I would first observe that human beings do not usually use reason to guide their lives. The long-term support for the logically fallacious Drug War, even by academics, is one of the best proofs of that statement. I find, moreover, that those who make a big show of using "Reason" are the ones to watch out for. They are the intolerant and combatant materialists of today who come to seemingly firm and concrete conclusions about the world, telling us that "this is so, according to science!" blissfully unaware that their "knowledge" is based on metaphysical assumptions, assumptions that can be rationally gainsaid2.
What assumptions? In our times, the "rationalist" typically assumes the veracity and sufficiency of reductive materialist principles, not just in the material realm but in the psychological and spiritual realm as well345. It is this presumption that we have to thank for the psychiatric pill mill 67 and the fact that drug researchers today cannot see any beneficial uses for drugs like MDMA 8 and laughing gas, even though common sense, history and anecdote cry out that these drugs have obvious positive uses9.
This is not to disparage reason itself, but to raise an important qualification: namely, that what seems reasonable to one class of society can often be found to depend for its supposed rationality on highly debatable premises, indeed.
Nor am I sure that I want to live in a world wherein reason holds sway, at least not in the utopian manner that Santayana envisions in the following excerpt:
"If the passions arose in season, if perception fed only on those things which action should be adjusted to, turning them, while action proceeded, into the substance of ideas—then all conduct would be voluntary and enlightened, all speculation would be practical, all perceptions beautiful, and all operations arts. The Life of Reason would then be universal.10"
It sounds like a paradise for Dr. Spock of Star Trek, or for a timid and nervous conservative who has never learned how to dance. ("Most dances," quoth Santyana, "are somewhat ridiculous," which sounds to me like sour grapes.)
But the notion that emotions could ever be tamed by reason seems naïve, to put it mildly. And the idea that they should be seems debatable. It is psychological common sense that the experience of Dionysian ecstasy can have psychological benefits for the depressed and anxious. Moreover, the west itself had a history of cultivating ecstatic states for the purposes of mystical enlightenment. The psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian Mysteries lasted for almost 2,000 consecutive years and inspired western thinkers such as Cicero, Plato and Aristotle11. As that latter philosopher reported, initiates came to the rites to experience truths, to feel them, not to "learn" them in any ratiocinative sense of that word.
And Santayana's insistence that "all speculation would be practical" is anti-scientific and anti-progress. It preemptively disallows our philosophical study of the worlds that William James encountered under the influence of laughing gas, or that indigenous people have encountered for ages with the help of plant-based psychedelic medicines. We cannot discuss these worlds with regard to utility or by correlating them with known things, as Santayana would have us do -- since these are entirely new worlds, at least to we intoxiphobic westerners. It is our job, as James claimed, to study these worlds, not to dismiss them a priori as unimportant and irrational12.
And yet Santayana says otherwise:
"We should not wish to know 'things in themselves.' What it concerns us to know about them is merely the service or injury they are able to do us, and in what fashion they can affect our lives.13"
Such a world view sounds like a science stopper to me. It is certainly a philosophy stopper. It sounds like the utterance of a closed-minded utilitarian 1415 .
Santayana here reminds me of "that guy" who will fix your plumbing leak in a heartbeat and will talk to you nonstop about socket wrenches, but if you talk to him about Socratic forms, his eyes will glaze over in a trice. He'll tell you, in effect, "Yes, but this has nothing to do with the price of tea in China!" Or, in more brutal terms: "Yes, but where's the money?! Is this stuff going to affect my bank account or not? If not, then why are you wasting my time?!"
Nor are Socratic forms dead. They may have a new relevance in helping us understand the counterintuitive world of quantum physics, as Bernardo Kastrup explains in his recent book on the metaphysics of the philosopher Schopenhauer16.
And what about that Reason, which Santayana tells us "is universal in its outlook and in its sympathies"? How does that claim square with William James' insights based on his use of laughing gas?
"Our normal waking consciousness," wrote James, "rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.17"
I have no doubt that clever philosophers could square Santayana's views with that of James, perhaps by distinguishing rational consciousness from Reason, but I am concerned here with the tendencies of Santayana's utilitarian 18 focus to foster an unwarranted self-satisfaction in modern self-proclaimed "rationalists." The idea that reason should call the shots when it comes to mood and mentation has given rise to the hateful doctrine of behaviorism in the field of psychology. This passion-free viewpoint has blinded modern scientists to a myriad of obvious benefits to the use of substances that we call (or rather denigrate as) "drugs"19.
Behaviorism aside, the real experts on psychoactive drugs are empathic individuals who have used them themselves and can advise on drug use that would further the life goals of a specific living, breathing human being20. There is no role for rationalists here who purposefully remove all feelings from their moral calculus and pretentiously try to tell us what we should need in order to feel happy according to their Excel charts, never bothering to ask us about our goals in life and the amount of risk that we're willing to take in order to attain them.
This behaviorism renders scientists stupid. It is why materialists can tell us that laughing gas has no therapeutic uses, even though common sense screams out otherwise21. In fact, laughing gas kits should be made available to the suicidal as we make Epi pens available to those with potentially deadly allergies. Instead, the FDA is attempting to treat the substance like any other drug, which is a slap in the face to the legacy of William James, not to mention to academic freedom itself22.
Like many of the drugs that we have outlawed, laughing gas conduces to a spiritual understanding of the world in the user. And so the disdain for altered states that is implicit in Santayana's utilitarian philosophy is a very "convenient" disdain, indeed. It prevents the professed atheist from ever having to experience the world in a way that might alter his jealously circumscribed vision of reality.
The praise of reason in itself is not folly, of course. There are rational reasons why one should prefer Mahler's 3rd Symphony to "Push It" by Salt n Pepa. And a lack of reason has certainly sent some cultures into quirky dead-ends, as in the case of the cargo cults of the Pacific23. But even if there were a thousand such benighted cultures, they would pose no existential threat to humanity. Their people still love, laugh and cry like the rest of us.
Today's existential threats come from countries that consider themselves to be highly rational. They are the ones who claim to have placed Reason on a throne. The Nazis of World War II prided themselves on their rationality and efficiency. And the rational scientists of Russia and the United States have placed the entire world under a nuclear Sword of Damocles, one which may yet bring the world itself to an end -- or at least force it to reboot and start from scratch.
This is why feeling must come first in any comprehensive philosophy of life. It must have precedence over utility-oriented reason. And because feelings of mistrust and fear abound in the annals of human history, the true philosopher will have learned from this past. He or she will advocate the strategic use of entheogenic medicines to eradicate this cancer from the suffering patient, that species to whom we somewhat ironically refer as Homo sapiens. The fact that few philosophers make this suggestion is easy to understand, however. Drug war ideology has taught us from childhood that substances we have labeled as "drugs" can have no positive uses for anybody, anywhere, ever. We are taught to consider them as evil in and of themselves. This, of course, is sheer superstition. But even if philosophers have risen above the omnipresent censorship to think otherwise, they are not in a hurry to say so since being honest on this topic entails great risk to reputation and career.
This is not to say that I dismiss Santayana's work out of hand. I do, however, find his disdain for metaphysics to be disturbing and short-sighted. As William James reports, the nature of human consciousness is far from understood and requires informed speculation, speculation informed by our experiences in altered states. Nor are the ultimate answers that we find on this subject likely to align with any common sense notion that we could deduce from the daily humdrum world around us to which Santayana would seem to limit us. Quantum physics tells us that the world we live in is very odd indeed24. In the words of quantum pioneer Werner Heisenberg, "Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.25"
Finally, as suggested above, Santayana's focus on utilitarian motivation in Reason has to be considered in light of world history. In the last one hundred years, in particular, the west has exploited South American lands in the name of utility, running roughshod over the will of the inhabitants. We have criminalized their religion and the plant teachers that they used in sacred rituals. We have told them that their gods were phony and had them adopt Christianity, often on pain of death. And who were those inhabitants over which we rational people triumphed? They were the very people whom Santayana dismisses as 'savages,' a pejorative term that he uses no less than 21 times in his books on "The Life of Reason."
To paraphrase Patrick Henry,
"If this be reason, let us make the least of it!"
Author's Follow-up: December 31, 2024
If this critique seems harsh, I would argue that it is no harsher than Santayana is toward the emotive world of "savages." Santayana's arguments are often subtle, however, so it would be wrong to dismiss him wholesale. I have no doubt that continued reading will provide me with valuable insights, notwithstanding the mischievous tendencies of his work as a whole, at least when read in this scientistic age of ours, governed as it is by behaviorist presumptions and technological triumphalism.
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I was listening to Mahler's 3rd Symphony yesterday before publishing this essay and asking myself in what way we might consider it to be rationally superior to "Push It" by Salt n Pepa. In one sense, I think the answer is rather straightforward.
Like many listeners, when I first heard Mahler, I was confronted by a bunch of sounds, or rather noise. It took education, both musical and otherwise, combined with a greater experience of life, for me to finally begin to "get" Mahler's music, to finally begin identifying the many leitmotifs as they were presented and morphed throughout the work and understanding how they related to the composition as a whole.
This is basically proof in itself of the work's rational superiority for me since its enjoyment clearly requires the activation of more neuronal connections than does the work of a top-10 hit. This increased neuronal connectivity is, in turn, a positive good insofar as it not only allows one to appreciate Mahler's music, but it conduces to more flexible thinking and creativity in general.
And so when people say that they don't enjoy Shakespeare or Mahler, I think they are saying more about themselves than they might imagine. Nor am I getting on an esthetic high-horse here. I am often not in the mood for either Mahler or Shakespeare, but whenever I fail to appreciate them, I attribute that shortcoming to myself: to a lack of education and/or experience on my part, and/or the fact that I am currently distracted by mundane concerns.
This is why I refrain from dismissing Santayana wholesale, lest I thereby be unwittingly advertising my own neuronal shortcomings. I have instead focused on those problems with Santayana's philosophy that I can clearly deduce from the philosopher's own words, most notably his premature disdain for metaphysics and his tendency to dismiss the emotive life as "savage."
--
I might add that people make the same mistake when it comes to psychedelic medicine. Some people do not have profound experiences under the influence -- at least on some particular substances at some particular doses. And they are sometimes inclined to blame this on the substances themselves. But they may be betraying their own lack of "education," in the broad sense of that word, with such complaints. Set and setting does matter, and part of the setting includes one's education level and inherent neuronal capacities. So rather than complaining about their inabilities in this quarter, they should better do some soul searching and find how they can approach the experience with a better mindset.
That said, psychedelics can do some of the heavy lifting. But you've got to meet them halfway. This is true of drugs in general. Both folks who misuse them and folks who diss them tend to base their judgment on uninformed use. There is a big difference between sitting down to smoke opium 26 with an open mind, humbly seeking creative enlightenment, and popping an oxy pill with the sole intention of "getting high," at least in so far as "getting high" means letting the drug do all the work. Attitude, intention, education level, and life experience all matter.
Author's Follow-up: January 7, 2025
I do not want to leave the impression that there is something wrong with enjoying soul music. To the contrary, a failure to be able to enjoy soul music might indicate a shortcoming in the emotive department. That failure could in turn say something about one's cultural provincialism.
As a white teenager in the seventies, I was a big fan of soul music -- including much of the music that never made it to pop charts -- falsetto ballads like "Dedicate My Life" by the Young Hearts and deep cuts from albums by Labelle. I kept my tastes to myself, however, because I knew that most white Euro-Americans were uncomfortable with the degree of feeling expressed in these songs. And trust me, those who ridiculed my preferences were not all rational geniuses: they simply had been brought up in a culture with a different esthetic, one wherein strong expressions of emotion were discouraged.
Author's Follow-up:
June 06, 2025
Here's something that Santayana got right.
"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.27" The Drug War, of course, is a clear example of that fanaticism.
The U.S. Congress considered the following to be a scientific fact back in 1924:
"A person taking narcotics regularly impedes evolutionary progress and tends to degenerate backwards toward the brute." -- Richmond Hobson
UNESCO celebrates the healing practices of the Kallawaya people of South America. What hypocrisy! UNESCO supports a drug war that makes some of those practices illegal!
Materialist puritans do not want to create any drug that elates. So they go on a fool's errand to find reductionist cures for "depression itself," as if the vast array of human sadness could (or should) be treated with a one-size-fits-all readjustment of brain chemicals.
William James knew that there were substances that could elate. However, it never occurred to him that we should use such substances to prevent suicide. It seems James was blinded to this possibility by his puritanical assumptions.
Until prohibition ends, rehab is all about enforcing a Christian Science attitude toward psychoactive medicines (with the occasional hypocritical exception of Big Pharma meds).
It is consciousness which, via perception, shapes the universe into palpable forms. Otherwise it's just a chaos of particles. The very fact that you can refer to "the sun" shows that your senses have parsed the raw data into a specific meaning. "We" make this universe.
It's funny to hear fans of sacred plants indignantly insisting that their meds are not "drugs." They're right in a way, but actually NO substances are "drugs." Calling substances "drugs" is like referring to striking workers as "scabs." It's biased terminology.
Outlawing drugs is outlawing obvious therapies for Alzheimer's and autism patients, therapies based on common sense and not on the passion-free behaviorism of modern scientists.
I'm told that science is completely unbiased today. I guess I'll have to go back and reassess my doubts about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
"Arrest made in Matthew Perry death." Oh, yeah? Did they arrest the drug warriors who prioritized propaganda over education?
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