he University of Pennsylvania just blacklisted the words "freshman" and "sophomore." Whatever we may think of this latest politically correct gambit, it strikes me as amusing that we have this faux freedom to tweak the dictionary while we have no freedom to use the plant medicine that grows at our very feet. If the university wants to be truly progressive and take a truly courageous action, they would ban the word "drugs," which is used in the US as a Christian Science pejorative for psychoactive medicine. But that would be a real stand that might cause real pushback, and that's not the kind of "bold action" that university deans are known to favor. "Look at us, we're attacking patriarchy -- but we still grant government the right to control how much we can feel, how we can think, and how much we can think."
August 30, 2022
You see what he did there? Brian's suggesting that progressives these days are hitting easy targets while steadfastly ignoring the biggest infringement of all time, both of personal and civil rights: namely, the Drug War, which punishes us (albeit usually indirectly) for saying or doing anything that conflicts with the Drug Warrior's attitude of substance demonization. For almost 40 years now, the government's official policy about "drugs" has been to lie to us about them. Not so much by saying false things but rather by reporting only negative outcomes of substance use. Office of National Drug Control Policy actually has a charter that forbids its members from even considering any positive uses for the substances that America has criminalized. And yet we're talking about the kind of medicines that have inspired entire religions.
What Have We Learned?
August 30, 2022
Mouse over questions to read answers
What is the main point of this mini essay?
To compliment University of Pennsylvania for their new rules about forbidden speech?
To task that otherwise worthy institution for ignoring the 24,000-pound gorilla in the room, viz the Drug War, which has created endless problems out of whole cloth.
To congratulate the school for ignoring the Drug War like everybody else.
In other words, Brian is wondering, when the heck is anyone going to realize that "drugs" is the loaded term par excellence?! For the way it's used today by Drug Warriors, it means: psychoactive substances for which there is no beneficial use whatsoever: not today, not tomorrow, not at any dose whatsoever for any person whatsoever for any reason whatsoever in any country whatsoever, ever.
Of course there are no substances like that in the entire world. A scientific country (not to say one that studies history and was founded on natural law) knows that any substance can be used for good or ill. There are no evil substances. Evil is not a property of things, but of people. Evil, for instance, is being done when a government purposefully tries to scare its people from psychoactive substances rather than educating them in the ways of safe use.
Author's Follow-up: October 10, 2023
I am not seeking to opine here on any particular progressive cause célèbre. My meaning is merely this: If the far left would get as indignant about their rights to Mother Nature as they currently are about the misuse of pronouns, the world would be making far more progress in overthrowing the anti-scientific, racist and panic-driven ideology of the War on Drugs -- which, of course, is actually a war on the users of the kinds of substances that have inspired entire religions.
We've all been taught since grade school that human beings cannot use psychoactive medicines wisely. That is just a big fat lie. It's criminal to keep substances illegal that can awaken the mind and remind us of our full potential in life.
It's interesting that Jamaicans call the police 'Babylon,' given that Babylon denotes a society seeking materialist pleasures. Drug use is about transcending the material world and seeking spiritual states: states that the materialist derides as meaningless.
In "Psychedelic Refugee," Rosemary Leary writes:
"Fueled by small doses of LSD, almost everything was amusing or weird." -- Rosemary Leary
In a non-brainwashed world, such testimony would suggest obvious ways to help the depressed.
If we encourage folks to use antidepressants daily, there is nothing wrong with them using heroin daily. A founder of Johns Hopkins used morphine daily and he not only survived, but he thrived.
The benefits of entheogens read like the ultimate wish-list for psychiatrists. It's a shame that so many of them are still mounting a rear guard action to defend their psychiatric pill mill -- which demoralizes clients by turning them into lifetime patients.
Immanuel Kant wrote that scientists are scornful about metaphysics yet they rely on it themselves without realizing it. This is a case in point, for the idea that euphoria and visions are unhelpful in life is a metaphysical viewpoint, not a scientific one.
How would we even KNOW that outlawed drugs have no positive uses? We first have to incorporate them in a sane, empathic and creative way to find that out, and the drug war makes such a sensible approach absolutely impossible.
To understand why the western world is blind to the benefits of "drugs," read "The Concept of Nature" by Whitehead. He unveils the scientific schizophrenia of the west, according to which the "real" world is invisible to us while our perceptions are mere "secondary" qualities.
My depression would disappear overnight if religiously intolerant America would just allow me to live as free as Benjamin Franklin.
To put it another way: in a sane world, we would learn to strategically fight drugs with drugs.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Penn State Patsies for the Drug War published on May 20, 2021 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
he University of Pennsylvania just blacklisted the words "freshman" and "sophomore." Whatever we may think of this latest politically correct gambit, it strikes me as amusing that we have this faux freedom to tweak the dictionary while we have no freedom to use the plant medicine that grows at our very feet. If the university wants to be truly progressive and take a truly courageous action, they would ban the word "drugs," which is used in the US as a Christian Science pejorative for psychoactive medicine. But that would be a real stand that might cause real pushback, and that's not the kind of "bold action" that university deans are known to favor. "Look at us, we're attacking patriarchy -- but we still grant government the right to control how much we can feel, how we can think, and how much we can think."
I am not seeking to opine here on any particular progressive cause célèbre. My meaning is merely this: If the far left would get as indignant about their rights to Mother Nature as they currently are about the misuse of pronouns, the world would be making far more progress in overthrowing the anti-scientific, racist and panic-driven ideology of the War on Drugs -- which, of course, is actually a war on the users of the kinds of substances that have inspired entire religions.
You have been reading an article entitled, Penn State Patsies for the Drug War published on May 20, 2021 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)