by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
December 6, 2019
n the "Wisdom of Life," Arthur Schopenhauer sums up an unspoken assumption of Western philosophy when he writes:
"Every man is pent up within the limits of his own consciousness and cannot get directly beyond those limits any more than he can get beyond his own skin."
Indeed, Schopenhauer's famous pessimism is derived from the daily observance of this supposed "fact of life."
But what if it's not a fact? What if we discovered that human psychology was quite therapeutically pliable after all? Wouldn't such a finding require a revision, not only of Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy but of Western philosophy in general, insofar as it presupposes stark limitations on the ability of individual human beings to change their own psychology for the better? Wouldn't it require the doomsayers of today to admit that there may be hope for humanity after all, if we only open our eyes (and our research laboratories) to the astonishing psychological healing potential of psychedelic plants?
These are not just hypothetical questions, for a scientific study of psychoactive plants is now proving to Western researchers what partakers of these substances have known for millennia, namely that plants like ibogaine, ayahuasca, and psilocybin can be used strategically to foster new understandings in the human mind, to help one rise above a parochial and neurosis-making upbringing, as well as problematic genetics, and to thrive in the world, in spite of the negative cards that they may have been dealt both by nurture and by nature.
But Western philosophy has entirely missed the implications of these developments. Why? Because most philosophers (like most European-Americans) are stealth puritans who are suspicious of psychoactive plants, unfavorably associating them with witches in Medieval times and with hippies in the present, a jaundiced view of Mother Nature that no doubt traces its origins to the Garden of Eden and that fiasco with the apple (or was it a pomegranate?).
Moreover, the Western penchant for materialism has encouraged drug researchers to dismiss psychedelic mental states out of hand as mere madness, refusing to consider the time-honored evidence of their psychologically therapeutic value, while they dogmatically search instead for reductively formulated nostrums whose chemical effects on the body may (at least in theory) be quantified. It's as though today's scientific credo with respect to psychological cures was:
Better a theoretically justifiable materialist solution with dubious results than a non-quantifiable solution that actually works.
How would a change in such attitudes benefit philosophy?
To make this clear, we can ask the following question:
"What would Schopenhauer's philosophy have been like had he experienced the mind-expanding effects of naturally occurring DMT?"
I think the answer is obvious: he would have rewritten his largely normative credos in a far more prescriptive fashion, insisting that humanity had no justifiable reason to abjure psychological plant medicines and that, to the contrary, there is every reason to think that such use can be philosophically therapeutic, and even ontologically revealing.
Why? Because this hypothetical Schopenhauer of ours would have discovered that psychedelics are custom-made to provide the user with a kind of intuitive proof of the tenets of what Aldous Huxley identified as "the perennial philosophy," that unifying view of life that has long been recognized and advocated by the non-materialists of the world.
I may be giving Schopenhauer too much credit here, but his use of DMT may have even spurred him to propose the following instructive syllogism:
Proposition 1: The unexamined life is not worth living.
Proposition 2: Psychedelics provide us with an unrivaled means to examine life.
Conclusion: Psychedelic plants are an indispensable part of every philosopher's tool chest.
Such a syllogism, developed in the 19th century, could have prevented America's march toward drug-war fascism, by reminding us that plants are our friends and that problems with their misuse are precisely that - problems with their misuse and not with the substances themselves. Meanwhile, if other philosophers were to take Schopenhauer's lead, the materialist west could begin a long-awaited merger with eastern thought and a unifying understanding of reality could finally be assayed.
As for what would be left behind by such a philosophical rebooting, good riddance, for it would be nothing but desperate materialist arguments about Matrix conspiracies, brains in a vat, and the supposed illusory nature of consciousness (and even reality) itself -- all of which mad speculation is elegantly refuted by the intuitive lessons provided by the psychedelic experience, at least when said experience is undertaken with due reverence (even if such reverence is only adopted heuristically by a materialist skeptic) and a willingness to learn.
Pessimism got the final word in Schopenhauer's actual philosophy, but that is only because, like most western thinkers then and now, he was reckoning without a consideration of what psychoactive plants might have to say on the matter. Of course, in his day, he had an excuse. He was no doubt unaware of the philosophically empowering potential of Mother Nature.
But today's materialists have no such excuse. Therefore, when they try to tell us that life is even bleaker than Schopenhauer implied, they should follow all such pronouncements with an asterisk, to inform the reader that the philosopher in question has not yet evaluated his dour outlook in the light of any ontological intuitions provided by psychedelic plants.
Perhaps someday there will even be a sort of reverse drug test at the Philosophy Department's front door, so that no one can enter who has not had at least one experience with psychedelic medicine. At very least, today's materialist philosopher should come clean about their willful renunciation of nature's pharmacy. If they want to tell us that reality itself does not exist, that's fine - as long as they admit to having unscientifically discounted a priori the contrary evidence provided by the reverent and strategic use of Mother Nature's plants.
May 5, 2022 The above author, bless him, (this Ballard Quass chappie) is writing under the perhaps somewhat naive assumption that his audience is conversant with the potential of psychoactive medicines to help human beings survive and thrive in the world, both individually and collectively. In response to this concern, I adduce the following remedial reading list, so to speak, to bring the challenged reader up to speed on this topic, starting with a heart-warming essay about the rave scene in Britain, in which MDMA (aka Ecstasy) brought unprecedented peace, love and understanding to the dance floor -- until Drug Warriors looked that gift horse straight in the mouth by cracking down on Ecstasy, after which -- surprise, surprise -- dance floor violence went through the flippin' roof! Another "victory" for the truly bone-headed war on psychoactive medicine.
How the Drug War Killed Leah Betters and ended the peaceful rave scene in Britain.
- Food of the Gods, by Terrence McKenna
- How to Change Your Mind, by Michael Pollan
- Psychedelic Shmanism, by Jim DeKorne
- Psychedelic Medicine, edited by Richard Louis Miller
- Sacred Knowledge by William Richards
- The Doors of Perception, by Aldous Huxley
- The Perennial Philosophy, by Aldous Huxley
- The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide, by James Fadiman
- The Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James (check out his take on nitrous oxide, and then read B's essay entitled Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide.)
- Thus Spake the Plant, by Monica Gagliano
- True Hallucinations, by Terrence McKenna
- When Plants Dream, by Michael Pinchbeck
Oh, and do notice, please, that nitrous oxide is discussed by William James in a book about religious experiences -- not a book about the danger of narcotics but a book about religious experiences! This is why the Drug War is a war on religion -- indeed, it's a war on the religious impulse itself. Brian has said as much in several essays. See, for instance, Why the Drug War is Worse than a Religion.
Oh, and how about using psychedelic medicine to HUGELY increase music appreciation? Check out The Educational Use of Psychoactive Plants.
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Why Rick Doblin is Ghosting Me
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Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs
The DEA stomped onto Thomas Jefferson's estate in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants in violation of everything he stood for, politically speaking. And the TJ Foundation helped them! They sold out Jefferson.
Addiction thrives BECAUSE of prohibition, which limits drug choice and discourages education about psychoactive substances and how to use them wisely.
They still don't seem to get it. The drug war is a whole wrong way of looking at the world. It tells us that substances can be judged "up" or "down," which is anti-scientific and blinds us to endless beneficial uses.
"The Legislature deliberately determines to distrust the very people who are legally responsible for the physical well-being of the nation, and puts them under the thumb of the police, as if they were potential criminals."
-- Aleister Crowley on drug laws
There are neither "drugs" nor "meds" as those terms are used today. All substances have potential good uses and bad uses. The terms as used today carry value judgements, as in meds good, drugs bad.
If America cannot exist without outlawing drugs, then there is something wrong with America, not with drugs.
There are plenty of "prima facie" reasons for believing that we could eliminate most problems with drug and alcohol withdrawal by chemically aided sleep cures combined with using "drugs" to fight "drugs." But drug warriors don't want a fix, they WANT drug use to be a problem.
If MAPS wants to make progress with MDMA they should start "calling out" the FDA for judging holistic medicines by materialist standards, which means ignoring all glaringly obvious benefits.
The sad fact is that America regularly arrests people whose only crime is that they are keeping performance anxiety at bay... in such a way that psychiatrists are not getting THEIR cut.
We need a Controlled Prohibitionists Act, to get psychiatric help for the losers who think that prohibition makes sense despite its appalling record of causing civil wars overseas and devastating inner cities.
More Tweets
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, What if Arthur Schopenhauer Had Used DMT?: Psychotropic plants as a cure for modern pessimism, published on December 6, 2019 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)
