William James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing Gas
an open letter to Steve Taylor, author of 'The Genius of William James'
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
January 27, 2023
Dear Mr. Taylor:
I just read your enjoyable and informative article in Psychology Today on "The Genius of William James," and would like to share a few thoughts with you on this topic, should you find the time to read them.
1. Regarding your fascinating thoughts on time, I have recently read similar observations in works by Wolfgang Smith, who points out how Cartesian conceptions force us to think of time in ways that do not square with the ways that we actually experience it.
2. I share your views on human consciousness. I like to look at the brain as a radio receiver for consciousness, as one of many ways of interacting with consciousness, so to say. If the brain is damaged, it need not mean that consciousness is "damaged," any more than damaging a single computer will damage the Internet or damaging a TV will damage the national television networks.
3. Regarding warfare, you write: "human societies need to find an equivalent activity that brings the same collective and individual benefits of war—without causing death and devastation." The fact is that ravers have already found such an activity: it is the use of MDMA , or empathogens in general. The use of Ecstasy in the 1990s brought together every race in color in unprecedented harmony on the British dance floors. The problem is that Drug War ideology holds the anti-scientific notion that criminalized substances can have no positive uses, for anyone, anywhere, at any time, for any reason, ever.
Speaking of the Drug War, I would like to end with a sort of call for action, please. As you may know, England is getting ready to outlaw nitrous oxide, as America has already effectively done. Not only does this deny godsend medicine to millions, but it effectively outlaws philosophical investigations about the nature of consciousness and reality itself. For as you know, the use of nitrous oxide strongly influenced William James' ontology. In fact, that ontology would be very different had William James been obliged to refrain from using that substance.
Therefore I would humbly encourage you to join me in protesting the Drug War's ongoing attempts to outlaw all substances (like laughing gas ) that give us hints of a non-materialistic world. This is one reason why materialism 1 has such staying power: because the Drug War has outlawed precisely those substances whose use tends to cast doubt on our materialist premises. This Drug War is surely a war on science and human progress and, in my view, it is our duty to denounce it as such.
Thank you for your time and your consideration of my ideas!
PS If there are problems with the use of N2O or any other substance, we need to educate people, not criminalize use and thereby end our investigations of ultimate reality. The money we spend on law enforcement should be spent on sending healthcare workers into affected communities and spreading the news about safe use practices. The alternative is scientific censorship.
Mr. Taylor has not yet seen fit to respond to my open letter, this despite the fact that the FDA has been working in the meantime to criminalize laughing gas , the substance whose use shaped William James' renegade attitude toward materialism. But then it is rare to find an article about James that even admits that he ever worked with laughing gas 3 . Even James' online bio at Harvard University fails to point out that politically incorrect truth, no doubt because it is so at odds with the reigning view of behaviorism and materialism in academia. James created both the psychology department and the psychology field itself at Harvard and yet his legacy on this topic is ignored even there. Ironically, even Taylor's article on the Psychology Today website is being "sponsored" today by a company that promotes a materialist view of "mental illness 4 ." The ad for Liven, a self-help app, tells us that: "Procrastination is not laziness. It is a depression response." In other words, depression, according to the app makers, is identical in kind to liver disease or a headache. Medical professionals are the supposed experts when it comes to mind and mood.
This is a huge power grab by medical science, if Americans would only recognize it as such -- and for the Big Pharma 56 companies, too, given that drug prohibition gives them a monopoly on providing mind and mood medicine. We are talking about a multi-billion-dollar business opportunity for medical science based on the category error of placing materialists in charge of mind medicine. With such money at stake, it is little wonder that the pushback against the jaundiced materialist outlook will be half-hearted, even to the point of rewriting history. I have contacted dozens of philosophers on this subject over the last three years, in the States and in England, and I have yet to find one who acknowledges a problem with the way that academia has rewritten James' history to avoid offending both materialist and Drug War sensibilities. I remain the only philosopher in the world to have officially protested the FDA's plans to treat nitrous oxide as a "drug," thereby making it even less available to philosophers (and to the depressed) than it already is.
In America, we would rather fear drugs than to use them to stop the depressed from killing themselves. In America, we would rather fear drugs than to allow for academic freedom.
"The homicidal drug is booze. There's more violence on a Saturday night in a neighborhood tavern than there has been in the whole 20-year history of LSD." -- Timothy Leary
They drive to their drug tests in pickup trucks with license plates that read "Don't tread on me." Yeah, right. "Don't tread on me: Just tell me how and how much I'm allowed to think and feel in this life. And please let me know what plants I can access."
Drug prohibition has resulted in hundreds of thousands of completely unnecessary deaths thanks to totally preventable drug overdoses!
Chesterton might as well have been speaking about the word 'addiction' when he wrote the following: "It is useless to have exact figures if they are exact figures about an inexact phrase."
If there is an epidemic of "self-harm," prohibitionists never think of outlawing razor blades. They ask: "Why the self-harm?" But if there is an epidemic of drug use which they CLAIM is self-harm, they never ask "Why the self-harm?" They say: "Let's prohibit and punish!"
There are hundreds of things that we should outlaw before drugs (like horseback riding) if, as claimed, we are targeting dangerous activities. Besides, drugs are only dangerous BECAUSE of prohibition, which compromises product purity and refuses to teach safe use.
If drug war logic made sense, we would outlaw endless things in addition to drugs. Because the drug war says that it's all worth it if we can save just one life -- which is generally the life of a white suburban young person, btw.
In response to a tweet that "some drugs cannot be used wisely for recreational purposes": The problem is, most people draw such conclusions based on general impressions inspired by a media that demonizes drugs. In reality, it's hard to imagine a drug that cannot theoretically be used wisely for recreation at some dose, in some context.
When people tell us there's nothing to be gained from using mind-improving drugs, they are embarrassing themselves. Users benefit from such drugs precisely to the extent that they are educated and open-minded. Loudmouth abstainers are telling us that they lack these traits.
We deal with "drug" risks differently than any other risk. Aspirin kills thousands every year. The death rate from free climbing is huge. But it's only with "drug use" that we demand zero deaths (a policy which ironically causes far more deaths than necessary).
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