Post by gottcha on Jan 22, 2004 13:57:40 GMT -5
I was invited to make a presentation at Kelowna's only Salon. The subject matter was found to be to controversial, as aI understand it.
I believe "thinking" demands challenges not rearanging
WHAT SOME PEOPLE DEEM AS THINKING IS MERELY THE REARANGING OF THEIR PREJUSICES.
Or
The war on SOME Drugs
Madame Justice Southin recently made the following pronouncement from her seat on the Court Bench
“The growing, trafficking in, and possession of (Marijuana) is the source of much work, not only for peace officers but also for lawyers and judges” wrote Justice Mary Southin “Whether that work contributes to peace, order and good government is another matter.” (Indeed it is!)
Madam Justice Southin further states, “I have not yet abandoned my conviction that Parliament has a constitutional right to be hoodwinked, as it was in the 1920’s and 1930’s by the propaganda against Marijuana, and REMAIN to be hoodwinked.”
Hoodwink is used as a verb. Verbs describe action or in this case a subterfuge.
Whoever perpetrated the marijuana hoodwink on parliamentarians, succeeded and by extension hoodwinked all Canadians who accepted, without question, the pronouncement of those who perpetrated the “hoodwink”
Justice Southin’s pronouncement is without doubt valid. Her observation regarding the hoodwinking of parliamentarians does indeed make of much work, work that pays quite well by the way, for lawyers, judges and peace officers. The Justice’s observations deserve our further considerations.
What were and are the motives for perpetuating this ‘Marijuana Hoodwink’ on legislators?
Why was and is it done?
Why the subterfuge?
Whose ox is being gored?
Whose agendas threatened?
Was the “hoodwink” put to use to create an altered state of conciseness also, a lower state of consciousness perhaps? It must be considered consciousness can be lowered as well as heightened, must it not? Is that not the argument supplied by Marijuana abolitionists?
Away back in 1972, 31 years ago Dr. Andrew Weil wrote “The Natural Mind, a new way of looking at drugs and the higher consciousness”. AND here we are, thirty some odd years later and the subjects is still debated from the same positions, and while doing so hundreds of lives have been ruined. Ruined not so much by the substances ingested as by system of laws based on emotionally charged argumentations and biases served up with a healthy dollop of junk science.
It is well noted in North American culture and perhaps world culture as well, that people use mind-altering behaviours and substances as a means of escape. I must strongly emphasis the word escape here. It really does not matter whether the means used is staring at mindless televised fluff, guzzling beer, sexing, or “comfort food” binges. The desire to shift ones conscious is pervasive.
Rarely considered are the possible *beneficial aspects* of perception change by the use of psychoactive substances deliberately used as a means to mind expansion.
There are also, and mostly unrecognized and ignored, myriad amounts of evidence in support of beneficial perceptual changes occurring while using mind-altering substances or practices.
Perception depends on ones perspective.
Here are two dramatic examples of diametrically opposed and polarized positions cited in Weil’s book-“The Natural Mind”
“When I was conducting human experiments with marihuana in Boston in 1968, a Federal Narcotics Bureau agent told me that no matter how my experiments came out, he would remain convinced that “marihuana makes people aggressive and violent.” My research had nothing to do with that possibility, but I asked him what his evidence was for his belief. He had one piece of evidence dating back from the early 1950s, when he had been seized by a curiosity to watch people smoke the drug. (His official duties were exclusively concerned with large-scale underworld heroin traffic and he had never come into contact with actual users of marihuana.) Accordingly, he had disguised himself as a beatnik and made his way to a Greenwich Village tea party. When he revealed himself as a Narcotic Bureau agent, “everyone there became aggressive and violent.” Most people laugh when I tell this story because the logical fallacy is obvious. But when I tried to point it out to this well-meaning man in Boston, he said, “That’s what I saw with my own eyes.”
“In February 1970 I attended a conference in California at which a young, radical sociologist presented data on drug use in American communes. He stated his belief that”marihuana often facilitates the development of communal life.” Asked to give evidence on this point, he explained that the question of who was going to wash the dishes was representative of problems encountered in making communes work. He said he had visited communes where the problem had been solved “by having everyone getting stoned on marihuana and make a game of dish washing,” and he added, “marihuana is known to aid in the performance of repetitive tasks.” When I objected to this last statement, he replied, “Well, that’s what I saw it with my own eyes.”
To continue with Weil’s observations –
“When you ask a question in research and the data comes back in this unhelpful way… you have asked the wrong questions.” Or make incorrect assumptions.
And so it is with the desire to alter ones consciousness.
A large part of the problem, as I see it, is in the use of such missives as absolutes, as in the expression ‘get high’. ‘Get high’ says nothing and has little positive charge to the listener whose perception is fixed in an assumed net loss of faculties. This now ‘fixed-in-belief’ attitude becomes unshakeable, or in other words “Right.” People who smoke pot become “drug users” and that label takes on a life of its own, one including all the intended negative aspects and suspicions of those who would make decisions on behalf of users of non-pharmaceutical drugs.
The “hoodwink” is now firmly fixed in consciousness.
Perhaps when the Stoners vocabulary advances beyond “ OH WOW” and “Far Out Man!” and he is able to describe the subtle nuance in his perceptual shifts, then those of the choose to limit perceptions might open their minds to views other than the ones they now hold.
And whether Madame Justice knows it, or not, she has exposed a very important point also addressed by Andrew Weil-
“The relative merits of straight versus stoned thinking are by far the most important of all of the garbled issues of the drug controversy, and it is the most anxiety-provoking. The anxiety arises entirely from ego-based consciousness because it concerns the deeply felt issue of self-esteem. When people who use drugs claim to have reached a higher consciousness or greater awareness, they automatically produce negative thoughts of lower levels of consciousness and lesser awareness in people who do not use drugs. Thus, these groups become polarized and begin to fight with each other symbolically, ritually, or even physically. When people are fighting they often fail to notice important things, such as the evidence that higher levels of consciousness exist and are available to all of us.”
In Roger Bacon's terms, the Middle Ages held argument to be the primary path to knowledge: argument from authority. Experience, the other mode of knowledge to which Bacon refers, was slowly beginning to make its way into Western life. We can get a feeling for the medieval mode of knowledge from the anecdote about the stable boy who heard the scholars arguing about how many teeth a horse had. The scholars consulted Aristotle concerning this weighty issue, while the stable boy went to the barn and counted the actual number of teeth a horse had. After reporting his findings to the learned gentlemen, the stable boy was, of course, summarily dismissed, because experience had nothing to do with knowledge. Knowledge was found in authority and system.
Is this description of knowledge and system the hoodwinkery to be found in the aforementioned “authority and system”?
cont
I believe "thinking" demands challenges not rearanging
WHAT SOME PEOPLE DEEM AS THINKING IS MERELY THE REARANGING OF THEIR PREJUSICES.
Or
The war on SOME Drugs
Madame Justice Southin recently made the following pronouncement from her seat on the Court Bench
“The growing, trafficking in, and possession of (Marijuana) is the source of much work, not only for peace officers but also for lawyers and judges” wrote Justice Mary Southin “Whether that work contributes to peace, order and good government is another matter.” (Indeed it is!)
Madam Justice Southin further states, “I have not yet abandoned my conviction that Parliament has a constitutional right to be hoodwinked, as it was in the 1920’s and 1930’s by the propaganda against Marijuana, and REMAIN to be hoodwinked.”
Hoodwink is used as a verb. Verbs describe action or in this case a subterfuge.
Whoever perpetrated the marijuana hoodwink on parliamentarians, succeeded and by extension hoodwinked all Canadians who accepted, without question, the pronouncement of those who perpetrated the “hoodwink”
Justice Southin’s pronouncement is without doubt valid. Her observation regarding the hoodwinking of parliamentarians does indeed make of much work, work that pays quite well by the way, for lawyers, judges and peace officers. The Justice’s observations deserve our further considerations.
What were and are the motives for perpetuating this ‘Marijuana Hoodwink’ on legislators?
Why was and is it done?
Why the subterfuge?
Whose ox is being gored?
Whose agendas threatened?
Was the “hoodwink” put to use to create an altered state of conciseness also, a lower state of consciousness perhaps? It must be considered consciousness can be lowered as well as heightened, must it not? Is that not the argument supplied by Marijuana abolitionists?
Away back in 1972, 31 years ago Dr. Andrew Weil wrote “The Natural Mind, a new way of looking at drugs and the higher consciousness”. AND here we are, thirty some odd years later and the subjects is still debated from the same positions, and while doing so hundreds of lives have been ruined. Ruined not so much by the substances ingested as by system of laws based on emotionally charged argumentations and biases served up with a healthy dollop of junk science.
It is well noted in North American culture and perhaps world culture as well, that people use mind-altering behaviours and substances as a means of escape. I must strongly emphasis the word escape here. It really does not matter whether the means used is staring at mindless televised fluff, guzzling beer, sexing, or “comfort food” binges. The desire to shift ones conscious is pervasive.
Rarely considered are the possible *beneficial aspects* of perception change by the use of psychoactive substances deliberately used as a means to mind expansion.
There are also, and mostly unrecognized and ignored, myriad amounts of evidence in support of beneficial perceptual changes occurring while using mind-altering substances or practices.
Perception depends on ones perspective.
Here are two dramatic examples of diametrically opposed and polarized positions cited in Weil’s book-“The Natural Mind”
“When I was conducting human experiments with marihuana in Boston in 1968, a Federal Narcotics Bureau agent told me that no matter how my experiments came out, he would remain convinced that “marihuana makes people aggressive and violent.” My research had nothing to do with that possibility, but I asked him what his evidence was for his belief. He had one piece of evidence dating back from the early 1950s, when he had been seized by a curiosity to watch people smoke the drug. (His official duties were exclusively concerned with large-scale underworld heroin traffic and he had never come into contact with actual users of marihuana.) Accordingly, he had disguised himself as a beatnik and made his way to a Greenwich Village tea party. When he revealed himself as a Narcotic Bureau agent, “everyone there became aggressive and violent.” Most people laugh when I tell this story because the logical fallacy is obvious. But when I tried to point it out to this well-meaning man in Boston, he said, “That’s what I saw with my own eyes.”
“In February 1970 I attended a conference in California at which a young, radical sociologist presented data on drug use in American communes. He stated his belief that”marihuana often facilitates the development of communal life.” Asked to give evidence on this point, he explained that the question of who was going to wash the dishes was representative of problems encountered in making communes work. He said he had visited communes where the problem had been solved “by having everyone getting stoned on marihuana and make a game of dish washing,” and he added, “marihuana is known to aid in the performance of repetitive tasks.” When I objected to this last statement, he replied, “Well, that’s what I saw it with my own eyes.”
To continue with Weil’s observations –
“When you ask a question in research and the data comes back in this unhelpful way… you have asked the wrong questions.” Or make incorrect assumptions.
And so it is with the desire to alter ones consciousness.
A large part of the problem, as I see it, is in the use of such missives as absolutes, as in the expression ‘get high’. ‘Get high’ says nothing and has little positive charge to the listener whose perception is fixed in an assumed net loss of faculties. This now ‘fixed-in-belief’ attitude becomes unshakeable, or in other words “Right.” People who smoke pot become “drug users” and that label takes on a life of its own, one including all the intended negative aspects and suspicions of those who would make decisions on behalf of users of non-pharmaceutical drugs.
The “hoodwink” is now firmly fixed in consciousness.
Perhaps when the Stoners vocabulary advances beyond “ OH WOW” and “Far Out Man!” and he is able to describe the subtle nuance in his perceptual shifts, then those of the choose to limit perceptions might open their minds to views other than the ones they now hold.
And whether Madame Justice knows it, or not, she has exposed a very important point also addressed by Andrew Weil-
“The relative merits of straight versus stoned thinking are by far the most important of all of the garbled issues of the drug controversy, and it is the most anxiety-provoking. The anxiety arises entirely from ego-based consciousness because it concerns the deeply felt issue of self-esteem. When people who use drugs claim to have reached a higher consciousness or greater awareness, they automatically produce negative thoughts of lower levels of consciousness and lesser awareness in people who do not use drugs. Thus, these groups become polarized and begin to fight with each other symbolically, ritually, or even physically. When people are fighting they often fail to notice important things, such as the evidence that higher levels of consciousness exist and are available to all of us.”
In Roger Bacon's terms, the Middle Ages held argument to be the primary path to knowledge: argument from authority. Experience, the other mode of knowledge to which Bacon refers, was slowly beginning to make its way into Western life. We can get a feeling for the medieval mode of knowledge from the anecdote about the stable boy who heard the scholars arguing about how many teeth a horse had. The scholars consulted Aristotle concerning this weighty issue, while the stable boy went to the barn and counted the actual number of teeth a horse had. After reporting his findings to the learned gentlemen, the stable boy was, of course, summarily dismissed, because experience had nothing to do with knowledge. Knowledge was found in authority and system.
Is this description of knowledge and system the hoodwinkery to be found in the aforementioned “authority and system”?
cont
