greatly enjoyed the documentary "The End of Quantum Reality," which I was happy to purchase, and am now looking forward to reading Wolfgang's refutation of Stephen Hawking's "Grand Design." Wolfgang seems to understand that the materialist quantitative bias has implications for everyone in all parts of our lives -- and yet I wonder if he can see something which almost every other smart person seems to be blind to today, and that is materialism's role in the Drug War and in our attitude toward medicine in general. We live in a world in which 1 in 4 American women are chemically dependent on big pharma meds for depression -- meds justified on the scientistic ground that they fix a chemical imbalance (which is wrong for both philosophical and scientific reasons) -- and yet laughing gas and ultra-safe Ecstasy are illegal to use for depression. Why? Because today's drug researchers don't care how much the depressed laugh: they want to see quantitative proof the substance "really" works. Likewise, Descartes didn't care how animals screeched and howled -- he needed quantitative proof before he would say that animals could "really" experience pain. In other words, they want to study pain and depression in the physical world only, not the corporeal one. (As Rimbaud said: science is too slow for us -- too slow for animals and too slow for the depressed)
The results of this world view lead to reductio ad absurdum today, when doctors can ask with a straight face: "Can laughing gas help the depressed?" (see essay link below)
I've written to over 100 philosophers on this subject without receiving any response. The Drug War terrifies folk. I just hope that Wolfgang has not been fooled by the Drug War propaganda campaign of self-censorship, thanks to which one never hears of the positive use of safe but criminalized substances, either in books or movies or TV shows -- and certainly never in cop shows, this despite the fact that the kind of drugs that we demonize today have inspired entire religions -- including the Vedic/Hindu religion that influences Wolfgang today.
I hope your organization will consider speaking out philosophically against the Drug War -- for science is not free in America, insofar as study of certain botanicals has been criminalized. Galileo knew he was censored by the church but today's scientists almost unanimously pretend that they are free when they are not. Otherwise they would write disclaimers after their articles, saying that their research on a given topic was limited by Drug War laws and the way that those laws discourage project funding.
Psychoactive plant medicine has been shown to grow neurons in the brain, and yet scientists write books about depression, addiction, Alzheimer's, etc., in which they seem to be giving us the final word on these topics -- but they are actually reckoning without their host, namely the fact that they live in the time of a Drug War, which starkly limits the places in which they can search for answers and cures. Researching the therapeutic value of MDMA is particularly difficult, insofar as the anti-scientific DEA treats MDMA like highly fissionable material and requires researchers (should they be grudgingly approved to obtain the drug) to do the same.
I hope what I'm saying here means something to you, because it's hard for my ideas to gain traction in a world that's been full of Drug War lies and presuppositions ever since the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 first essentially outlawed a plant (the poppy). Wolfgang has seen through so much in his work -- I hope he can see through the anti-scientific Drug War as well -- especially since the Drug War outlaws the kind of plant medicine that inspired the Indian religion with which he is so understandably fascinated.
Thanks again to Wolfgang and those who brought his important work to my attention.
The Links Police
Do you know why I pulled you over? That's right, because the Drug War gives me carte blanche to be a noxious busybody. That, plus the fact that you might be interested in the following links related to materialism and the Drug War.
To wit...
Upon perusing various works of the author, I was sorry to notice that he shared some common drug-war prejudices, like the idea that hippies were nuts for using psychedelic medicine, or rather for using it for improper reasons. But the mindset of the 1960 hippies can only be fairly judged by contrasting it with the mindset of the age against which they were rebelling, a mindset which was responsible for thermonuclear weapons and the war in Vietnam. Against that backdrop, a huge lot of silliness and even childish irresponsibility is to be tolerated, being so immensely preferable to the alternative: namely, the world of today in which we outlaw the very psychoactive substances that inspired the philosophy of William James, those medicines whose use tends to demonstrate or at least hint at the unseen and neglected world(s) of which Smith otherwise approvingly writes.
Drug warriors like Michael Pollan look at the '60s and say: "Think of the young lives that could have been ruined back then!" To which I say: "Think of the billions of lives of all ages that could disappear thanks to the militaristic mindset against which these young lives were rebelling!"
The dinosaurs were around for 150 million years. Modern humans, thanks to that militaristic mindset, will be lucky to be around for 5,000 years.
Open Letters
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.
In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James demonstrated how materialists are blind to the depth and meaning of psychological states of ecstasy and transcendence -- or in other words the states that are peculiar to mystics like St. Teresa... and to those who use psychoactive substances like laughing gas. The medical materialist is dogmatically dismissive of such states, which explains why they can pretend that godsend medicines that elate and inspire have no positive uses whatsoever:
To the medical mind these ecstasies signify nothing but suggested and imitated hypnoid states, on an intellectual basis of superstition, and a corporeal one of degeneration and hysteria. Undoubtedly these pathological conditions have existed in many and possibly in all the cases, but that fact tells us nothing about the value for knowledge of the consciousness which they induce.
And so materialist scientists collaborate with the drug war by refusing to see glaringly obvious drug benefits. They acknowledge only those benefits that they believe are visible under a microscope. The Hindu religion would not exist today had materialist scientists held soma to such a standard. But that's the absurd pass to which prohibition eventually brings us in a society wherein materialist science is the new god: scientists are put in charge of deciding whether we are allowed to imagine new religions or not.
This materialist bias is inspired in turn by behaviorism, the anti-indigenous doctrine of JB Watson that makes the following inhumane claim:
"Concepts such as belief and desire are heritages of a timid savage past akin to concepts referring to magic."
According to this view, the hopes and the dreams of a "patient" are to be ignored. Instead, we are to chart their physiology and brain chemistry.
JB Watson's Behaviorism is a sort of Dr. Spock with a vengeance. It is the perfect ideology for a curmudgeon, because it would seem to justify all their inability to deal with human emotions. Unfortunately, the attitude has knock-on effects because it teaches drug researchers to ignore common sense and to downplay or ignore all positive usage reports or historic lessons about positive drug use. The "patient" needs to just shut up and let the doctors decide how they are doing. It is a doctrine that dovetails nicely with drug war ideology, because it empowers the researcher to ignore the obvious: that all drugs that elate have potential uses as antidepressants.
That statement can only be denied when one assumes that "real" proof of efficacy of a psychoactive medicine must be determined by a doctor, and that the patient's only job is to shut up because their hopes and dreams and feelings cannot be accurately displayed and quantified on a graph or a bar chart.
Drugs are not the enemy, ignorance is -- the ignorance that the Drug War encourages by teaching us to fear drugs rather than to understand them.
Here's one problem that supporters of the psychiatric pill mill never address: the fact that Big Pharma antidepressants demoralize users by turning them into patients for life.
Laughing gas is the substance that gave William James his philosophy of reality. He concluded from its use that what we perceive is just a fraction of reality writ large. Yet his alma mater (Harvard) does not even MENTION laughing gas in their bio of the man.
Doc to Franklin: "I'm sorry, Ben, but I see no benefits of opium use under my microscope. The idea that you are living a fulfilled life is clearly a mistake on your part. If you want to be scientific, stop using opium and be scientifically depressed like the rest of us."
Someday, the First Lady or Man will tell kids to "just say no to prohibition." Kids who refuse will be required to watch hours' worth of films depicting gun violence, banned religions, civil wars, and adults committing suicide for want of medicine that grows at their very feet.
I can't believe people. Somebody's telling me that "drugs" is not used problematically. It is CONSTANTLY used with a sneer in the voice when politicians want to diss somebody, as in, "Oh, they're in favor of DRUGS!!!" It's a political term as used today!
Drug testing labs are the modern Inquisitors. We are not judged by the content of our character, but by the content of our digestive systems.
The Drug War is the most important evil to protest, precisely because almost everybody is afraid to do so. That's a clear sign that it is a cancer on the body politic.
The front page of every mycology club page should feature a protest of drug laws that make the study of mycology illegal in the case of certain shrooms. But no one protests. Their silence makes them drug war collaborators because it serves to normalize prohibition.
Someone tweeted that fears about a Christian Science theocracy are "baseless." Tell that to my uncle who was lobotomized because they outlawed meds that could cheer him up -- tell that to myself, a chronic depressive who could be cheered up in an instant with outlawed meds.
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, Open letter to Wolfgang Smith: author of 'The Quantum Enigma', published on August 19, 2022 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)
greatly enjoyed the documentary "The End of Quantum Reality," which I was happy to purchase, and am now looking forward to reading Wolfgang's refutation of Stephen Hawking's "Grand Design." Wolfgang seems to understand that the materialist quantitative bias has implications for everyone in all parts of our lives -- and yet I wonder if he can see something which almost every other smart person seems to be blind to today, and that is materialism's role in the Drug War and in our attitude toward medicine in general. We live in a world in which 1 in 4 American women are chemically dependent on big pharma meds for depression -- meds justified on the scientistic ground that they fix a chemical imbalance (which is wrong for both philosophical and scientific reasons) -- and yet laughing gas and ultra-safe Ecstasy are illegal to use for depression. Why? Because today's drug researchers don't care how much the depressed laugh: they want to see quantitative proof the substance "really" works. Likewise, Descartes didn't care how animals screeched and howled -- he needed quantitative proof before he would say that animals could "really" experience pain. In other words, they want to study pain and depression in the physical world only, not the corporeal one. (As Rimbaud said: science is too slow for us -- too slow for animals and too slow for the depressed)
Upon perusing various works of the author, I was sorry to notice that he shared some common drug-war prejudices, like the idea that hippies were nuts for using psychedelic medicine, or rather for using it for improper reasons. But the mindset of the 1960 hippies can only be fairly judged by contrasting it with the mindset of the age against which they were rebelling, a mindset which was responsible for thermonuclear weapons and the war in Vietnam. Against that backdrop, a huge lot of silliness and even childish irresponsibility is to be tolerated, being so immensely preferable to the alternative: namely, the world of today in which we outlaw the very psychoactive substances that inspired the philosophy of William James, those medicines whose use tends to demonstrate or at least hint at the unseen and neglected world(s) of which Smith otherwise approvingly writes. 
You have been reading an article entitled, Open letter to Wolfgang Smith: author of 'The Quantum Enigma', published on August 19, 2022 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)
