In the early 1900s, Charles Fort 1 wrote "Book of the Damned 2 ," in which he mentioned how science is an attempt to systemize our knowledge while keeping basic assumptions in mind. Any data that does not serve to substantiate those assumptions is "damned," i.e. ignored. But Charles Fort "didn't know from damnation." Since his day, the Drug War has damned a whole pharmacy worth of evidence by pretending that psychoactive substances have no positive uses for anyone, anywhere, ever. Click the links below to listen to and/or read this classic book3.
By the way, Wikipedia's summary of this book is insufficient, to put it mildly.
Wikipedia tells us that "the book is historically considered to be the first written in the specific field of anomalistics." But this is a very shallow book review. The book is actually a harsh satirical criticism of modern science, which as Fort believes, does not investigate anything at all -- but rather sets out to prove things that it already believes. This explains why science today ignores (or "damns," in the language of Fort) any positive stories about drug use -- because it is not interested in investigating drugs per se, but rather in establishing that drugs are bad.
This is why we have a National Institute on Drug Abuse rather than a National Institute on Drug Use. The facts about positive use -- dating back to prehistoric times -- have been damned (ignored) by modern science. Science's goal in our time is to systemize knowledge about drugs based on the assumption that drug use is always unnecessary, dangerous and bad in the long-term: in other words, science is dedicated to "proving" puritanical beliefs about drugs and ignoring the fact that all tribal peoples have used drugs, for both personal and sociological improvement, as noted by the first ethnobotanist, Richard Schultes4.
Fort's book, by the way, is quite amusing, at least to non-materialists. Here are a few of my favorite quips.
"Sometimes cannonballs are found embedded in trees. Does not seem to be anything to discuss; doesn't seem discussable that anyone would cut a hole in a tree and hide a cannonball, which one could take to bed and hide under one's pillow just as easily."
"The volume of smoke that went up (from the Krakatoa volcano of 1883) must have been visible to other planets — or, tormented with our crawlings and scurryings, the earth complained to Mars; swore a vast black oath at us."
"I think it looks very much like what I think it looks like."
"He 'identifies' this matter as sand from an African desert — but after deducting organic matter. But you and I could be 'identified' as sand from an African desert, after deducting all there is to us except sand."
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."
Think you can handle a horse? So did Christopher Reeves. The fact is, NOBODY can handle a horse. This message brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
Just think how many ayahuasca-like godsends that we are going without because we dogmatically refuse to even look for them, out of our materialist disdain for mixing drugs with drugs.
I'm told that science is completely unbiased today. I guess I'll have to go back and reassess my doubts about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
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.
In fact, there are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???
William James knew that there were substances that could elate. However, it never occurred to him that we should use such substances to prevent suicide. It seems James was blinded to this possibility by his puritanical assumptions.
I'm looking for a United Healthcare doctor now that I'm 66 years old. When I searched my zip code and typed "alternative medicine," I got one single solitary return... for a chiropractor, no less. Some choice. Guess everyone else wants me to "keep taking my meds."
ECT is like euthanasia. Neither make sense in the age of prohibition.
Americans love to hate heroin. But there is no rational reason why folks should not use heroin daily in a world in which we consider it their medical duty to use antidepressants daily.
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