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The Brainless Initiative

why it's time to REALLY study the brain

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

March 10, 2024



At a recent get-together, a healthcare expert assured me that solving crossword puzzles does not help one avoid contracting Alzheimer's 1 Disease in their old age, that we can focus all we want, but if dementia has 'got our ticket,' then the disease will be sure to punch it eventually. This conclusion is not surprising coming from a materialist scientist, who sees the individual as a generic biological widget subject to the inexorable laws of a fully reified illness like Alzheimer's. But even in the age of the Drug War, the medical journals are full of instances in which the human will has altered the course of a seemingly 'destined' illness. I say 'even in the age of the Drug War,' for the Drug War severely limits the psychoactive arsenal that is available for us when it comes to 'unthinking' illness and thinking 'health' instead.


The fact is, no one yet knows what the limits are to mental power. And why not? Because no society has set out with the goal of finding out. Typical tribal societies use psychoactive medicines, but for specific ritual and religious purposes, not as part of an ongoing search for the limits of the human mind. Western societies, on the other hand, demonize psychoactive substances wholesale and so are totally unaware of the way that they can enhance our mental powers. Even when such powers are grudgingly acknowledged, they are demonized with slanderous phrases such as 'getting high' and 'getting wasted.'

But there is a third way of dealing with the fact that the world is full of psychoactive substances - and will be increasingly full of them thanks to the progress of chemical synthesis. That third way involves using psychoactive drugs to leverage the powers of the human mind to fight illness, improve quality of life, and - who knows - perhaps even learn something about the nature of reality itself2.

And how do we accomplish this? By studying drugs, not with the help of materialist scientists whose interest is in the microscopic, but rather with the help of psychonauts whose focus is on the drug user's experience itself in all its subjective and holistic glory3. The possibilities for research are legion and would be limited only by our own creativity, especially when we evaluate the use of various combinations of drugs for certain persons in certain situations with certain desired outcomes in mind: not just resistance to disease, but increased comprehension, increased empathy, increased patience, etc.

But the western world is blind to such a way of thinking. We have a previous commitment to the drug-hating religious ideology of Mary Baker Eddy. And so we launch a multi-billion-dollar BRAIN initiative while simultaneously outlawing all the substances that could help us demonstrate the powers of that brain4.


Author's Follow-up: March 10, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


As HG Wells told us, health is not a thing but rather a balance of qualities5. We may find no direct correlation between completing crossword puzzles and avoiding Alzheimer's Disease, but that does not mean that puzzle-solving does not help. Completing a crossword puzzle can trigger other mental improvements that trigger other mental improvements that trigger other mental improvements. We're basically talking about the butterfly effect here, by which every action in a system ultimately affects the entire system and cannot be parceled off as being separate from the whole. We should at least remain agnostic about the powers of such activities until we have fully studied the power of the human brain, and that's a task that we have scarcely even begun, thanks to the fact that we have outlawed almost all the ways of improving that organ.









Notes:

1: What the Honey Trick Tells us about Drug Prohibition DWP (up)
2: As William James wrote: "No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded." (up)
3: Replacing Psychiatry with Pharmacologically Savvy Shamanism DWP (up)
4: The Brain Initiative White House, 2024 (up)
5: Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument against the Scientifically Organized State Chesterton, GK (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




The term "drugs" is no more objective than the term "scabs." Both are meant to defame the things that they denote.

It's disgusting that folks like Paul Stamets need a DEA license to work with mushrooms.

The drug war tells us that certain drugs have no potential uses and then turns that into a self-fulfilling prophecy by outlawing these drugs. This is insanely anti-scientific and anti-progress. We should never give up on looking for positive uses for ANY substance.

Almost all talk about the supposed intractability of things like addiction are exercises in make-believe. The pundits pretend that godsend medicines do not exist, thus normalizing prohibition by implying that it does not limit progress. It's a tacit form of collaboration.

News flash: certain mushrooms can help you improve your life! It's the biggest story in the history of mycology! And yet you wouldn't know it from visiting the websites of most mushroom clubs.

"When two men who have been in an aggressive mood toward each other take part in the ritual, one is able to say to the other, 'Come, let us drink, for there is something between us.' " re: the Mayan use of the balche drink in Encyc of Psych Plants, by Ratsch & Hofmann

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."

Q: Why are we never told about the potential benefits of drugs? A: Follow the money.

When Americans "obtain their majority" and wish to partake of drugs safely, they should be paired with older adults who have done just that. Instead, we introduce them to "drug abusers" in prerecorded morality plays to reinforce our biased notions that drug use is wrong.

If we let "science" decide about drugs, i.e. base freedom on health concerns, then tea can be as easily outlawed as beer. The fact that horses are not illegal shows that prohibition is not about health. It's about the power to outlaw certain "ways of being in the world."


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

This book features 150 annotated images, designed to force brainwashed Americans to confront the fact that drug prohibition is wrong. Here is what author Richard Parrish II says of the book's compiler: "The drug prohibition philosopher provides first-hand, principled, persuasive, and insightful arguments against the current drug prohibition regime..."

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Drama lovers: collect full-cast recordings of classic plays

In my spare time, when I am not shaming drug warriors for their heartless drug policies, I create full-cast recordings of classic plays using the latest in synthetic voices licensed by the Natural Reader company. Snag your copy of my production of Volpone, by Ben Jonson... and follow me on Payhip for more where that came from, including classics like The Post Office, The Double Dealer and The Inspector General. -- Yours in all-too-justified outrage, the Drug War Philosopher @ abolishthedea.com.

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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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