In October 1974, American philosopher Thomas Nagel posed the question "What is it like to be a bat?" in a paper in The Philosophical Review.1 Nagel was not asking what it was like to squeak and to hang upside down in a cave and to navigate via echolocation; he wanted to know what it FELT like to do all of those things, what it FELT like to be a bat. This might have been an obvious question to ask in an holistic society, but it had never occurred to our scientists to ask it. Nor is this surprising, since consciousness was an embarrassing subject for them. As long as they left consciousness out of consideration, they could claim that they were experts on animals and animal behavior. If consciousness was important, they would have to go back to school: they would have to study neuroscience and philosophy and learn about potential alternatives to materialism, given the failure of that latter philosophy to accord with the findings of quantum theory and especially with the phenomenon of entanglement, or what Albert Einstein referred to as "spooky action at a distance."2 They might even have to learn from Indian mystics who harness mind in ways undreamed of by westerners. No wonder that our scientists decided to brand themselves as positivists instead, rather than admit that consciousness mattered. In this way, they could hide their ignorance behind a scientific-sounding credo and "blow off" consciousness as a mere epiphenomenon, as a touchy-feely subject unworthy of their time, as the ontologically meaningless byproduct of an overly developed brain. But Nagel's paper rained on the self-satisfied parade of these scientists by reminding them that they were avoiding a huge part of the story of animal life. This criticism was not new -- it had been leveled against scientists over a hundred years earlier by Romantic poets such as Shelley and Wordsworth and later echoed in prose by philosophers such as Whitehead and Bergson -- but Nagel's paper phrased the issue in a new and interesting way for scientists in the age of quantum physics.
And we should not insist it's a problem if someone decides to use opium, for instance, daily. We certainly don't blame "patients" for using antidepressants daily. And getting off opium is easier than getting off many antidepressants -- see Julia Holland.
Prohibition is wrong root and branch. It seeks to justify the colonial disdain for indigenous healing practices through fearmongering.
When we outlaw drugs, we are outlawing far more than drugs. We are suppressing freedom of religion and academic research.
America created a whole negative morality around "drugs" starting in 1914. "Users" became fiends and were as helpless as a Christian sinner -- in need of grace from a higher power. Before prohibition, these "fiends" were habitues, no worse than Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson.
The Partnership for a Drug Free America should be put on trial for having blatantly lied to Americans in the 1980s about drugs, while using our taxpayer money to do so!
Wanna show drug warriors the error of their ways? Legalize all less dangerous drugs than alcohol and then deny work to those who test positive for liquor and confiscate their property if beer cans are found on-site.
This is why we would rather have a depressed person commit suicide than to use "drugs" -- because drugs, after all, are not dealing with the "real" problem. The patient may SAY that drugs make them feel good, but we need microscopes to find out if they REALLY feel good.
There is something wrong with a country that thinks it can decide what human beings around the world are allowed to ingest.
Americans believe scientists when they say that drugs like MDMA are not proven effective. That's false. They are super effective and obviously so. It's just that science holds entheogenic medicines to the standards of reductive materialism. That's unfair and inappropriate.
I'm told that most psychiatrists would like to receive shock therapy if they become severely depressed. That's proof of drug war insanity: they would prefer damaging their brains to using drugs that can elate and inspire.
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