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.
Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous OxideKeep Laughing Gas LegalListening to Laughing GasThe Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing MatterWhy the FDA should not schedule Laughing GasWilliam James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing GasA Quantum of HubrisAssisted Suicide and the War on DrugsBehaviorism and the War on DrugsBeta Blockers and the Materialist Tyranny of the War on DrugsDavid Chalmers and the Drug WarEvery Day and in every way, you are getting more and more bamboozled by drug war propaganda Five problems with The Psychedelic Handbook by Rick StrassmanHow Bernardo Kastrup reckons without the drug warI've got a bone to pick with Jim HogshireIn Praise of Thomas SzaszMaterialism and the Drug War Part IIOpen Letter to Dr. Carl L. HartOpen letter to Wolfgang SmithUnscientific American: the hypocritical materialism of Elon MuskWhy Scientists Should Not Judge DrugsWilliam James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing GasWithout Philosophy, Science becomes Scientism
Being less than a month away from an election that, in my view, could end American democracy, I don't like to credit Musk for much. But I absolutely love it every time he does or says something that pushes back against the drug-war narrative.
