William James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing Gas
an open letter to Steve Taylor, author of 'The Genius of William James'
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
January 27, 2023
ear Mr. Taylor:
I just read your enjoyable and informative article in Psychology Today on "The Genius of William James," and would like to share a few thoughts with you on this topic, should you find the time to read them.
1. Regarding your fascinating thoughts on time, I have recently read similar observations in works by Wolfgang Smith, who points out how Cartesian conceptions force us to think of time in ways that do not square with the ways that we actually experience it.
2. I share your views on human consciousness. I like to look at the brain as a radio receiver for consciousness, as one of many ways of interacting with consciousness, so to say. If the brain is damaged, it need not mean that consciousness is "damaged," any more than damaging a single computer will damage the Internet or damaging a TV will damage the national television networks.
3. Regarding warfare, you write: "human societies need to find an equivalent activity that brings the same collective and individual benefits of war—without causing death and devastation." The fact is that ravers have already found such an activity: it is the use of MDMA, or empathogens in general. The use of Ecstasy in the 1990s brought together every race in color in unprecedented harmony on the British dance floors. The problem is that Drug War ideology holds the anti-scientific notion that criminalized substances can have no positive uses, for anyone, anywhere, at any time, for any reason, ever.
Speaking of the Drug War, I would like to end with a sort of call for action, please. As you may know, England is getting ready to outlaw nitrous oxide, as America has already effectively done. Not only does this deny godsend medicine to millions, but it effectively outlaws philosophical investigations about the nature of consciousness and reality itself. For as you know, the use of nitrous oxide strongly influenced William James' ontology. In fact, that ontology would be very different had William James been obliged to refrain from using that substance.
Therefore I would humbly encourage you to join me in protesting the Drug War's ongoing attempts to outlaw all substances (like laughing gas) that give us hints of a non-materialistic world. This is one reason why materialism has such staying power: because the Drug War has outlawed precisely those substances whose use tends to cast doubt on our materialist premises. This Drug War is surely a war on science and human progress and, in my view, it is our duty to denounce it as such.
Thank you for your time and your consideration of my ideas!
PS If there are problems with the use of NO2 or any other substance, we need to educate people, not criminalize use and thereby end our investigations of ultimate reality. The money we spend on law enforcement should be spent on sending healthcare workers into affected communities and spreading the news about safe use practices. The alternative is scientific censorship.
Laughing gas is the substance that inspired William James' philosophy about human perception and the nature of ultimate reality. "No account of the universe in its totality," wrote James, "can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded." And yet disregard them we must because the drug war has outlawed all substances that help create such states. This is a veto on human progress. It is also psychological common sense that laughing gas could be used to prevent suicides and treat depression -- but materialist science ignores common sense. This is why they need to butt out when it comes to psychoactive medicine. They are no experts on emotional states, except in their own dogmatic materialist minds. It is a category error to place materialists in charge of our thoughts and feelings. We actually know what works for ourselves. And if there are any experts in the field, they are not materialists, they are pharmacologically savvy empaths, what the indigenous world calls shaman.
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.
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.
Even when laudanum was legal in the UK, pharmacists were serving as moral adjudicators, deciding for whom they should fill such prescriptions. That's not a pharmacist's role. We need an ABC-like set-up in which the cashier does not pry into my motives for buying a substance.
ECT is like euthanasia. Neither make sense in the age of prohibition.
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.
If media were truly free in America, you'd see documentaries about people who use drugs safely, something that's completely unimaginable in the age of the drug war.
Orchestras will eventually use psychedelics to train conductors. When the successful candidate directs mood-fests like Mahler's 2nd, THEY will be the stars, channeling every known -- and some unknown -- human emotions. Think Simon Rattle on... well, on psychedelics.
It's a category error to say that scientists can tell us if psychoactive drugs "really work." It's like asking Dr. Spock of Star Trek if hugging "really works." ("Hugging is highly illogical, Captain.")
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.
In the 19th century, author Richard Middleton wrote how poets would get together to use opium "in a series of magnificent quarterly carouses."
Only a pathological puritan would say that there's no place in the world for substances that lift your mood, give you endurance, and make you get along with your fellow human being. Drugs may not be everything, but it's masochistic madness to claim that they are nothing at all.
The main form of drug war propaganda is censorship. That's why most Americans cannot imagine any positive uses for psychoactive substances, because the media and the government won't allow that.
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, William James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing Gas: an open letter to Steve Taylor, author of 'The Genius of William James', published on January 27, 2023 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)
ear Mr. Taylor:
You have been reading an article entitled, William James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing Gas: an open letter to Steve Taylor, author of 'The Genius of William James', published on January 27, 2023 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)
