Biological Standardization Humans Experience One Reality example essay topic

My Choice to Abuse Drugs INTRODUCTION A Once upon a time, I and a friend of mine were sitting on a bench in typical public garden between some little blocks of flats, just outside the center of the city of Sofia. It had stopped raining about an hour before, luckily we had found a dry bench - sheltered from the rain by the branches of a chestnut tree - and were sharing a joint, wearily eyeing a bunch of old ladies that were sitting and staring into empty space on the other end of the garden. One never knows with old ladies. Until 1989 many of them had the habit of ratting on you to the secret police for saying jokes about the communist party, or listening to capitalist music, and such a habit dies not, but rather adapts to new realities - like a "war on drugs."Agents" is the street slang for such over-curious old folks, who stare at you from behind the curtains of their windows, - "Watch it man, there's an agent on third floor". - "Which one? Oh yeah, well, light a cigarette then, be natural".

As the grass hit home, the colors got brighter as usual, the sounds of the city and the insects became more pronounced, the rate of heart-beats increased. On the wet ground below, many snails and slugs were wondering around in their slow motion dream, leaving glistening trails on the grass and cracked concrete. "Watch", I said, and placed a "victory white" cigarette just in front of a snail. After a typical for stoner perception eternity, the snail had reached the cigarette and instead of just going over or around it, it stopped on top of it. Fifteen minutes later, three snails and one naked slug had joined into the party. Frozen, they sat stuck to the cigarette.

"They are getting high", my friend said, "yes", I replied. - "Could it be dangerous to them? Like poison or something?" - "It certainly is poison for us, I don't see why it shouldn't be for them". - "So they may die soon after this cigarette?" - "No idea, but they probably will die, or become ill or something". - "Doesn't that bother you?" This question made me collect my thoughts, which does take a bit of effort when one is high, and I answered something like: "My position is the following: these snails are pathetic little creatures. The little time that they are alive, they try to survive and to breed.

They keep getting stepped upon, infected by bacteria, crushed by cars. For all I know, they don't even have a mind, but are like little robots which feel pain, pleasure and maybe sometimes confusion, which desperately try to do what they were programmed to do - breed - before they snuff it. Right now, as they are getting high on the poison, they are outside the program which controls their lives, if only for a little while. This is as close to freedom, to something like individuality, as they are ever likely to get. Maybe they will all die in half an hour. I don't feel like a murderer.

In fact, I hope that if I am ever a snail, there will be someone to offer me a cigarette". B There is some arrogance, and unnecessary bravado in that argument, but nevertheless I still stand behind the attitude, which had made me say this. In fact, I stand behind it with more conviction and more developed arguments, than I had back then. Consider me. Where am I in this game of destinies? There is an eternity before my birth, there is an eternity after my death.

Planets slowly float in space, turning their different sides to the suns around which they spin, the suns themselves follow their patterns of movement for millions of years, on our planet mountains change, continents collide and re-group, seas evaporate, thousands of species of animals, birds, insects, appear, develop for thousands or millions of years, and then disappear. Who am I? My life is a tiny spark which is there for a second, even a thousand times less than a second, and then disappears. Poof! And I'm gone. As far as I see it, during this life of mine I can do the following: a) follow my biological programs - the instincts of the species I belong to - the 'inherited reflexes', and my 'acquired reflexes' - simple habits which I automatically learn from the environment.

That would make me no different from a hyena or a mosquito. b) I can also being a human, suppress parts of my instincts and follow instead social programming, which has shaped my psyche since birth, generated by my parents, my education and society as such. Such social programming shapes differently in different societies and different ages the thinking, emotions and habits of the individual human from birth to death: so that I do, think and see what other people tell me to do, think and see. That would make me a biomechanical doll, which feels pain, pleasure and maybe sometimes confusion, but is different from an animal in that it follows not its instincts - nature's programming, but its social reflexes - society's programming. c) The third choice is to keep trying to break out - de-program myself, to study myself and see which parts of me are from the "outside", which are from the "inside", and maybe some day achieve the transition from being a typical representative of my civilization - a sad ill monkey with emotional problems and delusions - to being an 'authentic', 'real', 'person'. Not only recognizing how crazy everyone is, and how crazy I am, not only trying to figure out a way to counteract all this craziness, but also trying to experience life itself, without middle-men, experiencing life as such, and not the twisted torn and sewed together in random fashion version of life shoved into my face, to be followed under threat of violence, prison or the mental ward. Of course this path of drug use is dangerous - even ignoring that jail or nuthouse are always a hair away - one mistake during the practice itself may lead to illness and death. But we all die.

And no one is qualified to choose instead of me when and how I die. In most, or maybe all constitutions of the world's nations, the citizen has "a right to life". But our lives are not eternal. They are eternal in a religious sense, but in the existing laws it is not the eternal life beyond, which is protected, but the finite biological lives of the citizens. And since we humans are not immortal - we are mortal - and we all die, the "right to life" does not mean the right to not die - that is impossible.

It means the right not to be killed. Meaning - the right to not have someone else decide instead of you when and how you die. My birth was not my choice but my death certainly can and must be. As long as I do not directly hurt anyone - and I certainly do not kill, steal or rape - I should be left to myself. I entirely agree with the view, that if everyone was a stoned metal-head like me, society would collapse. If everyone was an abstaining geologist or a drinking parking officer with a bird watching hobby, society would collapse just as surely.

It is precisely the interaction of wildly different types of people, that makes our civilization unique, and at the same time renews it, does not allow it to fester and stagnate. C People who take illegal drugs, 'drug abusers', officially are criminals of the worst kind, who must either go to prison, so that 'decent folks' don't get infected by their wickedness, or to have their brains washed by normalizing psychiatrists, who in the previous decades kindly cured in various parts of the globe, with their pills, electric shocks and syringes: children and teenagers from masturbation; dissidents from anti-communism; women from their 'hyper-sexuality'; homosexuals from homosexuality. Normalizers. When one of the biomechanical dolls begins behaving strangely, or communicating with weird signals, it must be disposed of, or 'fixed'. - "Another one with a broken brain for you, doctor".

- "Oh is that so? Lets just take a look... Hmm, yes, oh, ah yes... Nurse! Half a foot of wire, a set of B class depth perception circuits and a sexual inhibitor type 3". In this book I mainly attempt to present and analyze the various arguments which support the need for my imprisonment or brainwashing, while at the same time presenting my own case of why I in fact should not be imprisoned or brainwashed.

There are also some afterthoughts and additional comments. One final point: even if person X does not use drugs for anything 'useful' and only drifts around in a haze, this still should not make him or her a criminal. The most useless person in the world is not a criminal until killing, stealing or raping takes place. Everything else is a moral judgment of personal lifestyle, which should have no place in the laws of states which describe themselves as 'impartial', 'democratic' and 'free'. Part 1: Physical Health; Mental Health; Moral Monster; Future Crime Against Somebody; Unnatural 1. Physical Health This chapter deals with the arguments concerning the body harm which illegal drugs cause.

The arguments for putting drug abusers into jail or mental institutions is that thus their health is saved. Drugs are bad for the health, they kill, jail is better, makes you live longer. Let us take the hardest drug - heroin (to which all 'soft' drugs eventually lead according to propaganda). I have never tried heroin, and would feel bad if someone close to me developed a heroin dependency, but I definitely would not 'forbid' heroin. They say "once you start heroin, you " re a goner", and that "people die from heroin". These statements are absurd.

People do not die from heroin alone - in fact, in places where there is a tradition of manufacturing it, like Afghanistan or Pakistan, there are old people of 80 and over, who have been taking it since they were 10, and are still alive and kicking. Or at least alive and mumbling. People, who shoot heroin into their veins, and who die young as a direct result of this practice, die generally due to three reasons (apart from being put into jail): a) overdose; b) dirty heroin; c) disease from dirty syringe. When someone dies from a heroin overdose, this happens because the consumer of heroin is never sure of the concentration of heroin inside the dust he buys from the dealer. Suppose that Jimmy is used to a 15% heroin and 85% added obscure crap mixture. If someone sells him a mixture in which the heroin is 30%, he must take twice less than usual, otherwise, he will have an overdose - a dose of heroin to which his organism is not conditioned.

But Jimmy does not know what he buys, because it is illegal, and there is no quality control. In fact, he dies, because heroin is illegal. If heroin was legal, bought at the local drug store, with strict quality control of the product, he would not have died. When someone dies after injecting heroin mixed with rat poison, it is reported as "junkie dies after injecting heroin", not "citizen dead in rat poison scandal", but if someone dies after drinking wine with rat poison in it, he will be treated as a victim of poisoning, people will not blame the wine. When Jimmy dies after taking heroin mixed with rat poison, he dies because heroin is illegal, because the market is not legal, not open, not regulated, and therefore - the consumer has zero protection. He would not have died if heroin was legal.

The same goes of course, for the 'dirty syringe' cause of illness and death, what is needed is clean syringes, not mindless campaigns 'against heroin'. As if making an anti-drug concert performed by hypocritical drug abusers and ran by smug cocaine and whiskey fiends can actually lower the death rate better the clean syringes and clean heroin. Only a monkey can believe this. Only an evil hypocrite will pretend to believe it. Take your pick. Of course not only heroin kills according to the propaganda, all drugs kill and corrupt the body.

Lets take marijuana - my favorite drug - it "eats up the lungs", it "causes impotence", it makes you into a "schizophrenic". I could take up the arguments that the "scientific researches" which have been conducted are as biased and inconclusive, as the ones which link madness, suicide and crime with masturbation, rock'n'roll and comic books; that in fact if the state needs the scientists to prove that the Jews are treacherous mutants or that critics of the government have pathological mental disorders, scientists tend to prove exactly that; or even the classical, lame clich argument that other, legal substances are equally harmful, or even more so, but I consider all these arguments a waste of time, as I think time itself has proven them to be. These logical exercises do not carry power, because the opponents do not use valid logic anyway. They follow other things, some of which will be examined later on. Bottom line is: there is no substance in the universe, which can not kill you, if you do not use it carefully, and following correct information about it. When you break an arm or bust a vein doing fitness exercise, it is because you were not careful or not properly informed, not because fitness exercise is inherently evil, the same goes for every other practice, including sitting in a chair or taking a shower, and every known substance, including water, oxygen, and tomatoes.

Use them incorrectly, and you die. At the end of the day, my argument is the following: "my health is my health. If I so wish, I will cut off my balls and wear them on a string around my neck. This is my choice and no one can choose instead of me. If the government thinks it must impose by force upon me the currently fashionable "health wisdom", it's got another thing coming". But it can and does think this, of course, and now we proceed to examine the notions behind the force.

Or is it the farce? 2. Mental Health 'A Argument number 2 for putting me into a mental hospital, is that I am no longer in the 'real world'. That the drugs that I take 'distort reality', 'cloud the senses', that I 'escape into a fantasy world of illusions'. And the official reality is not an illusion? It is 'real'?

I have my doubts about that. To use a clich - raise a generation believing in angels, and they will see angels in the sky; raise a generation believing in UFO's, and they will see UFO's in the sky. The sad monkeys just have to be shown firmly while they are still young and defenseless what must be seen and what must not be seen, what must and what must not be thought, into which type of faces and bodies to freeze their muscles, and off they go, hurrying to complete their sick patterns of life demanded by their shared illness, before their misshaped bodies reach the point of no return of decay. I believe that the prevailing attitude - the belief of the people of all the societies within, and on the border of our civilization, that they experience Reality - is quite unfounded, childish and dangerous. They wave a holy book, knock on a table with their knuckles, or show a picture of a molecule and believe that in this way our experience of reality is proved. What follows in the next page and a half may be tedious to some, but is very important as example of simple logic which can be used to underline untruths upon which our miseries are built.

I know very little of biology, physics or cognitive sciences. But I am nevertheless aware of the following positions, which are based on information freely and easily available to anyone who is interested. What we do actually 'experience' - see, hear, smell and touch - is just a tiny, microscopic part of the universe, to which our biological senses react. The final reality is beyond our reach - we can only experience what we were designed to experience, at best we can magnify with machines the experience we were designed to experience.

When a tree drops and no one is there to hear it drop, it indeed does not make a sound. Sound does not exist outside of the ears of living beings. Sound is a vibration of the air, and it actually becomes 'sound' as such, only when these vibrations come in contact with the ear, or any other hearing apparatus of a living creature. There are no sounds outside of us - living creatures. Only vibrations in the air.

Or, to be more precise - the unknown process or thing, which we perceive with the help of our instruments as 'vibrations', 'in', 'the air'. What is out there we can not know, only what our senses translate into sounds, smells, colours, etc. The infinite reality is way, way outside our reach. I suppose at this point lazy 'common sense' counter-arguments within some readers appear - "if colours and sounds exist only inside us, how come we all react to them? If fifty humans hear a sound, does that not mean, that the sound exists outside them?" Not at all - it simply means, that the sense organs of the fifty humans are standardized, and therefore certain aspects of reality are translated into similar information (similar internal realities) by similar organs. If there were five dogs with the fifty humans, and they reacted to the sound as well, this would only mean, that some sense organs of the dogs are similar in construction to those of the humans.

Not that there was an objective 'sound' outside these humans and dogs - there was something else, to which their ears reacted and created a 'sound' inside them. This is biological standardization - humans experience one reality, pigeons another, snakes a third one, spiders a fourth, flies a sixth, fish a seventh, etc. These realities do not exist 'outside', but rather 'inside' each creature, which is synchronized with the other creatures of the same species. Each of these 'realities' is real enough for a species to survive, so all of these realities are real. And yet - they are different - as many different type of organisms, of senses exist on our Earth - that many are the different realities, different impressions of the environment on the organisms. Our world is a collection of an impossibly huge number of overlapping realities - but we only experience ours.

Quite apart from this biological standardization, is the social standardization - when a group of humans is programmed by other humans, to see, think, speak, live and die in the same way. Different societies in different centuries and decades, exist in (or rather 'maintain') different realities. These realities are constructed by humans, but not consciously. A little part - the visible, the legitimate part - of every reality is constructed and maintained consciously, the rest, the millions of details and hidden mechanisms, the lies and fears, the daemons and angels - are all subconscious. The invisible matter, the hidden patterns and logic of human realities, are subconscious. Therefore - the human race lives in different dreams.

Usually - in nightmares. And each dream is experienced as a waking reality. To the great misfortune of us all. The infinite reality is beyond the socially and biologically standardized experience of the human - the finite realities are many, the majority of them are also inaccessibly to any specific human, and they are all equally unreal. Some societies have realized this to some extent, and allow some diversity within the reality market.

The different political parties mirror different realities, different dreams. What is self-evident truth concerning the nature of man and society to a socialist, is questionable to a centrist and outright nonsense to a right wing conservative. You can't say that one party offers the real reality, and that the others are deluded madmen. Well you can, but I think that one-party societies suck, and if you prefer living in one, it would be pointless for you to continue reading this book. Also religions - each religion offers a different reality, sometimes radically different realities. You can't pick one out and say: "This is reality.

All other religions are upheld by a bunch of hallucinating retards". The same goes for art, music, the various meditation and philosophical schools. And let's not forget the thousands and millions of 'faith healers', 'clairvoyants', 'astrologists', 'black magic' people, 'white magic' people, and anyone who waves hands, adjusts energy fields, sees into the future and speaks to shining beings from elsewhere. As long as the kneeling Christian or Muslim who speak to God are considered normal, as long as an old lady is not locked away when she looks into the future with the help of a spirit, there is no logical cause to lock me away because I happen to see weird shit when I'm high. I'm supposed to be crazy? Compared to whom?

Who is the person that is the standard of normality? I have yet to meet a normal person. All I ever meet is 'slightly crazy' or 'intensely crazy', 'slightly ill', or 'very ill' - never have I met anyone with such a perfect state of the organism and psyche, to be 'completely normal', 'completely healthy'. Pretending that you are normal and healthy, while knowing quite well that you are not, and suppressing this knowledge with alcohol, pills, excessive masturbation, tobacco, soap operas or religious zeal, will only drive you deeper into the maze of lies and pain, why not give it up, experience a sharp but limited period of pain, and then with a lighter heart begin a fresh start? In this human world which we inhabit and create, there are interchanging flows of different realities, and while I believe that there should be a free market of realities, the state and church believe that they have the self-evident right to be reality monopolists. I think that any church member or lab researcher can believe what they want to believe, but this should not be state law - states are meant for other things.

Humans live together and follow rules for mutual protection and to achieve things which one human can not. Exchange of products, services and ideas happens. The 'state's would be a number of social structures for the maintenance of a safe environment for the exchange of products, services and ideas. It should make sure that people do not steal, kill, rape, torture, deceive each other.

That the strong do not take advantage of the weak, that those who can not survive by themselves are protected by others. Instead it acts like God, assuming that is has final knowledge about Man and the Universe - assuming that what I eat, drink, smoke, what I think, see, and hear and feel, should all be the way which I am told to do it. Because, you see, the state not only has the ultimate perception of the present, it also foresees the future... It knows that if I smoke marijuana or sniff some coke, I'll become a thieving hallucinating rapist. B 'Decent folks' can never admit that it is they, and their official reality, their lies and pretences, that break souls, creating the monsters around us - they can not take that responsibility for turning their children and partners into hysterics, schizophrenic, sadists and murderers, and always look for an evil outside agency - the devil, the conspiracy, the drugs, the bad music, the bad films... Spending every waking moment protecting their fragile primitive realities from information which might destroy them, and pretending all the while that they are not doing this.

With not relaxation, but relapses into uncontrollable mental spasms during sleep, followed upon waking by quick 'zipping' of the mental files concerning what was dreamt. What I see, do and think is my business. It becomes the business of society, when I either kill, steal or rape; or when I am so socially inadequate, that I walk into walls, crap into my pants and generally can not survive for an hour without someone's help. And please note: not if it is assumed by someone that in a number of months or years I will begin stealing, or walking into walls - this is wild speculation, unfounded bullshit- but if I actually do begin stealing or walking into walls. These are two very different things, one is paranoid speculation of ill monkeys, the other is what is called a 'fact'.

I, my friends, and millions of drug abusers the world over, neither steal nor walk into walls, but still are singled out for prison and compulsory mental hospitalization, due to the fashionable theories, the fashionable 'certainties' of what we will do in the coming years and decades. And even if I do kill someone in the year 2030 - and not for any other reason, but because 'drugs made me do it' - is this reason to put me in jail in 2007? This is insane - not acceptable even by early Star Trek logic, but amazingly enough - accepted by politicians, doctors and citizens in all the countries of the world. But this is the topic of another chapter, to return to 'mental health' issues: whatever goes on inside my mind, whatever goes on below my skin, while I am able to carry out a conversation, earn money, and cross a street, I am socially adequate, therefore not 'crazy' and whatever I see, do or think must not be controlled by the policeman, the doctor or the politician. If a chronically depressed, guilt ridden emotional sado-masochist who works a boring job and has a wall of lies between him and his partner and friends, thinks that he is the one to judge whether I am 'normal', by taking himself as an example of 'normality', it is his right to do so, that is 'freedom', but if his views are imposed on me by use of police-forces and medical institutions, this 'sucks'. 3.

Moral Monster A. An argument outside of the modernistic sphere of 'compulsory health protection', which is used to justify forcing me into a situation of simultaneously giving the government money in taxes, and get harassment and fear in return, is an older, more ancient type of argument - that drug abusers are moral monsters. Those who take drugs are immoral, they have no sense of good or bad, allowed and forbidden, and that means that they are not civilized. They are unpredictable barbarians who must be locked away, if society is to survive. But what is it that the decent folks fear? What is the image of the 'death of society', which would appear, if I am not jailed?

Death? Violence? Pain? Fear?

They are all here, they are present already, and have existed for centuries, since the beginning of recorded history. There are murderers; rapists; thieves and robbers; there are brutal wars; there are sadistic fathers and sadistic mothers and sadistic children; and there is blood lust which takes over the minds of riot police and makes them beat helpless people. None of the above can in any way be the result of me and my friends smoking pot, or tripping on acid, or even that guy in the park shooting up what he fondly believes to be heroin. To say that I am one of the millions who sponsor the 'mafia' by buying illegal drugs, and thus indirectly cause harm, is to repeat drooling self-righteous hysterics, who base crude logic on false assumptions. I buy illegal drugs because they are not legal.

If they were legal I would be buying legal drugs and I would not mind at all sponsoring the state instead of the 'mafia' - but I do not have this choice - because of the state. And even if I am indirectly responsible for keeping some mob boss satisfied - since when is such indirect responsibility to be punished by prison? What, like I should be jailed or put into a hospital if I buy fruits without demanding to see documents concerning the working conditions of those who picked it, and the tax paid by those who employed them? Of those who made the t-shirt I am wearing and those who distributed it? If it were a free market I would be able to choose to whom to give my money - but it's an illegal market, because of the state, so I pay to whoever offers. I don't wish it to be so - I would much rather prefer to have choice as a consumer.

So to first take away the possibility for legal buying of the drugs I use - and then jail me for 'sponsoring organized crime' is not only self-contradictory - its as hypocritical as it gets. Another issue in the matter of the moral monster phenomenon, is that the 'moral values', enforced at least on the level of talking by the decent folks, are: a) not dominant in today's society. They only pretend that life works according to their 'moral values' - it doesn't. And anyway, they are the first to lie, bribe and slobber over a relative's child on their lap. b) these moral values never were dominant., never were really followed. Every generation has a 'golden age' in the past when everything was alright, but today everything is wrong. Sad, sad, crazy, crazy monkeys.

When adults try to program children to live by certain rules, they are not telling the children all the facts. Rather, the adults construct a controlled information cocoon around the child, a micro universe, which follows not the rules observable in the every day, adult world, but 'special good rules' which exist in the shallow imagination of the adult. The adult follows the delusion, that if he / she lies and confuses and threatens the child enough, if the right method to achieve this is found - then somehow the resulting mixture of mental and emotional crap is the 'good child', which will surely grow up into a 'good person'. Because the adult also maintains a controlled information cocoon around himself as well, to protect his / her miserable attempts at personality from disillusionment, and if the child does not accept such a cocoon, this places in danger the adult's cocoon. The child must be threatened and cajoled into the lie of the adult, because the lie of the adult depends upon people believing in it. When the next generation is programmed it is always programmed in the 'good things' of the current reality, while the 'bad things' are treated as not really existing.

The child learns to lie to itself and perceive consciously only the reality insisted upon by the adults, turning itself into one of them. A mess of fear, pain, confusion, desperately attempting to identify itself with its projected role. Desperately to try to be the mask it wears, refusing to accept what is behind it, refusing to accept that such a difference even exists. And whatever was in the beginning behind the mask withers away as the years pass, it rots into dust, ignored by the person, until what is left behind the mask is only foul darkness. Any wonder that no one is prepared to admit there is something behind the mask? Thus it is a futile, doomed for inescapable psychological reasons, attempt of every dominant generation, to try to re-create through the next generation a world which would be just like the current one, but without the 'bad stuff'.

Decade after decade, a flood of 'good programming' information is directed in inadequate manners by mentally and emotionally sick monkeys, at those who must be programmed, and decade after decade there is angered disbelief of the programmers, that the world just does not correspond to their hypocritical guilt-ridden collective dream. It must be, of course, the fault of those, who do not act in the game of pretence, but live by a different logic, in a different reality. B. From an 'information flow' point of view, society is shaped by: a) Consciously directed information, with the intent of programming the population to follow a certain set of values, norms and other fictions. Such programming bursts of 'shape-giving', 'simple reality constructing' information, are produced by the state, the church, the local 'organization for morality and fatherland' and in short any institutionalized group of people, who see their calling as being the inheritors, shapers, the controllers of true reality. b) The independent flows of information, and the random combinations of different competing realities, which create unpredictable ideas and worlds. Although I personally seem to prefer the 'random' information structure, I do not go as far as to say, that the 'structured', information is unneeded - I am writing some right now, am I not? I can not imagine a world of 'random' information only. But it is exactly through the interplay between 'random' and 'structured' information, between 'random' and 'structured' realities, that civilization is being kept alive, is given youth.

If the 'random's ide of the information flow is repressed, there follows a brief glory of a 'structured' world, before its inevitable, bloody, horrific death. As happened to the European civilization in the first half of the 20th century, and the most extreme example of this process - Nazi Germany. Even if it succeeds in existing for more then 20 years without exploding, the 'ultra-structured' world of controlled information flows is maintained on one hand by the officials turning a blind eye on the black market which prevents the economy from collapse, and on the other - by a constant parallel underworld of threats, kidnappings, tortures and executions - like in the USSR and many dead and contemporary societies, where only happy, positive stuff is allowed to be shown on the surface. It absolutely must be remembered, that it's highly disciplined people, with clear moral values, and inbred loyalty and self-sacrifice, who conducted many of the horrors of the Second World War.

'Disciplined', 'moral', 'loyal' - this is a description of the Nazis. I've met in many books a question baffling the authors: how was it possible for the best educated and most disciplined people in Europe - the Germans - to behave like such monsters? I find nothing strange in this. The German system of programming the population was the most efficient one, it created the best possible robots, and they did what they were told to do. No mystery here. That is what you get, if the only reality available is the official state one.

Another type of disciplined, courageous, loyal and conservatively moral people is the one consisting of individuals who blow themselves up on bus stops. A main reason for the reaction of the decent folks against other realities, is that the very fact of existence of another set of values, automatically makes their decent official reality 'relative' as in 'not the supreme and only official reality'. Having the possibility of choice between different truths makes robots very very nervous and prone to unpredictable acts of violence. There always have been monsters among humans, who behave in horrific fashion - who rape their children, beat their partners, kill for pleasure, humiliate weaker people, etc... These monsters existed before the war on drugs was invented, they will exist long after the war on drugs has been forgotten.

The existence of these monsters is made possible by, among other things, the endlessly perpetuated hypocritical world of a 'pretend reality', and the unspoken 'dark's ides. Below the official reality of the decent folks is bubbling a dark counterweight abyss, full of forbidden pleasures and horrific nightmares. What the decent folks don't realize, is that the dark abyss within them exists only because they keep up a pretend reality by constantly lying to themselves. It's a mental compensating mechanism. Stop lying to yourself, examine honestly what you are, and you no longer will have to exercise all available mental energy to suppress 'the animal below', because there is no 'animal below', without 'the hypocrite above'. This is the difference between a mental 'free market', and a mental 'state plan economy', compensated by a mental black market.

When free market is replaced by state and corporate monopoly, there automatically appears a cruel and primitive black market, to compensate the obvious untruths and therefore inefficiencies of the structured monopoly. There is in such a society on one side an endless official war against the black market, and on the other - everyone gets things really done the black market way. Inevitably, in any society of more than one type of human psyches, there are overlapping realities, but there must be a liberal market of competing realities, if we are to avoid the cruel primitivism of the black market and the sophisticated sadism of the state officials. This goes for society in general, it also goes for the individual's mind - if you hide from yourself the 'bad stuff' and only see the 'good stuff', very quickly hysteria or schizophrenia sets in - as it has indeed set in, in mild, medium, and intense form, in almost everyone. Similar rules I believe apply both to the information management of the individual mind, and of society in general, as society (being a set of beliefs, values, truths and taboos) exist only in the minds of the individuals which inhabit it, and is therefore a projection of the dominant structure of the psyche.

So on one hand, our psyches are programmed by society, on the other - society exists only within our minds. On one hand I am shaped by external forces, on the other - there's nothing out there. Well - there are other beings like me, who keep communicating between each other patterns of information, which they believe to be the existing reality around them, a belief for which most are prepared to kill and some - to die. They'd rather kill, they'd rather die, then admit that they are ill liars. Proving, of course, that they indeed are very ill liars. C. Talking of projections - Civilization is on the brink of collapse not because the structured efforts of the state and decent folks are unable to create their perfect world. Civilization is on the brink, because they - the inhabitants of the dominant dreams - are succeeding far too well, following their own lies to the disasters to which they lead them, with increasingly more effective technologies to translate these inevitable disasters into global mayhem.

When the movements against opium appeared in Great Britain in the 19th century, it being an 'immoral' drug, the people fighting the use of opium would say: 'look what's happening in China! You get addicts who sell their wives and children just to be able to buy the drug. ' h, my, what an evil drug, tsk, tsk. Well how come a modern junkie in Detroit or Paris doesn't sell his wife and kids? Its not opium which made 19th century Chinese society into a place where the wife and children are seen as products which can be bought and sold! A fucked up society is fucked up with or without opium. And it's not smoking cigarettes, which transforms old Cambodian peasants into skeletons, whatever the educational films on TV may say.

And it's not heroin that makes modern Russia what it is today. Or perhaps it was vodka that was responsible for the appearance of the USSR, and beer for the appearance of the Third Reich? And marijuana smoking is responsible for the bloody civil wars in Africa? It is not alcohol or drugs which makes possible the miseries of this world, its just that we allow ourselves to admit to the existence of these miseries only when connected to someone we can despise or pity. Which just shows how pathetic we are. The current obsession with childhood sexuality, resulting in 'pedophile tourism', and child pornography being the dark secret of our synthetic clean society, is the direct result of the hysterical attempts of the mechanized corpses to ensure 'control' over themselves and others through lies and emotional violence.

They lead a life of evasions, denials, emotional games of domination and humiliation. Refusing to accept that their life and their mask are not the same thing, that they are full of suppressed fear and pain, by ignoring them, they let the fear and pain to secretly take life over, and shape all activities and feelings. Forever wondering "Did anyone see? Did anyone see behind my mask?" And congratulating themselves "No one saw! No one saw behind my mask!" , and then lying to themselves "No mask! No mask exists!

This is all that I am - nothing else! Nothing else!" They see children, with their innocent perceptions and nave emotions, and they feel strange. They are jealous of the children. But instead of asking themselves 'why am I not like that any longer?

Can I ever do something to be like that for at least five minutes?' they try neurotically to infect themselves with the innocence of children by physical contact, in the process destroying what they do not have but desperately want. And after a while, they get twisted pleasure just from the fact of destroying a soul, or of getting satisfaction of going through pathetic rituals with soul already destroyed before. And this is not that strange - for what else can a soul which is destroyed itself, desire? What will happen, if in spite of its inefficiency and absurdities, the machine of the official reality suddenly succeeds in all fields? When the last visible 'drug abuser', 'pervert', 'nut case' and 'delinquent' are jailed or hospitalized, there will follow half a decade of forced happy smiling and collective building, before the internal pressures of the primitive robot's psyche blow the world into smithereens once again. 4.

Future Crime Against Somebody Now that we have examined the "medical", "psychiatric", and "moral" arguments of the opposition, comes the turn of the "crime prevention" arguments. It goes as follows: when a human begins taking illegal drugs, so immediately begins of a long chain of events, which ends with him / her stealing, killing and raping. As this is considered to be scientific wisdom, it justifies the state intervention. According to this logic, in the end it does not matter where on the road to your future crimes you may be - you are on the road to them and that is all that counts - it's not a question of "if" but "when", and that is why it is the duty of the state to intervene and put you safely into jail, thus preventing crimes which would otherwise have occurred. "Science" can not predict what the fashion will be in five years, it can not predict, what artwork or film will 'change the world' next season, it can not predict when civil unrest will erupt, or a new energy drink will conquer the bars, but it is dead certain, a 100%, that individual 'A' who smokes pot, sniffs coke, trips acid or injects morphine, will inevitably become a thief, robber, rapist or murderer.

And whenever you point out, that in the past science proved that its ok for children to work for 11 hours in a factory, or that opium and tobacco are beneficial for the health, they just say: 'that was then. Now we know how things really stand'. Typical arrogance. Every generation of scientists believe that it is them who have discovered the final truth. And how can you persuade the public that this is not the case, when the doctor and the policeman are breathing down your neck? If science was that far advanced, that it could accurately predict the life of any human being, just from examining his or her blood or urine - we would not be living in the world we do.

We would be living in a Brave New World of totally controlled perceptions and emotions, or in a Mystical Fragmented Utopia. As things stand - we just don't know when a husband will murder a wife, when a bank manager will run off leaving ruins behind, or when the market or civil peace crash. And to claim that we do know, is pathetic. But instead of honestly admitting that there are huge areas of life in which events can not be easily predicted, people pretend that these dark holes do not exist, and fill them with imagined causes, effects, and characters. In my case, the imagined character is the vile junkie, the imagined cause is the vile drug, and the imagined effect is violence against another person. I am caught in this dream which is not of my making, because the dream is enforced by policemen, doctors, politicians and 'decent folks'.

True - a certain chunk of humanity is made up of monsters, but the group of monsters is not made up of drug abusers alone. It contains monster who are teachers, doctors, soldiers, policemen, salesmen, cleaners. Monsters, which drink alcohol, or coffee, or tea, or eat cake, who listen to pop, and who listen to classical music. Of the drug abusers a minority are monsters, a lot are just generally unpleasant. But then - the same goes for the rest of humanity. There is no 'cosmic', 'natural', 'biological', 'psychological' or 'social' reason for every pot-head, coke-fiend or speed-freak to turn into a robber, rapist or a killer.

Some probably will - most won't - just like with every group of people in urban and agricultural communities. 5. Unnatural As popular as the preceding arguments, is the one that taking drugs is 'unnatural'. This argument is put forward by many groups: - by members of sects and sub-sects, to whom 'natural' is 'what God said'; - by 'political conservatives', for whom 'natural' means 'what our grandfathers did'; - by 'atheist scientists' for whom 'natural' is 'what current lab research shows'; - also by people who sit with crossed legs, stick their tongues to the roofs of their mouths, count their breaths, and support the war against drugs on grounds that humans have no use for 'artificial substances' from the 'outside'. As if spaghetti, tea and eyeglasses are not artificial substances from outside. Humans are not self-contained closed systems.

We are open systems, constantly exchanging substances with the 'outside world'. When people speak of 'natural' and 'unnatural' practices, they assume that they know what 'natural' is. From what I gather from clever books, a natural state for a human is to go around naked, eat berries, kill animals with its teeth, eat everything raw, communicate with grunts and howls with other humans, and, if lucky, die of old age around 20 something. Everything we humans do today, and have done for thousands of years, is unnatural. It is the opposite of natural - 'artificial'.

Teeth chew what they were not designed to chew, the digestive system digests what it was not designed to digest, the air, the sounds, the body itself, is very very rarely in a 'natural' position. Our environment reflects in a warped way our biology, but in no way is it the original ecological niche which we occupied when we were 'natural'. Artificiality is made possible by the existence of human society which is based not on inherited information (like the societies of bees, ants, wolves, elephants) but information acquired through symbols, through mediums like conversations, books, pictures... Whenever we humans are faced by a choice between different practices and situations, we can never, while living in a society at least, be choosing between 'natural' and 'unnatural', but between different kinds of 'unnatural'. Just like talk of 'maintaining a natural balance' is logically invalid, so is talk of 'unnatural practices'. A balance which is natural maintains itself.

A balance which is maintained by humans is artificial. Therefore, when a balance is maintained by human efforts it can not be natural - it is artificial. No natural balance maintaining ecologist or contemplator likes to admit this, because to them 'natural' equals good and 'artificial', 'unnatural' - bad. Most people are in the same mental trip, calling natural what they consider good, and unnatural what they consider bad. Which is 'only natural'.

Of course taking drugs is unnatural. But so is working in a bank, drinking coffee, washing teeth and wearing socks. Being put into prison or a mental home is certainly not 'more natural', than smoking marijuana. Living naked in the forest is natural. And even if I am completely wrong, and driving a car or using electricity for light is indeed by some sick logic far more natural then smoking a plant or injecting its extract - why should this be a question of such magnitude as to put me into jail or mental home?

Why should anyone the hell care if what I do is natural or unnatural? Because I anger the gods? But I don't believe in your gods! So in the end it is all a question of punishing me for not believing in your gods? But, if I am a danger by not believing in them, if I make them less real or powerful by not believing in them - how pathetic are they?

How pathetic are you? And if I don't affect them - then why do you or they care? Some people would wave a holy book at me, and say that I was in fact created by 'the Lord', and therefore am his property, and to not do with myself what he commands me to do is a crime. What can I say? 1. I don't believe you actually talk to this Master and know what he wants - you are lying; 2.

I don't believe he exists at all in the way you describe him- rather he is a symptom of your mental illness; 3. If he does exist in the way you describe him, and does tell you what you say he does - he can kiss his property goodbye, because it has just declared independence; 4. If I am wrong - I'll get what I deserve after I die. This is between me and him. It's none of your business. 5.

Your business is what happens on the outside - if I steal, kill or rape. What happens on the inside - this is so not your territory. 6. Conclusion We have examined the main positions of the opponents. All of them, on closer examination, as I hope to have shown convincingly, turn out to be obscure magical / psychotic incantations, based on the assumed, 'self-evident' truths of various dreams which follow various unconscious scenarios, but all four carry strong emotional appeal for the inhabitants of our society. One final example of the lack of valid logic in the war on drugs are the marijuana laws.

When one points out to the politicians how absurd it is when possession of a plant meant for smoking leads to equal or higher prison sentences in comparison to crimes like assault of a person, robbery and rape, there are two 'liberal arguments' given in return: 1. "Although this is the punishment in our law books, of course we don't really put kids with a cigarette of marijuana into jail for years! The judges can see that the law should not be enforced to its full extent in such cases, and go easier on the young delinquents". 2. "In out society small prison sentences or even just fines are the official punishments for possession of a small amount of marijuana. It's only the dealers who are severely punished".

In the first case the opposition actually admits that the laws are inadequate and that it would be wrong to enforce them they way they are written. Than what is the point of these laws? The point is political - declare the activity of 30% of the inhabitants illegal, and keep them in perpetual fear. You don't have even to have enough prisons or mental homes to lock them away - you can't lock them all away anyway - society will collapse - but you can always keep them guilty and weak in front of the state authority.

Like in previous decades and to this day in many societies there are laws against homosexuality. Millions do it, everyone knows that millions do it, but strict laws against it allow keeping a huge chunk of the population in fear. The second argument, that only people who are seen by the law as 'dealers' get severe sentences, is not based so much on a logic of political tyranny, but rather on almost sincere attempts of finding a compromise between the mass hysteria and common sense. It's good that there are societies in which you don't have your arm cut off if you have a cigarette of marijuana, but still, the idea that you must get it from the thin air and not from someone else is absurd.

There is a hint of the Anglo-Saxon concept of 'fair play' in this - 'if we catch you with a little amount its ok, if we catch you with more - tough luck. ' PRAGMATIC ISSUES Behind this abstract logic of oppression, there are of course, also simple pragmatic issues: - careers which politicians make by their anti-drug / indecency crusades; - promotions which police officers get for catching an X amount of "drug abusing and dealing scum"; - huge profits which the organized crime has from the illegal status of drugs - a splendid excuse for restricting civil freedoms. - some of the huge organized crime profits finding their ways into cops pockets and politicians bank accounts. From a practical point of view, the current war on drugs is good for everyone - the politicians are happy; the mafia is happy; the police is happy; the population is happy. "The war on drugs" is a survival strategy of so many people, that if drugs were to be legalized tomorrow, millions would be lost to some, careers would be lost to others, whole national economies would be seriously threatened, and the poor decent folks would have to find another group which to blame for everything which is wrong in their lives, another group with which to compare and to feel smug about themselves.

REALITY DEFENCE But behind the confused emotional logic, the lies, as well as the 'common sense' pragmatism, there is a third layer of explanation. It has to do with the state protecting its "reality" from subversion. In dictatorships and totalitarian regimes it is known all too well, that not only political hints, but also simple "strangeness", "outlandishness" can make the state censor to forbid a work of art. The sheer "avant-garde" is dangerous in itself, because it subverts the legitimate rules of reality, by offering an alternative. And people's jobs, marriages, all activities which keep them alive and give meaning to their lives, their 'survival strategies', exist only as long as the reality which makes them possible exists.

So it is an intuitive feeling of self-preservation which makes the decent folks fear and hate 'drugs', makes them laugh at strange paintings and get depressed from strange music. But of course, no society can remain unchanged. The fight which they lead is doomed from the start - change in general can not be halted, drugs in particular can not be 'un-invented', you can not turn the clock back to the moment before drugs appeared, and by putting everyone you catch taking them into prison, you do not ensure a stable and happy society, all you ensure, is an illusory peace of mind for yourself. SUMMARY To put it simply: it is my belief, that mind affecting drugs are divided into legal and illegal by a simple criteria. The drugs which shut out the worrying thoughts and emotions and help a citizen go through his or her routine with a smile are legal, while drugs which lead to brooding self-examination, or out-worldly bliss, and therefore to questioning or ignoring of the current rules and expectations, are illegal. Drugs which help you stay programmed are legal, drugs which can be used for personal de-programming are outlawed.