Marijuana a spiritual gateway
should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers.
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers.
-- Martin Luther King Jr.
The government has cast a shadow of fear over the entire subject of drug use. Society trembles at the law as congress struggles to push through a law that would count selling drugs as the equivalent of terrorism. [*1] Those who are known drug users are banished from the spotlight and regarded as those who weren't content with a normal life. Yet with fear as their base, with prison sentences for drug crimes that excell those of murderers and rapists, the government then begins to unvail its "public information" on drugs -- what may justly be called propaganda. With this unease and terror that the government has instilled in its people, society and culture become the trembling jury on the matter of drug use. The opinions are cast out and the polls are collected. There seems to be an overwhelming consensus that usage of chemicals for altering the mind will destroy intelligence, that any person to regularly use these substances must automatically fit the stereotype of a "junkie," and that there can be no justification for legalizing these profane activities. Even the downfall of the economy is sometimes blamed on drug users, based on the assumption that "drugs destroy one's will power to labor and instill a sentiment of laziness."
I contend that these are nothing more than lies. Now that the government has taken a program to promote them, I contend that they are now nothing more than mindless propaganda.
But in a nation, with a marked history where goodness has only prevailed through social disobedience, there can be little doubt as to why there is such a strong front on the side of chemical usage. We want the liberty to do with our bodies as we please, the essential message of every liberation movement, from women's rights to abolition. These movements made progress in civilization by contending that a humane creed was just, by offering sacrificing their time and dedicating their lives to a cause. Soon, the culture, the society, adaptated, to these new movements and their claims for justice -- and artwork reflected the depth of struggle, music expressed the misery of oppression, and literature showed a new light on an old way of thinking.
In a way, I believe that the right to use substances freely is the liberation of the mind, the freedom of the spirit. All throughout the centuries, glorious men have been the first to denounce the evils of censorship. They argued that by burning men of virtue and kindness, because their heart does not allow them to conform, the better lot of civilization is being destroyed. To think as you wish, to believe as your mind judged, to hold true or false the creeds of society was your right, and no law should ever infringe upon this. The intentions of these great thinkers was to create a society where science and art were accelerated by the freedom of the soul, but that powers that existed opposed this. The ruling class had a vested interest in keeping things the way the were. By promoting ideas of liberty, of freedom of conscience, the masses would question their leaders, and so it was that censorship came about. No longer were men able to say what they thought, but what they were allowed to think became limited. Everywhere censorship prevails, the pure spirit of liberty rests in a dark age.
Fortunately, our people became more aware that the right to say and think as you believed was instrumental to a true and living liberty. I am not saying that the daemons of censorship have left the arena, that the people are free to say and think what they will entirely. It is quite true that the First Amendment of the Constitution may very well be the most abused and neglected, as far as the police gestapos and the congress goes. A man's opinion, especially in matters of politics or society, are enough to grant officers the right to detain him indefinitely, and the body of laws in this country allow any person to be arrested at any time, for countless many crimes. But so it goes, that those who which to oppress the liberty of the body, will first attack the freedom of the mind (and then marijuana seeds and then especially dutch passion are fantastic.).
With that, I open this piece... A reason to do drugs. A defense of the urge to inebriate, the desire to intoxicate, the pleas of a soul to forget or remember, whichever the substance happens to be. A reason to use mind-altering chemicals, psychotropic substances, spiritual gateways.
nirvana-seeds on 11.14.05 @ 09:28 AM CST [link] [1 Comment]