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 pokermush
Waterboardingmyself toprotect America!
 
Registered: 09/17/06
Posts: 475
Loc: Utah
Last seen: 5 months, 16 days
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 Re: On the Illegality of Magic Mushrooms [Re: AlteredAgain]
#6440604 - 01/09/07 02:45 AM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
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Personally, I avoid the stuff. I have heard much of what you are saying, but notice how I framed my statement. I stated that they had been demonstrated safe within the requirements of the FDA. The point is that the FDA has a procedure to evaluate the safety of these things, even though we might think those rules are too stringent or too lax.
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Cabinet_Sanchez
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Registered: 02/14/07
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This seems to be an important thread considering this is "the shroomery" so I'll add my .02, which I'm sure will be instantly rejected by the "open-minded" poster and cohort.
I do indeed believe that this thread is semi-representative of the reason why psylocybin and psylocin (I say deliberately because mushrooms themselves are now not especially illegal in Oregon or New Mexico), as well as many other "drugs" are illegal. More on that later.
So far the main discussion has been about how "male" values are totally ungroovy and that only "feminine" values promote compassion or basically anything else "good." This is reverse-sexism just as much as affirmative action is reverse racism. Men and the concept of "male" in Western cultures are as they are because of our society's pressures just as much as women (and "feminine") are the way they are because of them. This would be a good reason to complain about our social structure: it inherently generates sexism. The problem is, feminism (or the opposite) hasn't got anything in particular to do with psylocybin.
Also brought up is the religious concept of a universal consciousness and oneness which is likely an amalgam of Jung's ideas and theories about the Mayan calandar's ending in 2012 (which was specifically mentioned). That's a great idea, and I'm hoping the world as it is will end in 2012 too. HOWEVER:
IT IS MOSTLY IRRELEVENT TO THE ISSUE OF WHY PSYLOCYBIN IS ILLEGAL.
The point I mean to make with all that nonsense is that the discussion so far by the two main posters has not actually made much of a point on the legality of psylocybin and other drugs.
The reason (or at least the biggest reason in my opinion) for the drug war being fought right now (mind you not when it began) is a lack of education. Right now for the majority of young people the government is almost the sole informant on "drugs." Sadly, most of this is misinformation. The reason psylocybin is illegal is that most people's education on the chemical states that it is basically the same as LSD, cocaine, crack, and heroin. If the majority of Americans knew the truth about psychadellics (that they are non-addictive, and have positive effects), I doubt this prohibition would last. Americans think they are prohibiting a harmful toxin that ruins your brain, that's why they're willing to spend billions.
You can test this yourself; go tell someone (preferably a "clean" sort of person, who only knows what the government has said), that shrooms have no harmful effects and will give a new perspective on reality. That person will probably not believe you. Ask a new friend who doesn't "do drugs" to try shrooms with you. They will probably say that they don't want to abuse something that hard or do something that dangerous.
It seems that most people so far have been equating the use of drugs with a grand, all-encompassing consciousness revolution (aka 2012 and the like). The fact of the matter is that if psychadellics and cannabis were made legal, everyone would not simply reject the existing "order" of how things are, sit around trees and pass each other bongs, discussing the meaning of life. They will not meditate on the new perspective gained. The fact is that many, if not most people who smoke pot frequently right now are unsavory characters who just want to get stoned all the time and ignore the so called "greater good" altogether. They're the people who come on here looking for the next thing on which they can "trip balls" and fuck themselves up. Even your average everyman and politician can see the fact from the philosophical rhetoric, and that's why this sort of transcendental waxing hurts legalization's cause rather than helping it.
The guy who calls in to talk to Dennis McKenna on a radio show about how the government is refusing to let us have drugs because of the mystical information they contain, just like they refuse to tell us the truth about the extra-terrestrial crashes at Area 51 is the biggest enemy to our cause.
This mystical woo-woo and grand philosophizing about the apparently undefinable and conspiratorial "social order" is a healthy way to get outside the box, but cannot help the real cause of freedom. Sadly or not, we are going to have to deal with a world in which large governments set boundaries and rules for even larger groups of people. Trying to suddenly topple and reform the government is not going to work; a flaming annarchy symbol and the arcadian dream that without government everyone will survive by smoking pot, doing shrooms, and discussing their "feminine values" and compassion in instantaneous universally unconscious ways is totally impractical. In my (and I have to at least think most reasonable people's) opinion the fight against this war has to be done within the system in some way or another.
This is what I think "on the illegality of magic mushrooms." The war on drugs (including psylocybin) in itself is unconstitutional. Remember the alcohol prohibition? There was an amendment for that wasn't there. That's because the power to prohibit a person from ingesting a substance is not granted by the constitution. Congress never once asked the American public if it wanted to ban all drugs and plants which could alter out mindset. It just did it. The reasons for that no longer matter; the primary issue is how to change it now. Personally I would look to such landmark decisions as Roe vs. Wade, which states that people have the choice to remove anything from their body if so desired (I don't care what your position on abortion is, it's only important because right now, it's legal). Would it not follow that people have a right to put into their bodies whatever they wish? It is not the government's place to tell a person what he or she can ingest unless it interferes with the rights of another person, which at least in the case of shrooms is unlikely. A person on shrooms, after all, has little desire for violence, and in light of legal substances such as alcohol which regularly cause extreme domestic violence, I don't see how shrooms can be banned in such a way. Challenge these laws in the courts if you believe them unconstitutional, as I do.
Another avenue would be to call the DEA's bluff and educate the young. Hell educate everybody. This is something that will have to take place if psychadellics are ever made legal anyway. Education about the real risks and benefits of drugs are commonplace, except when it comes to that set of "drugs" ie crack, meth, et cetera. If this were to change, I bet drugs would become more popular, less "deviant," and eventually would be voted legal.
Another poster presented the idea that capitalism allows people to reach their dreams by working through the system. If your dream is to legalize psylocybin, capitalism can help you, believe it or not. If you work within the system and win big, you might have enough money to tell the government what's legal and what isn't. It's happened before.
Unfortunately it will take time no matter what is done, because the entire stigma of anyone using a psychadellic being a "drug addict" needs to be dissolved. That is currently the main cause of the continued prohibition. Whatever the initial cause, be it the man stomping down on free thinking or pharmaceutical companies paying the government or some other economic issue, the present cause is simply ignorance of the facts about most drugs.
Working against the system on this issue will unfortunately not achieve the goals set by those who wish to do so. It is impractical and harmful to the cause of those who wish to have the right to have relationships with plants. It is indeed analagous to the situation of the Black Panthers' radical idealism vs. the NAACP's lawyers. The Black Panthers hurt the civil rights cause by spouting the equivalent of current mystical woo woo existentialism and alienating the people who will and must depend upon the system.
The "drugs make people subversive to the system" theory is tempting and tasty in its promise that everyone using drugs will form a wondrous community of peace-loving and that right now the evil empire is crushing it, but it's just not realistic. I think that people right now have a want to end the war on drugs and its massive toll on our economy and judicial system, they just need a why. Fortunately, that why is the truth.
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 EntheogenicPeace
Scholar
Registered: 10/04/05
Posts: 2,235
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Re: On the Illegality of Magic Mushrooms [Re: Myc0s]
#6670858 - 03/14/07 10:23 PM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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I agree with what you said about conservatives, but let's keep in mind that what we are discussing is two very different types of people; those who make the propaganda, & those who adhere to it. Those in power use the concepts of nationalism & religion for their own economic ends, not becuase they themselves believe it. But they know that their base of support will be from gullible & uncritical people who are more than willingly to submit to authority without question. From this regard infusing people with 'conservative' ideas, especially in areas of morality, will keep them narrow-minded & subservient, & they will be content with their own inferior economic position to those they're told are supposed to be above them.
Those in power fear the general effects that psychedelics would have upon the masses... more thoughtful, caring & compassionate people who would seek solutions of peace & dialouge, and would be inclined to build a more just & egalitarian economic arrangement globally. Widespread use would destroy the shallow & superficial concepts of reactionary nationalism that keep the masses within oppressor nations from uniting with the masses within oppressed nations in the true spirit of international revolutionary solidarity.
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EntheogenicPeace
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Registered: 10/04/05
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Re: On the Illegality of Magic Mushrooms [Re: pokermush]
#6671073 - 03/14/07 11:17 PM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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How would people know?
That is a very good question. Looking back it is correct to say that I made a mistake in what I said there.
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This is a logical fallacy, and you are making the mistake of interjecting (il)legality of mushrooms with several other (unpopular) activist causes, allowing your shroom cause to be dismissed just as easily as the rest.
What I said is not a logical fallacy. What is deceptive is you dismissing very real things as being merely 'activist causes'. Considering the FDA is controlled by the government, & the government by corporate interests, it is fantasy to assert that objectivity can be found in their proclamations. That's akin to saying that a think tank of "scientists" whose salaries are paid primarily by ExxonMobil has assumed validity, neutrality, & objectivity in making statements on global warming. What is a clear logical fallacy is you saying previously that since very few people know the truth about fungi & their potential to benefit humanity, that that can't be held against what is scientifically true or not... & then using the fact that the things I mentioned are not widely known/popular causes in a vain attempt to dismiss the issues I mention. Since most people don't even know what aspartame, methylphenidate, & BGH are, let alone anything about them, that means nothing as far as scientific validity is concerned, nor does the proclamations of a special interest group interested much more in profit than public safety.
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Also, pharmacists can't prescribe anything. The doctor prescribes and the pharmacists fills the order.
There is quite the shared interest of immense profits present between the two. To focus on a small technicality is to avoid the broader & much more relevant issue.
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The people who keep shrooms illegal haven't experienced a shroom trip and they don't know how it really changes a person.
Even if that were true without a single exception (which statistically there's no way it can be... & it certainly isn't as all manner of official studies have been done on psychoactives at one time or another), that doesn't mean that an educated person can't read & think critically on a topic they haven't experienced firsthand. There is no way that those in the ruling classes of society who determine policy don't know the potential benefits of something they themselves haven't experienced firsthand. I've never meditated in accordance with Zen Buddhist principles, but that doesn't mean I can't comprehend the positive & peaceful effect it could have upon myself, as well as the effects it has had on countless others.
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Ummm... how many people NOT TRIPPING ON LSD would say that? That behavior is so abhorrent that it is hard to comprehend, unless the person saying it is in a drug-altered state of mind.
But I have to say, I've seen plenty of video of these so-called enlightened hippies spitting on soldiers, cheering for the destruction of America, and "peace" protests with very violent messaging. Is it the drugs? I don't know but every time the hippies march, we get farther from the legalization of shrooms.
Based what drug users say, it wouldn't be hard for the average person to conclude that doing LSD and other drugs makes people hate their country and leads to anti-social behavior.
Yes, the quotes were exagerrated intentionally for the purpose of demonstration... although a few (especially those whose childhoods were immersed in computer graphic violence) do feel that way. The point was that most people within oppressor nations have a mindset of apathy when it comes to the suffering of those in less fortunate circumstances, less fortunate circumstances many times brought on & sustained by those same apathetic people without their knowledge. Psychedelics are (very often) a catalyst for seeking to understand the world & one's role in it. It is from this desire to learn that otherwise ignorant people come to find out that their hands are not clean of a brutally murdered peasant somewhere in Latin America (or any number of events could be substituted here). What they choose to do with this knowledge is their individual choice, but they can no longer claim ignorance as an excuse; whereas before they had this curiousity to learn about the world, they truly were ignorant.
As for the rest of that statement, it shows a predetermined bias of close-mindedness regarding critical analysis of the concept of nationalism. Hating the regime & economic system under which one lives is not the same as hating one's neighbors & their communites. Wishing to see an end to U.S. imperialism in the world does not mean wishing to see a nuclear weapon annihilate all of what is called 'America' today.
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Drugs are scary, and paranoid statements (like yours) from drug users reinforce to the average person that drugs (including shrooms) are harmful to the individual and society in general.
That one actually wasn't intended to be read as an exaggeration (other than, perhaps, the last sentence... depending on what region of the U.S. you were from), so I don't know how you call it a paranoid statement. If you watched a series of programs on The History Channel entitled "Hooked: Illegal Drugs & How They Got That Way", you would see well-educated historians (not some 'cracked-out, drug-using, paranoid nut job' like myself... as I know some see me as such) acknowledging that demonizing these substances was intended to discredit the Civil Rights & (more importantly) the anti-war movement among conservative White America, a demographic whose support is necessary for maintaing the existing state of affairs domestically, & in turn internationally.
Edited by EntheogenicPeace (03/14/07 11:23 PM)
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EntheogenicPeace
Scholar
Registered: 10/04/05
Posts: 2,235
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The reason (or at least the biggest reason in my opinion) for the drug war being fought right now (mind you not when it began) is a lack of education.
Really ... You don't think it has anything to do with the countless billions of dollars that go from the masses into the bank accounts of large, politically-entrenched corporations over the past decades (whether Halliburton getting no-bid contracts into the hundreds of millions to build jails to house an ever-increasing prison population, or U.S. arms dealers supplying all manner of weapons and equipment to the government of Colombia to fight "The War on Drugs", or more & more money going to policing agencies to increase domestic surveillance & operations, or many, many other examples)?
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It seems that most people so far have been equating the use of drugs with a grand, all-encompassing consciousness revolution...
I've hardly been saying that. Over & over & over again I've made it clear that these (perhaps seemingly unrelated to some) global/social/economic issues aren't about alien conspiracy theories or the Illuminati... these are issues of money, & lot's of it (and of course the control that comes from having money). I'm a socialist, not a spiritual guru. I speak on world issues almost exclusively from an economic standpoint. To refer to a revolution of values as being something from another planet is false. To the contrary: it's something everyone everywhere can relate to; no matter their skin color, nationality, religion, or even present class status. Was this man some kind of hippy with 'far out' & unEarthly ideas who only a few loons would give their attention to...
"One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just... This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane ... cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.... Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.'' - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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EntheogenicPeace
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Registered: 10/04/05
Posts: 2,235
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[...the Black Panthers' radical idealism...]
Ah, yes... what could be more 'radical idealism' than organizing & operating inner-city free breakfast programs for poor youth (black & white alike). Such crazy radicals... serving the people directly... they should've put on a suit & tie and went into a corporate or government building if they wanted to accomplish something worthwhile, instead of wasting there time on the streets (you know, where the people live).
As far as psychedelics & society as a whole is concerned... you can mock it if you like, but I stand on the weight of thousands of years of history of the indigenous peoples of the Americas prior to the genocidal arrival of the European colonialists to bear testimony to what I am saying, not any kind of New Age mysticism. The common attack against entheogens and other psychoactives that promote peace is that they're incompatable with human progress. You may not have read in your corporate history book, but the indigenous peoples of the Americas had architecture, agriculture, astronomy, ceramics, mathematics, medicine, spirituality/religion & more every bit as advanced (in some cases more so) as the Europeans did. What they didn't have, that made them susceptable to what was likely the largest holocaust in human history, was standing armies & navies and the associated weapons of mass destruction. They had no use for them as they weren't imperialist peoples who sought to travel the world murdering, enslaving, & exploiting.
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enlightened seed
satsang
Registered: 05/04/07
Posts: 79
Loc: somewhere amongst civiliz...
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First off I would like to say that this is a great post! I believe that the our government for the people (yeah right) are just the puppets in a much larger and ever growing dis-information, propaganda driven, mind controlling, confusion of the modern day slave population. In order to maintain their ego driven alternatives to understanding their own insecurities that they are somehow above and beyond the so called "level" of average human beings because of their wealth and their inability to possess empathy for anyone of social status that is not of their own! If we as the human population to succeed in changing the path which we are being guided we turn off our television PROGRAMMING and tune into each other. It is my opinion that as generations before mine and after will become more aware of ourselves and learn to distinguish illusion from reality, truth from LIES. The children are the future and will become the leaders of tomorrow and must have positive and responsible role models to help shape their world view, not the corporations or puppet masters who are fulfilling their own desires at the cost of the ENTIRE human population! Then again maybe I'm wrong? Just my .02 cents!!!!!!!
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enlightened seed
satsang
Registered: 05/04/07
Posts: 79
Loc: somewhere amongst civiliz...
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as i was reading the post i became somewhat dis oriented and after posting I realized that the original topic was "Re: On the Illegality of Magic Mushrooms" and am sorry for posting somewhat off topic?!?! Which leads me back to the subject above and could go on and on and on and on.....! I don't believe "Magic Mushrooms" will ever become "legal" in my lifetime, while the man made drugs will become made ever so easier to get. That my friends boils down to one thing.... Yup you guessed it MONEY. Some of the largest pharmaceutical company's which have annual profits in the hundreds of billions of dollars played a major role in the synthesis of the DRUGS in which are still produced and criminalized to this vary day!! Mushrooms are more natural than 99.99% of the food put in their body's every single day and are scheduled in the same class as heroin and pcp! There is only one word that can describe the insanity that this natural occurring fungi could have you stripped of your freedom and locked in a cage because another human being said thats the way it is and will be is "Unimaginable". Like I said in my last post...The children are OUR future. Each one teach one and our fate will be in their hands!
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EntheogenicPeace
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Registered: 10/04/05
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Right on.
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