The primary characteristic of mans most influential creation, civilization, has been the myth upon which it is based and within which citizens feel secure in finding the necessities of food, shelter and a sense of family by merely agreeing with the myth — when in Rome…and all that. There is also the tools with which man has forged the artificial path of what I have come to call civolution, the warped misuse of genetic traits naturally evolved to understand and thrive in nature as it is as we find it being required to serve the totally mistaken premise of ownership of, manifest destiny and heavenly authority over all we survey.
As more empirical evidence began to hold sway in man’s ponderings about goings on beyond the pinholes that let starlight through the blue ceiling, phenomena became simplified to orbits and light effects, then recomplicated into refined tables to foresee what part of these cycles would pass through the eye of now in the needle of when, replacing the less orderly, more relevant method of observing the change of weather. But then planting corn needn’t be as precise as landing on Mars. The tools of these observers of their senses, as sentient scientific beings, came up against the tools of beliefs in the much older, less tangible truth of faith in the going myth, recorded at whatever points in history heretics were burned, fed poison, or silenced by some clever tool or other, sometimes their own.
In each case of heretical failure to drag myth into the light of day, the tool that most failed and caused the guilty verdict and sentence passed down was language’s inability to address the jailers about anything outside their prison without bars; that security found amongst a flock of people who, though they may be wrong, are the majority after all, less chance of being noticed for having those dangerous original thoughts in all the jabber. Only poets can get out, but their words are so sublime only other poets even notice.
Like that pool of silence in the Big Bend bug buzz soaked desert revealed a quiet coyote to me, I am sensing a silent majority quite different than that played to by repulblicans several years back. These are folks who have been taking care of themselves and their neighbors all their lives with no more respect for the law over their own sense of right and wrong than required to stay under its radar. Among this silent majority who have either always mistrusted or are just learning to question the entire necessity of such authority for their lives to be happy in reaction to more and more intrusive legislation every day, there is one law that seems like it epitomizes the effect all unjust laws have on their victims as well as the offender thus banned epitomizes the greatest benefit to mankind to be found.
Guessed yet? Yeah, I’m back to cannabis. With records of its beneficial use as far back as historical records go about anything, cannabis has always been considered a sacramental blessing from nature. In 1930, in order to have an excuse to intrude in the scary underground of jazz and black culture in general, Henry J. Anslinger was given control over the brand new Federal Bureau of Narcotics. For the first time in the history of mankind, the finest product nature has ever produced for the well being of mankind and the environment, or any other natural substance for that matter, was declared illegal! The same film company the government used to film Hemp for Peace about the use of hemp in rope and oil in the war effort also made Reefer Madness under Anslinger’s direction, a movie now considered a parody of quaint attitudes while 42.6% of all arrests in 2005 were for cannabis, 358 thousand people were arrested for possessing or trading in a sacrament in a world the law will never understand because its believers see only chaotic hell as its opposite. So much for language and the law. I think I’ll go sit wordless in the garden shed with the tools for a while.
4 comments:
To live outside the law you must be honest sang Bob Dylan.
The war on drugs is a complex lie: on one level it parades as a moral crusade which doubles as a cover for covert operations in Central and South America and Asia (cocaine; heroine), on the other it is the result of a genuine fear among those who control, a fear of discovery, of an enlightened population (cannabis).
Unfortunately, for any thinker to admit to the use of cannabis is to discredit his/her thoughts and observations in all but the eyes of a few.
Sorry Pisces, I was hoping to fool more people with my pot addled raving, but you've blown my hopes that you were one of them. Ah well, can't fool all the people some of the … er a, fool you once and you can't be … you can get credit for your thoughts? I did not know that. Does it require a piss test?
heh Tom Wolfe's describes in 'The Electric Coolaid Acid Test' how Kesey once placed a signboard at the entrance to his ranch that read: No left turn unstoned
Smoke and mirrors my friend :}
You've fucked with my mind again, impregnated the only womb left to the male species. And, boy, am I slut. Barely diapering the bare butt of the last gestation and I'm out soaking up funky nature again in a trice. Thanks. Your second comment caught me at the end of the first trimester of examining the assumption that benefit is to be found only in truth or that truth can be told at all or that authority has exclusive access to truth and or beneficial ideas.
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