We have heard a lot discussion about free speech and censorship lately. There were hundreds or thousands of videos and articles covering the banning of Alex Jones from various social media platforms. Many others have been targeted too. Now, people who were unconcerned with the issue of censorship are becoming involved in the debate and that is great. However, there is a sort of censorship that is far more personal, far more pervasive, and enforced by the systems of authority with the threat of violence or imprisonment. To be specific, by prohibiting consciousness expanding drugs, the authority is censoring certain types of thought. They say that thinking the way that cannabis or psychedelics make you think is dangerous to the self or others and they persecute people who chose to think in those ways under that pretext but the real danger is to the authority itself. Many of the outlawed drugs have a way of allowing a user to see past the lies and propaganda that we have been fed throughout our lives and that type of understanding is threatening for those whose positions of power rely on the public's willingness to accept their official narratives. This is something that the authority would prefer not to allow and they have taken action to stop it in the form of the drug war. They will tell us that altering our thoughts is unacceptable. They will take the means to think in those altered ways by force and imprison anyone who possesses them or provides them to others. If that is not a form of "censorship" I don't know what is. Interestingly, I have seen few people frame the argument in this way. At any rate, I believe that if we concern ourselves with censorship (and we should), we should also concern ourselves with the drug war because, in practice, it outlaws specific ways of thinking and that is censorship of the mind.
I don't advocate for the use of every drug. Some of them can be quite problematic but I don't think that anyone should go to prison for any of them either. I don't believe that an authority or society has the right to tell a person what they can choose to do with their mind or body. To me, freedom isn't freedom, if one isn't free to make the wrong choices. In my opinion, every drug should be legal or, at least, decriminalized. However, when I talk about "consciousness expanding drugs" and why they threaten the systems of authority and are "censored" by those systems of authority, I am primarily referring to cannabis and psychedelics (though there are other valuable drugs). I am only writing this paragraph because I don't want to be accused of promoting crack, or heroin, or something. I can't say if those things are particularly mind expanding (I have never done them) but I suspect that they threaten the system and are banned for other (probably still self-serving) reasons.
I have written extensively about how psychedelics and cannabis can be mind expanding and how they can change a person's perspectives on the things that he or she has accepted as the truth so I don't want to spend too much time rehashing those topics here but I will briefly touch on them. Psychedelics can cause a shift in consciousness that is usually accompanied by an erosion of the "ego." That combination of effects seems to allow the user to take a uniquely objective look at what he or she has believed to be the reality that we inhabit. Without being colored by our cultural and personal baggage or by the propaganda that we have absorbed, our beliefs about the world and our places in it can be seen for what they truly are. That effect often has the benefit of washing away the lies that we all believe to be true because we have never bothered to question them. Cannabis on the other hand works differently. It does not violently burn the untruths out a person's mind in the way that psychedelic drugs would but it does seem to encourage a deeper level of thought. Where psychedelics do much of the work for a user, cannabis encourages the user to do the work on his or her own. One becomes more willing to reflect on things and to examine them. Cannabis increases curiosity and that often leads people down an inconvenient (for the authorities) path of discovery.
Both the rapid disintegration of approved the world views (caused by psychedelics) and the drive to find the flaws in those world views (potentially inspired by cannabis) are threatening to the systems of authority because their power often relies on our willingness to accept that what they say is the truth. I don't mean this is a "tin foil hat" sense either. We know that the government, the media, and the schools feed us propaganda. Almost anyone who sat through an anti-drug class and heard the ridiculous claims that they make knows this but "They" need enough of us to believe the lies, if "They" are going to continue to justify the policies. Before and during every war we are inundated with propaganda. Anyone, who is old enough to remember the build up to and early stages of the second Iraq war, should recall general Colin Powell and the little vile of anthrax that he dangled in front of the American people to justify the military action. Enough of us were scared into unquestioning support of that war while anyone with a dissenting opinion was ostracized (The Dixie Chicks, for example). The authorities know that these sorts of lies are harder to sell when there is a free thinking and curious population (as there would be, if we had easy access to cannabis and psychedelics). They can't ban thoughts (I am only half-joking when I say that they are probably working on it, though) but they can take away the tools that allow us to think more freely or to think in unique ways and that accomplishes the same goal.
By preventing us from legally reaching the states of consciousness that are brought into existence by the use of thought provoking drugs, the authority is censoring our minds. Other than having the power to cause a change in a person's consciousness, a psychoactive drug is no different than any other inanimate object. If it was not for those abilities, they would not be prohibited. While it is the substance, itself, that is banned, the purpose of its prohibition is to prevent people from partaking in its use. The authority says "the way that those substances make you think is 'dangerous' and we cannot allow you to think like that." To my mind, this is a clear act of censorship and, in some ways, a more troubling one than the high profile cases of traditional censorship that we see involving people like Alex Jones. Most obviously, it goes beyond limiting our speech because it intrudes on our ability to think freely. Thinking is the "conversation" that one has with the self and when the the authority criminalizes a drug and prevents an individual from controlling his or her internal "speech," it is denying protection to that "speech." This censorship of the mind is also enshrined into law and carries criminal penalties which makes it an order of magnitude worse than the recent attacks on the spirit of free speech by social media companies (though that is also a serious issue in its own right).
Call me crazy if you would like to but remember that the systems of authority, to which we are subject, have both the means and the motive to try to censor our thoughts through the use of drug prohibition. We know that "They" lie to us and we know that some drugs can help us to see through those lies. The government runs the schools (here and in many other countries) where they can present their propaganda to captive and impressionable audiences. They pass the laws and pay for the law enforcement. Criminalizing drugs is a simple enough action to take, it can be justified with lies, and it serves the interest of the authority. This doesn't prove me right when I say that drugs laws are a form of censorship, of course, but when one looks at how drug prohibition functions to prevent us from altering our thought and at how preventing us from thinking in those ways benefits the system of authority, this issue starts to resemble other, more familiar, forms of state sponsored censorship.
Peace.
All the images in this post are sourced from the free image website, unsplash.com
You remain my favorite author on Steemit. Your scope of analysis proves your very point made here.
On bad days, I see psychedelics as one of the last tools capable of helping humanity remember who we are and what power we have, if we only make use of it in a responsible way.
I would be nowhere without the self-talk largely inspired by cannabis use. There's a reason there are stigmas against anything one would stumble upon on a psychedelic trip. Banning those reminders just wasn't enough I guess ;)
Thank you. That and the resteem mean a lot.
"I see psychedelics as one of the last tools capable of helping humanity remember who we are and what power we have"
Truth. Sadly, that is still a hard idea to get across to people. Things do seem to be moving in the right direction though.
"I would be nowhere without the self-talk largely inspired by cannabis use." I agree. 12 was the age I first smoked a joint. It produced in me the desire to expand my knowledge of world more than anything else I experienced up to that time. 15 was when I tripped for the first time and moved me further down the path of awareness. At 63 I do not feel any other experience (including sex and rock 'n' roll) has been as influential on my psyche as pot and psychedelics.
"While it is the substance, itself, that is banned, the purpose of its prohibition is to prevent people from partaking in its use. The authority says 'the way that those substances make you think is dangerous and we cannot allow you to think like that.'"
That's definitely what has been occurring in Japan. This country did not have much of a cannabis tradition since Meiji (possibly it did in earlier times - there's the use of cannabis seeds in several cooking spices; there was the prevalent use of hemp for fabric and rope making). For centuries, Japan has been an agricultural culture with a deep alcohol tradition. Since at least Tokugawa Era (early 1603 to 1868) there has been a heavy emphasis on restricting free will, etc. It appeared that keeping people drunk was an effective way to dull their thinking. By Meiji it was so firmly entrenched and went into hyper-drive with the push of the Nation State and intense competition with the non-Japanese. By 1946 when McArthur banned the use of cannabis, the Japanese government was more than happy to comply (since the society had eradicated its use in the culture by that time anyway except in the minor uses mentioned previously).
As a result, the mindset that is enhanced by the use of cannabis, hardly exists in this country. The vast majority is unaware and so is happy with the status quo. Unless a real education campaign is conducted here to spread such awareness, Japan will continue to have some of the world's harshest drug laws long after the U.S. decriminalizes cannabis; even though, the U.S. was the country that forced Japan to officially criminalize it in the first place. Without the perception or mindset that cannabis helps to expand, most Japanese will be stuck buried in the propaganda propagated during the height of the cannabis prohibition. Truly a sad state of affairs and damaging to anyone who wants the freedom to partake. Ignorance is bliss is far from the truth.
"It appeared that keeping people drunk was an effective way to dull their thinking. "
I almost mentioned something similar. The legal drugs seem to be the ones that keep people numb or help work longer.
Well that's great to see this as a resteem from paradigmprospect! The greatly undervalued resteem button!! :)
Happy to get your work on my feed now that im following :) thanks for the great writing style :)
Thank you.
Haha Yeah I have been a fan of @paradigmprospect's work for a while now and I am always happy to see my work being enjoyed by a good steemian like that.
The war on drugs is and always has been a waste of taxpayer money.
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