Non-locality, quantum teleportation and the EPR paradox

Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen wrote a paper in 1935 to try to prove that quantum mechanics was not a complete theory.  In classical mechanics, reality consisted of billiard balls rolling around on the pool table of space-time.  If the position, weight and speed of every particle were known at once, it would be possible to predict the future with perfect accuracy.  But quantum mechanics had replaced this clockwork view of the universe with a gambling God.  In quantum mechanics, a measurement on the same exact state did not produce the same result, half the time one thing would happen, half the time another.  Instead of definite variables with definite values, quantum mechanics had a roulette wheel of random outcomes in a given situation.  Furthermore, that inaccuracy seemed not to be due to some incompleteness of the theorem, but rather this vagueness was a fact of reality itself, made necessary by some sort of barrier to the depth to which we can peer into reality.  This barrier appeared to be caused by some sort of interaction between the measuring mind and the objective world, and this interaction was not open to investigation through physical experimental means.  This barrier is known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.  As noted above, in the classical view, if the position and momentum (mass times speed) of every particle were known at once, then everything from then on would be known with no uncertainty.  But nature places limits on us so that we cannot have such certainty.  It turns out that if we know the position, we cannot know the momentum accurately.  Or, vice versa, if we know the momentum, we cannot know the position accurately.  This necessary uncertainty has something to do with the fact the we are trying to gather all this information for our mind’s use.  Without a mind trying to correlate the momentum and the position, both can be measured accurately with no problem, but it is the mind’s involvement in the process that makes the variables we are trying to measure entangled.  These seemingly unrelated physical properties become entangled with mind stuff and are no longer free events.  Reality and outcomes of its measurement have been molded somehow by interaction with the observing mind.  Absolute determinism of the future is avoided because of this interaction with our universe.  Or another way to see it, without the mind there would be no free will.

So Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen wrote a paper which set up an experimental situation known as the EPR paradox.  Certain types of radioactive particles will decay into mirror image twin particles going in opposite directions.  So the twin particles resulting from the decay will have the same mass but equal and opposite momentums.  So let us imagine Alice on the west coast and Bob on the east coast.  We will put a radioactive emitter in the Midwest halfway between them so that the particles reach Alice and Bob at the same time.  So if Alice measures mass, she knows Bob’s particle has the same mass, so we know the mass of Bob’s particle from Alice’s measurement.  If Bob measures the momentum of the particle he gets, then we know the mass and momentum of Bob’s particle, violating the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, right?  It turns out that Bob is unable measure his momentum correctly.  Somehow Alice’s measurement of a particle on the west coast has an instant non-local effect on Bob’s measurement of a different particle on the east coast.  If Alice doesn’t make any measurement, then Bob is able to measure the position or the momentum as he pleases.  This is called a paradox because it violates our simple ideas about reality.

The EPR paradox is not just a what-if, but has been verified several times experimentally in the laboratory using polarized photons.  The EPR paradox and non-locality are a fact.  Quantum reality exists in states.  In the example we gave above, there are two states: [Alice knows momentum, Bob can't know position], [Alice knows position, Bob can't know momentum].  Either one of these states is possible initially.  It is Alice’s intent to correlate these two measurements, to have forbidden knowledge of the future, that instantly affects physical reality on the east coast where Bob is, so as to prevent that trespass of Alice’s.  It is therefore Alice’s will and mind that glue together at once points across the country and around the globe.  If we instead put Bob on Alpha Centauri, we can see that Alice actually affects the reality of the whole universe at once.

The non-locality and entanglement illustrated by the EPR paradox also make teleportation possible.  Another set of entangled variables (besides position and momentum) is the quantum spin on the x axis and the quantum spin on the z axis.  If we know the quantum state occupied by a particle, we may make a copy of that particle.  Knowledge of the full quantum state of a particle includes knowledge of its spin states.  If we can teleport one particle, we can do it with many, then a mouse, a dog, a cat or a human!  Normally we cannot know x and z spin at the same time because of their entanglement.  But instead of seeing entanglement as a barrier to an outdated view of the universe, we can use entanglement to achieve teleportation.  Here is how we can use quantum entanglement to make a copy.  Alice performs a x-spin measurement on her particle.  She sends the result of the measurement to Bob by classical means like a laser pulse (this can only be done at the speed of light or less so as to not violate relativity).  After Bob receives the measurement information, he opens his particle box, and performs his z-axis measurement.  The measurement itself will make a perfect copy of Alice’s particle appear in Bob’s locality after the proper quantum transformation.  This is called quantum teleportation.  Two papers of theory were written on this subject in 2004, and successful teleportation of atoms has occurred in the lab already.

To understand the EPR paradox and quantum teleportation, it is necessary to abandon the view that reality is made of chunks of space-time with the four forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear) acting between two local, touching points in space-time.  Instead, all of reality is a complex vibration that may condense locally into certain physical objects with discrete bands of measured variables.  Like acoustic frequencies, the quantum state waveforms of reality are separated into discrete bands of frequencies by this condensation into physical objects and measurement by the mind, much like the equalizer on a stereo separates an audio frequency into response bands.  This discrete banding of waveforms makes measure variables in quantum physics have certain jumps in value which has been confirmed experimentally and is the source of the term quantum (meaning chunk, not smooth).  From the EPR paradox and non-locality, we learn that the whole universe is vibrating in unison at once, and at any point where mind acts, the color and sound of this wave changes at once in the whole universe, and the objects and measured properties that condense from this song are also changed at once to some degree at every point in space from then on.

Why smoking bans are wrong

Mr. McKultchison was my chemistry teacher. I loved chemistry, the boiling flask, the dripping tubes, like some sort of nanotech city of atomic construction. He was very old, 85 or so, wore the same maroon sweater every day for four years, and chain smoked constantly. This was in the day when at the ivy’s everyone smoked unfiltered cigarettes everywhere, library, cafeteria, classroom. Although the eighties had dawned and with it came Reagan, shitting on the poor, disrespect of science and reason and embrace of the irrational with a surge in fundamentalism, and worst of all, an obsession with flabby, iridescent spandex “fitness”. Not the fitness of weight-lifting or skiing, some functional activity with man against gravity and other forces of the earth, controlling his movement and action in a perilous sphere, but sad people sweating in a mirrored rec room, raising a stink of mediocrity.

Mr. McKultchison smelled like old classical pillars, and fields of tobacco stretching before the graven steps of Monticello or something. He stood for arcane wisdom and peace, and Buddha’s smile perpetually gracing his dry lips. There was talk of outlawing smoking, and he was on the list. We were doing a reaction one day involving cyanide as a catalyst. With his age, the politics of the time, and the growing purist and shallow trends in public mores weighing heavily on his shoulders, Mr. McKultchison this day was stooped, weighed down, looking as though he was feeling as though he could no longer hold up the values that mattered anymore as the other people around him, head to toe, turned to brightly colored assemblages of plastic. He no longer seemed timeless as he always had, and within a day it seemed, he had begun to appear as someone whose time was very close at hand. He was talking, wistfully, of how many friends he had known who had died, died in fact doing the same reaction we were now doing. He explained how cyanide is so deadly that a tiny vapor can kill you before you even know something is amiss. He explained how like old soldiers of science, he and his friends were taken out one by one, with attendant mourning, planning of funerals and firing of gun salutes, all to show the best method of an isomerization, in general to show overall that we are dancing in a swirl of constant vibration and movement, a ballet of particles and forces, like twirling lovers in an endless dance. He explained that one crack in the pyrex reaction vessel may not even be visible to the human eye, but those one or two cyanide balls, those sentinels that open the doors to death for the two more molecules that follow and slice apart your hopes, dreams and memories, come unannounced. The human brain naturally sounds no alarm right before its destruction by cyanide. It was discovered though that smoking cigarettes while doing this reaction so vastly increases one’s sensitivity to smell that the invisible microscopic sentinels of death now smell profoundly like acrid almonds, sending noxious alarms throughout the body and giving rise to a call to action and self-preservation.

For sixty-five years he had, with each drag, felt the certainty of life, the confidence that he was at his sharpest and most vibrant. Smoking had saved his life, made his life, and he felt tobacco was the wife he never had. She protected him, kept him warm at night, soothed his brow when he was troubled, and most of all, tuned his body so as to be sensitive in the extreme to any threat to remove them from each other, to remove him from the vibrant dance of this life. He dared any man to do this reaction, to understand deeply the nature of this life, this dance to which we cling, to this depth, without the mistress of tobacco to accompany him. As I took my drags with difficulty, he reminded me it took at smart man to do the necessary thing and smoke, as the alternatives were to never be privileged to see this reaction or to be taken out, in all probability, with my cold blue hand being tucked back into the body bag. I never did forget his greater lesson, that the earth is our mistress, and she has given us all manner of plants and animals as tools so that we may have joy and give back that joy in science, art, and loving those around us. This is what we are, alive animals on earth, and purity, non-smoking, drug-free lifestyles are modernist delusions.

Kabbalistic glyphs in Masonic Baal-guided scrying

Session V

Since the last time I used DMT and had the realization that it was my own brain that was imposing the consistent narrative of sexuality, I realized the need to have an effective means of controlling this astral plane as well as some means of stocking it with new narratives so as not to fall back on old patterns. Relying on a stereotyped vision of reality that has always been comfortable to me, I fell back on the use of kabbalistic meditation techniques. As I understand it, the kabbalah is, most simply put, the art of viewing the universe as made entirely of atoms, but rather than like the atoms of the physical materialist being merely physical balls or entities, the kabbalist has the universe made up of vibratory thought-energy-atoms. This allows the practitioner of the kabbalah to, in theory, utilize her thought energy to manipulate matter, or to utilize matter to manipulate the practitioner’s thought energies in precise ways, and would also allow the practitioner to have special insight into reality by understanding the relationship between reality, sound, and thought at its deepest level.

When I find it necessary to pursue mystic paths, though being a physical materialistic atheist myself, I find it most satisfactory to fall back on kabbalist paths as they require the least compromise of my daily conscious beliefs. This necessity to rely on spiritual techniques despite a philosophical unwillingness to the contrary reminds me of a statement made by William Burroughs during an interview shown in the movie The Source. At one point, William Burroughs is describing the terrible physical side effects of the drink yage, which contains DMT and an MAOI. The interviewer asks why a person would punish themselves in such a manner. At this question Burroughs gets quite angry and says, “If you’re going to take yage, you take yage!” Therefore, by analogy, if you “smoke DMT, you smoke DMT!”; you may have to utilize spiritual techniques alien to your waking consciousness to have that special experience you seek. You must accept the negative as an expedient means to an joyful end. If these techniques become sufficiently and consistently useful for survival as to seem more necessary for a comprehensive world view than mere appendages of expedient means, then it becomes mandatory as a scientist to modify one’s daily beliefs and move on with a new world view. However, for now, it was still an expedient means to utilize kabbalistic techniques to begin to control the journey.

I initially thought about using the Hebrew letters, from which I learned about the kabbalah. But there is a lot of baggage with this culture’s letters, and I have always found it difficult to remember Semitic letters made of brush strokes and points. Furthermore, never really understanding the kabbalah in past study, I set about researching the origins of the Hebrew alphabet and came to learn about proto-Canaanite, proto-Sinaite, and it’s descendant Phoenician, from which we get ancient Hebrew and subsequently Biblical Hebrew. Furthermore, the Phoenician alphabet influenced the Latin (therefore the Germanic and Romance languages), Greek (Cyrillic and Slavic), Semitic (Arabic and Hebrew), and even Indian (Sanskrit) languages. It can certainly be argued to be the primal alphabet of all magical cultures and traditions of the mid-East and West. In examining the forms and glyphs of the original letters, which are quite like the Egyptian hieroglyphs by which they were inspired but from which they were not copied, or Druidic runes, the proto-Sinaitic glyphs and those chronologically before are quite clear as to what they represent in nature. An ox is quite clearly the head of an ox, etc. While there is some occasional argument, for example as in gimel, as to whether it is a crescent, camel or boomerang, the use of any one of these will suffice, and a narrative that links all three will suffice as well if that suits the experience better. I set about using the Phoenician alphabet because it is well-standardized, whereas the prior alphabets require some interpretation and reconstruction subject to the investigator’s personal bias, well defined (due to the survival of a fair number of scripts over time), and while the identity of some letters is in question still, by combining the interpretation of previous reconstructions, I found it possible to settle on a personally satisfying explanation for each glyph. There is also tremendous agreement over time as to the meaning of some letters, for example, Mem, as ‘water’. I set about learning the Phoenician alphabet and it’s letter signs and associating them with the Hebrew, which gave me great inspiration as to how Hebraic and Arabic scripts, and Semitic scripts in general, function. After sufficient practice with the glyphs over days, I was ready to scry.

I then prepared a dose of DMT in scrying range ~ 50mg. I took a small warming dose to make sure I could control the imagery of the letters through a slight rush. Then I took a deeper dose. On doing so I entered into a psychedelic space, but a very comfortable one. The sense of a being was there, same as before, but only as a helpful guiding female voice, not visually. I could peer through a triangular doorway into another world made of a pale blue sky with a pillar of white, non-stormy, fluffy clouds at the center, like a UFO of clouds. There were multiple psychedelic rainbows dripping from the entry way. It was the epitome of blue sky and peace. I realized I was peering through the shape of daleth like a doorway. I heard the voice urge me to try other letters and I did. Each one opened up another hallucinogenic space. For example, vav opened up a flaming yellow desert-like hallucinogenic space, with burning orange trails, a hot Mars-like environment. Shin opened up a crystalline world, each of the three points serving as seeds of extensive crystallization. At one point I utilized lamed and had a beautiful vision, which does escape me, because it wasn’t anchored with the symbol’s meaning, which I couldn’t remember at that moment. Now I remember it means ‘goad,’ ironically. I had remembered the letter by a mnemonic with ‘L’, so the voice chided me in the future not to utilize such mnemonic tricks and to remember the meanings. I nodded. As usual, she reminded me not to criticize myself overly much, assured me of universal love and benevolence, and encouraged me to move on to other glyphs. I moved on to mem with great success. By the time I reached nun, I could feel the effect of the neurotransmitter beginning to leave. With characteristic and usual sadness, I wished I could never go. She encouraged me to practice as long as I could, especially as the drug was leaving, so the ability might stay more permanently. I did so until the scrying no longer had the sense of reality, but pushed fantasy. I came to and delivered this narrative.

I feel I was encouraged by the female spirit of DMT to continue using kabbalistic meditation techniques based on the Phoenician alphabet of 22 letters as doorways to different hallucinogenic spaces. I saw them as vibratory spaces or levels, co-existent, adjacent or interwoven with our own, somehow participating or interacting with ours on a perpetual basis in some important manner. My questions now are what are the nature of these spaces? What is the nature of their interaction with our space? And how is mastery, control or vision of these spaces useful to my character, development, or identity as a human being? I suspect the answer to the latter question is probably the easiest. To know the real situation one is in is always of greatest value.

Ayahuasca papers

Holy Guardian Angel:
DMT 1:
I have recently begun a spiritual path involving the use of the sacred plant ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic vine, originally from South America, containing dimethyltryptamine, DMT. DMT is one of the most powerful hallucinogens known to man. DMT, like other hallucinogens, is thought to act at the serotonin receptor, which it does. But this does not explain the effects of hallucinogens in full. For example, recent studies show that LSD when attached to the serotonin receptor does not behave the same intra-cellularly, when attached, that serotonin does. Therefore, it can be pretty much said that the way these drugs work in the brain remains a mystery, except to say that they significantly alter brain chemistry to make ecstatic states highly possible.

DMT is considered to be the prototype of the tryptamines, which are the defining genus of the pure hallucinogens. DMT is found in virtually every type of living creature. All manner of flowering plants, grasses, sea life, reptiles, coral, fungi, and a remaining plethora of species, have members that contain significantly large amounts of DMT. DMT is said to be virtually everywhere, certainly in every highly structured organism. Our brains, in fact, are flooded with DMT. The irony of this is that since DMT is a Schedule I substance in the US, this should imply that our brains, being in possession of significant amounts of DMT, a Schedule I substance, are de facto illegal to possess or use according to the US government, which is not a surprise.

My work with DMT may be divided so far into three stages.

Stage I:

The first use of it precipitated the vision of a goddess. I’ve had goddess visions on numerous hallucinogens before, initially marijuana, then LSD, ketamine, salvia divinorum and psilocybin mushrooms. The view of a pan-gaian goddess emanating all life in psychedelic glory is actually a fairly common trip report. No doubt, this is responsible for the heavy presence of the female life-giving archetype in early mythology. It is also telling that the Christians, though they tried to impose a patriarchal ideology on people of the world, found it necessary to include Mary as the divine mother archetype, so as to satisfy the longing and necessity for the goddess. Myself, I have seen most ecstatic states as unified in a female figure. This was no different except for being more intense, and more filled with the sensation, as is commonly reported with DMT, of being in the presence of a true being.

Stage II:

The second stage was a surprising one. I again saw the same female deity, but this time I began to interact, not just linguistically and visually, but moreover had tactile hallucinations in the form of feeling touch upon my skin and feeling interaction, culminating to the point of actual intercourse. It was seeming like the pulsing motion was the writhing of a female engaged in the act of copulation. It was very satisfying and rewarding to be embraced by the universal in this way. It was the visual representation of yoga, or at least the suggestion that this was a truly yogic path of tantric union.

Stage III:

The third stage was very interesting.

Phase III was interesting because of its cinematic movement in three parts. Act I was focused on enjoying the mindspace. I immediately fell into the psychedelic mind-space with cartoon dancing, curvilinear lines, fractal, resonating, recursive patterns. All this is common with any hallucinogen, but multiplied by several factors with DMT. I experienced the onset of this mind-state with a great “Aha!” I had a moment of self-discovery, wherein I realized that I so like this mind-state, that I pursue it - often. I find it intrinsically rewarding to be in this special mind-state, this cartoonish landscape of my own mental creation. I often point out to people who need experience and guidance with tripping that the way to view the trip is as a show projected on the back of your eyelids, projected by yourself. It is important to maintain an internal monologue and a narrative about what you’re seeing and why you are seeing it, to prevent a loss of ego and subsequent psychosis.

Act II was focused on beginning to understand that this mind-space was a projection, and it was the same being I felt I had interacted with earlier. I began then conversing with this projection, which is so often experienced in the DMT realm as a being. In conversing with the being, I asked why it presented itself as a woman. It answered rather coyly that it was because that was the way I liked it. I began to realize that what this really meant was that I was the one seeing certain curves, certain lines, certain writhing motions as necessarily feminine. These were actually simply lines, curves, and colors, and that the interpretation of them was entirely up to me. I began to see that what I had seen as sexuality was nothing more than a series of lines and a sort of protuberance that was pulsing energy. It could be seen as a mouth, a vagina, a writhing female, or simply as some sort of hallucinogenic love volcano. The latter is what I settled upon with joy. I see too that I project myself in certain ways to others, perhaps as projecting endless love and energy in a somewhat seductive and sensual way. Then at the end of this act two, with the realization that the internal being or internal temple is none other than myself, I began to notice certain phenomena that led to further awareness.

In watching these patterns emerge, I occasionally form a negative thought. This negative thought would result in colorful planes of animated, cartoonish reality being fractured into broken, dull-grey/brown shards of broken mirror falling to the ground in pieces. It was clear that there was a connection between those negative thoughts and the destruction of this treasured mind-space, as this was contrasted with positive thoughts causing the generation of joyful, colorful inhabitants of this mind-space. I began to see the clear connection between the projection I was making and my own thoughts. My satisfaction or dissatisfaction with this projection was entirely under my control, as this projection was entirely under my control. Whereas I began to see in act II the internal temple is a projection, in act III the connection between my thoughts and the enjoyment of this internal temple became obvious. In act III, I began to see that my internal temple and its enjoyment is in fact nothing more than directly related to my self - my projections, my thoughts, and my self-control.

Stage IV

Again I felt the presence of a female figure. This time, as I tried to impose upon it my conceptions of last time, such as that it was my own mental projection, it was shattered by seeing it radiating everywhere. I began to think of its projection as male or female, and I realized its feminine voice to me, not so much feminine images anymore, was coming from my own head for convenience. Perhaps Jung is right in saying that creative voice for a woman is a man, the animus, and the creative voice for a man is a woman, an anima. Deep inside the unconscious, the repressed self, it would be logical that a male would, in order to fulfill a male identity in society, repress whatever his image of the female self is and put it into the unconscious, so that it becomes in fact the voice of that whole world.

I began to see that the entity itself wanted no further impositions of concepts by me as to it being local, everywhere, god or goddess, male or female. I began seeing even the silliness of the hallucinations earlier, which had been pleasant, as being somewhat tiresome and not exactly what this being had in mind. Any imposition of my self, imperfect as it was, was not welcome upon such perfection. It is I who must become perfect to dance with it. I began to sense that what I was facing would be best described as Crowley’s Holy Guardian Angel. He refers to this concept that in self-work one encounters as a guide, a voice speaking back to oneself, that is going to take you by the hand and lead you on your spiritual path.

I had already learned that how I think about myself and others and how I interact with myself and others is going to affect the spiritual tone of this path, its chance of success, and the place of its final destination. DMT is not only the spirit molecule because it is everywhere, the skeleton key of consciousness, but furthermore it is the journey, the trip one takes, when you die and the brain is flooded with DMT. Life flashes before your eyes and you face a projection of everything you’ve ever made yourself to be and stand in judgment before your Holy Guardian Angel — the true self you were meant to be. This experience can be painful for some or pleasurable for others depending on the kind of life lived. Playing with DMT is meeting one’s judgment early, being taken on a journey to the gates of the underworld, while one still has a chance to act upon what one sees and to change.

The HGA began to show a certain gray, indiscriminate face, straight, indescribable to any detail of it’s beauty, a face better than any backside or writhing motion. I asked, “What is it you want me to do?” I saw the world as it is, a pink-fleshy mandala of chattering teeth and random motions, indescribable fractals of human flesh juxtaposed in fractals of suffering and activity. Even the punctuated frivolity and joy was pointless in its absurdity. The whole fleshy landscape was distracting, twisted and mammothly unnecessary. I began to see that what she wanted was for me, or me and my wife together, to shift the world to meet her gaze, to turn that wheel. I felt the earth move beneath as there was a fierce grinding, the scrape of one tectonic cog against another with brutal resistance. The world changed by turning the wheel from what it is now to what it should be. I felt the tremendous force, and resistance and work involved in that, down to the core of the columns of the earth, but I knew with certainty it had to be done as commanded. The rewards of being in that perfect place, face on to everything, make it clear that it is the place you, me, we, the earth are meant to be in.

DEA Still Harassing Patients in California

I can’t believe this (just got this in my email) is STILL going on. Come on, Arnold, stand up for your citizens’ rights!

Yet another reason to support Dennis Kucinich is that he sees that the War on Drugs is a failure.

Good information on Ganja

Doing some research on pain relief my husband came across this ganja website, with some excellent information from a PhD’s dissertation about the cannabinoid system (the receptors for cannabinoids in the brain). Marijuana really IS good for you, and seems to be a big part of a lot of processes.

Now here’s a good idea…

…let the poppies in Afghanistan actually help patients!

Of course, it makes too much sense for anyone in power to agree to it. Here’s the BBC story.

Look, Folks! Another Federal Abuse of Power

To anyone who’s been checking, hoping for new entries, my apologies for being away so long, unannounced. I’ve been using my neurons doing gardening things, and parenting things, and wifely things, as well as making progress with my flute. But I had to come in here and bitch a little about the feds’ absolutely out-of-hand breach of states’ rights recently in their crackdown on medical marijuana clinics in California, Oregon, and Utah. Here’s what the jackass in charge had to say about it:

“Today’s enforcement operations show that these establishments are nothing more than drug-trafficking organizations bringing criminal activities to our neighborhoods and drugs near our children and schools,” said Ralph W. Partridge, head of the DEA in Los Angeles.

This guy’s obviously able to completely disconnect himself from reality.

Here’s the story.

Outrageous. Yeah, this is what we need to be doing, harassing doctors, nurses, and patients. We’re going bankrupt as a nation, fighting terrorism, which, let’s face it, IS a very bad thing (why we ignored our neighbors’ struggle with it, and even fostered it in some places, is another question I’ll leave for now); we simply can’t afford to keep fighting this ludicrous “war” on drugs. Which is actually a war against drug users. And which is totally outside the scope of government.

Some of the statements in the news story and in the discussions online about this make clear that some citizens feel the government HAS to enforce the drug laws BECAUSE they’re the law (clearly people who got stuck at phase 4 in Nielsen’s theory of moral development…you know, that we-can’t-break-the-law-or-the-universe-will-unravel thing). Well, we can change the law. Duh.

I’m not going to argue here about how harmless marijuana is relative to the two legal intoxicants, tobacco & alcohol. There’ve been plenty of excellent arguments made by folks with better scientific credentials than mine for why marijuana should be relegalized. I want to talk about the historical view, which almost always gives a better picture. It’s like stepping away from a painting, or looking down at a city from a tall building. You’d think the guys in charge might try it sometime. But that would involve reading. Oh, I’d forgotten.

I do not understand the disconnect from reality that our government seems to experience. Like Lewis Black says in a bit, it’s like these guys take a big dump on the floor right in front of us and then turn around and insist it’s fertilizer.

Here’s my analysis, after having read and cogitated on this problem for the past 15 years: it’s time to reverse the mistake made last century, when the intoxicant favored by blacks and Mexicans was made illegal in order to give the officers who’d been fighting (again, mistakenly) to keep Americans from drinking alcohol during Prohibition something to do. All that’s happened is the creation of a monstrous and vicious black market, just like the Prohibition did with the mafia. If it hadn’t been for the leg-up organized crime got with that, our country would be a lot more peaceful and less corrupt than it is now. And now the black market in heroin, which is killing so many of us, is funneling money to the Taliban. And all those potential tax dollars are going down the drain, along with the money spent on enforcing this corrupt and inane law.

And that brings us to one of the issues that needs to be dealt with in any discussion about the relegalization of weed. A very large reason why the law hasn’t been changed is that there are too many people making a living off the status quo. Not only the drug dealers and the DEA agents, and myriad police precincts, and privatized prisons, but there’s even an entire industry surrounding drug testing, both the manufacturers of and the lab techs doing the tests, and the folks who make stuff to help users pass them. And then there are the pharmaceutical companies who make a killing selling us toxic medications that treat poorly what marijuana treats well, and gently. It’s an outrageous amount of money we’re talking about. But that’s too bad. Folks had a lot of money invested in the status quo surrounding slavery, too, but that didn’t make it right, and when it was time to change, change came, no matter how much some didn’t want it. These guys can adapt and do something useful or they can be burned off like the parasites they are.

I just hope that we don’t end up at war with each other, like over another states’-rights issue. I do know that there are plenty who are going to continue to oppose the government over this. I’m one of them. And I also know that the government can ill afford to continue to blow our money on something so stupid when we’re fighting a real enemy, at home and abroad.

The citizens of California, Utah and Oregon had the sense and the compassion to pass laws allowing those in need to use marijuana. The feds have no business going against the people’s will on this.

Another thing: America is supposed to be a beacon of freedom. How can they spout that rhetoric and then jail so many of our citizens for non-violent drug offenses? Hardly the land of the free, as far as I can see. It seems like we ought to be doing our best to distinguish ourselves from tyrannical dictatorships. Instead we seem to be moving further and further in the direction of fascism.

The Road to Hell (starts in UCLA?)

My christmas tree is still up and decorated, despite my meaning to take it down for the past two days. Yoga and flute practice have gotten in the way, and research on the ‘puter. I’ve checked out some other blogs. (My daddy always said that the road to hell was paved with good intentions. So should I get rid of the good intentions?…oh, I should do more of what I intend. Well, sure, but that’s a lot easier said than done.)

One of the things that caught my eye was that business about the tazering at UCLA. That’s not exactly a clear cut case, I’ll tell you what. The student clearly had a chip on his shoulder and should simply have shown his ID. The whole thing could have been avoided. But can I blame an Iranian-American for having a chip on his shoulder? I can only imagine what he’s been through.

And the cops. Well. I’ve known a few good cops (my dad, for one, for about 11 years), but on the whole I’d say most of them are power-mad head cases, though some do have good hearts. Still power-mad, but with no desire to be evil.

Some are just plain evil.

Most are a mix, a confused, ego-dystonic mix. Dealing with criminals, and even maybe-criminals, is pretty stressful. My dad discharged his gun only once on duty,(he was a cop a long time ago, in a beachfront town), and he told me that he nearly shot his foot off, then fired the rest of the shots into the floor as he raised his sights to the robber he was trying to stop. He’d been terrified.

You know, I’ve known about how messed-up-evil people can be for a while, having read a lot of my dad’s library, or at least leafed through, in that teen-aged way, enough books to leave a pretty big impression. He was a criminologist, having returned to school after some time as a homicide detective; he ended up running the police academy for a long time. So I used to read about serial killers, and the pathology behind things like the Jonestown massacre (this was pre-Waco), and all that sort of thing. But still, as a kid, I was totally against the death penalty. I’m still not crazy about the idea of state-sanctioned murder. Seems like revenge, though from a pragmatic point of view, some people really do sort of sign away their human rights by behaving like monsters. If you’re gonna rape a little kid in the ass, for example, you don’t really deserve to live, the way I see it. We as a species can’t afford to keep that sort around. Hubby said to me the other day, on this subject, that he used to be against the death penalty, until he sat in a room interviewing a patient who’d raped and killed little kids. “You talk to someone who skinned kids and wore’em as socks, and you kinda figure some people just aren’t meant to be alive.”

What a huge responsibility, though, dispensing justice. I can see why so many have wanted to have a god to do that for them.

You wouldn’t want to kill the wrong person, eh? And it’s been done. Too many times. Once would be too many. But it’s been way more. And who knows how many’ve died without their innocence coming to light.

Maybe now with DNA evidence they’ll be able to really demand things be “beyond a shadow of a doubt.” I mean, a SHADOW of a doubt? If believers were held up to a standard that stringent, I don’t think many from the past few hundred years, at least, would stand a chance through the pearly gates. (No wonder the Catholics invented purgatory. ‘Course, all that money for indulgences was probably pretty heavy in the scales, too.) But cops have been known to plant evidence. (If I were a man, I’d sure think twice about selling sperm.)

But back to the death penalty and its unjust practice. Up to now, it’s been disproportionately dispensed. Guess who gets it the most often? Black folk hurtin’ white folk. You betcha.

I’m betting we’ll watch the numbers rise for Muslim-Americans. I wonder what it feels like to watch your group slide into the status of a minority that goes beyond being hated into being persecuted.

I mean, I’m part of a hated, traditionally persecuted minority…three of them, even: witches, atheists, and pot-smokers. I’m a pot-smokin’ atheist witch. How you like them apples? But all those groups I’ve joined by choice (well, the witch part is debatable. I grew up hearing stories about my great-great-grandmother, whose birthday I share, who was as witchy a woman as my town had seen, I reckon. So I may come by that naturally…), and I can choose to keep quiet about them all, too.

But to be born to a group, your face and your name, that catches that much flack. And to watch it go from bad to worse. I’ve thought about what that must be like, for decent Muslims in America who really don’t want to hurt anyone, just want to be left alone to do their jobs and raise their families. I’m not saying they’re all wonderful. I know some don’t treat their women and/or children right…but I could say that about any group. And yeah, they believe in a wacky religion that’s right now rife with extremists. (Anyone just tuning in: I think all religions are wacky, so don’t think I’m bigoted or anything. I just think the best way to deal with reality is, well, by accepting it, thanks.)

But back to that kid at UCLA. If I were a peace-loving Muslim in America, I’d be raising my voice, that’s for dang sure. But I wouldn’t be swearing at cops. I’d be arguing with my imam.

You gotta watch this

I told you the war on drugs was one of the things I’m fed up with. Here’s an excellent video I just watched at cannablog with my kids.