WHEN THE KOOL-AID IS ELECTRIC
"The only way to fight the system is to take drugs that will artificially pacify you or dissociate you from society."
A while ago someone brought to my awareness this idea: that that the only solution to the Gordian Knot of liberalism is for people to take psychedelic drugs. Interesting thesis, so let’s take a short Saturday stroll through this section of the Garden of Ideas.
1. Folks championing psychedelics like to point to the 1960s as proof of the emancipatory power of mind-altering drugs. If their historiography is to be believed, humanity was enslaved in mind-shackles of our own making for virtually all 12,000 years we’ve been writing shit down. Politics, the nation-state, religion, the law – all artificial oppressive structures that finally had their come-uppance when the Good St. Tim and his band of merry pranksters unleashed the the gift of LSD on an unsuspecting world.
Uhm, I have news. It has been over half a century since the 60s and all these bugbears still exist. In a form much unchanged if not even bigger, meaner, and badder than they were back then. But don’t let pesky facts get in the way of feelings! The 60s didn't challenge the Modernist paradigm in any shape, way, or form, so it is perplexing to me that some think the 60s were a kidney punch to the global elites.
If anything, the drugs and sexual revolution of the 6os directly and indirectly accelerated the rise of the senile globalist oligarchy we have today.
2. Time to scratch away some of the coat of paint surrounding a beloved legalisation argument: that doing so is a form of civil disobedience or “fighting the System.”
This is some Grade-A punch drunk rhetoric but consider this:
"The only way to fight the system is to take drugs that will artificially pacify you or dissociate you from society."
Doesn’t sound so appealing now, does it?
Drugs will just let you sleepwalk over the edge.
You see, drugs and technology are two of the most powerful tools of personal empowerment and self-mastery any man or woman can bring to bear.
At the same time, drugs and technology are two of the most powerful pacifiers at our overlords’ disposal.
It is possible, with a mix of motivation, discipline, vision, and some chemical/nootropic help, to becoming a highly successful individual in the wasteland we call the modern world. What’s that? Material success not to your liking? OK, how about going on an ayahuasca trip and exiting modernity as a latter-day shaman? In both scenarios you are the master of the ship and you use the drugs to help you get an incremental insight or advantage to break through to the other side.
A new plateau of awareness.
But I ask you: How many people do you know who have such discipline and vision to see it through? How many of these godlike men and women exist in the world?
It is far more likely – statistically, biologically, spiritually, philosophically – that our well-intentioned cosmonaut gets dashed to pieces against the Scylla and Charybdis of the soul, and unable to find their way back, descends deeper and deeper into an underworld of substance dependence and poor choices.
3. Humans have been medicating with herbal tinctures and medicinal leaves/roots for longer than we’ve been farmers. They’ve been used in small amounts for millennia by different societies for meditation, tribal initiations, and religious ceremonies.
I’m not worried about the dangers of drugs qua drugs. It is the power that they can have over people that concerns me. I’m concerned that in our desperation to get away from the banal horror of living in Modernity, we forget that these things can be an avenue for great harm as much as they do good.
Drugs are amoral. They are not malicious or benevolent. They are a form of technology. They are tools. Hammers are tools. And when one has a hammer, everything starts looking an awful lot like nails. Especially with recent developments in neuroscience and biotechnology. We have the ability to engineer drugs with a far higher degree of sophistication than any generation before. So the pharma products of the 21st century will be more effective, more helpful, more potent, AND more dangerous. Not a stretch that in 10-20 years we will see pills tailored to an individual’s genome.
This knowledge is enough to give every would-be dictator a huge hard on. Imagine the implications of making powerful sedatives available to the population because the population seeks relief/escape/relaxation. You could, if you wish, turn your entire society into a society of addicts and combine it with a form of social credit score like in China.
Raise them from young to be dependent on mood-altering pills or calmatives to help them blend in and function normally in society. Citizens who express too many independent or dissident views would then have their access to calmatives revoked. You could effectively prevent dissidence from ever becoming a meaningful problem through state-sponsored pharmacopeia.
Welcome to the biosecurity state.
4. So no, I am not necessarily opposed to legalising drugs, but it is important to understand that getting, let’s say, weed legalised, is not a "victory against The System". It is The System giving you access the methods by which you may dismantle your brain in the name of never having serious dissent against it.
The World-Controllers were eager for the people of the Brave New World to have access to as much Soma as they wanted.
5. Drugs and hedonism. Hedonism in the Epicurean sense is pretty sound and I can respect people who occasionally indulge to celebrate a special occasion. That’s in an ideal world. We do not live in an ideal world and most people (read: normies) who profess to be hedonists are unbelievably dumb.
Normies use drugs as a cope. They always have, and they always will. Alcohol was the first state-sponsored drug and appears to have been massively persuasive. When building the pyramids, the Egyptians paid the labourers in beer, you know. Drugs are unhealthier than religion, but normies really need one or the other. The masses are slaves. This will not change until the sun explodes.
6. A lot of great things can be achieved by individuals on drugs.
There are theories that The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch was painted while on a trip.
And apparently, Freud and Tesla did most of their work on cocaine-fuelled binges.
I’m sure there’s a way to take shrooms or smoke weed and still be a rational, sober and productive member of society. Drugs are just tools; their value depends on who is using them, how much is taken, and towards what end. Context matters.
There are exceptions. Meth continues to be shit and doesn't have any prosocial purpose whatsoever.
I have some compassion for the addicted because they were thrust into the world without a single lesson in impulse control and bombarded by companies who want to continually drain them for profit.
Addiction is going to become more prevalent as social alienation continues to grow. Already in the West I'd guess that 90% of the population is addicted to SOMETHING.
Shopping, casual sex, ideology is all addictive – if you let it be.
Political signalling/activism, social media, Netflix and junk entertainment is all addictive – if you let it be.
That’s a recipe for disaster. What should we do? What can we do?
That’s a question I hope to answer in the near future.