Counter-Currents
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Put your bongs down people and listen to me for a few minutes. I want to explain why I think marijuana is one of the most insidious substances known to man from the point of view of long-term self-actualization.
I fell in with some stoners my first year of college. Naturally, they tried to share their vice. But it did nothing for me, and I hated smoking of any kind, so I never got into it.
Years later, though, after I had my Ph.D. and a teaching job, a friend came to visit me and asked where he could get some pot. I said, “There’s a sign down by the record store that says ‘Drug Free Zone.’ I bet you can buy some there.” So we walked to the store. I went inside and bought a Marianne Faithfull CD, and by the time I came out, he had scored some pot. We walked back to my place, and I decided to try it.
Obviously marijuana had become increasingly potent and hallucinogenic over the years, because this time it had a profound effect. We were watching an episode of Alias, and during a commercial, I had an extraordinary experience. I felt that the commercial had expanded into a whole world in which an utterly compelling drama was unfolding. I completely sympathized with our heroine’s struggle to get a whiter than white wash. Her pain was my pain. A 30-second commercial had just moved me as much as an epic drama. “I’ve got to try this again,” I thought.
I had symphony tickets the next day, so my friend and I partook some more, then had dinner at my favorite restaurant. It was the tastiest meal I’d ever had. Then we heard Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), Richard Strauss’s musical autobiography, with sections on his art, his romance and marriage, his battles with the critics, and his peaceful retirement from the world. It was the most profound musical experience I had ever had. I was completely inside the music. I lived, felt, and understood the meaning of every theme. I particularly got into the romance section, with its musical flirtation, bickering, and lovemaking. I wanted to do a whole Ring cycle on drugs.
On the way home, though, I had the same profound musical experience listening to an utterly insipid pop song on the radio. And before we got home, I wanted to get a snack, so we stopped at a convenience store, and I got a box of crusty, day-old donuts. They were every bit as delicious as the meal we had earlier.
At that point, it dawned on me why the potheads I knew seemed perfectly content to sit around in their pajamas eating Captain Crunch and watching daytime television. If Britney Spears is as profound a musical experience as Richard Strauss, why go through the trouble of appreciating Strauss? If TV commercials can be as dramatically profound as Sophocles and Shakespeare, why strain your brain? If day-old donuts and cold cereal are just as delicious as a skillful chef’s creation, why bother with cooking? If masturbation can be just as enjoyable as sex, then who needs other people? If being a slacker is just as pleasurable as accomplishing something in one’s life, why even get out of bed?
I realized that marijuana had the power to totally destroy my ability to create and grow as a human being. It has the power to turn men into sensuous, swinish philistines. It also robbed me of sleep by inducing fevered, racing thoughts at bedtime. It had completely lost its charms.
Now, I am willing to grant that your mileage may vary. I know couple of highly accomplished people who regularly smoke pot. But these are outliers. I have known far more unambitious slugs. I have also known two people who have destroyed businesses and friendships and their own dignity as human beings through pot-induced paranoia.
I also know there are legitimate medical uses of marijuana, although I would wager that 95% of medical marijuana users are just malingering stoners gaming the system.
Why are so many adults today seemingly frozen at juvenile levels of maturity and taste? The main reason is the dominance of selfish, hedonistic individualism. At the age of 14 or 16 or 18, some people decide that henceforth they are going to satisfy rather than transcend themselves. Thus they seek out only those social relations that affirm rather than challenge their initial preferences. And as long as you can pay, some capitalist will cater to you in your comfort zone. (Bad credit? No credit? No problem!) Hedonistic individualism and capitalism thus make it possible for more and more people to reach 40 or 50 or 60 with their teenage selves still intact.
Marijuana is just hedonistic individualism in herbal form. Self-actualization requires pain and struggle. Virtue is hard not easy. But why worry about that, when marijuana can make you perfectly content with whatever level of ignorance, immaturity, and bad taste that you happen to be at when you take your first hit?
29 comments
Unambitious slugs are more common even among non-pot-smokers, so you have to factor that in. But undoubtedly the most phenomenally unambitious people I’ve ever known (and wish I hadn’t) have all been devout potheads.
I spent a solid year, from age late-21 to late-22, smoking close to every day, on some days having multiple sessions. I too found all my favorite activities were enhanced by pot, and I was very keen to try everything while stoned. Great fun, but talk about an ambition-killer.
I even knew as I was doing it that this kind of life was categorically not what I expected of myself, but I’d kick the can down the road, telling myself I’d stop next week, week after week. What eventually snapped me out of it was noticing and being revolted by the steep downward spiral in the quality of company I was keeping. By the end of my little “experiment” I was associating with hardened criminals and related scum. That did it. I quit that company and I quit pot cold turkey and never looked back.
Today I lean towards legalization, even though I want nothing to do with pot myself. It could well prove a disaster but I think it’s something that has to be tried, so that if it is disastrous it will be clear to all. Until then, unregenerate potheads can always justify their behavior as a romantic stand against an oppressive order.
I completely agree with this. Metapedia has described marijuana as the “Jewish drug” because it atomizes the user even more from society. This of course by extension applies to family, community, race, etc.. Another thing that indicates the insidiously Jewish nature of this drug’s effects is the fact that most of the “Legalize it” movements have been heavily supported by Jewish plutocrats. It is a drug that keeps the gentiles racially sublimated and docile. If I had my way it would be banned from use in every White ethnostate.
Yet how many of you drink alcohol? It seems none of you have problems boozing at a conference. How many homeless people have asked you for money to buy pot? How many have asked for money to buy alcohol? The pothead may be unambitious, but to watch children cartoons and eat sugary food costs money. They at least have some sort of job to support their habits. The alcoholic has lost all ambition to even function in society. The only ambition is to get drunk. Alcohol is a much bigger burden on society than pot ever will be. Not to mention alcohol has always been a favored industry of Jews. Of course the drinkers will say, “but I drink in moderation! It doesn’t control my life!” Perhaps it doesn’t, but if it is possible to drink in moderation than it is also possible to smoke in moderation. Besides, if you’re intent on wasting your money on intoxicants, who would you rather give it to? A white farmer profiting without paying taxes to the federal government or a multi-national corporate brewery, possibly ran by Jews, who have a vested financial interest in multiculturalism, etc.
My rebuttal to Greg’s jeu d’esprit can be found here:
https://counter-currents.com/2013/09/what-the-drugs-have-taught-me/
What he has described is the typical experience people have when first beginning to use pot at the age of, say, 16: everything is fascinating, everything is wonderful, everything tastes better. Those who continue to use pot (the smart ones, not the typical stoners) eventually get beyond this stage and realize that pot is wasted on television and Britney Spears. Instead, they use pot to enhance activities that have the potential to afford them genuine and profound insights — such as listening to Wagner, having Tantric sex, looking at great art, or communing with nature. Used in the right way (as I discuss in the essay linked above) pot is genuinely capable of, to use a hackneyed phrase, “expanding consciousness.” And let us not forget that it — and other psychedelic drugs (and pot is a psychedelic drug) — were used by our ancestors, in sacred contexts. Smoking it while watching TV commercials will not help anyone see why.
My thoughts exactly.
In fact, pot will make you more discerning if you are in a self concentrated mindset. I cannot tolerate junk food/stupid people/television high anymore (I was somewhat of a stoner in high school and college) because it is so easy to see through everything.
Only smoke occasionally (once or twice a month) and plan something interesting to do. One of my best recent memories was watching Syberberg’s Parsifal on a snow day. Since it increases sensuousness, pot will definitely give you a deeper, joyful appreciation of quality art and make everything of poorer quality laughable. I have had insights watching films, listening to music, and enjoying nature that I would not have had while sober.
“I realized that marijuana had the power to totally destroy my ability to create and grow as a human being. It has the power to turn men into sensuous, swinish philistines. It also robbed me of sleep by inducing fevered, racing thoughts at bedtime.”
I agree and had similar experiences way in the past. To those who like too much booze, no better. At least booze wears off fast. There are long term effects that the heavy users never seem to notice. I’ve made many jokes about all the boomer stoners I know who have the same conversation over and over again without ever realizing it. Heaven help them if they get Alzheimer’s too.
The sad ones are the young ones who have no future. There may be a chance to heal the autonomic nervous system and detox. But they would need to get motivated enough to even try.
What I learned about the stoner drugs is that they increase to functioning of the parasympathetic system and dampen to functioning of the sympathetic one. Because people are not born equally strong in each branch of their autonomic nervous system the effects vary.
The friends I would guess as having a very strong sympathetic system don’t seem to come to as much harm from Weed, but those from more northern climes with strong parasympathetic response do very poorly.
All the effects you describe are parasympathetic responses
My experience also–that it is the drug of choice for the chronically indolent.
Looks like those bunnies could use some Zig-Zags, though.
Unfortunately if we can be satisfied with a lack of virtue, as pot allows, then we’re more likely to end up in the abyss to which vice leads people.
Alcohol & Weed are just nasty.
Though, every spiritually inclined person should try DMT at least once in their lives…
Yes. I agree with this. In my early 20s I smoked at least once a day. This went on for a few years. In that time I accomplished next to nothing. Eventually, as is common to many former smokers who are, shall we say, no longer in their early 20s, marijuana began to make me have intense anxiety attacks every time I smoked it so I just stopped. I do have fond memories of particular musical experiences, including the Ring twice (Solti and Boulez). I rarely appreciated bad music while high and did hear new things in good music but there is no question that bad TV becomes somehow fascinating when under the influence. I distinctly remember laughing at an episode of Friends once, a humiliation that will haunt me to the end of my days.
I have smoked it once since then and while not unpleasant in itself, I was keenly aware of the waste of time it was. It ruined my whole afternoon because I realized I was just letting time slip away. But that is also a function of age. Twenty year olds really do think they will live forever.
Still, I am absolutely pro-legalization, etc. but I would strongly advise against anything but very ocassional use and only for certain people. Paradoxically, those who smoke every day are probably the types of people for whom it is most appropriately contraindicated.
Greg had the same experience that I’ve had with pot. It is GREAT once in a blue moon and in the right situations. But on a regular basis it stains every experience with paranoia or stupidity. I have friends who smoke every day and whenever I partake, although I enjoy it, I’m floored that my friends can handle it.
I prefer alcohol because I enjoy trying out different bourbons, beers, and wines; and I also love the pleasant calming factor. Hallucinogens have always terrified me and I’ve been told by many reliable (experienced) sources that I’m a poor candidate for LSD or mushrooms. Truth be told, I’ve had my share of freakouts on pot. It can be a lot to handle if you’re already in a weird situation. I once had the experience of being high while canoeing a river. My pregnant wife flipped her canoe and, although the water was shallow, I felt a surge of terror that was disproportionate to the actual danger.
Bourbon. One extra large cube. That’s how I roll.
I’ve had a few talks with my college age son about this. He went through a brief period of relatively regular pot smoking. It is NOT a benign drug, and from my own experiences with pot head friends in the past, I was able to give him some colorful examples.
A drug that keeps you on the couch, in front of the tube, and eating incessantly seems to be tailor-made for Americans.
Probably for most people, pot is not a good thing and tends to impede accomplishment. But then I think of my favorite musicians and the good music that the herb has inspired… Also, as stated, like any drug it effects people differently. I knew a long-haul trucker who had a stash in his glove compartment which helped him wile away the miles. Not something I would try. And when my daughter, whose boyfriend had got her into it, told me recently that she had stopped, I was very pleased.
But the bigger question is drugs in general and what to do about them. Recently a friend had been on some kind of steroid treatment, and she told me it gave her such a boost of energy that she was sorry when the prescription ran out. So there is all kinds of stuff available one way or another, and the question is, are humans until the end of time going chase around their fellow man to make sure he’s not ingesting what they don’t want him to? Drugs are, or can be, an evil but so are prisons full of drug users, cops in the back alley, cops breaking down doors, cops lying to people – i.e., the drug war is an evil in itself. My solution is to let people ingest what they want, but if they get so wrecked that they can’t keep work and need government assistance, they should be put in an institution and forcibly dried out. I don’t know if the majority of people would ever go for that – if your loved one is independently wealthy and killing himself with heroin, most people will want the authorities to step in and do something about it.
When anyone cites highly accomplished and creative potheads, I always wonder if they might have been even more accomplished without the herb.
I largely agree with Seaxe’s & Jef Costello’s comments. The marijuana bud little deserves such derision even from a self-confessed teetotaler such as our own Dr. Johnson. It’s true that as with alcohol it requires responsible and safe use. However, the dreaded herb is far more benign than liquor. Isn’t it in Trifles for a Massacre that Celine goes on about the debauching and decadent effects of wine on Whites.
The bogeyman of perceptive and cultural desensitization presented in this article is unconvincing. I trust your judgement about your own experience with the intoxicant, but disappointingly it’s an attitude in which you are more in line with mainstream thought.
I believe even the more staid thinker John Derbyshire supports a softening of legal restrictions on pot. I’d have to say that a West Coast White nationalism without freedom of choice in terms of narcotic rings false to my mind. Although, I think I recall you allowing drugs to be legalized to some degree in the theoretical White republic. Obviously, there are at least three separate issue here that of legalization, of actually partaking, and proscription of the drug which deserve consideration. Of course I understand that these issues pale in comparison to the priority of preserving our gene pool and reversing the demographic catastrophe befalling European and European derived nations.
I understand the urge of advocates to distance themselves from anything seen as disreputable and diversionary. I understand the desire of the rank and file for purity and greater purpose. There is something incredible parochial about such mind sets. In homage to Dr. Sunic’s forays into Ancient and Medieval literature, respectability and purity where not viewed to be in perpetual conflict with our heroic forebears desire to get sloshed with their drug of choice. This topic reminds of Camille Paglia’s own critique of soft and organic drugs as opposed to manufactured alcoholic beverages.
I’d recommend a book called short book The Chemical Muse. The book is not as encyclopedic as I’d like, but even if you don’t buy the book the author provides an interesting discussion on the influence of hallucinogens on the Western mind in this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E01pQCE10Ng.
I’m curious to know Dr. Johnson, is there a text in which we can read about Ernst Junger’s experimentation with hallucinogens? Wasn’t Julius Evola said to have indulged as well?
However, the dreaded herb is far more benign than liquor. Isn’t it in Trifles for a Massacre that Celine goes on about the debauching and decadent effects of wine on Whites.
That’s all very well, but I would out that those of us who prefer alcohol savage the behavior of alcoholics, whereas the promoters of weed are very defensive about hardcore potheads. I’ve never heard of anyone attempting to defend getting drunk every day. In contrast, potheads laugh off getting stoned every day as though it’s no big thing. Of course, there are people who will speak up for having a glass of wine or two every evening, but the equivalent in weed consumption would be a couple of tokes of a joint. We all know that no smoker would settle for such a trifling amount.
“We all know that no smoker would settle for such a trifling amount.”
I am an occasional smoker and my limit is three tokes, so your statement is incorrect. My mother smokes herself into near comatose state every day and I find it deplorable. We have watched the same TV series together three times now, and I guarantee that were we to watch it again, she would have no memory of most if it due to being stoned. For me, it is more of a spiritual experience than an escape from every day, mundane reality. It is for that reason that I do not smoke socially and will not allow it to become routine.
“I realized that marijuana had the power to totally destroy my ability to create and grow as a human being. It has the power to turn men into sensuous, swinish philistines. ”
Great. The author generalizes the whole population based on his experience. I, for one, have never felt that cannabis destroyed or even touched my ability to grow as a human being. A nice joint after a busy work week is the best thing ever. I would NEVER smoke during the working week because I have THINGS TO DO. If you have enough self control, cannabis won’t influence you. Also smoking every day is the highest form of degeneracy. The same goes with eating, you either eat a bar of chocolate for a week, piece by piece or you eat the whole bar in one day.
Self control, goals and controlled self-rewarding.
I agree with much of what you say. However, pot doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing – be stoned all the time, or not. I believe that the *judicious* use of drugs can enhance a person’s life, while the injudicious use can ruin it.
Most people don’t wake up in the morning and have a shot of whiskey for breakfast. Alcohol enhances getting together with friends, and it enhances sex. So we use it for those purposes. With pot, it enhances all the senses, so food, sex, music, and appreciation of beauty are all enhanced. So why not use it just for those purposes? If you smoke it once a week, or once a month, I don’t think it will turn you into a lethargic bum.
I took LSD once, and it was a sublime experience. I never felt the need to take it again, but I’m glad that I took it that one time. I can still remember the mind-state I was in, and appreciate it. I believe that it’s good for you to alter your mind-state once in a while, although, as you mentioned, the pot nowadays is much, much stronger than it used to be, so only take a very small amount to start with.
I smoked pot for about six years when I was younger. In that time I dropped out of the 10th grade. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that when I quit I got myself into a respected state university and earned a BS.
That said, the only functional recreational user I know is my father. He’s smoked as far back as I can recall and in that time raised a family of 5 and still works 45-50 manual labor hours a work week. His hands are thick and calloused. They tell a story and I’ll remember them most when he’s gone, but I digress.
At the extreme, and after decades of use, I’ve seen it trigger extreme paranoia in users. It’s not pretty; and on the whole, most people I know who smoke will be considered life’s losers.
Now, I’ve had great sex, food and entertainment experiences on the substance and I certainly don’t wish to deny a curious mind the same, but it must be responsibly enduldged with a foreknowledge of its suductive power. Most people, however, simply lack the constitution for it and will succumb to the high, including myself at one time.
The memoirist is lucky to have had such a pleasant experience with strong dope. Like a large percentage of people, I experience too much fear and anxiety ever to enjoy the “positive” benefits of marijuana and other hallucinogens. In my teens I had two occasions when it increased my intelligence enormously in some narrow fields. However, this “Minority Report” type of insight was so frightening that it was psychologically crippling and hence of no practical use.
The spiritual instinct is man’s strongest drive. Drugs and other addictions are a sublimation of this drive.
Maaannn… Cannabis must be feeling like ole’ Catiline after Cicero took ‘im to the woodshed:
“Quo usque tandem abutere, Cannabis, patientia nostra? Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet?”
O tempora, o mores…
To G.M. and all authors on this site, and elsewhere: When you use a foreign phrase, you should always put the translation in brackets. This is “good writing,” and it’s polite and considerate of your readers. Also, readers will have a higher opinion of you if you do and never say ugly things like, “He’s an arrogant asshole” or “He’s a pedantic fool” for assuming that *all* readers are fluent in *all* foreign languages.
For example, “Political correctness would have us all believe that a newborn baby is a tabula rasa
[blank slate].”
Although in this case he’s fortunate he didn’t. Catiline presumably felt some combination of embarrassment and indignation. I’ve known precisely one person in whom weed reliably produced those feelings, and he was agreed by the whole social circle to have very, very trying personality. G.M. is way off the mark.
Thank you Marian; you’re quite right. It is nice to provide an English translation to save readers the trouble of doing what non-English speakers must commonly do, which is cut & paste a phrase or web page into a translation engine.
Also, sorry for not responding to your invitation to write an article on emerging genetic techs a while back. Thought about it, decided not to. Long story short: >500-IQ humans should be possible any day now, via iterative embryo selection & the knowledge gained from intelligence GWASes. See Steve Hsu for more.
Re: Verlis’ comment, it is he who is way off the mark, having failed to comprehend my brief post. I was sympathising with (an anthropomorphisation) of pot after Grey-Jo’s devastating denunciation. What part of “Cannabis must be feeling like ole’ Catiline” do you not understand?
smdh @ C-C niggaz ;P ;). Peace out, Goyim.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwxFQgxEMng
If you claim you smoke pot occasionally and it has no control over you you are a. lucky because you don’t have addictive personality traits, b. not far enough down the track of addiction yet or c. lying. I was in the top 3% academically until I found and began smoking pot from age 15. I barely finished high school and was a stoner ne’er-do-well for a couple more years until I got totally sick of the paranoia and kicked it. After that I went on to do quite well and got back my passion for sport and life. I dabbled with it once or twice again after numerous year’s abstention and the paranoia returned immediately – those neural pathways were still open like a pierced earlobe.
What exactly are all these “accomplishments”?
Finding the comments more interesting than the article, e.g. “The Jewish Drug”. Although, Mr. Johnson’s trip report doesn’t establish any hard facts with respect to the perception that cannabis egalitarianizes, whereunder anything becomes equal to everything. Although this may sometimes seem true, so is any narcotic experience characterized by avoidable negative bio-chemical effects. It may be in good conscience; or sometimes pragmatic, to be against the popularization of pot – it may be better given our tangled history of narcosis and religious experience — as depicted in religious paintings, to improve its political viability in a cultural way.
Imagine media or fully theoretical stimulus that mobilizes pot as a controllable experience, by way of culture and politics akin to a hot-toddy before bed, or an afternoon sleeve of lager. Is there an alt-right strategy, beyond abolishing it, for pot using liberals to ‘expand their minds’ to the depth conservative position? Or is it all merely a question of alt-right aesthetic style and verticalist social cues.
Any egalitarian consciousness induced in pot highs ought to be considered legible and useful, or developed as a culturally manageable pan-European survival knowledge, from the vantage of judgement aimed at a focused re-attachment to experience & reality. Also, I will add that non-Trust based races and “cultures” cannot, and ought not, hold within this frame against our potential to actually master and refine its social function. White Wheede in the Right Way, as it were.
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