"There is a myth about such highs, the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved while high are real insights and the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we're down the next day... If I find in the morning a message from myself the night before informing me that there is a world around is which we can barely sense, or that we can become one with the universe, or that even some politicians are desperately frightened men, I may tend to disbelieve; but when I'm high I know about this disbelief. And so I have a tape in which I exhort myself to take such remarks seriously. I say, 'Listen closely, you sonofabitch of the morning! This stuff is real!"
~Carl Sagen
This is from a book I just read.
3 comments:
what book is that from?
It's called the Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. It's about how different plants, the apple, the tulip, cannabis, and the potato, have used humans for spreading themselves around the world. Here's another excerpt that I like.
"Christianity and capitalism are both right to detest a plant like cannabis. Both faiths bid us to set our sights on the future; both reject the pleasures of the moment and the senses in favor of the expectation of a fulfillment-whether by earning salvation or by getting and spending. More even than than most plant drugs, cannabis, by immersing us in the present and offering something like fulfillment in the here and now, short-circuits the metaphysics of desire on which Christianity and capitalism (and so much else in our civilization) depend.
What, then, was the knowledge that God wanted to keep from Adam and Eve in the Garden? Theologians will debate this question without end, but it seems to me the most important answer is hidden in plain sight. The content of the knowledge Adam and Eve could gain by tasting the fruit does not matter nearly as much as its form-that is, the very fact that there was spiritual knowledge of any kind to be had from a tree: from nature. The new faith sought to break the human bond with magic nature, to disenchant the world of plants and animals by directing our attention to a single God in the sky. Yet Jehovah couldn't very well pretend the tree of knowledge didn't exist, not when generations of plant worshiping pagans knew better. So the pagan tree is allowed to grow even in Eden, though ringed around now with a strong taboo. Yes, there is spiritual knowledge in nature, the new God is acknowledging, and its temptations are fierce, but I am fiercer still. Yield to it, and you will be punished.
So unfolds the drug war's first battle."
in all honesty - i have trouble caring wholeheartedly about the drug battle. i like to get high and fucked up sure but its definatly a pleasure orientated experience. i cant say that drugs have really opened my awareness much beyond having more fun or coming closer to people by seeing them in such a defeated state ...
carl sagan is the man by the way ... i think he founded the SETI so hes sort a big deal. sagan was also very against anthropocentrism ... good man
Post a Comment