Headline: Americans are world's top drug users: study "Americans are the world's top consumers of cannabis and cocaine despite punitive US drug laws..."
We also rank pretty high (or low, depending upon your perspective) in pharmaceutical drug use. Why on earth would a free people need to "escape" via the chemical manipulation of their biology? That's a bugger of a question because it might force us to take a mirror to what we believe our country to be.
When government stays within its constitutional limitations, the people are free to reach their full potential. However, when government usurps the sovereignty of the people, even if the people beg to be cared for, their "full potential" gets redefined and limited at the whims of the bureaucratic oligarchy. Americans take more drugs than any other nation despite the trillion dollar war on drugs waged against them. You would think that at some point it would become obvious that war declarations, much less police-state operations against mind-altering substances, are futile. But perhaps futility is the point.
When you feel powerless in any relationship, you may become despondent and thus a bit self-destructive. Whether it be voting within a two-party system, a war on cancer, poverty, AIDS, drugs or terror -- we have been "gifted" with Hegelian dialectics without end. Is our end in sight? Man, in his arrogance, thinks that he can destroy Creation itself, since he is full with the illusion that smallpox and polio were eliminated by his scratch and sugar cube. However, disease, like poverty can never totally be eradicated, because you can't eradicate a state of consciousness. It has to be won everyday, first, by what you believe, and then by what you do based on those beliefs.
While healing an individual may be organic "cake"; eradicating disease in TOTALITY for the masses is tantamount to the medicalization of all life according to Marx and Engels. Sure, it may sound good to those hopelessly naive, but it stands four-square "in the way" of the freedom of the individual. Collectivists don't mind doing that, but the republic, for which it has stood for over two centuries, used to laugh and pity those who did not understand the value of individual liberty. Now much of what is left of a free republic appears ready to eschew liberty for (false) security because of externalized threats.
Despite my avowed mission as a healer, I am not "for" eradication of disease. In fact, healing is not necessarily the cessation of an allopathic diagnosed ailment. My "medical" suffering has taught me invaluable lessons which I could not learn in any other way. Why would I want to take away anyone else's opportunity to learn the things that I have -- or greater? This utopian concept of disease eradication is hopelessly collectivist and rooted in an immaturity of spiritual, much less biological understanding.
While I am "all for" the freedom to eradicate disease in any way you see fit, it is always to be applied on an individual basis, not based upon some animalistic concept called "herd" immunity. When thousands of people are sick, you are not sick because they are. The conditions for illness are created from within. Even when you accept "reality" placed upon you from an external source, it is an internal agreement that allows the veil of illusion to shield your eyes from the truth.
The "human condition" is to EXPERIENCE all of life so that we know what it is like to walk in another's moccasins. It used to be that Americans valued liberty above all else. Now it seems that the majority of those who are politically active (at least those covered by the MSM) favor socialism, communism or fascism. Under a constitutional republic (not a majority-rule democracy), the rights of the smallest minority are protected against the knee-jerk fear and emotionalism contained within the historically and presently ignorant, government-loving mob.
While each individual chooses to take drugs for different reasons, I am certain that a culture that embraces liberty to its fullest extent will have far fewer chemical-dependents. The culture in which the people depend upon government to dole out a little liberty here and there is the one filled with drug addicts, both legal and illegal. Why wouldn't it be that way -- isn't forced dependence depressing?
The path of liberty is the only path that leads to independence. Yes, that means you are at liberty to screw up and get sick along the way, but how else can you learn of the right path if you don't know what it is like to be on the wrong one? Maybe Americans are craving the path of dependence so that they will appreciate the path of individual liberty once again, as much as they crave oxygen while drowning. I only hope that we come up for air in time.
Perhaps you would like some liberty infused oxygen in your media? Why not give Break the Matrix a try?
Stumble It!