On knowing nothing and seeing even less

One of my favorite writers is Jennifer Michael Hecht – I’ve only read two of her five books. She brings to me thoughts that I don’t or can’t access on my own. She highlights the wisdom of others in her books Doubt: A History and The Happiness Myth.

In Happiness she highlights an important point: Our brains have allowed us to survive and prosper on this planet, but not by all-encompassing vision. Rather, it is limited vision that focuses us on a few things while we ignore things that do not aid survival. We survive attacks by beasts and by each other, and threatening weather and climate. Quoting William James from Varieties of Religious Experience:

…our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go though life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus , and at a touch they are there in all their completeness….No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.

From Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception:

The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, but shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.

James and Huxley wrote about something as old as our first walk on this planet – expanded consciousness, relaxation, joy and insight that comes from use of narcotic substances. We do it now, we’ve always done it. In an age where we operate heavy machinery we have to be more prudent. As Hecht says, riding a horse into a brick wall might not be fatal, but with an automobile would surely be. In times before the industrial age, drug use was common and accepted even in the highest reaches of society, and especially among the intellectual elite. It’s as common now, but not as accepted.

I mentioned among friends recently that I’d like to see what lie behind the curtain of my consciousness, that I’d like to be more in touch with my senses. I’d like to escape forever accounting and taxation and world problems I cannot solve. LSD seemed a natural way to go. It’s not a natural chemical, but virtually all who have taken it have been left unharmed. It’s not a dangerous drug.

Zounds! You’d think I suggested torturing kittens for sport. It will suck my brain out, I was told. It’s dangerous!

I am routinely involved in a far more dangerous, brain-sucking activity – watching TV.

American society is heavily censored, not only for prurience sake (as if sight of female breasts and genitals would harm little boys), but also in use of drugs. Harmless substances like marijuana and LSD are likely to land fines or imprisonment, the latter usually for people of color. Our thoughts are regulated by media censorship (actual and self-inflicted) and rigid marginalization of anyone who expresses anything resembling critical thought (as with those who doubt the official 9/11 story). Ours is an extremely oppressive society, most un-joyful, confining and constricting.

I urge any who read this to drop everything – don’t get drunk, but do get high enough to forget it all and concentrate on important stuff, like the sound of color and what really happened to us that fateful day in September of 2001. Just for starts.