For every act of evil, there is an act of beauty. You Can't Change the World, Only Your Attitude Towards It.

Tao Leaks

Information is power. Bleugh! That speaks of secrecy and control of information.

Information is of true worthy value when it is removed from this idea of power and who holds what. When information is accessible to all then we have a situation that would scare those of a controlling nature; religions, politicians, marketeers and empower humanity.

Take drugs (that is as an example and not a direct order), drugs are a fascinating subject and I could rattle on for pages. A brief overview is this: All kids will come into contact with drugs, that is a given guarantee, and when in contact they will react in a way affected by education. Given a ruler who tells them that all drugs are an evil and then for them to smoke weed and enjoy it. They will then form a distaste and a questioning of authority, seeing that authority lies, they may due to this explore further and into trouble.

Given wise and true advice they may also experiment, or not, and in either case they will make more informed decision and they will trust their source of information and seek more advice later.

If drugs are illegal and hard to get then they have mystery, chic and cool. If they are just well known things then they lose these qualities.

If a drug has a cost and you can't get it (as for example it is "illegal" and controlled) then you must work hard to get the cash for that drug. The more it is controlled then the more the cost and the more work or crime is needed to afford the drug.

If though all drugs are absolutely free then there is no market and no crime to feed habits. Want heroin? then you go to the place it is available and you take it, as with any other substance. This seems crazy but it is absolutely wise. There is no market, so no dealers, so no crime, petty theft, mugging, and so on to feed the cash flow required to feed an illegal habit. All you have is the effect of the drug on people and not the related crime fueled by the market.

Taking alcohol as an example, you may kill yourself with it, you may make poor decisions and you may be very anti-sociable - you may also be very sociable indeed and have a bloody good time. You may be ill because of it, you may form an ongoing habit - you may not.

Some drugs are very similar and some wildly different to the alcohol example and people should be aware of the pros and cons well in advance of their possible contact with the substances.

The legality of nicotine which is highly addictive, gives little to no high, is very expensive and terrible for health is crazy to most who consider it. Certainly if cigarettes did not exist and someone invented them here today then they would never get a market.

The fact that we have receptors in our brains whose only purpose is to connect to THC, the active chemical in cannabis, is peculiar indeed if you are to explain it as an accident or coincidence. Chemicals by comparison that are now added to the food we eat daily are alien and damaging indeed compared to illegal cannabis or illegal mushrooms, illegal DMT or other parts of nature deemed illegal. It is legal for a company to sell you damaging food additives but illegal for you to go into nature and eat a certain naturally occurring plant.

These discrepancies cause even normally uninquisitive minds to question the validity of information sources and to easily accept the chance that we are lied to for control.

Many can not imagine a society where information is shared rather than rules enforced. One where information is open, all is free, and it is left to the individual to look after the individual. When considering these options people are too far prejudiced by the very system they are juxtaposed to query and strangely they are too trusting of a system they know full well does lie to them.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

3 comments:

The Rambling Taoist said...

Interesting.

Brandon said...

Good points, I agree.

But, our brain's THC receptors are actually there to accept anandanmide, a natural, THC-like chemical our brain makes which has a similar effect (anandamide was so named to mimic the word ananda, Sanscrit for bliss).

Ta Wan said...

case in point ;)