Category: Vignettes

VIN 17- Cannabis Helps

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

There is nothing wrong with pot. Cannabis itself lacks the association of something so base as even alcohol. It has not been tied to the antisocial behaviors alcohol or tobacco smoking has. Whether this will change is irrelevant now however unlikely. Facts do not align with the required dynamics of an addictive or dangerous system such as they do with the aforementioned.

Behavior changes with Cannabis are too often positive, and recorded as such, to believe its use could become anything more than it is. Alcohol is often connected as cause or result of trauma. Tobacco has killed millions, and continues to– but so do automobiles.

To say nothing of the unfairness of restricting access to what a person might want or need, to experience.

Though the same cannot be said of those things and experiences that might harm others through them, it is no less unfair to restrict them from doing such things in public, within reason. In simplest terms: smoking tobacco in public should be no more restricted than not smoking in public.

In theory, this is only fair. In practice, it’s understandably uneven: I.e, smoking sections in restaurants do not reasonably separate smokers from non as a result of building ventilation, but can if designed to, as in the case of smoking rooms in airports.

Beyond these obviously reasonable effects, unlike Tobacco, Cannabis has little to no market value for “criminal” enterprises if not prohibited. Simply, there is no money in illegally trading a legal product. By that stage in its marketability it is too abundant. Too easy to manufacture, grow, or get hold of. A plant, literally nicknamed for its ability to grow abundantly anywhere, despite medium or climate, is an obvious loss to any unrestricted market.

Again, in simplest terms: certain items, made legal, are unprofitable to trade as illegal ones because they require prohibition to have value.

The only entities that care about such attributes are industry. Industry: the same systemic machine-arm of society that formed the paper-trade that outlawed Hemp. Cannabis, outlawed in the 30s as a result of Immigrant-fueled white-hysteria, became the poster child for anti-criminal law enforcement.

Because such entities excel at that type of contradictory hubris.

A century ago, the fad was packaged and rolled Tobacco cigarettes. This time, it’s Wacky Tobacky cigarettes. No true change has occurred in the system, just in the throughput, and thus its output. Pot’s going into the rolling machines now, not tobacco, that’s it.

The difference lies in people’s use of it. Cannabis, or Pot, is tribal. Ritual. It has an effect Human beings thrive on. That idea, spreading as it is, is powerful. Its zen qualities are reflected in the people whom use it and hope to pass on its values. To the Rastafarians, this is the “Sacred Herb.” One that brings the spirit closer with that of Jah, or God incarnate.

People, learning to think and feel for themselves. No matter the confines of their circumstance, it is they whom dictate its revolving, when and how to grease its wheels to aid in time’s passage. Of course there are elements of systems that oppose that, but only because they fear losing the power their control over it gives them.

Fact is, power exists regardless. They’ll survive: are just scared. Their fear, because of its nature, causes them to exert squeezes on their surroundings. Just as the fearful wise-man grips his armchair these creatures grip their power-bases through small, almost meaningless acts that ripple panic down to the masses. It is in drops at a time, but builds to overflow or spillage.

Like fear, anger is understandable. As are all emotions. Anger however, should never turn to wrath against those seeking goodness in earnest. Like all, they too know fear and can be unpleasantly controlled by it. The danger comes when thousands suffer and die needlessly, from ignorance of these facts as in the case of so-called “Drug Wars.”

So. No person is inherently bad for their use of a thing. Let alone something with as many proven uses as Cannabis. An ill-intended person will be ill-intended despite their day-to-day habits. This is Human Nature.

This knowledge alone is a kind of soul-vaccine, like that usually reserved for the pious or saintly. Yet that vaccine, discovered and deduced easily not only through the effects of Cannabis, but in its name, is of the dual instruments of practice and meditation; observation and recollection. Of one’s self. Their depths.

Such is akin to the essence of Truth. Of Human knowledge. An understanding so deep that only Gods and myths can accomplish its reach and still stand before our suspended disbelief. Yet all the same, it is measured in bits and bytes because it can be: because our world can be. Each of us admits that this is our reality: our Matrix and shared illusion. Science agrees.

Our world can never be as beautiful outside as in until each of us knows, accepts, and works toward that regardless of gratification or not. We must be willing not to see the fruits of our efforts, and so therefore make our species’ inner-beauty shine all the brighter meanwhile. Force, as an aura, to radiate in auras of healing energies; thoughts, emotions, tender actions, no matter how difficult.

We must do this, because otherwise, we deserve nothing as a species. Creator or no. We are wounded. Damaged and in need of repair. No tool, no matter its capacity for danger, should be stripped from our tool box entirely. Merely kept from the hands of those untrained in its use, but in the same, restrained way as any yet-untrained contributor.

This is the task from our Mother– not that of each of us as individuals, but that of all of us: the creating forces of not only Earth, sentience, the universe, but their collective power. For truly, they are inert. Products of circumstance. Effects of natural forces eroding one another like repeated floodwaters of a ravine.

There is no further room for our indifference toward these ideas as a species. No matter how odd it must seem, we as their products must bow before the unseen forces only Science comprehend. Therein, we must accept that it is not each of our places to comprehend it, but that we can if we wish to.

We must trust only in the tangible. Have faith, but based only in what is known to be true: Ideas. Powerful ones. But ideas nonetheless. True ideas. Conclusions. Logical deductions. Theories. Concepts evolved and changed but concluded in their final iteration. The type of aspiration of a species and for a species; to each one contribute something world-changing, however “fallen-short” it might end up.

Cannabis, or pot, does not make one a bad person. Only condemning ideas for change and the betterment of all. If the former led to the latter, condemnation would be understandable. But if it does not, it is irrelevant to character.

VIN 16- Musky Smells

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

The thing about Musk is: he could be genuine. Or, equally, yet another flunkie. More or less, an Antichrist for the postdigital liberties movements, coming at a time most detrimental and damaging. Why? Simple: Elon Musk is of the age, position, and personality type to affect great change. Many have been. The difference is his field of play.

He’s a postdigital child.

Whether he realizes it, lives it, accepts it, even wants it or not, he is a perfect example of a multi-faceted, system-oriented thinker, in a position of true power in economic, global, scientific, and innovative communities.

He is the elite, and appears to be playing for Sense, if little else.

But to do what needs be done for Humanity, truly, requires setting events in motion that would eventually destroy his own legacy through his effects– even those he as an admitted digital-child, cannot begin to foresee.

The problem inherent in this issue inevitably becomes foreseeing one’s own legacy and its demise, committing regardless.

But it is no different than accepting one’s memory, like oneself, will die out. Will it have been worthy of living, as one’s life should be, thus becomes the sole question. At the heart of this, like most things, is the binary issue of selfishness or not. In combination: Human behavior further dictates one cannot always be counted on to check one’s own greed.

At the helm of a mega-corp, that greed, can be astronomical. Literally. Musk wishes to capture the minds of Humanity and point them at Mars, but whose priorities are these? Are they his: the man of new-blooded money new to a game and ready to change it? Or are they the Corporations’: age-old ideals of what can be, for the moment aligned because of potential greed.

Leaving Earth for Mars is not to be taken lightly. We cannot begin to expand, to Mars or elsewhere, if we’ve not yet finished our foundational building, here. Death among the stars is no less death. Attempting otherwise will forever alter our history, our so-termed destiny or fate. Therein history will cease to write of Humanity’s story and instead begin to write of its demise.

All from the loss of a crucial moment of opportunity and understanding. That moment, one of decades and seconds, generally sensed by our species, told that only by growing closer could we understand this Universe. It cannot be done by individuals alone. Science and history dictate as much. Are the products of it.

Therefore, it is imperative it be carried out by a, if not unified, symbiotic society. Preferably, one seeking to establish its legacy and secure itself as a force in the Universe– as any multi-cellular organism is driven to.

Corporations, though also multi-cellular, are not organisms. This is a common misconception both perpetuated and ignored by those involved in their workings. Mostly, from fear of recognition that the great evil– Corporations– are really only bureaucratic systems. Not societies. Their utter lack of feeling, empathy, or sympathy, makes them such.

It is not a failing. Rather, a byproduct of a system’s design. It is not a character flaw or a personality trait: however seemingly alive, it cannot feel. It cannot think. It can only run. In most cases, only run toward output of money.

To further muddy the image, evolution implied through long-term PR and Ad department schemes of re-branding have become akin to cell-regeneration. Beginning with single-cells and dividing, replicating, and successively revising their internal structure, Corporations like societies and organisms too, ultimately appear to be evolving.

However, they remain unliving. Their own actions well-documented by themselves but maintaining the ignorance through ritzy glamours that hide their every, hideous deformity. Each one only so grotesque as is made by oneself when allowing it to fester.

Yet these are systems.

Countless generations of growth-fracture cycles have formed them. Rhythmic, steady, but always producing errors, detrimental or not. Those anomalies, better known as Mutation, form the basis for all adaptation and survival of known organisms. The same can be seen in Corporate consolidation, Dark-horse industries and leaders, and flash in pan billion-dollar ideas.

But Corporations are not ruled by these rules: they imitate them.

A Corporation has no fixed head. No fixed owner. It exists to exist. Not because nature intended it, but because it was willed into power by (mostly) intelligent beings. Yet, there is no-one behind the curtain. Not even for those involved. Certainly, predecessors and successors have come and gone, but there is no “heir” to a corporation. Heirs may inherit corporations, but Corporations whom inherit requires intangibility to be otherwise.

Corporations are systems. Socio-economic thought-systems. Series of processes for doing business, as software running transactions in an OS: a system within a system, but one nonetheless.

Now wrapped up in the face of a postdigital child, whose inheritance neither exists nor does-not exist. Like many things of the time Musk’s as likely a product of as he is of hope. Worse, postdigital child or not, not one of us is incorruptible. Humans have demonstrated this time and again.

Humans live only within comfort zones, or surrounded by familiar things, or supportive out of habit. So deep does this fear of unknown corruption go, we’ve created whole spheres of public, private, and provincial health and governance laws. All of it to combat corruption we’ve termed– through rational dark ages– evil, hate, badness.

But many things of their time, like Evil and Musk himself, are the manifestations of simple realities incapable of being ignored. Regardless of best way, his may be little more than a flag to show communication on matters (his, chiefly,) are now open. After all, it is only from fear of loss that watchers cry out.

Musk’s opportunity here will make him a place in history. Even if, as a passing memory of Humanity’s folly. Whether from reverence or regret, there’s no telling. Not yet. All any watcher can do is remain vigilant, make their call, hope they’re heard so tragedy can be avoided.

But being a postdigital child myself, I’m neither holding my breath nor putting all my eggs in one basket. Especially in space, that feels prudent.

VIN 15- Isolation is Bad, Mmkay?

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Isolating one’s self, at base form, means making oneself more alone. A person may do this themselves, with no-one else around or in a small group. Historically, large groups do it too: religious ones. Conservative, racial, and prejudicial ones. Even whole countries can become isolated through politics, geography, or economics. Through-out human history, the delineations of most of these groups were more or less the result of fear, necessity.

People walled themselves behind castles first as protection.

Long before fiefdoms played much part in society however– and conquest proved itself so fruitful, did the idea of nation-states as border-lands come to be. Now, countries and groups expand most often with economics: reserved military might, threats, intimidation, the like. All bullshit tactics to feed the bigger-stick persona of fuck-you-got-mine.

But ultimately, Human society lives now in a postdigital world. One where, by its very nature, virtuosity or purity matters not. Humans have learned to see existence as 0s and 1s: the pure manifestation of every universal truth summed up therein. There is no gray, because we are the gray. There is only input/output, systems of it fractalized and scaled to every possible level of reality, infinity, and not. Information– datum, is infinite and finite. All and nothing. Both black and white, but also neither.

We are everything else. The color spectrum between. And because of that, our existence dictates that black and white are, in fact, different from color: from gray. From us. Yet somehow, Humans still allow ourselves– force even, to believe we’ve utterly no say over these facts, no effect on them. We believe they they’re otherwise divine instruments, not structures formed of tools by the very logical and dominating forces that comprise us.

Nature made us. Nature is us. We are animals. Primates. Human. That is our taxonomy. Moreover, we are comprised of all the same recycled matter and energy as the cows, their grass, its sunlight, the particles and waves that form it.

And we are fucking that system up for everyone, ourselves included.

The essence of a system is through-put. A system takes an object, applies its purpose-built methods, and refines it. In theory. In reality, the refinements may not always be such. Such is true for all systems. From evolution’s vestigial Appendix to the codec corruptions of modern conversion software.

Once extended to the enormity of the universe, its mechanics, its methods of action, the truth of that merely becomes greater, larger. More tangible. Especially in the face of a special history such as ours.

In a reality where people can stand on one side of the world and effectively see, hear, and touch someone on the other side, how is isolationism good?

VIN 14- Creator Gods Need Not Exist

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Fear only reality. For reality might be a God whom swallows you in smoke.

God, or a creator species, could exist. However, for iteration powerful enough to contain or create the universe, and to envision it, would require a society, system, or species advanced enough to have intended that system for a purpose larger than its constituent parts. That purpose however must not centralize on Humanity.

Until this critical viewpoint is rectified in theologic structure, one cannot convince one’s intellectual equal nor superior of a reality otherwise.

In essence, an atheist cannot begin to accept a God exists, generally, if that God does not allow for contradictory realities between his will and man’s reactions or interpretations of said will. More importantly, to do otherwise is foolish as it misunderstands Humanity’s own need to humanize.

Fallibility is Human, and dehumanizing is not the way to gain a people’s trust nor fraternity.

The problem there, lies in the various systems of power built up around, and infinitely fueled by, the various, current, faith-culture systems. Take the middle-east, for example, their faiths:

Their people are people. People like any others. Strip away that which makes them individuals– land, clothing, status, even skin color– and recognize them as Human beings. Now recognize that Human psychology is not dictated by faiths, Gods, institutions, nor governing bodies. It is dictated by nature and nature alone.

Whether that nature is the result of a God, its creation, or something more or less, does not matter; only the system’s output. That is to say, the system of nature, emplaced or not, and its eventual effect.

The essence of a system– a binary inter-stitching of in/out, on/off, 0/1– is such that it is no more nor less complicated than necessary to function or output. Therefore, the complexity of Human reaction is merely the byproduct of Human referential layers atop one another. Layers of Human psychology and Human experience interlaced and interacting as per Nature’s output.

This does not require a God to occur. It requires only Humans, their nature, and Nature itself. Whether that nature is God-created, remains aforementioned– and obsequious to the Human ego alone.

The problem however, is within a corrupted system. Therein, all layers from corruption up are damaged and must be repaired or recreated. Either through cut and paste methods, or scratch-made efforts. Until such realities are corrected in Human belief-systems, progress cannot be made in improving them.

In context, power-hungry evangelicals and clergy masquerading as bandits, religious zealots, fools, thieves, and bad-actors, is the hitch in a system otherwise finely tuned for a sole function; to inspire hope, faith, and compassion.

This reality manifests via those impostors, alienating followers not only from the outside, but the system itself from any potential growth of belief as a whole. Meanwhile, inspiring misanthropy along the way forms an utterly isolationist system, damaged and dangerous beyond literal belief. Such isolationist mentalities seep into action, thought, hope, faith; thereby rendering the system itself pointless.

In parlance, this means power-hunger, prejudice and the shield of religious zealotry in spite of Societal damage, damages the belief-system itself.

Such systems remain bound by the same rules as any other; including damaged, internal low-level output damaging high-level output by increased degrees. Moreover, the more crucial the defect, the more critical the component and the more dangerous the effect to output.

Gods need not exist for belief systems to be built around them, nor for bad actors to manipulate or harm others through them. Thus, regardless of personal beliefs, Humans must recognize that all Humans suffer when any one is isolated from the rest.

As history shows, there is little that separates people more thoroughly than arguments about whose God has the bigger dick.