On Cannabis (From a College Discussion)

[The following is a reply I made to another student's post, which focused little on the article's content but heavily on conveying opinions of a negative, and uninformed nature.]

I truly, honestly respect your opinions and point-of-view. This post is merely to point out a couple logical fallacies you use in your statement (not intentionally I'm sure), and to introduce some additional information to our discussion derived from the scientific method, not myths perpetuated over the last several decades since the racially motivated "reefer madness" campaign intended to alarm "whites" to further discriminate against African-Americans (just like what was done in the past with criminalizing opium because of the Asian labor-force in the SW that used it frequently to offset the effects of being worked half-to-death, and with cocaine to sour majority {"white"} opinion about the latino population).

I agree that money-making is the main motivator involved in the business "model" described in the article. However, your explicit and implicit correlations between the harmful effects of alcohol and tobacco smoking, with the effects of cannabis use are a Fallacy by False Analogy. I recommend anyone identify and review this particular fallacy, and try to pick out the others inherent in your post for themself (I learned them all in my "Critical Thinking" philosophy course, but if you need a quick rundown on logical fallacies I suggest what I believe to be the most comprehensive and concisely defined list available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies). What decades of scientific study has revealed (that you'll only hear coming from those who do not have a motive to hide or downplay the following facts) is that:

• Alcohol is, by definition, a "poison" to homo sapiens, because our biology neither involves internally creating alcohol molecules, nor needing to get it from an external source (through consumption), to fulfill a legitimate biological function/process; the human body is not biologically designed to make any biologically-productive use of this chemical, and, more to the point, the human body is not adapted to quickly and efficiently neutralize this particular chemical to keep it from causing physical damage to certain types of cells--especially neurons and the various types of liver cells there are--before it can be filtered out and expelled.
• The human body has, by design, what is called by biologists, an "endocannabinoid system," which is directly involved in biochemical processes of inter-system communication between the central and peripheral nervous systems with other musculoskeletal systems and especially the immune system. Not only is the endocannabinoid system a critical component of the molecular messaging systems of the body that we inherently have by genetic design, our own bodies (and the bodies of certain other animal species) actually constantly create their own endocannabinoid molecules for use with the endocannabinoid receptor system.
• Cannabis sativa and cannabis indica species are around today, and so effective at creating large quantities of phytocannabinoid molecules because humans carefully bred and cultivated cannabis for several thousand years to enhance the plant's hardiness against disease and pests, and to increase its cannabinoid output (in the U.S. up until the late 1930's with the marijuana/hemp tax stamp act, which was a ploy by government officials with corrupt personal socioeconomic motivations, under the public guise of just being a new tax, to actually ban it outright because not one, single stamp was ever issued by the government).
• The use of the word "marijuana," instead of using its scientifically-catalogued genus name, "cannabis," was popularized back then to serve a derogatory purpose, clearly because of the racial stigma the non-English word invoked towards another targeted minority (latinos), in concert with the "reefer madness" campaign against African-Americans, to affect a public backlash based on irrational fear towards the plant because it threatened the financial interests of powerful whites invested in the pharmaceutical, timber (because hemp, cannabis' "cousin," is the strongest naturally occurring fiber on Earth*), and other industries threatened by this natural plant they couldn't control the market for and make money off of (certainly nowhere near the amount of money they stood to lose with a plant that was greatly superior to products offered by the aforementioned industries and could be cheaply grown by anybody, anywhere). *(Besides hemp making vastly superior rope and other textiles, the first two copies of the Declaration of Independence were written on hemp paper, which is why after nearly 240 years they are in such excellent condition; if it had been written on wood pulp-based paper, it would have disintegrated long ago.)
• Decades of scientific studies, mostly done in Israel and European countries because of cannabis' designation under the U.S. Controlled Substances Act as "Schedule I"--despite cannabis not meeting the law's own legal criteria for that category, the fact lawmakers claimed the scheduling decision for cannabis was supposed to be temporary (to allow time for additional research to assist placement in the proper Schedule, such as III or IV), and Nixon rejecting the findings of his own appointed commission (the "Schafer Commission") appointed to conduct a rational review of cannabis that found cannabis to be relatively harmless and that it should not be criminalized--conveniently prohibits possession by any person or institution even for the sole, legitimate purposes of medical and scientific study), have consistently proven that:

1. it is literally, physically impossible to overdose on cannabinoids because they only interact with the endocannabinoid system which has a finite number of receptor/binding sites; every death ever recorded in which a person had consumed cannabis involved consumption of an additional substance you can OD on, like alcohol, heroin, cocaine, and, yes, even caffeine (caffeine ODs have made news lately because it is now being sold in a pure, powder form). Every scientific study done on animals to test cannabis' capacity to kill, has never succeeded in killing even one of its test subjects (except in the intentionally "fixed" study done in which the monkeys were asphyxiated because the researchers did not provide any oxygen into the masks attached to the subjects' faces).
2. the only scientifically documented bodily harm associated with cannabis involves smoking it (which, like cigarette smoking, involves literally burning the plant-matter at very high temperatures, creating aerosolized tar and thousands of byproduct chemicals, many of which are carcinogens); all scientific studies done on inhaling cannabinoids through the use of a vaporizer (in which "hot" air at much lower temperatures pass through the plant-matter, aerosolizing the cannabinoid molecules without inducing any combustion) have consistently shown no presence of tar or carcinogenic compounds in the vapor inhaled. There is also no biological damage caused by consuming cannabinoids orally in any of the many edible formulations there are.
3. the only negative psycho-neurological impact that has been scientifically documented on cannabis, is with extensive, prolonged use in a child, whose brain is still developing new neural networks. The myth that the "stoner effect" on intelligence lingers for years or forever, even after cessation of use, has been disproven time and time again.
4. you can not become "addicted" to cannabis, as that word is defined in professional literature, for two reasons: a) cannabis does not interact with the dopamine system in the brain (commonly referred to as the "reward system," although it serves various other purposes as well), as drugs like meth, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, caffeine, opiates, barbiturates, and half a dozen or more byproduct chemicals of tobacco combustion do; b) your body creates endocannabinoid molecules all the time anyway--its a "natural substance" always present in your body--thus, you cannot develop what is technically referred to as "physiological dependence." Can it become habit-forming because you like the euphoria, immense pain-relief, enhanced creative/open-ended cognition and sensory sensitivity, and other effects it has on you? Yes. Does your body develop a physiological need to continue consuming cannabinoids, like alcoholics, heroin addicts, caffeine junkies, or tobacco smokers develop, in which cessation actually causes a severe biochemical deficit? No. No one who only consumes a significant amount of cannabis, and nothing else, ever experiences a "hangover" or withdrawal effect, for the reasons heretofore stated.

• Do people do stupid and potentially dangerous things when "high?" Yes, as is true of most drug users, the mentally ill, and many perfectly sane, sober folks who just make bad decisions to try and satisfy a psychological motivation. Are cannabis users statistically as likely to do something stupid as, say, a drinker of alcohol? No, not even close--I welcome you looking up the stats yourselves. Do cannabis users get angry, aggressive, hostile, and have complete impairment of instinctual judgement like so many people do when they get drunk? No. They may just get temporarily lazy, hungry, lost in deep thought, and become "too" passive.
• Has legalization statistically increased minors' access to cannabis? No. Why? Because the vast majority of minors still choose to get their cannabis through the black market, because it is cheaper (because of being of generally lower quality and not being taxed), and the quantitative total demand minors have had for cannabis was already being fully met by the black market prior to legalization.
• The idea that cannabis is a "gateway drug" has been firmly discounted by recent studies. It is genetic predisposition and negative environmental influences that drive a person's desire to use "harder" drugs.
• The government has a real, bona-fide patent, Patent 6630507, entitled “Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants.” Not only does cannabis provide these benefits, which has major implications for improving general health and slowing the progression of Multiple Sclerosis and other neurological diseases, it has a very pronounced anti-inflammatory effect, both generally and on overactive immune systems that are responsible for such diseases as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, crohn's disease, fibromyalgia, and countless others caused by a dysfunctional or hyperactive immune system.
• The National Cancer Institute, a sub-department of the federal U.S. National Institutes of Health — before it was promptly gagged two days later — reported on their website a research finding that, “the health care provider may recommend medicinal Cannabis not only for symptom management but also for its possible direct antitumor effect.” As an official agency they are cautious in how they word things, by habit, but an official government agency that specializes in cancer research would never even mention such a 'possibility' if there wasn't significant evidence already documented of this likely being the case.
• There are many other diseases for which concrete evidence is surfacing supporting the idea that (because the endocannabinoid system plays such a vital role in inter-system communication and in interacting with the immune system) cannabis use directly slows the progression or even reverses the progression of certain diseases, not that cannabis only can alleviate many of the symptoms of those diseases.

DISCLAIMER: I do not use cannabis at all (nor alcohol), and have not used it once in three years. Why did I previously use cannabis and do such thorough research on it (which required extra effort to find unbiased sources)? Because after my 16-month army combat deployment was over, I came home with a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and PTSD, which developed into also having Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Social Anxiety Disorder, but I eventually ran into an article talking about how a research institution was trying to get government permission to conduct a study to see what benefit cannabis may have for veterans suffering from PTSD. That peaked my curiosity, and only after deep, extensive research did I decide to take advantage of WA and OR states' "medical marijuana" programs (which was before recreational legalization took place). I can't put into words how important it was to my recovery from the mental torment I had been living with every minute of every day. The editor of a widely-circulating NW publication did a cover story on my very real, life-saving experience with medicinal cannabis use.

Do I think cannabis should be legal for recreational use even though I personally choose not to use it now? Yes. Why? Because ultimately you can't stop people from doing what they want to do; all you can do is force it underground (black markets, "behind closed doors") by making it illegal, thus making it impossible to regulate and allowing all the money to flow into the hands of organized crime syndicates and violent cartels, instead of keeping the money in the legitimate economy and adding to government coffers to pay for social programs that can help the mentally ill and those suffering from real addictions, among other societal responsibilities we collectively have to each other.

If you want proof that the unwinnable "drug war" is not helping but only deepening social strife and societal dysfunction, look no further than our prison-industrial complex which makes some very wealthy (the U.S. houses 25% of all inmates incarcerated in the entire world), and the failed State of Mexico, whose collapse is almost entirely funded by black market drug money flowing in from the U.S. If you want proof that decriminalizing ALL drugs and taking all of the billions spent on a war on our own people and locking up countless millions in glorified dog-kennels that perpetuate dehumanization and "hardening" of criminals, but instead redirecting all of that money and effort into social programs that support rehabilitation, economic opportunity/independence, and a dramatic decline in drug abuse, look no further than Portugal and other European countries that have followed their lead.

Highlights of the History of Astronomy and the Basics of Solar System Astronomy

Historical:

• The ancient Babylonians kept vast written records of astronomical data.
• Since the 7th century B.C., the Chinese kept highly accurate records of astronomical data.
• Plato and Aristotle formulated a geocentric model of the solar system describing the Earth as the center, with the sun and other planets revolving around the Earth in perfect circular orbits and the planets simultaneously having epicyclical orbits about their solar orbits to explain "retrograde motion" of the planets observed from Earth.
• In the 2nd century B.C., Hipparchus improved the geocentric model slightly, made the first (relatively) precise observations of stars, and developed the apparent magnitude scale measuring the apparent brightness of a star on a scale of 1 (brightest) to 6 (faintest).
• In the 3rd century B.C., Aristarchus was the first to propose a heliocentric model of the solar system (in which the sun is the center, and the planets revolve around the sun) but his work was largely ignored.
• Ptolemy's sophisticated and far more detailed improvement on the geocentric model was so successful that it remained the near-universally accepted model of the solar system until the Renaissance.
• During the Renaissance, Copernicus developed a detailed heliocentric model of the solar system utilizing a great deal of mathematics that successfully predicted the astronomical patterns of solar-body movements, and whose work was built upon by Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler.
• Galileo, who developed the first relatively powerful telescope of the time, was the "father" of observational astronomy, and through his telescopically-collected observations discovered four moons orbiting Jupiter, that the moon had craters, the sun had "sunspots" (which he happened to correctly explain the nature of), observed that Venus (from the perspective of Earth) went through luminary phases similar to the moon, and used his observational evidence to directly support the validity of the heliocentric model.
• Later, Kepler used the couple decades of accurate solar observational data collected by Tycho Brahe and his own intellectual conceptual insights to develop his three law's of planetary motion (1. The orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci, 2. A line segment joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time, 3. The square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit).
• Then came along Isaac Newton, who developed the "universal law of gravitation," which very precisely explained mathematically the heliocentric model movements of solar-bodies and made extremely accurate predictions for the future motions and positions of solar-bodies.

Non-Historical:

• Only approximately a maximum of 2,000 stars are visible with the naked eye.
• The Earth's average diameter is 7,918 miles.
• The solar system has a diameter of approximately 9 trillion miles.
• 1 lightyear ≈ 5.88 trillion miles.
• The radius of the observable universe is approximately 14 billion lightyears.
• The apparent encompassing sphere of the heavens about the Earth is called the "celestial sphere."
• 88 constellations are officially recognized by the IAU; that star patterns not formally considered constellations are called "asterisms."
• The apparent path of the sun across the celestial sphere is called the "ecliptic."
• Modern astronomers use a "photometer" and an apparent brightness scale that ranges from -30 to +31? (+31 was assigned to the faintest object detected by the Hubble telescope) {each increment = a ratio of 2.5 from the next increment in degree of brightness}, the Sun measures -26.75 on this scale, and the next brightest star, Sirius, measures in at -1.44.
• Astronomers use "declination" (the angular measure above or below the celestial equator) and "right ascension" (angular measure in units of "hour" {1 hour = 1.5°} relative to the "celestial meridian" (0° in longitude) to define the location of astronomical objects.
• The point directly above (90° perpendicular to the horizon at your current location) is called the 'zenith.'
• A star is said to "culminate" (reaches its highest altitude in the sky) when it is on the celestial meridian.
• The daily paths of stars around the celestial axis are called "diurnal circles."
• To find the "North Star," Polaris, you can use the 'pointer' stars, Dubhe and Merak (which are at the end of the 'bowl' of the Big Dipper).
• The stars that never 'set' below the celestial horizon in the Northern/Southern hemisphere are called "North (or) South circumpolar stars" respectively.
• The band about 16° wide around the sky centered on the 'ecliptic' is called the 'zodiac,' which ancient astrologers divided into 12 constellations, or "signs," each taken at 30° increments of longitude.
• The Earth’s geographical equator remains tilted at about 23.4-23.5° to its orbital plane about the sun.
• The 'vernal equinox,' which occurs about March 20, is the Sun’s position as it crosses the celestial equator going north and is the point on the celestial sphere chosen to be the 0h measure of right ascension.
• The 'autumnal equinox,' which occurs about September 23, is the Sun’s position as it crosses the celestial equator going south.
• During the equinoxes, day and night are equal in length.
• The 'summer solstice,' which occurs about June 21, and the 'winter solstice,' which occurs about December 21, are the most northern and most southern positions of the Sun during the year in the northern hemisphere, and that at these times we have the longest and shortest days, respectively, in the northern hemisphere.
• There are two measures of "day": the 'solar day' (measuring the time interval of Earth’s rotation using the Sun for reference) and the 'sidereal day' (measuring the time interval of Earth’s rotation using the stars for reference).
• A sidereal day is 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4 seconds long, requiring the use of leap-years and leap-seconds.
• The Earth’s axis of rotation shifts extremely slowly around a imaginary 'cone' in space once about every 25,800 years (which is called "precession") and is caused mainly by the tug of the gravity of the Sun and Moon on Earth’s equatorial bulge.
• The Arctic Circle and Antarctic Circle mark the southernmost and northernmost latitude, respectively, at which the sun can remain continuously above or below the horizon for 24 hours (at the June solstice and December solstice respectively).
• The Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn are the northern and southern latitudes, respectively, at which the sun reaches zenith only one time a year.

Wisdom Concerning the 'Self' (from Some of Humanity’s Greatest Minds)

[The following quote's are some of the ones that were compiled by Maria Popova in her article on brainpickings.org :]

Mindfulness in the Present Moment
"I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is — I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?" — Henry David Thoreau ('Walking' - 1861)


"On the Shortness of Life" by Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC – AD 65)
"It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it."

[…]

"You are living as if destined to live for ever; your own frailty never occurs to you; you don’t notice how much time has already passed, but squander it as though you had a full and overflowing supply — though all the while that very day which you are devoting to somebody or something may be your last. You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire… How late it is to begin really to live just when life must end! How stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point at which few have arrived!"

[…]

"Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately."


Knowing Who You Are
"There is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out."

[…]

"We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that 'I myself' is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body — a center which 'confronts' an 'external' world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange. Everyday figures of speech reflect this illusion. 'I came into this world.' 'You must face reality.' 'The conquest of nature.'

This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not 'come into' this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated “egos” inside bags of skin." — Alan Watts ('The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are' - 1966)


The 'Fixed Mindset' vs. the 'Growth Mindset'
"Believing that your qualities are carved in stone — the fixed mindset — creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character — well, then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn’t do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics.

[…]

"There’s another mindset in which these traits are not simply a hand you’re dealt and have to live with, always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you’re secretly worried it’s a pair of tens. In this mindset, the hand you’re dealt is just the starting point for development. This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way — in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments — everyone can change and grow through application and experience.

Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training." — Carol Dweck ('Mindset: The New Psychology of Success' - 2006)


Never Cease to Ask Questions and Pursue Answers About the Unknown
"By posing the unanswerable questions of meaning, men establish themselves as question-asking beings. Behind all the cognitive questions for which men find answers, there lurk the unanswerable ones that seem entirely idle and have always been denounced as such. It is more than likely that men, if they were ever to lose the appetite for meaning we call thinking and cease to ask unanswerable questions, would lose not only the ability to produce those thought-things that we call works of art but also the capacity to ask all the answerable questions upon which every civilization is founded…

While our thirst for knowledge may be unquenchable because of the immensity of the unknown, the activity itself leaves behind a growing treasure of knowledge that is retained and kept in store by every civilization as part and parcel of its world. The loss of this accumulation and of the technical expertise required to conserve and increase it inevitably spells the end of this particular world." — Hannah Arendt ('The Life of the Mind' - 1978)


On 'Perfectionism'
"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.

[…]

Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist’s true friend. What people somehow (inadvertently, I’m sure) forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here — and, by extension, what we’re supposed to be writing." — Anne Lamott ('Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life' - 1995)


On Evaluating the Validity and Usefulness of a New Idea
"The kit is brought out as a matter of course whenever new ideas are offered for consideration. If the new idea survives examination by the tools in our kit, we grant it warm, although tentative, acceptance. If you’re so inclined, if you don’t want to buy baloney even when it’s reassuring to do so, there are precautions that can be taken; there’s a tried-and-true, consumer-tested method."

[…]

"1. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”
2. Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
3. Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
4. Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.
6. Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.
7. If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.
8. Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.
9. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result." — Carl Sagan (' The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark' - 1996)


Get Lost to Find Yourself
"Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go. Three years ago I was giving a workshop in the Rockies. A student came in bearing a quote from what she said was the pre-Socratic philosopher Meno. It read, “How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?” I copied it down, and it has stayed with me since. The student made big transparent photographs of swimmers underwater and hung them from the ceiling with the light shining through them, so that to walk among them was to have the shadows of swimmers travel across your body in a space that itself came to seem aquatic and mysterious. The question she carried struck me as the basic tactical question in life. The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration — how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?"

[…]

"How do you calculate upon the unforeseen? It seems to be an art of recognizing the role of the unforeseen, of keeping your balance amid surprises, of collaborating with chance, of recognizing that there are some essential mysteries in the world and thereby a limit to calculation, to plan, to control. To calculate on the unforeseen is perhaps exactly the paradoxical operation that life most requires of us."

[…]

"To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away. In Benjamin’s terms, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender, a psychic state achievable through geography. That thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you is usually what you need to find, and finding it is a matter of getting lost." — Rebecca Solnit ('A Field Guide to Getting Lost' - 2005)


Be Like Water
"After spending many hours meditating and practicing, I gave up and went sailing alone in a junk. On the sea I thought of all my past training and got mad at myself and punched the water! Right then — at that moment — a thought suddenly struck me; was not this water the very essence of gung fu? Hadn’t this water just now illustrated to me the principle of gung fu? I struck it but it did not suffer hurt. Again I struck it with all of my might — yet it was not wounded! I then tried to grasp a handful of it but this proved impossible. This water, the softest substance in the world, which could be contained in the smallest jar, only seemed weak. In reality, it could penetrate the hardest substance in the world. That was it! I wanted to be like the nature of water.

Suddenly a bird flew by and cast its reflection on the water. Right then I was absorbing myself with the lesson of the water, another mystic sense of hidden meaning revealed itself to me; should not the thoughts and emotions I had when in front of an opponent pass like the reflection of the birds flying over the water? This was exactly what Professor Yip meant by being detached — not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling was not sticky or blocked. Therefore in order to control myself I must first accept myself by going with and not against my nature."

[…]

"Water is so fine that it is impossible to grasp a handful of it; strike it, yet it does not suffer hurt; stab it, and it is not wounded; sever it, yet it is not divided. It has no shape of its own but molds itself to the receptacle that contains it. When heated to the state of steam it is invisible but has enough power to split the earth itself. When frozen it crystallizes into a mighty rock. First it is turbulent like Niagara Falls, and then calm like a still pond, fearful like a torrent, and refreshing like a spring on a hot summer’s day." — Bruce Lee ('Bruce Lee: Artist of Life' - 1999)


Making 'Good' Out of 'Evils'
"Throughout our nervous history, we have constructed pyramidic towers of evil, ofttimes in the name of good. Our greed, fear and lasciviousness have enabled us to murder our poets, who are ourselves, to castigate our priests, who are ourselves. The lists of our subversions of the good stretch from before recorded history to this moment. We drop our eyes at the mention of the bloody, torturous Inquisition. Our shoulders sag at the thoughts of African slaves lying spoon-­fashion in the filthy hatches of slave-ships, and the subsequent auction blocks upon which were built great fortunes in our country. We turn our heads in bitter shame at the remembrance of Dachau and the other gas ovens, where millions of ourselves were murdered by millions of ourselves. As soon as we are reminded of our actions, more often than not we spend incredible energy trying to forget what we’ve just been reminded of."

[…]

"To show you … how out of evil there can come good, in those five years I read every book in the black school library. I read all the books I could get from the white school library. I memorized James Weldon Johnson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes. I memorized Shakespeare, whole plays, fifty sonnets. I memorized Edgar Allen Poe, all the poetry — never having heard it, I memorized it. I had Longfellow, I had Guy de Maupassant, I had Balzac, Rudyard Kipling — I mean, it was catholic kind of reading, and catholic kind of storing."

[…]

"Out of this evil, which was a dire kind of evil, because rape on the body of a young person more often than not introduces cynicism, and there is nothing quite so tragic as a young cynic, because it means the person has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing. In my case I was saved in that muteness… And I was able to draw from human thought, human disappointments and triumphs, enough to triumph myself."

[…]

"We need the courage to create ourselves daily, to be bodacious enough to create ourselves daily — as Christians, as Jews, as Muslims, as thinking, caring, laughing, loving human beings. I think that the courage to confront evil and turn it by dint of will into something applicable to the development of our evolution, individually and collectively, is exciting, honorable." — Maya Angelou (Documentary: 'Facing Evil with Maya Angelou' - 1988)


Living by Your Own Standards (the Basis for 'Happiness')
"Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively. After a short time, a very short time, there would be little that one really enjoyed. For what keeps our interest in life and makes us look forward to tomorrow is giving pleasure to other people."

[…]

"Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: ‘A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work; and the ability to love others.’"

[…]

"It’s your life — but only if you make it so. The standards by which you live must be your own standards, your own values, your own convictions in regard to what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is important and what is trivial. When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else or a community or a pressure group, you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being." — Eleanor Roosevelt ('You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life' - 1960)

Homosexual Equality (the Lessons of History & Clarifying the Concepts of "Marriage")

[Originally Posted 9/24/09; edited and expanded 1/10/15]

Despite being 100% heterosexual, I find choosing to support homosexuals having equality of social status, as well as rights and protections provided under the rule of law, in amazingly simple decision to reach given the constitution and lessons provided by history.  I realize large social changes take time, but how can so many of us still be so blind to the lessons of the past?  It wasn't so long ago in the annals of world history that the majority of men struggled vehemently to deny women equal rights to own property and participate in the voting process of democracies.  Not so long ago the majority of whites in this country so passionately fought, either through force or active bigotry, to deny blacks genuinely-equal social status and legal rights.  And now, our society once again finds itself socially polarized, this time on the topic of homosexual equality.  Well, let us be honest with ourselves.  As past generations had their social revolutions, this generation is, too, experiencing a social revolution, and I would argue success in overthrowing the current social status-quo with regards to granting homosexuals equal social status and legal rights is as every bit as inevitable as the successes hard fought for by blacks and women over the last couple hundred years.

I was told a story recently about a black man who was obliviously broadcasting his side of a cellphone conversation about homosexuals to a small crowd sitting nearby him.  Needless to say, his opinion of homosexuals was passionate, egregiously unfavorable, and, quite simply, astoundingly hypocritical.  Past generations of this man's family, as recently as his parents undoubtedly, poured their blood, sweet, and tears into fighting and struggling against that very same prejudicial attitude towards blacks—simply because they were "different" in some relatively benign way compared to the majority.  Nevertheless, there he was, as blind to the absurdity of his irrational attitudes towards homosexuals as whites' attitudes had been towards his ancestors.  It just goes to show that personal self-awareness and rational reasoning can be absent in anyone, even someone whose heritage should have made him realize what a hypocrite he was being that day.

We all must always be on guard against and actively fight against prejudice and hatred, especially within ourselves.  We each harbor a degree of stereotypical thought processes in our daily lives, usually without being consciously aware of its subconscious influence on our thinking and behavior, and occasionally have what would be deemed by our own self to be 'undesirable' emotional responses to certain circumstances we encounter.  To provide a relatively clear-cut example: if you were a middle- or upper-class white, who genuinely believes they do not have a racist "bone in their body" thanks to a non-racist upbringing, walking through your nice, mostly-white family suburban neighborhood at dusk and see a young African-American male heading towards you on the sidewalk wearing a hoodie that hides all but part of his face and sagging, baggy jeans, there is a really good chance you are going to have an instinctually negative emotional reaction upon first recognition of those circumstances, such as a degree of anxiety, even though your conscious belief system reminds you seconds later that you should not judge that person and their potential threat to you based on a stereotype; despite this rational reminder you may continue to feel tense until you pass him without incident.  This example was constructed to maximize the understanding of the general concepts, but countless, less clear-cut real life examples exist in practically everyone's daily life in which the brain is naturally, inherently, constantly interpreting and evaluating the things in its environment at a subconscious level, using probability as its guide in prioritizing how it evaluates what things should receive what percentage of the finite resource of one's attentive awareness at that moment, and judges what the safest instinctual interpretations of the things going on in that person's environment are.  Because of the way the brain automatically processes information about its environment based on probabilities, which are determined by patterns recognized in past life experiences and engrained "background information"/knowledge, stereotypes we know about, whether we consciously object to stereotyping or not, factor into how the brain instinctively reacts to its environment.  To a large extent, instinctual responses are unavoidable at the moment they occur, and can only be overridden through conscious evaluation of a given situation using good reasoning.  Thus, the path towards social prosperity and harmony, which benefits us all in the end, must begin with a thorough, objective self-evaluation of the quality of one's own rational and moral reasoning and knowledge-base which forms one's established worldview, belief systems, and values.

We need to recognize that marriage under the law and marriage 'under God' need not, and should not, be considered one and the same thing in this debate.  I myself was legally married in a court of law to my wife almost five years before we married through the church.  The argument by the majority of religious people, who improperly entwine the concepts of legal marriage with "spiritual" marriage, and, in so doing, believe that allowing such legal marriages some how sullies the 'sanctity of marriage' ("sanctity" being a term that, by definition, can only be associated with religious marriage 'under God'), that legal marriage should be prohibited for homosexuals, despite the fact that our constitution specifies the necessity of recognizing a 'separation of church and state,' is simply untenable.  Measuring how sanctimonious a marriage is has everything to do with how faithful, loving, and selfless the behavior of the two partners towards one another is, and has nothing to do with what is in their underwear—in similar fashion to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s belief that a person should not be judged based on the color of their skin, but "by the content of their character."  There is no doubt in my mind that there are countless homosexual couples whose behavior is far more laudable than many heterosexual couples.  Let us leave the religious side of the debate to the religious establishments and stop letting conservative religious arguments unconstitutionally influence our government from obeying its own constitutionally established protections.  The 14th Amendment to the Constitution states, "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."  This constitutional amendment did not happen by accident.  It was one of the most consequential and direct results of the Civil War and the overall social struggle to restore the human dignity of, and establish legal rights and protections for, blacks.  It will take time but it is certain that the 14th Amendment, and the same kind of revolutionary social attitude that gave birth to it that exists today, will earn homosexuals equal social status and protection under the law across this country in the years to come.

[The prediction I made nearly five and half years ago, when I first published this post, concerning the social progress that would occur to provide for equal social status and application of law for homosexuals turned out to be correct, though the good fight against prejudice continues....]