Smoking Marijuana to Escape the Mess We Made - Finding our own guilty hand in the society we run from

[marijuana as an escapism by Zayd Depaor]

Smoking Marijuana to Escape the Mess We Made
FINDING OUR OWN GUILTY HAND IN THE SOCIETY WE RUN FROM
 

Whenever I walk through the streets I seem to be smelling marijuana everywhere. With so many people smoking it, despite it being illegal the police and the government have softened their approach to it. It has virtually become legal in all but name.

I can't stand the smell of it, it smells awful and I end up inhaling it as I go about my daily business. But I don't want to inhale it. People's use of it and the societal toleration (or encouragement) of it, directly impacts on me negatively along with its indirect harmful consequences.

Apart from medicinal use, many people take marijuana socially and recreationally. A form of physical and perhaps psychological pleasure. But marijuana, like the use of alcohol and other drugs, for many people is an escape from reality. It alters the mind so that the awareness of the surroundings is distanced. People seek refuge in it from oppression, depression and aggression. An escape from the present mess to somewhere else, even if that other place is nowhere.

An ostrich ducks its head in the sand when problems arise and people take drugs. But taking drugs will not improve the reality. It will only make people incapable of judging that reality and less able to fix it.

There is of course now a growing group of people who not only call for legalization of marijuana but the legalization of all drugs. Legalizing a thing does not change its essential reality nor its natural impact. Marijuana will still be marijuana and it will have the same effect in terms of clouding judgement. And covering your eyes, so that you don't see the mad axe killer in the woods wont make him vanish.

A society where so many people want to alter their minds so as not to face reality tells us society is not working well. People hide from the society as though they are separate from it, but denying a problem rather than confronting it is part of what sustains it. We are in the society, we are its building blocks and its directors.

The society consists of the beliefs, ideology, thoughts and relationships of the people, along with the systems collectively created and administered by an authority emanating from the people and generally supported by them. Therefore the society we live in is the result of our own ideas, actions and relationships.

So next time you reach for that joint, those pills or that whisky which you hope will shield you from the problems outside, ask yourself this – Where is my own hand in the mess? Did I not agree to turn a blind eye to oppression and leave it someone else? Did I not put my trust in the untrustworthy? Did I not follow the crowd without knowing where they are going? Did I not agree to be robbed by barbaric levels of taxation? Did I not willingly enslave myself to those who wish me no prosperity? Did I not support the thoughts and ideas that sow the seeds of chaos in the first place?