healthy cynicism

Diogenes the Cynic was a strange figure. Born in Sinope (modern day Turkey) in 412, he was a man who knew how to cause a controversy.

He was exiled from his native town for defacing currency, moving to Athens where he quickly became famous for causing trouble in what he saw as a corrupt society that only quested for pleasure and personal gain.  He was not alone, the Greek philosopher Antisthnenes (born 445 BCE in Athens) said: “Everything that the wise person does conforms to perfect virtue, and pleasure is not only unnecessary, but a positive evil.” He also said, “"I'd rather be mad than feel pleasure."

Sounds like the ranting of a mad man to me!

But the original cynics believed that the purpose of life was to reject all conventional desires for wealth, power and fame, and to instead live in harmony with nature, a simple ’virtuous’ life free from all possessions. They did not consider all pleasure worthless, Antisthenes himself wrote on the enjoyments of “wisely chosen friendship.”

“The cynics believed that the world belonged equally to everyone, and that suffering was caused by false judgments of what was valuable and by the worthless customs and conventions which surrounded society.” Wikipedia

Not all that crazy after all…

However, Diogenes was a philosopher who was not satisfied simply talking the talk, he believed virtue was better illuminated in action than words, and therefore made a vow of poverty, begging for a living and sleeping in a tub in the marketplace.

His most notorious philosophical stunt (still illuminated in the tarot today in the card of the Hermit,) was to carry a lit lantern through the streets of Athens in the daytime, and when one passer by asked him what he was doing, he replied, “looking for an honest man.”

His various ploys gathered as much positive as negative attention, one man Crates of Thebes giving away a large fortune so he could live a life of Cynical poverty in Athens.

It was common in the streets of Imperial Rome in the 1^st century to find Cynics begging and preaching through the cities of the Empire. It would be hard to draw comparison these days (unless Big Issue vendors suddenly developed their own school of philosophy.)

“In the second century the Romans finally felt secure enough to tolerate diversity and Rome witnessed the proliferation of a bewildering variety of cults and philosophies…Just as Hollywood stars today traipse from one new cult to another in search of something more than money and fame, so rich Romans also liked to spend their leisure time dabbling in new mysteries.” Timothy Freke, Laughing Jesus.

Although the Cynics popularity waned in the late 5^th century much of its rhetoric lived on and was adopted by early Christianity (prior to 325 BCE) and absorbed into Stoicism.

Which leads to an interesting question: If Jesus had been born in Athens, would he have simply been referred to as a cynic? Is there anything written in the Bible, considering the above, that argues he was not? “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24)

Conversely, it was at he time of the second century when a lesser known Christian philosopher named Justin first moved to Rome. Desperate to be taken seriously, after being rejected by both the Pythagorean and Platonic schools, he began his own cult. It was in his writing that we first hear of Jesus being but to death by Pontius Pilot.

Bares thinking about…

Whichever is the way of things, it takes a remarkable individual to internalize the lessons of life to the point that they become the lesson. Very few are capable of both withdrawing from society to seek knowledge of self, and returning from isolation to share this knowledge with others. Most of us exist only as society.

It is so much easier to be a cynic these days. American director Ken Burns even argues, “…We too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it's worse than fear - it's active disengagement.”

How far the apple has fallen from the tree of Diogenes, who lived very unsafely due to his choices based on cynicism, and it is doubtful that anyone could argue that his life was wasted; he was the living embodiment of philosophical showmanship, never could he be accused of being afraid or disengaged.

 

In truth I believe we could all do with being a little more cynical, a little less willing to believe the hype, a little more willing to follow our way and find our own truth. As George Bernard Shaw said, “The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”

seven deadly sins: pride

The Seven Deadly Sins owe there existence among us thanks to a 4^th Century Greek monk named Evagrius Ponticus, who was the first (it is believed) to list eight evil thoughts. They were: gluttony, prostitution/fornication, avarice, hubris, envy, wrath, boasting and dejection (acedias).

These ideas were later translated from Greek into Latin in the writings of John Cassian (360 – 435, a famous Christian theologian and celebrated mystic of the time), and thus became integrated into the Western tradition’s/ Catholic spiritual pietas of the middle ages. Cassian translations were: gluttony, lust, greed, pride, despair, wrath, vainglory, and acedia.

In AD 590, a little over two centuries after Evagrius wrote his list, Pope Gregory I revised this list to form the more common Seven Deadly Sins. In the order used by both Pope Gregory and by Dante Alighieri in his epic poem The Divine Comedy, the seven deadly sins are as follows:

Lust

Gluttony

Avarice/greed

Acedia/sloth

Wrath

Envy

Pride

There are, according to the Catholic Church, two types of sin. The first is venial sin (the spiritual equivalent to a parking ticket), and the second (and far more severe) is mortal sin. The seven deadly sins or Cardinal Sins (which I always thought meant sins only Cardinals could commit when I first heard of them) and are seen as the origins of all sin. And none is more objectionable than pride.

It was, after all, pride that broke the final clause of Lucifer’s tenancy agreement in heaven, and it can be argued that it is God’s pride that is preventing him from returning home.

We can all agree that envy, wrath and gluttony are not desirable traits, but is pride not also a redeemable quality? Aristotle considered it to be a profound virtue. English novelist Jane Austin wrote: “Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us.”

I am inclined to agree. I have never understood why the catholic church would, on one hand have it’s flock believe they were created in the image of god, but with the other hand, condone them for feeling quite proud and having a bit of self-respect over the matter.

Does god want you to mope about, taking no pleasure or satisfaction in or from anything you do?  I can’t imagine what good it would do you in believing so.

It is true though, that excessive pride is easily understandable as ungodly, especially in the cases of extreme national pride.  According to Wikipedia, “, “In Europe before the development of nationalism, people were generally loyal to a city or to a particular leader rather than to their nation. Since that time, nationalism has become one of the most significant political and social forces in history, perhaps most notably as a major influence or postulate of World War I and especially World War II.”

The term nationalism was coined Johann Gottfried Herder in the 1770’s, but no one knows precisely where it emerged first.  Its development is closely associated with the European and American revolutions of the late 18^th century, in retaliation to the oppression of sovereign power. There are many forms of nationalism, from the tribal groupings of sports fans to the dark risings of the Nazi’s and authoritarian fascism. Inherent in all, from the harmless to the hideous, is the intrinsic belief that your “state” is naturally superior to all other states. As Napoleon Bonaparte testified, “a soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.”

Yet no one ever choked to death while swallowing pride!

The pride of Dante’s day is not the pride of today; perhaps it is time to reevaluate how we can find salvation for our souls in this modern world. Samuel Butler has perhaps started us on the right track when he postulated the seven deadly sins as: “want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion.”

CHURCH OF NINE: chapter four

04

Hak walked out of the office for the last time without saying goodbye to Sylvia, and curved into the high street towards home. After five minutes walking, she had the distinct feeling she was being tailed.  She had had the feeling many times before and was rarely wrong.

            She paused at a bookshop window feigning interest in discount paperbacks whilst glancing sideways to catch a glimpse of her follower.  The street was sporadically spread with mid-afternoon shoppers moving awkwardly like newborn penguins on the icy pavements.  A gritter truck crawled on the road showering the streets with safe sand and orange light.

No one seemed interested in her.  She pushed her hands in her leather jacket pockets and pushed on. She was relieved to get home, opening the heavy entrance door of her block of flats with eye over her shoulder. The neon strip light in her communal hallway buzzed like a damaged insect and spewed a sickly blue light up the trench grey walls of the stairwell that lead to her front door, number 4.           

She heard the landline ring from outside, so ran into her under-heated flat thumping her shin in the dark as she dashed to pick up the receiver. “Hello?”

There was no reply.

“Who is this?”

The line cut dead.

“What the hell is going on?”

She rubbed her throbbing leg, trying to suppress the stinging pain. Then someone entered the flat. The creaking floorboards and clumsy footsteps of the trespasser in the corridor gave them away like a blush in a eunuch village. 

She scuttled across the floor on her hands and knees, peering through a crack of doorway into the dark corridor, in an attempt to see whoever was on the other side as they ransacked her rooms.  She did not want to make any rash moves; she had no desire to be stupid or dead.

However, what happened next happened too quickly to prevent.  The door was pushed open hard, hitting her head with such velocity that she was shunted across the room.

“Oh bugger!”  A barefooted man in a puce-pink dinner suit ran to her aid, sweeping hand full’s of wild black hair from his eyes. By the time he got to her, she was unconscious.

“Oh Harry,” an elderly lady joined him. “What have I told you about first impressions?” 

“Aunty,” protested the eccentric, “this clearly was not my fault.  She was hiding behind the door! What are we going to do? I only know the Heimlich manoeuvre!”

“I told you to be careful!” Said the lady sternly. “Now, chop-chop and pick her up, the least we can do is get the most important part of the plan right!”

He stood his ground. “You said nothing about taking her. You can’t just take someone!”

“I said nothing about not taking her.  You know I have back troubles, chop-chop!”

“This is not right.” Harry protested.  “You said you just wanted to ask her questions. We have to wake her up.”

“In the current climate anything could happen to her.  She is a damsel in distress Harry, be a hero and grab her there’s a good boy.”

He shuffled his feet. “There is bad Karma here.”

“Nonsense. Think of the bigger picture, there’s a good boy!  Chop-chop, we have not got all day!”

“Yes Aunty.” He submitted, knowing there was never any point in arguing with this woman. He picked Hak up with ease, swinging her body over his broad athletic shoulder.  “Sorry Aunty.”  He said, following her out of the apartment.

ambition and it's consequences

There comes a time in everyone’s life when it is time to leave the nest, cut free of the noose of the apron strings and stretch out into the world. In supportive environments we are all encouraged make our lives our own, seek our fortunes and face the world with individual resolve.

However, as Oscar Wilde outlined in his short essay the Soul of Man under Socialism, “The recognition of private property has really harmed individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought the important thing was to have and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is…What man really has is what is in him, what is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.”

Has striving for wealth, as Wilde suggested, left us poor when it comes to discovering our own personal riches? Everywhere man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chain stores?

Ambition is by definition “a desire for achievement or distinction, and the willingness to strive for its attainment.” We all want something out of life, be it happiness, family, promotion or the winning lottery numbers. No matter how many times we hear that life is a journey, we all seek the destinations; is there not enough beauty in a rainbow without (the need of the reward of) a pot of gold at the end?

Must all work be ambitious – do all singers need to be signed to make the most out of their voice?

There are many positive qualities in the determined and ambitious, they can effect great and everlasting change in the world, as the American anthropologist Margaret Mead famously said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

Determination, persistence and a refusal to let anyone stand in the way of what you hope to achieve are virtuous (and enviable) qualities.  We’ve all watched Dragon’s Den, and it cannot be denied that individuals who excel in the business domain are extremely impressive figures. Lucky is not a word the highly successful even consider, unless in reference to self-made luck, and there is something to deeply admire about a person that takes this kind of responsibility for their lives. 

But is it not time that we, in the west, stopped worshipping money and those who have it? Is it not time we came a little more imaginative with our ambition? I am tired of the fad’s and books, especially in the ‘self help’ (help your-self) market, encouraging readers to think themselves rich, manifest themselves swimming pools and create the perfect world for them.

For the world to be perfect, it has to be so for everybody.

Because, when we consider the qualities evident in the corporate structures of our worlds, there is far less to admire, especially when the ambitious/ greed driven trading habits of companies such as Exxon Mobil, BP, and Royal Dutch Shell literally rape the world of it’s environment to feed the consumer lust of the west.

Wal-Mart is the world’s top earning company, netting $12,011.64 a second, and scooping a revenue of $378,799,000,000 per year, higher than the GDP of most South American countries. And they say there is a shortage in this world?

They are correct: that shortage comes in failing to recognize the true power of the consumer/ individual human being.  These companies would have zero profit if we all stopped buying their product. There are more of us than them. This is our world, not theirs.

We have the power, we make the choice, and if everyone in the world decided tomorrow that they were never going to buy another item from Wal-Mart (they own everything pretty much, so this in itself would be revolutionary) that company would be ended quick-smart!

And the same goes for BP.

It is becoming very evident from recent environmental disasters, such as the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, that Earth can no longer sustain the west and it’s greed whilst maintaining a healthy eco-system for the rest of the our planets occupants.

One has to go.

We really need to decide soon.

“Don’t imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot.” Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man under Socialism.

in love

It was Oscar Wilde who once said that he had never fallen in love, but had slipped in it a few times.”

But there seems to be two kinds of love. There is the spiritual, heavenly love that is synonymous with a connection to god and the divine. And there is the more mundane love, which we experience in relationship to one another.

Is love really all we need?

The ancient Hebrews did not have separate figures to represent numbers, so they used letters of their alphabet.  As Donald Michael Kraig explains in Modern Magick: “It was believed that if two words had the same numerical total, they had a significant relationship to one another, and in some cases could be considered synonyms. As an example, aheva=13 and echod=13. Therefore aheva (love) and echod (one) are the same. Since in Judaism there is only one God, according to this system, God is Love.”

The Hebrew language is attested from the 10th Century BCE, and later developed into Mishnaic Hebrew (200CE), the Hebrew dialects found in the Talmud (meaning instruction, learning) the central text of mainstream Judaism. If folks then realized that there is a connection between one and all, and this connection was benevolent, how did we go so very wrong?

 “When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away...”

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

There are many different kinds of relationships, the degrees of closeness of which are separated by the act of sex (usually).  Your closest partner is the one you have sex with and your closest friends are the ones you would never have sex with (somehow it is believed by many that sex ruins friendship, which really says very little for sexual relationships.) And not least, all families are related and created through the act of sexual intercourse. As well as connecting, sex conditions.

In the west, monogamy is the accepted form of relationship, all other forms somehow dismissed as dysfunctional or loose.

But monogamy has its dysfunctions too. When was the last time you expected a friend to be faithful? You simply assume they are faithful, or you would not be their friend. If your friends did not share their lives with others, would you not worry about them?

Why is it not so with lovers? 

“Marriage requires a special talent, like acting. Monogamy requires genius.” Warren Beatty

The expression “falling in love” underlines a (mostly unconscious) human belief that we are all walking around the planet completely unaffected by loves gravity, unless serendipity slips a banana skin under our feet.  In truth I believe we waste the idea of love whenever considering the notion that there might be only one other we could share it with. 

We do our selves no service in giving credit to romantic ideals of knights in shining armour or princesses in ivory towers promising happy ever afters. Our priorities in life always change if we grow: I used to fancy Michael J Fox when I was 14, now short-arsed time travellers just don’t do it for me somehow.

So who is to say the one that I meet in my thirties, is going to be the one that suits me in my fifties, or vice versa? I may have three children, with two different men, why should I be judged as being promiscuous simply because of the way I choose to form and maintain relationships? If I look after my children and their spiritual, physical and emotional needs, why should I not have 15 of them from all different nations? Is this not what love would support?

I do respect those who choose to form lasting relationships; I am by no means anti-loving.  But, if as the ancient Hebrew’s proposed, one and love equates the same thing, then I am by default love, and there is no need to fall in with anyone else.

be a rebel

We all have the choice of conforming or not conforming to the world at large.  We admire and write songs about those who think for themselves, who do it their way, who balk at tradition and the safest path.  Yet it takes real courage to stand up for what we believe in, if it contradicts what our “community” has taught us is right and set in stone.

“The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.”  Colin Wilson

Those decree authority do so by making rules, and they serve their power by ensuring that these rules never change. They become law or fact. Those who try to break the rules are either sinners or criminals. Very few people have the courage and ability to fight the law, and win. Especially when it is decreed that this is God’s Law.

How differently would people feel about their lives if they believed God did not care about human issues? Would the need for war not crumble if everyone believed that God only cared about you being a happy and loving individual?

“Nature made us individuals, as she did the flowers and the pebbles; but we are afraid to be peculiar, and so our society resembles a bag of marbles, or a string of mold candles.  Why should we all dress after the same fashion?  The frost never paints my windows twice alike.” Lydia Maria Child

A child’s first word is rarely God, although it is as easy to say as Mum or Dad. God is a word taught to a child much later on, and in many communities, that child would be punished and rejected if they did not believe in this word exactly as they were taught to.

But each generation born has a duty to challenge the generation before it, yet we all crave and need acceptance. No man is an island. We are conditioned with and by the expectations of others.  We are told to modify our behaviour to their standards, and warned that failure to behave ourselves will end in punishment or isolation.

“The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you except yourself.” Rita Mae Brown, Venus Envy

If you do something your mother or father approves of, you will be rewarded with love. If you do something your peer group approves of, you will be rewarded with acceptance.  Very rarely are we encouraged to be our selves.

But the history books are crammed with rebels, individuals who had the nerve to serve their own belief to the letter, even if it meant death and torture. Many men and women fought against the popular ideas of the time because what they believed in was far more important to them than public acceptance.

Darwin took a risk saying evolution may have had an important part to play in the human race being what it is today. Nowadays it is ridiculous to think anything else, we are evolved. But if someone challenged Darwin’s theories, they would have just as much a fight on their hands today in the scientific community as he did in his day. Is that really evolution?

“Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities.  The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary.” Albert Einstein

Think of the work of Gandhi, who believed the British had no right to India or South Africa, and fully believed that the way to take back these lands for the people was to be done non-violently. There is a reason people talk about him still. Dr Martin Luther King had a similar dream that was to uproot the belief that African Americans were less important citizens than Americans of European origins. Again, he believed that the way to do this was through non-violence.

Both died violently at the hands of their own people, but I truly believe neither would have changed a thing about their lives, even if they had known how they were going to end. Why? I think it was more important for them to listen to the beat of their own drummer, than to dance to the tune of status quo of their time. As Doug Floyd pointed out, “You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note.”

We all have this important decision to make for ourselves, and most of those important decisions require challenging our own personal beliefs. Whatever people tell you might be right for them; they can never know with absolute certainty what is right for you. Courage is saying no to the authority, when you know the only authority that matters is the authority you have over your own life and freedoms.

“Read, every day, something no one else is reading.  Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.  Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do.  It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.” Christopher Morley

intuition

The word 'intuition' comes from the Latin word 'intueri', which is roughly translated as meaning 'to look inside’ or 'to contemplate', and is defined by dictionary.com as, pure, untaught non-inferential knowledge – which is why I like to call it inner tuition.

But where does this come from? Jung defined intuition as "perception via the unconscious", (the source of higher knowledge, or infinite intelligence, that we are all somehow connected to. According to Jung, the Ego (the "I" or self-conscious faculty) has four different fundamental ways of perceiving and interpreting reality, and two ways of responding to it. They are: Sensation, Thinking, Feeling, and Intuition; thinking is the opposite of Feeling, and Sensation the opposite of Intuition.

According to Jung, if a person has a highly developed Thinking function (an analytical "head"), the Feeling function (the empathetic, value-based  "heart") will be correspondingly underdeveloped, and in some cases suppressed.  The same goes for Sensation and Intuition.  Sensation is orientation "outward" to physical reality, and Intuition "inward" to psychic reality.”(Is there a psychic reality?)

Jung is also famous for coining the terms extraversion and introversion as a way of describing the diametric oppositions within an individuals responses to the world; the extravert being orientated out to the physical, the introvert orientated in to the psychic.

 An introverted-sensation type, such as an artist, experiences the physical world (sensation) from the perspective of the psychic or inner consciousness (introversion). Whereas, extroverted-intuition types, which Jung categorizes as most clairvoyants and psychics and even entrepreneurs who are able to see opportunity without evidence and experience revelations (intuition) that they can easily convey to others at the social (extrovert) or interpersonal level.  

In other words, “A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Is there any difference between imagination and intuition? It seems both bestow us with the gifts of foresight, is intuition not simply the guidance system of the imagination?

There is a passage in Conversations with God when Neale Donald Walsh asks: “How do I know I am talking to God? How do I know this is not just my imagination?”

And the answer came: “What would be the difference?”

A beautiful thought is that if god and imagination are synonymous, daydreaming is Holy. I wish I had worked this out in the classroom as a child, it would have answered my boring teachers demands to pay attention perfectly. 

Do we all, as Madeleine L’Engle said, have to move into a slow intellectual acceptance of what our intuition has always known? As Jung outlined, the greatest opposition to our intuition is our perception of what is actual - sensation. We can easily talk ourselves into or out of anything, given the right frame of mind.

But scientists who have made the most important breakthroughs’ in their field have all needed to follow hunches to make the discoveries they have. “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein.

For most of us, dreams are the most important source of intuitive guidance, according to many psychologists this is due to us being in a more receptive state to our unconscious pulls when we are sleeping. Timothy Freke, in his illuminating essay Lucid Living, proposes that all life is a dream (hardly a new idea) and we are the dreamers; each of us with a whole dream world existing within us.  

The world, according to Freke, is not an outer experience, but an inner one. “Knowing you are dreaming is the secret of enjoying the dream.” He calls on his readers to enter an ultra-awake state called lucid living, where we can awaken from the “sleeping sickness” that keeps your unconscious in a “life dream.”

Or as Eileen Caddy put it, “cease trying to work everything out with your minds. It will get you nowhere. Live by intuition and inspiration and let your whole life be Revelation.”

Is our intuition proof that there is a benevolent force somehow steering our path, one that cannot be defined by reason? It is a question I rarely stop asking myself. Every step we take in this world, we take with our mind first. But are we co-creating with a divine hand? Is trust in what we cannot see more important than a faith in what we can?

the atheists faith

As far as we know, we are the only animals in this kingdom to have faith in a god.

It would be bizarre to see a lion give up his instinct and instead, put all of his trust in an idea he never had for himself in the first place, in the hope that all would work out well for his pride.  It would be even more bizarre if he then began to convert other lions to his faith, threatening them all with certain hell if they did not.

It would never happen, lions are too busy living (and not nearly as gullible as we are!). All creatures have instinct and demonstrate a willingness to follow that instinct. Instinct is the keeper of survival, and survival is the guardian of life.

All of us are born with built-in internal guidance system that warns us against burning, getting hit by buses, falling into rivers etc. We sense a multitude of dangers with our gut reactions, and we never have to learn these skills, they naturally develop (with supportive guidance, of course). We are born with instinct hot-wired into our bodies; just like animals we have built-in fight or flight mechanisms.

But where human beings differ from the rest of the animal kingdom, is we are the only creatures that believe having faith (again, as far as we know) will get us home safely.  Does a rabbit prey that it’s hunter won’t catch it? If a rabbit manages to run free, does it thank god?

To have faith is to have confidence or trust in an outcome, but often faith stems from a belief that is not based on proof nor substantiated in anyway by evidence.  How is it possible to have confidence in something that cannot possibly be proved? There is simply no way of knowing whether things will work out well in the end, or whether or not faith makes one bit of difference. 

It is possibly “nicer” and securing to think things will work out well, but as Voltaire put it “faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.”

Does it actually serve us to have faith?

Faith has become synonymous with religion, (religions have been referred to as faiths since the late 13^th century.)  All of the major religions pretty much agree on the fundamental idea of there being one god, and if it were not for the slight differences in their faith, would probably get along very happily.

But because faith cannot be proven it is a very dangerous tool in the wrong hands. Especially when you consider that a suicide bomber is working to prove his/her faith in god, and to slay others who contrast with the practices of their faith.

America, the world’s most visible superpower, is referred to as one nation under god.  Yet hostility from the religious right (due to misguided evangelism) shown to homosexuals, women who have abortions, Jews (endless list) demonstrates yet again how faith divides god’s people.

Is this what god would want? Would the almighty not prefer his flock to be living in faithless peace rather than ripping our selves into dogmatic pieces because of minor differences such as which direction to prey towards and what names to give prophets?

No one knows what god wants, and therefore, no one can judge another.  I think Michelangelo said it best when he said: Faith in oneself is the best and safest course.

There is a saying: let go, let god that I have always loved.  (I interpret this as not referring to the god of the religion, but to god as life itself.)

 To let go is to ride the wild current of life, as we are born with nothing and we die with nothing, so how can there be anything to lose?  The purpose of life is to live.

To let god is to not resist this current, be yourself and allow all that is good about you steer you, to master this process is to be god-like. The more we trust in life, the more faith rewards us with greater and more satisfying experiences. Life is the only god. It has no opposition: death is the opposite of birth. Life encompasses all, put your faith in that.

“As your faith is strengthened you will find that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow with them, to your great delight and benefit. “

Emmanuel Teney

cocaine

I don’t have anything against drugs – some of my best friends use them. There are some drugs I am blatantly for, such as marijuana (I actually share Bill Hicks view, I don’t think they should simply legalize it, I think they should make it mandatory). But there are some drugs I think this world would be a far better, healthier and loving place without, one of which is cocaine.

I have not had a pleasant history with Charlie.

Thankfully I have never been addicted to it, mostly because I think there are far better things to pay through the nose for (and with far less risk of losing your septum.) But I have lost many friends to the sound of the Peruvian drummer’s march, friends that eroded over time into egocentric and thoroughly paranoid shadows of their former selves. 

And so I refuse to be sold another line.

According to Wikipedia:“ Until recently Colombia was the world's leading producer of cocaine. Three-quarters of the world's annual yield of cocaine has been produced in Colombia, both from cocaine base imported from Peru (primarily the Huallaga Valley) and Bolivia, and from locally grown coca. Coca grown for traditional purposes by indigenous communities, a use which is still present and is permitted by Colombian laws, only makes up a small fragment of total coca production, most of which is used for the illegal drug trade.”

South American indigenous people have chewed the leaves of Erythroxylon coca, a plant that contains vital nutrients as well as numerous alkaloids including cocaine, for over a thousand years.  Wikipedia states, “The remains of coca leaves have been found with ancient Peruvian mummies, and pottery from the time period depicts humans with bulged cheeks, indicating the presence of something on which they are chewing.”

The rise in popularity of cocaine in the west is attributed to none other than Sigmund Freud, who, On April 24, 1884, ordered his first gram of cocaine from the local apothecary. It was not to be his last.

Freud had researched into the uses of Cocaine by the German Army to stave off exhaustion, and was believed to purchase the drug in order to help patients with nervous disorders. Like most people who purchase their first gram of coke it cost him a small fortune, one-tenth of his monthly salary. He developed a cocaine habit that he bragged about in letters to his lover and friends, one that would have shamed Elton John in his heydays.

It was through his acquaintance with an eye surgeon named Carl Koller that cocaine became widely used in the medical community. Koller and Freud became coke buddies (Freud pushed the drug on everyone, including his fiancés parents), and they dosed up regularly together doing a variety of medical experiments on themselves.

At the time Koller was looking for an aneasthetic to use on his patients during eye surgery, and found his answer when he realized the numbing effects the drug had.  After the first successful treatment of a patient using cocaine, Koller sent a buzz through the scientific community and by the late 1800s more than half the medical community had developed coke habits.

William Halstead, a founding father of the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore developed a hefty two-gram a day habit injecting nerves, he eventually switched to morphine in an effort to cure his cocaine addiction and died an opiate junkie. And they say ignorance is bliss.

But it was not only the scientific community that found the addictive pull of cocaine too difficult to turn their noses up at. Cocaine products started flooding the market in the 1800’s in the form of lozenges and pastilles, elixirs and pills.

Cocaine wine was first sold in Europe under the name of Vin Mariani, named after its creator Angelo Mariani in 1860. In the US John Styth Pemberton brought out his own version of the drink in 1881. He was moderately successful, but in 1885, Atlanta banned the sale of alcohol. Pemberton changed the recipe, took out the alcohol, and sold his new drink under the name Coca-Cola.  He didn’t make a penny, so sold the entire operation to Asa Griggs Candler for $2,300

 Candler launched the new drink in 1886 as "a valuable brain-tonic and cure for all nervous afflictions" and promoted it as a temperance drink "offering the virtues of coca without the vices of alcohol". The new beverage was invigorating and popular. Until 1903, a typical serving contained around 60mg of cocaine.

This may seem unbelievable, but according to cocaine.org, “until 1916, one could buy it at Harrods a kit labeled "A Welcome Present for Friends at the Front" which contained cocaine, morphine, syringes and spare needles. Prospective buyers were advised - in the words of pharmaceutical firm Parke-Davis - that cocaine "could make the coward brave, the silent eloquent, and render the sufferer insensitive to pain".” How times have changed.

In 1912 the US Government published a report stating that 5’000 people had died in one year due to opium and cocaine abuse. Three years later in March 1915, The Harrison Narcotic Tax Act was passed to regulate and tax opium, heroine, and cocaine. The act outlawed the sale and distribution of cocaine in the United States, however the sale and use of cocaine was still legal for registered companies and individuals. Cocaine was not considered a controlled substance in the United States until 1970, when it was listed in the Controlled Substances Act.

Today, America is by far the world’s largest consumer of cocaine, it was estimated that the market fetched $70 billion in street value in 1995 alone, far exceeding revenues of Starbucks that year.

There is a tremendous demand for cocaine in the west, it is rife in the party scene, synonymous with certain professions, and since the 80’s, has become the rich mans luxury. Cocaine is a symbol of expendable income, and therefore holds status. But there is one oxymoron I have always had trouble with; there is nothing pure about cocaine.

First, lets consider the process it has to go through to get from leaf to baggie.  An interview with a coca farmer published in 2003 described how cocaine was produced by acid-base extraction by methods that have changed little since 1905.

“Roughly 625 pounds of leaves were harvested per hectare, six times per year. The leaves were dried for half a day, then chopped into small pieces with a strimmer and sprinkled with a small amount of powdered cement (replacing sodium carbonate from former times). Several hundred pounds of this mixture was soaked in 50 US gallons (190 L) of gasoline for a day, then the gasoline was removed and the leaves were pressed for remaining liquid, after which they could be discarded. Then battery acid (weak sulfuric acid) was used, one bucket per 25 kilograms of leaves, to create a phase separation in which the cocaine free base in the gasoline was acidified and extracted into a few buckets of "murky-looking smelly liquid". Once powdered caustic soda was added to this, the cocaine precipitated and could be removed by filtration through a cloth.”

Is there anything pure about this process?

In 2010 Peru surpassed Columbia as the world’s foremost supplier of Cocaine.  Since Columbia was targeted as part of the US War on Drugs initiative, between 2000 and 2010 cocaine production was reduced by 60%. Coincidentally, the level of drug-related violence halved in those ten years, moving Columbia from being the most violent country in the world, to having a homicide rate that is inferior to Venezuela.

The countries of drug production have been seen as the worst affected by prohibition. “Ecuador is thought to have absorbed up to 300,000 refugees from Colombia who are still running from guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug lords,” says Linda Helfrich. “While some applied for asylum, others are still illegal, and the drugs that pass from Colombia through Ecuador to other parts of South America create economic and social problems.”

Is there anything pure about what the effect of purchasing cocaine does to others lives?

A report by the UK government's drug strategy unit stated that “due to the expensive price of highly addictive drugs heroin and cocaine, that drug use was responsible for the great majority of crime, including 85% for shoplifting, 70-80% of burglaries and 54% of robberies. The cost of crime committed to support illegal cocaine and heroin habits amounts to £16 billion a year in the UK.”

Is there anything pure about any of these statistics?

Let us just be honest. When we purchase cocaine we soil an ancient tradition, held sacred by our ancestors. We support one of the worst examples of fair trade ever known to man. We condone the brutality of organized crime, drug lords, and the displacement of thousands upon thousands of people who would have homes, if not for our need for luxury. Why? Because everyone falls for a line…

If this is purity, give me dirt.