6. Cannabis-and-God
A wonderful thing about cannabis is its capacity to help you probe those great mysteries of life, like what people did before toilet paper was invented, why hospitals are full of sick people, and if there is a creator of it all, what is she/he/it/them (acronym “shit” for short) like, and should we care? Let’s dive-into some territory where even some philosophers are afraid to travel. In the spirit of boldly-going, let’s not formalize this investigation too much, and instead just “ramble” through some ideas and their implications in an unstructured, cannabis-driven, way (i.e. blurt-out in a stream-of-consciousness the first thoughts that enter your head).
The first insight cannabis gives are to question some old assumptions, see if they hold-up, and if they don’t, try some different assumptions and see of they hold-up. The big assumption from many religions is that there is a god or gods, and it-or-they must be pretty awe-inspiring. They are the bringers of war, famine, human understanding and compassion and the like. Whatever their “skills”. it is assumed they have a lot of power, influence and intelligence, even an infinite amount. What if this assumption is partially wrong? Yes, they may have powers, but they might be as thick-as-shit, have the compassion of a warble-fly, or the wisdom of a Big-Mac.
What are the implications of a deity which falls-short of human capabilities in some area? Well, I think this means the human race could be quite proud of itself as it could outperform God in those areas. In fact, we might be able to team-up with God to help shore-up its weak points. So, there ought to be two-way traffic of advice-and-support, the traditional God-to-us, but also us-to-God. During communication, perhaps through prayer, we could ask God how we can help it. I quite like this idea; just because something is bigger than us, we don’t have to be in awe of it. If God is sensible, it could learn a thing-or-two and be a little modest about it.
This causes me to focus on how we best communicate with God. Prayer is the traditional channel, but it has never worked for me. I’ve tried mentally hooking-up with any passing deity, or alien civilization, but failed miserably to make contact. In answer to my question “is there anybody there?” all I get is a resounding “No” (the logician in me finds this far more fun than Russel’s paradox). Certain individuals claim to be able to do this (priests, prophets holy-Joes etc.), and I’ve no doubt of their sincerity. My late great-uncle Ernie used to communicate regularly with fairies at the bottom of his garden, but that was mostly when he stopped using his medication. But I’m open to those with more skills in this area, even though it doesn’t work for me – perhaps I’m the outlier?
Where else can we interact with God? Is he there in Albert-Heijn, lurking between the bakery and the fruit section? An old man with a long white beard looking confused and disappointed, needing to talk to someone? I keep looking, but can’t seem to find him/her/it, but not for want of trying. If not at Albert-Heijn, then where? On the internet, or perhaps one of the pamphlet wielding followers of Christian sects such as the watch-tower or evangelical happy-clappers. Which reminds me I was once woken-up on a Sunday morning with a category-five headache by the evangelical church opposite my budget-hotel in Brussels. I should have been there like a rabbit, catching God as he visited instead of diving under the covers and waiting-it-out. A missed opportunity. In tennis terms this was fifteen-love to Satan.
I’ve had a few of other missed-opportunities like this. I and my partner Marvella were once a bit early when meeting-up with a cannabis dealer in north London. To kill time, we dived into what we thought was a Weatherspoon’s pub, but after a somewhat confused conversation with a well-dressed bouncer on the door, discovered this disused cinema was now the centre of another evangelical church. If God had directed us to meet him as the Christian bouncer assumed, we were a big disappointed, as we found a traditional pub instead where we talked with the Arsenal fans before a big home-match. Thirty-love to Satan.
Another occasion God came knocking but Satan answered, was observing Christians annotating the old-testament. I first saw this on the morning flight between Belfast and London where all the Northern-Irish MPs were sprinkled around me in business-class. Diagonally opposite on the isle-seat was the reverend Ian-Paisley busily making notes on the margins of the bible, presumably preparing for a sermon. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make out which books and verses he was making notes against, and I was a little too timid to ask.
A similar thing happened a few years later on the high-speed-train between Brussels and Amsterdam. A group of young Americans were chatting excitedly amongst themselves about coffee-shops and the like, while one of them was doing exactly what the good reverend was doing. I twigged, they were probably from an evangelist sect, Mormons or some similar group. The difference was the annotation was being done in green-ink. Green-ink “ye-Gods”. Didn’t anyone tell them that the only people who use green ink are the head of MI5 (the infamous “C”), and residents of secure mental asylums? (this is supposedly to alert readers to this if they receive unsolicited letters). Again, I could not make out which books and verses they were highlighting, but they were adamant the “true-meaning” had to be established. Forty-love to Satan.
Yet another missed opportunity was in Canterbury-Cathedral. After the tour we were dumped in the Cathedral shop, in a fairly “relaxed” state (i.e. stoned). There to greet us were three teddy-bears dressed up in full clerical-gear; the archbishops of Canterbury, York and Winchester (I am not making this up). Sixty pounds for one, one-hundred-and-fifty for the three, a discount of thirty pounds. That sounded very reasonable, and I was just pulling out my Amex card before Marvella gave me one of her looks, and suggested this may not be good value-for-money. She was right of course. Game to Satan.
Thought incoming. Do you have to endure this sort of thing with other religions, or is it just Christianity with its merchandizing and in times past the selling of indulgencies etc? What does my favourite sect, the sisters-of-Perpetual-Indulgence, make of all this? Does Shia-Islam attempt to sell you teddy-bears of the Ayatollah-Khamenei? I think not. Does Buddhism sell you the head of the Buddha? Oh, I just remember it does. There was/is a shop in Harlem (the Netherlands version) that sold nothing else. The largest by the door stood two metres high and would take a fork-lift to move. Don’t you just love the Dutch?
The last occasion was when I was staying at the Vatican (as you do). It was actually a posh hotel in the Vatican-City I used to use, and as I checked-out was informed the Pope was just about to address the throng. Did I take a few minutes to join the crowd and take a look around? No, I didn’t; another missed opportunity, but at least I was nice-and-early at the airport. I wish I had stayed now, but the lure of the plane back to Amsterdam and its coffee shops was too great. Perhaps in tennis terms these missed opportunities equate to game-and-set to Satan.
I’ve just remembered one other time Satan distracted me from approaching God – the whole of my schooling and its’ appalling religiosity (Question: how could I’ve forgotten that? Answer: with great difficulty, but eventual success). I was sent to a British minor private-school with a military focus. A contemporary ended-up heading the British armed-forces (have you noticed all these UK military types have rosy-red-cheeks – too much time with a G&T in the officer’s mess?). It was awful; all cold-showers and buggery as described by the writer Tom Sharpe. I find “bugger” one of those magic words, like “mellifluous” or “effervescent”. I always remember my maternal-grandmother playing snap with me, and as she intentionally lost exclaiming, “Well, I’ll be buggered”. Personally, instead of the future-perfect tense I prefer the simple-past, as in “I’m buggered”, particularly if spoken in a broad Australian accent.
Thinking about it, I see an opportunity here for one of those late-night talk shows. When they are interviewing their B-list celebrities and politicians, they can pose them the “B” challenge. This is to say on camera “well, I’m buggered” and be marked out of ten by a studio panel, just like those talent shows. Similarly to Eurovision where each act can choose the language they sing in, the B-listers can designated an accent. The default would of course be Australian. At the end of the series the winner could be asked back onto the show to do a reprise, receive their award (a plastic something-or-other), before refocusing on their flagging careers. Everyone happy.
Actually, there wasn’t even any buggery at private-school (that came later), but cold-showers, physical-sports, religious-services the endless exam work, and in the little time remaining the most egregious; you were “expected” to do a t least one character developing hobby, such as playing a musical instrument, archery, community-service, or God forbid, reading books (a cruel-and-unusual punishment!). That was pretty much it. What was a poor tranny supposed to do, but keep sitting bolt-upright when all four-hundred-and-fifty boys and thirty “masters” were on their knees praying. Dumb -insolence (thankyou Clive James).
School-holidays didn’t bring me any closer to God either. I was brought=up in a rural part of Essex; all fields, trees, country-lanes, live-stock, tractors etc. Could I see God’s hand in any of these? Of course not; have you any idea how boring-and-tedious the country is. Take trees. They’re big green things, do I really have to know the names of them all (I still don’t)? I’d hardly detect God under these circumstances. And livestock? Do you know the only interesting thing about sheep? The only interesting thing about sheep is there is nothing interesting about sheep (another paradox). Why on earth did the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh bother cloning Dolly the sheep? They could have spent their time more productively cloning a brick.
I’ve chilled-out a lot now and can see beauty in the countryside, both in Essex and around the world (I love Japan). But spending more than a few days there is not my thing, and I still don’t feel any divine presence there. When I recently had to visit the town nearest the village of my youth, the newsagent there proudly stocked “Classic-Tractor” magazine alongside the latest edition of “Plant-Hire-Monthly”– I make my point. Game-set-and-match to Satan then! Actually, tennis is another of those bloody-silly games alongside golf and cricket. The only good thing about it was by choosing to do it at school instead of team sports, I could bunk-off-early and squeeze-in a smoke behind the bike-sheds. And another thing…
Sorry, I’m ranting. I’ve been diagnosed with Sinister-Rabia, (colloquially known as left-ranters-syndrome), a rarer-and-harder to treat variant of the more common Dexter-Rabia (right-ranters-syndrome). Actually, after feeling a little stressed I say my UK doctor. After explaining I had set-up a successful international supply-chain company based in Amsterdam, with fortune-five-hundred clients alongside all the top consultancies, he diagnosed me according to the DSM-IV manual with bipolar-disorder comorbid with NPD (narcissistic personality disorder). Strangely, when I showed him a video of me lecturing to Infosys in their Bangalore HQ, he changed his diagnosis to Sinister-Rabia, and passed me on to my current internet doctor, Sidney “Snake-Oil” Sidewinder MD, from the lower-Manhattan reservation of the Semolina first-nations tribe.
Doctor Sidewinder combines main-stream medication for this ailment (SSRIs) together with tribal-medicine (the flowers of the Datura plant). He grinds these together, blesses the mix, fills an old-aspirin bottle with it before FedExing it to me. When I realize I’m ranting, I eat some of the mix (even though I’m supposed to snort-it), and it works pretty quickly. So, my advice if you share this debilitating condition, avoid trigger situations such as saloon-bars and talking politics, and always take the above mix with you.
Talking about Satan, let’s investigate her/him/it. I’ve always thought Satan was quite a homey-sounding word. God seems too big and distant, but Satan seems quite approachable; the sort of entity you could have a really good discussion with in the saloon-bar. When the ayatollahs of Iran rant about the US and the UK, it always generates within me a certain sense of pride as they describe the US as the great-Satan (tel. 001-202-666-0666), and the UK (tel. 0044-020-0666-0666) is described as its junior-partner, the little-Satan. A kind of evil double-act. If we are annoying Iran, Russia and the like so much, then we must be doing something right.
Why has Satan had such a negative press? Does he/she/it not provide a counter-balance to the goody-two-shoes of God? For instance, why was God so down-beat on Sodom-and-Gomorrah? I mean, who doesn’t appreciate a little sodomy now-and-then? The late Ian Paisley once had a campaign strap-line “Save Ulster from Sodomy”, which only stoked interest into the sex-lives of the people from the North of Ireland. I have to admit its quite a “cool” line, better than “Save Ulster from Gomorrahy”, but we don’t quite know what that avoids. I find this most distressing; if we know what went on in Sodom, why not in Gomorrah? Classical scholars; do your research and enlighten us.
Armed with that information, we may be able to make a positive contribution to the political problems in the Middle-East. The Olympic games was resurrected after two-thousand-years to successfully bring countries and peoples together. We could rebuild Sodom and Gomorrah as tourist-resorts on the shores of the Dead-Sea, where the “peoples of the text” (Jews, Christians and Muslims) could all chill-out before visiting their respective holy-places. Expertise could be bought in from the good-burgers of Las Vegas, and the original archaeological sites of the two “smitten” cities could be lit-up at night by lasers. A long weekend in New-Sodom could become as common as visiting that desert town, and help the local economies no-end.
I guess I’m just not a religious person. I’m not that artistic either, but I found using cannabis allowed me to tune-in to art. I’ve tried doing the same with God, but it just doesn’t work for me. The more I try to “get” God, the more bemused I am by the whole thing. Undoubtedly people I’ve met, and even a past business partner of mine, had/have a very strong and personal relationship with God. But this shouldn’t be a reason to give-up on God. If you are not predisposed to religiosity, you can still use, and should use, your rationality to “plug” this gap. Which is what I suppose I’m doing here.
Putting my rational hat on, what might a God be doing, and in particular with reference to us-lot – i.e. humanity? I think I can just about see a divine-entity setting things up in such a way to see if we humans choose lightness over darkness, good over evil, vanilla-flavour over strawberry-flavour. This last taste analogy is not just a cheeky analogy, its central. What is good? Is good for me good for you? Is evil for me evil for you? I’m not talking about psychopathy here where a few individuals obviously have no hard-wired sense of this, but fairly practical stuff, like sex.
What is it with western type religions that see sex, and particularly adventurous sex, as works of the devil? Is a western God just very prudish? If so, I think the problem is with God, not with us. If he/she/it sends pestilence and destruction on fun sounding places like Sodom and Gomorrah, surely, he/she/it needs some urgent counselling. I’m not suggesting an immediate sectioning, but this violent behaviour does need to be confronted. Anger management via kind of talking therapy should be tried first, and then perhaps some treatment.
I remember some therapy interventions where people with sexual hang-ups have their phobias talked through before being given a little shot of cocaine or something similar. I think this is an excellent idea, and would happily volunteer to safety-test this approach before convincing God to accede to treatment. Only if he/she/it refuses treatment should a section order be issued, and my dear friend Bellevue-Bruce let-loose on in a hight-security environment.
What about non-western religions and Gods. I don’t know much about these, but coming from Essex, I don’t see this as a hold-back when considering this. I quite like the idea of God being a bit like us, either more developed, or retarded in some way, but still accessible. But what about a God that coopts us into its perfect vision? An eastern God where we improve ourselves according to a perception of perfection we cannot access. How do I know I’m doing well and contributing to the big plan if I’m not let-in on the secret? If I’m expected to sit cross-legged on top of a mountain repeating mantras and contributing to a perfect universe and our place in it, isn’t it only fair God explains things a little, i.e. be understandable and understood?
If I’m a cog in a perfection machine, I’d like to know my function. I’d be happy to put the effort in, help God out to achieve its goals, but informed consent would be nice. I’d like to be able to opt-out if I didn’t agree with the plan or it just not being right for me. Being an old hippy what’s wrong in smoking dope and not doing very much at all; not much good, not much bad, not much anything, but quite enjoyable. Why does God have to be so committed, and is it right to assume that all individuals should share this enthusiasm? No, it isn’t right. Give us a choice and lighten-up. Informed consent, that’s what I say. Not everyone can “do-a-Kant” and maximize our consciousness. Not everyone wants to. We are all different, and there may be a good reason for that.
By-the-way, I just got you-tubed by a video on Dante and reckon with all the above I’ve only reached level-seven in his hell-inferno (insulting God). I was hoping to get all the way to level-nine, the deepest level of hell. Which brings me back to Christianity, my favourite religion. In it there’s a strong sense of doing good and lessening evil. I’m all for this, seriously, I am. But I’m not sure you are ever going to arrive at a universally understood and accepted definition of these terms. The obvious thing that needs pointing-out here is that you don’t need a God to define them. Philosophers and others have, and are trying, to do this, and I wish them well. What if there is no point to any of this (existential-nihilism – I love that phrase), a teleological mirage? Good, evil, the search for good or evil, the idea of anything to be maximized or minimized, or any particular end-state being reached, is the case? Why all the hassle then? We have humans on one side, the universe on the other, occupying well, different universes. How did this come about? What meaningless process could have possibly generated humans (and others) that see and seek meaning, whether through insights into God or into man, or insights into the universe via science or philosophy? (e.g. a theory-of-everything that boils-down to a single goal such as maximize the number-of-black-holes, or maximizing the rate of entropy increase via whatever mechanism, including human). There is a candidate process; Wallace and Gromit’s (sorry, Darwin’s) theory of evolution by natural-selection.
Evolution does seem to have delivered complex organisms such as ourselves with hard-wired attributes such as compassion, joy, hatred, naughtiness, doing good and bad, and not as zombie-automatons (with the exception of amoeba, ants and the like). This is David Chalmers’ hard-problem. Putting my math’s-hat on, in advanced game-theory a hard-wiring of trust would help deliver better results than rational arguments (e.g. the prisoner’s dilemma). So, it’s not impossible these qualia (mental experiences) are at least tolerated by evolution, if not preferentially selected-for. And God? God may be a complex/sophisticated quale too (single form of qualia, the mental thingy, not the mis-spelt bird)!
How would this work? After intense discussions with another quale (Little-Bear, our teddy), I decided to put it in a slightly neuro-science way. Brains can’t interact directly with other brains, so we build a careful-and-complex model of each human we know in our brain. By receiving indirect feedback via their behavioural input, we update the model. Evolution has been very good at this.
For a social animal like ourselves the biggest threats and benefits do not come from the physical world, but from the closest people around us – family, workmates, teachers, enemies etc.). If we have the hard-wired ability to successfully assign models to people, why not pets, animals, forests, rivers, Gods, and yes, even teddy-bears). The propensity-and-ability to do this (theory-of-mind), differs greatly by individual, and this could also be differentially selected for. Not everyone needs to be a warrior, a thinker a breeder or a dreamer. With practice I’ve got better at understanding others, and recommend we all try more.
Yes, there can be, and I believe is, local meaning and purpose in a pointless universe. God is alive and well, but is not safely at some distance “out-there”, but is already hard-wired into our brains. Scary or what?