When you die...

The atheist can see the psychological, emotional perversion of the religious. The atheist can see the silliness of their minds. The religious want so badly to have a sense of control, a sense of order which makes for a sense of security; so they will make up explanations that contain controlling ideas, comforting ideas, structure and comfort for a bunch of lost sheep. And that is what they are, lost sheep. The feelings of insecurity that we all can feel in this mysterious universe seem to make humans gravitate towards the perceived comfort religion offers. Then people end up in self delusion in order to keep buying into the weird things they are asked to believe by their religion.

It is silly, kind of pathetic.

That is why the above image is nice. It's a funny and cheerful way to look at the dismal reality described above.

If I were going to make up a story and brainwash myself into believing it I would choose the one that simply involves dying and seeing all your old dogs run towards you to say "hi". That is a nice idea.

And it's a hell of a lot nicer than ideas that involve holy wars, slavery, genocide, oppression of women, suppression of certain ethnicities, and really diabolical inventions for human suffering.

Photo from http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Feds to Stop Blowing Money Raiding Cannabis Gardens

Eventually the hemp plant will be restored back to it's respectable natural spot in the world. It won't be feared or hated, or abused forever. Humanity will eventually return to reason and clear thinking on this issue and begin to embrace the plants many wonderful benefits. The hemp plant has been grotesquely abused for a long time, since around the 1930's. But it's not the kind of abuse some might think of. Cannabis has been abused by law makers who have fought the plant out of American society and then consequently by the "bad guys" who manufacture and deal the weed in violent, trouble causing types of ways.

So if hemp is so great then why is it illegal? Why the war on drugs? Money was of course the original motive for the prohibition/abuse of marijuana. William Randolph Hearst (the guy portrayed in "Citizen Cane" was both a politician and a big newspaper, timber and paper industry man). Jack Herer and others believe he intentionally created the marijuana prohibition to better his business. Hemp was about to be a billion dollar plant and would have hurt Hearst's timber, paper and newspaper businesses. Read more in Herer's book "The Emperor Wears No Clothes". Essentially, the corrupt politicians and business men who fallaciously convinced an entire nation of people that the hemp plant is inherently evil and causes murder, rape and psychosis caused the U.S. to lose a resource that could have had amazing positive benefits on our society's social, psychological, economical, environmental health. It is really a shame.

Here's where the story starts to turn around...fast forward to the U.S. in the year 2009...we've just seen a hopeful sign in that direction with the U.S. Government stating that they have stopped all federal drug raids. Cue wild applause. Much credit goes to our President who is a reasonable enough man to make such a decision.

So full on legalization shouldn't be too far behind. Of course it will be a matter of years and will involve some hard work on the part of the activists but I think there are signs that it will happen much sooner than we had been imagining.

There are more and more public figures showing tolerance for, love for or just the occasional appreciation for cannabis.

Last week Martha Stewart did an entire episode on pot. It was their "pot show", complete with brownies, pot plants and lots of jokes and puns made about pot (the weed kind) as well as pots to cook in and plant in. Martha is kind of a cool lady.

I've heard she doesn't care what people think of her and boy am I glad to find out that she is a kindred spirit at least when it comes to the issue of MaryJane. Glad she is using her place to promote the responsible, healthy, adult use of marijuana.

Autodidact

Autodidact - a self taught person. For me it's feeding your childlike curiosity on your own, in your daily life, all the time. When gaining new knowledge is craved by a person, life can be so much more enjoyable and satisfying. Literally every situation can be an opportunity to find something new out about the world. One only needs to choose to live their life always gathering new data through observation, experimentation and analyzation of things, people and situations that are around them.
Dropping trash off at the dump can be turned into an opportunity to find out all sorts of curious things like "what happens to my trash/recycling after I dump it?". Simply chatting up professionals everywhere you go is an excellent way to learn during ordinary circumstances. When buying a cup of coffee or tea one can ask something about the process of steeping tea, or how an espresso machine works, or whether or not the employee feels like they are making enough to cover living expenses comfortably. Sometimes people wonder how their neighbors business is fairing financially, 'Is his business bringing him good money or is he working crazy hours and still living check to check?' Questions like that retrieve information about how well that particular society treats it's average man. Which leads one into subjects like politics, history, cultural anthropology, psychology, ethics etc. Because these subjects are deliciously interesting and knowledge about them can enhance quality of life, more people ought to be living more commonly in a curious state of mind.

Among the most helpless, dependent of all infants is the human baby. In order to survive they must learn about their world and how to function in it. This is probably why human babies seem to come pre-programmed with a natural, very persistent characteristic of curiosity.

Unfortunately, man kind has invented a system that squashes our natural instinct to learn: compulsory education. All kids start out hungry to find out "what?" and "why?", but this goes away for many of them after years of nearly 40 hour weeks during which they have to sit down, shut up and be told what facts to memorize. They eventually learn that learning isn't fun, it's something mandatory, that doesn't apply to real life. So they learn to get good grades to fill a requirement, not from internal motivation to find out new things.

Too many kids and adults are uninterested in gaining new knowledge. Too many people have a moment in which they may wonder while folding a piece of paper, 'How are trees turned into paper?' but are satisfied to just dismiss the question rather than pursue the answer. Those that actually do google "how paper made" or take a tour of a paper mill or rent a documentary about it do themselves and humanity a favor. It is a fulfilling lifestyle for the individual and is beneficial for humanity because the more thinking people we have on this planet the more likely we are to create societies that work in healthy, happy ways.

For some reason as a kid, adolescent, and a very young adult, school was repugnant to me. I blew school off as much as I could get away with. I blew about 20 grand (of my parents money) going to an expensive University when I didn't have a subject that I wanted to pursue or something I wanted to learn how to do. It wasn't until I dropped out of college and went on a school detox for a while that I started to find my love for learning again. It came back with much gusto. All of my twenties have been spent enjoying the freedom to pursue a subject when I become fascinated with it. A lot of times these subjects are ones that we definitely went over in school but I find that I have zero recollection of the subjects I was taught- even the stuff that I put hours of studying into. It's sometimes frustrating to have to go back and learn the basics that I should already know but things we learn by arbitrary need in a classroom are not truly internalized. It's the knowledge we pick up while motivated by our own desire, and while living in the real world that we can really hang on to.
In this blog I hope to discuss some of those subjects and hope someone will be curious enough to read and discuss here.

-Bonnie

From the Editor

Here is a vague idea of what to expect from this blog. Regular, quick, easy to digest, entertaining, fascinating, thought provoking reads. Philosophies on a variety of current issues in our world, in our cultures. These philosophies are unique because they come from the mind of a human who has little formal education and very poor formal education at that, who is really just a self taught, free thinking*, always learning sort of person.

-Alder

-editor for Free Philosopher

* not necessarily referring to the group of people known as "free thinkers"