Like most of you, i have been spending quite some time hoping for the legalisation of drugs.

More and more, i´m realising that it is not likely to happen very soon and that most of us may not live to ever see it realised.

I see the importance of fighting for a cause. But like, with the issue of climate-change, you may spent time hoping or even fighting for a solution, a climate treaty...but it´s not likely to ever lead to any result and it´s therefore much more usefull to start accepting climate-change and to try to investigate how our lives will be affected by it and how we can adapt.

It may be difficult to accept, but liberal, open-minded people, are a minority all over the world. A very small minority. In most places, the word 'liberal' is being used as synonimous with the word 'perverted'. Open-mindedness is seen by most people as an attitude, hostile towards cultural traditions and therefore as a form of hostility towards anything sacred.

That is something, i don´t think will ever change.

I am more and more starting to see, that as a liberal, i have often felt alone and misunderstood. And that much of my hope for change, has been personally motivated from that angle.

Not that i would want to say that hoping for a climate-treaty or legalisation of drugs is bad or a waste of emotional energy.

What i´m saying is that we should accept the fact that we are in a sense alone and misunderstood and that we should just try to carry this burden of being relatively enlightened beings, compared to most of society.

This will prevent us from getting sucked in heated emotional debates that will not ever result in anything positive anyway.
I think it will in turn, make us, paradoxically, more effective when we decide to engage in some emancipatory struggle.

I think a Bruce Lee quote is relevant.



The person who allows their mind to become like water easily adapts as the vessel of life changes.
The person that holds their mind rigid like a block of wood never feels quite at peace with an ever changing vessel.

In the end however there is no need to either grasp for change nor feel aversion to reality.
The cosmos will ebb and flow as the cosmos ebb and flow.

This is the attitude I try to adopt today. It seems to help me be happier and more at ease with the world.
I do my part to make the world a better place and then I give the fruit of that labor up to the divine force of creation.

Peace

Eloquent words joedirt, thank you for bringing such a light of wisdom into the world.

I have had similar thoughts at times. Times are slow to change, and almost by definition the liberal vanguard will be hated and misunderstood until generations later, when some of (but rarely or never all of) the radical social reform they fought so hard for becomes a part of the complex of mindless assumption that later generations of liberals challenge to much hatred and misunderstanding...and so it goes on.
Of course, this whole line of thought can lead to the opinion of oneself and the likeminded as "relatively enlightened beings" who were born too soon. But this is a misunderstanding of the way of things. History and social change is written by a collective effort driven by a complex of diverse beliefs throughout societies, hopefully even more so now that the internet has removed barriers to open communication. Of course, it seems clear that much of the space for this writing is taken up by the "victors" so to speak, i.e. those who find themselves in positions to manipulate the greatest number of people. Formerly this was mainly through victory in war, but I suspect that it now has much more to do with controlling media output and communication.
However, we each have a share in the power that upholds the metaphorical crown. (monarchies have obviously been superceded by oligarchies of sorts) Without our implicit and explicit support the structures of authority have no power. Unfortunately for most (hedonically orgasmic for some) the structures of authority that we find ourselves in at the moment (capitalism, but let's not get pseudo-Marxist) make life very pleasant. Thus those who might create change, the most driven individuals, tend to be adopted into higher, more comfortable levels in the authority structure. The efforts of leaders who might inspire and drive change for the better are often diverted into making their own lives unbelievably lavish and beautiful, at the cost of the betterment of everyone else.
Everyone ought to read Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man.
Opening line: "A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress."

So anyways, my point is that although things seem like they will never change on the normal subjective time-scale that we have to live with most of the time, we are quite literally pieces of the future and can thus give rise to a future that we desire. This is the spirit that Gandhi so eloquently gave voice to with, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." The truth that he is expressing is that while it is easy to complain about the way things are and to blame external forces, the most authentic expression of one's ideals is to let them manifest themselves in your daily lives, "in myriad little petty and unsexy ways, day in and day out" as David Foster Wallace reminds us to. This is how change happens. One thought, decision, and person at a time.

This is all very nebulous I realize in hindsight. It does not really respond directly to polytrip's original post. But basically I agree with you polytrip. It is not productive to shout endlessly at another person because of their views.

You are not alone, polytrip, and I know how easy it is to feel despair over how things should be. On the bright side, over 50% of Americans feel cannabis should be legalized, and that will happen within our lifetime. Other psychoactive plants and chemicals will take more time. Remember that slavery in the USA lasted for 450 years, and although we haven't healed from it, most of the actual chains are finally gone.

Frankly I think drug legalization will come before climate change is dealt with. Climate change is actually part of my work, and it is very depressing, so I take the long view to retain my optimism. No matter what we humans do to this planet, including destroying ourselves and every living thing on it, after the dust from our millisecond of existence has settled, in a few billion years something else cool will arise from the muck to give this big brained consciousness thing another go. So please don't give up! Everything you do, including rescuing stranded starfish washed up on the shore or a worm drowning in a puddle after a rain shower, matters greatly.

Peace and love to you.

Namaste!

Perfect article explaining the War on Drugs (Talks of California, but applies to all states):
http://www.republicrepor...ff-of-the-war-on-drugs/

Those few lobbyists and many police forces make too much money from continuing the War on Drugs to want to get rid of it.