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Entheogens, Society and Law: The Politics of Consciousness, Autonomy and Responsibility

Book by Daniel Waterman · 6 quotes · Justice, Retribution, Truth

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Entheogens, Society and Law: The Politics of Consciousness, Autonomy and Responsibility Quotes

“When interpreted as infallible, the truth claims of powerful institutions — whether religious or secular — tend to emphasise the fallibility of individuals and their subjective ethical intuitions; thus, undermining self-reliance, including people’s ability to make use of information they intuitively know is basically correct, based on their own experiences or simply common sense.”

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Book:Entheogens, Society and Law: The Politics of Consciousness, Autonomy and Responsibility
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“Systems of retributive justice work well as long as they are proportional. However, in complex societies, where the State is the arbiter of justice, proportionality may break down: offences created by the elite few become offences against the entire community.”

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Book:Entheogens, Society and Law: The Politics of Consciousness, Autonomy and Responsibility
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“I am keenly aware that the security we enjoy is frail, and could easily be disrupted. Secretly, a nagging fear gnaws at me: what has really been learned from the lessons of Auschwitz and the Third Reich? Do we really understand what happened there and how we might prevent such events in future?”

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Book:Entheogens, Society and Law: The Politics of Consciousness, Autonomy and Responsibility
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“A system of justice does not need to pursue retribution. If the purpose of drug sentencing is to prevent harm, all we need to do is decide what to do with people who pose a genuine risk to society or cause tangible harm. There are perfectly rational ways of doing this; in fact, most societies already pursue such policies with respect to alcohol: we leave people free to drink and get inebriated, but set limits on where and when. In general, we prosecute drunk drivers, not inebriated pedestrians. In this sense, the justice system is in many respects a battleground between moral ideas and evidence concerning how to most effectively promote both individual and societal interests, liberty, health, happiness and wellbeing. Severely compromising this system, insofar as it serves to further these ideals, is our vacillation or obsession with moral responsibility, which is, in the broadest sense, an attempt to isolate the subjective element of human choice, an exercise that all too readily deteriorates into blaming and scapegoating without providing effective solutions to the actual problem. The problem with the question of moral responsibility is that it is inherently subjective and involves conjecture about an individuals’ state of mind, awareness and ability to act that can rarely if ever be proved. Thus it involves precisely the same type of conjecture that characterizes superstitious notions of possession and the influence of the devil and provides no effective means of managing conduct: the individual convicted for an offence or crime considered morally wrong is convicted based on a series of hypotheses and probabilities and not necessarily because he or she is actually morally wrong. The fairness and effectiveness of a system of justice based on such hypotheses is highly questionable particularly as a basis for preventing or reducing drug use related harm. For example, with respect to drugs, the system quite obviously fails as a deterrent and the system is not organised to ‘reform’ the offender much less to ensure that he or she has ‘learned a lesson’; moreover, the offender does not get an opportunity to make amends or even have a conversation with the alleged victim. In the case of retributive justice, the justice system is effectively mopping up after the fact. In other words, as far as deterrence is concerned, the entire exercise of justice becomes an exercise based on faith, rather than one based on evidence.”

JusticeRiskSocietyMoralityEvidencePossessionHarmChoiceFairnessDrugsSuperstitionRetributionSubjectivityMoral ResponsibilityDeterrentScapegoatingDrunk DrivingSentencingDrug Sentencing
Book:Entheogens, Society and Law: The Politics of Consciousness, Autonomy and Responsibility
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“The recasting of the Origin Myth as a story about the perils of disobedience precipitated a kind of decoupling of scripture from religious experience: when religious authorities began to insist on the literal truth of scripture, they were effectively promoting a kind of secular rationalism that states that one does not need to have a religious experience of any kind to live a moral life: all one has to do is declare one’s faith in scripture, in the doctrine of Jesus’ divinity and such, and accept the authority of the Holy Catholic Church as God’s representative on Earth.”

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Book:Entheogens, Society and Law: The Politics of Consciousness, Autonomy and Responsibility
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“In an effort to justify the prohibition of 186 species of mushroom, including the ‘offending’ psilocybin containing mushrooms sold to the public through smart shops, Dutch Minister of Health, Dr. Ab Klink, refers to the high instance of anxiety and ‘even paranoia’ experienced by those who use them. He makes no mention of the very low incidence of harm (social or otherwise) involving fresh psilocybin containing mushrooms, or the disproportionate number of alcohol and tobacco related deaths, injuries and social disruptions. We are left with an impression that the Minister believes the state has a duty to banish fear itself. This exemplifies the degree to which scientific and medical rationales may become confused with moral and ideological commitments that undermine the ‘wall of separation between Church and State,’ a fundamental tenet of modern democracy.”

FearParanoiaPsilocybinWall Of SeparationSmart Shop
Book:Entheogens, Society and Law: The Politics of Consciousness, Autonomy and Responsibility
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