-- Download SOPA and PIPA, the Next Drug War as PDF --

So thankfully today the internet is up in arms over SOPA and PIPA. Most people are terrified of their freedom of speech being violated, as these bills give the entertainment mega-companies power to blacklist websites and content without a trial or even hard-evidence of copyright violations and they could easily be used as a back door to censor anyone the government or media companies disapprove of.

This is, in my opinion a greater assault on our personal liberties and the United States Bill of Rights than the patriot act.

However, SOPA and PIPA won’t mean the end to online freedom. They will mean the beginning of the online war for our freedom.

If these bills pass, the internet will become a battle ground. Countries all over the world attempt to ban websites, but anyone with a little knowledge can find a proxy and hide their activity. The main thing that stops them are harsh criminal penalties or possibly a sense of loyalty to their country. Here in the United States we have neither of those things. The web pirates and the downloaders who love them are not going to just roll over and accept their fate and start allowing iTunes to rape their wallets. No, we’re going to go through proxy servers.

Then what is the government going to do? Outlaw proxies? That would make most of our current server configurations illegal. Proxies are used every day in a multitude of ways, most of the time  for perfectly legal reasons. There is no easy way around using them. It wouldn’t take long before half the internet users were running through proxies and the government would need to continually ramp up their efforts at catching these pirates, costing the taxpayers and internet businesses more and more money.

A huge number of the people working to build the internet are people who are not getting paid for their time. The systems that drive servers are mostly open-source, written by volunteers. How is it reasonable to expect people who are volunteering their time to change the way they are doing things, put in extra work to limit the functionality of what they’re building, all so a few millionaires in Hollywood can make some extra cash.

If government did somehow manage to filter out all the illegal use of proxies, then we would go back to burning DVD’s and passing them around. Physical discs, unlike online media, can be sold for a profit. Pirates could once again profit from their ventures and it wouldn’t take long before criminal organizations got involved.

If somehow government cripples our ability to burn DVD’s, then we’ll start transferring files with our cell phones. Freedom loving online pirates are not going to back down from this any more than marijuana dealers are willing to back down from the drug war… and drug dealers face much harsher penalties. Are you going to start giving life sentences to people who only want to see the public have access to music and other media that enriches their lives?

What we would have is another un-winnable drug war. It would be one more thing to divide the nation, one more thing to cost taxpayers insane amounts of money, potentially one more thing to profit organized crime, and one more thing to strip the people of their basic freedoms.

————-

Yeah, I download “illegal” movies and music. I haven’t bought a CD in ten years. I’ll admit to that… nay, I’ll announce it with pride. There is nothing wrong with downloading and using copyrighted material and those of us who do it should be proud that we aren’t suckers and that our sense of right and wrong has not been manipulated by big-business interests.

First of all, in my personal defense, I have contributed as much to the creative community as anyone I personally know. I’ve written four books, plus everything you see on this website. People have told me that my books have changed their lives. My novel, Against A Rock is a better piece of fiction than any of the professionally published EVE novels. My WordPress plugins which you see on the left have been used by thousands of websites, plus I have more stuff on KalinFlash.com. I have received less than a total of a hundred dollars for all my personal creative work over the past fifteen years. If anyone wants to accuse me of stealing or being a “pirate” because I download music and movies, then I want them to explain how this is fair that I can put in all this work, creating quality products and I get nothing and I want them to show me how they have contributed to the creative community. What right do people who have never created a piece of art have to dictate how the artistic community behaves?

Think about all the bands you see in the bars working for beer, sometimes racing from their day jobs to get to their gigs on time. Most of them aren’t that great, sure, but they are still putting real effort into it and are usually making less than minimum wage. However, more than a few of them have real talent. Sometimes people’s favorite bands are locals playing for beer, and surprisingly frequently they have more skill than the millionaire bands. Most of these guys never get signed and never make it in the industry because the big businesses in Hollywood have the monopoly. They’ve created a system where they decide what the public watches and listens to and the creative community must pander to their wishes and focus on trying to get signed. Without this corporate monopoly we could have a system based, not on someone’s ability to know a producer and slip into a contract, but on the actual quality of their creative work and the affect it has on it’s consumers. Quality bands could be bubbling up naturally in a fair and equal manner.

If you think online pirating is so wrong, think about this: without those pirates, there would be no Hulu or Netflix streaming services… or if there were, they would cost as much or more than a movie rental at the video store. These services were started as a direct response to online piracy. Without the pirates, do you really think the media companies would be giving their wares away at reasonable prices like they do on Hulu and Netflix? No, if they had total control over their media, they’d be charging as much as they possibly could.

Remember when CD’s came out? Cassette tapes at the time cost 8 or 9 bucks. CD’s came out and immediately cost 12 to 15 bucks. However, CD’s were significantly cheaper to produce, right from the beginning. No moving parts. But because it was a new, fancy technology they were able to pretend like they were more valuable and subsequently gouged the public. When the internet opened up, they felt like they were entitled to continue their scheme instead of respecting the basics of capitalism and updating their business models to a changing landscape. The consumers and the internet community at large are the ones who have suffered the most as a result of this.

So this is why I’m opposed to SOPA and PIPA as an anarchist, as a web developer and as a writer and why I am announcing my intent to use my web development skills to deliberately undermine these laws if they happen pass.

I urge everyone, as an author and a web developer, please openly oppose SOPA and PIPA as they can cause a tremendous amount of damage to the internet from a technological standpoint. Enforcing this would bring chaos to the internet and would bring our government into an un-winnable war against piracy, similar in futility to the drug war, and possibly just as destructive.

I also oppose this bill as a contributor to the artistic community who has written several books and never seen a dime. Big business copyright holders have held the artistic community hostage long enough. Most true artists do not support these kinds of attacks on people who just want to listen to music and watch a few movies without being financially destroyed.

-- Download Wacky Words Facebook Game - My Newest Programming Project as PDF --

Wacky Words

So this is my newest project: a massive multiplayer text based comedy game I’ve been working on for the last few months in my free time.

http://apps.facebook.com/wackywords/

The Game:

The idea is a worldwide competition to see who can invent the funniest or wackiest concept or product. You can bet or invest in the ideas you think are the funniest and gain experience points, level up and buy skills either by being funny or deciding what you think is funny. It’s a very bare-bones game currently but eventually it will have a large social element tied to your facebook friends, walls and posts and stuff. Kinda like how the other facebook games utilize wall posts, except that everything in my game will be funny and unique… or at least will try to be.

You start by reading other people’s creations and voting or investing, or you can jump straight into the second tab and start drawing random words which you can then drag to combine into funny phrases and concepts. Write out a description or “sales pitch” for your wacky concept, submit it, and start earning gold and experience points from the votes. Wanna get really intense? Hound your friends to vote for your creation… or if you’re a real dick… hound all your friends to vote against someone else’s idea.

Future:

At this point the game has just the basics: ability to create new concepts and write out your sales pitch, with some text formatting. Ability to browse creations, vote up, vote down, invest and gain money. Currently I’m building the leveling system and a set of half a dozen different skills like more votes and investment tokens. Then I intend to add sharing features and hopefully tie the commenting with the Facebook posting system. Maybe I’ll add live chat for all that smack talk. Then it’ll need some friends integration, so you can see your Facebook friends in-game and with that, the ability to challenge each other and hold mini-competitions to see who can get more votes. (At this point the popularity-contest aspect of this game could be very important.) I will hopefully be able to bust out some apps for iPhone and Android, and finally, I plan to create a website that automatically makes a new post every time someone posts to the game so that regular web viewers who would never go to a facebook game or download an app would get to see all the funny crap.

Of course… this is all under the assumption that people actually find this game kinda fun and want to play it. I haven’t had the most success in the past with getting people to play my games, so please follow the link up top and give it a try on your facebook account and send me your feedback.

Nerd Stuff:

You may notice the front-end is built in flex. I debated this decision for quite a while, but finally chose flex over HTML5, mainly because of the ease of development. At this point, HTML and JavaScript just can’t compete with Flex in terms of rapid development and being that I’m only one developer I want to be able to  get this done as quickly and easily as possible. Flex should also allow me to easily create mobile apps for all the major devices. I’m hoping it’ll be just a matter of moving some stuff around to fit on the smaller screen or breaking functionality into smaller screens. Flex is so modular that that should be simple to achieve.

On the other hand… I have to learn JavaScript for my job right now anyway and I may become much more comfortable with it and depending on how the future of Flash unfolds, I may wind up regretting my decision.

For the backend I chose Google App Engine and Python. App Engine was an easy choice. It makes perfect sense because I’m already a fan of Google products and seem to feel more comfortable within their design methodologies than most others. Again, rapid development was most important and App Engine certainly helps with that. No worrying about setting up databases, background processes, security or–god forbid–load balancing. A massive-multiplayer game like this wouldn’t even be possible for a lone programmer like me without all the pre-built systems. Now it’s a piece of cake.

I picked Python to use with App Engine. I wanted to use PHP, since that’s got the biggest programmer base and I’m already comfortable in it, but of course, PHP is not natively supported… why I have no idea… and I’m not gonna trust a third-party App Engine PHP interpreter. So it was between Python and Java. I’ve worked in Java before, a couple years ago when I made my first Android App and… meh… it was okay. It’s no ActionScript, but really, what is? So I did a few Google searches for “Java VS Python” and most people seemed to prefer Python, so that’s what I chose. Maybe not the best way to decide, but there ya go.

-- Download The One Percent Do Not Create the Jobs as PDF --

I occasionally hear the argument against the Occupy Wall Street movement that the one percent are the ones who create all the jobs, but I find a few issues with this theory.

1. It’s not necessary to be filthy rich to create jobs. Anyone with some investment capital can create jobs. Not everyone can do it, but it certainly doesn’t take millions of dollars.
2. If there is truth to the idea that the one percent create most of the jobs, it is because they are the ones hogging all the job-creation resources.
3. Often times the jobs the rich folks create aren’t that great. If a person can’t use their job to feed their family, it’s not much of a job. If the job is so stressful and underpaid that homelessness looks appealing, it’s not much of a job. If you don’t have healthcare or any idea what you’re going to do about retirement, it’s not much of a job.
4. Jobs are not created through money and economics. A job is a job because it’s something that needs to get done… well… at least that’s the way it should be. When a plumber is called to a house to fix a leaky pipe, it’s not because of capitalism, the company owner, nor the economy. The leaking pipe created the job. Capitalism is merely providing an accounting system and the company is merely profiting from situation.
5. The argument contradicts the other anti-occupy arguments that claim the occupiers are simply lazy and don’t want to work. If a desire to work is all it takes to get a decent job, then why do we need to reward job creators so much, as though job openings are so valuable?
6. It seems conceited to expect people to eat from the dollar menu, skip meals and wrap themselves in blankets because they don’t want to spend money on heat, then think they’re gonna be all thankful that they have a miserable job that serves little purpose other than to make someone else rich.

-- Download Too Scared to Say Anything to Your Face as PDF --

A few days ago I got a couple replies on my story, Cops have no Morals–which I’ll admit may be a somewhat inflammatory title–from a police officer. In the most recent (a response to my response), this is what the officer said:

Thank you for the honest reply.

I agree that not every offense falls into my personal range of ethics. However the majority of the offenses and laws that I enforce everyone agrees are necessarily and ethical.

The main reason I came to your post was I saw it linked on Reddit, a site that I often browse but seems to be infected with irrational cop hate.

Probably the worst side effect of the anonymity of the internet is how people demand the cops treat them fairly, be respectful and not lump them into broad stereotypes. However they then turn around (many times in the same post) and inflame peoples sensibilities by stating a personal experience where they felt they were treated poorly. They then state that all cops are this way and demand sweeping terminations or outright revolt.

It gets to me when I work all day going to domestics, arresting drunk drivers, directing traffic, freezing my butt off in the snow and not had an argument or bad experiences with anyone. Then I come home and just want to read some funny rage comics but end up depressed over how much the internet seemingly hates me.

All I ask, ALL is that you judge me by my actions and not the 1% of cops who cause trouble or break the law.

“You have to admit that if you were assigned to arrest someone for a crime you did not believe was wrong, or if you believed the person was innocent, you would still have to go arrest that person”.

This happens with marijuana laws, I just write people tickets as long as they are polite and cooperative about it. Now if your driving and smoking or selling to people under 21 I’m going to take you to jail.

I agree they should just duplicate the laws of alcohol and apply them to marijuana. So there we got that out of the way.

Same applies to speeding, I start writing tickets at 12+ which in my opinion is pretty common sense.

Do I honestly think your brand new car is dangerous and going to fly out of control when your doing 81 in the 60 in the middle of the night. No.. but you agreed to not speed when we gave you a drivers license so man up and take your ticket.

The guy you met in your story sounds like a jaded burned out drugs and vice cop. I wouldn’t want to work with him with that attitude and I don’t think his department would like him acting that way.

Please give your support to hard working average cops, when you meet the bad ones be polite and an adult and then go inform his department if you think they behaved inappropriately.

So I came up with another response that might not perfectly address all the issues in the comment, but I felt justified its own blog post:

Yeah, anarchists can get nasty with the name calling toward police. It doesn’t help our case and just makes us look like children. It’s a problem with most controversial issues, though and unfortunately comes with the territory. I posted the story to the anarchism sub-reddit and I don’t know if it got re-posted or something, but a police officer browsing the anarchism sub-reddit is kind of like an abortion doctor browsing the pro-life sub-reddit. You’re bound to find something offensive. You must understand that criminal justice is inherently controversial. I know this sounds harsh but you make a career out of pointing guns at people, taking away their freedom and destroying people’s lives. I’m sorry I have to put it like that, and you can argue that it’s a necessary evil, but that is literally what you do. You need to accept that not everyone supports that. While we anarchists may have serious difficulties communicating our position, it doesn’t mean our anger doesn’t have a valid source.

Unfortunately police are at more of a disadvantage than other controversial individuals because you’re so sheltered from the people who are morally opposed to the things you do. We’re too scared to say anything to your face and the media doesn’t take us seriously, so it comes out in anger and frustration over the anonymous internet. The only weapon we have against the guns and prisons are our words, and most of the time we don’t even have that.

I feel like most of us became anarchists as an emotional response to a traumatizing event caused by criminal justice. Police brutality and misbehavior is only a small part of the issue. Even when everything is done by the book there can be tremendous emotional damage. Perhaps they lost a loved one to the prison system, or were wrongfully accused of something. As another example, I had a gun pointed at me point-blank over a plant that grows from the ground. When you stare down the barrel of a gun into the eyes of someone who is ready and willing to splatter your brains across the pavement but society insists they’re heroes, it changes you inside. It can be hard to deal with and I’ve never heard of any programs to help criminals deal with this kind of emotional trauma and ensure they don’t take it out on society.

On a side note, you said that people should just report wrongdoing from police, but I think you know that’s not realistic. Police rarely abuse anyone who has not committed some kind of crime, and once you commit a crime, society pretty much discredits anything you say. If a meth addict accused your partner of planting evidence, I’m sure you would have a hard time taking him seriously. And look at cases like Rodney King. We can’t watch that video and still feel safe when we accuse police of wrongdoing.

If you read my article, 35 Ways Criminal Justice is Counter-Productive to Peace on Earth, you’ll see I have a list of specific reasons why I think modern style police-work is morally wrong on a fundamental level. Whether or not you think they’re valid, you should be able to tell that I’ve put serious thought into it. I didn’t just decide laws were evil over a couple traumatizing events. In order to truly claim that you care about right and wrong, you need to put serious energy into forming your moral opinions, being careful to hear both sides of the story, and your actions need to reflect your morality.

-- Download I Am the Nine Percent as PDF --

I think the land is already divided like this. There is no "if".

Today I posted Cops Have No Morals, a depiction of one of the most eye-opening conversations I’ve ever had. It’s a story that is as much about corporate America and our capitalist society as it is about a police officer. Spoiler alert: in 1998 a police officer insisted that there was no such thing as a cop who cared about right and wrong, then went on to reveal the secret to success in Capitalist America.

I’m sure if you’ve looked around this site you can probably guess that I support Occupy Wall Street and my local version, Occupy Seattle, but at the same time I don’t particularly feel as though I’m one of the ninety-nine percent.

In the last few years, the economy has been very good to me. My income has steadily increased. I bought a condo after the housing bust and got a great deal at a low interest rate. I have a fancy corporate job with full medical and dental, doing something I love. I can sometimes spend nearly a thousand dollars in a month on restaurants alone. I have a sun room overlooking a golf course… well, a driving range and mini-putt. I have a guest bedroom with a liquor cabinet and I buy my weed by the ounce.

Then the other day, I saw this picture posted to Facebook and thought it was perfect, because I think that’s where I am. I am one of that nine percent.

I’m not a millionaire, of course. I’m not part of the one percent, but I don’t have any kids and have made good investments, but I see so many others out there who are struggling to feed their families, who would be devastated if they lost their job, and have no clue what they’re going to do about retirement. I don’t need to worry about any of that.

The main difference I’ve noticed between them and me? They chose to make careers out of things they felt would help society, things they felt needed to get done. I made a career out of something fun that would make money.

The reason I was able to do this, to think of only myself, to “look out for number one”, was because of what this officer told me. He taught me how to be selfish.

For years this speech creeped me out. I ran it through my head over and over again for years, and was horrified. But what’s truly horrifying about this speech, I found out years later, is that every word he said was true.

I had promised myself that I would never work for another corporation, that I would always do something to contribute, that I would always be humble, I wouldn’t do destructive things like drive a car or eat farmed fish and all that. After a few years, however, society beat me down. Every time someone tried to tell me the police were the good guys the officer’s speech ran through my head, telling me I was a fool for caring about right and wrong, and over the years, I simply gave up.

Since then I’ve worked for several companies that I felt were ripping off their customers, knowingly selling faulty products as well as companies whose sole purpose was to manipulate people into buying things. I’ve sat in meetings where we cracked jokes about how rational people should see us as evil. In one meeting with hundreds of people, a corporate representative literally told us that it didn’t matter what was true or not in our sales pitches. I can deal with this because of that officer who taught me how to shut off my sense of right and wrong.

I see teachers, firefighters and plumbers out there who saw a gap in society, something that needed to get done, and used that to guide their career decisions. They cared about society before themselves. A friend recently got fired for failing a pee test and had a hard time getting another job as a result. Turned out he was listing the job on applications because he felt some kind of moral obligation to be honest about his work history. I had to tell him, this is the real world. Nobody’s gonna reward you for honesty, and nobody’s gonna care if you tell a few lies. Manipulation and lies are an integral part of the financial game in America and every one of the one percent and the majority of the nine percent have accepted that and have blatantly exploited it, at the expense of the 90 percent. And they did it right under your noses.

And I’m part of the problem. I’m an anarchist and a socialist, but I behave like a capitalist. I’m a hypocrite. I know it’s wrong. I feel bad, but not bad enough to stop, because I love my job, I love my condo, and I love sushi and creme brule.

So just remember occupiers, those police surrounding you and the one percent they represent, they don’t care about right and wrong the way you do. Just remember that. Otherwise you will be truly shocked at what they are capable of.

-- Download My First Mairjuana Smoke as PDF --

I took the following from a draft of an autobiography I tried writing around 2004 that turned out to be too preachy and crazy to do anything with. There were only a few salvageable passages and this is one of them. The first time I ever somked marijuana. A magical day.

Around 1995, halfway through high-school, I bought a Phil Collins album but have rarely listened to over the years. However, one song truly caught my soul: Both Sides of the Story, and the line, “Sleeping with an empty bottle is a sad and an empty hearted man, but what he really needs is a job and a little respect and to get out while he can,” has always stuck with me. I thought Phil Collins had figured out the secret to understanding life and the universe, and somehow condensed it into one sentence: “We always need to hear both sides of the story.” Shortly after buying the album I wrote a story based on a line, which I also called, Both Sides of the Story.

I had a friend at school during this time who was willing to admit to me that he smoked pot. I believe that up to this point, people viewed me as too straight-edge to talk about something like this, but since I’d started writing, I’d gained more self-confidence and loosened up some of my attitudes about things. At first I looked down on him for smoking weed, as I still had this preconception that only fools do drugs and that it wrecks your life and makes you lazy etc, etc. However, I supported legalization, because as brainwashed as I was back then, I still didn’t see the point of imprisoning people when they’re not hurting anybody but themselves.

At one point I told the stories about mailbox bashing and driving around with a laundry basket full of water balloons, soaking pedestrians. I hadn’t done any of this stuff in a long time, but talked highly of it, and how much fun it was. I was quite surprised when he told me those things didn’t sound like fun to him at all. I figured since he smoked pot, he would be antisocial in other ways.

“I just don’t enjoy doing things that hurt other people,” he said, and shrugged it off.

So this statement changed me somehow. At first it baffled me how someone who smoked so much marijuana, which was supposed to make you stupid, could throw out such a simply profound and intelligent statement, and pass it off as simple common sense. It was so simple, yet somehow I had never looked at my actions in quite the way he presented them.

So I rethought my whole outlook on drugs. Perhaps they caused a person to slack off and become stupid… (except this didn’t seem to be the case with my friend as he got better grades than me.) but drugs didn’t make you a bad person.

And with the advice of good old Phil Collins, when my friend dropped me a note in class, asking me to ditch (I saved the note all these years and scanned it for you here) I decided I needed to see both sides of the story.

I still have this note in my box of mementos in my closet.

So we drove to a friends house, and at first we smoked off a joint. I was highly nervous, but my friends were so calm and non-chalant about it that they reassured me that we wouldn’t be caught. I took some hits, but couldn’t keep any down, coughing with the slightest inhale. We tried shotgunning (taking a hit from a person’s exhale, so the smoke is diluted) but nothing worked for me. I coughed everything out, no matter what we attempted.

(Around this same time Bill Clinton was claiming that he’d tried pot but didn’t inhale, then changed his story to say he inhaled but coughed it out. To his credit, he wasn’t lying. He was being totally honest; he was just totally ignorant of how marijuana works. Taking it into your lungs is all you need to get the effect. If you cough it out, it doesn’t have much less of an effect than taking a successful hit. I can totally picture Bill Clinton being totally stoned, probably shoving food into his face, laughing, and carrying on, all the while having no clue that anything’s different.)

So we went back to school . I kept saying, “I’m not feeling anything,” and they kept saying, “we can tell you’re stoned.”

I sat in the back seat, and one of the two said, “Hey, you wanna put Kalin in a bubble?” He put his fist to his hand and turned back toward me and began blowing, like he was blowing up a balloon. They actually had the joke coordinated pretty well, the driver flipping off the radio just as the other tied the imaginary balloon. They then pretended to have a conversation with exaggerated hand movements, moving their lips silently.

I kept saying, “Okay, very funny. I know this isn’t real.” But somehow it felt real, just the same. Then after persisting in the joke for several silent minutes, he turned again and popped the balloon, screaming “BANG!”

We went back to class, and found ourselves doing research in the library. I decided to just slack off and hang out. I kept saying that I didn’t feel anything, and my buddy was getting nervous that someone might hear. I was so confused. I’d expected demons or ecstacy or a profound vision. This strangeness… this differing perspective was not at all what I’d expected… the world looked a bit different somehow… but still I insisted I hadn’t gotten stoned.

My friend was so nervous of getting caught now that we were back at school, as I seemed to be talking about it quite openly. I wanted to stand up and tell everyone in the library, “Hey, marijuana isn’t evil. I thought it was all along and I just discovered it isn’t. It doesn’t rape children and it doesn’t blow up your brain, and it doesn’t bring any sort of irresistible ecstasy. It’s just a thing. That’s all it is. Just a thing.” But unfortunately, I didn’t do that.

Then it was lunchtime, and I ordered my regular meal, and sat with a bunch of friends, mostly girls. I always ate with similar groups of friends at school, but never had tremendously active parts of the conversation. I felt they saw me as background.

But today was different. I was more comfortable with everything. I scarfed down my sandwich, then got up to buy more food. I got up twice more during the lunch period for more food. I kept talking about how much I love to eat, but didn’t mention to anyone that I had just smoked pot. In fact, I didn’t even consider the idea that it was affecting my actions until much later. I started talking, and I don’t remember about what. It could have been profound intellectualism or nonsense, but more than likely it was a combination of the two; I don’t really remember. But I do remember how it seemed like these girls were hanging on every word I said. I remember a couple had been in very bad moods when they sat down but by the end of the lunch period, they were laughing and carrying on in this conversation that for once, was centered around me.

For many months after this experience, I thought I hadn’t gotten high. I thought it had no affect on me. However, I found myself with an increase of self-confidence after the experience. School became easier. My grades improved. My social skills improved. I allowed myself to relax a little.

And of course, I almost immediately began to apply my new found perspective to my writing.

-- Download Psilocybin Shrooms are Good for You as PDF --

A friend emailed me the other day with a link to a couple new studies demonstrating that psilocybin mushrooms can have profoundly positive effects on personality. For me this is a “well, duh” situation, but it’s nice to have scientific evidence for the facts us hippies have known for so long. The first one has some quotes like this:

The earlier study had found positive psychological changes — documented by both participants and their family members and other associates — in calmness, happiness and kindness.

People became more curious and more interested in new ideas and experiences and in trying new things. “It ended up being the best experience of my life,” says 67-year-old retiree Maria Estevez.

“I was just able to drop ego totally and experience the world without all those filters”

Estevez says that she, too, has become more open and empathetic since taking psilocybin.

The other study had this to say:

Fourteen months after participating in the study, 94% of those who received the drug said the experiment was one of the top five most meaningful experiences of their lives; 39% said it was the single most meaningful experience.

their friends, family member and colleagues also reported that the psilocybin experience had made the participants calmer, happier and kinder.

many of Griffiths’ participants said they were left with the sense that they understood themselves and others better and therefore had greater compassion and patience.

I felt these same kind of effects twelve years ago when I first started using drugs. First it was the marijuana, when I was 18, which helped calm my mind and helped me focus in school, allowing my GPA to jump dramatically, within just a couple months of starting smoking. It helped me put an end to my teenage depression and almost immediately cured my chronic bowel issues, which I suspect were mostly stress related.

Then I tried mushrooms and the positive effects were even more profound. I remember before experimenting with these drugs I judged people primarily by their choice in music rather than the content of their character. I was selfish. I was a nice guy, but I was only nice because I knew it would benefit me in the long run. Mushrooms and marijuana helped me to find a deeper meaning behind being a decent person.

Most importantly though, these drugs helped me understand myself and how my emotions worked. There’s nothing else that can compare to this in terms of psychological and emotional benefits. I recall how lazy I was before using these drugs, wanting nothing more than to watch TV and eat junk food for the rest of my life, caring little about contributing to society or making positive changes. When I was a teenager I never imagined I could be as successful or as passionate or in as good of physical shape as I am now because there was no way for me to conceive of the myriad of ways I could make my brain work. Drugs, and specifically mushrooms, were pivotal in opening these pathways, allowing me to take full control of my life.

The studies mentioned empathy, and without a doubt the increased mental understanding that these drugs bring can notably improve a person’s ability to understand and care about others, but for me what’s most profound is the way I feel they’ve helped me to become more successful and intelligent. I’ve written three novels and a plethora of short stories. I’ve gotten emails from people telling me that my stories changed their lives. I’ve built web applications that have been used by millions of people. I truly believe that the drugs I’ve used and the careful way I’ve used them is one of the main reasons I’ve been able to be successful. I’m not even really trying, to be honest. All this time I’ve felt as though I’ve just been screwing around having fun, because I absolutely love writing code, almost as much as I love writing stories. While everyone else out there is struggling to feed their families, stressed out and hating their jobs, the only thing I have to get upset about in my own life, other than girls and relationships, is the fact that the job recruiters won’t stop emailing me trying to get me to come in for interviews.

So… I don’t know… I think it’s important for me to stop and appreciate the advantages I have in this world as a result of the drugs I’ve done. Sometimes I forget that many people have not had these experiences and do not have this kind of connection to their deeper self.

-- Download Religion: It's Just not Worth It as PDF --

Today I got a response to a recent blog post, Why I Need to be Outspoken About Atheism, a short post I made about a few old friends who did crazy, destructive things because of religion. Since I get so few comments on anything other than my WordPress plugins, I figured I’d give Steve’s comment it’s own post.

I find your experiences horrifying as well, sadly I see that none of them disprove God but instead prove the easy degree to which human nature is perverted to violence, and self destruction. While this happens in the name of religion, it also happens for many other reasons. Many of these reasons are intertwined within each other wealth, and the lack of it, respect, a sense of belonging, and the list goes on. Having grown up surrounded by those who believed everything from Satan to the idea that they were vampires who could go out in daylight, what I find is not that God does not exist, but that human beings need the ability to separate fact from fiction. The idea that certain books of the bible for example are literal truth is laughable, many are creation stories and myths the same as any other culture, it doesn’t mean they aren’t important, but the stories of Adam and Eve hold as much truth for me as the stories of Oberon and Titania. This does not mean that I doubt a higher power is responsible for the creation of my universe, only that the only human way to understand this is to be carefully grounded in reality. I am sorry that religion, and specifically the Christian religion has done you so much harm, it should never have happened that way. I would love to converse intelligently as I have often found that discussions with Atheists yield more religious truth than those who dub themselves, “believers,” because the believers never try to understand their faith, and outsiders see things differently. I hope you take this message in the spirit it was given, and I look forward to reading some of your work, your writing just in response to this comment seemed clear, concise and well thought out.

My Response:

Thanks for commenting, Steve. I appreciate the attention.

My blog post wasn’t trying to disprove the existence of God. That’s a whole other topic which I tend to avoid. Many other atheist blogs are doing a great job of scientifically and logically arguing against the existence of God, but I feel those arguments frequently fall flat, particularly with non-believers, because God is largely an emotional issue rather than a logical one. I prefer to focus on the emotional benefits of Atheism and leave the proving and disproving to the scientists.

It’s true that “human nature is perverted to violence, and self destruction” by many different things, but that does not excuse religion from doing it too. A drunk driver cannot argue that because sober people sometimes fall asleep at the wheel, he’s not responsible for endangering people’s lives. If you compare drunk driving statistics with my religion and crime statistics, you’ll see that a relatively small percentage of automobile accidents are actually alcohol related, while the overwhelming majority of crime in the United States is committed by people under the influence of religion. Why should religion get a free pass when we hold other things accountable?

This discrepancy is particularly obvious when you remember that alcohol companies do not tell the public that alcohol will make you a better person. They never claim that it’s necessary for a  happy marriage or that non-drinkers have no morals.

You say that human beings need the ability to separate fact from fiction, and with that I completely agree. That’s exactly why I write these posts. Unfortunately the mere concept of God is a part of that fiction. (Well… in all honesty it’s not unfortunate for me. I love living in a world without God. These are our lives. We can be whoever we want to be and build ourselves up to whatever we might want for ourselves.) Once you believe in God, you open the door to any other kind of spiritual belief. If God is possible, anything is possible, so I don’t think it’s fair to imply that people who believe in witches or Satan are any crazier than someone who merely believes in God.

You may have abstracted your belief in God out away from your day-to-day life. You probably (just taking a guess here) believe in evolution, for example, but think it’s guided by a distant hand that doesn’t interfere directly with us, but nevertheless is looking out for us. That’s fine for you, and it may work for now, but unfortunately it legitimizes the next guy who comes along and believes in a more direct kind of God who talks to people and tells them to jump off bridges.

Take certain hard drugs like heroin or cocaine for example. The majority of people who use these drugs are responsible users, only doing it once every few years or just trying it out a couple times in their life. A coke dealer might point to this majority of people to legitimize what he does, but there’s always going to be the occasional person who takes it to the next level and seriously damages themselves.

The real question should be, ‘is it worth it?’ Does the benefit of something justify the risk and long-term problems associated with it? For things like heroin or cocaine, I think they most likely do not. From what I’ve witnessed in my life, religious people see little to no benefit from religion. They are not smarter; they are not happier; their relationships don’t last any longer; they’re not any better at dealing with grief or hardship; they’re not any more successful; and they’re not any better at maintaining their lives than anyone else. It’s just a different way of seeing life and people seem to defend it based on little more than it’s just how they’ve always seen things. Most don’t even seem to enjoy going to church. When something provides so few real, tangible benefits but then causes my friends and neighbors to jump off bridges and go on killing sprees, I say no; It’s definitely not worth it.

-- Download All Dogs go to Heaven as PDF --

I found this page hilarious. Two competing churches putting up a series of reader-board signs, arguing with each other. I think this is a good demonstration on how inconsistent religion really is. Every church claims their way of looking at their religion is the only right way, and they can never agree, yet when arguing with outsiders, they all claim that they’re unified.

If all churches had the same attitudes that Our Lady of Martyrs has, I’d have a much more difficult time being an atheist, but unfortunately, most seem to be more like the Cumberland Presbyterian.

So this back-and-forth started with Martyrs putting out their sign saying “All dogs go to heaven” and the church across the street responded with “Only humans go to heaven read the Bible”. Now, I don’t know what the Bible actually says about this idea of pets getting into heaven, so I can’t argue it on that point, but on a purely emotional level, the idea that the cats and dogs that we love and include in our family aren’t deserving of the same afterlife is kinda disturbing. Considering the degree to which people love their cats and dogs, this seems emotionally and spiritually repulsive to me and is a wonderful example of how religion can strip a person of compassion and empathy.

Two churches located across the street from each other. At least the Catholics have a sense of humor.