Cannabis--Philosophy for Everyone by Fritz Allhoff

Author:Fritz Allhoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2010-11-04T04:00:00+00:00

DALE JACQUETTE

CHAPTER 9

NAVIGATING CREATIVE INNER SPACE ON THE INNOCENT PLEASURES OF HASHISH

There was once, my lord, crown of my head, a man in a certain city who was a fisherman by trade and a hashish eater by occupation. Whenever he earned a daily wage, he would spend a bit on food and the rest on a sufficient quantity of that hilarious herb whose extract is hashish. He took the hashish three times a day: once in the morning on an empty stomach, once at noontime, and once at sunset. Thus he never missed being extravagantly happy. Yet he worked quite hard at fishing, though sometimes in a very unusual way.

Tale of the Two Hashish Eaters,

Arabian Nights

Creative Inner Space

A philosopher stoned is not the Philosopher’s Stone. I doubt very much that there are distinctive philosophical insights to be gained by smoking pot. If I thought there were, then, as a philosopher, I suppose I might want to get high all the time.

What one derives from cannabis at its best is a sense of experiencing something familiar as though for the first time, occasionally with a strange pulsating halo of significance. This sometimes intensely vivid impression of the newness of something already known leads thought even when it is back down on the ground to consider previously unexplored ways of thinking about old concepts, problems, and propositions in ways suggested by the experience of a good cannabis buzz. New associations may seem to present themselves to consciousness also as though for the first time, or with more apparently profound meanings than otherwise observed. The ideas must naturally be coming from the same mind, so it is as though the straight mind had previously denied these innovations admission to the privileged court of consciousness, until cannabis opens the door. It is easy when you are high to get carried away with the streaming train of ideas, to project one’s imagination into many creative endeavors that one might never actually develop the talents to pursue. This is not to say that cannabis cannot be an invaluable ally in expanding and focusing whatever native creativity a person naturally possesses.

I call the feeling of creative potential, real or illusory, anecdotally reported by persons high on marijuana, creative inner space. The reason cannabis users speak of getting high is that the drug typically delivers the sensation of being partly weightless in space. When you are high, or, as it is also significantly called, spaced, it can sometimes feel as though you are able to mentally explore a previously unsuspected dimension of possible connections and associations between things that for the cannabis user seem entirely new to thought. As unexpected ways of understanding are presented to the imagination, and their peculiar combinations suggest ideas to be exploited in creative work, a cannabis user seeking inspiration can sometimes make productive use of different ways of looking at things that a soaring cannabis high affords. Some persons who like to get high on cannabis do so specifically for the sake

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