We Need Drugs to Escape INTO Reality
I can find a million ways to run away from my problems until they come to bite me. That is called escapism. But the “reality” I am running from is usually so silly in itself: I make so many incorrect assumptions and judgements. Sadly, so many people are stupider than me. Some of us even refuse to seek knowledge and overcome ignorance.
Society contains so many such people. It explains part of the confusion and chaos visible everywhere. Everyone agrees that addictions can control our behaviors, which in turn control our interactions with each other.
But we only acknowledge some addictions in society: drugs, alcohol, food and sex— the usual suspects. We don’t talk about addictions to pop culture (music, sports, tv shows, video games) as much, but they are a huge drain on our time.
But really, we underestimate philosophy’s power to control us. We all want comforting answers to everything, including life’s biggest questions. We want to outsource that job of finding those answers to someone else, while we sit and play video games. Then, we feel guilty. To make up, we binge consume the answers and then worship the people giving them.
These habits cause our realities to be so poorly representative of the world around us. Each of us ends up like a light-sensor covered in mud unable to understand our environment that way we wish to. Now, imagine using such faulty muddy sensors to build something useful (a society). No matter how we tweak it, we end up with trash.
Some say “drugs take us to a higher reality”. Other “smart people” demonize drugs coz “drugs blind reality”. What if drugs do neither? Maybe we are just binge watching shitty TV show after shitty TV show, all inspired by the same subject — Reality, and we keep fighting over the one-true-show instead of paying attention to the actual subject. So, who needs to escape INTO reality? Everyone. But no matter how badly we need one, a drug can’t be invented to do this for us at least unless we learn to do this ourselves, first.
We can’t find a “shortcut” to a destination we never attained.
