Our Modern World: Hegemonic Ties, Ideological Nonsense

 

The mind is a terrible thing to release.

The human body requires freedom of movement, but our minds submerged in human civilization need discipline. This simple truth represents a terrible contradiction, but it is more akin to human absurdity. If we all want to achieve a mental tranquility that leads to true freedom, then we have to train our minds to watchfulness on what we are actually accomplishing.

This method of the mind implies a total and absolute awareness, or concentrated mindfulness, on what we are actually doing and the marvelous magic that surrounds our actions. This practice further includes simple tasks, such as, breathing, sitting, standing, walking, thinking, pushing-pulling, ascending-descending, turning, etc.

Such a method for the brain is much easier to write about, than to perform in live practice. It takes the strength of the will and some personal determination to transform our minds into the wonderful now, this very moment of life leading unto our unknown deaths. We could actually love our paths towards transformation, rather than reaching for the ‘goals.’

Yet, our actual ‘life goals’ are often mirages or bizarre fantasies that usually don’t come from our minds; instead, they host and feed deep within our brains, and most unfortunately, those troublesome ideas have taken over our imaginations.

Living in our modern world, we are all inundated with incessant, perverted state propaganda, corporate media lies, advertising crap and publicity refuse. We have no real choices in the matter. Our imaginations and mental reasoning are bound in the tangled webs of ingenious media deceit. This deception comes from a myriad of sources that have incubated from outside of us. Modern mediums of communication share one common disease-ridden strain: hegemonic ties and ideological nonsense.

Ideology had its first eruptions under the rubrics of human civilization, around 6,000 years ago, implying static communities that practiced agriculture, instituted intra-family hierarchies, rituals and temporary social positions. Family dynasties consolidated their organized household properties: first moveable, such as domesticated animals, jewelry, clothes and basic furniture, and second, the immobile, such as lands and water routes. These civilizations also fabricated artisanal hierarchies through ceramic works, carpentry, culinary arts, medicinal-herbalism, masonry, language-scribe work, metallurgy, etc.

From this socio-economic base emerged the first political economies. These political economies later created social class differences and moveable market stations for trade and the creation of a merchant class. In order to facilitate trading, agreed to mediums of exchange, or money, emerged, such as cattle or precious commodities.

Due to differences in class positions, status and cultural differences emerged. Some societies had more of something than the other ones. Cravings and Conflict increased in intensity, and so village centers had to fortify their strategic positions, usually near water routes. Villages built walls or moved their center positions to higher altitudes, or they used both methods. This was the birth of the city.

These power centers could also wage wars, or stage treaties for peace. From this greater social complexity, a class of convincing and eloquent speakers, persuasive priests, and top warriors known for courage in combat, had transformed themselves into local leaders. The successful leaders won martial victories over enemies and furthered geographic extensions of the sacred territories.

Before there were ideologies, the victors representing the chosen community, embodied the incubation of social power through state craft.

In order to maintain social cohesion within the sacred community, leaders had to interpret the commonly held world-views, or render the cultural foundations that had originally created and nurtured ‘the sacred land and the sacred people.’

Their creative works of interpretation represented a marvelous culmination. Their concepts moved from a hodgepodge of ideas and mental imagination towards transcendence: the ordered and organized state-people-territory-religion cult.

Ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Indian and Chinese religions were good examples. Latter imperial empires of ancient history also formulated their particular religious origins, legends, prophecies, myths, fantastic stories, heroic accounts, historical lessons and theatrical pieces, such as the Ancient Hellenes, or Greeks, the Ancient Romans, (before the official state religion of Christianity), and the Ancient Persians, or Iranians.

In the Americas, the Olmecs, Toltecs, the Mexica-Aztec regime, the Mayan city-state alliances, the Chavin religious center in the Andes, the Wari military regimes, the Chimú city states and the Inca Imperial Empire, all of those civilizations created similar religion-state-people-sacred land concepts.

Around 600 BCE, the Ancient Persians transcended even further. They created both a state-people-territory religion and a belief system that could travel across lands. The ancient Zoroastrian faith had embraced the powerful concept of mystical monotheism.

There was one God of Light and Love, Ahura Mazda and his archangels, who constantly battled an enemy, a Spirit of Evil and his demons called Anghra Mainyu. The Revelation of this one God came out of the voice of the Prophet, Zarathustra. The Holy Book, encompassing the Law, hymns or Psalms, rituals or Liturgies, while proclaiming the Divine Message, had the name of Avesta. Through the regular recitation of prayers, cleansings or Baptisms, and community rituals or Worship, believers could attain sanctification with the One God, and thereby Resurrect their Soul bodies into the Divine Heaven.

Zoroastrianism begat the other world religions of ancient history in Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean world, such as Judaism, Mithraism and Manichaeism. The most powerful of the three was Judaism.

Judaism linked the monotheistic, all-powerful God, with his adversary, Satan, and created a complete ethical-historical-mystical- heavenly realm around the One God and his chosen people, the Jews, which held the tablets of the sacred Law of Moses, originally given to the Hebrew speaking nation during their exile from Egypt.

The first Jews had emerged from exile during the grand epoch of Persian imperial control in order to rebuild the Second Temple of Solomon, destroyed during the Babylonian imperial invasion of Jerusalem in 597 BCE. Like the Zoroastrians, the Jews also developed the concept of a resurrected afterlife location called Sheol.

The Jews were the first religion-nation-land sacred cult, (from the earlier Hebrew identity), with the ability to transform themselves into a cosmopolitan and urban society of ‘believers.’ Their holy book, the ‘Tanakh,’ moved into the universality of world civilization, and this same transformation also took place after the foundation of the grand empire of Alexander the Great. Taking advantage of such a great political opportunity, Judaism spread from Mesopotamia and the Levant region into various regions of Asia, Africa and Europe.

Two later monotheistic religions in the ancient world had also transcended to even greater heights than Judaism. The two monotheist gods had fully given up the idea of a sacred earth and a sacred people. They, instead, raised the believer to the class of the priesthood. These two religious faiths represented Christianity and Islam.

Not only did they scrap the old land-people-temple-kingdom statecraft order, but they both became world religions within a short space of time after their ‘persecuted’ births. They built entire civilizations and world cultures under their jurisdictions, and which still last today. Their ancient names were Christendom, or the Christian kingdoms yoked under the Universal Catholic-Orthodox Church, and Dar Al-Islam, or those submitted to the Muslim faith, ruled through the Caliphate, and later, the Sultanate. Universal, world religions became the first ideologies. The sole criteria for both sanctification and power came through the institutionalized faith.

This is the full definition of ideologies. Ideology represents a compendium of contradictory and myriad beliefs, ideas, dogmas, creeds, doctrines and theses under some type of organized belief system transformed into a cosmopolitan science of universal truth.

Within our modern and contemporary world, ideologies have transcended into their final and most powerful positions. There are now hundreds of sets and subsets of ideologies, whether political, intellectual or cultural. Ideological positions have suffocated people’s minds across the Earth; while, ideological institutions have continually tried to seize the state or warp the general culture, all in order to both control the general population and murder their ideological enemies. We Anarchists have a special role in helping to destroy the intellectual foundations of all ideologies – inclusive of our very own faith – ‘Anarchism.’

Not only do ideologies create schemas for pseudo-truths, but they have also created political institutions and have formed sociopolitical alliances, or hegemonic ties. In the medieval period of the Mediterranean world, the Catholic Church constituted political pacts with powerful kingdoms, such as the Frankish Kingdom, (around 700 A.D.), the Holy Roman Empire, (around 800 A.D.), and the Kingdom of France, (around 1200 A.D.). During the ninth century A.D., the Islamic world created rival caliphates, such as the Caliphate of Al-Andalus, or Spain in the west, and the Great Caliphate of Baghdad, the Abbasids, in the east.

From 1400-2000 A.D., in the continent of Europe, the plague of ideologies increased a hundred fold. Most ideologies transferred themselves onto the secular world and they began to drop their religious connotations. The first ones were Renaissance Humanism, Protestantism, Trent Catholicism, Mannerism, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment or the Illustration.

From these ideological sets, emerged the subsets of Rationalism, Liberalism, Nationalism, Journalism, Regionalism, Constitutionalism, Conservatism, Modernism, Marxism, Socialism, Communism, Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, Maoism, Libertarianism, Monopoly Capitalism, Objectivism, Monarchism, Republicanism, Anarchism, Progressivism, Individualism, Feminism, Positivism, Nihilism, Utilitarianism, Imperialism, Keynesian Capitalism, Eugenics, Colonialism, Orientalism, Militarism, Racialism, Anti-Semitism, Fascism, Zionism, Neoliberalism, Communalism, Postmodernism, American Exceptionalism, Communitarianism, etc. Simultaneously, multiple artistic-intellectual ideologies came into view, such as Realism, Symbolism, Impressionism, Fauvism, Structuralism, Functionalism, Constructivism, Pointillism, Surrealism, Classicism, Neoclassicism, Minimalism, etc.

Meanwhile, intellectual and academic based movements have appeared on the modern cultural scene in order to seize some cultural capital and perpetuate their power. Some examples have included the Psychology Cult, Sexuality Studies, Social Engineering-Sociology or social control theories, Educational Theory-Leadership or coercive state schooling, Military Sciences or warmongering, Anthropology-Intelligence Data Mining, or state-corporate spying and subversion of indigenous cultures, Journalism-Media Studies or media manipulation, Business-Advertising-Management Theory or profiteering, Criminal Justice Theory or modern prisons, Public Health-Nutritional Studies or modern medicine, etc.

There are hundreds more of these ideological plagues, which are too long to mention in this essay, all incubating and rotting the insides of life within our small Earth. It is no wonder that our world has become so confusing, horrifying and daunting, while the more sensitive people turn to drug addiction or madness in order to escape such mental delirium under the lies of crap science and twisted truths.

The most ideologically poisoned land on the Earth is the current Amerikan Empire. The polished serial killers currently holding power have maintained an empire through erecting various levels of cultural dry walls and insulations to rule more effectively over the ignorant and cowardly subjects. This criminal super state has managed even greater hierarchical levels of revolving doors that have kept the safe distances between its shocking leaders and the lumpen citizen mass.

The functional highway median gradations between the state and the people have sustained themselves through ordered systems of respected knowledge and pseudo-sciences, such as Liberalism, Democracy, State Government, Constitutionalism, etc. These same ideological systems and institutions have given a fine shine and brilliant luster to an otherwise horrifying, criminal enterprise. This state of the art indoctrination system has worked marvelously. Within US society, all social classes, ethnicities, and most subcultures consent to the US government as the legitimate authority in matters of social control, waging total and aggressive war, and the right to legal theft, or taxation.

All modern states or governments must use a contradictory assortment of cultural, social, intellectual and political ideologies in order to effectively rule and abuse their citizen-subject victims. State and elite sponsored ideological formations have waged a ruthless propaganda war against our fragile minds since our childhoods. How do we Anarchists fight such cultural malformations allied with the state? How can we can help free the minds of our fellow humans?

The two proven methods are to both intellectually refute their theoretical lies with counter-knowledge, and to publicly ridicule such mental nonsense. This method also critiques the few remaining doctrinaires coming out of another ideological mess – Anarchism.

Worlds of Pharmakopeia II: Cannabis Churning in the Mystical Orient

A cold wind was howling through the medieval streets of Rome during middle December. The days were real short. Darkness even shadowed the moon. This particular day was in the middle of the month, and the year was 1485. Christmas had its parties coming up, but the Pope Caesar had other nefarious plans tucked into his fat stomach. The sinister name of intolerance and hypocrisy was none other than Pope Innocent VIII, (the Eighth).

On this nefarious date he issued a strange papal bull against witchcraft and sorcery that seemed to infect the women of Europe, and especially the First Reich of Germany, bizarrely called, the Holy Roman Empire. This Empire was neither holy nor Roman.

Within this peculiar papal condemnation, he also cited the use of a demonic herb, called cannabis, often found, or imagined, in satanic religious rites. His informant-experts for these underground, conspiratorial satanic covens represented two German Dominican monks, Jakob Spengler and Heinrich Kramer. They would soon publish a nasty book, called ‘The Hammer of the Witches,’ which would help in the murder of close to 200,000 ‘witches,’ mostly marginalized women, during the next 250 years in Europe and in America.

Unfortunately for the plant ‘cannabis sativa,’ this strange and mystical herb from deep Asia, received the taint of evil with the papal stamp of approval. Yet, this same Pope Innocent the Eighth enjoyed some other mortal sins during his reign. He was obese and lived a life of extreme luxury inside the papal palace. He fathered two illegitimate children and had them married off into one of the strongest Families in Renaissance Italy, the Medici. He dipped some of the papal finances into the new Portuguese African Slave Trade. Meanwhile, he tried to revive the Papal Crusades of another Pope Innocent, in order to exterminate the Muslim Turks, the Protestant Waldensians in Northern Italy, and the Hussites in the Czech lands. All cannabis haters in history have shared three evil characteristics: intolerance, gross hypocrisy and state murder.

What is it about cannabis sativa that attracts such hatred and venom? The answer lies in its historical origins: the mystical rites for Lord Shiva and the Islamic Assassins in the medieval period. Cannabis still has these mystical, ‘orientalist’ associations to this actual day. Whether the foreign visitor enters the medinas of Morocco or the festivals dedicated to Shiva in India and Nepal, the scent of the cannabis herb inundates the consciousness.

From its evil oriental connections until its later appearances in the United States, cannabis would connect to a more infamous notoriety. African-American artists smoked the herb while they played their demonic, African sensualized beats, called jazz. Attractive white women even took off their shoes in the smoky clubs, and they danced with the demons. Mestizo, mixed race, Mexican fruit pickers and outlaws also smoked the leaf, called ‘mota,’ during their raucous partying. The dangerous, criminal classes, of course, used the oriental poison. The Amerikan Imperial thugs had taken notice. The historical hatred against cannabis has simply been another combined form of intolerance and murder.

Cannabis is actually a marvelous and natural soft drug. It relaxes and calms the mental nerves, and helps with bouts of nausea and gastrointestinal pains. Some doctors state that cannabis has other helpful healing properties. Cannabis can spark interior mental activity or engaging conversation. It stimulates the human appetites, both culinary and sexual. The drug goes perfectly with foods, entertainment, the arts and it especially compliments other natural drugs found on the Earth, such as alcohol, coffee and tea.

The only negatives to the drug are certain habitual users of it. It seems to have the similar effects of antidepressants on them, which produce lethargy, ego self-obsessions, or minor neuroses. But these are some excessive users. I have also personally met aggressive and successful attorneys that were avid smokers of the weed.

I return to cannabis’ ancient history and its orientalist associations. Lord Shiva, the God of both Creation and Destruction, the Cosmic Dance and the Holy Lingam, (phallic power), the revealer of mystical Tantra, patron of cows, yoga and the third sex, married to the goddess, Parvati, father to the god, Ganesh – also partook of the mystical drink, called ‘soma.’ Legend has it that the mystical drink was none other than ‘bhang,’ a milky concoction containing cannabis.

Shiva’s wandering followers called ‘sadhus,’ still partake of the magical perfumed medicine. During my travels around the world, I have seen these holy men, and some thieving-fakers claiming to exist as sadhus, smoking cannabis out of funnel type ceramic pipes called ‘chillum.’ Watching those holy men in action with their long dread locks, scruffy beards, blue and white-painted dyes, bodies smeared with cow dung, rope necklaces and bracelets, and dirty loin cloths, added to the whole Indian-Asian mystical effect.

On a more common level, during the Hindu festival of Holi, which happens around springtime, young Indians and Nepalese drink the marvelous liquid ‘bhang’ shakes, or ‘lassies,’ and later, hit the public streets throwing brightly colored dyes on the surrounding partiers and walkers. They hit me too – which added to the great fun during that day. Shiva’s gift was a truly a wonderful act.

Islam conquered the northern regions of the Indian subcontinent in the middle of the eleventh century. The cannabis magic of Shiva would also influence the Sufi Muslim mystics that lived in those regions. Even the great Sufi poet and mystic, Rumi, praised the herb and the wine. Cannabis entered the Islamic world: it stayed and it prospered. Still today in the Islamic world from North Africa to Afghanistan, the traveler can spot old men sitting in cafes, wearing their ‘chalaba’ long outfits with hoods. They smoke the green and brown ‘kif’ in their long pipes, while they sip on herbal mint tea, Turkish coffee and chew on honey snacks. Religious controversies have continued between the Sunni, Shia and Sufi branches of Islam – but smoking the flowering buds united them all.

One of the truths of human history has been its reign of absurdity. Cannabis had attached itself to one of the Shia sects of medieval Islam – ‘the Assassins.’ The Assassins were part of the Ismaili sect or the ‘Seveners.’ They also drank the luscious wine and smoked the enchanting herb.

The medieval Japanese Shogunates had their ‘ninjas’; while Medieval Islamic World Culture had their assassins. The assassins lived outside of society. Those disciplined holy warriors squatted in abandoned, foreboding military castles in northern Syria, Iraq and Iran. Their founder, Hassan i Sabbah, or ‘The Old Man of the Mountain,’ organized this Shia sect military order into a hierarchical brotherhood. Inside the castle, the warriors studied religious and philosophical texts, scientific works, learned various languages, and most importantly, the arts of killing. Their three preferred methods moved towards the silent variety: the dagger, the poison and strangulation.

Their victims were always political leaders within the Islamic world. If the Islamic political hack instituted unjust acts, mandated cruel laws, oppressed the poor, allowed poverty to accumulate, or stole lots of money from the just – then the Assassins went on the attack.

The Assassins first left a note pinned with a small dagger within the confines of the caliph or sultan’s palace. If that didn’t work, then the spiritual leader picked an Assassin to fulfill the last deed – a violent death. The Assassins always reached their victims, and after killing the state bum, they would often let frightened onlookers see the terminating work. Many of the assassins never returned from their ultimate missions.

Only one Islamic political-military ruler survived them – Saladin the Great. He survived three attempts on his life. They aroused fear in both the Islamic potentates and the European royal Crusaders. One of the Crusader kings even used the Assassins as allies against his Islamic rivals. Their enemies called them, ‘hashasheen’ in Arabic, or the Troublemakers.

From this Arabic word, the European Crusaders, and especially the Venetian merchant, Marco Polo, tied some connections between the sinister Oriental herbal paste, ‘hashish,’ with Assassin lore. According to the ignorant Euro-experts, hash was the powerful ingredient that transformed the Assassins into fanatical killers. This corrupted link also transformed European languages on the continent.

Most European languages have a separate word for killing and for murder: ‘matar,’ in Spanish, ‘tuer,’ in French, and ‘uccidire,’ in Italian. But these three languages share the same original word for murder, ‘asesinar, assassiner, assassinare.’ This outrageous relation between cannabis and irrational violence even stayed well into the 1930s USA with crap movies such as ‘Reefer Madness.’

This marvelous soft drug of cannabis has had its absurd orientalist associations. The real issue of cannabis was not its properties, but the European hatred for ‘the other,’ which still fuels the sociopathology of the Amerikan Empire. The murderous and hateful world empire still hunts for its victims through its continuous War against Cannabis, and all other ‘illegal drugs.’ The CIA can deal whatever it wants, yet the same US government prefers smokers to rot inside its hundreds of overpopulated prisons. In spite of all of this hate, Lord Shiva’s precious gift still wafts its distinctive breeze throughout all the lands of the Earth.