Pubdate: Tue, 01 Sep 2009
Source: Maui News, The (HI)
Copyright: 2009 The Maui News
Contact:  http://www.mauinews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2259
Author: Alan Lowen
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09/n811/a07.html?1338

ZEALOTS USE MORALITY TO HOBBLE OTHERS

Jerome Kellner's campaign in "Letters" against marijuana has no 
balanced evaluation of scientific, psychological or social pros and 
cons. All it serves is his personal moral stance, which impels him to 
make absurd extrapolations (Letters, Aug. 22) about brain damage and 
criminal behavior resulting from smoking pot.

Throughout history zealots have used morality to impose on others 
their own joyless ways. Witness the Taliban. Morality is a loveless 
and frequently punitive substitute for learning to appreciate 
humanity, including one's own. It requires no inner quest, no 
self-awareness. It self-righteously decides what is right and wrong 
for everybody, without seeing anybody. Wrapped up in its own beliefs, 
it has no capacity to feel or understand.

There was a time - long ago - when smoking marijuana helped me heal 
psychological wounds that had been inflicted on me as a child by very 
moral people. It also helped me open to life's spiritual dimension. 
When that happened I gave up smoking marijuana, but I am deeply 
grateful for all it gave me.

Second, all over the world I have had the privilege of meeting many 
generous, compassionate, warm-hearted, wise and often quite brilliant 
individuals for whom smoking marijuana was a sacred, conscious 
practice and a deeply benevolent social ritual.

Alan Lowen
Paia 
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