People Love Simple Answers

A nineteen year-old on Craigslist posted an ad seeking platonic friends in which he bared his dismal situation in life for all to judge:

1. I have no job.
2. I have no car.
3. I have no friends.
4. I like to smoke weed.

Doesn't sound very appealing, does it? My attention was drawn to this ad because I was browsing the "rants and raves" section, where someone had posted a message entitled, "oh, weed is harmless...OH YEAH?" The message contained a link to this guy's plea for friends. The implication is that weed has devastated this guy's life to the point where he is unemployed, without a car, and without friends.

I thought about that, and how the ad plays into the stereotype that many people have concerning pot smokers, an image popularized by Cheech and Chong in their hilarious movies from the 1970's. I'm not sure I would find those movies funny today, but when I watched them as a young man, it was under a thick haze of marijuana smoke, and they seemed funny enough at the time.

The unemployed guy was just nineteen years old, and I didn't find it all that surprising that he had no job and no car. Maybe he is attending college, or maybe he can't find work in today's economy, where few employers are hiring. Is marijuana the cause of his troubles? Certainly not, no more than beer would be.

People use marijuana for a variety of reasons, and no two people are the same. The nineteen year-old could be an addictive personality that uses a variety of substances, where marijuana is likely the least of the chemical cornucopia. He might drink, smoke tobacco, and smoke pot as well. The question then becomes, what causes his problems? Is it the alcohol, the tobacco, or the pot? Maybe it is none of the above. Maybe his problems are even deeper than the substances that he chooses to imbibe. I prefer the last answer, because I have some experience with substance use myself. Marijuana does not alter a person that much, no more than beer. Anyone who has smoked it before can testify to this, and should, in order to counter the misinformation so prevalent in the world.

Besides an addictive personality, what are the other reasons that people choose to smoke pot? Most, I suspect, merely desire inebriation. Thrill-seeking behavior is what this is about. People smoke pot for much the same reason that they visit an amusement park or masturbate--activities that George Castanza's mother (from Seinfeld) associated with each other. It's interesting to note that many forms of thrill-seeking behavior, such as masturbation, firearms, horror movies and video games, receive some level of disapproval from society. Is society becoming boring, a nervous nanny that frowns on fun?

Other marijuana consumers may be self-medicating their depression or anxiety. Actually, marijuana is not a bad choice for that type of thing. I know, because when I smoked pot as a teenager, it was because I was suffering from depression. It's pretty easy for someone who is not suffering from depression or anxiety to look down at the pot smoker and exclaim, "Aha! The marijuana made you that way! If only you quit smoking pot, you would be a better person!" That's the easy answer, and people like easy answers. In reality, if you take their medicine away, pot smokers will simply become more anxious. They may turn to drinking. They will definitely find an alternative of some sort, because human beings are nothing if not resourceful. What needs to be addressed is not their choice of medicine, but the causes of the underlying distress. Heal the wound, don't just rip off the band-aid.

It takes effort and energy to look deeper into the nature of things. Who is willing to take the time to sort out the truth? Many people put their faith in right-wing politicians and die in pointless foreign wars because of a toxic preference for easy answers.

Remember this easy answer from the 1960's? "We have to stop the spread of communism! Let's spend a trillion dollars fighting in the jungles of Viet Nam."

Here's a more recent example. "We have to stop the evil dictator of Iraq! Let's spend another trillion in the Middle East."

Simple reasoning was used in each of these cases. Who will take the time to explore all of the facts? Who will stop in the middle of an angry nation's march to war? It's not easy to stand against the madness of crowds, to be the lone dissenter. You may be called a traitor.

Truth-seeking is the search for the difficult answers, the ones that may be inconvenient. The truth is almost never cast in black and white, good versus evil, and beware of those who claim that it is. Instead, truth often remains obscured in shades of grey. The mystic Osho said, "Nothing is good, nothing is bad." We project those values upon the world in order to simplify reality. We can never have the entire truth with the limitation of two eyes and one brain. The truth is vast and complicated, and we are small and simple. We should try to see as much as we can and never give up searching for answers, because the minute we think we have all of the truth, new information may arise that contradicts old information.

Due to the uncertainty over the truth, we should be reluctant to take life. In "The Lord of the Rings," Frodo expressed a desire to kill the creature Gollum. He asked the wizard Gandalf, does Gollum not deserve death? For indeed, Gollum was an evil creature that had murdered in the past, and he was observed to be spying upon them. Gandalf replied, "There are many who deserve life. Can you give it to them? Be not eager to deal out death. Even the Wise cannot see all ends."

I advise that people question things and never cease gathering knowledge and information. Education is called The Way, because through it, we can understand many things about the world. But remember that there is a difference between real education and indoctrination. Not everything that one reads in a book will be true. Much that we see upon television is false. In school, we were taught to paraphrase what we read. The emphasis was upon memorization. More important than that is critical thinking. Much information must be rejected, because it is false or only half-true. Learning to develop critical thinking is the highest goal of education. Memorization is the lowest, and only fools will stop learning at that level.