> > > > > The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization, 101 > > by Christy Rodgers / September 1st, 2009 > > clip -- > > Last year, a disenchanted classics major named D.C.A. Hillman published a > book called *The Chemical Muse: Drug Use and the Roots of Western > Civilization*. It was his revenge on the academic community that had > censored his thesis, forcing him to remove the section dealing with > recreational drug use in Greek and Roman times in order to graduate. > > It’s a short but pithy book, aimed at the hypocrisy of the modern U.S. > stance on (some) drugs as much as at the stuffy classicists who maintained, > in the face of reams of textual evidence, according to Hillman, that “[the > Romans] just wouldn’t do such a thing.” I’m not a classicist, but Hillman > doesn’t have to work very hard to convince me that Rome’s pleasure-seekers > didn’t just drink lots and lots of wine in those saturnalian romps of > theirs. > > *The Chemical Muse* is a brief overview of the evidence that the ancient > Greeks and Romans were both aware and tolerant of the use of psychoactive > substances: opiates, cannabis and other plant-based drugs, while they > simultaneously warned of the dangers of “poisoning” (what we would refer to > as overdose) and prescribed precautionary remedies for it. In fact, > according to Hillman, the only aspect of drug use that was criminal in these > societies was the intentional poisoning of another person with a drug. > > Hillman is mostly interested in presenting his case from a civil > libertarian standpoint; since our own imperfect understanding of civil > liberties is largely derived from Classical society via the Enlightenment, > he wonders how we can have descended to a position so much less enlightened > in this regard than our primitive forebears in the ancient world. > > But in his defense of Greek and Roman recreational drug use, Hillman barely > touches on what is to me, the heart of the matter: drugs may have stimulated > the very visions and insights that gave early poets and philosophers levels > of understanding that Western civilization has built on ever since, while > systematically purging the parts of those understandings that didn’t gibe > with any practice not useful to refining social control and/or increasing > the production of profit. Hillman does make note of the pre-Socratics, chief > among them Pythagoras and Empedocles, for whom mysticism and rigorous > investigation of the natural world were no contradiction. He says: “the > roots of Western philosophy reach deep into the fertile soil of the human > imagination, where shamanism, divination, and narcotic experiences have held > sway for thousands of years.” While this idea alone could easily be the > subject of a book, Hillman is more interested in documenting classical > references to drug use than to linking it to the production of important > concepts and archetypes, from mathematics to theology. > > full -- < > http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/09/drugs-and-social-progress-since-the-greeks/ > > > > > > > > The late Brazilian bishop Dom Hélder Câmara said it well: “When I give food > to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, > they call me a Communist.” > > ------------------------------ > ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
