Did Sagan say that in writing? I know he wrote a few things about his experiences with pot, but those were informal, anecdotal writings, and this sounds much more formal, almost like a public statement meant for publication, or a speech.
this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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Here is a summary with a link to the PDF: https://bigthink.com/health/carl-sagan-on-smoking-marijuana/
Kinda blows my mind that capitalists so desperately want marijuana to be illegal. It’s basically the closest real-world analogue to Brave New World’s Soma.
You want the populace to be complacent? You need to let em blaze it.
Weed leads to more open mindedness. Why bother using it as an opiate of the masses when you have actual opiates. Push those instead while throwing anyone who has touched weed into the private slave system for superprofits.
There's already plenty out there to keep a population complacent. Also, the prison industrial complex and all that surrounds it is big business.
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Sensitivity and fellowship, yet my (former) friend who is a big stoner has gone all-in on conspiracy theories and is championing the Reform party in the UK because Labour are apparently race traitors. Guess weed can't do all the lifting.
Can't win em all. Also, weed in the UK is rubbish /s
If you are as smart and educated as Carl Sagan, I’m sure weed isn’t doing the heavy lifting.
Yeah for people like Sagan, the "serenity" he's referring to is probably more about quieting his mind.
Maybe weed isn’t relevant in that case, let’s not forget that in the US, weed was promoted by liberals and opposed by the MAGA crowd.
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To make an apple pie you gotta first create the universe. Def a stoner thought lol
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If there is one thing weed is really good at, it is making people okay with being lazy and with their current situation. LSD on the otherhand, can really make you rethink everything.
what's wrong with being content and finding peace? The productivity drive has been driven into you by capitalism and leads to mass discontentment and suffering. One must detach from endless striving to achieve true enlightenment and happiness, and weed can do that and chill people out and cure them of their "protestant work ethic" which is a cultural disease.
Inherent in this type of "weed makes you lazy" rhetoric is that it makes other people lazy. You want everyone else working endlessly and tirelessly implicitly here, that they must face endless burden for your benefit. It's a form of social control where you are attempting to force your values onto others instead of respecting their right to chose what they do with their own body and life.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/smoking-weed-more-emphathetic-study/ Fwiw.
My partner has an Rx for his myriad of autoimmune stuff. It really helps him when he isn't feeling well.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's causal, but it could also be that more naturally empathetic people trend towards weed to cope with the reality that our society is brutal and predatory and uncaring. I know I need weed just to cope with living in a fascist society where almost everyone around me shrugs their shoulders at genocide.
Also it could be shared confounding variables like the fact that more poor, young and POC people smoke, and old rich white people have drained themselves of all empathy
Whatever gets you through the day. Glad to have others with heart around. :)
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