Sitting on the couch during the COVID-19 lockdown perusing the Netflix menu I pondered why so many of the TV shows are about drugs. Every second drama series focused on nefarious drug dealers located in different places around the globe. What is the cultural fascination with drugs, drug taking, drug dealing and the consequent law and enforcement issues around these topics? Why have we turned to recreational drugs en masse over the last five decades? What is the motivation underpinning the collective desire to bend reality and get high? Is it primarily an economic determination? Do we seek a chemical escape from the banality of our lives? What drives the human race to indulge in these psychotropic substances on such a scale? Then, I had an epiphany, it is the systematic irrationality embedded within our cultures and civilisation, which make so many of us turn to drugs. Indeed, delusions about god turned me to drugs.
Kids Turning to Drugs to Escape the Conflicting Truths
If we honestly appraise the current reality, where a belief in an invisible supernatural entity resides within an otherwise scientifically based materialistic universe, we will see the dichotomy at the heart of our situation. Homo sapiens have existed for a couple of hundred thousand years on planet earth and hominids have been here for several million years. The scientific revolution is some five hundred years old and our belief in gods stretches back well beyond recorded history. Billions of modern human beings believe in various versions of these invisible supernatural entities. This is despite the very real fact that no tangible evidence has ever been discovered to prove that any of them exist or have ever existed. In direct contravention of our adherence to rational and scientifically verifiable laws in almost all other areas of life, we turn a blind eye to this ginormous elephant in the room. Children are raised with this inconsistency and irrationality surrounding them. These kids are educated in institutions, which teach conflicting truths. No wonder so many of them turn to drugs. Yes, delusions about god turned me to drugs, perhaps, in the hope that I would find some insight into this strange contradiction of fact and fiction.
Belief in God is a Rejection of Real Life
Human beings cling to their belief in a benevolent and personally concerned god despite all factual evidence to the contrary. Tragedy and misfortune befalling the conscientious religious believer does not readily dent his or her faith in the divine. The death of a loved one is explained away by ministers of faith as god embracing this individual and he or she going to live with the almighty in heaven or paradise. In fact, death and bereavement are probably the greatest drivers of the belief in something divinely different from what we actually have. The belief in god can be seen as a rejection of the basic unfairness of the materialistic universe. We are born into life and destined to die. This initially unappealing conundrum is enough to turn anyone to drugs. Human beings want to get high and escape the apparent bummer of their fate. Happy clappers get high via singing and prayer about entering heaven and staying their forever, having a wonderful time.
God Failed to Mention DNA
What does it mean for our civilisation when a large section of the world’s population maintains a belief in something that does not exist? Not in the sense that the world’s established religions define god by at any rate. All these scriptures and holy books have been written and authored by human beings. Many of them millennia ago. They share the fact that none of them offer any real wisdom beyond being a reflection of the customs and cultures responsible for the attitudes of their human authors. The end result is that we have a large social leaning toward irrelevant and obsolete matters. Things like sexual predilection are overly emphasised at the expense of more sensible concerns, especially for 21C human beings. Today, we face possible extinction from biological viruses and from technological weapons of mass destruction. It is clear from my own examination of religious texts that the authors were completely unaware of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) – the blueprint of all life on earth. How could a concerned god be in the dark when it comes to DNA? Is it credible that divine communication with prophets via revelation would have missed the most important stuff and left out an understanding of DNA and the atomic nature of the cosmos? If the messengers were dunces, why haven’t we had regular updates since then? It is all such a poor state of affairs that many people have obviously turned to drugs. Perhaps, drowning their sorrows in self-medicating substances at the mess humanity finds itself in. Alternatively, it is a divine conspiracy and god wants to keep us all out of the loop when it comes to understanding creation. Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge, sshh, quiet, say no more, I know what you mean.
The belief in god by billions of earth’s denizens places us all in a deluded realm lacking any real clarity. Religions have, over the decades and centuries, attacked and murdered dissenting human beings who do not claim belief in their version of god. Heretics have been tortured and burnt at the stake in their tens of thousands. Great and bloody battles have been fought from one end of the planet to the other over allegiance to invisible supernatural entities, who do not really exist. If a stranger were to view this reality from a vantage point outside of our own delusion what would he, she or it think. The alien life form sitting in judgement on our own irrational and ludicrous behaviour over thousands of years. Sounds suspiciously like that supernatural entity sitting on a cloud up above, you know the one with the long white beard. Human beings suffer from endemic low self-esteem, we must, because we feel more comfortable with having someone else in charge. God is ultimately responsible for everything – what a collective cop out! We are all too busy getting out of it on drugs and singing and chanting prayers to bother with taking charge of our lives.
Okay, what are we going to do about it? What measures are we going to take to resolve this global dilemma, which is turning our people and our children to drugs? Are we going to put away our security blanket? Put away the bedtime stories about benevolent superbeings that don’t really exist? Because you know, you cannot demand that people refrain from indulging in mind-bending drugs when more than half the world believe in fairies and stories about supernatural supreme beings. If you cut your daily dose of reality with a good nip of make believe, then, recreational drug takers everywhere have the right to get stoned whenever they please. Delusions about god turned me to drugs. The aberrant nature of our current situation is pushing people toward drugs by forcing them to exist in a world where incoherent beliefs belie scientific truth. The climate change conundrum sits on the same platform, where the world’s population and their leaders deny the science showing us our fate. We don’t want to acknowledge the facts and, so, we will deny them or just ignore the truth.
We may be the biggest brained monkeys who climbed out of the trees but that does not stop us behaving badly and going bananas. Our fallacious relationship with truth is unsound, insane and preposterous. No wonder so many people are taking drugs. It is, therefore, no surprise that Netflix is streaming so many programs about drugs and their dealers. If you believe in invisible, supernatural entities. If you abide by the three Os – omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent – in your life, then do not blame the predilection for substance abuse among children and adults. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Get real and give the imaginary god the flick. You will be helping innocent children avoid the perils of drug taking and addiction.
©Robert Hamilton