Weed Cancer.

When too much of a good thing, grows out of bounds, and keeps on growing, its called a cancer.   I believe the research that points to the cancer-curing powers of marijuana but unfortunately, it seems to me that growing weed has become a cancer in this community.   

 Economic patterns have their own rules  - money, for instance,  is based on desire and excess of money creates excess of desire, which we term "greed".    Money breeds greed like manure breeds flies and after a while, the buzz gets annoying.   When an economic pattern gets out of control,  the authorities have to step in..  If you think that sounds paternalistic, it is, but evidently the children of this county need some parental oversight.  

Many, many people that I'm close to, have grown weed over the years I've been here and since I lived  some  20 years on the Ridge, you know I'm telling the truth.  But the current situation is wrong.  It doesn't take a criminal element to grow medicinal herb, but it does take a certain thug element to make buyer connections and protect one's product and turf against others and the more warlike the tribe, the more successful the endeavor.  After a while, the medicinal hippies and unemployed contractors get pushed aside by those with more unsavory connections and histories.  I see it happening here in my neighborhood in Rough and Ready, and I don't like it. 

Something about that plant, maybe it was meant to be kept secret?  Like the way the Indians felt about the gold in the rivers before the white man came with his needs and his greeds.   I believe it is a healing plant and good for many things.  In this,   I follow the advice of a modern prophet, Ellen G. White, who said in 1884 that we should stay away from modern patent medicines and the industry that provides them (another instance of money breeding greed)  and look to the natural plants and remedies that God provides.  So I'm certainly not anti-marijuana.  I am pro community and if we let growers take over the community it will be destroyed.  If not sooner, through violence and greed, then later when it inevitably gets legalized nationally and the bubble pops.  A community needs diversity to survive in the long run.

 The green gold rush is over. It was fine while it lasted, it saved many people from losing their homes and helped this county  pull through some lean years, but we've got to get it under control.   At least on this side of the river.  The Ridge is a different thing.  It evolved a hippie culture that  has mechanisms for dealing with  the stresses and obtains a kind of "wild west frontier" culture that can handle the problems.  Its weed-growing culture has evolved over time and is thus more stable. In an ideal county, there'd be room for different rules for the Ridge.  Maybe it's time to consider the mechanism of secession? The Great Republic of Rough and Ready supports that idea.

The Rising Pragmatism

"North America in the 21st Century will be an increasingly diverse place.  Long-established principles of equality and national unity will be disrupted by the demands of difference. "

-- Scott Pratt, Native Pragmatism, intro,  xvii


I do believe ol' Scott nailed it on the head there.  That does seem to be where we are at, right now, with the headlines all full of racial tension and violent reactions...  even if it is 'only' a media thing, it is also and totally a "media thing" and an object of thought to be fought.  We must deal with this perception of America in crisis, that comes through the airwaves and out to the world which watches.
 And our leadership is defunct.
Can we all just admit that?
Right up front?

The kind of skillsets and character that make for success in politics, do not constitute the characteristics of true leadership.

capisce?   

Of course you do.  You understand exactly how it works.  There's a sort of folk-saying for it - the only person adequate for public office is the person who doesn't want public office.  Ronald Reagen portrayed that character on the big stage, and it definitely wins voters.. But in real life, it's impossible.  A self-defeating conundrum.   But let's hear what else Scott has to say on our current crisis...

" Any adequate response to this pluralist environment will require changes in established ways of thinking. "


Wow!  That seems pretty obvious, but at the same time, pretty radical.  How do we change established ways of thinking?  Especially in a world where the establishment owns the propogations of digitalized cultural inputs?  That seems highly problematic, to me.

imho.


" It will call up, in fact, a philosophical crisis,"

yup.  agree completely.  I think I'm not alone in my agreement, 'neither.

 "Whether or not it is so named, in which options will be narrow.  People can ignore difference, suppress it with escalating violence, or they can search for other principles. alternative ways of understanding and acting in the world, that will promote coexistence."

I vote for the latter.  I vote for the pragmatic solution, which increases the quality of my social experience.  That's my vote.   I'm with Scott.

 What about you?

I recently started a mailing list with no subscribers.  Which is not surprising considering, the subject of the mailing list discussion is Josiah Royce, the most simultaneously obscure and yet significant philosopher in the world.  Nobody's heard of the guy.  Not even in his home town, Grass Valley, where the library is named after him, but the librarians are without a clue as to what he thought, spoke and wrote.

In academic circles, he's been mostly abandoned and in non-academic circles, there's not much philosophy or metaphysics.  In fact over all,  we've witnessed a kind of "californication" of our entire culture, in the past 150 years, Since Royce published his great opus, The Problem of Christianity, and at the beginning of his career, Royce described the california phenom.  He wrote in a letter to William James, that it was a wasteland of metaphysics, among other significant attributes.  A place where the concern was of the mining share-holder and the farmer, for prices and commerce and gain.  The entire goal of our world as we find it today.  

California as  a prophetic statement of the American Way.  A place-holder for the Eureka feeling that America as a whole, brought to the world scene it it's day, and carries through the promulgation of value in Hollywood and the Silicon Valley, to the world as a whole, and the rest of the country especially.  This Royce describes in detail, in his work, in his words and in his life.   And what he meant by "metaphysical wasteland" and what I mean by the indictment of the social sphere at large is, nobody really takes the time to dig into the roots of things, much.

This is a bad tendency.  Society recognizes this and understands that a sort of silt, builds up over the years.  A silt that can only be dredged by the deep thinkers.  The ones willing to dive into the murky depths, and unscrew the inscrutable.  To analyze and interpret the meaning of our mutual experience of the times we live in.  These brave souls are called "metaphysicians" and I intend to use this blog, this means of communication, to explain and declaim and hold up the ideas of Josiah Royce.  To pursue and expand upon and to elucidate to all, the great vision and totality of Royce's life and cause - The Great Community.

I also intend to explain Grass Valley.  And California.  To all.  I appreciate your attention.