I was watching the evening news a few nights ago, and Peter Jennings
started the show by saying `The king is dead'. Is he? Something
extremely symbolic seems to have passed with the death of the world's
most fiendish drugpin, Pablo Escobar. The Medellin Cartel is in
shambles and the Cali Cartel has taken over in its place. The Medellin
Cartel was infamous for its bloody terrorism. Escobar supposedly was
even ordering murders from his luxurious prison. Judges, reporters,
politicians, presidential candidates, all were viciously murdered in
the Medellin `narcoterrorist' campaign. The Cali Cartel is by no means
a `kinder and gentler' trafficking organization but they have much less
blood on their hands and supposedly prefer bribery to bloody murder. An
analyst on the news suggested of course that the Cali Cartel was not
going to crumble any time soon, but that this assassination of Escobar
was significant `psychic leverage'.
I've been thinking about drugs lately. It seems to me there is an
interesting overlap in the subversive radical libertarians,
cryptoanarchists, and psychopunks who advocate pseudospoofing and those
who advocate (or at least tolerate) drug use. We have the same
arguments about drugs as we do about pseudoanonymity. `It's a
liberating experience.' `It's hopeless to attempt to prevent it.'
`Nobody gives a damn if it is widespread.' `People should have a right
to privacy.' Masked in all these arguments are very evil sentiments and
the philosophy that `that which cannot be enforced should not be
prohibited'. (I forget who said that.) The drug practitioners likewise
mask their true agenda in pompous rhetoric about `the positive
environmental influence and diverse uses of hemp' when there is really
only one use their are interested in: getting stoned.
* * *
The corruption and poison associated with drugs in respectable
organizations can be legendary. I once worked at a company for a year,
and found out to my utter dismay when I left that there was an active
drug conspiracy within the company. This was a highly reputable
computer reseller in the Denver area, with major clients such as
U.S.West, and expanding very rapidly (they went public when I was
working there). I found that this conspiracy penetrated to the very
highest levels of the company, to the top salesman and founder himself!
I worked in a technical department and my supervisor flabbergasted me
with these revelations one day over lunch. I was absolutely
dumbfounded. He told me how one of his employees felt he had the right
to sneak out of the building and take pot-breaks in his car when he was
most stressed out. The supervisor didn't have the authority to fire
him. In fact, if he did, he himself might have been sacked instead for
his anti-drug stance in the face of a company that was `rotten to the core'.
The supervisor told me of a female employee who had a drug dealing
boyfriend. She took in the marijuana into the company and people from
around the company stopped into her office to pick up envelopes
containing their drugs. Another supervisor, my boss explained to me,
had a very serious cocaine habit too. It all fell into place. One day
the cocaine addict was absolutely jumping around, something like a
headless fowl, like the shocking fellow soldier whose sheer stupidity
puts the life of everyone in the group at deadly dangerous risk. He
said something very bizarre to me, `so Lance, just HOW ARE YOU FEELING
TODAY?' The strange tone was entirely uncharacteristic of him, and I
was baffled at the time, but after the revelation from my boss it clicked.
I had flown to Alberqueque NM with the same drug addict supervisor, and
remember the flight back. The guy stopped in the bathroom and kept me
waiting for about 10 minutes. I was really wondering what was taking so
long! I realize now he was getting stoned to get on the plane. I wonder
when he was stoned when I was working with him on the very sensitive
network installation we barely pulled off from all kinds of fiascos. He
told me that he couldn't have done it without me. I wonder if we should
have done it without him.
The NM trip was my first business trip. I was ecstatic and extremely
nervous at the time. Many things could have gone wrong and many did,
but I came back with a feeling of satisfaction. Today, after coming to
the realization of the sheer corrupt ineptitude of my coworkers, I look
back on the affair as tinged with a black evil. I resent the vice of
these people that dirties my positive memories about the trip. In fact,
my esteem for my whole association with the company and many fond
memories have been veiled in disappointing sadness.
I remember another technician complaining about `Melody', the lady who
was distributing the drugs. He said that he wanted a job out of the
company as an on-site technician for U.S. West. He was extremely
bitter, but whatever I tried I could not get him to tell me why he was
so upset. He was holding out on me, like everyone else in the company.
Everyone knew I was squeaky clean and even the clean fringes that
touched the blackness kept their knowledge of the conspiracy to
themselves. I don't appreciate his holding the truth from me. It was my
right to know.
Melody was quite the airhead. She was required to pick me up in the
company car daily. She frequently missed the appointment, and I often
had to call her after waiting and wasting 20 or 30 minutes. Sometimes,
just as I was about to call she showed up. Other times, she did not
show up even after I called her. One day I got really exasperated after
she failed to show up after I called her. I began the long
hour-and-a-half walk to the office from where I was. I stayed off the
route she would take so that she could not find me.
When I got to the office she was extremely upset. But she also made me
feel very guilty, like the whole thing was my fault, like a mother
scolding her son. `Where WERE YOU?' `I looked all over for you!' she
said. `I couldn't find you anywhere!' For a week she was more prompt
but fell back into her old patterns of irresponsibility and neglect.
She didn't really change at all.
Melody was taking me to work one day in the company car, and seemed to
be very distracted. I was daydreaming out the window of the passenger
side in the front. We were making a left turn in the intersection, and
were first in line, waiting for the arrow. The right lane of the
oncoming traffic to our left of the intersection was empty, but cars in
the distance were slowing to stop at the red light. I watched in utter
slow-motion she's-not-really-going-to-do-it horror as she made the left
turn into the left side of the median, driving into oncoming traffic.
She snapped out of it when she saw the oncoming semi truck.
The semi truck saw us, as well as the other cars in the intersection,
and they slowed, and I breathed in cracked relief. I shook and buried
my face in my hands in utter embarrassment and shame. She maneuvered
the car in a U-turn in the lane (actually, a 360 degree revolution),
around the median and into the correct lane. I can't remember, was the
left arrow still green? yellow? off? Or maybe she just managed to
reorient the car in a 180 direction and stop at the red light. The
whole experience was quite a blur, something like a hideous,
nightmarish drug-induced hallucination. For Melody, it was.
* * *
There are many points to make about this story. The first is that it is
a true story! The second is that it has very many metaphors that we can
explore in relation to drug use. Drug networks are virtually the
definition of a conspiracy. Some people are aware of it, and `inside',
and some people are `clean', like me, and must be kept from the
blackness by insiders. And these networks can infiltrate respectable
organizations and corrupt people all the way to the top. It can
monstrously damage the productivity of the company yet some people
would rather that the company die of its slow death of blood poisoning
than give up their drug use. They would call drug tests an `invasion of
their privacy'. In fact, some of the employees at my company had worked
at other bigger companies and were fired for their drug use. But my
company had no record of it! And the drug users would certainly do
everything possible to ensure that!
Another interesting metaphor in my true story lies in that of the clean
supervisor. This man was one of the most respectable people in the
company I knew. I counted him my only true friend. He understood the
dynamics of the company and the human interactions better than anyone,
and had made many positive contributions to it. He was a source of
extropy in the entropy, so to speak. The thought that he might have
been fired by his corrupt boss because he was trying to rid the company
of something that was poisoning repulses me.
Another point to make is that some companies can continue to function
in the face of drug use, and sweep it under the rug. But it is
impossible to deny that the effects are there. Like the botched jobs,
and my horrific encounter with a potentially deadly traffic accident,
the signs are unequivocal. Any person who thinks their drug use does
not affect their own performance or that of a company is grotesquely
deluded. But that is the consequence of drug use!
One of the most sinister aspects, however, is that I see as the
`respectable organization facade.' This is a situation where a company
has a very highly acclaimed public image but an ugly, rotten interior
that the public is unaware of. People in the company will resist with
the utmost of force and intimidation any attempts to uncover the
corruption, such as anonymous phone threats. After a while, in the face
of such an investigation, it becomes easy to spot people who are
`dirty' and who are evading questions. People become desperate in their
conspiracy. They know what they are doing is evil but at the same time
cling to it with white knuckles, because they know that as soon as they
loosen their grip it will crumble into ashes, and in many cases it does
anyway. In many cases these people choose their own demise. The longer
their denials, the more spectacular their falls.
* * *
The idea of different people in a drug network actually being tentacles
of a single Medusa is very interesting, and I have talked about it
before. The drug organization understands the idea of
compartmentalizing knowledge so that worthless front-line street-level
runners are unaware of higher or even lateral components of the
organization, so when apprehended, even if they `squeal' they are
worthless in uncovering them. The police can cut dozens of quivering
tentacles and Medusa lives on.
In a sense, Pablo Escobar was the ultimate Medusa. He surrounded
himself with buffers until his death. Many people in the country think
he is a hero, a modern day Robin Hood. He certainly promoted this
image! It was critical to his `success'. But it was probably also
critical to his downfall. Once his sycophants perceived a momentum
against him, they simply switched sides and informed on him. This is
the double edged sword of Medusa's tentacles -- they can also turn and
strangle her, and Medusa must go to extraordinary measures to prevent
it, even a `purge' against Medusa's own `family' like those of Saddam Hussein.
* * *
Your mind is your most precious asset! It is your window to your soul!
And drug use is like spraypainting the fragile window with graffiti,
like throwing jagged rocks at it. A drug invades your sanity like a
virus invades a computer. No wonder psychopunks are so enamored with
viruses! The virus is the metaphor for their life. They slowly,
invisibly spread their poison by infecting systems that fail to
adequately fight them. I'm sure that the bubonic plague likes to say,
`I'm not saying that killing people is OK, but if your defenses are
down, I'm just helping you out by exposing them.' Just like Medusa
gradually being confused about which of her tentacles is which, as the
identities inevitably blur together, does a mind gradually disintegrate
with drug use.
* * *
One of the other extremely evil aspects of drug use is that of the
corruption of close friends and oneself. As I was saying, drug use can
devastate one's life to the ultimate degree. One can lose a job, a car,
a house. More devastatingly, a spouse, one's children. Most
treacherously, one's own health, sanity, or life. I think all the
cryptoanarchists, radical libertarians, and cypherpunks who promote
drug use seem to be in favor of a sort of social sadochism and
masochism. `The world is an ugly place, and everyone should wallow in
it.' This is like the drug user bringing down his respectable friends
with his own depravity.
The drug user with a conscience is tormented by his daily betrayals of
his friends, and seeks to smooth over the cracks that he is continually
causing. He tries to be soothing, and point his finger in some other
direction, `hey, look at that!' while he is snorting white lines. He
will whimper and whine plaintively, `please, don't make a big deal out
of this, we don't want a scene.' The truly vicious drug user has no
remorse. He has never apologized for his destruction to the fragile
fabric of human trust that he rips daily. He erects elaborate
mythologies that supposedly legitimize his poison. But at the root it
is all nothing but black deception and delusion.
Imagine the absolute horror of these encounters. Imagine that you
highly respect someone, say they may have cofounded a great company
like Sun, you have tried to cultivate a friendship over many months,
and you suddenly understand that they are a drug user! What are your
options? Do you run? Do you tolerate them? Do you try to change them?
What is the requirement of true friendship? I think that quiet
toleration is like being an accomplice to a crime. You are not only
betraying your friend but yourself. As ugly as it feels, as grotesque
and hideous your task, you must pursue it.
That which does not destroy evil makes it grow stronger! You will
discover your true friends, if you had any. The veils of delusion will
fall as you come face to face with the betrayal of people you once
respected. Even with your supposed friend's attacks, apathy, flight,
and abandonment, the knives in your back, the tears streaming down your
face, your blood in puddles around you, it is your responsibility to
Humanity and your soul that you continue to attack all Lies that cross
your path to your final rasping breath.
People have a duty to challenge that little niche of corruption they
have uncovered, so that the `little niches' don't grow into monstrous
nightmares. This is very much in the way that the Nazi movement has
been described in retrospect by many. `They came for people I did not
know, and then people I did know, and then my friends, and then me.'
When there is an encroaching active evil, passivity feeds it. Another
interesting essay talked about the whole Nazi movement as a sort of
subtly incremental plunge into raw evil, each step definite but
imperceptible. Sort of like the story of the frog, who will jump out of
hot water but will passively die if it is gradually brought to boil.
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