Ganja Concept: The Pendulum Swings from Woke to Holy – How Hashish Customers Should Navigate the New Spiritual Revival
The Sacred and the Stoned: When Identification Politics Broke the Machine
Move that joint and settle in, as a result of we have to discuss how America’s newest cultural swing received so rattling excessive. We’re watching a textbook pendulum impact: woke ideology pushed so exhausting into authoritarian territory that it created the proper situations for an equally authoritarian backlash wrapped in Christian nationalism.
Let’s be clear about what occurred. What began as cheap requires tolerance and inclusion morphed into one thing way more sinister – a motion that demanded complete ideological compliance beneath risk of social destruction. When “males can get pregnant” turned a compulsory perception quite than a compassionate lodging, when questioning any side of intersectional orthodoxy made you a “literal Nazi,” the motion stopped being about justice and have become about energy.
The woke motion wasn’t tackling systemic issues – it was systematically destroying particular person pondering. They changed Martin Luther King’s dream of judging individuals by character with a inflexible caste system primarily based on immutable traits. They weren’t anti-racist; they simply redistributed racism with new targets. The fixed demand that everybody settle for more and more contradictory claims as absolute reality broke one thing elementary in American discourse.
And now we’re seeing the inevitable backlash. Average individuals who received uninterested in being known as bigots for believing primary organic actuality are swinging towards Trump and Christian nationalism. It is like watching somebody give up ingesting by turning into a spiritual fundamentalist – buying and selling one type of psychological imprisonment for one more.
This issues particularly for hashish customers as a result of each extremes are hostile to free pondering. Woke ideology calls for you settle for predetermined conclusions with out query. Christian nationalism does the identical factor, simply with completely different conclusions. Each methods punish curiosity, unbiased thought, and the type of consciousness exploration that hashish tradition has all the time valued.
We’re getting into the age of AI with a inhabitants educated to just accept no matter authority determine tells them what to assume. Whether or not that authority is a blue-haired professor screaming about microaggressions or a preacher claiming God desires America to be a Christian ethnostate, the sample is identical: give up your particular person judgment to the collective.
The actual tragedy is that this pendulum swing was totally predictable and fully avoidable.
The transformation of progressive politics from “reside and let reside” to “comply or be destroyed” did not occur in a single day, however the harm it prompted was swift and devastating. What began as cheap requests for primary respect turned an authoritarian system that demanded complete submission to more and more absurd claims.
The breaking level wasn’t about homosexual rights or racial equality – points the place most People had already developed. It was when the motion demanded that organic actuality itself be subordinated to ideological purity. When saying “girls are grownup human females” turned hate speech, when acknowledging that women and men have completely different athletic capabilities turned transphobia, the motion misplaced any connection to rational discourse.
This wasn’t about serving to transgender individuals, who deserve respect and lodging. This was about energy – particularly, the ability to pressure others to publicly affirm beliefs they did not maintain. It is one factor to ask for tolerance; it is one other to demand that everybody take part in your worldview or face social annihilation.
The intersectionality framework that emerged was significantly poisonous as a result of it explicitly rejected particular person analysis in favor of group-based judgments. As a substitute of treating individuals as distinctive people with complicated identities, it created a inflexible hierarchy the place your ethical price was decided by what number of oppression factors you may accumulate. White homosexual males discovered themselves categorized as oppressors. Working-class straight girls have been instructed to test their privilege. The entire system turned a parody of the equality it claimed to hunt.
However the actual harm was epistemological – it destroyed individuals’s capability to assume clearly about reality and proof. When “lived expertise” turned extra essential than goal actuality, when questioning any side of the orthodoxy marked you as evil, vital pondering itself turned suspect. Universities, as soon as bastions of mental inquiry, turned indoctrination facilities the place college students discovered to police one another’s ideas.
The hashish neighborhood ought to have seen this coming. We have all the time understood that compelled consensus is the enemy of reality. When somebody tells you that you could consider one thing or face punishment, that is not training – it is coercion. The identical mentality that created “reefer insanity” simply discovered new targets.
The motion’s obsession with language policing was significantly revealing. Continuously altering terminology, demanding individuals use particular pronouns, creating new phrases for ideas that already had completely good descriptions – this wasn’t about communication, it was about submission. Each time you compelled somebody to say “birthing individual” as a substitute of “mom,” you were not advancing equality – you have been demonstrating your energy to manage their speech.
The tragic irony is that this authoritarian overreach undermined professional progressive targets. Actual points like police reform, financial inequality, and environmental safety received overshadowed by cultural battles over pronouns and toilet entry. In the meantime, the fixed accusations of racism and bigotry misplaced their energy by way of overuse. When every thing is Nazi conduct, nothing is.
This created the proper situations for backlash. Average People who supported homosexual marriage and racial equality instantly discovered themselves categorized as bigots for sustaining primary organic literacy. They did not instantly turn into conservative – they have been pushed there by a motion that could not tolerate disagreement.
The swing towards Christian nationalism is not occurring in a vacuum – it is a direct response to woke authoritarianism. When one ideological system calls for complete compliance, individuals typically flee to a different system that guarantees easy solutions and ethical certainty. Sadly, they’re simply buying and selling one type of psychological imprisonment for one more.
Trump’s attraction makes good sense if you perceive what average People simply endured. After years of being instructed they have been racist, sexist, transphobic monsters for holding primary common sense beliefs, they discovered somebody who stated “really, you are not loopy – males actually cannot get pregnant.” The aid was so profound that many individuals missed the authoritarian tendencies that got here with the bundle.
Christian nationalism presents every thing woke ideology denied: clear classes, secure definitions, and the validation that your conventional beliefs aren’t evil. It tells exhausted mother and father that their considerations about radical gender ideology in faculties are professional. It tells working-class People that their cultural values matter. Most significantly, it guarantees to battle again in opposition to the individuals who spent years calling them bigots.
However this is the issue: it is nonetheless authoritarianism, simply with completely different symbols. As a substitute of demanding you settle for that males can menstruate, it calls for you settle for that America was divinely ordained as a Christian nation. As a substitute of forcing you to make use of most well-liked pronouns, it desires to pressure prayer in faculties. The mechanism is equivalent – give up your particular person judgment to collective authority.
The psychological attraction is clear. After years of chaotic, contradictory woke calls for, Christian nationalism presents stability and certainty. Binary pondering turns into a aid if you’ve been compelled to navigate an ever-changing maze of intersectional guidelines. “God stated it, I consider it, that settles it” feels refreshing after being instructed that goal reality is a white supremacist assemble.
The analysis reveals that folks experiencing ideological whiplash typically exhibit elevated desire for authoritarian management and simplistic explanations. Christian nationalism offers ethical certainty by way of absolute frameworks that remove cognitive burden. Whenever you’ve been psychologically exhausted by calls for to carry contradictory beliefs concurrently, the attraction of by no means having to assume critically once more turns into overwhelming.
For hashish customers, this needs to be terrifying. The identical motion that desires to revive “conventional values” has traditionally been the driving pressure behind drug prohibition. The mindset that sees hashish as “the satan’s lettuce” is making a comeback, and this time it has the momentum of righteous anger in opposition to woke excesses.
The religious bypassing mechanisms are already evident. Political aims are being framed as divine mandates, making criticism equal to opposing God. The identical psychological methods that made individuals settle for that organic intercourse is a social assemble are actually getting used to make them settle for that America’s issues will be solved by way of prayer and spiritual authority.
Each methods share the identical elementary flaw: they require the give up of particular person vital pondering in favor of collective ideology. Whether or not you are being instructed to “belief the science” (whereas ignoring precise science) or “belief God’s plan” (whereas ignoring observable actuality), you are being requested to cease pondering for your self.
The hashish neighborhood has all the time understood that consciousness growth requires questioning authority, not submitting to it.
The present pendulum swing between woke authoritarianism and Christian nationalism represents a false selection that each hashish tradition and the approaching AI age will finally reject. Each methods demand the identical factor: the give up of particular person vital pondering to collective authority.
We’re getting into an period the place AI methods can course of complexity far past human cognitive limitations, making binary ideological frameworks more and more out of date. You’ll be able to’t navigate an information-rich, technologically refined world with inflexible both/or pondering. The longer term belongs to those that can maintain a number of views concurrently, query assumptions, and adapt their beliefs primarily based on new proof.
Hashish customers have all the time understood this. The plant teaches cognitive flexibility, perspective-taking, and luxury with uncertainty – precisely the abilities wanted for the AI age. Whereas society swings between completely different types of psychological imprisonment, our neighborhood maintains one thing valuable: the dedication to free pondering.
The tragic irony is that each extremes declare to battle authoritarianism whereas training it themselves. Woke ideology claimed to battle oppression whereas creating new types of ideological tyranny. Christian nationalism claims to revive freedom whereas demanding spiritual conformity. Neither system leaves room for the person consciousness that hashish tradition has all the time celebrated.
As we watch these cultural wars play out, our function is not to select sides between competing authoritarianisms. It is to mannequin what real tolerance seems to be like: accepting individuals as people, questioning all authority (together with our personal assumptions), and sustaining the cognitive flexibility that comes from repeatedly increasing our consciousness.
The pendulum will finally settle, however free pondering is everlasting.
CANNABIS AND THE SPIRITUAL REVOLUTION, READ ON…
