Category: society

The Case For Cannabis: Prohibition Harms Minorities

Cannabis prohibition causes harm across most levels of society, but some bear the brunt more than others. In the Western World, it can be seen that cannabis prohibition has a disproportionately heavy effect on minorities, and there are multiple reasons for this. This article will discuss the need for cannabis law reform from an ethnic rights perspective.

The South African High Court found found in a recent judgment that “the
criminalisation of cannabis […] is certainly characterised by the racist footprints of a disgraceful past.” In other words, the South African authorities are willing to admit that cannabis prohibition was forced on the people of South Africa out of malice.

They found that “it is general knowledge that some sections of the [Black] population have been accustomed for hundreds of years to the use of dagga, both as an intoxicant and in the belief that it has medicinal properties, and do not regard it with the same moral repugnance as do other sections of the population.”

It followed from this that the prohibition of cannabis and the normalisation of alcohol was to put European values first and foremost, and this was mentioned in part of their judgement when they made recreational cannabis legal earlier this year.

Ever since Jamestown – and possibly long before then – European colonialists knew that native peoples had a great susceptibility to alcohol. The American Indians called it ‘firewater’ for the explosively violent behaviour it caused among their kind. Rolling a barrel of rum into an Indian village had a similar effect to rolling a barrel of gunpowder into one.

The science is like this: in Europe, most of the people who could not handle alcohol had been wiped out of the gene pool over thousands of years of exposure. Anyone who chimped out when drunk got killed or put in prison, and thereby failed to reproduce. Consequently, Europeans (much like Middle Easterners) do not lose self-control when drunk at the same rate as peoples who have not had that historical exposure.

The people who conquered the New World did not understand the genetics behind this, but they were well aware of the destabilising effect that alcohol had on native communities. So they passed laws, such as cannabis prohibition, that forbade any alternative to alcohol. This forced the natives away from cannabis and forced them towards drugs that would destroy them.

Laws prohibiting alternatives to alcohol are extremely prejudiced in favour of European people and people of European descent. In terms of the damage it can do to people who don’t have a genetic resistance to it, alcohol is almost a bioweapon, and passing laws that prohibit recreational alternatives to it could rightly be seen as acts of genetic warfare against non-European populations.

In New Zealand, Maori leaders like to talk about economic reparations and the damage done by colonisation. But never do they talk about the damage done to Maoris by cannabis prohibition.

Maoris have no cultural tradition of alcohol drinking. Unlike Europeans, Polynesians have only been exposed to alcohol for a few centuries. This means that they have not had time to evolve a resistance to the substance, and neither have they had time to make alcohol part of their culture. Alcohol is a foreign substance to the New World, and it’s foreign to the natives here.

As anyone with a clue knows, Maoris love cannabis. Not only do you frequently see Maoris smoking weed at parties, but it’s common to see Maoris in the street wearing Bob Marley t-shirts or with the red-yellow-green of reggae culture somewhere in their clothing. Their love of cannabis is unrepentant – in other words, it’s part of the culture.

The reason for this is simple: not only is cannabis great fun, but Maoris are also aware of the destabilising effect that alcohol has on native communities, and have found that their social recreational drug needs can be met just as well by cannabis as by alcohol (in most cases). Given an even playing field, it’s better to smoke cannabis because it leads to much fewer problems, in particular much less violence.

However, although this behaviour is fair, rational and reasonable, it’s prohibited. There are hundreds of Maoris in prison right now for cannabis offences, even though the prohibition of cannabis has nothing to do with their culture and is something that was forced on them by (some) white people.

It follows, then, that anyone who is truly interested in racial justice in the West must also be in favour of cannabis law reform. This will not only give minorities an alternative to alcohol, instead of having alcohol culture forced on them, but it will remove one possible source of discrimination against those minorities by taking the issue away from Police discretion.

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This article is an excerpt from The Case For Cannabis Law Reform, compiled by Vince McLeod and due for release by VJM Publishing in the summer of 2018/19.

Understanding New Zealand: Demographics of Maori Speakers

With the uptick in interest in Maori language recently, there has also been an interest in understanding who speaks the language. A large correlation matrix based on electoral and Census data can tell us a great deal. In this article, Dan McGlashan (author of Understanding New Zealand) tells the statistical story of Maori speakers.

There are two different ways of telling the story of the Maori-speaking demographic. The first is by comparing them to the population as a whole, and the second is to compare to them to the general Maori demographic. This article will do both because it is worthwhile to look at the two separately.

The correlation between being a Maori speaker and being a Maori is 0.99. Essentially this means that virtually everyone who speaks Maori in New Zealand is ethnically Maori. It also means that all of the correlations with being a Maori speaker will be close to the respective correlations with being a Maori, so that any differences between the two groups will be subtle ones (but hopefully instructive).

Curiously, the correlation between median personal income and being Maori (-0.48) was exactly the same as the one between median personal income and speaking Maori, but if we go down a level we can see a wider pattern in this data. For the most part, the voting patterns of Maori speakers mirrored that of Maoris, but there are patterns in the differences.

The average Maori speaker is slightly less likely than the average Maori to have voted Labour in 2017 (0.56 to 0.58). This is a small difference and it remains a fact that the average Maori speaker is strongly inclined to vote for the Labour Party. This is mirrored for National: the average Maori speaker is slightly more likely than the average Maori to have voted National in 2017 (-0.72 to -0.74).

The average Maori speaker was also slightly more likely to vote Green than the average Maori. The correlation between voting Green in 2017 and being a Maori speaker was -0.12, compared to -0.14 for the correlation between voting Green in 2017 and being Maori.

But if being a Maori speaker made one slightly more inclined to vote for the Greens, it made one slightly less likely to vote for New Zealand First. The correlation between voting New Zealand First in 2017 and being a Maori speaker was 0.35, compared to 0.38 for being Maori.

Because the Greens and National are the parties that tend to attract the most well-educated people, we can guess from this that the average Maori speaker is slightly better educated than the average Maori. Indeed, this proves to be the case.

The correlation between being a Maori speaker and having a university degree was -0.42 for all of Bachelor’s, Honours and Master’s degrees and -0.38 for a doctorate, whereas the correlation between being Maori and having a university degree was -0.45 for both Bachelor’s and a Master’s degrees, -0.46 for an Honours degree and -0.41 for a doctorate.

This tells us that the average Maori speaker is slightly better educated than the average Maori, despite being more poorly educated than the New Zealand average.

The correlations with age brackets tell us that the average Maori speaker is a bit older than the average Maori. The correlation between being in the 0-4 age bracket and being Maori was 0.82, whereas the correlation between being in that bracket and being a Maori speaker was 0.78. Conversely, the correlation between being in the 65+ age bracket and being Maori was -0.48, compared to a correlation of -0.47 between being aged 65+ and being a Maori speaker.

The correlations with the various industry types tells us in which industries we are more likely to find Maoris who speak Maori.

The correlation between working in the education and training industry and being Maori was 0.43, but the correlation between working in that industry and being a Maori speaker was 0.48. This tells us that a very high proportion of the Maoris working in that industry speak te reo (possibly because they work in whare whananga or similar).

On the other side of the equation, Maoris in some professions were less likely than average to be a Maori speaker. These were usually working-class professions. The correlation between working in the transport, postal and warehousing industry and being Maori was 0.47, whereas the correlation between working in this industry and being a Maori speaker was only 0.41. From this we can conclude that very few of the Maoris working in transport, postal and warehousing are Maori speakers.

In summary, this suggests that the average Maori speaker is a Maori who is a bit older and better educated than the Maori average.

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Dan McGlashan is the man with his finger on the statistical pulse of New Zealand. His magnum opus, Understanding New Zealand, is the complete demographic analysis of the Kiwi people.

The Five Rejections

It is not easy to say what the alt-centre is, but it is easy to say what it isn’t. The alt-centre is the sixth political position: the one that remains after the explicit rejection of the other five positions. This rejection is necessary because all five positions have evidently failed. This essay seeks to delineate the boundaries of alt-centrism by rejecting the flaws of the other positions.

The alt-centre rejects the position of the old right that the current system is the best system and that the status quo ought to be maintained.

The desire to always keep everything the same is an instinct born of fear of change and greed. Not everything has to stay the same as much as possible and for as long as possible. To fear change is to misorient oneself because everything changes; all of the contents of consciousness are temporary. Therefore, the alt-centre rejects conservatism for conservatism’s sake.

Much the same as all of the non-right-wing positions, the alt-centre is appalled by heavy concentrations of wealth and power in few hands. The alt-centre shares a sense with these other positions that gross inequalities of privilege are obscene, on account of that there is a limit to how much privilege can be earned. Compassion for those who are on the edges of poverty is paramount.

Verticalism is rejected by the alt-centre, for the reason that the majority of people in Western societies are educated to a decent level and can therefore be expected to be reasoned with. Reasoning with people, instead of bullying, mocking, coercing or abusing them, is how bonds of solidarity are formed, and so it ought to be encouraged where practicable.

The alt-centre rejects the position of the old left that the ruling class is inherently illegitimate and that anyone with wealth or power is bad.

Just because someone has wealth and power doesn’t make them evil. Trying to rip people down because of envy is not a behaviour that will lower the prevalence of human suffering on this planet – to the contrary. That sort of resentment-based aggression is precisely the sort of slave morality that the alt-centre rejects.

Horizontalism is therefore also rejected by the alt-centre. Instead, a premium is placed on scientific evidence. This tells us clearly that there are no two things in Nature that are precisely equal, and therefore a desire to equalise everything is a recipe for eternal conflict.

The correct way to get those born into unearned privilege to relinquish it is not by threats and violence and it isn’t by trashing the whole world. It is by reason. The alt-centre seeks to minimise the deleterious effects of unearned privilege by maintaining strong bonds of solidarity across all groups within society, so that none are incentivised to hoard wealth by an indifference to the poverty of others.

The alt-centre rejects the position of the old centre that an insipid compromise between the old left and the old right is the way forward.

You can’t have a compromise between people who seek to cling to power at all costs and people who just want to trash the whole world. This inevitably leads to short-term solutions that fail to meet the genuine long-term challenges of our political and economic climate. These short-term solutions end up causing more damage in the medium to long term.

Neoliberalism is an example of an insipid compromise. In the case of neoliberalism, we get a plastic corporate liberalism that seeks to McDonaldsise the whole planet for the sake of maximum profit and efficiency. Such compromises are considered categorically wrong by the alt-centrist, which abhors reducing things to their lowest common denominator.

In any case, the centre demands the perpetuation of the Establishment, and the alt-centre cannot accept this. The alt-centre cannot accept that the Establishment be allowed to remain on their throne. They have fucked up too badly. In any case, the challenges facing us are too massive, and our culture too sclerotic to adapt to meet them – they can only be overcome with a new paradigm of thought.

The alt-centre rejects the position of the alt-right that segregation and separation are the answers to the failures of the Establishment.

There are many competing ideologies in the world, and most of them have glaringly obvious flaws, it is true. But isolating oneself from these competing ideologies, like a monk hiding in some mountain retreat, is not a philosophy that can sustain an entire nation. Just because the Establishment has failed doesn’t mean we have to throw all of societal advancement and all culture out the window.

Just because the Western World has fallen into chaos, doesn’t mean that we should swing as far as possible in the direction of order. The lessons of the Hemoclysm are still relevant – absolute power still corrupts absolutely. All totalitarian ideas about controlling information or limiting freedom of expression – whether in cyberspace or meatspace – are rejected by the alt-centre.

Related to this, the alt-centre rejects all obsessions with degeneracy, purity and wholesomeness. Altering one’s consciousness for the sake of creativity or social interaction is not “degenerate”. The alt-centre argues that avoiding all drugs is saying no to life, and is therefore an anti-life philosophy. Likewise, the desire for an ethnostate is anti-life, because a diversity of human phenotypes is natural. The alt-centre rejects all anti-life philosophies.

The alt-centre rejects the position of the alt-left that diversity is strength.

It’s obvious that having some things in common is necessary for any group to function as a group. In order for the concept of a group to even be possible, the individuals that institute it have to have something in common. The more they have in common, the stronger the bonds of solidarity will be. These strong bonds of solidarity are necessarily for a society to function.

It’s also obvious that open borders are simply going to lead to a primitive, precarious and paranoid existence where nothing can be certain from one moment to the next. There is no moral imperative to make our societies more diverse just for the sake of it. Indeed, the alt-centre would argue that diversity allows the ruling classes to divide and conquer the masses more effectively. The correct balance between solidarity and diversity has to be struck.

Moreover, the alt-centre completely rejects the new anti-white narrative that is being promoted by the alt-left. The only real privilege is class privilege: a black man with money is more privileged than a poor white man. This remains the core of alt-centre philosophy. The moral imperative is not to God, or to the State, but to alleviate suffering in our fellows.

These five rejections are sufficient for the alt-centre to carve out its own niche in political space. It is one that will grow, and may well eventually come to power. Anyone who repudiates any one of these rejections cannot be an alt-centrist.

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If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis).

Writing Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism has gone from being a little-known condition to being a condition that everyone is accused of having, autistic or not. However, just because everyone is aware of autism doesn’t mean that everything they think they know about the condition is accurate. This article looks at how to write believable and realistic characters with autism.

The most characteristic feature of autism is a pronounced difficulty with social interaction, usually coupled with an obsession with certain repeated actions. This difficulty with social interaction is enough to cause immense difficulty in the lives of some autists and the people around them. This goes beyond mere awkwardness, to a point where fundamental communication becomes difficult.

From the perspective of a person with autism, much of the difficulty about living with the conditions comes from an inability to make the intuitive understandings about other people, and their behaviour, that is usually taken for granted. A person without autism (a “neurotypical”) seems to have an almost psychic understanding of how other people think and behave. Social interaction just seems so effortless for such people.

Your protagonist might have difficulty getting along with someone who has autism, on account of that the autistic character doesn’t seem to understand what the protagonist believes to be the rules of social interaction. The protagonist might make jokes that don’t get laughed at, and come to think that the autistic character doesn’t like them, when the problem is a low level of communication.

Then again, your protagonist might get along with an autistic character just fine. Autists can make a lot of sense, in their own way. Often, a person with autism will be capable of observing human interaction without all the pretense and brainwashing, and can arrive at objective, if odd and unconventional, conclusions. These can sometimes be valuable wisdom (and they can sometimes be juvenile truisms).

Viewed from the outside, an autistic character might appear as excessively orderly, to the point of dysfunction. Autists often like to ritualise certain behaviours (much like Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), to the point where not being able to perform the ritual sometimes creates unbearable anxiety. Their speech can be likewise regimented and repetitive. It’s common for them to compulsively stack objects or line them up.

Moreover, autists often feel solidarity with other neurodiverse people, and vice-versa. Autism is entirely different to, say, schizophrenia, but much of the lived experience of autism is similar to other mental conditions. The social rejection and the anxiety about more rejection, the anxiety, the shame, the frustration, the despair: these are all emotions that mentally ill people tend to experience more than others. An autist might relate strongly to someone who also feel them, even if that person is not autistic.

If your protagonist has autism themselves, you will have to be very careful about how you render their internal dialogue, should you write about them in the first person. A lot of fiction is poorly written because the characters in it have an unrealistically high level of understanding the behaviour of other people. An autistic protagonist will frequently be baffled by the behaviour they encounter. Much of their behaviour will be a complete mystery.

One of the most dramatic things about autism is the emotional consequences of the social difficulties that arise from having the condition. The awkwardness of autism is often mistaken by other people for malice, psychopathy, pedophilia, terrorist intent and all manner of other things. This makes life extremely difficult and can make for a harrowing story (unless your protagonist turns out to be a pedophile or terrorist).

It ought to be easy to engender sympathy from your reader here, because most people are sympathetic to the sense of injustice that comes from undeserved social rejection. Despite that, the other characters might feel like they have good reasons to reject the autistic character. After all, it is hard to tell the difference between social clumsiness and malice sometimes.

Because autism is a spectrum, there are many subclinical versions of it. A character with a subclinical level of autism will be relatable for many – after all, there is no person who has perfectly smooth social interactions all day every day. For them, their autism might be something that just makes life more colourful or interesting.

Autism can increase in severity all the way up to the point where a character with it will just about live in their own world, divorced from the concerns of most of the others. Realistically, a character with severe autism will have a hard time being a major character in your story because their degree of communication impairment will be so severe that no-one else will understand them. More moderate forms could involve a degree of social impairment that can be more or less overcome.

There is reason to believe that small amounts of autism can be helpful in certain occupational fields, especially those that pertain to the imposition of order upon chaos. Therefore, an autist need not be presented as conspicuously mentally ill. They might have found a niche that suits them perfectly, in some job that requires order to be imposed upon chaos. Mechanics and computer engineers are favourites.

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This article is an excerpt from Writing With The DSM-V (Writing With Psychology Book 5), edited by Vince McLeod and due for release by VJM Publishing in the summer of 2018/19.