Political Cartoon: Look Who's Privileged

I am so mad at the DNC right now.  There are layers upon layers of criminality and malfeasance within the democratic party that I am no longer willing to tolerate.

They were caught stealing the election from the more popular candidate, who's more likely to win in November.  They broke the rules, and failed in their duty to present an impartial primary contest. This was a coup d'etat. I will not support it by voting for clinton. If I ever vote for another democrat again, they may count themselves lucky.

clinton: "YOU BERNIE SANDERS SUPPORTERS ARE SO PRIVILEGED!"
Copyright 2016 David Fleischmann
"thefreeradical"

In so many ways, they rigged this election, and more critically, they maintained a stranglehold on the free flow of information, for instance about the candidates. They presented clinton as the winner before the primary had even begun, and announced the winner several times as it was continuing. Each time, they were reporting false information as fact.  They insulted and humiliated Senator Sanders, maintained a media blackout of his campaign, and sold a false narrative that he was old, infirm, ineffectual, unelectable.

They poisoned the waters of discussion on the internet by hiring an army to troll social media and tar all who spoke criticism of clinton as sexist, racist, homophobic, right-wing, etc., putting them on the defensive, rather than allow any scrutiny to fall on clinton. I have been called "privileged" for supporting the one candidate that actually proposes policies designed to help the poor and underprivileged, and I am against the candidate who's a paid representative of billion-dollar corporations engaged in exploiting the earth and its people for every dollar.

The DNC worked to slander Bernie supporters as violent, which could not be further from the truth, and is a clear case of projection on the part of clinton supporters, who have been unabashedly violent.

Any valid criticisms of clinton go ignored, explained away, disbelieved out of existence.  The leaked e-mails came from the DNC, and nowhere else. Regardless of your feelings about who may have leaked it, the leak and its content remain fact, and it needs to be dealt with.

The Dems wholeheartedly support the violent policy of prohibition, despite there being no public health or safety benefit.  The entire drug war is now well-known to have been launched (by nixon) only as a means to arrest, incarcerate, and disenfranchise large numbers of black people.

Democrat politicians joined with those on "the other side" to coordinate violent 3AM raids on Occupy Wall Street, a peaceful and totally legal people's movement.  In doing so, they stripped thousands of homeless and underprivileged people of a ready source of aid of all types.  Occupy was slandered as violent (much like Bernie supporters were slandered), blamed and framed for crimes committed anywhere in the downtown areas they located in. Rather than get behind the populist movement, establishment democrats sided with the corrupt banks, and protected the corporate billionaires from their due justice by the 99%.

This is your legacy, you corporate democrats. Suck it up. You made this.

Rebuttals to Common Prohibitionist Arguments 6: "Do you want your surgeon operating on you while high?"

"If you are for legalization, do you want your surgeon to be high while he operates on you?  Or your pilot to be high while he's flying the plane?  Or your bus driver, child's teacher, etc."


The rhetorical question makes many unsupported assumptions:
Assumption 1: Prohibition prevents people from getting high.

                Prohibition fails to prevent people from getting high, so the odds are the same my surgeon will be high with or without legalization.  Any decrease in drug use due to prohibition is negligible. 

Assumption 2:  A substance that is made legal will, as a result, be used by everyone.

                    Currently many thousands of substances are legal and on the market, yet everyone is not "on" them all the time.  Though alcohol has been legal since the mid 1930's, there are many millions who manage to avoid being drunk as they do their job.  Ditto for pharmaceuticals, all of which have side effects. 

Assumption 3: Using cannabis prevents people from doing their job well, or even adequately.

                          There is just no evidence of that when it comes to the vast majority of jobs.  Naturally, no one wants a service worker whom they rely on to be impaired, on anything!  It makes no difference if the impairing substance or activity is legal or illegal; cannabis, or modeling glue. 

Assumption 4: Cannabis couldn't possibly benefit anybody's health or work.

                              Do I want my surgeon to have used cannabis before operating on me?  Well, let's see,... is he epileptic and prone to seizures if he doesn't use cannabis?  Then, absolutely, YES, I unequivocally want him to use cannabis before he operates.  Why, would you want your surgeon to skip his vital anti-seizure medication before operating on you?  That seems a bit, well, reckless.  

  That's just one scenario, but others come to mind: muscle spasms, chronic anxiety, depression.  Any of these might negatively affect a surgeon or pilot's performance, so if these conditions can be mitigated by the use of cannabis, and without any serious side effects, then that is clearly a positive.

In the end, this argument boils down to the same old simplistic moralistic screed: "drugs are bad, mm'kay?"

Rebuttals to Common Prohibitionist Arguments 5: Legalization is not an "Experiment"!

I often hear people referring to Colorado's new policy of cannabis legalization as an "experiment."

Countless articles, even those written by people who are ostensibly in favor of legalization, purport to analyze the results of Colorado's "legalization experiment."  Prohibitionists try to warn us to wait for the results of this "experiment" before launching legalization campaigns in other states and nationally.

As you can guess from my scare quotes, I disagree with the characterization of legalization as an experiment.  For all of human history, cannabis has been free by default.  No one ever imagined banning this widely-used and boundlessly-useful plant until the 1900's.

So clearly, prohibition is the experiment. Truly a failed, deadly experiment.  Legalization is the ending of that experiment and the restoration of the default.  Banning substances does not work to the benefit of society.  This has been made abundantly clear by the prohibition of alcohol, and the drug war, which only drove usage rates up, as well as adding a host of other problems.

Let's end this failed experiment of prohibition and restore normalcy.

My childhood experiences with altered states of consciousness

Needless to say, I was a bit different as a child.  I was a loner, often wandering off, getting lost, or just zoning out from what was happening around me.  Though I had no words for what I was experiencing, in retrospect, I know I was feeling bored and drained by what I took to be a sort of pointlessness or fatedness to life.  At some point, I found I could, and thus did, alter my consciousness, though at the time, it seemed I was just doing what I naturally would do.


There were these were naturally-occuring states caused by changes in brain chemistry. The dream-state is one example of such an altered state. It quickly occurred to me that the dream state was a door to a magical realm of infinite possibilities, one that would inspire my waking imagination to conjure up new fantasies and philosophies.

There was the classic "headrush." Getting up too quickly after a long period of rest, the vision clouds up with colorful dancing patterns, consciousness dims, like when one is about to fall asleep, and fainting is a definite possibility.  Not the safest, but it allowed one to dance along the edge of consciousness.

Then there's spinning in place to induce dizziness. Never one of my favorites, because the dizziness would often make one fall down, and the accompanying nausea can induce vomiting. A tale is told of my childhood in which I as a toddler was repeatedly spun on a spinning chair until I finally tossed my cookies. Perhaps this experience turned me off to the dizzying and nauseous effects of spinning, and for that matter, alcohol.

Hyperventilating was another, that had sort of an opposite effect: your heart would race, head throbbing, and you seemed extra-conscious for a bit, although it could quickly turn to unconsciousness too.

The best one, I discovered while innocently rubbing my eyes. I found a certain spot on my closed eye that I could push on, that would cause a strange yellow light to appear in the corner of my vision. I now know I was perturbing some mechanism of my eye that caused this phenomenon.  Continuing to push on it would cause this light to spread over my entire field of vision. Then what appeared to be a twisting tunnel would appear, and it seemed my consciousness was passing through it.  At some point, the tunnel would widen out to this "place" of brightly colored geometric patterns, swirling and morphing in front of me.  I had already encountered the idea of other worlds of existence, from things I had read like the Chronicles of Narnia, or the Oz series. At some point, this coalesced into a belief which I held, and I searched for those secret doors to fantasy realms with the utmost sincerity.  I recall vividly my disappointment and frustration at not finding them in physical reality.  But here in the privacy of my closed eye, with the swirling lights and patterns, I was king, and my stimulated imagination was able to pick out images from the visual chaos to represent the various elements of the fantasy world: elves, goblins, dragons, weapons, armor, etc. which I'd also encountered in the game world of Dungeons and Dragons.

Burning Man 2014: Journey up: Wadsworth, Nevada, odd ISIS reference

Driving up to Burning Man often coincides with major, often tragic, world events.  One year it was the protracted siege by militants, of a school full of children and adults in Beslan, Russia.  Another year, it was Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst disasters in US history, which effectively destroyed the city of New Orleans.  This year, my drive out coincided with a fear campaign by media conglomerates that drummed up fear of a supposed new threat to our very well-being, a brand new terrorist organization with a new name and new attitude, ISIS!

Not to belittle the threat that is truly there, but the odds of a US citizen being killed by a terrorist is a small fraction of the odds that he or she will be wrongly killed by a police officer in the execution of his or her duties.  Not to mention that ISIS is entirely a product of US intervention, and all of their weapons say Made in USA.

So I had pulled into the colossal parking lot of the Walmart in Wadsworth, Nevada.  This was the last major spot of civilization on the way to Burning Man.  Only small towns remained ahead, which, though they did cater to burners, were not equipped to fully outfit everyone.  I caught a short nap in my car before heading into the store to clean myself up a bit, and get some last minute items.

Back at my car, I encountered a gentlemen of Wadsworth at his pickup truck in the opposing space.  His truck was empty; he wasn't going to Burning Man, but saw that I was and we began a conversation.  He was older than I and seemed to have a conservative bent, which would be fitting for this rural Nevada town.  He said he had been to Burning Man once, but the harsh desert conditions were not for him.  He talked of the event, predictably, as a festival of wild debauchery.  Not entirely untrue, of course, but hardly the whole story, but I happily indulged him with a smile and nod.

Then he expressed concern, that at a large festival like that, that we were open to a terrorist attack from ISIS.  I was a mix of shocked and amused.  I told him that it was highly unlikely that Burning Man would make the most attractive target for a terrorist strike, compared to, say, New York or Los Angeles.  The weather and terrain conditions on the playa make anything out there a daunting task, let alone sneaking around in the blank whiteness to plant explosives, or whatever this man might've feared they'd do.  No, this was just more warmongering hysteria drummed up by our media.  This man had no doubt been watching his fox "news", and moralizing about the hippie rave in the desert, and just put two and two together.

I did what I could to comfort his fears, or fantasies, or whatever, and bid him goodbye.  I take nothing personal from this encounter, as he was merely carrying and passing on the message of fear that had been given to him by the innocuous-looking television in his home.

Please, if you are worried about attacks from a foreign invader, have a look inside yourself and see if there's anything within you that is attacking, invading, angry, or belligerent.  What we fear and hate in others is that they reflect back to us some part that we fear and hate within ourselves.  Pointing to an outside enemy, or to "those people" as the ones that need to be fixed, or killed, is a distraction from real problems right at home, right in our own communities, in our institutions, and in our own bodies. 

Let's all look within to face and address the real issues.

"AMERICA FIGHTS TERRORISM" copyright 2008 David Fleischmann, the free radical

Burning Man 2014 Story Page

Back from my tenth Burning Man: 2013

I have returned safely from my trip to the Black Rock Canyon of Nevada.  The weather was great, with nary a single dust storm the whole week.

The art festival was again spectacular.  Every year the scale of the art and theme camps seems to outdo itself, and this year was no exception.

My own experience this year was laid-back and mostly in-camp.  I did get out a few times, but not as much as in previous years.  But that was fine for me, as I have already experienced plenty of great times on the playa with the interactive art, massive rave camps, etc in my previous nine years, and have a bit of a jaded, "been there, done that," feeling towards it all.  But I love seeing the virgin and newer burners experience these things for the first time, and having their minds blown.

Instead of going out a lot, I hosted several events in our humble theme camp, Cartoon Commune, including Laughter Yoga and a cartooning workshop.  They were quite well-attended and much appreciated by the attendees.  Other events in our camp included daily Longevity Stick exercise, 60's dance party, Goth dance party, Improv Comedy, Open Mic Nite, Life Drawing, souvenir button-making, fortune-teller, and massage parlor.

Our camp was better than ever this year thanks to the hard work of my campmates, Gerflash, Fountain, Nostrildamus, and the rest.  My Uncle Mike set up a display of his artful 3D pictures with the red and blue glasses, which were a big hit.  We had a large shade space for our guests and ourselves, with a stage, benches, chairs, LED floodlights, and some frontage art consisting of dream catchers made from hula hoops and old magnetic tape.  As always, our lovely and inspiring wind-powered gray water evaporation system, the Gray-B-Gone Evap-O-Tron, constructed from a design found online, handled our gray water beautifully.  Louis (aka Fountain), arranged a small kitchen complete with a "rocket stove" from recycled coffee cans and newspaper, and a "kitchen sink," so we were able to cook fresh hot meals for our camp dinners.  I made a vegan stew, (Louis is vegan), and other meals included sandwiches, felafel, chili, and lentil soup.  The massage parlor was a carport structure with privacy tarps on the sides, with two massage tables and all the necessary lotions and oils.

I made a shrine from a repurposed medicine cabinet decorated with scenes of my favorite playa experiences, and with portraits of some of my favorite inspirational figures on the back.

My personal dome was especially comfortable this year, with a queen-sized air mattress with warm flannel sheets and blankets, topped with a ornately-patterned comforter and a few throw pillows.  I covered the rest of the floor in cushions, except for my gear which stacked neatly in waterproof bins.  An extra layer of shade on top made it semi-cool in the heat of the day, with the door wide open and a small vent in back to let the breeze through. 

Rebuttals to Common Prohibitionist Arguments 4

"Cannabis is correlated with schizophrenia."

This line of argument is an insidious attempt to convince the ignorant that cannabis causes schizophrenia. In fact, there is no scientific evidence to support this.  Correlation does not equal causation, but this distinction is too subtle for the average person who reads the above headline.
There is evidence to suggest that those who are prone to schizophrenia will more likely use cannabis, likely because the cannabis eases the negative symptoms of the schizophrenia.

The rate of cannabis usage has gone up tremendously in the last forty years. If cannabis were truly a cause of schizophrenia, we would have seen schizophrenia cases increase at a proportional rate.  What we see instead is that rates of schizophrenia are steady for this period.  Therefore, there is no causal link between cannabis use and schizophrenia.

What prohibitionists who use the above argument will never do is to compare that correlation to that of alcohol and all manner of mental health problems. No, they always insist on looking at cannabis in isolation, never mentioning that alcohol has a much clearer causal link to mental disorders than cannabis ever could.  The same is true for countless other legal substances and risky behaviors.

Finally, citing any specific harm of cannabis as a reason to keep it illegal is just specious.  If it is truly harmful, then there is all the more reason to bring it under the control of a legal and regulated system. Leaving its trade to organized criminal cartels allows it to cause so much more harm than it otherwise would.  Countries that have enacted policies of Harm Reduction over prohibition have seen their rates of usage decrease, even as harms associated with drug use and the illegal drug trade have all but disappeared.

How to Remember Dreams

How to Remember Dreams:

The best way is to keep paper and pencil, or a recording device by the bed so that when you wake up in the night you can record a quick impression of what you were dreaming about.
Dream-journaling can be fun and rewarding, and I have filled pages with long descriptions of dreams.  Other times, it seems a written description can't capture the feelings and utterly outlandish happenings in the dreamworld. 

Not wanting to interrupt my sleep for long writing sessions, I found a way to incorporate mnemonic devices into my dream-recalling strategy.  I would just remember one element of part of a dream and repeat it over and over to myself.  Later, on waking up again with a new dream in my mind, I will select an element from that and add it to the first one which I can usually still recall.  In this way, I build a list of smaller elements, each of which triggers the memory of the dream that contained it.

When a dream is just beyond recall, I find the best way to remember it is to try to go into the feeling of emotion that was associated with the dream.  If I can feel that feeling from the dream again, sometimes I can remember the whole dream.

Telling dreams to another person seems to be a great way to purge the feelings of dreams, and in effect, release them.  Sometimes an image from a dream will haunt me for years, but telling another person about it seems to defuse the energy of it.

Often we dream about something that then happens in waking life.  Or we meet someone in a dream whom we then meet in waking life.  Could the ability to remember dreams be a benefit in terms of being prepared for what might come?

I now practice Compassionate Non-Violent Communication.

My experiences have left me with one central dictum: to commit violence is the worst thing I can do, firstly because it always comes back to me.  Also, because I feel we are all one, so doing violence to others is doing it to myself.  I recently encountered an established method of living this ideal.  I read a book about NVC, a form of communication that seeks to eliminate violent judgements and dominating language.  It instead focuses on the beautiful and universal needs that belong to all beings, and on the feelings that accompany the fulfillment or frustration of those needs. 

I am part of a group that meets weekly to practice this and learn more.  We first check in with how we are feeling and what needs are active for us (either being met or not met), and then as individuals, we bring up issues or challenges that we'd like to work on, and our facilitator, James Prieto, helps guide us through it in the format of NVC. 

People are generally able to see other people's needs as valid and important.  We tend to get into conflicts when our strategies to meet those needs bump into other peoples' strategies for meeting their needs.  So, in those situations, rather than judge and attempt to dominate the other person, we return to the level of feelings and needs to restore the human connection.  When both sides have had their needs heard, then a new strategy can be found that seeks to meet both party's needs. 

The core of the communication is as follows: observations, feelings, needs, requests.  Evaluations, or judgements tend to break the connection between people, and are not brought into the conversation, except to break them down into the core feelings and needs they are attempting to express.  Observations, on the other hand, are unbiased statements about what is happening.  So the format for a typical interpersonal problem would be: "I observe that you ____ (did something that made life less than wonderful for me).  This makes me feel ____ (a negative emotion like sad, angry, scared, etc), because I have a need for ____(some primal need like safety, support, love, respect, etc.) .  Would you be willing to ____ (clear, positive request)?"  Demands engender resentment, as they are a form of violence, implying a punishment if the demand is not met.  Requests are open to discussion and refusal, but make clear to the other person what need of yours they can meet to make life more wonderful for you. 

I highly recommend this method of communication to all, as it can make your relationships stronger, and make you stronger as a person.

How to Remember Dreams

I've been interested in dreams for a long time.  Remembering them is an important first step in studying ones own dreams.

The best way is to keep paper and pencil, or a recording device by the bed so that when you wake up in the night you can record a quick impression of what you were dreaming about.  Later, the details can be filled in as you recall them, cued by your notes.  Dream-journaling can be fun and rewarding, and I have filled pages with long descriptions of dreams. At other times, it seems a written description can't quite capture the feelings and utterly outlandish happenings in the dreamworld. 

Not wanting to interrupt my sleep for long writing sessions, I found a way to incorporate mnemonic devices into my dream-recalling strategy.  I would just remember one element of part of a dream and repeat it over and over to myself.  Later, on waking up again with a new dream in my mind, I will select an element from that and add it to the first one which I can usually still recall.  In this way, I build a list of smaller elements, each of which triggers the memory of the dream that contained it.

When a dream is just beyond recall, I find the best way to remember it is to try to go into the feeling of emotion that was associated with the dream.  If I can feel that feeling from the dream again, sometimes I can remember the whole dream.

Dreams and Dreaming

What are Dreams?

Some possible answers:

Crash-Test Laboratory:
One purpose for the dream-state is as a kind of crash test laboratory in our minds. We can test out any scenario that we are likely to encounter in life, or a symbolic version of it, to see what we might do, and how the result will play out.  We can repeat this as many times as necessary to find the course we will most likely take.

Virtual Playroom:
Where we can do, say and be anything we want to in a consequence-free context.  Though we usually don't know it's a dream, our subconscious gets to play with all the component elements of our waking, conscious life: people, places, events. All of these focus our emotion. 

Training for the Afterlife
Is there a connection between the dream state and that which we experience after the death of our physical bodies?  Is the fluid physics-less world of dreams analogous to a body-less journey into the void that our souls will presumably embark upon?  Dreams may be a kind of "practice" for the real thing, a gymnasium for us to stretch and build our spirit-bodies for what lies ahead.  Or it may just be a reconnecting with where we were before birth.


Dreams are real...

They are very real in that they affect us.  A dream can confer a feeling that stays with us the whole day, even a whole lifetime.  They can empower or disempower us.  These effects exist in the real world, and in this sense, the dreamworld invades into the waking one.

Dreams are inexplicable...

Can anyone fathom or explain how we all lie down and have the most amazing, wondrous, impossible and barely-intelligible experiences, and then wake up and go about our day as if nothing happened?  What happens in dreams so often defies description.  Things so strange that they cannot be put into words seem perfectly normal in the dream-state. 

Dreams are important...

What would waking life be without the knowledge of this other, truly bizarre state of consciousness?  We need some respite from a world where the laws of physics are unyielding, a place to relive, or pre-live any experience we like, from our lives or anyone else's.  It is one place where we are unbounded, infinite, and able to connect with the divine.  This must be a source of hope and comfort.

Be my follower!

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Thanks for being here!

What is Burning Man to me?

Anyone can learn the official answer to "What is Burning Man?" at the official Burning Man website:
http://www.burningman.com/

More relevant to this blog, what is Burning Man to me?  Well...

Escape:
This place is really far away from everything I know.  Geographically, it's a whole day's drive away.  Mentally, spiritually, it is many galaxies distant from the usual life.  The playa embodies solitude: totally flat, featureless and unwelcoming, like the surface of an alien planet.  The society created by burners is a pocket of love and comfort within this desolate wasteland.  When I am there, I can barely conceive of life outside of that canyon. 

Outlet:
Anything goes here, just about anything.  My creative side flourishes here, as there is a blank canvas inviting me to leave my mark.  All expressions are welcome.  Everyone is expressing, and creativity is a kind of currency here.  The very best of expressions are available to witness and share. 

Home:
The only place on earth, where, for one week a year, I get to own, really own my own space.  I own it by building my sacred space within it, welcome my people inside, hold court, argue, embrace, rest, sleep, eat and hide out from the storm.  My dome on the playa is where I really feel at home.

Magic:
Nothing can possibly compare with a night of roaming the playa.  No description, however complete, can convey the unpredictability and unfathomability of experiences on the playa.  Things happen that cannot ever be explained: strange guides come to your aid, the exact object you need materializes out of the darkness, and a dreamlike quality leads you to that exact thing for which you have always wished. 

Frenzy:
The outpouring of energy caught me from the beginning.  Frenzied dancing, drumming, fire-spinning, and generally performing is the norm.  The pure energy of the Saturday night burn is not easily forgotten.  Tens of thousands of people assemble with hundreds of ingenious art cars, lit-up costumes, and amazing gimmicks.  The man burns to the sound of wild cheering, then, when it falls, a swarm of bodies circles in towards the massive fire.  Spinning counter-clockwise around the fire, the citizens of Black Rock City experience each other.  Around the circle, musicians, dancers, and artists of all types pour out their creative expression, forming collaborations and spontaneous pockets of exuberant revelry.

Challenge:
The harsh playa is not for everyone.  Severe dryness, heat and relentless dust wear down the body.  To stand up to it takes a certain toughness, and some knowledge of survival methods.  When one is prepared, with every contingency planned for, survival becomes fun, a gift to share with others.  I relish a nice stroll through a whiteout with my dust mask and goggles.

Rundown

Welcome.  I am free radical, artist, musician, dancer, writer, activist, healer, dork, etc. 
On this blog I will be posting my creative output for all to enjoy.
I play guitar and sing, my own original songs and covers of others' work.
My art is mostly cartooning and abstract painting.  Also do vision drawing and painting.
I write poems and stories, as well as comedy bits and sketches.
Philosophy and spirituality are of prime interest to me.  I don't accept that we cannot know the purpose of existence.  I feel there is far more to this life than science can detect.
Magic pervades all existence.
In my experience, prohibition of certain popularly-enjoyed and/or addictive substances is not only a failure of policy, but an atrocity that rivals the holocaust.  I am active in the effort to change these laws.  I welcome any discussion of this important issue. 
The earth is a precious thing and must not be squandered over a little petty wealth for a few privileged individuals.  The way the world is going cannot continue for long. 
The #Occupy movement is a chance for any and all to get involved in making positive change.
We are at a crossroads, a tipping point, regarding humanity's history and destiny.  Major shifts are about to take place, are already taking place.  The picture is vague from up close, but when one pulls back, the total pattern is clear.  [The transcendent object is about to manifest.]
I practice some healing arts including Laughter Yoga, soul reading, ritual dancing.  I can extend my aura to heal or guide others. 
These, among others, inform my spiritual practice: Alan Watts, Terence McKenna, Ram Dass, Thich Nhat Hanh, Dr. Madan Kataria, Graham Hancock.
Burning Man is my Home, where I live my true intention for a week each year.  Cartoon Commune is my theme camp and radical interactions and barely-believable experiences await anyone intrepid enough to make the journey.

My contact information:
My other name is David Fleischmann
I live in Laguna Beach, in Southern California.
You can email me at dookieholder@gmail.com
Message or friend me at http://www.facebook.com/thefreeradical