Wanderers – Short Film Narrated by Carl Sagan (Video)

Wanderers - Short Film Narrated by Carl Sagan (Video) | Third Monk image 2

This short film provides an inspiring look into the future, where humans visit other planets in the galaxy. The narration by Carl Sagan, philosophically explores our natural instinct to go far beyond our starting point.

The film is a vision of our humanity’s future expansion into the Solar System. Although admittedly speculative, the visuals in the film are all based on scientific ideas and concepts of what our future in space might be like, if it ever happens.

All the locations depicted in the film are recreations of actual places in the Solar System, built from real photos and map data where possible. – Erik Wernquist, Filmmaker

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WANDERERS

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The Policy on Cannabis is Bad Science – Letters from Carl Sagan

The Policy on Cannabis is Bad Science - Letters from Carl Sagan | Third Monk image 6

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Carl Sagan never got to see the day when people could go to a store and purchase weed without fear of the law. But thanks to a collection of his papers recently made available by the Library of Congress, we now have Sagan’s personal writings on cannabis.

This 1988 Sagan letter shows why a government-funded scientist might be reluctant to draw too much public attention to his views about marijuana in the midst of President Reagan’s drug war.

Writing to Dr. Grinspoon (editor of Sagan’s famous essay on the benefits of cannabis), Sagan expressed outrage about language in a congressional funding bill for NASA that required contractors like him to adopt written anti-drug-use policies:

The oath required seems to smack of prior restraint and is unsymmetrical with respect to other crimes.

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Annie Druyan confirmed Sagan enjoyed marijuana “frequently.” She made it clear just how important cannabis was in their life together: “We smoked the way other American families would have wine with dinner. For us, it was our sacrament. It was something that made a great life sweeter in every possible way.”

Druyan also described how Sagan utilized marijuana’s medicinal properties to experience a measure of relief. He used cannabis to treat “not only the lack of appetite and the nausea [from chemotherapy]but to refocus on the beauty of life in the midst of such torture.”

The plant’s effects directly impacted the couple’s work over their decades of collaboration on everything from “Contact” to the 1980 PBS series “Cosmos” that Sagan hosted and that they wrote together. The 2014 Fox reboot of “Cosmos” — hosted this time by Neil deGrasse Tyson and again co-written by Druyan — not only took home four Emmys, but made mention in one episode of 17th Century scientist Robert Hooke’s use of cannabis while describing him as “possibly the most inventive person who ever lived.”

War on Drugs or War on Consciousness?

This disconnect from science was among Sagan’s chief concerns about the criminalization of marijuana. It was “something that particularly infuriated Carl as a scientist,” Druyan says. He was troubled by not only the “bad civic engineering but the very bad science behind prohibition.”

In 1990, Sagan wrote to leading drug policy reform campaigners suggesting they organize a rebuttal to the propaganda being spread by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America:

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In another letter from 1990 Sagan laid out these fundamental philosophical questions underpinning America’s drug war:

Why are all “drugs” lumped together in American rhetoric and public policy questions?

Why are hallucinogenic drugs so widely distributed among the cultures of the Earth?

Do research findings that indicate a given drug to be safe get as much public attention as those that indicate it to be dangerous?

How do social and economic inequities drive the underprivileged to drug use?

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With the success the Cosmos reboot and with more states voting on legalizing marijuana in November, the newly unearthed Sagan documents add to the growing consensus that marijuana prohibition is not grounded in science and is not supported by leading thinkers and prominent people.

“We are going at warp speed toward getting rid of that prohibition now,” says Grinspoon.

Carl Sagan’s Long Lost Deep Thoughts On The War on Drugs | Marijuana News

The Public Must Question the Government For Contributing Nothing to Society – Carl Sagan (Video)

The Public Must Question the Government For Contributing Nothing to Society - Carl Sagan (Video) | Third Monk image 1

In one of his last interviews, Carl Sagan warned the public about questioning government officials who had no skill or capacity to lead a growing society.

Carl Sagan was highly respected for bringing the wonder of the cosmos to a mainstream audience. He balanced aspirations of human evolution with guiding advice about potential dangers to our existence.

Politics Are Obsolete

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We live in an age based on science and technology with formidable technological power. And if we don’t understand it, and by we I mean the general public, if it’s a ‘oh I’m not good at that and I don’t know anything about it’. Then who is making all of the decisions about science and technology that will determine the kind of future our children live in, just some member of congress? There are only a handful of members of congress who have any background in science at all.

There’s two kinds of dangers, One is what I just talked about that we’ve arranged a society on science and technology in which no one understands a thing about science and technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is sooner or later going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people do not know anything about it?

We Must Question Everything

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And the second reason I’m worried about this is science is more than a body of knowledge, it’s a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility, if we are not able to ask skeptical questions to interrogate those who tell us something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan political, religious who comes along.

It’s a thing Jefferson laid great stress on, it wasn’t enough he said to enshrine some rights in a constitution or bill of rights, the people had to be educated and had to practice their skepticism and their education otherwise we don’t run government, government runs us.

The Voyagers: A Short Film About Love, Hope, Space, and Carl Sagan (Video)

The Voyagers: A Short Film About Love, Hope, Space, and Carl Sagan (Video) | Third Monk image 3

The Voyagers is a beautiful short film by video artist and filmmaker Penny Lane, made of remixed public domain footage — a living testament to the creative capacity of remix culture — using the story of the legendary interstellar journey and the Golden Record to tell a bigger, beautiful story about love and the gift of chance.

Lane takes the Golden Record, “a Valentine dedicated to the tiny chance that in some distant time and place we might make contact,” and translates it into a Valentine to her own “fellow traveler,” all the while paying profound homage to Sagan’s spirit and legacy.

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In 1977, NASA launched two unmanned missions into space, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Though originally intended to study Saturn and Jupiter over the course of two years, the probes have long outlasted and outtraveled their purpose and destination, having recently exited our Solar System entirely. Attached to each Voyager is a gold-plated record, known as The Golden Record — an epic compilation of images and sounds from Earth encrypted into binary code, the ultimate mixtape of humanity. Engineers predict it will last a billion years.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Golden Record was conceived by the great Carl Sagan and was inspired by his childhood visit to the 1939 New York World’s Fair, where he witnessed the famous burial of the Westinghouse time capsule. And while its story is fairly well-known, few realize it’s actually a most magical love story — the story of Carl Sagan and Annie Druyan, the creative director on the Golden Record project, with whom Sagan spent the rest of his life.

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It’s hard to imagine the Golden Record being made now. I wish Carl Sagan were here to say, ‘You know what? A thousand billion years is a really long time. Nobody can know what will happen. Why not try? Why not reach for something amazing?’ There is no way to forestall what can’t be fathomed, no way to guess what hurts we’re trying to protect ourselves from. We have to know in order to love, we have to risk everything, we have to open ourselves up to contact — even with the possibility of disaster. – Penny Lane

A Glorious Dawn- Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. Acrylic on Canvas.

> A Short Film About How Carl Sagan Fell in Love | Brain Pickings

Carl Sagan’s Ideas Foreshadowed the Zeitgeist Movement (Video)

Carl Sagan's Ideas Foreshadowed the Zeitgeist Movement (Video) | Third Monk image 2

The late Carl Sagan (1934-1996) was a hero in the scientific community and a role model for everyone around the world. Carl Sagan’s’ influences carry today because his words, hence his empirical point of view, seem to be ever more appropriate in our current economic and political climate.

The video does not advocate that Carl Sagan supported The Zeitgeist Movement as he passed long before its conception. Rather, using his own words, to simply show how Carl Sagan was in line with the thoughts and direction of this movement that concerns all of human kind.

For more information on the Zeitgeist movement, click here.

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Carl Sagan – Pale Blue Dot (Comic Strip)

Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot (Comic Strip) | Third Monk image 2

The Pale Blue Dot quote by Carl Sagan is given a new visual spin by Gavin Aung Than in this beautifully illustrated comic strip.

Our pale blue dot in this universe is what we all have in common, lets share in good times.

Pale Blue Dot –  Art by Gavin Aung Than

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I couldn’t think of a better quote to celebrate Zen Pencils 100th comic. I’ve been wanting to adapt it since I started the website, but I knew I needed a decent amount of time to do it justice.– Gavin Aung, Zen Pencils

Stoner Intelligence? Cannabis Found to Boost Growth of Brain Cells (Study)

Stoner Intelligence? Cannabis Found to Boost Growth of Brain Cells (Study) | Third Monk image 2

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A new report offered by the Neurochemistry International Journal (Aug 2013) has discovered that cannabis’ CBC cannabinoid helps promote brain cell growth.

This study aimed at elucidating the effect of major non-THC phytocannabinoids on the fate of adult neural stem progenitor cells (NSPCs), which is an essential component of brain function in health as well as in pathology.

We tested three compounds: cannabidiol, cannabigerol, and cannabichromene (CBC), and found that CBC has positive effect on the cell viability of mouse NSPCs during differentiation in vitro.  

We measured ATP levels as an equilibrium marker of adenosine and found higher ATP levels during differentiation of NSPCs in the presence of CBC. Taken together, our results suggest that CBC raises the viability of NSPCs while inhibiting their differentiation into astroglia, possibly through up-regulation of ATP and adenosine signalling.

– Endocannabinoid Research Group, Institute of Biomolecular Chemistry, Italy

Brain cell growth boosted by CBC is one of many studies that are exploring the relationship between cannabis and the brain. Scientists like Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman are known as some of the smartest stoners who admitted to smoking weed.

Cannabis Cannabinoids and Brain Function

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Cannabinoid Profile – Cannabichromene (CBC)

> New Research: CBC Cannabinoid Sparks Brain Cell Growth | Marijuana Research

Sunshine, A Visual Masterpiece About Our Dying Sun From Danny Boyle

Sunshine, A Visual Masterpiece About Our Dying Sun From Danny Boyle | Third Monk image 3

sunshine-danny-boyle-4If you were cool enough to catch Danny Boyle’s Sunshine during its 2007 theatrical run, you were treated to a visually immersive film that brought you on board with a space crew chosen to save human existence by replenishing a dying sun. Supporting the eye opening cinematography was the beautiful soundtrack score by John Murphy that has been used in various films and shows like the Walking Dead.

The protagonists of Boyle’s films have included nihilist junkies (“Trainspotting”), enraged zombies (“28 Days Later”), neo-hippie backpackers (“The Beach”) and poverty defying children (“Slumdog Millionaire”). His genres have ranged from black comedy to apocalyptic horror to the metaphysical science fiction themes explored in Sunshine.

Sunshine Trailer – Directed by Danny Boyle

The principle of sensory stimulation is front and center in “Sunshine,” which depicts a manned mission to the Sun. A crew of scientists has been given the task of restarting the dying star by torpedoing it with a nuclear payload. The tone of the film is a throwback to 2001: A Space Odyssey and the premise seems to be lifted from the 1968 Pink Floyd title Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. On a related note, Pink Floyd was originally asked to score the soundtrack for 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Sunshine – The Surface of the Sun, Music Tribute

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One constant in my film career is focus on sheer physical pleasure. I don’t want people to sit there and objectively watch the film. I want them to experience it as something that’s under their skin, so you try to make the films really tactile. – Danny Boyle

Sunshine – Captain Kaneda Meets the Sun

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Danny Boyle his screenwriter, the novelist Alex Garland, who also wrote the script for “28 Days Later,” embraced the idea that “Sunshine,” precisely because of the vastness of its subject, would be a space odyssey in the most interior sense: a head trip. “It’s like films about mountains,” he said. “They’re not about mountaineering. They’re about the mind. Movies about space raise those questions of what we’re doing here, and that inevitably introduces a spiritual dimension.”

sunshine-danny-boyle-2Boyle tried to inspire a suitable degree of awe for the scenes that simulated contact with the Sun (crew members peer out at the looming orb through Ray-Bans and filtered windows). “I’d say things like, ‘Every bit of you is just a bit of exploded star,’ a nod to Carl Sagan’s philosophies.

Sunshine – Helios, Music Tribute

 

Sunshine – Danny Boyle Interview

 

Sunshine – Quentin Tarantino Review


> The Space Odyssey of Danny Boyle | New York Times

A Society Without Cannabis Lacks Unfiltered Levels of Perception – Carl Sagan

A Society Without Cannabis Lacks Unfiltered Levels of Perception - Carl Sagan | Third Monk

carl-sagan-cannabis-perceptionI am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, un-available to us without such drugs. – Carl Sagan

Joe Rogan Podcast – Carl Sagan’s Belief of Cannabis Being Our Connection to the Universe

Joe Rogan talks about Carl Sagan’s essay on cannabis where he revealed that some of his best insights came from smoking marijuana.

The Marijuana Majority, Quotes From Public Supporters of Decriminalization

The Marijuana Majority, Quotes From Public Supporters of Decriminalization | Third Monk image 16

Marijuana Majority exists to help more people understand the simple fact that supporting commonsense solutions like regulating marijuana sales and ending marijuana arrests are mainstream positions and that there’s no reason those who support reform should be afraid to say so.

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Morgan Freeman, Academy Award-Winning Actor

It’s just the stupidest law possible… You’re just making criminals out of people who aren’t engaged in criminal activity. And we’re spending zillions of dollars trying to fight a war we can’t win! We could make zillions, just legalize it and tax it like we do liquor. It’s stupid – The Daily Beast

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Danny Devito, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Even if one doesn’t smoke pot one has to see the benefits of decriminalising it! – Twitter

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Joe Rogan, Comedian & UFC Commentator

People say, ‘Well you can abuse marijuana’… You can abuse cheeseburgers too, you don’t go around closing Burger King… If people…commit crimes while on those drugs they should in fact be punished, but you can’t punish someone for something that hurts no one. – YouTube

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Rosario Dawson, Actress

I’m for the legalization of marijuana, absolutely… We’ve got a lot of things that we need to be putting our focus and attention on and it’d be really great to take it off of joints. – CNN

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Carl Sagan, Astrophysicist

Is it rational to forbid patients who are dying from taking marijuana as a palliative to permit them to gain body weight and to get some food down?… That’s a highly irrational official government position – YouTube

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Elijah Wood, Actor Wilfred

The whole notion that marijuana is illegal is past the point of ridiculousness... To be honest, I’m not really much of a pot smoker… But I’ve always been an advocate. I just feel it should be decriminalized. – High Times

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Quentin Tarantino, Filmmaker

It’s slavery… All the reasons that they have for keeping this going are the all same reasons they had for keeping slavery going after the whole world had pretty much decided that it was immoral. It’s an industry. – George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight

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Bill Maher, Comedian & TV Host

It’s like gay marriage. These things that we believe are third rails, and then somebody has the guts to challenge it and they find out, ‘Wow, the American people actually are ahead of us. – HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher

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Seth Rogen, Actor

There are probably 400 people getting murdered at this second, and these two cops are taking an hour to write up my court summons for smoking a joint... That just seemed so…ridiculous to me. – Playboy

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Gavin Newsom, Lieutenant Governor of California

These [recreational marijuana users] are incredibly upstanding citizens: Leaders in our community, and exceptional people. Increasingly, people are willing to share how they use it and not be ashamed of it… These laws just don’t make sense anymore. It’s time for politicians to come out of the closet on this. – New York Times

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Brad Pitt, Actor

The drug war is actually being used to hold a portion of our society down... It’s criminal in itself… The only way to end the war on drugs is to take the profit out of it… We have to look at the what-if-everything-was-legal and people were allowed to make their own choices. – Huffington Post

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Bill Clinton, 42nd President

I think that most small amounts of marijuana have been decriminalized in some places, and should be. We really need a re-examination of our entire policy on imprisonment. – Rolling Stone

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Snoop Dogg, Rapper

Go to Amsterdam where it is legal and you see that the crime rate is nonexistent. There are people riding on bicycles being happy and it’s because of the environment that’s provided by the legalization of marijuana. Hollywood Reporter

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Jack Nicholson, Academy Award-Winning Actor

The illicit drug market funds terrorism and — this is a huge problem in America — fuels the foreign gangs. More than 85 percent of men incarcerated in America are on drug-related offenses. It costs $40,000 a year for every prisoner. If they were really serious about the economy there would be a sensible discussion about legalization. – Daily Mail

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David Duchovny, Actor

I’m all for legalization. I don’t think it would lead to any more use. Everybody I know, if they want to, has smoked pot. The fact that it’s illegal doesn’t stop anybody I know, so why not allow everybody to benefit from it? It would be billions of dollars of tax revenue. – Shockya.com

 

> Support Marijuana Reform | Marijuana Majority

Benefits of Cannabis Use By Carl Sagan, Essay Excerpts

Benefits of Cannabis Use By Carl Sagan, Essay Excerpts | Third Monk image 4

Carl Sagan’s essay on cannabis was written in 1969 for publication in Marijuana Reconsidered (1971). Sagan was in his mid-thirties at that time. He continued to use cannabis for the rest of his life. Here are our favorite excerpts that highlight the benefits of cannabis use.

Break On Through to the High Side

I had reached a considerably more relaxed period in my life – a time when I had come to feel that there was more to living than science, a time of awakening of my social consciousness and amiability, a time when I was open to new experiences. I had become friendly with a group of people who occasionally smoked cannabis, irregularly, but with evident pleasure. Initially I was unwilling to partake, but the apparent euphoria that cannabis produced and the fact that there was no physiological addiction to the plant eventually persuaded me to try.

 

Surreal Art

The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I’m down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse. There also have been some art-related insights – I don’t know whether they are true or false, but they were fun to formulate. For example, I have spent some time high looking at the work of the Belgian surrealist Yves Tanguy. Some years later, I emerged from a long swim in the Caribbean and sank exhausted onto a beach formed from the erosion of a nearby coral reef. In idly examining the arcuate pastel-colored coral fragments which made up the beach, I saw before me a vast Tanguy painting. Perhaps Tanguy visited such a beach in his childhood.

 

In Tune With Music

A very similar improvement in my appreciation of music has occurred with cannabis. For the first time I have been able to hear the separate parts of a three-part harmony and the richness of the counterpoint. I have since discovered that professional musicians can quite easily keep many separate parts going simultaneously in their heads, but this was the first time for me. Again, the learning experience when high has at least to some extent carried over when I’m down.

 

Enhanced Taste of Food

The enjoyment of food is amplified; tastes and aromas emerge that for some reason we ordinarily seem to be too busy to notice. I am able to give my full attention to the sensation. A potato will have a texture, a body, and taste like that of other potatoes, but much more so.

 

Sex and Weed

Cannabis also enhances the enjoyment of sex – on the one hand it gives an exquisite sensitivity, but on the other hand it postpones orgasm: in part by distracting me with the profusion of image passing before my eyes. The actual duration of orgasm seems to lengthen greatly, but this may be the usual experience of time expansion which comes with cannabis smoking.

 

One Consciousness

I do not consider myself a religious person in the usual sense, but there is a religious aspect to some highs. The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with my surroundings, both animate and inanimate. Sometimes a kind of existential perception of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of myself and my fellow men. And at other times, there is a different sense of the absurd, a playful and whimsical awareness. Both of these senses of the absurd can be communicated, and some of the most rewarding highs I’ve had have been in sharing talk and perceptions and humor.

 

Baking For Social Change

I find that most of the insights I achieve when high are into social issues, an area of creative scholarship very different from the one I am generally known for. I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of gaussian distribution curves. It was a point obvious in a way, but rarely talked about. I drew the curves in soap on the shower wall, and went to write the idea down. One idea led to another, and at the end of about an hour of extremely hard work I found I had written eleven short essays on a wide range of social, political, philosophical, and human biological topics. Because of problems of space, I can’t go into the details of these essays, but from all external signs, such as public reactions and expert commentary, they seem to contain valid insights. I have used them in university commencement addresses, public lectures, and in my books.

 

The Plant or the Bottle

I have mentioned that in the cannabis experience there is a part of your mind that remains a dispassionate observer, who is able to take you down in a hurry if need be. I have on a few occasions been forced to drive in heavy traffic when high. I’ve negotiated it with no difficult at all, though I did have some thoughts about the marvelous cherry-red color of traffic lights. I find that after the drive I’m not high at all. There are no flashes on the insides of my eyelids. If you’re high and your child is calling, you can respond about as capably as you usually do. I don’t advocate driving when high on cannabis, but I can tell you from personal experience that it certainly can be done. My high is always reflective, peaceable, intellectually exciting, and sociable, unlike most alcohol highs, and there is never a hangover. Through the years I find that slightly smaller amounts of cannabis suffice to produce the same degree of high, and in one movie theater recently I found I could get high just by inhaling the cannabis smoke which permeated the theater.

 

We’re Getting There Mr. Sagan

There is a very nice self-titering aspect to cannabis. Each puff is a very small dose; the time lag between inhaling a puff and sensing its effect is small; and there is no desire for more after the high is there. I think the ratio, R, of the time to sense the dose taken to the time required to take an excessive dose is an important quantity. R is very large for LSD (which I’ve never taken) and reasonably short for cannabis. Small values of R should be one measure of the safety of psychedelic drugs. When cannabis is legalized, I hope to see this ratio as one of he parameters printed on the pack. I hope that time isn’t too distant; the illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.

> Mr. X By Carl Sagan (Full Essay on Cannabis) | Marijuana Uses

Carl Sagan – Human Conceit, We Are Not the Center of the Universe (Video)

Carl Sagan – Human Conceit, We Are Not the Center of the Universe (Video) | Third Monk

Philosophy and religion cautioned that the gods (or God) were far more powerful than we, jealous of their prerogatives and quick to mete out justice for insufferable arrogance. At the same time, these disciplines had not a clue that their own teaching of how the Universe is ordered was a conceit and a delusion.

Every other proposal, and their number is legion, to displace us from cosmic center stage has also been resisted, in part for similar reasons. We seem to crave privilege, merited not by our work, but by our birth, by the mere fact that, say, we are humans and born on Earth. We might call it the anthropocentric—the “human-centered”—conceit. This conceit is brought close to culmination in the notion that we are created in God’s image: The Creator and Ruler of the entire Universe looks just like me. My, what a coincidence. How convenient and satisfying! –Carl Sagan