Natural and unnatural

[ohayoco]

Arguments involving 'natural=good' such as the naturalistic fallacy and the appeal to nature crop up a LOT on here, but they are incorrect. If you're not big on philosophy, watch the South Park episode 'Cherokee Hair Tampons' (starring Cheech & Chong) instead! The only advantage of natural chemicals is that, when there is a history of human experimentation with it, more is known about the effects... ancient psychonauts sitting in the jungle consuming it... in a less scientific way than modern psychonauts use synthetics and previously overlooked natural chemicals and combinations.

I've started this thread because peeps are often disagreeing on what is natural and unnatural on here... whether it be in reference to entheogens or the world in general. If all the info is compiled here, then it can be easily referred to.

Is a bird's nest natural? Yes. So is a human's nest natural? Again, yes. If a building is natural, is a megacity? Yes. As is an anthill, a termite mound, a coral colony. A coral reef is a megacity built by coral polyps! To call any human activity unnatural is to seperate ourselves from nature, and it is this arrogant anthropomorphic view that has got the Western world into so much ecological trouble.

Humans are tool using animals. Using tools is natural, and we are not the only ones who do so- birds do it, chimps do it- and the fact that we have become so adept at it does not make our creations suddenly 'unnatural'. Even when that tool is nuclear power. Whether the use of a certain tool is a good idea is another matter, but arguments on naturalness are irrelevent.

We can extrapolate further and further, and eventually we see that there is NO SUCH THING AS UNNATURAL! The observations of quantum physics and the atomic level seem unnatural in their alienness... but they are the very thing that makes nature so what can be more 'natural' than that? The only thing that is unnatural is that which breaks the laws of physics (the true laws, not the perhaps imperfect ones we have outlined so far)... and that is NOT POSSIBLE! So there is therefore no such thing as true 'unnaturalness'.

Natural and unnatural are subjective relative terms, like good and bad, and nothing more. It is a flawed and unncecessary concept... an illusion. The terms 'man-made' and 'synthetic' are far more pertinent.

 

[bufoman]

As Shulgin said regarding synthetic chemicals " I made them and I'm natural".

Regarding things that are not bio-degradable like certain plastics I understand the distinction because it does make a difference for the environment but for drugs it is no different. Just because something is natural it can still be dangerous just as a synthetic chemical can be safe. This argument is ridiculous. No one who knows what is going on would make such a statement. Terrence McKenna said that at least with the natural used substances they have a good track record, thousands of years of use. However synthetics can be dangerous, safe, or safer than naturals, it all depends on what is being evaluated. In every case it is different, there is no set rule.

 

[40oztofreedom]

Down to a fine line, there is no thing that is unnatural... but there are things that within a certain state, are toxic, and demolishing towards something organic.

A piece of radio-active steel does not belong in the forest with plants and animals. Neither does plastic, but at its roots, it organic and natural.

 

[ohayoco]

Woah! National Geographic on homosexual animals (and it's accepted behaviour for them). Gay lions, giraffes, apes, deer, birds, dolphins etc. It's like Foucault said, the dominant worldview of a society suppresses anything at odds with its values. But here they are, and apparently it's not uncommon.

The naturalistic fallacy is often used by homophobes and this link is a good antidote to that argument

 

[ohayoco]

A piece of radio-active steel does not belong in the forest with plants and animals. Neither does plastic, but at its roots, it organic and natural.

Yes. The argument should never be about what is natural and what is unnatural... this point is an irrelevent red herring. The argument should be what is sustainable, and what is not. That is what matters.

 

[Infundibulum]

I am one of those who also believe that there is not such thing as unnatural. There is however an inherent problem with the some of the things humans sometimes make, say for instance a synthetic drug or a polymer (e.g. plastic).

People can make things not normally found in mature, like a wooden stool and the can also make other things not normally found in nature like lsd or some plastic material. What is the difference between those two? Why some people feel that the wooden stool is "natural" enough whereas the plastic is totally unnatural?

I do not really know why, but I believe that part of the problem for such distinctions lies on what I would call the "scale issue". Humans have certain dimensions and they can work with objects that small or that big. It is very difficult for the human mind to grasp and manipulate quantities that are vastly larger or vastly smaller than us. As an example, some of the stars in the night sky are millions of light years far away. Yet, to a primitive man, his impression would be that stars are 2-3 miles above his head. It is just too difficult to understand what the length of a light year can look like. Same goes for the microcosm. It is just too small to be grasp it fully. It is difficult to grasp the length of a femptometer!

Where does this thing lead us? A wooden stool is using an material of our scale (tissue of the wood) to make an product again within the boundaries of our scale. We know exactly what we are doing, we have almost full control of our actions and possible dangers when crafting a stool.

But what happens when we try to fiddle around with objects much smaller than our scale? We have the technology to do it, yes, and we also have the technology to do it as good as we can. But still, it "feels" like playing with invisible objects, we're never 100% of what we've created (along with our desired product, that is) and thus we have not 100% control of what we have achieved by molecular fiddling. This can be enough for some people to show that a polymer is/can be dangerous but the wooden stool will always be fine.

And it is not far from truth, the more we venture away from things we can easily control the more we are in peril of fucking something up.

 

[40oztofreedom]

A piece of radio-active steel does not belong in the forest with plants and animals. Neither does plastic, but at its roots, it organic and natural.

Yes. The argument should never be about what is natural and what is unnatural... this point is an irrelevent red herring. The argument should be what is sustainable, and what is not. That is what matters.

Then why is the topic called "Natural and Unnatural"

Be more clear on the subject.

 

[ohayoco]

Then why is the topic called "Natural and Unnatural"
Be more clear on the subject.

Because people here keep using the naturalistic fallacy as an argument, when it isn't one, so I called it that so that people as yet unaware of this mistake will be attracted to the thread, read it, and then the same old arguments will no longer crop up all over the place in different threads

In other words, so that people stop citing something being natural as a reason for it being good... instead, if it applies, argue that it is sustainable and therefore good, because that would be a valid point.

 

[ohayoco]

Infundibulum- yes your point on scale is an interesting one, and I agree new technologies are probably riskier in general than old... geo-engineering is an emerging one that I find quite scary because I can see 'them' going ahead with it, and they could well kill us all that way... the ecosystem is far too chaotic to ever be able to predict the results. I mean, it's taken 30 years to come to any kind of consensus about climate change, now they're considering instigating potentially even more damaging scenarios.

 

['Coatl]

I'm not going to get into a big arguement here... but to me in the scope of psychoactives... natural and synthetic are easy to distinguish! Caapi is a plant.... it's natural. Meth doesn't grown on trees... is not. Simple.

 

[69ron]

[quote='Coatl]I'm not going to get into a big arguement here... but to me in the scope of psychoactives... natural and synthetic are easy to distinguish! Caapi is a plant.... it's natural. Meth doesn't grown on trees... is not. Simple.[/quote]

Yea, heroin doesn’t grow on trees. Meth doesn’t grow on trees. Crack cocaine doesn’t grow on trees in little bundles for you to pick and smoke either (although it’s chemical source grows on trees).

All of the highly addictive damaging drugs are all products that can be made from nature, but are not found in nature in useable form.

The popular drugs found in useable form in nature, such as marijuana, mushrooms, etc., are not highly addictive damaging drugs. Nature doesn’t make anything like that. Even coca leaves are not nearly as harmful as purified cocaine. Ephedra sinica isn’t nearly as harmful as meth.

So the natural vs. unnatural holds true in many cases.

 

['Coatl]

Yes! 69ron you just typed everything that I failed to put into words!

Thank you!

 

[polytrip]

Mother nature is very effective, often. Many of nature's psychedelics are easyer for body and mind to handle; DMT breaks down because of MAO activity while DPT doesn't. On the other hand, if an organism wants to poison it's enemy's it will be incredibly succesfull as well.
The stuff old ladies use to keep looking young, botox, is one of the most toxic substances ever to be found.

 

[burnt]

^^Yes and that sums up my opinion on difference between natural and unnatural. Maybe people are more familiar with the unnatural scary compounds that run around the news all day making everything synthetic seem like its poison. But that's looking at the big picture in a very biased way. I can think of many many many chemicals in many many many common plants that can easily kill a human being or are carcinogenic etc. It makes zero difference if something is natural or unnatural. Whats important is how it effects human beings and at what dose does it exert a particular effect.

 

[69ron]

Yeah but when it comes to the major drugs of addiction (heroin, crack, meth) that are ruining people's lives, they are all unnatural man made products either totally synthetic or extracted and highly concentrated by man. None are found in nature in a useable form. Nature doesn’t make drugs like that in useable form.

 

[ohayoco]

Well the discussion has now moved into familiar territory! It's great that no one has denied the validity of the naturalistic fallacy, because this means that the arguments should be more logical from now on.

The popular drugs found in useable form in nature, such as marijuana, mushrooms, etc., are not highly addictive damaging drugs. Nature doesn’t make anything like that. Even coca leaves are not nearly as harmful as purified cocaine. Ephedra sinica isn’t nearly as harmful as meth.

Ok 'the popular drugs'. Firstly, I should say that I'm wary of synthetics because of their short history of use etc so I'm not exactly against you but am just arguing to open the discussion. The botanicals you list are the popular natural drugs only because they're safer than the many other VERY UNSAFE botanicals! Nature is full of poisons. Before opium and hashish became popular Europeans were getting high on dangerous and often easily-fatal plants like hemlock, henbane, deadly nightshade, datura... with many, an easily-made mistake in dose turns it from entheogen to poison. Witchcraft could be a dangerous practice in Pagan Europe! As was its successor medieval medicine, compared to medicine today.

And plants vary more in potency than pure chemicals, so one could argue that mistakes are potentially more likely. Incidentally, mescaline also has a small dose/overdose threshold, which is why, if you want full effects, it is safer to consume extracted mescaline that take the risk of eating an amount of cactus that could be fatal if you were lucky/unlucky enough to have bought strong stuff.

Why do people treat or extract botanicals, or even use synthetics? Not only to get useful effects, but also to remove unwanted ones. SWIM knows a girl who put herself in a coma when she was 17 because she followed an incorrect recipe for amanita muscaria. She read that the Vikings boiled it and drank it, so that's what she did... not knowing that it is poisonous unless first dried.

Does alcohol count as natural? Of course. It's just yeast-poo in some bronze-age guy's apple juice. And it's far more popular than marijuana and mushrooms. It occurs naturally and can be made naturally, yet it could be said to have had a terrible effect on indiginous cultures after introduction, as well as having bad social and physical effects on the cultures to whom its use is native. Opium is natural too, and I really don't see a big difference between its use and that of heroin.

You mentioned ephedra. I don't think ephedra is safe. It require careful use. SWIM got some from a TCM vendor once and made himself some tea. The guy in the shop just said 'don't have too much'. The first tea didn't do much so he made a stronger one. After the second tea, he thought he was going to have a heart attack! His heart had never pounded so fast in his chest from amphetamine or coke before, it was worrying... and all from a handful of twigs! The very small gap between dose and overdose with ephedrine is the reason why it was scheduled.

Yes meth is damaging, but so are many botanicals. The difference is that some stupid people consider them fun enough to do anyway. If meth wasn't around, these people would be chewing on some kind of noxious natural seed to get fucked instead... just as kids nowadays do anyway! Chewing on some HBWR seeds without extracting the good stuff from the bad because they can't get their hands on some less toxic extract/synthetics... HBWR gives some people horrific seizures that involve a trip to the hospital. Check the Erowid reports. In fact, SWIM's studied their reports a lot and these reports have helped shape his opinions. It is very interesting to compare the amount of good vs bad trips etc, as well as the 'train wrecks' section (lots of botanicals end up in this section, it's not only for synthetics!).

Perhaps the best thing about extracts/synthetics- the reduction of side effects- is also their downfall, at least in the case of meth and cocaine addicts. They have become more popular because they fulfil their function better... their function being a pleasurable experience in the case of addicts.

And it could be argued that an addiction to such drugs is the fault of the user, not the chemical. In olden times, these addicts would be getting fucked up on alcohol or opium instead, beating their wives or abandoning their family respectively. I agree that meth is a real social problem because of the near-psychotic behaviour that it can create, I'm not defending that. But I'm sure many natural deliriants would cause equal mayhem if these people were taking them instead.

 

[69ron]

Yeah, but if you focus on the popular drugs of abuse, the ones all the drug addicts like, the unnatural man made ones are the most problematic. You simply can't argue against that. The top three are crack, meth, and heroin. No matter how you attempt to word it, you can't get away from that fact.

Arguments about henbane and stuff do not hold much water. They are not popular. They've never been that popular because they are not as habit forming as heroin, meth, or crack, period. No one is seriously addicted to ephedra either.

Were are all the drug addicts suffering from herbal addiction? WHERE?

The rehab clinics are filled with crack, heroin, and meth addicts, not people addicted to herbs. You can’t argue against that fact.

 

[69ron]

Another thing to add, 100% all natural tobacco isn’t nearly as harmful or addictive as the stuff being sold in cigarettes, and that’s because man has added all sorts of nasty chemicals to the cigarettes specifically to make them more addictive.

 

[69ron]

The other argument for natural versus unnatural where natural wins is that Psilocybe or Peyote can make their psychedelics without producing any damage to the environment. Man cannot make LSD without causing damage to the environment. Making LSD requires tools, chemicals, solvents, etc., that nearly all damage the environment. So in that respect, natural is absolutely better than unnatural.

It's far better to grow San Pedro for mescaline, then to construct a lab for making LSD. Pretty much every part of making LSD pollutes the environment. Think about all the solvents and how they are manufactured. Think about all the chemicals and how they are manufactured. Think about all the tools and how they are manufactured. Pretty much none are environmentally friendly.

To make mescaline, you just plant San Pedro, water it, give it some sun, and eat it. Not only does it not damage the environment, it helps it out! You can’t beat that.

 

[ohayoco]

he rehab clinics are filled with crack, heroin, and meth addicts, not people addicted to herbs. You can’t argue against that fact.

I'm not arguing that. But don't ignore key natural drugs just to bolster your argument... don't forget alcoholics. Alcohol is natural and habit forming. So is opium- in fact, heroin really belongs with the naturals, because it's nothing more than a more convenient way of getting the addicts their fix. 100 years ago they would've all been smoking opium instead.

So, we have alcohol and heroin as the two most abused. Both can be considered natural in origin, sure they're refined nowadays but still refinement hasn't made them more popular. Then there's meth and crack. So that makes 50/50!

And one could take this further by arguing that crack is just freebase cocaine, which is a botanical extract from the coca leaf. So meth is the only synthetic of the usual suspects. When you look at it that way, the argument isn't so clearcut.

I'm not arguing either way, synthetic or botanical can be good or bad. But I do think it's not good to make such general generalisations (!), because that's just prejudice. And prejudice isn't scientific.