Jason Silva, host of National Geographic Channel’s Brain Games, says in a Big Think interview that cannabis legalization is “a huge win for civilization.” In addition to the countless medicinal uses of marijuana, Silva says the very ability to choose to use cannabis is a step toward “cognitive freedom” — the freedom to choose how to use one’s own mind.
“When you change the cultural context in which people are able to have marijuana, you change the particular flavor of marijuana consciousness,” he says. “It’s just very exciting because I think we’re going to see new forms of entertainment, new forms of cultural spaces for people to partake in what they’ve been doing for hundreds of thousands of years, whether its through external technologies or internal technologies.”
He goes on to explain that everything from mindfulness and meditation to Burning Man, raves and theater productions are all rhetorical technologies, or techniques, of capturing and managing attention and are able to illicit transformational interpersonal experiences. Silva hopes that with cannabis legalization, people in everyday life will be able to alter their consciousness, legally, in a safe space, in a way that allows for new perspectives.
The result, he says, is, “hopefully some kind of transformation, heightened appreciation, increased compassion, increased wellbeing and increased creativity.”
Watch Silva’s interview below.
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