Jonathon Turley bemoans the situation wherein Supreme Court decisions and dissents may often be based on "facts" that are or should be disputed, when so-called "Brandeis briefs" dump voluminous studies into the record, enabling justices to pick and choose among data patterns to claim scientific support for their opinions.
I don't think this situation is worth any energetic discussion, let alone bemoaning. The basic error is (again) apotheosis of reason.
I have huge affinity for scientific thinking and continuing lifelong hope for a future civilization that will be based on reason rather than force. Apotheosis of reason, however, seems to include the postulate that reality is separate from the considerations or opinions of living beings. That postulate is a trick. Real civilization must be based on agreements among living beings, not any "Truth" (capital "T") which is above and beyond their fundamentally arbitrary, free consideration.
This does not make agreement and amenable society difficult or less likely due to any lack of externally dictated "Truth". Neither God nor physics will solve our current political and existential strife. But this puts more responsibility on each of us, above all else, to honestly and skillfully communicate with others. The reason I respect Jonathon Turley is that he does communicate, honestly and very skillfully, to hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens, multiple times on most days. Reality itself consists of freely (though not always wisely) made agreements which have accumulated among living spiritual beings. There was almost certainly a time before e = mc squared was true.
And (contra Turley perhaps), we should want Supreme Court Justices to have access to all possible data. It is their job to be wise enough, and to put forward enough effort, to distinguish and extract the most valid and useful information, even from the most ridiculous "Brandeis briefs." If amici adopt self-defeating habits of dumping the whole internet into attempts to persuade, their arguments will go largely unread.
It is each of our jobs to keep arguing, and to patiently allow others to keep arguing with us, until we agree (not totally, but at least about something new), and continue trying, forever. That's life. Communication, not force, is the answer.
John Lennon said the Beatles smoked weed for breakfast, and they were not alone among the most creative artists from at least the twentieth century to the present. I have written about the romance of rebellion and the stunning 1967 benediction of Sergeant Pepper for a nostalgically recalled flowering psychedelic counterculture of my youth. Almost everyone my age has some emotional connection to psychedelics.
But the drugs weren't the thing: freedom, sensation, music and love were it. On balance, the drugs probably didn't even help. I recently heard a modern version of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (by Twisted Pine) that's better than the original. Maybe these guys were tripping when they put it together, but it doesn't even seem relevant to ask. Certainly set and setting are radically different, and that was/is always a huge part of acid.
MAPS and whatever orthodox psychiatric entities may be pushing a "psychedelic renaissance" are much like the amici that Turley finds such a nuisance, for dumping masses of "facts" into the record in the hope that SCOTUS can be swayed by "science".
LSD certainly dumps masses of disjointed "reality" on a person, which cannot be evaluated or helpfully integrated, or (most importantly) communicated for purposes of any progression of social agreement.
SCOTUS has the Constitution of the United States as a reference point for their thinking about justice and policy. They won't be overwhelmed by weaponized information technology. But unfortunately, there seems to be no corresponding reference for deliberations about the nature of an individual and his/her relationship to others and the universe.
Where is any Constitution of the Human Person? Psychiatry is absolutely the last place to look!
So psychedelic "therapy" is a cruel lie.
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