the appeal of drugs

having taken no drugs whatsoever in all my life, i probably am not the most qualified person to talk about drugs. but funnily enough, there have been days, today being one, where i get tempted by the idea. where does the appeal from from?

for me, i think i relate the idea of drugs as being a means to go from your initial state (a) to another state (b).

why would that be helpful?

the want usually comes from an unhappiness with where you are now. getting to state b isn't necessarily a better one intrinsically, only, the reason why it is preferable is because the state a Must be escaped at any costs - if state a can be avoided, then it must be avoided, the heart says.

things other can drugs do this.

escape into a good book
escape into your headphones
escape into a computer game world

drugs is not the definitive means to get to a different state of affairs than the one you're in. the funny thing is, the escape is short lived. and here the lie becomes less potent. the promise is escape. no-one while tempted to get off their face will hear from their tempter about the morning after. no-one hears, or remembers, that the escape isn't actually an escape at all, rather, a temporary glitch in the programming of normal life.

the appeal of drugs is interesting. it never suggests that state a itself is open to change while still being state a. it never says that we have available the means to happiness in all circumstances, that state a can be the place we live in and yet be satisfied. i believe that real life has a beauty and a potency of its own that i am meant to discover.

so, since there is no real escape, there is no call to be hoodwinked by things that look like escapes. only, to seek out the beauty in what is already here.

fools

christians have pastor jerry and his qu'ran burning tendencies, the gay community get george michael and his driving and crashing of cars under cannabis, the music scene has lady gaga wearing oufits that look like they're made of meat, today's youth who wish to showcase their talents get... justin bieber instead, islam gets al-qaeda who give the loudest (but not islam's desired) say as to what following their god means, footballers get john terry and the handshake (or lack thereof), politicians get the opportunity to harbour racism as a policy through bnp and ukip.

so, there's no people group exempt from fools.

thankfully, god isn't out there to point the finger, but to save us from ourselves. in the character of jesus, he puts himself in the position of being the fool, even accepting the mockery that was never due his name.

"Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, "You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!"

In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. "He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! He's the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, 'I am the Son of God.' "In the same way the robbers who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him."

new pop

this isn't earth shattering news or anything, but i had a vocal melody line in my head today. I was in the middle of trying to figure out where it came from, when i realised that it had two sources!

so, if you hear

Lady Gaga's "just dance"

and

U2's "sunday bloody sunday"

you'll find the first line on the vocal melody is the same! so much for gaga bringing fresh ingenuity into pop. countless christian bands are lambasted (mainly by my dad) for being exact U2 sound-a-likes, which I guess must also grate on the countless christians who don't like U2, want christianity to be represented as being accessible to their own generation, and would like to see perhaps their own preferred genres represented to the glory of god (and well!)
but with this fresh discovery i think mainstream pop is in just as much danger of sinking into tedium. i guess its part of the definition of mainstream, the idea of needing to appeal to most people, that it Has to ignore the many obscure minorities.. but mainstream music has also changed a lot within the past decade or so. U2 have not though, so if we base things on these sounds then music as an ever adapting medium loses it's momentum.

(as it happens, i do like U2. as a lover of music foremost though, i'd say that other bands have used them as their influences to the point of exhaustion and mediocrity, and the scene needs to move.)