Does Canna Clatch Support "Legalization"?
An interview with the creator of the Altruistic StrainHunters
Your blog received it's first comment. First off, congratulations on this. Second, what can you tell us in general terms about your ambitions as a writer?
CC - Thank you. I am very thankful for all of our followers and for any new blog gaining traction, there are many small moments that are markers for remembering just where you came from and what was important when you were small and starting out, we have many of them already.
My ambitions as a writer not exactly ambitions but just a general hope to be part of a discussion, to help bring some points to the table that may be ignored or to try to widen the scope of the discussion at face. Much of what I've written has never been published and I feel that I have a tremendous amount of work to do to become a more well rounded artist and to incorporate my love for subjects and communication and community to meld itself into something that can be interesting or at least useful to the social matrix. I think there are controversial issues that are being dismissed and independent writing, solid research journalism, and ethical sense within the independent creator all have to pick up where the large conglomerates have proved useless or negligent.
There are millions of marijuana activists across the world, most are for legalization. Is Canna Clatch for legalization?
CC - You're right, there are millions of Americans who affiliate themselves with the label "marijuana activist" and to this, we wish them the best in their endeavors. We would like to invite them into a wider discussion about inalienable rights to nature, by man, as it was implied in the Declaration of Independence. "Marijuana" in the United States, is a pejorative term, and can be logically deemed a ethnophaulism. I invite the American people to bring our government's statesmen/women, lawyers, and medical bodies to come to use latin, which they have historically, within their respective "formal usages". Why would they not?
In short, I support the emancipation of nature through the deliberate exoneration of anything that can be grown as well as any other plant that comes from nature. Foods, Energies, Medicines…...Entheogens have implications of co-evolutionary and co-habitation that cannot and should not be infringed upon by states or religious bodies.
People, by their inalienable right to nature, should be able to cultivate and ingest anything they wish. This is what I support. I attempt to avoid clouding my arguments with terms like "drugs" and assuming pharmaceuticals and their derivatives (spice and ecstasy) would be intelligent to absolve of all infringement or regulation by the government, this is a platitude and is probably a good after school special for ex-DEA agents, if there is such a thing.
You have introduced the idea that cannabis is an entheogen, but also the 28th Amendment for Nature. Can you expand on that for people who are not quite sure what this implies?
CC - Please understand clearly that I am not introducing the idea that cannabis is an entheogen, I am repeating a premise that comes from many historical sources as well as from many current religious bodies and spiritual groups and affirming something I myself have personally come to understand through gnosis and direct experience. Entheogens are "plant teachers" that allow the consciousness of humans to connect with a higher aspect of the physical representation of the plant. This premise is ubiquitous across the majority of indigenous civilizations in some form or another - plant alchemy is nothing new. Cannabis takes on many different uses across history in our co-evolution and is considered a "companion herb" to several other entheogens by more than a handful of indigenous populations.
Altered states should not be negatively implicated within our societies and cultures and people who use entheogens should not be subjected to special status and persecution. The inalienable right to nature, by man, is in total and the moment we start to put barriers between people and aspects of nature, we may as well put barriers on our speech freedoms, firearm freedoms and other uniquely identified characteristics of liberty. Religious bodies, namely Vatican City and it's conglomerate has done an immaculate job since the last Dark Age at making states bend to it's policy of persecution and subjugation of people who venerate entheogens and indigenous tribal knowledge that accompanies such value systems that these civilizations and individuals would have. It's time to remove the barriers between people and nature in suo complexu - that is to say in it's entirety.
The 28th Amendment premise is something we've introduced for Americans to begin thinking about the wide scale implications of removing the government from their spiritual lives - and that nature, without doubt, has implications for their spiritual life and personal evolution. The United Nations has done nothing but subjugate Americans to Vatican City policy and a Constitutional Convention would bring to bear many constitutional grievances the U.N. incites as it relates to American Sovereignty. The crux of religious mind control is a fulcrum that pivots on the idea that people be kept from the self awareness that is engendered in the transcendental experience of plant alchemy.
You have introduced the little-used term "Altruism" within your name. This is a marketing disaster by contemporary standards - can you please give some background to this choice and your decision to use it?
CC - Google is actually a little used term that got re-introduced. Marketing is subtle art that I have no use for within the context of my naming and chose something intuitively instead. This is actually a question that brings on a "heavy" answer and it's a bit difficult to truncate things or give the revised nutshell response. Altruism is a philosophic premise that is quite interesting and can be implicated from the point of the Self to the self or from the self, to another. At the surface level, I wanted to inject the idea of selfless seed trading and strain hunting. There is so much to be said about the cannabis genetics players that use scarcity and feminization to aggrandize something that can help people to a degree that cannot be calculated. Cannabis plants can be cloned at any stage in their growth, this is an amazing thing, an yet humans use scarcity and elitism for monetary and material profit.
The deeper implications of being "altruistic towards oneself" through the use of entheogens and integrated living through continued self awareness is a subject I cover in our in person socials and have found many similar tenants within Buddhism, Taoism, and gnostic Christianity that relate to the "self agency" that is understood further through plant alchemy. Self-love and self awareness go hand in hand and this is where I center my writings on altruism - the idea that if we as humans simply do the things we authentically find enriching and creative, abundance follows. To do things for the sole purpose of being in Joy, is a soulful integrated human experience and there is a subtle understanding of your manifestation that is more easily understood with the use of entheogens.
This is why scriptures and tomb walls and sculptures repeatedly symbolize specific plants within their details.
We call ourselves a "developed society" and yet the vast majority of us are experientially stunted and our collective self awareness and collective egoism is indicative of this. If I can borrow terminology used by the propaganda within the "Drug War", marijuana is a gateway drug. It's a gateway (and companion) to other entheogens. Auguste Comte, the french philosopher, idealized the nature of altruism being opposite of egoism and in this we hope to perpetuate his premise that was further expanded by our American colonialist writers Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson.
Can you tell us about how you define "independent writer" vs "gonzo journalist" and how you might work to differentiate your writing from the saturated ecosystem of "cannabis writing".
CC - I have no trouble differentiating myself. I am a terrible writer and even worse on camera. I make content on several levels. These levels start at my own personal amusement, to my close confidants, on to the community and lastly the blog and the social platforms. My intent foremost for Canna Clatch was to continue the notion of people coming together around cannabis to share wisdom, take in information, and to enjoy the meaningful connections that come from helping people in meaningful ways. The writing and video content is a continual activity that many of our community members are involved in and I attempt to cultivate a collaborative foundation in everything I do. Cannabis as a topic spins off in to so many other "rabbit holes" and ancillary subjects that people find "delicate" or find "off limits" and therefore "conspiratorial", that I am differentiated just by the sheer scope of my content. If you say to me that you believe heroin thrives because cannabis is scheduled, I will high five you and flip you a nod on the afghan and golden triangle poppie productions being directly impacted by the ability of people around the world to grow their own poppies and do with them what they please - that scarcity and heroin creates a racket and a cycle of addiction.
I have, from the start, used the concept of gonzo journalism as it was executed by the late HS Thompson. Not exactly as he did of course, but the concept itself is extremely applicable to the time and places I find myself. I happen to agree with Hunter that there is no such thing as "objective journalism". The philosophical premise that we, ourselves impact the event we are "covering" by simply having our awareness on it is alive and well within physics and alternative theory communities - gonzo journalism, I feel takes this premise maintains a personal authenticity that cannot be quite matched in what we call "MSM" or mainstream writing. Gonzo is documentarian and can be extremely journalistic as Hunter did such a great job showing us as he threaded between subjects and demographics.
Independent writing is a much more tricky definition and I think that Hunter had a difficult time scratching out his idealistic level of autonomy in his time and writers today have even more opportunities to subjugate their writing to the parameters of someone else, or something else, and in the wider scope of things, there really is no difference between a cannabis writer, a futurist, an economist, and a philosopher. Entheogens are implicated in all of these areas of thought and we as a species are slowly re-learning this. My great tribute about Hunter is that he maintained his common theme of community around "Freak Power" and reviving the "counter-culture" that had been subjugated in it's infancy in the 1960's - to activate the younger generation to action and have an impact on the political process. I attempt to do this this in a slightly different method by creating community around the idea of liberty through emancipation of nature and appealing to people's innate altruism.
Many of your readers and followers are probably curious but never ask - Why do you call yourself a "strainhunter" when your blog doesn't actually do strain reviews?
CC - This is great! This is the difference between our speakeasy's and the content I put out on the blog. If you attend our socials, you quickly get an understanding of why I chose this moniker - strictly speaking, I wanted everyone to discover their innate strainhunter. I put a great deal of effort in the activity of "curating" and am always trying to find people and genetics in all their forms. With regards to my writing, I stay away from the saturated writing ecosystem around strain reviews and the hubris it generally entails. We have covered strains individually and have written extensively about the subjective nature of the review process and talking about the "affects" a strain has an a person. I am very excited about the new discoveries coming out every day regarding individual cannabinoids and their therapeutic affect on individual symptoms or diagnosis but I try to keep from getting into unneeded generalizations that prove too ambiguous to be helpful. One of my original intents with Canna Clatch was to be an ongoing "interviewer" of cannabis breeders and talk with them about their strains and phenotypes so that a direct line of information could be relied upon instead of a bunch of marketing junk a seed bank whipped up. This is why I invite breeders to our socials so they can have a direct connection with people interested in learning through community. You will see strain reviews in the future on the blog/site. Breeding cannabis, I feel, will become a pretty ubiquitous activity before long and continued interest in the subject is obvious, we need to venerate the best breeders doing great work today and maintaining selflessness around tribal knowledge and distributing useful traits freely. I think the widespread adaptation of CBD Sensi growing has proven that there is varying levels of selflessness being employed in the breeding industry.
I will say quickly too that there will be a massive schism in the cannabis community when the first mappings of the world's genetics are published from the tissue samplings being taken in and processed. Strain reviews will start from the foundation when you can point to the place on the map you currently reside, until then, we're doing terpene profiles and word of mouth labeling of strains and their heritage and this is not accurate information, nor is it information you should be able to proprietize or aggrandize.
Who funds Canna Clatch and how does it affect the content?
CC- Everything I do is self-funded. I have no contracts or editors. My hope is to create a membership community where chapters can exist everywhere there is a network for one. My personal opinion is a delivery and community based curated membership packages are the future of cannabis consumption and that people will want to seek community around their personal companionship with cannabis - wherever they are. My personalized non-profit model cannot exist in the current climate so we simply create enjoyable socials and cultivate cottage cannabis activity and commerce and barter. My model will always be the anti-thesis to industrialized and impersonal cultivation and consumption that seems to be the new trend in the U.S. by Willie Nelson and other moguls.
You mentioned the term "non-profit". Why is not possible and how do you describe your model?
CC - Cannabis is both unique and essential, valuable beyond the rightful jurisdiction of taxation and there is a current climate of "gold rush" by both private investors and politicians looking to expand their coffers through taxation. It is up to our doctors and lawyers to help shift the common understanding of this plant, and of entheogens in general, so that we can experience true liberty in being able to cultivate and commerce the plant and it's ancillary materials without infringement by the state. My non-profit model is very simple and allows people to help the less fortunate with their membership and with their patronage. There is not a lot that can't be done through specialization of skills and within a network of people that maintain an altruistic perspective and way of living. My model would put children, elderly, and veterans on a short list to gain access to known cannabis protocols and derivatives and would outwardly look much like a church today...without all the mind control and vamping of life force/money. I contend that the first state that allows for a change to their constitution that allows for spiritual use of nature or the religious use of plants, there will be a watershed of realizations around the country that no business model works the moment you let churches and non-profits take their tax base away.
You brought up Hunter S. Thompson, he took many writing gigs with major publications - is this something you would be open to?
CC - Absolutely! I want to cultivate a collaborative culture as much as possible and this means offering an open nature towards the major content creators that are already out there. My main point to make with Hunter is that his period was very periodical heavy - he went to great lengths to berate rolling stone that they were not circulating in Washington DC because he couldn't find a copy anywhere while covering the convention. Hunter would agree that today's period is about the moving picture and about using mixed content to create an enriched experience that does not subscribe to traditional norms of our "entertainment industry". My ideal would be to have a content creator come to me and say, we're making an app for tablets that puts out enriching media that people donate towards after consuming. I have given many kudos to Vice Magazine for their trend in making extremely moving documentary style-video shorts. I feel there particular style is fitting to the gonzo style of journalism and that if they would open themselves up to having a channel dedicated to entheogens, they would blast our culture right out of the frying pan and in to the butter dish.
With all this being said, it's safe to say that Canna Clatch supports legalization and that cultural change sometimes happens in small steps and not in massive leaps?
CC - Yes, I support the strict understanding of legalization of hemp, ganja, marijuana, collie weed, kanef, and I would say I support legalization over rescheduling which would put the plant in the hands of the pharmaceutical cartels and their corporate subsidiaries all across the food industry. I would like to see people get access to this plant number 1, but I would like Americans to widen their discussion to the whole of nature being inalienable to humans and that cannabis is not really legal until average people can acquire it in a standard supermarket free of tax. There are extremely powerful forces wanting to get people in to a consumer funnel of cannabis products, includes insurance schemes, and lots of regulatory overhead. People should be making the decision to grow for themselves because they have the right to, before they are offered some pharmaceutical product that is cannabis-derived under their company's insurance HMO. Change occurs as fast as the civilian body wants it, I've spoken at our socials about the march on the governors steps, leaving 5000 cannabis clones on the steps of your capital on the day that the states birthday falls on each month. I want to see the drug war ended and the indentured to be released from the private prisons being held under drug offenses related to cannabis and distribution. I want to see asset forfeiture and the Patriot Act all become a bad memory just like slavery. I live in a state where we just voted yes for legalization and the 3 prohibitionists in our state capital where effectively lobbied by the liquor control racketeers and the league of cities. The medical program was modified and there was never an jurisdiction in the original bill as given to the voters. I see this as proof that politicking is never below moralists and materialists.
What would you say is going to be the biggest impact on our country by widespread legalization and therefore use of cannabis, hemp, and all of the various things that will be implemented and discovered from it?
CC - I meditate on this very question as much as possible because it's a very interesting question. I always come back to the same answer…...the ethical society. People are waking up to the cartels and rackets that have perpetuated since the early 20th century and that today's permutations have gotten extremely ugly with methamphetamine and pharmaceutical industry really turning a generation of people into overnight addicts. The united nations, world bank, federal reserve and it's subsidiary tentacles in government have all worked to perpetuate the usury and inflation scheme of serfdom on the American people and cannabis is helping people wake up to the idea of liberty and the real sovereignty that the founders wrote about. How can we ever condone a patent on something that we have a built in receptor system for? This is the ultimate insult to the average citizen and this is why I try to keep my topics about instigating positive change instead of becoming resentful towards your federal and state governments.
Quality of life is going to increase and the human footprint on earth can be minimized and our cleanup era can begin in earnest. The era of middle east petro and fracking can finally become an era of people finding autonomy and health through self agency and creating community through holistic and humanistic values. If we can have a macro change towards altruism and seeing the plight of others as our own plight by relation here in the United States, our influence will be extremely reverberating across the other continents...and some may say….lack of influence will be extremely reverberating across the other continents. Creative inspiration is part of the entheogen experience and we'll continue to adapt technological concepts to this plant so that it improves our way of life and will creatively inspire us to utilize technology for many other ethical and altruistic employs. This plant is exceptional in it's ability to get humans to partner with it, to process it in a new way, to hybridize it for something new or for some new concept.
If you were made President of the United States, what would be your first move to try to help the current status quo?
CC - Wow! What a dreadful question and dreadful position to be in! My first move would be to put in a sizable sensimilla garden right next to the rose garden outside the white house. I would then draft an executive order to legalize all things that grow in nature and hold a constitutional convention with all the states and give a platform for each state to construct language in their own constitutions that work off the implied idea that the federal government has totally emancipated cannabis and will not get in the way of cross state commerce and will only help regulate international trade. I would put first the question to the citizenry of whether it is ethical for states and agencies to tax a food and energy staple, a medicine and entheogen? After that I would put forth specific questions to the citizenry that would give their policy makers some idea of popular sentiment through their vote: should we continue to host the United Nations? Should we dissolve the Federal Reserve, DEA, IRS, and bring in question several specific policy questions that kneel American sovereignty to supra-national bodies. We would immediately put our membership in any international treaties on drug enforcement and trafficking and would reign our DEA from international activity. As the convention got underway, I would give veterans a new citizen status that allows them to purchase land and property at a discount and garner loans for creating cannabis gardens and company start ups.
Thank you for taking the time for this interview! It's been informative and we would like to offer you the floor for any comments you left out?
CC - Thank you for taking the time to ask such great questions and I appreciate your interest in my writing and my opinions. I look forward to discussions and conversations inspired by our time here today. I look forward to the next interview.
