Crow Grow

I'm a landlocked bird flying inside a cube of dirt in the sky

Have you ever danced with a Duckstack, in the pale moon light?

Art: Mike Davis

If you are reading this, stop. Drop what you are doing, gently, and read this: You are not supposed to be reading this. You’ve read too far. If you read the room, you would be reading better, but it would still not be enough, because it didn’t go too far. Read into it next time, so that you don’t read too much, like this.

Marijuana

Fact Check: blackout hedonism is good for society, actually¹

Drugs are extremely useful for controlling people. That’s not really controversial- marijuana’s main function is to make its users complacent and open minded, which is where the hippie weedhead stereotype comes from. Like all things, you become what you spend your time on- and every second in a drug induced stupor is “practicing” mindsets and habits, disarming you for conflict.

As drugs of all kinds have become more prevalent in our culture, you can plot a linear decline of standards of all kinds, and the rise of modern liberalism or “wokeness”, which is itself a rebellion against standards². If you wanted a complacent people, you could try to beat resistance out of them, but its a lot easier to make them rely on you for their medication³. Many of the actions the government takes can be explained this way- from welfare to LGBT to the many pro-pornography messages being spread in public schools.

You see, the baby boomer generation was wrong about pornography- it didn’t raise men’s standards impossibly high, it actually lowered them. How? As my dad says, “met needs don’t motivate”: a girl doesn’t need to be nearly as good in a man’s eyes if she is simply one amongst an impossibly large freely available digital harem. It also means the men don’t need to be as good either, because they don’t feel the need for another real life woman. The motivation just isn’t there, it was sapped.

Open minded people don’t rock the boat. People who “spend their strength with prostitutes” don’t accomplish anything. People who play too many video games derive less satisfaction from real-life accomplishment. Women who sleep around feel no need to have children. All of these arrangements are extremely advantageous to what was called “predators”. The type of person with something to gain from you leaving your house unlocked⁴. The term “victim blaming” was invented by this type of person’’, but God knows exactly how much more we could have done. And if I tell him circumstances beyond my control caused me to fail a test, he is going to ask me why I’m a procrastinator. Responsibility is a concept very close to sobriety, which means “taking in data accurately”. Surely you cannot do this if you take everything as your fault- and surely you cannot do this if you take nothing such. You can go too far with this, but you can also come far too short. I’m a big fan of sobriety.

It is difficult to take people seriously who engage in drugs⁵ and alcohol. Its like, “you’re telling me you regularly, as a hobby, fry your judgement? If this is how you treat your mind, why should I respect it more than that?

Everybody knows this, also. Which is why they claim the drugs give them unique powers of insight- obviously they aren’t that smart, since they’re doing shrooms or whatever, so to reclaim respectability they have to kind of export it, like how diabetics rely on an external pancreas. “I may not be smart, but the weed is”. But is the weed really that smart if it can’t actually accomplish anything? Marijuana probably doesn’t even lift

In Joseph Smith’s day, a lot of Christian sects which we don’t normally think of as charismatics were quite charismatic. Methodists would role on the floor and had this whooping thing they would do to show they had “got the spirit”, for example. And, like the girls in the crucible, there is a sort of empathetic “high” affect. This is normal and fine, even the jumping around and speaking in unintelligible tongues (glossalia) are just fine as far as ways for God to communicate with people who want him to communicate with them that way. But once Peter, James, and John had ordained Joseph Smith, he began to quickly identify that something was missing from these displays:

““Try the spirits,” but what by? Are we to try them by the creeds of men? What preposterous folly—what sheer ignorance—what madness! Try the motions and actions of an eternal being (for I contend that all spirits are such) by a thing that was conceived in ignorance, and brought forth in folly—a cobweb of yesterday! Angels would hide their faces, and devils would be ashamed and insulted, and would say, “Paul we know, and Jesus we know, but who are ye?” Let each man of society make a creed and try evil spirits by it, and the devil would shake his sides; it is all that he would ask—all that he would desire. Yet many of them do this, and hence “many spirits are abroad in the world.”

One great evil is, that men are ignorant of the nature of spirits; their power, laws, government, intelligence, etc., and imagine that when there is anything like power, revelation, or vision manifested, that it must be of God. Hence the Methodists, Presbyterians, and others frequently possess a spirit that will cause them to lie down, and during its operation, animation is frequently entirely suspended; they consider it to be the power of God, and a glorious manifestation from God—a manifestation of what? Is there any intelligence communicated? Are the curtains of heaven withdrawn, or the purposes of God developed? Have they seen and conversed with an angel—or have the glories of futurity burst upon their view? No! but their body has been inanimate, the operation of their spirit suspended, and all the intelligence that can be obtained from them when they arise, is a shout of “glory,” or “hallelujah,” or some incoherent expression; but they have had “the power.”

The Shaker will whirl around on his heel, impelled by a supernatural agency or spirit, and think that he is governed by the Spirit of God; and the Jumper will jump and enter into all kinds of extravagances. A Primitive Methodist will shout under the influence of that spirit, until he will rend the heavens with his cries; while the Quakers (or Friends) moved as they think, by the Spirit of God, will sit still and say nothing. Is God the author of all this? If not all of it, which does He recognize? Surely, such a heterogeneous mass of confusion never can enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Every one of these professes to be competent to try his neighbor’s spirit, but no one can try his own, and what is the reason? Because they have not a key to unlock, no rule wherewith to measure, and no criterion whereby they can test it. Could any one tell the length, breadth or height of a building without a rule? Test the quality of metals without a criterion, or point out the movements of the planetary systems, without a knowledge of astronomy? Certainly not; and if such ignorance as this is manifested about a spirit of this kind, who can describe an angel of light?”

-Teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith, p203-204

Or, put more simply in the Doctrine and Covenants:

D&C:50:23 And that which doth not edify is not of God, and is darkness.”

In other words, one criteria that saints should judge things by is usefulness. Now, can Satan give evil power to accomplish something, and thus be “useful”? Yes. But he would much rather you not accomplish something, generally speaking. If something is good and useful, it is a much safer bet to assume it is from God. You can narrow this even further by “is it useful for something that is righteous”? But this includes secular pursuits, remember that early Latter-day Saints often retreated to the temple to ponder upon engineering and chemistry problems.

D&C 29:34 Wherefore, verily I say unto you that all things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal; neither any man, nor the children of men; neither Adam, your father, whom I created.

The Church of Jesus Christ has a dietary code called “The Word of Wisdom”. It directed the early saints to abstain from tobacco, alcohol, coffee and tea, and to eat things good for your body. This principle extends- Wisdom and sobriety are concepts very close to each other. It is a spiritual law, and it is a commandment specifically given to us in the 20th century. In fact, proper diet is essential to keeping not just the body but the mind in correct working order- sober. Ever eat a ton of sugar and then get lethargic? That’s what the west has been doing for decades now on a civilizational level.

It would be nice, I suppose, if the President of the United States ordered everyone to eat right and not be fat. President: If you are reading this, hello, please consider. But you aren’t the president, you don’t hold the reins of power. You can’t declare air strikes on marijuana⁶.

What you can do, is personal righteousness, and then personal righteousness in your sphere- meaning your family. If you can do that, then you can spillover into your community, and gradually fence the commons. That’s pretty much the only viable strategy for spiritual warfare right now. This is how you wrestle with “principalities and dominions”, this is the actual spot where it hurts. Not terrorism. Not hexing the moon. Just living a good life, and expanding.

Duckstack Technology: Air

new year, new air⁷

We are receiving a lot of complaints lately that air has kind of fallen off. Like it used to be cool, but there's better things out there now. And I guess when we examine it its true that air is something lacking, and we agree that it could use a little extra “pow”. so we are going to replace all air with balloons for you

Some patch notes

• Balloon sizes will vary from water balloon size to, rarely, as large as a hot air balloon

• Half of balloons will be filled with helium, and half of them selected at random at the time of conversion will be filled with random other substances, such as oxygen, lead, water, animals, knives, or plasma

• Special rules will allow you to breathe balloons in place of what you currently breathe (air for most of our readers, water for our fish ones) but if it doesn't seem to be working out we'll just disable breathing, and you can just breathe whats inside balloons if you want to, for fun, instead

We believe air: balloons update will provide a much more tactile sensation to encountering air, such as walking. This update should give everyone just a little extra pizazz to their day to day air experiences.

History

I write this beneath a drool waterfall

Putting the kid to bed and he tries all the tricks to stay up, tonight it was “can you pet my back?” meaning he wanted backrubs. “No baby its time for bed.” “um, petting my back is one part of going to bed!”

Had to explain to the older kid today that while he (correctly) intuits that it is harder to be mad at him when he is giving us hugs we do actually still need him to listen to us

The kid got a kitchen set for Christmas, including a bunch of plastic foods and appliances with itty bitty motors and stuff, and he has been making us “eggplant smoothies”, I do not think he knows what eggplant tastes like. In fairness, neither do I. What do Eggplants taste like?

Spent some nice quality time feeding the toddler while the kid sprints in circles around us for like 20 minutes

Had some nice moments with the toddler chasing the kid around the house and vice versa, and then the toddler crawling around the house showing off his newest vocabulary: “Roar.”

Third Realm: Tides of the Sea

As the tide clears out, the Duckstack has one last present to leave in its wake.

1. 10/10 hedonists agree

2. Like building standards, the point is that if something is “up to code” it may be relied upon for certain things. In other words, trust. If there is no standard of fidelity, marriage cannot be relied on. If there is no standard of entrance to medical school, the quality of its doctors cannot be relied on. If you have no standards of integrity in yourself, you will be unable to make a proper impact on the world, because people in need will look elsewhere. This should terrify you. You must be trustworthy.

3. For example if you were to sendabunchofprostitutesintoIsraeltogetGodtoabandonthem

Revelations 2:14 But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.

4. Another reason male feminists often end up being rapists

5. I think there are categories of drugs which can increase sobriety- such as music, or antipsychotics, for schizophrenics. The line for each individual is drawn by God, ask him, not me. I’m just talking about the ones that are obvious. Or the ones which, extremist that I am, would have been obvious fifteen years ago.

6. You also are not going to map the astral realm to declare war on the “bad” DMT elves. You are a drug addict. They’ve already got you lol

7. thats what I always say