This is a story about being an observer...
Regrettable social media rant number 4294967295.
Mushrooms.
If you don't like them, then don't eat them. Agreed?
We can sell them. We can have them in our supermarkets. We can have them in convenience stores. We can can find them on amazon dot com.
We can tolerate the buying, selling, cooking and consumption of mushrooms. Agreed?
We can see that mushrooms grow everywhere - they spring up in surprising places. Mushrooms are deliberately cultivated, because so many people enjoy eating them and choose to have them as part of their diet. We also regularly see mushrooms growing wild, i.e. not due to any deliberate human action or inaction.
Nobody needs to sow any seeds. Nobody needs to do anything.
Poppies and hemp are ubiquitous species that most laypeople would recognise as a cash crop farmed in a monoculture: Massive fields full of the same thing, planted and being nurtured by humans. Mushrooms are different because mushrooms grow wild all over the many islands of the United Kingdom.
We can tolerate the existence of mushrooms. Agreed?
We have not embarked upon any eradication programs to rid ourselves of a popular edible foodstuff that grows wild in our environment, without any human cultivation. We have not tried to wipe out a source of human nourishment which many people choose to have in their diet because they enjoy the flavour, texture and smell of mushrooms.
Yet.
Bizarre as this sounds...
I picked an edible foodstuff from where I found it growing wild, and I ate it. During the briefest of moments, when the mushroom was picked and was being transferred to my mouth, I was breaching the law.
During the few elapsed seconds it took me to pick a wild mushroom, put in my mouth and swallow it, I could have been arrested and prosecuted for a very serious crime that carries extremely harsh punishments.
That's weird, right?
Weirder still is that once the mushroom was in my stomach I was no longer arrestable or prosecutable. If I had lowered my mouth over the mushroom, bitten it and swallowed it, arguably no crime was committed at all. If somebody else had picked the mushroom and dropped it into my open mouth, then I didn't break the law.
Even weirder is that the punishment I might have received for picking a wild mushroom and moving it to my own mouth to be swallowed, appears to imply that my actions were very gravely deleterious to society and the wider human race. The maximum punishment I could have received as a sentence for my crime would be 7 years in prison and be to fined an unlimited amount of money.
There are only x trillions of pounds sterling equivalent of all global currencies in circulation worldwide, but the law would allow for me to be fined quadrillions, quintillions or indeed an infinite amount of money. Why not fine me a googol pounds? Why not fine me a Graham's number of pounds?
What for? What did I do that was so bad? What was wrong about my behaviour? Please explain it to me.
Usually with crimes, there are victims. If you perpetrated a crime where there was a victim, harm was caused to property, or there was antisocial behaviour, then you need to be punished. That is obvious.
For example, if I killed somebody, injured somebody or raped somebody - or otherwise caused harm to a victim and/or their property - then I would need to be punished. We democratically decided what the punishments for crimes should be. We made our own laws via the democratic system. We have elected to have a justice system, policing and punitive institutions. Our laws are an approximation of what the majority of people would deem unacceptable behaviour in our society. We each individually differ with our opinions on what is right and what is wrong, but collectively, we have agreed upon one set of laws, which apply to almost all of us.
Let's just take a second.
To digest.
Let's now try to swallow all of this.
Pause.
Possession of mushrooms is considered to be exactly the same as possession of crack cocaine, crystal meth, heroin and other "class A" controlled substances.
Cannabis plants haven't spontaneously started growing all over the United Kingdom. Somebody had to plant the seeds. Somebody has to cultivate the cannabis plants. Deliberately grown cannabis plants, which required so much human effort to bring to these islands where the plant varieties do not naturally occur, incur only the wrath of the law we reseve for "class B" controlled substances.
Nobody is selling cannabis leaves in my local supermarket. Nobody is making TV cooking shows where cannabis leaves are considered to be an edible foodstuff included in a meal.
Cannabis leaves don't really need to exist - have no need to exist - because they're not a common part of people's diet.
Even if you selectively bred and cross-bred cannabis varieties with the aim of creating a more palatable leaf, you would struggle to persuade many people to eat the leaves.
If we study all recipes for appetising food that have occurred anywhere since the we first started making intelligible marks onto things - beginning with cave paintings and carved objects - we see no evidence of cannabis leaves as an ingredient that you'd want in your salad.
This is an assumption, based on observable human behaviour over countless millennia, but the overwhelming evidence indicates that we collectively agree that cannabis leaves don't belong in our mouths as part of our diet.
I would ask for you agreement, but I think you should be allowed to eat a cannabis leaf to decide for yourself whether you like the taste. However, I can assure you that all the countless recipe books aren't wrong: cannabis leaves taste bad.
Once again: cannabis leaves taste terrible, hence why they have not become a popular meal ingredient.
Cannabis leaves have no place alongside the other leafy vegetables we consider to be human nourishment.
Agreed?
Mushrooms aren't to everyone's tastes, but they are an ingredient in recipes which predate written language. Mushrooms were known to be food before humans even invented the word "food". The human animal finds the taste of mushroom flesh to be appetising. The human animal always prefers to eat mushrooms not lemons. Although a diet of lemons might technically sustain you, I suspect you would be hard-pressed to find a single person in 7.6 billion who chooses a diet of lemon-like foodstuffs as a significant source of their daily calorific nourishment requirements.
So if it's a choice between mushrooms or starving to death, you'd eat the mushrooms. Agreed?
If it's a choice between eating lemons, eating mushrooms, or starving, you'd choose the mushrooms. Agreed?
If ever there was a more ludicrous example of an approach to what is legally referred to as "The Misuse of Drugs" then it would be criminalising the possession of mushrooms.
We had better build a whole lot of prisons to hold all the farmers, greengrocers, supermarket employees, cooks, chefs, restauranteurs, diners - practically every person in the entire United Kingdom - for having some mushrooms.
Mushrooms are quite literally everywhere: Growing everywhere. We can't control them.
Having a law that talks about "controlled substances" and "Misuse of Drugs" whilst also classifying mushrooms as "class A" - the very most harmful substances to society - is beyond ridiculous.
If ever there was a better example of nature refusing to be controlled by human laws, then it would be mushrooms.
Mushrooms stubbornly refuse to be controlled, even though they are specifically referred to in law as "controlled". They are literally called a "controlled substance" when our own eyes confirm that mushrooms do not care about human laws and refuse to be controlled by any statutory instrument. Mushrooms act in contempt of our courts. Mushrooms spitefully flout our laws.
Mushrooms wilfully refuse to comply with the wishes of Her Majesty the Queen, resisting and obstructing the Crown's agents. Mushrooms have no respect for the individuals who have been elected to represent their constituents as Members of Parliament, sitting in the House of Commons in the Palace of Westminster by virtue of the democratic system of governance, as self-determined by the citizens of the United Kingdom.
Ha ha ha.
Joke's on you suckers.
You literally voted for mushrooms, in so many ways. With your pounds. With your electoral ballot. With what you put in your shopping trolley. You voted with your mouth, in so many ways, but mainly by putting mushrooms into your mouth.
You wanted mushrooms. Most people want mushrooms.
Yet, you also allegedly wanted mushrooms to be so very criminal, that their possession, dealing, cultivation and trafficking would deprive UK citizens of their liberty FOR LIFE, detained at Her Majesty's pleasure. However, I suspect that is not what what most people want.
You want mushrooms in your shopping trolley, but the law considers them to be EXACTLY THE SAME as crack cocaine, heroin and crystal meth.
Are you high?
Will somebody please come and lock me up, because I bought mushrooms, cooked them and ate them.
When should I expect the police?
Or should I just hand myself in at the nearest police station?
What should I do with any mushrooms I have left remaining uneaten? Should I put them in my compost bin, like the local council tells me to do, or should I hand them over to the police as evidence?
What would be the learned opinion of any Queen's Counsel who I retained the services of? What would the opinion of the Attorney-General be? What would the right honourable Geoffrey Cox think about my mushrooms? What about the countless mushrooms which continue to exist in flagrant disregard of the statutory instruments which control them, the judiciary, the courts, the police and the other Crown institutions which seek to enforce the laws of the United Kingdom?
Is this what "take back control" looks like? Apparently that's what 51.9% of the UK population democratically voted to do.
Assuming that we regain full control, do you think mushrooms will begin to care about the laws controlling them?
Fundamentally, isn't there just one set of laws we can all universally agree upon?
You can't legislate in contradiction to the universal laws of physics.
You can't just write something down on a "special" piece of paper and expect the universe to comply.
Again, for those who are slow learners: The only laws are the universal laws of physics, which are immutable.
The laws of physics are universal and have existed - and will always exist - while there is a universe.
You can dress up in fancy wigs and robes and prance around in grand buildings. You can put shiny things that you found in the ground onto your head if you like. But you know what? The universe thinks you're an idiot if you do that. The universe thinks you're absurdly insignificant and finds it perversely hilarious that its laws quite literally predicted your existence and your behaviour, but yet you do do not properly perceive what is so obviously observable all around you.
If you think humans make and enforce laws, you are an imbecile, as illustrated by the humble mushroom.
Humans and their behaviour were preordained from the moment of the universe's conception, along with the immutable and universal laws of physics. The laws of physics predicted and explained literally everything.
If you think that mushrooms can be controlled by statutory instruments created by Acts of Parliament, with Crown agents of Her Majesty The Queen enforcing those statutory instruments, then you my friend, have overlooked almost the entire observable universe.
Through simple observation, we can plainly see the irrefutable evidence of the existence of a set of fundamental and universal laws, which are immutable.
In short: Mushrooms exist. Deal with it.
Deal with it by understanding and accepting what is observable.
Do not "deal with it" with acts of human behaviour that the universe doesn't care about. The universal immutable fundamental laws of physics predicted all your BS well before you even thought about it.
Deal with it.
Deal with it all.
Accept it.
You cannot change the laws of physics, no matter how badly you want to. Irrespective of your genius or how you manage to collectively conspire, no individual, group or entire species can ever change or avoid the fundamental universal immutable laws of physics which govern all things for all time.
I know it's a lot to take in, but I suggest you make a start by opening your eyes.
Then, just observe.
Mushrooms exist and we should stop having a tantrum about their existence, because that behaviour is ludicrous, absurd and also totally hilariously predictable. Yet, the majority of us are unforgivably ignorant and act petulantly and arrogantly, whenever we assume that WE make and enforce the laws, when in fact the [universal] LAWS [of physics] MADE EVERYTHING, including us and mushrooms: We're made of the same stuff.