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Richard Dawkins on the danger of "Gerin Oil"

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Monkey see Monkey Do Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-25-05 09:21 AM
Original message
Richard Dawkins on the danger of "Gerin Oil"
It is a highly addictive drug, but governments everywhere encourage its use

Gerin oil (or Geriniol to give it its scientific name) is a powerful drug which acts directly on the central nervous system to produce a range of characteristic symptoms, often of an antisocial or self- damaging nature. If administered chronically in childhood, Gerin oil can permanently modify the brain to produce adult disorders, including dangerous delusions which have proved very hard to treat. The four doomed flights of 11th September were, in a very real sense, Gerin oil trips: all 19 of the hijackers were high on the drug at the time. Historically, Geriniol intoxication was responsible for atrocities such as the Salem witch hunts and the massacres of native South Americans by conquistadores. Gerin oil fuelled most of the wars of the European middle ages and, in more recent times, the carnage that attended the partitioning of the Indian subcontinent and, on a smaller scale, Ireland.

Gerin oil addiction can drive previously sane individuals to run away from a normally fulfilled human life and retreat to closed communities from which all but confirmed addicts are excluded. These communities are nearly always limited to one sex, and they vigorously, often obsessively, forbid sexual activity. Indeed, a tendency towards agonised sexual prohibition emerges as a drably recurring theme amid all the colourful variations of Gerin oil symptomatology. Gerin oil does not seem to reduce the libido per se, but it frequently leads to a prurient desire to interfere with, and preferably reduce, the sexual pleasure of others. A current example is the horror with which Gerin oil users view homosexuality, even when expressed in long-term loving relationships.

Gerin oil in strong doses can be hallucinogenic. Hardcore mainliners may hear voices in their heads, or see illusions which seem to the sufferers so real that they often succeed in persuading others of their reality. An individual who reports high-grade hallucinogenic experiences may be venerated, and even followed as some kind of leader, by others who regard themselves as less fortunate. Such following-pathology can long postdate the leader's death, and may expand into bizarre psychedelia such as the cannibalistic fantasy of "drinking the blood and eating the flesh" of the leader.

Strong doses of Geriniol can also lead to "bad trips," in which the user can suffer morbid delusions and fears, notably fears of being tortured, not in the real world but in a postmortem fantasy world. Bad trips of this kind are bound up with a punishment culture which is as characteristic of this drug as the obsessive fear of sexuality already noted. The punishment culture fostered by Gerin oil culminates in the sinister drug-induced fantasy of "allo-punishment"—the belief that individuals can and should be punished for the wrongdoings of others (known on the in-group grapevine as "redemption").

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7036

Also, todays Independent asks: "Is 'Gerin oil' the root of all evil?"
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article314997.ece
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valerief Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-25-05 09:25 AM
Response to Original message
1. I thought that was Christian fundamentalism
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EST Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-25-05 09:26 AM
Response to Original message
2. Wonderful!
Dawkins at his finest.
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madeline_con Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-25-05 09:28 AM
Response to Original message
3. "... rhythmic head-nodding towards a wall ..."
This explains DUH-bya's behavior on CNN today.
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glitch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-25-05 09:31 AM
Response to Original message
4. He's right! I have known a few gerin oil addicts in my life and they
are like zombies.
And the drug is freely available, even distributed on television 24/7!
Of course our fearless leader is deep in the throngs of it, and proudly so.
But don't mistake gerin oil for misilu trips - they are quite different.
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Turbineguy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-25-05 09:33 AM
Response to Original message
5. Gerin oil
Edited on Sun Sep-25-05 09:34 AM by Turbineguy
and on Sunday yet. God might a hurricane your way, then again, he might send it someplace else.
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scarletwoman Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-25-05 09:34 AM
Response to Original message
6. Heh. Took me a minute to get it...
Outstanding piece, totally true.

sw
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DavidDvorkin Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-25-05 09:39 AM
Response to Original message
7. I feel stupid
I don't get the pun.

That he's talking about religion, and specifically Christianity, is clear from the start, and it's amusingly done. But I don't see what the word play is.
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muriel_volestrangler Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-25-05 09:51 AM
Response to Reply #7
9. Not a pun, an anagram
(as the Independent article says). And it's religion in general - the exmpales he uses include Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism as well as Christianity.
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DavidDvorkin Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-25-05 12:47 PM
Response to Reply #9
11. Duh
Thanks. I skimmed the article but missed that part.
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muriel_volestrangler Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-25-05 09:49 AM
Response to Original message
8. I'm a bit worried it took Prospect's editor so long to figure it out
Even if your mind doesn't spring straight to anagrams, it's obvious by the end of the first paragraph that he's talking about religion. If you've been told there's an anagram in the article, it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to think of the phrase or word you've never heard of, but which is being used as a codeword for religion.

Still, a fun piece from Dawkins.
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whistle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-25-05 10:28 AM
Response to Original message
10. "...all 19 of the hijackers were high on the drug at the time"....
Edited on Sun Sep-25-05 10:32 AM by whistle
...How does this guy know that? Were the bodies of the highjackers ever recovered? Could tests on burned up and dismembered corpses be done to identify the drug with any accuracy?

oops....I feel dumb....gerin oil is r..e..l..g..i..o..n all mixed up!:yoiks: :blush:
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kath Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Sep-28-05 01:19 AM
Response to Original message
12. Kick, 'cuz I *love* Richard Dawkins.
He's also spoken out pretty vigorously against Chimpy during the past few years.
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Monkey see Monkey Do Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Oct-03-05 10:24 AM
Response to Reply #12
15. He's an "unelected and deeply stupid little oil-spiv"
being my favorite line on Bush.
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Magginkat Donating Member (215 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Oct-02-05 04:30 PM
Response to Original message
13. What the Sam Hill is Gerin Oil?
I've never heard of it. Does it have a common over the counter name?

It would seem that if something was this addictive it would be regulated by the FDA.
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muriel_volestrangler Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Oct-02-05 06:16 PM
Response to Reply #13
14. Have you read all the replies in this thread? (n/t)
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WhiteTara Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Oct-03-05 07:04 PM
Response to Reply #13
16. did you ever play unscramble
the letters? great newspaper pastime.
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