I don’t know if you heard but marijuana
was legalized in the last election in
two more states and in the District of
Columbia as of the last election medical
marijuana is also legal in 23 states and
if you go to these stores these new
retail stores that sell this new
commodity called marijuana you run
across some of the brand names that you
see up here in this poster right there
hundreds of these names by the way but
they the California and skunk or maybe
you’d like some nice white widow or my
favorite light of Ja the clearly the
marketing teams in charge of our
marijuana commodity sort of participate
in what you might call sort of like late
hippie irony but now that marijuana has
become a product there are other people
that are engaging in this kind of new
dialogue about what do we call marijuana
how do we sell it how do we market it
it’s gonna we’re watching really an
underground illegal market surface to
become a visible legal market this is a
guy I hung out with for a while in
Seattle
he’s a former Microsoft executive Jamin
Shively who stepped down and started
this company called Diego pea SATA
it’s named for his great grandfather who
was a Mexican hemp farmer right and
jaemin is trying to corner the market on
what we might call sort of like high-end
pot sort of the Bordeaux of marijuana
these are the names of his brands Diego
racer Abba selection Armada Juan de Fuca
might have to work on that one Libertad
right these are these are meant to
invoke some sort of like Caballero
aristocracy right and speak to us on
that level and what we’re really
watching like I said is this kind of the
language of marijuana the old hippie
language is kind of being traded out for
a new kind of retail
which and already I found this this is a
map of how to match your pot with your
wine there may come a time when you’re
going out to dinner with a client at
some point and you will say ah yes white
widow
I hear that pairs well with a nice
Grenache how did we get here if you look
at this map or this chart you’ll see
that legalizing pot only ten years ago
seventy-three percent of Americans were
against it that was only ten years ago
and now a majority of Americans are in
favor of legalized pot a lot of people
change their minds in a short period of
time we’ve seen this before here 15
years ago 62% of Americans completely
opposed the idea of gay marriage and
then something happened mine’s got
changed and now it’s a bare majority but
we see now that these two issues which
are rolling through the states and being
legalized all across America and these
are two of the most sort of really
fundamentally up ending social issues of
our time right these are you know when
when the when the people opposed to gay
marriage said like this is a complete
referee definition of marriage this is
changing everything we know about
marriage they weren’t wrong
they were right this is a complete
rewriting of what marriages and you know
a majority of Americans at a time when
the national country is so conservative
has changed their minds okay they’re
high they’re at a party
there’s the ex-husband he’s coming over
hmm Adam this is Agnes Jake’s wife okay
that little clip and let me just explain
what it was that was the entire pot
scene from a 2009 romantic comedy called
it’s complicated okay
the whole scene is really just Meryl
Streep is formally married to Alec
Baldwin she’s going out on a date with
Steve Martin they get high they run into
Alec Baldwin at a party that’s the whole
joke right and it’s it’s as mild as you
just saw so when this movie came out in
2009 it had a very difficult time in
part because it was rated R right and it
was rated R as it got leaked in the
papers not because of vulgar language or
sexuality or violence but because can
you see that phrase down at the bottom
it featured pot smoking with no bad
consequences that was a violation of the
Hollywood rule you can’t have smoking
with no bad consequences someone has to
die someone has to drive off a bridge
someone has to jump out of a building
that has to happen or you get an R
rating now maybe one of the things I
like about this clip is we might be
seeing sort of the intersection of a
very old narrative about pot and a very
new one right because of course what we
saw with Meryl Streep and Steve Martin
was a kind of harmless little moment of
people getting high responsible use just
like you hear often about drinking beer
or wine that there is such a thing as
this right and understand that there is
there’s just a distinction that I want
to make here between these two
narratives between what we officially
say and what we will actually act on it
okay I understand that right now in
America marijuana is what’s known as a
Schedule one drug there are five
schedules and they they descend in order
of danger Schedule one the most
dangerous drugs that we have a Schedule
one drug is heroin a Schedule one drug
is LSD and two Schedule one drug is
marijuana what’s the schedule to drug
PCP
crystal meth is a schedule 2 drug
that’s the official narrative of the
country of the United States of America
and if you ask people where our drugs
bad they would say yes drugs are bad
that’s what they believe but what did
they actually act on what did they
actually know and I think what was
happening in that Meryl Streep clip is
that we saw sort of the the Hollywood
trying to enforce the old narrative in
the movie trying to sort of deal with
some gulf exists you have to understand
how we come to know information now
there are many ways we study in class
there’s all kinds of ways in which
information comes into our heads and one
of the stories that you’ll see every
couple of months is this one that we
have developed these Google Minds that
we have offshored all this information
to our iPhones that we don’t have memory
anymore we don’t have these personal
interactions what we have is Google and
the iPhone all arguments get settled
right but here’s the reality we’ve
always had a Google mind as cognitive
scientists will tell you most of us sort
of offshore a great deal of what we
believe in the minds of our friends and
our acquaintances our relatives right I
don’t really keep a lot of knowledge in
my memory bank about sports cuz my
friend Kevin he’s a whiz-bang at that
stuff I could just ask Kevin where I’m
from Charleston South Carolina where
genealogy and chronology and history is
very very important but I’ve never
stuffed my head with any of that stuff
because my mother is just unbelievable
third cousins twice removed she knows
who all those people are I don’t have to
bother myself with that information I
can move on so we’ve all offshored
information with our friends we’ve been
doing this google thing since time began
right most of us brush our teeth with
fluoride toothpaste and if I asked you
should we have fluoride in the water I
would wager that almost everyone in this
room would say sure again that’s good
that’s good but you know there people
who think that that’s bad it’s a small
minority but they’re people who think
that fluoride is what the Nazis used to
kill people they think it’s a government
plot to destroy our brains I think
fluoride is
really bad but overwhelmingly most
people who believe that fluoride is good
match what they believe with their
actions in other words this is one of
these things where there is no gulf
almost everybody believes that fluoride
is good and almost everybody acts on
that on that information but here’s the
question I want to ask you you brush
your teeth with fluoride you don’t mind
having fluoride in the water how do you
know that that’s true how do you know
did you go read a fluoride study I don’t
think so you used your google friends
you are of the tribe of people that
think fluoride is okay that’s how you
know and that’s how we know a lot of
things this is a chart that shows people
who believe that the top line the light
greenish one that ends in 42% shows that
almost half of this country believes
that we were invented in this form by
God instantaneously this story comes out
every couple of years and scientists go
completely ape you know it’s like oh my
god half the country believes then I’d
an intelligent design and creation
science this is crazy we’ve got to beef
up our stem programs we’ve got to
encourage young people to study science
and it’s true 42% of Americans will tell
you that God invented man and woman in
the current form instantaneously at some
point in the past so you would think
logic would follow that if that’s what
they believe then that’s what they would
act on and so you would think that may
be something close to 42 percent of our
school districts would teach this but
they don’t in fact almost no one teaches
it and every time someone does try to
teach it it’s a huge stink and there’s a
huge fight and invariably intelligent
design goes down as it did here in
Pennsylvania very famously just a few
years ago there was one prior to that in
Kansas and often what happens is parents
who if you asked them at the door in a
poll do you believe that God created man
and woman in the current form that we
exist at some point in the past they
would say yes but those same people
go and argue for evolution to be taught
in the schools and and beat these
battles right
and when when these things happen often
the victory is brutal
you get headlines like this and then
right after these battles go down this
is often some part of the media circus
is that one of our sort of like
appointed media clown steps up and says
something in this case it was Pat
Robertson who came out and said that God
will probably strike some terrible
natural disaster on Pennsylvania and
when that happens understand it will be
because they rejected intelligent design
there’s a small group of people that
thought that that was that made sense
but for most people they laughed at that
because people like Donald Trump and Pat
Robertson these people occupy the role
of sort of giant Macy’s Day Parade
balloon like clowns whose occasional
utterances are almost entirely designed
to make one tribe or another cling to
their views now the right wing has their
clowns and the left wing has their
clowns and for the right wing one of
their clowns just say like Michael Moore
right weird this guy this is Al Gore
with Bon Jovi this is at the opening of
an inconvenient truth now what are the
interesting things about Al Gore making
that movie and winning the Nobel Prize
the following year is it the the peak of
belief and global climate change
occurred right around then and started
to decline it was 71 percent in 2008 and
it’s dropped to 59 cent in 2010 and
since then the people who believe in
manmade climate change has dropped to 49
and scientists information scientists
are constantly asking themselves why did
that happen what happened well you know
you could you can point to a couple of
things that happened in 2008 Obama got
elected maybe that you know maybe that
drove some people but that seems hardly
to pertain to climate change and there
was a kind of climate change scientist
candle but one thing that happened was
Al Gore got a Nobel Prize for n and
community truth and one set of
information scientists note that very
few people saw this movie and the people
who did see it already believed it
anyway
but you know what did happen when he get
that Nobel Prize people saw the people
who saw that movie and when people saw
the people who saw that movie many of
them may well have thought you know what
not my tribe I don’t believe that anyone
is they believe that and maybe that’s
why the numbers went down and yet in
Florida just a couple of years ago a
local community decided to take action
on climate change and put up you know
walls and the sea and do whatever they
had to do to protect their town from
climate change right and if you look in
this article you’ll see it says right
there
Jacobs called it notable for bringing
Republicans Democrats Tea Party members
and independents together to agree on
common regional goals in other words
when people asked to act on the reality
of climate change they did that they
might say they believed that global
climate change wasn’t happening but when
it came down to taking action they did
there’s that gulf between what you say
you believe for some people and what you
will actually act on right so a large
part of this comes from the work of Dan
we know this guy because this is the
cliche of what a STONER is and many
ideas come out of this picture right
when you look at him we think oh that’s
a STONER he’s a loser he’s never gonna
get ahead he’s kind of incoherent
inarticulate and he’s a loser cuz he
smokes pot that’s the official narrative
that’s the one we all grew up on that’s
the reefer madness narrative but then
what happened was medical marijuana
drove a whole new cohort of pot smokers
to suddenly be visible to the rest of us
and so then we had to ask ourselves is
she a loser how about this girl how
about this guy is he a loser and
suddenly that question started to fall
apart and the cliche started to crumble
and all of a sudden the pot smoker was
many people and often just some guy
trying to get some weed to take home to
his wife as more and more of these pot
smokers came out who were not the cliche
and all of that crumbled away one of the
things that happened is that people who
didn’t smoke pot suddenly knew people
who did and realize that the cliche was
a lie and also that the sky didn’t fall
and so when the issue of pot
legalization comes up in the polls and
in the balance suddenly there’s a new
cohort that is willing to vote for it we
see this happen over and over again you
know when I was a little boy this is
what a gay man look like this is from a
movie called the boys in the band it’s
very big when I was in the middle school
it’s ancient and it’s basically a gay
positive movie but it existed long ago
and so it had to traffic in or had to
you know deal with the cliches that
existed then and at the in the 70s in
the media image if you are a gay man you
were thin you had fairly atrocious hair
and you had an inordinate fondness for
Necker chips bad hair neckerchief gay
but then what happened is more and more
gay people men and women of all ages of
all kinds began to come out of the
closet more and more non gay people came
to know them and realize that it wasn’t
the guy in the kerchief that it was
something else it was something bigger
was more complicated and that cliche
began to fall apart and we suddenly
realized huh maybe gay men can have nice
hair but what really happened to was
that the sky didn’t fall and so when the
issue came up on the ballot should we
give it should the majority of Americans
give these people the right to marry the
right to have the exact same rights that
the rest of us have non gay people were
suddenly comfortable to vote yeah yeah
and it’s because of those modest and
small conversations revolutions don’t
really happen on cable TV or in the
media or on Election Day or in that
paralyze swamp that is Washington DC
they end there changing a mind is really
the most local of local politics it
begins by breaking down a cliche when a
kind of unclothed cohort begins to
emerge and show us the reality of a
lived life so wild and unlikely
revolutions are still very possible in
America it’s just that if the science is
to believe to be believed more likely
than not they’ll begin with the
conversations we all have when this talk
is over thank you you