Let go of some of the nuanced or specific issues some of these big box canna brands have. Let go of the spiritual relationship ideology we have with plants. (Honestly most people create romantic mythics around relationships between living things, like humans and plants, while still lacking a detailed understanding of the mechanisms behind them. The order of it all.) The mythos becomes nuanced the more it stands as a placeholder to reality, a shadow on the cave walls. It doesn’t mean that the relationship between human and plant isn’t even more critical, but the early mythos has placed humans above plants in the hierarchy of order and complexity. Does that change the critical role of plants? No, of course not, and in all of our scientismo and mythical stories, plants preceded humans. They are older in existence and because of that fact, they will exist before and after human life, always. Does that make them a god? No. They are an element in the symbiotic order of all life here, in this moment, on this planet. All connected in some way by the life that preceded them. We were and are here to benefit by their position in existence, play our role as caretakers and give them a name. Perhaps go even deeper and reciprocate thought and intention so like us, that form of critical life is also evolved.
Zoom back in a little.
What’s going on in the cannabis space?
Here’s my guess. Things were going south prior to COVID. The pandemic created a false world in many industries. Cannabis was one. Operators in the cannabis space are gamblers. It’s in the blood. Every run is a gamble, every sale, every call or meeting. When you clean up the odds it’s an incredible high. Also, like most gamblers, degenerate behavior is concentrated. Some of it we can live with, some of it we can’t. And almost everyone in this space has been guilty of creating terribly muddy deals where the space for ethically faded behavior can thrive and grow. Those two elements collided with the pandemic false world. Now we are back where we were and everyone is scratching their heads like the last three years wasn’t a sugar laced death pill.
If you’ve been on the sidelines just watching and not participating or if you have entered the space in the last ten years it would be easy to think that all of these bad deals are the result of some newly maligned precedent. I can tell you, it is not. It is the same behavior from back in the medical days just amplified by more money and the majority acceptance of the people. That can change. Big time. There are already pushes for that and the current state is volatile. Things are chaotic in the overall world, and new trends or ideas from another world view can easily emerge.
So if we are watching the old guards’ degeneracy bloom into a self eating parasite, there needs to be a quick shift with whoever is still operating and isn’t planning to sell their company to big pharma, tobacco, AG, beverage, or worse, investment groups like Blackrock. Those of us who still have gas in the tank, still love the craft and have some equity in the industry, we have to bury the hatchet, clean up the mess and move forward with a new mission statement and an evolved order of how we work with each other.
I’ll provide an example of how this is not happening and the cost. New York is coming online and the clandestine growers of New York are now stepping out. Some of the best weed I’ve ever smoked was grown in New York. What’s happening is that products from flooded markets are hitting New York at flooded prices rapidly reducing the early value that existed in early markets prior. The New York growers are now sitting in the same world as many small growers in California but without the time those growers have to at least make an attempt using early market pricing to build and grow. The resentment is there and it will grow. Another tribe will form.
The possible value that Cali growers supporting New York growers would have for the overall global market has now been reduced. The advantage lost to territorial pissing.
On the licensed end it wouldn’t surprise me if some NY conglomerate sues the state of California for utter negligence in managing their program. They have a case. It’s an ugly one.
So my proposal to everyone is that we at the very least begin to try something else. We can start by letting go of this Pinky and the Brain pursuit and make choices that benefit more of the whole and less for the one. The benefit for the one is also not a good look or flex. In fact if your persona is based on material gain and wealth you are not reading the room well. That is a dead way. So table the degeneracy, the one-upmanship, and the motley-crew-meets-death-row trajectory. Stop practicing the role of the predator and start practicing the role of the caretaker. In service to the people (your customers), the future of the industry and the enjoyment that comes from working with this plant. The drama is tired. It used to have a bit more humor, but it’s hard to laugh because the humor of it all is what’s supposed to initiate the change in behavior. It’s not funny when it doesn’t fire off. This era has fucked all our heads up. It’s becoming a black mirror.
The garden is the mirror of our actions.
This tech world is a mirror of self-centered illusions. Which isn’t surprising. It was built by nerds obsessed with fantastical superheroes in fit forming tights.
