Culture and Ideology are not Your Friends
organism.earth
Culture and Ideology are not Your Friends
Culture is a closed system of thinking and values, of the sort I am denouncing. And the greatest barrier to your enlightenment, your education, and your decency, is your culture. And I realize with joy that here I skirt the bounds of political correctness, because everyone is running around saying, you know, “Recapture your roots, get in touch with... See more
Culture and Ideology are not Your Friends
You know, Christ said “the lukewarm I vomit from my mouth,” and that’s how I feel about people who chip away at psychedelics and take piss-ant amounts, and go to clubs, and go to class, and go to the mall, and—you know, this is not the program, folks. I mean, it’s somebody’s program, but I’m interested in life-changing experiences.
Culture and Ideology are not Your Friends
Terence McKenna on microdosing. Hilarious.
culture and ideology are not your friends. They are not your friends. This is a hard thing to come to terms with, because a certain kind of alienation lies at the end of this thought process. On the other hand, you can’t live in the cradle forever. You can’t be clueless forever. So somebody might as well just lay it out for you and say culture is... See more
Culture and Ideology are not Your Friends
Another form of intelligence that fascinates me—and I think this is where the great surprise may come: I can feel the AI out there. I know it’s there. I know it’s growing. I know the planet is its embryo. I know the human community is its placenta. What will that kind of intelligence look like? We have no idea. We can imagine super-intelligence,... See more
Culture and Ideology are not Your Friends
I believe—and again, these are bold generalizations, but generally substantiated—that nature is fractal in its structure. What that means is that a pattern occurring on a given scale can be expected to occur on other scales; very different. Simple example: an atom is a nucleus with electrons spinning around it. A solar system is a star with atoms... See more
Culture and Ideology are not Your Friends
Would it be wrong to call this some kind of multi-layer competency architecture?
it’s no surprise to me that society is very nervous around this issue, because society’s eggs are all in one basket and the psychedelically inspired citizen, or the psychedelically inspired shaman, is a dangerous force. Even in traditional societies, the shaman is central to the social functioning, and the health, and so forth, but is never allowed... See more
Culture and Ideology are not Your Friends
Shamanism and “the eccentric” - Graeber and Wengrow talk about the eccentric in The Dawn of Everything but somehow manage to avoid using the word “shaman” in the entire book.
I had a discussion with Giorgio Samorini, who’s an Italian ethnobotanist and who has taken ibogaine, or Tabernanthe iboga, with the African tribe that uses that initiation. And in that initiation they give 400 grams of this plant that is effective at 4 grams. And they give 400 grams, and sometimes people die. And it’s pretty heavy duty stuff. And I... See more
Culture and Ideology are not Your Friends
Morphogenetic field; Culture as habit
Cultures are boundary-defining engines; that’s what they do. They teach you: “We do it this way. Don’t go there—in your mind, in your heart. Follow the rules! Follow the rules!” Cultures are like operating systems. You know, at Ur and at—well, Ur will do—they set up a stele in the center of the marketplace, and on the stele they carved the laws.... See more
Culture and Ideology are not Your Friends
Psychedelics as “percussive maintenance”