The Psychedelic Transhumanist

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Sand
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02 Oct 2009, 11:01 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

Sand wrote:

Taking a psychedelic is just a brutal way to batter our perceptive and cognitive systems and the likelihood of a positive result seems to me very chancy and perhaps dangerous if the attempts are multiple. They are leaps in the dark with no concern as to where you might land.

I'd have to argue that it depends on the person, for some people it meshes very positively others not so much. That seems to be mostly determined by a couple of things 1) personality traits and 2) where they're chemical levels are at (if your naturally low on neurotransmitters you'll likely be a heavyweight, if you have a high level of neurotransmitters in general you have to watch your intake).

You're not arguing, you're agreeing. The human perceptive and cognitive systems are extremely sophisticated machines. Murphy's law says that if a machine does not perform properly, kick it. As amusing as Murphy may be, I prefer not to consign my mind to a chemical butcher's cleaver as an amusement.

techstepgenr8tion
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03 Oct 2009, 8:25 am

Like in most cases though the extreme situations are overhyped and those worst case scenarios are easily explained by the person taking far more than they should have, being in an environment that was really conducive to a panic attack if they were dead sober, etc. In other words its easily avoided by using good common sense.

kekekeke
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05 Oct 2009, 1:12 pm

Magnus
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07 Oct 2009, 12:29 am

Awesome comic. Did you ever hear the absurd theory that humans came about due to our to shrew like ancestors eating mushrooms? The earth was without sunlight for many years so mushrooms flourished. The little monkeys (our great great grandparents) came down and ate them. The psychedelic affects expanded their minds so much! That is why the primates brains are so big. Maybe the dolphins ate them too before swimming into the water. :lol: At any rate, it makes for a good story.

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skafather84
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07 Oct 2009, 10:43 am

Magnus wrote:

At any rate, it makes for a good story.

Haven't heard that but I heard that Moses was tripping on the local shrooms in the area when he wrote up the 10 commandments

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TheHaywire
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11 Oct 2009, 7:37 pm

Nice reading! Have always been into Leary and Mckenna.

Robert Anton Wilson was a colleague of these writers and wrote a lot about transhumanism too. He described people who had reached the next step of mental evolution as neophytes and people who hadn't as neophobes.

The neophobes are unwelcoming to change and chaos while the neophytes embrace it. So according to Robert Anton Wilson we are actually living in a world of the evolved and the unevolved.

skafather84
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12 Oct 2009, 12:39 pm

I love Robert Anton Wilson's stuff.

TheHaywire
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13 Oct 2009, 12:51 am

Someone that doesn't surprise me since you're also into Warren Ellis. Nice!

peterd
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13 Oct 2009, 3:26 am

I always enjoyed RA Wilson too but was always a little disappointed by him. And surely no list like this is complete without a mention of John C. Lilly

Quote:

In the province of the mind, there are no limits.

Reading "Programming and metaprogramming in the human biocomputer" filled me with awe. Disappointment and frustration that things I'd burned my brain to discover were already in print as well, it's true, but the man went beyond the beyond.

skafather84
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13 Oct 2009, 12:31 pm

peterd wrote:

I always enjoyed RA Wilson too but was always a little disappointed by him. And surely no list like this is complete without a mention of John C. Lilly

Quote:

In the province of the mind, there are no limits.

There's quite a bit already written about. Though the key part is actually finding a way to bring the hypothesis in the realm of being a theory. That footwork has really yet to be done.

Asmodeus
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06 Nov 2009, 4:59 am

Quote:

"Their arguments are not necessarily subject to the conventional scientific method, but they are not so easily refuted."

"They question our fanatical efforts at control via the runaway complexity of progress"

"My first experience of virtual reality happened in 1990 and required absolutely no technology except about 500 micrograms of LSD-25"

"Each one of us grew up in a world where people and pets were invested with a certain internal reality that bricks and blocks obviously did not possess. This is not true for our children."

"It’s likely that people will become ever more comfortable with the notion that unpleasant (and unproductive) psychological states are simply bad code in the Darwinian bio-computer. And once you’re comfortably ensconced inside that materialist cosmology, where meaning is secondary to mechanics, there is no particularly compelling reason (other than medical fallout) not to debug the mind with consumer molecules. The paradox is that these mechanistic molecules can produce deeper, more authentic selves. People on SSRIs often describe themselves as finally feeling like normal people, like the person they were meant to be. This paradox… lies at the heart of the posthuman condition."

We are not subject to science. LSD is virtual reality. Children treat animals as objects. Some Darwinian concepts are Materialism. Medical evidence isn't valid.

And people feeling like who they want to be after treatment with SSRIs isn't a paradox. It's the treatment working.

These people know little or nothing about transhumanism, and seem to be confusing it with some kind of art/pseudophilosophy to throw out proselike drivel.

AceOfSpades
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06 Nov 2009, 11:29 am

skafather84 wrote:

Magnus wrote:

At any rate, it makes for a good story.

Haven't heard that but I heard that Moses was tripping on the local shrooms in the area when he wrote up the 10 commandments

I heard he was tripping on some Acacia tree. I'd say that makes more sense since shrooms don't exactly make you hallucinate. If I remember correctly, Acacia trees have DMT in em, which is the same chemical that makes you dream.

Acacia
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06 Nov 2009, 1:01 pm

AceOfSpades wrote:

If I remember correctly, Acacia trees have DMT in em.

It's true. Many varieties of Acacia contain traces of DMT and related compounds, although usually not in a high enough concentration so that you could just chew up some leaves and start tripping.

Regarding the premise of this thread, I will simply offer another quote by Timothy Leary: "Once you get the message, hang up the phone."

For some spiritual seekers, the use of psychedelics is sort of like driving a car instead of walking. You may get to your destination faster by driving, but once you get there, you don't need the car anymore. You made it. If you continue to drive the car, you may get lost.

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