Highly recommend the author of this post, or any other psychonauts, to read Cosmic Trigger by Robert Anton Wilson. He recounts a period of several years in his life where his psychonautic explorations left him believing he was in contact with an alien intelligence.
He wrestles with trying to find scientific explanations and whether that’s important or not since the experience deeply impacted him regardless of its cause.
I don’t personally dabble in hallucinogenics, but I’m always fascinated by what bubbles up from the brain given various stimuli.
It’d be interesting to see if you could get something like GPT-3 to heavily weigh a given author’s corpus when generating output and see what it spits out for “Detritus and Carrot walked into a dwarf bar...”
The Power of Nightmares - Curtis traces back the history of leaders abandoning the approach of holding on to power through a shared vision of a better tomorrow that people can rally around. Curtis using the rise of suicide bombing as an example of a powerful nightmare that leaders can use to gain and keep power by convincing the people that their leadership is the only thing holding back the abyss.
My enjoyment of his films comes from appreciating his attempt to thread a narrative through a complex series of events and images. The linked New Yorker article makes it clear that he’s well versed in the postmodern rejection of grand narratives, but it doesn’t stop him from trying.
I find his films thought provoking, but I look to them for truth with the same skepticism I have for reading some Nietzsche — I never look for one source to get everything right, I just hope to learn something in the process.
No provider wants the cesspool to be pinned on them. I get that emotionally, but this is nuts. Obviously they have the right to make these moves, but god knows what happens when the new administration starts reflecting on the role played by Big Tech in this mess. Washing hands long after infection, so to speak.
What happens when congress uses these moves as evidence that Big Tech acknowledges the need to take responsibility for harmful content and then expects the same moves made for much smaller stakes?
Glad I downloaded it yesterday since this was obviously an unrealistic deadline. It’s getting harder and harder to keep tabs on both sides now. Things have really fragmented in the past 24 hours: lots of posts on MeWe, Telegram, Gab, etc, looking for the “best” communication channel.
Big tech is so desperate to score points with the new administration as soon as Trumpism is in its death throes (hopefully). As much as I hate the content on things like Parker, this makes me sick. I get why they want the kid gloves treatment from the Biden administration, but scrambling to ban content after the Capitol was stormed is about as noble as resigning days before the inauguration. But like it’s been said, “Never let a crises go to waste”.
I spent a good 5 or 6 years reading philosophy and psychology in my spare time. I don’t claim a formal understanding of the subject that would come close to what you would get from a college degree, but I do feel like I understand the zeitgeist a lot clearer than before.
I preface with that to say that my recommendation is to pick and chose which parts are of interest to you and then dive in further to the source material. If you take the approach that you must start at Aristotle, you run the risk of burning out before getting to areas that might be life changing to study.
I got my start by grabbing all of the “Introducing...” [1] series of graphic novels about subjects I commonly heard referenced but didn’t understand. From there, I dove into the underlying texts of everything I found interesting.
Again, I didn’t gain an academic understanding of the subject, but I came away with a wildly different worldview than when I started. Life’s too short to be an expert at everything, but that doesn’t have to stop you from exploring on your own.
These books have some pretty deep illustrations, not just cartoon drawings of the subjects. One favorite of mine was a scene showing Monet painting haystacks, frustrated that a worker had left a ladder on one he was studying — I think the implication was Monet wasn’t _really_ trying to capture impressions of the haystacks as they appeared throughout the days and seasons, just his preferred impression.
I’ve been feeling the physical symptoms I associate with depression, but not the changes to cognition. I feel like I’m wearing an iron mask, if that makes any sense. Really heavy head with what feels like a layer of numbness between me and my surroundings. I have an appointment to talk about it with a doctor next week since I don’t want to spiral into something worse.
It’s odd to me that I’m not having the cognitive changes I associate with depression, like inability to focus or an overwhelming sense of dread. I’m surprised that things haven’t spiraled cognitively after 7 months of WFH and social distancing. I’m grateful to have a super energetic dog that needs walking twice a day, at least.
I usually use throw aways when talking about this kind of thing, but am trying to get better at doing my part to raise awareness of mental health issues in this field.
What have people found are the best ways to help normalize dealing with mental health issues in our industry?
It actually is an interesting topic to look at the history of Blood Libel and see the Satanic Panic and QAnon as the evolved/remixed version with different actors.
I think with the advent of the internet, things are shifting away from ritual murder to sexual exploitation of minors as the big fear, but “that group of people you don’t like is out to get your children” is quite the enduring narrative.
I do have some hope that the more extreme conspiracies pass in time and don’t permanently damage the psyche of those involved. Growing up in the Bible Belt during the Satanic Panic, I was legit afraid of being caught and sacrificed by satanists after a friend’s dad had us watch a movie about the “Pagan Invasion”. Satanists out to kidnap kids for ritual sacrifice was a Big Fucking Deal that many people actually believed —- Paradise Lost is a good documentary from that wave of hysteria.
I know of very few people that are terrified of satanists any longer.
He wrestles with trying to find scientific explanations and whether that’s important or not since the experience deeply impacted him regardless of its cause.
I don’t personally dabble in hallucinogenics, but I’m always fascinated by what bubbles up from the brain given various stimuli.