4 ms·
You know, I'd have to suggest "Intergalactic Pot Healer" as a soft introduction into the whole scene. Thing about reality being slippery we have a tendency to
by artsyca 6y ago
You know, I'd have to suggest "Intergalactic Pot Healer" as a soft introduction into the whole scene.
Thing about reality being slippery we have a tendency to acknowledge the fact when we're reading the books but then to comfortably return to our regularly scheduled mundane existence the minute the books are closed.
I still haven't been able to reconcile the sheer madness of the world with the workaday banality and obedience I've experienced in this cursed industry.
- Trasmatta 6y agoI had some bad drug trips earlier this year, and one of the things that's stuck with me is the realization of how bizarre our reality and existence is. It manifests as an existential dread, where I realize that we're all walking around in a world we don't understand, where most people don't seem to be questioning that fact. It's like, we all just started existing one day. You can trace that back to your parents, to being born, to evolution, to the laws of physics, to the big bang, etc, but that doesn't remove the bizarre fact that we exist and are conscious for some reason but we have no idea why. (Or if the question of "why" even makes any sort of logical sense.) Even the reality we think we perceive is unlikely to be anything like what's actually going on. Isn't that just so weird? It's been about 5 months now, and I still get hit with these feelings multiple times a day. It's accompanied with a strong feeling of anxiety, so I wish I could go back to the old banality. (Yes, I've been considering therapy for awhile, but it's difficult to get an appointment with a therapist right now.)
- artsyca 6y agoDude read the first paragraph of "Call of Cthulu" by HP Lovecraft. Unfortunately that ship has sailed for us, there is no going back all the way.. But you should take comfort in that you're not alone. I have a lot I'd like to share with you, would you be into having a virtual cup of tea or coffee?
- Trasmatta 6y agoWhen this all happened, that quote was one of the exact ones that I felt described it perfectly! The existential dread felt like my mind beginning to correlate its contents and it was terrifying. I'd love to discuss it more. Where can I get in touch?
- pstuart 6y agoI would love to hear what you have to share as well. The ability to have conversations of this nature are rare treats.
- artsyca 6y agoJoin the conversation bro -- we can arrange a jitsi meeting
- pmoriarty 6y agoYes, some kind of de-conditioning and "seeing the world with fresh eyes" has often been attributed to the psychedelic experience. I'd take it all with a grain of sand, however. Just because what one experiences on psychedelics might seem "more real than real" doesn't mean it actually is. Some have described psychedelics as superplacebos.. people can be very suggestible in such states, and are prone to believing what they want to believe.
- Trasmatta 6y agoAbsolutely agreed. I don't feel like I actually learned anything new or anything that I didn't already believe. The only secret about the universe I uncovered was that it's a complete mystery and we don't have any idea what's going on. Which is something I already believed, but the belief is different from confronting the void itself. And even that realization isn't something that intrinsically should be connected to anxiety, except that the drug also induced a panic state in me, so now my brain associates those thoughts with fear and danger. Slowly working on reprogramming that.
- 09bjb 6y agoI've been through some very similar stuff. It was two years after "I" was blown to pieces before I had really integrated these strong pangs of anxiety, memories that I was nothing at all and that ultimately reality is terrifyingly absurd. It's been a long process of learning that these pangs are important learning experiences, that they are fuel for compassion for others, that curiosity and awareness transform them into something else... etc. etc. down the rabbithole of self-care for the unwilling mystic. If you're interested in what I did with all that since then, I'd be happy to chat more and share what I've learned, where I'm at, and where I'm headed. Seconded on the cup of virtual coffee, /u/artsyca, although of course I'm perfectly happy not to crash y'all's party.
- artsyca 6y agoNaw dude let's do this! We need to form a small support circle I'd be very grateful and indebted to our meeting.
- perfmode 6y agoi like the way you put that: “ self care for the unwilling mystic“
- Trasmatta 6y agoThat sounds really similar to my experiences, and I'd love to chat. > and that ultimately reality is terrifyingly absurd Yep, this is exactly what I felt, and now deal with on a daily basis.
- perfmode 6y agoMay I recommend a movie directed by Linklater called Waking Life. > Waking Life is a 2001 American experimental philosophical adult animated docufiction film written and directed by Richard Linklater. The film explores a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of reality, dreams and lucid dreams, consciousness, the meaning of life, free will, and existentialism.[3] It is centered on a young man who wanders through a succession of dream-like realities wherein he encounters a series of individuals who engage in insightful philosophical discussions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waking_Life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waking_Life
- DonHopkins 6y agoWalking Life is mentioned in "10 Great Movies That Owe a Deep Debt to Philip K. Dick": https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/movies/g2691/movies-inspired-by-philip-k-dick/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/movies/g2691/movies...
- perfmode 6y agowow! had no idea his work ran through all of these. thanks for sharing this.
- pmoriarty 6y agoI'd recommend Linklater's Slacker over Waking Life... I liked the former way, way more than the latter. Waking Life did have some amateur philosophizing in it, and maybe had some PKD influence to it, but at best it was PKD-lite.. I found it more annoying than anything, due to the endless stream of characters in it that sound like they're trying to be incredibly profound, but they're really not. Slacker doesn't take itself nearly as seriously, so is much more successful with its own cast of weird characters.
- perfmode 6y ago> endless stream of characters in it that sound like they're trying to be incredibly profound i fell in love with this piece of art a decade ago. then there was a five-year period during which I felt the same way about the film myself. i would have agreed with this statement. but in this past year, attending meditation retreats and interrogating my metaphysics, my perspective shifted once more. it’s very much been thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
- pstuart 6y agoYou are very much not alone in feeling this. These last 4 years have only exacerbated that tinnitus of cognitive dissonance. The "serenity prayer" is worth keeping in mind; surrender is a powerful tool.
- Trasmatta 6y agoThanks, you're right. I've found some comfort in stoicism, which is definitely closely related to the serenity prayer. I also realize part of it will just take time for healing and integration.
- rantwasp 6y agosorry you are having a hard time. contrary to what one might believe you should be able to get an appointment with a therapist - remotely though - it should actually be easier now since a lot of people don’t like not_in_person therapy. as a meta: i recommend the book “the power of now”. it sounds like pseudo selfhelp bullshit but at least for me it clicked beautifully - and it can be a really good initiation/transition to something more established like buddhism.
- madaxe_again 6y agoYou might just be a philosopher in distress. I’ve thought about this stuff for a long time - my grandmother started me, as a child, on the path of “why is that a cat? How do you know you’re not its dream?”, and introduced me to PKD, whose corpus I devoured the first time around while nine or ten. I’ve seen the human world as absurdist comedy, blindfolded people shuffling around in a circle, for about as long as I can recall. It’s nonsense upon nonsense, forgotten meanings, wilful misinterpretations, and age-old traditions invented yesterday. Our meta-consciousness is senile and gibbering. Etymology provides a wonderful insight into just how screwed up we are - when you see meaning diverge, drift, and even invert across culture and language, you realise just how malleable the world, human reality, is, if you modify the symbol set. When I first tried LSD in my late teens, it wasn’t so much “whoa, revelation!” as “yup, that looks about right”. You can learn to live with the colourless pit of infinity hovering in your mind. You can even come to love it. You still need to do the human things, play the human game, but you now have the added perspective of understanding that there exist possibilities outside of the human game, ways of living divested of a lot of the meaningless crap. It can be advantageous, like being able to think in 3D in flatland. I managed to stick it out as a “regular person” for about 15 years, working in an office, living in an apartment, buying stuff to try to pave over the infinity hole - but it just felt more and more wrong, like play-acting at life rather than living, like I was a sad little third-hand simulacra of a human being. Sad little robot, enter stage left, exit stage right. Didn’t fancy that role. I live off grid now, and work with my hands, growing food, building structures and infrastructure, transforming my labour into a direct and tangible output - it has been massively helpful, as it lacks the layers and layers of abstraction that civilised life demands, and presents a clear, direct and straightforward reality. I still sit here and think about it all, still sometimes get caught out by a nihilistic trap, but more generally have just come to appreciate existence and consciousness as the most brilliantly absurd thing possible. What a thing, to seem to be matter that thinks. Marvellous if real, marvellous illusion if not. A marvel, either way.
- Trasmatta 6y agoGreat post, thank you. In a way I do feel like it threw me unwittingly into philosophy. A lot of what I felt seemed like it came right out of Sartre's writings -- who I had never even heard of before last year. I'm hoping that with some time and healing I'll get to that place where I can appreciate the absurdity for what it is. I don't think the anxiety I feel is inherent in the realizations themselves, but emerge as a result of my perception of them. It's been hard to deal with that this year though, when there have been so many other anxieties piled on top of that core existential fear.
- atombender 6y agoGalactic Pot Healer. It's fantastic. Odd and certainly not a masterpiece, but still some of Dick's best writing. It's one of his instances of mythology creation; it's closer to a fantasy than sci-fi. Apparently it was one of Dick's least favourite novels. As I recall, he wrote the book in just one week while under the influence of amphetamines, and later had no recollection of having written it, and he more or less disowned it.
- rantwasp 6y agohahahaha. breaking news: pkd claimed that all his books are basically an expression of what he “sees” in alternate universes. so he saw himself more like a transmitter than a source. in his exegesis he goes back and reinterprets all his work through the valis filter. it’s nuts but beautiful in a poetic manner. as for the pot healer? i think the book is dope and it’s up there in my top10.