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> “I am profoundly mistrustful of the ‘pure gifts of the Gods.’ You pay very dearly for them,” Jung warned [...] As for Huxley, he was described by Jung as a “Z

by pkdpic 5y ago

> “I am profoundly mistrustful of the ‘pure gifts of the Gods.’ You pay very dearly for them,” Jung warned [...] As for Huxley, he was described by Jung as a “Zauberlehrling,” a sorcerer’s apprentice who has learned how to call on ghosts but does not possess the knowledge needed to control them. This is a thought provoking section. On the one hand I have the utmost respect for psychedelics and their liberating potential against repressive socio-economic psychological mechanisms etc. On the other hand, being in my mid-thirties I'm starting to realize that a lot of the destructive behavior of my closest friends and family might ultimately trace back to prolonged use of psychoactive substances including psychedelics like mescaline and psilocybin. I grew up seeing these drugs as non addictive harmless and spiritually enlightening. But there is no doubt in my mind based on my observations that they weaken the perceptual connection with the every day world and ones relationships with other people, at least when done for prolonged periods. My friends and family who have been the most active users of psychedelics have had their post-adolescent lives plagued by divorce, alienation from friends, misguided career decisions and have made them easily distracted and often hurtful insensitive people who seem to have a perennial inability to empathize with others or feel emotional remorse. Ultimately the heavy users of psychedelics I am closest with seem like they have become docile bodies with a diminished capacity for critical thought that fit very neatly into an abusive capitalist society that wants them to endlessly chase fame and fortune while remaining addicted to over-stimulating digital media. And its hard to believe thats what Huxley and the intellectuals of his generation would have wanted. Im not sure how I feel about psychedelics anymore, I just know that they've trapped a lot of people I love more than they've liberated them. At least in their later years.

realce 5y ago
“We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.” - HST 1971 I feel you.
- robocat 5y ago
  A Scanner Darkly ends with the most gutting personal note: """ This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed -- run over, maimed, destroyed -– but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example, while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each. Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. “Take the cash and let the credit go,” as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime. There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say they were wrong to play when they should have toiled; it just tells what the consequences were. In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science, which means causal law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate, because any one of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street, but, as I narrate from the deepest part of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who kept on playing. I myself, I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel. So, though, was our entire nation at this time. This novel is about more people than I knew personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers. It was, this sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape recordings, the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the establishment. And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things dreadful. If there was any “sin,” it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate my love: To Gaylene… deceased To Ray… deceased To Francy… permanent psychosis To Kathy… permanent brain damage To Jim… deceased To Val… massive permanent brain damage To Nancy… permanent psychosis To Joanne… permanent brain damage To Maren… deceased To Nick… deceased To Terry… deceased To Dennis… deceased To Phil… permanent pancreatic damage To Sue… permanent vascular damage To Jerri… permanent psychosis and vascular damage . . . and so forth. In Memoriam. These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The “enemy” was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy. — Philip K. Dick, 1977 """
amanaplanacanal 5y ago
It’s possible that you have the cause and effect reversed. Self medicating is rampant in our society, whether that medication is caffeine, alcohol, other stimulants, sleep aids, or psychedelics. Basically, we are all just trying to get by, dealing with our various traumas the best we can.
- pkdpic 5y ago
  Totally possible, but I did know a lot of these people before and after they 'went too far' or whatever you want to call it. All I know is that they were kinder and more critically minded before. But perhaps there was no alternative path. Impossible to say.
DarylZero 5y ago
> My friends and family who have been the most active users of psychedelics have had their post-adolescent lives plagued by divorce, alienation from friends, misguided career decisions and have made them easily distracted and often hurtful insensitive people who seem to have a perennial inability to empathize with others or feel emotional remorse. These sound like personality problems that cause drug use. It's very hard for me to imagine drug use causing personality problems. Unless they were using them in childhood. > Ultimately the heavy users of psychedelics I am closest with seem like they have become docile bodies with a diminished capacity for critical thought that fit very neatly into an abusive capitalist society that wants them to endlessly chase fame and fortune while remaining addicted to over-stimulating digital media. And its hard to believe thats what Huxley and the intellectuals of his generation would have wanted. That's what our society does to everyone, not just drug users. Maybe the drug users have a harder time "growing up" because of the personality problems that caused them to use the drugs.
- pkdpic 5y ago
  I hear you, but they were definitely sharper mentally earlier on. Maybe its just normal aging. Maybe alcohol plays a role in tandem. Maybe its just the mental trauma of chronic stress from trying to survive in a system you feel at odds with. Maybe its all of it. But its a noticeable difference between my equally tormented friends who stayed away from drug use. They have a lot of problems but not the same marked decline in empathy and decision making. Anyway that PKD quote someone posted says it all...
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    > they were definitely sharper mentally earlier on We all were...

by pkdpic 5y ago

realce 5y ago

“We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.” - HST 1971 I feel you.

robocat 5y ago
A Scanner Darkly ends with the most gutting personal note: """ This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed -- run over, maimed, destroyed -– but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example, while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each. Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. “Take the cash and let the credit go,” as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime. There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say they were wrong to play when they should have toiled; it just tells what the consequences were. In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science, which means causal law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate, because any one of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street, but, as I narrate from the deepest part of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who kept on playing. I myself, I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel. So, though, was our entire nation at this time. This novel is about more people than I knew personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers. It was, this sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape recordings, the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the establishment. And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things dreadful. If there was any “sin,” it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate my love: To Gaylene… deceased To Ray… deceased To Francy… permanent psychosis To Kathy… permanent brain damage To Jim… deceased To Val… massive permanent brain damage To Nancy… permanent psychosis To Joanne… permanent brain damage To Maren… deceased To Nick… deceased To Terry… deceased To Dennis… deceased To Phil… permanent pancreatic damage To Sue… permanent vascular damage To Jerri… permanent psychosis and vascular damage . . . and so forth. In Memoriam. These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The “enemy” was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy. — Philip K. Dick, 1977 """

amanaplanacanal 5y ago

It’s possible that you have the cause and effect reversed. Self medicating is rampant in our society, whether that medication is caffeine, alcohol, other stimulants, sleep aids, or psychedelics. Basically, we are all just trying to get by, dealing with our various traumas the best we can.

pkdpic 5y ago
Totally possible, but I did know a lot of these people before and after they 'went too far' or whatever you want to call it. All I know is that they were kinder and more critically minded before. But perhaps there was no alternative path. Impossible to say.

DarylZero 5y ago

> My friends and family who have been the most active users of psychedelics have had their post-adolescent lives plagued by divorce, alienation from friends, misguided career decisions and have made them easily distracted and often hurtful insensitive people who seem to have a perennial inability to empathize with others or feel emotional remorse. These sound like personality problems that cause drug use. It's very hard for me to imagine drug use causing personality problems. Unless they were using them in childhood. > Ultimately the heavy users of psychedelics I am closest with seem like they have become docile bodies with a diminished capacity for critical thought that fit very neatly into an abusive capitalist society that wants them to endlessly chase fame and fortune while remaining addicted to over-stimulating digital media. And its hard to believe thats what Huxley and the intellectuals of his generation would have wanted. That's what our society does to everyone, not just drug users. Maybe the drug users have a harder time "growing up" because of the personality problems that caused them to use the drugs.

pkdpic 5y ago
I hear you, but they were definitely sharper mentally earlier on. Maybe its just normal aging. Maybe alcohol plays a role in tandem. Maybe its just the mental trauma of chronic stress from trying to survive in a system you feel at odds with. Maybe its all of it. But its a noticeable difference between my equally tormented friends who stayed away from drug use. They have a lot of problems but not the same marked decline in empathy and decision making. Anyway that PKD quote someone posted says it all...
- DarylZero 5y ago
  > they were definitely sharper mentally earlier on We all were...