4 ms·
A dose of MDMA transformed a white supremacist
- jfengel 3y agoIt's a nice story and an interesting data point, but I've got a lot of doubts that it's going to prove useful. The guy was under a lot of stress. He was already primed for a "breakthrough". Maybe the MDMA contributed to it, but maybe it was just an event that gave him an opportunity to do exactly the same thing he'd been doing before in the opposite direction. We can't tell if "reopening a critical period in the brain" is really responsible. I'd love to believe that empathy can be induced, so I try to remain skeptical when I hear that it can be. I am deeply disheartened by how many people deliberately choose hatred. It seems to reinforce their egos, and ego-preservation is deeply ingrained in everybody. Things that can flip can just as easily be flipped back. An alternate interpretation of this event is that he was suffering the ego loss of no longer being important in a hate movement, and made himself a prominent figure in giving up hate. The MDMA could have been just a coincidence, a moment he took to sit down and come up with a new idea. I don't know if that's what happened. But I've watched enough white supremacists and other conspiracy theorists to suspect that it will take much more than a chemical nudge to change their minds.