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The sheer existence of established and (partially) self-reinforcing sets of cultural standards doesn't strike me as a good basis to explore the fundamental comp
by perching_aix 1y ago
The sheer existence of established and (partially) self-reinforcing sets of cultural standards doesn't strike me as a good basis to explore the fundamental complement of it all, or to describe it altogether as something assuredly misleading and "bad". This should be especially apparent if you've ever tried creating something that is self-justifying (it's usually a hard, valuable, and sought after effort).
Put differently, while an idea being established and self-justifying doesn't necessarily mean it's exclusive in these traits and should be bolted in, sure, an idea being fringe also doesn't necessarily mean it's unjustly fringe at all, or that it's being unfairly discriminated against. To claim so without evidence is little more than conspiratorial thinking and self-victimization.
It further sounds really quite self-serving to paint e.g. me as some misguided sheep part of some malicious cabal for this. It's a little more than just a variation on the all too common ill faith ways of argumentation; mixing in the semantic specifics of psychedelic experiences, name dropping people, movements, and quotes, and deferring to a "specific" culture's particularities serves at most as a distraction from this.
- kelseyfrog 1y agoI'm not sure where you got "malicious cabal" from. Cultural values are the water in which fish swim. They look normal, obvious, trivially true, or just the way things "are". No one is secretly directing cultural truths while believing they are lies. Cultural truths are self-perpetuating ie: socially reproduced. It's actually quite the opposite. True-believers overwhelmingly disseminate cultural myths. It's the police officer who believes they can positively affect the enforcement of order, educators who base values in the rational order of the mind. It's journalists and pundits who frame news as a tension between order (good, stable) and chaos (bad, dangerous). Where deviance is newsworthy primarily as a threat to order. See news cycles on crime, protests, economic instability, all in terms of order must be "restored." Look at the modern workplace, for instance, obsessed with order, predictability, and process (think: KPIs, best practices, Six Sigma). And corporate culture manuals and onboarding training reinforcing norms of punctuality, control, and rational planning. It's present in engineers, scientists, architects, IT managers - professions often celebrated as the apex of rational, orderly progress and as solutions to messy[chaotic] problems. Even here, it's easy to gain karma dunking on the liberal arts, all because science is assumed more value because it more closely aligns with necessary order. None of these roles form a secret cabal. Still, they enforce and perpetuate the cultural value system whose results are judged on the basis of order. No one is saying that chaos is good or order is bad. It’s that the binary itself is a function of our cultural mythmaking. When psychedelics make that myth visible, the reaction isn't to consider the critique, but to defend the myth as "reality."
- tacitusarc 1y ago> No one is saying that chaos is good or order is bad. It’s that the binary itself is a function of our cultural mythmaking. Respectfully, this is nonsense. Ask anyone who lived in Libya under Gaddafi and then in the years since, or who lived under any other despotic regime and compare it to the chaos that ensued when the despot is removed. Civilization’s association with order is not random (or a function of “cultural myth making”); chaos _sucks_.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kelseyfrog 1y agoAll myths contain a seed of truth. I can accept that living in Libya sucks while also accepting that our culture mythologizes order. I'm not sure how to see the world in such black and white terms - that acknowledging one invalidates the other.
- perching_aix 1y agoBut your original commentary paints the world's entire cultural backdrop as myth driven. There was no representation of this subtlety you now acknowledge must be addressed.
- kelseyfrog 1y agoI'm sensing a certain uneasiness with the disorder of simultaneously truths. If anything, what you bring is a good example for the value of order manifest in rationality. It's not a hypocrisy. Both are true. If that doesn't make sense, then remember curiosity is the cure to confusion.
- tacitusarc 1y agoDespite the smugness of this comment, it does not strike me that anyone replying to you has seemed confused.