Dubstep EP is nearing completion. You fuckers should check my Facebook page, lemme know what you think of all my tunes.
New Social Thread
- Thread starter MetalAges
- Start date
Krigloch the Furious
Pants full of poo
Thinking about selling my Digitech GSP1101
Wanna replace it with an ENGL E530
Anyone interested?
Wanna replace it with an ENGL E530
Anyone interested?
Jimmy... Dead.
contemplative curmudgeon
I'm not programmed to seek truth, but to win; because my brain doesn't really understand probability, therefore, I think everyone's out to get me and I'm hard-wired to have double standards and these facts don't change my mind.
Smoking or vaporizing some real good bud right now and I'm flippin' my lid!
Terence Mckenna
Smoking or vaporizing some real good bud right now and I'm flippin' my lid!
Terence Mckenna
Last edited by a moderator:
Dak
mentat
I don't want to come off as um, judgemental. But this "shaman savior" stuff is based on the Noble Savage Myth discussed earlier. I don't disagree with the general gist of what the guy is saying, but while chewing some special plants and listening to ancient chants might make you forget problems, it won't make them go away.
Jimmy... Dead.
contemplative curmudgeon
Whatever DaK! Just keep being some elitist asshole who lord obscures knowledge over us like an approaching thunderstorm made of anus!
haha, you're the best man.
haha, you're the best man.
Dak
mentat
inorite. Culture as an operating system is a pretty decent analogy though. Must contemplate.
Satanstoenail
My Larpstyle determines my Derpstyle
Einherjar86
Active Member
While hallucinogens can be great fun, I never have and never will laud them as some kind of memory/culture-wiping software that allows us to download a new "operating system."
Hallucinogenic experiences induced by drugs are basically like waking dream states; people have visions and experience sensations because the inhibition of consciousness is lowered. This is the same thing that occurs in dreams; the unconscious takes over. However, this shouldn't be equated with a kind escape from culture. Dream-images are sustained, informed, and fueled by our culture. Any vision, whether it be a dream or hallucination, speaks to us on some symbolic level, and this symbolic level has to always be somehow conditioned by the conscious, cultural realm. The pre-conscious (I use this word as distinctly separate from "unconscious," since the unconscious still deals with symbolism) is inherently non-symbolic, non-linguistic. It doesn't deal in sign systems or representational structures.
In short, I hate fucking hippies.
Hallucinogenic experiences induced by drugs are basically like waking dream states; people have visions and experience sensations because the inhibition of consciousness is lowered. This is the same thing that occurs in dreams; the unconscious takes over. However, this shouldn't be equated with a kind escape from culture. Dream-images are sustained, informed, and fueled by our culture. Any vision, whether it be a dream or hallucination, speaks to us on some symbolic level, and this symbolic level has to always be somehow conditioned by the conscious, cultural realm. The pre-conscious (I use this word as distinctly separate from "unconscious," since the unconscious still deals with symbolism) is inherently non-symbolic, non-linguistic. It doesn't deal in sign systems or representational structures.
In short, I hate fucking hippies.
Oblivious Maximus
I am the worm
I never bought into that whole "mind expansion" bullshit. Whenever I used drugs of any kind it certainly wasn't to "expand" anything. Turn off your mind as Electric Wizard would say.
divine_torture
leVel
viewerfromnihil
Vein-Marbled Tower
divine_torture
leVel
Or slipnuts or awesome metal guy. What's with these newfags fagging up the very meaning of fag with fags and fags? Faggy faggers are fagging fagging me offag. Fagaroo. Fagalations. Faghension. Fagshacklebackle fockfag.
Jimmy... Dead.
contemplative curmudgeon
Ok, so my question is, if "pre-conscious" is non-symbolic, and non-linguistic than what is it? Can what you are describing even be called consciousness? I would liken that to "mineral" or "vegetable" consciousness which is to say the same supposed "consciousness" that rocks and plants would have, respectively.
Einherjar86
Active Member
No, the pre-conscious can't be called consciousness; but it is the only way to achieve a kind of "clean slate" like Mckenna wants to in regards to culture. Drugs and Dreams can give us visions, but these visions are steeped in the symbolism and context of our culture. Consciousness can allow us to contemplate philosophy and the universe, but it can't allow us to actively repress years of cultural conditioning. The only drug users who achieve this are those who eventually succumb to mental scrambling.
Jimmy... Dead.
contemplative curmudgeon
I don't think the intention was ever to "repress" cultural conditioning, but merely to be made aware of it and step outside of it. I'll try to find it but there's a talk where Mckeena speaks about the paradox of culture; that is to say how culture is a limiting factor which seeks to preserve itself by repeating certain cultural norms, themes and ways of behavior, while at the same time it is a mental structure which allows us to climb to higher and higher levels of awareness and technological complexity.
I don't think Mckenna's intention is for people to take psychedelics and be so divorced from culture that they can't make heads or tails of anything. Rather the psychedelic experience is a break away from culture in which we can look at it differently. When the trip is over one is back in the normal culture but the challenge is to bring something back from the other realm which may be of value to yourself and/or your fellow human beings.
I guess I don't fully get what you are saying. Do you think achieving this so-called "clean slate" is a good thing? If so, how does one get back to that pre-conscious state to achieve said clean slate? Is such a thing even possible?
I also take issue that all drug visions are steeped in cultural symbolism. I would say at low-doses, yes, because anything you see or think of will be filtered through how you normally would filter it based on your understanding of the world, your worldview, aka your cultural outlook. However, if you ever experienced psychedelics before, there are points at higher doses where cultural symbols lose meaning or at the very least are intensely de-emphasized.
Even something like fractals. The first time I saw fractals it was a major "woah" moment. I was entranced by this beauty and complexity arising from nature and my own mind. I wouldn't say my thoughts regarding fractals at the time had anything to do with cultural conditioning. It was just a stunning moment. What Mckeena might call, "The felt presence of immediate experience".
I don't think Mckenna's intention is for people to take psychedelics and be so divorced from culture that they can't make heads or tails of anything. Rather the psychedelic experience is a break away from culture in which we can look at it differently. When the trip is over one is back in the normal culture but the challenge is to bring something back from the other realm which may be of value to yourself and/or your fellow human beings.
I guess I don't fully get what you are saying. Do you think achieving this so-called "clean slate" is a good thing? If so, how does one get back to that pre-conscious state to achieve said clean slate? Is such a thing even possible?
I also take issue that all drug visions are steeped in cultural symbolism. I would say at low-doses, yes, because anything you see or think of will be filtered through how you normally would filter it based on your understanding of the world, your worldview, aka your cultural outlook. However, if you ever experienced psychedelics before, there are points at higher doses where cultural symbols lose meaning or at the very least are intensely de-emphasized.
Even something like fractals. The first time I saw fractals it was a major "woah" moment. I was entranced by this beauty and complexity arising from nature and my own mind. I wouldn't say my thoughts regarding fractals at the time had anything to do with cultural conditioning. It was just a stunning moment. What Mckeena might call, "The felt presence of immediate experience".
Einherjar86
Active Member
I disagree that drug-induced visions aren't susceptible to cultural symbolism and conditioning. Even something as purely mathematical as fractals occupy a place in popular imagination. These images might not seem to possess much symbolic weight, but that's actually all they possess. We're incapable of looking beyond the symbolism of objects/images. Even under the influence of narcotics or hallucinogens we can only ever impose meaning onto these experiences. Even if the experience itself is so primordial and/or traumatic, it becomes laden with meaning in retrospect. That's what I personally believe.
I don't think achieving the "clean slate" is a good thing. We're culturally conditioned creatures, we rationalize our decisions and beliefs rather than seek truths, and we can never circumvent the grips of our consciousness. But I don't think we should turn from this and try and attain a kind of primordial, pre-conscious state. We need to think critically about the new facts coming to light concerning our brain and consciousness, and try and understand what responsibility this places on us as subjects, if we choose to accept those parameters.
And on that note, I made a new blog post. See below.
Really interesting blog post; the paragraph where Watts condemns most First Contact stories was particularly interesting to me, because I always bring up the very same thing whenever I get into discussions with people about how we anthropomorphize everything to such an illogical degree that it brings about a plethora of issues both practical and theoretical in nature.
