108 replies to this topic

[boy_waitress]

ever notice thoughts form like fractals? have you had that kind of connection with someone where at times it's almost like the barrier that separates you from being two different people or beings dissolves and you'll have a conversation that rises and falls like a mandlebrot set, and a long time passes and you haven't even consciously been using words or inhabiting physical space? ever think, as you zoom back out and the room materializes around you and you realize your throat is dry, that if you focus the hardest you ever have in your life you can form concrete thoughts that represent the true, pure form of this other that you've just witnessed and communed with, but it speeds away as fast as the world returns? tell me you have please!

 

yes I too have done drugs

 

but also no I'm just teasing. in all seriousness sex is the most obvious and relatable parallel, bc it sounds like you're kind of describing a certain type of sex, or relationship to sex maybe would be a better way to describe it

 

 

outside of that, I kind of get where you're coming from, as in I think I relate to it in different terms, but it's hard to know if the differences are semantic or substantive. it's a bit difficult for me to fully relate bc it's hard to think of ideal types as ascertainable and i thus do not tend to think in terms of there being a pure, essential self. but. I have felt like me and the other person were briefly seeing the same mirage and talking about the same imagined objects and felt this profound feeling of connectedness that I really only was ever able to describe in terms of its distance from the sort of fundamental loneliness of being a person in a body.

[boy_waitress]

btw I can't really keep up with the prolific conversation about capitalism, space dicks, carbon emissions, consumerism, for-profit media markets, and china (esp china, like I don't even know how to begin to talk about china, I'm not looking forward to having ordinary conversations about china all the time and I can feel it creeping into my daily Real Life), but I probably agree w you mope and hobo about most of it

rudy I mentioned the supernatural bc over the years I've come to feel less dismissive of the I'm Not Religious I'm Spiritual crowd and willing to acknowledge that spirituality is an ill-defined and inadequately considered category of human emotional experience that is for whatever reason treated as its own distinct category separate from other forms of emotional connection. I esp think this is a problem on the left bc most perspectives I encounter fall into the category of a) feh feh feh atheism, b) I grew up catholic and am gay/trans/queer/whatever now and fuuuuuck that noise, or c) I mean I get why some marginalized groups gravitate towards it but it's still Problematic, and so anything even mildly associated with that sphere either falls into the realm of distasteful artifacts of a history of conservatism and control, socially acceptable opium for the masses, or white women who won't shut up about crystals

so that sucks, because sometimes I think the metaphysical can serve as an alternative means of social change. you've got the fukuyama-adjacent shit that gestures towards the inevitability of capitalist liberal democracies, and the idea of the market has more or less been naturalized despite its status as an historical aberration that requires considerable government intervention to maintain.

and like you think about the le guin quote about imagining a world etc. etc. and part of the reason that's difficult is bc if you take a materialist perspective then it's hard to envision an environment that is not either an iteration of or a direct response to capitalism, and imo a means of escaping this landscape is to migrate to a sort of orthogonal one in which, if we have naturalized a fundamentally unnatural concept (am avoiding the complex philosophical distinction between 'natural' and 'unnatural,' sue me), then the supernatural becomes a space of reclamation, a dimension along which even if one cannot imagine a world outside of capitalism they can at least envision an afterlife beyond that world. when you have lost the natural, as we have, perhaps surrender the natural, reject the validity of the natural, find a space in the supernatural, in spiritual traditions that have by their lack of material value remained external to the Global Economic Regime.

this is essentially about finding a language to observe and articulate the rooms that are not included in the floor plan. to be the post to their modern. we already know that shit exists; we just forgot it because a) eurbody in the club gettin' white consumers between the ages of 18 and 34, and b) someone was smart enough to put it in a time capsule and bury it.

this is abstract but so is the concept of faith (~faith~, reclaim it from #blessed my oppressed, repressed, suppressed brethren). even if you don't believe in shit -- which I don't, honestly, even tho I kind of wish I did, or could -- I have rarely encountered venues more capable of effectively excluding market logic.

[crone_lover720]

ever notice thoughts form like fractals? have you had that kind of connection with someone where at times it's almost like the barrier that separates you from being two different people or beings dissolves and you'll have a conversation that rises and falls like a mandlebrot set, and a long time passes and you haven't even consciously been using words or inhabiting physical space? ever think, as you zoom back out and the room materializes around you and you realize your throat is dry, that if you focus the hardest you ever have in your life you can form concrete thoughts that represent the true, pure form of this other that you've just witnessed and communed with, but it speeds away as fast as the world returns? tell me you have please!

 

yes I too have done drugs

 

but also no I'm just teasing. in all seriousness sex is the most obvious and relatable parallel, bc it sounds like you're kind of describing a certain type of sex, or relationship to sex maybe would be a better way to describe it

 

 

outside of that, I kind of get where you're coming from, as in I think I relate to it in different terms, but it's hard to know if the differences are semantic or substantive. it's a bit difficult for me to fully relate bc it's hard to think of ideal types as ascertainable and i thus do not tend to think in terms of there being a pure, essential self. but. I have felt like me and the other person were briefly seeing the same mirage and talking about the same imagined objects and felt this profound feeling of connectedness that I really only was ever able to describe in terms of its distance from the sort of fundamental loneliness of being a person in a body.

good bc I was starting to worry you havent!! but no really you're right of course to poke fun of the naked banality there or else I'd have to delete it. fwiw tho I actually don't think you can quite get there with drugs or at least none of the handful I've ever had. I've had that mind-meld experience sober with a few people and I think most people probably have had similar experiences. like drugs or meditation it creates an invitation to examine once again how our brain constructs reality, which highlights the importance of mental self care in the face of all of these immense problems with no clear solution that is likely to happen - things that would defintely kill me if they became the first thing on my mind when I get up.

 

that's where I get benefit from the supernatural, ie the spiritual. a casual, non-assertive personal atheism is cool and all, but as I get older it's no longer I can no longer make it without something more. for the lack of a better term I find it to be a psychological need, at the very least.

 

I've never seen it necessarily as an escape from capitalism, though that makes sense in that one, it's also an escape from said entire constructed yet very real and very constrained reality, and capitalism is a particularly pervasive plague on said reality especially for having nothing fundamentally to do with being human YET causing so many problems and constraints on life.

[boy_waitress]

i agree about the drug thing! even beyond the connection there's a certain sense of wonder that comes with realizing that what you're doing is in no way caused by some sort of substance, so for me there's like... the primary connection, and the secondary connection to the capacity to connect with the person to begin with.

vis-a-vis your comment about personal atheism, yeah definitely. years ago, back when i used to live in ohio, i went to this dope dope soul food restaurant that was actually the cafeteria of a church. anyway i was getting a fried pork chop and greens etc. and realized that it was sunday afternoon and church was actually in session, and i opened the door and peaked through it and felt.. something? something. so like i waited there until church let out and watched all of the people come out into the cafeteria and mingle loudly and comment on the quality of the fried pork chops and greens etc. and then walk around a table that had a tablecloth and a setting on it and give it a kind of solemn look

so i watched this for a while and later asked what the deal with the table was and the woman who ran the kitchen told me that a little black boy had disappeared a few years back and they'd set the table up for him in case he ever found his way back and i thought

hmmmm. it was the first point at which i felt like maybe i was genuinely less bc of growing up outside the black church. after i started reading the post-colonial shit it kind of clicked that what that the faith in whatever had made that moment possible was and could be transformative outside of conventional religious contexts. i wanted desperately in that moment to have known that boy and to have been able to look at that table like they all did.

it all feels frustratingly half-baked for me but like, there's a radical politics of the metaphysical somewhere in there.

[Frisky SKeleton]

need dietcoke in here to start solving some of this. he's a nuclear engineer or something now I think? during CHOP/CHAZ I thought of him bc I think he was in that general area, and I was really hoping CHOP/CHAZ would get their hands on some enriched uranium

I think if you zoom out enough it definitely seems like everything is irreversibly going to shit, but I think that this is, and I'm really sorry if I sound overly simplistic here and I don't mean to be dismissive, a metaphor for our own mortality. but the world's always been going to shit, rome fell and yet we have better pasta now than ever, didn't even have tomatoes back then let alone pomodoro. tomato was cultivated for millennia by the people who lived on the continents now called America, long before the culture of people who eventually made Italian food knew the others existed. the world is more than anyone can manage, so in order to not live an empty life in hopelessness you zoom in and focus on what you can change. but then we're constantly confronted with externalities that make us zoom out further and further and start the process over again. it's a mandlebrot set, just like everything.

ever notice thoughts form like fractals? have you had that kind of connection with someone where at times it's almost like the barrier that separates you from being two different people or beings dissolves and you'll have a conversation that rises and falls like a mandlebrot set, and a long time passes and you haven't even consciously been using words or inhabiting physical space? ever think, as you zoom back out and the room materializes around you and you realize your throat is dry, that if you focus the hardest you ever have in your life you can form concrete thoughts that represent the true, pure form of this other that you've just witnessed and communed with, but it speeds away as fast as the world returns? tell me you have please!

It's weird sort of, semi-knowing everyone. dietcoke was a decent bit older than everyone else? 70s kid rather than 80s? I think about him every time I shoplift.

My country is in lockdown again and it's strange being back here. There's a pandemic related background "funny feeling" that combines with the special nausea I get reading my old posts that's certainly an experience! Rome fell but now we have spaghetti.

I've taken to gardening and growing things more generally. I thought it would give me a greater appreciation for life but it turns out life is really common and death is the majority of it. A different appreciation for life I guess, but comparing it to a Mandelbrot set seems similar in the same way. All the big picture patterns come from the unending work of it's infinitesimally unimportant members. I have a lot of friends that have gone child-free for climate/collapse/general uncertainty about the future reasons which is kinda related.

 

[Mope]

I actually agree 100% with the spiritual and supernatural being an important facet to life.

I read a quote recently by Alastair Crowley where he states that: “Magick is the bridge between religion and science”

And though Crowley’s kind of a nut I completely agree with it. I’ve had a lot of those really heavy kind of spiritual hallucinogenic trips to the extent that now my brain kind of does it all on its own a lot.

I don’t know why but I really reflect on the nature of existence, consciousness, shared experiences and all those things that you really can’t wholly strip away by science alone.

I mean you can, you always can in a certain way but in others you cannot.

I read alot much, much later about a kind of philosophical theology called “pantheism” which I know I’ve talked about this before but I really really like it.

It’s the belief that the universe itself, all the forces within it, all matter living and not is the personification of “god”.

It is god, it’s all god. We are god, the earth, the wind, the sea. It’s all divinity.

It’s really a kind of basic truth. That everything within the universe impacts everything else in a way. All components to a larger kind of underlying subconscious. Kind of like how certain aspects of botany describes plants as having a sort of “consciousness”.

Stimuli to external influences and the environment

And in a way, everything does this. Absolutely everything.

If I reach, pick up a pen and then drop it atop a table I have irrevocably changed the course of reality as we know it.

A “god-like” act.

It’s really really cool and a really versatile discipline, IMO it’s kind of a literal representation of the psychedelic experience and that feeling of shared consciousness, connectedness, oneness.

Of course the pen itself is a static object, it’s not alive but it can and has been constructed or influenced by those that have.

A lot of different scientists have prescribed to it and personally I see it as the next step to both religion and atheism because in a way it’s both.

Like, I can; and have talked to many many people and described to them what I believe in and why I believe in it and they ALWAYS accept it. Because it’s also an inherent facet of their own beliefs.

I do lots of different things and kind of “feel it”

I mean one of them obviously is by taking a shit ton of drugs but other things too. Like watching animals interact with their environments or like I mentioned earlier watching an urban environment in contrast or harmony with nature.

Listening to music and watching the sea is a big one too. Really nature in general. It’s like the environment moves in different ways to the rhythm of the music.

Of course this is all perception but that’s kind of the beauty in it.

I mentioned something in the “Whats on your mind” topic about taking ALOT of LSD and being at a house party full of people all on goddamned LSD then walking around and being fed these segments of conversations and utterances that really made me feel like the drug itself was this kind of higher consciousness worming it’s way through people and causing them to unveil truths they normally wouldn’t. Exposing themselves. Like a kind of spiritual virus just infecting person to person to person and how it freaked me the fuck out. Like I was the only person still acutely aware of it.

To me, those kinds of things are “supernatural”. A lot of human and animal behavior in the same way and how people believe or do the shit they do or how they can be easily influenced.

Even if it’s just stupid little things like making someone laugh or have an emotional response. It’s telling, important I think. All these connections and how they function.

That’s part of the reason why I started writing. I write or describe pantheistic beliefs all throughout but in an indirect way. And I tried to string together all these different themes, topics, humor and entertainment to flex that influence.

It’s like a working social experiment in a way and the more I write and get a reaction out of people it’s like a working proof of concept for me.

Seeing if the things that commonly draw or speak to people combined with those that speak to me have an influential impact or not.

[hobo2]

That's an interesting perspective, I'd like to try an assortment of drugs someday to gain another perspective on things. In my little bubble I've not touched anything aside from some alcohol. Perhaps the closest I've gotten is exploring the internet and absorbing a wide range of funky content, some of which I'm sure was produced with the help of drugs, but still I don't feel like I've had a deep enough connection. It pisses me off how it's still mostly illegal and that the US is only barely navigating legalization of weed at a state level in a really clumsy manner. It's not necessarily the illegality that's stopping me, but I have enough to occupy myself with to bother seeking it out and haven't had the opportunity simply presented to me. Maybe I'm hanging out with the wrong kinds of people.

 

I think I understand what you mean by thoughts forming as fractals, rudy. It's like moving to another dimension, connecting in ways you just couldn't in a mere three. I've felt that in deep conversations with others as well as getting lost in thought myself when I feel like I've had an epiphany. That, too, fades and I wonder why I thought I've had everything all figured out. Perhaps it all amounts to intellectual masturbation, but at least when it comes as a product of conversation, the bond shared between the other is strengthened.

 

I've often heard of people not wanting to bring children into such a horrible world, but part of me wonders if it's just an excuse. That's not to say that having children is some amazing accomplishment that all should strive for. In fact, I'm emphasizing that there is no need to have an excuse to *not* have children. Too often I find myself making excuses for not wanting to do things, when really an "I don't wanna" would be perfectly acceptable. Then again, perhaps "I don't wanna" is an excuse itself, a pathetic attempt at covering for my own inadequacies. The fact remains that I don't want to have children and it's not because the world is shit, but because I'd rather fuck around and drift through life. On some level it's a lack of desire to have control over another life. It's the reason why I wouldn't want a pet either. I like the idea of being left alone and leaving others alone, but it can also be a paradoxical, contrarian, or even hypocritical position to take at times. 

 

I assume we'll pull through the disasters ahead, even if most of the world's human population is wiped out and it's a living hell (even more so than now). Humans are so damned tenacious and persistent, we'll rebuild. Civilization as we know it has been shit for a long time, what scares me is that the tools to enforce the shittiness are only getting better. I don't fear AI having a sudden awakening and subjugating humans, I fear humans getting better at applying AI to subjugate humans. Nuclear weapons haven't been around long enough to definitively conclude that they'll never be used in a full-scale war. Hell, there were a couple of close calls during the cold war. The cold war was really uneven, too. China has a much better grasp at playing the game. The game of waiting and the game of economics. Not only that, but Russia is a nuclear ally of them, so it's not a matter of just two major nuclear powers opposing each other with a few minor ones sprinkled about. I don't consider it unlikely that a fuck-up could cause a chain reaction, even if world leaders think they're smart enough to know all the costs involved. 

[Mope]

It’s new ground they’re really just starting to legitimately take seriously and explore; though like ketamine treatments have been used for years to treat depression. Ayahuasca which is a form of DMT for a range of traumatic psychologically damaging experiences, addictions, and neurological disorders.

They just released a new study saying MDMA helps to stimulate I think it’s brain synapses growth that usually only really occurs in children. Psilocybin which is used to treat cluster headaches kind of like CBD for kids with seizures. Psilocybin and LSD helps with coming to terms with trauma and death too.

I’m not saying it’s a sure fire thing, it definitely isn’t. The human mind is a very powerful tool as well as a weapon for self destruction. Usually for these things new users use a “sitter” whose more experienced and can help direct the mood or flow of the experience.

People just fuck me up though, I can be around them but I start to psychoanalyze them and read into shit on a deeper level and it’s kinda hard to pull myself out of it so I just learned by throwing myself into it and “winging it”.

Like, for me at least there are certain principles I always abide by and I don’t have too much trouble.

It’s a hard thing to really “learn” just by hearing though. It’s good advice but it’s like anything else you’ve got to experience it to truly understand the context.

For instance: Never fight a trip. Never ever ever fight it. It’s like getting into a fight with Godzilla, you will lose every single damn time and even the struggle itself will be used against you.

Just got to ride it like a wave, even the dark places but I find you only go there more frequently when you struggle or gotta lotta unresolved trauma.

Like, it’s all your conscious and subconscious showing you things. It’s not really religious or profound in the sense that you’re experiencing the otherworldly as much as you’re experiencing the full force of your own mind.

So more often than not the things you see, or feel, or experience are of some gravity to you.

Like for instance being raised as a devout catholic throughout your childhood then turning off to religion and then tripping and experiencing the Virgin Mary and the birth of Christ.

It’s not god talking to you as much as that aspect of your life and those earlier experiences manifesting throughout your mind. Helping come to terms to it or what it means to you.

It’s really really interesting. Tiring after awhile though.

One thing I always wanted to do was fucking peyote or mescaline and walk through the desert.

To me drugs are like an assistance, a tool set. Colors for painting a canvas in a way.

Of course in some ways they’re a facet of seeking a state of rest or normalcy I can’t really attain on my own like most people physiologically or mentally. In others they amplify that heightened state I naturally get into. Like NOZ on a race car.

Psychedelics and hallucinogenics cause the state of “epiphany” or creativity to be amplified as well which is why it gets tiring.

It’s weird, It’s literally like I am almost if not always high and I use narcotics to redirect the flow if I want or need to.

I personally don’t really have a problem with it but yeah the legality is a bunch of bullshit so is the stigma. I figure in a few years it won’t be that much of a thing. Maybe a decade or so and modern medicine will have a better grasp on it.

[Mope]

For me not having kids is a matter of personal experience, not really meeting someone I could trust to have them, the world in many different aspects just being too fucking shitty.

I had two step kids for awhile, raised my little brother like a son and I like kids and take to them really well.

I never thought I would though, for a myriad of reasons I figured that I’d be a toxic piece of shit that would inadvertently fuck up any woman, child, or animal that entered my life.

Just to the point where some of the bad and SO MUCH of it would just HAVE to come out.

It took being in that role for me to really realize that those things were lessons and actually carved me into a better person than the ones that put me there.

I would LIKE TO have kids, personally speaking I think being a dad would actually make me a better person. But for a bunch of reasons I just couldn’t put any kid through that.

My job is inherently a form of abandonment and neglect, no matter what. It’s dangerous and you’re always gone. To walk away would put me in a predicament of effectively providing and to keep it would mean id damage those people.

Even if, it’s still not really enough to provide for a family. For a mother to be able to let go of a career to raise kids because I just wouldn’t be there.

Then you’ve got the state of the world, instability, bleak future concerning the state of the environment itself, the fucking cost of living, education, housing, Medicaid.

Like, I was raised in a relatively poor family where my actual childhood itself was undermined by the pressures of just GETTING BY. Not having shit, not being shit. The dysfunctional tendencies of my parents from the pressures of being dumb fucking idiots who shouldn’t have had kids because they were too fucked up themselves and it was a very shortsighted decision they later regretted and this was a constant reminder in everything they did concerning their kids.

It straight fucked up every single one

And while I’m not saying WOE IS ME! I’m definitely not, I’m over it. And I think id fucking die before ever becoming that. It’s an easy path to fall into even if you do everything in your power not to, it’s far far too easy.

It’s a profound problem within the state of our generation and it’s only even worse now.

So, I’m not saying id NEVER have kids. Because I kind of already have a few times. I’m saying for me to consciously take on that task it’d take far more than I know I’m capable of or may ever be. And it’s not my fault, psychologically and patriarchally I could but economically and socially I just couldn’t. Life doesn’t allow it.