Yep. And the same is true with Frank's trolling about the well-definedness of truth. Consistency, like reduction and isolation, is a fantastic tool but a bad master. When Hanson argues that we must continue to have babies or risk the halt of innovation, it's with a fixed backdrop, worldview. Adopting his "coordinate system" is pretty easy for me, having been reared in what I expect is a similar context. It's more difficult to adopt a radical view. I'm just not a radical. But still, I find myself fairly easily slipping into the perspectives of some radicals I've had the privilege to read (e.g. Fannon). That might mean I'm inherently unstable, disintegrated, or whatever. And maybe that implies I shouldn't be doing any entheogens. Booo! Conservatism is wasted on old people. Old people should proudly don and doff various freak flags. And young people should cling desperately to their myopia as best they can, exploit their niche while their energy maintains.
I just returned from a visit to Utah. The hotel was hosting a reunion of some arbitrary collection of ancient Marines. Wow. Just. Wow. All the handicap parking places were full every night ... every one of them adorned with various sorts of macho posturing bumper stickers (e.g. "Secured By: F*ck around and find out" - or "Smith & Wesson" - or some ironic nonsense about the scourge of socialism). Of course, there were a few of us bearded long-hairs in and out of the breakfast area. But boy howdy did we get the Evil Eye from the majority of those old farts. I can only imagine what the upside down pentagram on my t-shirt might mean to them (maybe that I'm a member of O9A), or the fact that I'm the sole escort for a gaggle of Renee's grandkids ... god only knows what heresy I teach those kids when nobody's around. Were I an actual cynic, I'd carry baggies of mushrooms to dose the breakfast materials before those fogies even arose. (I'm sure they'd be surprised to find out I'm up at the crack of dawn every day.) It'd be Freakin' Hilarious to see them *liberated*, prone on the floor in the lobby pondering the beautiful shapes in the false ceiling ... or staring deeply into their coffee, watching the milk mimic the swirling galaxies. If Hanson's right about anything, it's a corollary: society advances one funeral at a time. On 10/12/23 10:49, Steve Smith wrote:
I think I agree with this spirit... and the invocation of a high-dimensional (but finitely so) landscape is not only the constraints we live in, but in some sense the ones we *choose* to live in? I think excess/sloppy meaning might be another term for a local/temporary increase (or exchange) of dimensionality, effectively lowering the thresholds between basins? In anthropological terms I think we are in "shaman" territory (the perspective/insight to selectively shift the dimensions around for the group as-needed)? Also maybe the point of psychedelic/entheogenic substances? We are reading Pollan's "How to Change your Mind" at the moment.
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