What Does Spiritual Mean?

luka

Well-known member
I would say it is up to us and people like us to push this stuff forward. its our job. Our generational task. We will give poetix a heroic dose of liquid acid and convert him to our cause.
 

luka

Well-known member
I would go as far as to say scientific research and clinical trials are completely useless. I think science is the woo here. A quantitive approach offers nothing. Seeing which brain areas light up is valueless. It's also quite sinister. I did a little workshop at breaking convention and it was full of these sinister pynchonesque agencies, half corporate half academic, putting money into research for no doubt nefarious ends. There are people that want to own the psychedelic space I think. Enclose the commons. Fold the outside into the inside
 

luka

Well-known member
Poetix is going to lend us some respectability, some intellectual rigour, grounding in the philosophical tradition. He'll be vital to the cause.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
I think it's more likely I will become a wibbling loon. Well, I say that. I half-arsed my one attempt at acid, decades ago, and didn't get all that much out of it. Circumstances have never seemed propitious for a retry. Perhaps when I retire I'll become a full-on psychopharmaconaut. But also, what I did take away from that one attempt was that my basic equilibrium seemed undisturbed. I don't mean some sort of sound kernel of unshakeable commonsense ("pah! all this nonsense is just a hallucination!"), I just mean my primary ontological security. The boundaries of my self softened but it didn't feel like a dissolution, more a shift in salience: some things stood out more, others stood out less. If that happened to a much more extreme degree it might be disorienting, and it might open a pathway towards revisiting old trauma. I do believe there's a strong medical indication for psychedelic experiences, carefully guided.
 

luka

Well-known member
With increased dose you don't just get a difference in degree you get a difference in type.

On the other hand you are firmly convinced that your brain is 'weird' ie not neuro-typical, so it may be that these things affect you differently. (They affect everybody differently)
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
Quite a few of my ASD friends are well into hallucinogens, so they don't seem to find them uncongenial at least.
 

luka

Well-known member
I've tripped with ASD people (I'm assuming that's autistic spectrum something?) and they like it but I haven't noticed any commonalities in the way they react to it. Just as unpredictable as anyone else.
 

version

Well-known member
But i’d like to see psychedelic tropes: beautiful patterns, dissolving boundaries, strange and sacred geometry, amorphous states but executed in future focused art that leans toward being potentially odd or uncomfortable rather than familiar. The experience can be terrifying and some of the most interesting visions and insights are dark and unsettling, this isn’t always reflected in how psychedelic art looks and feels. There was a thread on this too.

Did you ever see Google's DeepDream program?

DeepDream is a computer vision program created by Google engineer Alexander Mordvintsev which uses a convolutional neural network to find and enhance patterns in images via algorithmic pareidolia, thus creating a dream-like hallucinogenic appearance in the deliberately over-processed images.

deep-dream-740x3701.jpg
 

version

Well-known member
That's the problem with Pynchon sometimes. You don't get the feeling there's a vision preceding and informing and underlying the smart Alec extended metaphors. There's no substance.

I find it varies. Sometimes I think something of his is brilliant, sometimes I wonder how stoned he was when he wrote it.

Loads of ambition, no vision? Haven't read him. If you tell me I can swerve completely i'll just take your word for it

I like all his stuff, but if you only read one then Gravity's Rainbow's the one to read.
 

catalog

Well-known member
In this pandemic, ive been thinking about what a new religion would look like, what would its features be.

For example, most religions have dietary proscriptions. Could we see a new plant based religion emerge, veganism with even sharper teeth than rn?

In terms of other tenets, most religions mobilise emerging science so eg scientology took from freud and looking inside, with the audit.

So would a new religion now look more towards transcending humanity? The idea of AI and moving out the body?

What would the rituals look like? Would there be core books or websites?
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Thank you catalog for reactivating this. Interesting.

I think the AI track is the probable one, for what a guessing game is worth.

Plus the transcendence factor - we could be somewhat close to the point of some kind of vital detachment from materiality, some kind of virtual exodus, etc.

I had been wondering if it was possible to praise infinity/apeiron in the raw, without dressing it up at all (yet alone subjectizing it or even anthropomorphizing it). Could something like this be done, or will we have to render it somewhat more "digestible" and/or relatable in order for it to have existential authority over us?

Could something of an apeiron-proxy be construed as a cybernetic hive-mind/internet-of-things?

Could something like this, to advocate for somebody's devil, be geared such that the zeal it incites in someone falls perfectly (enough) line with a capitalist agenda?

We shed data as a sacrifice, but how unlimited will our data be? Surely in a mundane, particular and serial way, our data production will be ceaselessly novel - but if we abstract this production into some mosaic of categories, might we reach a point where nothing we do is unpredictable?

How would this be felt, by the subject (interesting how "subject" kind of works in multiple ways here, as the agent-in-question and as the subordinate agent to something greater)? While the broader question would be "why would we invest ourselves so deeply in some infinity?" I think the more pertinent one is "why would we invest ourselves so deeply in this appearance/"phenotype" of infinity, this internet of souls? Why not some other form of infinity?

To a more provocative point, can such a mechanics be observed/analyzed to such an extent so as to enable the meticulous and circuitous crafting of gods?

More to the point of environmentalism - at what point (assuming we have not already gotten there) will any ideology or approach short of fanatic environmentalism be ostracized and/or snuffed? Who, to approach it from another angle, would be benefitting from this?
 

luka

Well-known member
Thank you catalog for reactivating this. Interesting.

I think the AI track is the probable one, for what a guessing game is worth.

Plus the transcendence factor - we could be somewhat close to the point of some kind of vital detachment from materiality, some kind of virtual exodus, etc.

I had been wondering if it was possible to praise infinity/apeiron in the raw, without dressing it up at all (yet alone subjectizing it or even anthropomorphizing it). Could something like this be done, or will we have to render it somewhat more "digestible" and/or relatable in order for it to have existential authority over us?

Could something of an apeiron-proxy be construed as a cybernetic hive-mind/internet-of-things?

Could something like this, to advocate for somebody's devil, be geared such that the zeal it incites in someone falls perfectly (enough) line with a capitalist agenda?

We shed data as a sacrifice, but how unlimited will our data be? Surely in a mundane, particular and serial way, our data production will be ceaselessly novel - but if we abstract this production into some mosaic of categories, might we reach a point where nothing we do is unpredictable?

How would this be felt, by the subject (interesting how "subject" kind of works in multiple ways here, as the agent-in-question and as the subordinate agent to something greater)? While the broader question would be "why would we invest ourselves so deeply in some infinity?" I think the more pertinent one is "why would we invest ourselves so deeply in this appearance/"phenotype" of infinity, this internet of souls? Why not some other form of infinity?

To a more provocative point, can such a mechanics be observed/analyzed to such an extent so as to enable the meticulous and circuitous crafting of gods?

More to the point of environmentalism - at what point (assuming we have not already gotten there) will any ideology or approach short of fanatic environmentalism be ostracized and/or snuffed? Who, to approach it from another angle, would be benefitting from this?

https://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=14358&highlight=Dematerialisation

There is a fair bit of speculation about the incipient AI theology etc here. Covers most, possibly all of the points youve raised.
 

Leo

Well-known member
wonder if there's any chance things swing in the opposite direction: people who survive think "fuck, I now realize I could lose everything in a flash" and throw caution to the wind, go full-on hedonist. eat/drink/be merry, for tomorrow we die, etc.
 

catalog

Well-known member
Has everyone seen the master by Paul Thomas Anderson? I think he was inspired to make it cos he read somewhere that after a way, there is space for new spiritual movements, cos people are a bit at sea, as their worlds have disappeared. So this is the lines along which I was thinking. Interestingly, with the newest religion, Scientology, I think it only became a religion to protect from lawsuits etc. Cos religions get a protected status. But if you look at what is now protected as well as religion... Maybe some clues there
 

luka

Well-known member
The whole cluster of New Age beliefs is as much as, and probably much more of a religion than Scientology, albeit nebulous where ascientology is strictly codified.
 

catalog

Well-known member
TM and all that is interesting in this context as well, in terms of the artists involved. Famously Dave lynch but also Dean blunt. Coping strategies. Well being. The rediscovery of the east. It all bundles in. The 60s. We are back there again. I think this disruption could be like another 60s moment, but maybe where I am going wrong is I'm expecting something new, whereas really what wil happen is that more old stuff will get rediscovered. Maybe Jesuits will be back who knows
 

kumar

Well-known member
in the plague theres a bit towards the later stages where the town is described as becoming increasingly superstitious, with an abundance of prophetic serials published in local newspapers. resonates slightly with the emphasis on modelling, behaviour analysis etc
 
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