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Alright, no, we're going to talk about psychedelics some more. Owen brings up a good point, which is that for the psychonaut, the use of psychedelics is an ideology, it has a religious character. Time for another case study in the architecture of religion
There are different sects of psych users who have their various allegiances to their own substance of choice, much like there are different sects of Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism
To recap, I have identified six major components of religious practice. This is my personal taxonomy, it's a work in progress, there are things I am likely to add in the future, all models are wrong, etc.
In this essay, I don't care if any religion is true or false (all things are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, eh my friends?). Many people perceive classification as an attack, we'll talk about that some other time. It's not.
False consciousness. The FC myth of the psyker has a motte and bailey structure. Motte: they open your mind, free you from mental prisons that stop you from thinking clearly. Bailey: they show you the ineffable true reality behind our mundane perception
As with any other faith the motte is an emergent salespitch, often the one that hooked our erstwhile evangelists, akin to a Christian asking you "what do you think happens after you die" or a scientologist offering you a personality test. It's genuinely intended to help you.
Eschatology. This has fallen out of favor with psyche-users but featured prominently in the writings and teachings of many early psychedelic gurus. Terence McKenna even invented accelerationism and pinned the end of the world to 21 Dec 2012. dangerousminds.net/comments/timew…
The age of aquarius talk died down even though our orientation to the news is perpetually apocalyptic. Most psykers have evolved to a less falsifiable "return to the golden age" type of story, as owen says.
Nemesis. Again, the memeplex has evolved. In the 60s it was "the man" but this species of psyche advocacy is mostly extinct. I don't detect a coherent consensus here. This drug makes you too "open" to frame life in terms of enemies, part of the problem
Ecstasy. This one is self-evident. There are drugs that induce the emotion or the phenomenological experience of religious ecstasy. That's it, that's the joke. But notice the ways that the use of the drugs have come to be ritualized
There is lore around how one should take psychedelics, "set and settings", "packing for the trip", there are rules for where you should take them, and how often, and with who, and what to do if it goes south.
There is a sense of the ancient, the stoned ape hypothesis, the idea that these types of drugs have always been used in religious rituals, in shamanism.
It's worth pointing out what shamanism really is. You think it's priesthood but it's really medicine. Shamans were the medical doctors of their societies, and just like doctors today, a big part of their job is to give you sanctified placebos. Some of their interventions do work
Roman mystery cults! ergotized grain! Retvrn to tradition! The Romans, who Americans think they are, also developed acid cults and it also happened as their traditional religions broke down. This proves, what, exactly? That history rhymes?
Diet. Psychedelic use is not nearly institutionalized enough to have an official diet, but veganism is often co-morbid with other forms of open-mindedness, and we can see this kind of attitude on display here: reddit.com/r/vegan/commen…
As an aside, notice the verbal uniform of psychedelic users. This is another component that I don't have in the original thread, because it's just part of the form of a memeplex, irrespective of content. Others have explored this at some length, but briefly...
Ideologies develop idiosyncratic language that allows adherents to signal to each other covertly. Specific phrases or words take on esoteric meanings or valences that the practitioners use to synchronize their beliefs and actions, and to identify each other in different contexts
from the thread above: "destroy these illusions" "seeing the connected-ness of all things" "entheogen", calling the drugs by specific names. Non-user: mushrooms, shrooms. user: Psilocybin. etc. "let's you think from a non human point of view"
On the other hand, veganism is also a pretty self-contained religion so there is some (dairy-free) chocolate in the non-gmo peanut butter, there.
Evangelism. As every dealer knows, drugs sell themselves, but the evangelistic current in psychedelic use is unusually aggressive, in that it mostly consists of "bro you gotta try this", although see above where we note that the usage is ritualized.
A particular facet of the psychedelic conversion event is the act of changing your mind. Much like the AA can wrap any god behind the "higher power" interface, psychedelia can wrap any god behind the "was able to see reality" interface.
It doesn't matter what you believed before, or what you believe now, what's important is that your beliefs changed because you took psychedelics, and there is just almost no way for you to not think that's good, or else you wouldn't have changed
One of the ways religions eat each others' followers is man-in-the-middle attacks like the above. You go to an AA meeting, they tell you "if you like your higher power, keep it". Soon you're not a Christian, you just think you are, & in practice you are a friend of Bill
Whereas most religions have to do some legwork, psychdelic use is a religion with a phsyical body (i.e., the drug), so it gets some of the benefits of embodiment for free.
Some users even think that mushrooms are an alien form of life that is trying to communicate with us, which is to say that they recognize the drug itself is the principal evangelist.
Psychedelic users do seem to converge on certain thought patterns and memes, most of which seem to center around doing more psychedelics.
This is part of a series, here are some past entries. In which I examine "what it feels like" to be a pickup-artist.
An exploration of conversion funnel for women's lib feminism
In which I make up my own, whimsical religion.
If you were really clever and felt like attacking me, you'd do a writeup of my worldview in this format.
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