Zig Zag Zen

Overall: 8.3/10.0

This book is a beautiful collection of essays and art exploring the relationship between psychedelics and Buddhism. If you are interested in either of these consciousness-shifting reality changers, I recommend this book. 

All men are mortal, therefore Socrates

(Listened to "Shine On" while writing)

Each sentence is a string, either constraining you to the floor or rescuing you from your abyss. With each chosen word, the writer hopes to sculpt the readers perspective. Further and further we leave that Platonic place that existed between the title and the first letter of that first sentence. Aggressively or seductively, lovingly or complacently, the writer hopes to lure you into their reality tunnel. Its easier to not dwell on the magnitude of it all.

The written word when written well is magic. Words are magic. A well selected assemblage of symbols can give the creator immortality. Or at least the kind that brings ambitious young domesticated primates peace at night who would do well not to read Ozymandias. I am one of these foolish ambitious young domesticated primates and so I enjoy reading the works of other such monkeys. It is the least I can do, playing my tragic part in the prolonging of these dead primates futile dreams of immortality by assimilating their ideas into my own ocean of synaptic connections.

The human experience is such an absurdly beautiful tragedy. We spin on this orb through the Void knowing we will die, living in almost a perpetual state of fear with brief but orgiastic glimpses of the divine, all while we pretend we understand our plight, sporting a mask of maturity, understanding, and control. Born into a cult we seemingly cannot escape amongst a psychotic collection of cults, we think ours the best. Murcia!

Other than sex, sports, and the rare illuminating conversation, my favorite way to ignore the absurd around me is talking with these demimortals. Lately, its been Robert Anton Wilson. I haven't enjoyed another primates symbol collection this much since Nietzsche. This primate's sense of scope and humor mirror what I hope my own will be. I find it no coincidence but rather synchronicity that he too, amongst many other dead primates who enjoyed writing, started his consciousness expanding perspective with peyote (Huxley, Shulgin, Leary). I hope one day I'll be able to try those the little black buttons.

The written word's significance is dissolving in our current generation. Many disagree and I understand that, but here is how I see it. The most noble purpose I can think of as to why a writer writes is to pass along an idea. Hopefully an idea that benefits the majority of unconscious slave monkeys robotically reacting to life. Most of these slave apes don't fucking read. You can see the dilemma.

I'm not trying to write a manifesto or a magnum opus, but I think a new perspective on how best to spread good ideas is required for the ambitious domesticated primate. I'm worried about nothing though, maybe nine people will read this, and thats okay. I just like writing.




*If you're part of the 50% of American's who'll read more than 0 books this year, check out "Prometheus Rising" by Robert Anton Wilson.  

Our parents think we're dumber than them.

Our parents generation thinks we’re the dumbest yet. 

(maybe there is some truth to what he's saying because my dumbass can't find a high resolution picture of his book.)

The youth being the worst yet is not a new idea.

“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”

-Socrates, over 2,000 years ago

We aren’t dumber. We’re just the first generation to be cognitively raped by technology, by Quality.  

The education system is Stone Age drudgery compared to the dopamine inducing rewards the Internet, social media, and sex offers the youth. Our brains have never been as stimulated as they have been the last decade (asterisks for hippies on the west coast during the late 60s).

Our generation is shying away from the surface level dullness of mathematics, mechanical and analytical sciences, and logic itself. This perceived dullness is caused only by a lack of understanding. Science is beautiful bro.

Instead, we want to make music, make art, be popular, be powerful, and be perceived as attractive.

Our abandonment of logic leaves us susceptible to the most ridiculous and idiotic systems of thought. Nearly every version of the Illuminati I’ve heard explained by peers calls forth the strongest urge in me to slam my face into an unforgiving surface, permanently shattering my teeth, jaw, and shearing the flesh from my skull.

Logic muthafucka, do you speak it? 

I’ve no solution to our problem. I do think identifying it is a start. Okay I do have one suggestion as to where to start. Stop listening to 2-Chainz.

Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna

Terence McKenna is a modern age shaman. He was one of the figure heads birthed by the awakening 60's. He had a grasp of the human language few compare to. Yet language didn't imprison his thoughts, and he had some controversial thoughts. One being the Stoned Ape Theory. This book is his argument in favor of this theory. In his mind, this book traces human history as it evolved side-by-side with plants. 

Rating: 9/10

Quotes

"The psilocybin intoxication is a rapture whose breadth and depth is the despair of prose."


"The collectively designed cultural environment in which we all live is the objectification of our collective linguistic intent."

"An ecstatic experience transcends duality; it is simultaneously terrifying, hilarious, awe-inspiring, familiar, and bizarre."

"Monotheism exhibits what is essentially a pathological personality pattern projected onto the ideal of God: the pattern of the paranoid, possessive, power-obsessed male ego."

"The so-called need to control and dominate others is psychologically a function, not from a feeling of power, but from a feeling of powerlessness."

"The strongest argument for the legalization of any drug is that society has been able to survive the legalization of alcohol. If we can tolerate the legal use of alcohol, what drug cannot be absorbed into the structure of society."

"Men who follow such concerns that are not following the accepted canons of male behavior within the dominator model are often assumed to be homosexual."

"It is this a kind of happy coincidence that the subjected effects of ingesting cannabis and the care and attention needed to produce a good resin strain both conspire to accentuate values that are oriented toward honoring an preserving the feminine."

"Let us be absolutely clear, sugar is entirely unnecessary to the human diet; before the arrival of industrial cane and beet sugar humanity managed well enough without refined sugar, which is nearly pure sucrose. Sugar contributes nothing that cannot be gotten from some other, easily available source. It is a "kick," nothing more. Yet for this kick the dominator culture of Europe was willing to betray the ideals of the Enlightenment by its collusion with slave traders. In 1800 virtually every ton of sugar imported into England had been produced with slave labor."

"This drug was the first of a growing group of high-technology drugs that deliver the user into an alternative reality by acting directly on the user's sensorium, without chemicals being introduced into the nervous system. It was television. No epidemic or addictive craze or religious hysteria has ever moved faster or made as many converts in so short a time. "

"Indeed, we cannot even be certain whether science, the epistemic tool upon which we have come to depend most heavily, is up for this task (Exploring the psyche)."

"The familiar feeling of "fight of flight" is often a feature of the first wave of somatic feelings associated with the hallucinogen. One must discipline the hind brain and simply wait through this turmoil within the animal body."

In response to "Poetry and Ambition"

I found Poetry and Ambition to be one of the most memorable essays I have ever read. I would do myself a great injustice not to revisit this work many times. Hall litters the pages with so many quotable one-liners you’d think he was writing poetry. Maybe that’s how good prose is supposed to be.

“If your goal in life is to remain content, no ambition is sensible.” Wow. Has ever a truer and more useful line been transcribed? I know too many peers who would read this sentence and assimilate it 180 degrees differently than I. I live in an area where the populace, if over 18, are mostly content to fall into the cycle of partying until parenthood, working until retirement, and retiring until death, the entire time harboring soul crushing debt, stress, and passionless relationships. They have no ambition. They are content. I gladly sacrifice my contentedness to chase my ambition. Even admitting that, “Ozymandias” rings in my mind as a warning. That poem is forever the mass, rope, and crew, saving me from capitalism’s siren song.

The piece of advice that infected me virally, and subsequently will always dwell within me, is that one should set an impossible goal. Shoot for the stars and land amongst the clouds. I have such a goal. Such a goal gives life a purpose. A purpose eliminates boredom. If one is ever bored, one has not discovered their goal. I have not been bored for almost 3 years now. However, alleviating boredom bares a new symptom, a kind of anxiety in rest. Since establishing an impossible goal, allowing for a purpose to be born, resting from pursuit of that goal brings guilt. I’m in a phase of my life where I’m trying to cope with this unpleasantness. My current hypothesis is falling in love.

I’d like to say that the selections in this class have exceeded my expectations. Now, I’m not sure if that says more about my ignorance than your teaching skills, but I mean it as a compliment, so I hope it is received as one. I am thoroughly enjoying this class.

Chaos by James Gleick

This is one of those books...

This book strings together the historical thread that led to what we could call "Chaos Theory." Have you ever seen this...

That is the Mandelbrot Set. Among other things, its a picture of infinity. I am not yet comfortable with numbers and mathematics so the beauty and profundity of the math behind Chaos Theory is lost on me. However, a concrete discovery for me is that there are two main divisions of geometry; Euclid's and Fractal's, and that nature's geometry is not Euclidean but Fractal. 

I'm lacking inspiration. It was an amazing book but it evolved into a chore. I have a neurotic drive where I must finish a book I start. These are some notes I scribbled.

1) Science is increasingly specialized.

2) Language is a powerful barrier between branches of science.

3) Euclidean geometry is a kind of Platonic geometry where Fractal geometry is nature's geometry.

4) Chaos Theory is pattern emerging in, what at first glance, seems to be random systems.

5) Strange Attractors are the separation between randomness and chaos.

6)  An increasing senese to look for the fundamental concepts which science rests on.

7) There is SO MUCH I don't know. So much of it seems like noise, fluffy language not required.

8) In order to keep my sanity, I need to focus on pragmatic science. What will help me? What will help others? What is useful?


Has the question been asked: Is all of fractal's geometry, this natures geometry hidden inside this visual equation?