TheAlchemist

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  2. Posted · Edited by TheAlchemist

    Weed is not in itself a psychedelic or non-psychedelic. It has the potential of acting as a psychedelic, a stimulant or a depressant.

    The method of consumption, the set and setting, frequency of use, personal history and intention all have a major effect on what potentials in the plant come forward. 

    Take an edible in a beautiful place in nature without any distractions, after a tolerance break, with no phone and set a real intention as you would with a psychedelic and you're likely gonna have a totally different experience than sitting at home hitting the bong eating pizza for the 5th time this week. 

  3. Posted · Edited by TheAlchemist

    Many of the existing Trump followers will likely double down in their defense of Trump after this, since now in their eyes the whole judicial system is completely corrupt. So I think we might see an even more extremist version of the MAGA movement.

    Probably this verdict will have a real effect on the part of the population that doesn't really follow politics and are not super passionate about it, and those Trump supporters who are not idolizing him but just supporting him because of some shared values. Also, it isn't easy to convince half the population of a conspiracy theory, a lot of people still have a respect for the judicial system.  

    I think it's likely Trumps rhetoric will get even more extreme in demonizing the left and Biden, but he is running out of moves here. Biden just needs to keep it cool and stable, funnily enough being that "law and order" character which is usually associated with conservatism. 

  5. Posted · Edited by TheAlchemist

    @Leo Gura some years ago you mentioned in some other context how crucial it is to truly respect another persons agency. That point stuck with me and it has been very helpful in many contexts. Whether it is relating to an addict or a discussion about vaccines or talking to a fundamentalist Christian, I just keep realizing how important of a foundation it is to truly respect a persons need for agency, independence and self-determination when discussing any of these things. 

    For example, I am pro-vax, but I started to see how the so called anti-vaxxers were just often super anxious and frustrated because they sensed their agency was being breached. Kind of like if some authority figure orders you to take out the trash. If it is expressed in a way that doesn't leave open the possibility of saying no, it might feel like a self-betrayal to force oneself to do it, even though it practically isn't a big deal. All the theories and conspiracies are secondary effects of people who felt their sense of agency was being breached and the strong emotions connected with that. I started to feel more at peace with the anti-vaxxers when I saw what the underlying need was, I was able to connect to that experience of lacking a sense of agency in some way, because I had also felt that in another situation. 

    Trying to see and connect to the underlying emotion and needs can be like an antidote to dehumanization and an engine for empathy. 

     

  8. Posted · Edited by TheAlchemist

    In regard to documentaries, I highly recommend some of Adam Curtis' work. In relation to politics/ideology "Can't get you out of my head" is very eye opening. He compiles archival footage in fascinating ways to narrate the rise and fall of various ideologies and worldviews at a wide-scale societal level, exploring how we got to where we are and also a tiny bit about how we might move forward. Quite fun to watch yet also highly thought-provoking and insightful. 

    Another lovely series of his is "The Trap" which goes along nicely with Leo's latest release ;)

     

     

  9. Posted · Edited by TheAlchemist

    I can't recommend anything but I can share a method for finding some great books in any field. Go to reddit and a specific subreddit for lets say sociology, geopolitics, critical theory, psychoanalysis, philosophy etc. and do a search within that subreddit for book recommendations in a specific topic. This wya you can often find some of those more specific and rigorous books in any topic instead of the more popular science, often less nuanced books that a more general audience might be familiar with in that field. 

  11. Posted · Edited by TheAlchemist

    Good exercise, really stimulated some thinking/wondering. I'm sure Leo did cover some of these already in his video, I didn't fully watch the episode yet.

    I also noticed that with some of these, the "opposite" can be just as much of a trap.

     

    1. Upgrading your lifestyle right after making more money, getting a nicer car, a bigger house, fancy food etc - it is much more difficult to give up gained luxuries. You become dependent on that new standard of living and will suffer if you lose any of it. 

    2. Supplements/nootropics - even if you find the perfect supplement that solves all your problems, you now are dependent and can't live without it. (Exceptions exist)

    3. Categorically avoiding people who you don't "resonate" with. (Not actually abusive people or trauma inducing situations)

    4. Diving into social media bubbles that confirm the existing worldview, and avoiding exposure to alternative or "opposing" perspectives. 

    5. Any kind of scapegoating of the "other". "Othering" in general. 

    6. Putting any teacher or speaker on a pedastal, thinking they have all the answers and are somehow fundamentally above you. 

    7. Confusing strategies to meet needs with actual underlying needs.

    8. Confusing assumptions/judgements with underlying feelings. 

    9. Trying to change people or pressure them to think like you. This only backfires since it's like interacting with a salesman, people sense there's always an underlying agenda, and it doesn't respect an individuals agency. 

    10. Game theory type thinking - assuming people are always rationally and selfishly calculating maximum benefit for themselves at the expense of others and operating based on that. HUGE trap. 

    11. Utopistic thinking - believing that if we just remove the "bad stuff" only the "good stuff" will remain and our utopia will be realized. 

    12. Cynical dystopic thinking - thinking that all collectivism and envisioning of a better future is bad and dangerous.

    13. Revenge and punishment towards others or oneself

    14.  Shaming people and shame in general (vs. guilt)

    15. Attempting to get and also actually getting the world to conform to your desires

    16. Wanting power over others and/or having significant power over others

    17. Conforming to peer pressure

    18. Attempting to get everyones approval

    19. Inflexibly chasing "goals"

    20. Taking ones individual life too seriously

  12. Posted · Edited by TheAlchemist

    The "devil" is in your mind and will catch you, one way or another. Even the bliss of the dualistic heaven itself is fuelled by the screams of pain in hell. So unless you enter an ignorant state in heaven, you will still be aware of the duality that sustains your bliss and the devil will still be there haunting the back of your mind. By resisting it you are only denying the other half of reality. To succeed in your "goodness" you ultimately end up sacrificing most of mankind to Satan himself, through the belief that they burn in hell and somehow deserve it.

    So once again, in the name of the ultimate "good", (which in the fundamentalist Christian sense means denial of evil), you end up committing the greatest evil, which is sacrifice of almost all mankind to the devil. 

    Reality needs both sides to function my friend, the devil feeds off of resistance and denialn. We don't need to love the devil, but just understand it is a representation that is just another side of the same coin that all the "purity" and "goodness" is. The devil isn't ultimately real, only God is, but the Devil is an aspect of God.

    The Absolute must include and transcend both. And what we call the devil can be integrated and "tamed" in healthy way through art and spiritual and philosophical insight. Until then, as long as the insistence on one-sidedness of reality and God continues, the ancient war machine maintains its momentum. 

  13. Posted · Edited by TheAlchemist

    You didn't choose to be born in Ukraine (or wherever), so why should you be forced to give your life to it?

    It is only through coercion (often social) and an identity that is regidly tied to a nationality that wars can still go on at the scale that they do. World wars don't happen through the masses voluntarily going to kill people, the whole war machine needs the national identity, demonization of the other, social stigma etc. at scale (which you have faced) to function.

    Ultimately, it is a question of your own conscience and staying in integrity with it. If you are clear with yourself that going to war is madness and won't help the world move towards a better place, then it is much better to refuse, assuming you are ready to face the consequences of potentially being shamed or at the most extreme being physically forced or even killed for not complying.

    Don't let anyone convince you to go just through shaming you or pressuring you, but if you truly can find a good argument that convinces you in a way that you can maintain self-integrity and peace with yourself and the world, then by all means go. Just don't let potential shame or threats be the reason. 

  15. Posted · Edited by TheAlchemist

    @Nicolagreen4 your belief in that kind of conception of God forces you to believe in Satan too. If you believe there is an all-powerful and totally "good" being out there which excludes large parts of reality outside of itself (evil), it creates the (often unconscious) opposite force in your mind too to balance it out, since there really is a lot of horror and suffering in the world and you need an explanation. 

    But instead of actually engaging with what is happening and trying to live with the difficult and confusing reality, what appears is a scapegoat, you want this character called "Satan" who is to blame for everything and is the explanation for all the things you can't accept in reality.

    This is a completely understandable leap in faith to make, it brings a certain kind of relief from anxiety, the most confusing and difficult to understand things become simple through this model, and you also get a grand mission and purpose for yourself, fighting these "monsters" that lurk around every corner. The problem is, it just keeps the same ancient war alive, both inside and outside. 

  16. Posted

    @Girzo From what I understand, the pharmaceuticals are mostly irreversible MAOI's where as harmalas are reversible MAOI's (RIMA's). RIMA's still require some care with avoiding tyramine rich foods, but it is even more important with the classical irreversible MAOI's. 

  19. Posted · Edited by TheAlchemist

    The demon is a representation that emerges to get relief from the state of anxiety caused by not knowing. In the same way that in the middle-ages in europe, the oceans on maps had all kinds of crazy monsters on them, we tend to "fill in the blanks" of something we don't understand, and usually fill it with something dark and evil. It is like a canvas for the imagination to create all sorts of explanations to relieve the tension caused by not knowing if there is a threat in the "darkness". 

    This effect tends to be especially strong in us with a Christian upbringing, since we have been taught that there is an all-good and all-loving God that has consciously planned and created the universe. In our minds this causes us to feel conflicted, since there still is all kinds of evil and suffering in the world.

    How can absolute evil come from something that is absolutely good? This leaves a powerful void of not knowing around evil and suffering in the world, and all sorts of attempts are made to get relief from this anxious state. This void is often filled with the character of a demon, or even ultimately Satan himself as that which must be the source of all evil, and must be behind everything that is bad in the world. But ultimately there is no Satan as an entirely independent identity, Satan is a scapegoat, a projection canvas that has been collectively imagined to bring coherence and relief from this cloud of not knowing. It is still experienced by people because the belief is at such a fundamental level in the mind, so it is not entirely imaginary like what we call a delusion, since many people do experience it and report similiar things. But this mostly springs from a shared worldview that tends to generate the same representation in multiple peoples minds. 

    Basically it is the same phenomenon that happens when we fear darkness or the unknown in general, we imagine all sorts of monsters and dangers lurking in the shadows. It is not that they are necessarily there, yet we don't want to turn on the lights because we think the monsters (which we have imagined) will be there, see us and destroy us completely. Again, they do have a sort of "reality", since it is a collectively shared representation/imagination or "weakly objective". 

    So in a world of demons and monsters, in a world with a lot of unknown, we tend to find solace in the representations that present themselves as opposing forces to the darkness. We find true relief through Jesus or whoever, yet we also simultaneously accept that the monsters really are real and that we must resist them since they want to destroy us.

    So, it seems to me the leap into the arms of God or Jesus (as representations that oppose dark/evil) brings true and deep relief, at least temporarily, but ultimately it still keeps the war going, it evades a fully lucid confrontation with the Absurd. Through facing the Absurd, (the seeming contradiction of good/evil ) I believe there lies an opportunity for understanding, for wholeness and for true peace. 

     

    Reminds me of a few quotes:

    "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." 

    --------------------------------

    "Recognition of the reality of evil necessarily relativizes the good, and the evil likewise, converting both into halves of a paradoxical whole."

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    "It is a bewildering thing in human life that the things that cause the greatest fear is the source of the greatest wisdom."

    -Carl Jung

     

     

  20. Posted · Edited by TheAlchemist

    Without progressive taxation of the rich you end up with increasing economic inequality in society, which has many downstream harmful effects, for example reduction in social cohesion and social mobility and an increase in polarization. You might get economic growth in the short term by pleasing the rich, but in the long run the stability and resilience of the society suffers, and ultimately the economy suffers too.

     

  22. Posted · Edited by TheAlchemist

    99% of the 300 missiles/drones were shot down by Israeli air-defence, and obviously Iran would have known this before the attack. It would actually make sense for Iran to shoot empty shells towards Israel, knowing that they will get shot down.

    Iran mass produces one of the world's cheapest and versatile drones, so it's not a big investment to appease parts of the population that demanded a counter-attack. 

    Screenshot_20240414-115721.jpg

    Interesting to see how Israel will react. In a way they got their "win" already with their air defence systems being so robust, so there is no humiliation or real shock element here that would rile up support for a strong counter attack in the population. Although with the current government you never know what might happen..

    Curious to hear from any Israeli people on the forum, how is this attack being perceived among your friends/families and in the media? Is it perceived as a win because of the air defence being so successful, or is there a sense of anger or desire for retaliation because it sure was quite a large scale attack in many ways?

     

  23. Posted

    58 minutes ago, Razard86 said:

    Good post, but to answer your question. God in the form of human does not understand what is going on, But God knows everything.

    God is everything and nothing at the same time, and is aware of everything going on because it is the very unfolding of what is going on.

    It is the fusion of being and knowledge so it knows everything as it's self.

    In fact God knows everything so much it wipes out a past and future. 

    And also... God is you.

     

    I appreciate the reply, and I think there is a lot of truth in it. Yet at the same time I am left wondering, what is the value of "being human" (if any) from that perception? I wonder if what you say could be interpreted by someone as a devaluation of the experience of being human. If I am God, I am not human. If I am nothing, I am also not human, (since we generally define human as something distinct and seperate from the rest of the world). While I am not being nothing and I am not being God, I am being human at this moment as a matter of appearance at the very least. 

    How do we take this perspective and affirm and rejoice the limited human experience in all its absurdity, instead of it being taken on as something that reduces our sense of agency or valuing of our condition?

    The qualitative, subjective experience of being human (even if it is only appearance), what value do you see in it? Is it a mistake? A misperception? In any way "lesser" than some other way or state of being? Is there something novel, something fresh, something unique in the experience of being a limited human? Something to celebrate here in limitation? How do you see it?

  24. Posted · Edited by TheAlchemist

    The modern spiritual, self-help and business gurus and celebrities are just new forms of the old Gods. People think these gurus and celebrities have all the answers and understand it all, and get upset when they find out they were flawed and fall short just like any other human.

     

    An image is projected onto these figures, that of a savior, a great leader, even a messenger of the "higher realms". Then when these people don't live up to the image, it often causes immense pain and frustration, and these figures are attacked as having "deceived" them. When really it was the deception that was truly desired by the follower, to bring coherence and relief in a world of unaswered questions. It's just the illusion of the guru that was shattered, which was in itself originally constructed by the follower to get relief. This loss obviously causes great pain and confusion, since so much hope was invested.

     

    People who have gone through a western education often are puzzled by how people could believe in silly things like Gods and angels and demons. But really that hasn't gone anywhere, those ideas have just taken on new forms. Forms that are taken as supremely real and that are adequately convincing in this time. In the world of the ancient greeks, the idea of Zeus or Afrodite playing around with humans was interely reasonable and rational. The stories were built around what made sense at the time.   

     

    For us the equivalent might be the "self-made" billionaire character, the spiritual or the self-help guru, the celebrity singer or any person that is put on a pedastal and idealized.  It doesn't seem that silly to us now, but I imagine future humans will look at such notions of these ideal human beings as equally silly as we see the notion of big evil monsters lurking in the oceans. 

     

    This is not to say that we can't learn from spiritual teachers, religions, philosophers, self-help teachers or even musicians and celebrities; just that if we want to escape the cycle of excitement and disappointment, we must stop putting any of these people on a pedastal as characters. People will always fall short of that ideal, and maybe there is no perfect teacher. Maybe even God itself doesn't fully know what's going on.

     

    This perspective, far from being depressing can truly put us back on the drivers seat and can empower us to be active agents in the world, not throigh chasing some ideals or running away from hell, but from a place of not-knowing why it's all happening and embracing that. Maybe even God doesn't know what the heck is going on, maybe he needs the human consciousness to figure this shit out somehow. 

  25. Posted

    Sounds very interesting. I'm in Finland and many of those alt-cannabinoids are basically legal since they aren't explicitly banned. But I guess nobody is having the balls to sell them here, at least yet.

    This sounds very much like something worth exploring, there are some strains of cannabis that activate and open the floodgates of insight like that for me, but it is often overshadowed by other more powerful effects. So, it sounds entirely plausible to me that there exist cannabinoids that really dial in some specific quality like that.