by Jamie Wheal, 2021
Kerrbear's Reading notes
"What experience and history teach us is this: peoples and governments have never learned anything from history." - Georg Hegel
We all suffer from some version of the Edifice Complex, where the institutions that are most prominent in a given time and place also reflect our values.
The "centre" who cannot hold are those left hanging between polar extremes: the Fundamentalism of traditional religion (Meaning 1.0) on the Far Right, and the Nihilism of modern liberalism and material scientism (Meaning 2.0) on the Far Left. Our society no longer has a sense of the sacred; instead we are all scared. We are utterly faithless.
Begins with A Lexicon for the Eschaton
China has adopted the capitalism of the West without democracy: vertically integrated supply chains, predatory lending, and profit margins without the uppity citizenry, human rights, and elections.
We're slated for 1 billion climate refugees by 2050.
twenty-six people … own as much wealth as the poorer half of the world
We're not yet evolved for cooperative harmony, we're evolving toward it. Typically we cooperate with those with whom we share DNA.
Tell the story of the way things have always been, and you own the high ground to also frame how (and why) things are the way they are now, and what we should all do next.
Tribalism is destiny. Humanism is optional. Vitalism (pro-all-life) is aspirational.
The Dark Triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) are present on both sides of the polar divide, seeking to smash the system as either Nazis or hackers, Blockchain futurists or gun-toting patriots.
fear or love win-lose vs. win-win for some of us or all of us
The purpose is to tune the game so everyone can keep playing it indefinitely.
To reach together higher ground to vault into prosperity from depravity we can link up in chains of familiar same and risk dragging down those we love with the weight of our fear of those we don't know… yet or we can hunker down on all fours, a stable base to mount and be mounted eat and be eaten to rise together by piling up
Both germs and memes spread virally.
Plastic is sinking and concentrating in the deep. Plastic Ocean, Synthetic Seas.
Memes propagate non-locally according to entangled nodes unseen. See also Morphic Resonance.
Advanced species don't colonize outer space—an idea they'd find archaic—but instead colonize inner space… Evolutionary processes in our universe might lead all advance civilizations towards the same ultimate destination; one in which we transcend out of our current space-time dimension into virtual worlds of our own design.
Cf. Nick Bostrom's Simulation Argument
Perhaps we are beginning to map hyperspace with DMT and similar explorationsn of inner space.
Hamlet paraphrased: "There are more things on heaven and earth than we dreamt of in our philosopheez". Which could be taken to mean that ignorance outpaces understanding, intuition, knowledge, or even imagination.
Our desperate attempts to make sense of information surplus/overload are making us crazy. Flooded with dopamine thanks to our overactive amygdala alarm clocks that go off whenever we sense threats to our existence in news stories from around the globe, we are susceptible to apophenia: the tendency to perceive patterns and meaning among otherwise unconnected events and facts.
Aberrant interactions between dopaminergic reward systems, a dysfunctional amygdala, and the neurohormone oxytocin engender a neural milieu that improperly assigns emotional salience to environmental stimuli. This deficit in turn results in aberrant social cognition tha tmay ultimately lead to misguided social responses, from withdrawal and isolation to suspicion and paranoia. — Andrew Rosenfeld, "Oxytocin, Dopamine, and the Amygdala: A Neurofunctional Model of Social Cognitive Deficits in Schizophrenia"
Everyone isn't marching happily along the conveyor belt of Progress.
We need to reinvent religion: recipes for reunion, rituals, and rites of return.
Meaning 3.0 must be broadly relevant and locally adaptive. So we borrow key qualities from Meaning 1.0 (Faith) and Meaning 2.0 (Modernism).
| Ecstasis | Catharsis | Communitas |
|---|---|---|
| Beyond | Becoming | Belonging |
| Inspiration | Healing | Connection |
| Sexuality | Addiction | Local |
| Psychedelics | Illness & Injury | Virtual |
| Music & Dance | Existential Despair | Spiritual |
| Prayer & Religiosity | Bankruptcy | Marital |
| Intensive Meditation | Divorce | Romantic |
| Respiration | Near-Death Experience | Familial |
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Albert Camus, "The Myth of Sisyphus"
We seek peak experiences and flow states.
… the whole effort of humankind through millennia of history has been to capture these fleeting moments of fulfillment and make them a part of everyday existence. Csikszentmihalyi
Without some way to wipe the slate clean, our lives become mired. When we have cultural processes that hold us up while we suffer, we can transform that suffering into something profound.
We need (rituals of) forgiveness.
Grief is praise because it is the natural way love honors what it misses. Martin Prechtel, Mayan elder poet
Isolation is the root cause of and contributor to alcohol and drug addiction, passive aggression, depression, anxiety. Yet we are still ashamed of feeling lonely. At the center of our loneliness is our innate desire to connect.
We have evolved to be members of a tightly knit community.
Group flow is up to three times as rewarding as an isolated peak experience.
… any cultural movement that threatens to upset the existing status quo is typically squashed by those looking to maintain business as usual.
- the Cathars, a mystical sect that thrived in medieval France and Italy- whirling dervishes of Sufism- Tantric Shaivist sects in India (Brahman's Dream)- Shakers, Quakers, and Mormons
The counter to this predictable suppression of transformational movements is … [to][w]idely share recipes that enhance individual and communal sovereignty, using ingredients that are easily accessible.
Like Be Here Now or The Anarchist's Cookbook, we now have The Alchemist's Cookbook to help us. "Seed a revolution, don't lead a revolution."
Respiration, embodiment, sexuality, substances, and music supporting inspiration, healing, and connection.
| Archetype | Hedonist | Conformist | Purist |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nickname | Lizard Brain Fuck Monkey | Straight-Edge | Crypto-Puritan |
| Core Identity | Sensation Seeker | Rule Follower | Identity Protector |
| Catch Phrase | If it feels good, do it. | If it's what the Dr. ordered. | My body is my temple |
| Missing Link | No brakes | No steering | No gas |
| Substance of Choice | Coke, Bubbly, Chronic | Ambien, Adderall, Alcohol | Wheatgrass, elixir, cacao |
| Achilles Heel | Addiction | Compliance | Pride |
| Resistance | You're not the boss of me. | Who would I be if I did that? | I don't need crutches |
| Core Value | Full range of experience | Advice of experts | Sanctity of mind and body |
| Naturally | Ecstatic | Communal | Cathartic |
Begin with breath
use circular breathing to access ancestor-mind pulse while inhaling, consciously vibrating the nasal cavity 15-30% more oxygen, 15x nitric oxide (super calmer)
5 inhale, 5 hold, 5 exhale, 5 hold then 10 each, then 15, then 20
10 exhale, 2 hold, 4 inhale or 2 exhale : 1 inhale = 2x hale
soft gaze, lightly humming finish inhale with a sniff for nitric oxide boost
aka snoring? aka circular breathing
aka pursed lip exhalation
aka holotropic breathing
The mind is a nest of fears; to be mindful is to be fearful. Mindlessness is fearlessness.
aka Laughing Gas
So what would it look like to combine all of the respiratory practices we've just explored into one, integrated Vital Respiration Protocol?
- Warm up with box breathing to increase your CO<sub>2</sub> tolerance and diaphragmatic control.- Master the free diver's vagal breathing to lower your heart rate. Chill your face for the mammalian dive reflex.- Blow off excess CO<sub>2</sub> with Grof's holotropic hyperventilating.- Supersaturate our red blood cells by pre-breathing pure oxygen.- Practice gas-assisted static apnea with 70/30 nitroxygen or 30/70 carboxygen.
Does BDSM make us mentally healthier? On the OCEAN scale, BDSM Players tend to be less neurotic, more open, more conscientious, and more extroverted, and less agreeable.
An example of the folly of thinking Humans are exceptional
We appear to be unique in the animal kingdom in discovering you can hot-wire pain to experience pleasure and even healing.