<<It could peel your brain off reality like an old bumper sticker.>> Funny, the PCP I was hustled was more body/sense trip than psychological. Almost an anti-ecstasy, per your description. Go figure street compounds.
Speed comes to my mind in peeling your brain off reality. Both, I believe are documented as actually, permanently changing brain structure.*tapped out on chemicals
Another thing the 60's were famous for, and barely here mentioned, was the incredible stupidity that passed for common sense. For example, if a 4way turns out bum, keep Doubling the dose! A good trip is inevitable and will wipe out the previous! If gamblers buy it, why shouldn't a desperate adolescent? 3 or 4 times doing that and it becomes hard to handle, wouldn't you say. One ends up with decades of 'basket~weaving~' before breaking even on that bet. Remember, drugs don't kill people, stupidity does.*sixties sociology fading to personal anecdotes
<<that I am my meat, and the "spirit" is a fiction, an evolutionary appendix of our brains. Mind you, this is my opinion, an article of faith>> Yes, separate from space is difficult, but separate from time is simply an unprovable article of faith, not answerable to correct or incorrect. Me, I prefer to keep an open mind, rather than definitively decide to reject. One can argue bad effect--crusades, ... but, well, Gordon Lightfoot said he trusts the Holy Rollers over the High Rollers. I've found this overwhelmingly true. If unprovable faith allows choice, then I would not disparage them. *little left to say on soul
<<I have no fear of genomancy.>> Nor I, as you've graciously noted. What I do fear, with good historical precedence, is the control, the course we will travel to the benefits. I see no authority who can lend reason or wisdom to the pursuit. The current authorities [business, government, multi-lateral agencies, personal self-control, ...] are callous to unintended effects. Who wouldn't bet a quarter to a dollar on an even chance? But who do YOU know who would bet all they had and could borrow against quadrupelling it on the same even chance? There are folks in positions of control who take that bet. Genomancy will make inevitable the 2nd bet. Inevitable will, therefore, be the gross unintended consequences. We won't even know till it has happened what the peril is. This genie is out of the bottle, and there is no way to put it back in. If I could, would I? I honestly don't know where my reason or feelings lay.
<<It may be like the Mandelbrot set. An awesomely complex and pretty pattern that can be generated anew the same way each time from an astoundingly simple set of equations. DNA might be like this. It sets the meat part of the human.>>Very nicely said, but limited in scope, I fear. <<Mandelbrot set>> = fractals?
<<I have not addressed social context - and this is a lot of who we are [snip]. Our experiences won't be dictated by the DNA - but I surmise our attitudes are beholden to our genomes - and thus the experiences of our children will have our new attitudes powerfully fed back into them.>> This is the expectation.
My mapping physical to intangible, is, I suspect, the goal that yields a clone, not a baby version, but identical. It will include brain chemistry, endrocine, and other systems, maybe down to muscles. *knowledge on genomancy fading
**I live for addressing social context.
**I believe science can and will do marvels. I am troubled, despite your poetic framing, that the suffering that will accompany getting these marvels will be needless and excessive. One solution so simple, but whose resistance is so strong that I am baffled, is to include the whole species, not just the civilized 1/4. Surely firing 1 cylinder of my riceburner 4 is an inefficient way to travel. Similarly using the fraction of human minds we do is inefficient. And somehow, a concerted human effort is not going to produce as much science pollution, just as 4 cylinders produces less than 1.
**Have you Hubris? Sure, just as the last paragraph displays my Bleeding Heart. If the 'darndest things' meant more to me than tragedy, I'd be on the Disney site. Actually, I think we [ok, me] more worship and follow those with tragic flaws, than rise/fall to that extreme.
***<<Pi-it is absorbing the experience it makes>><<LRR-The "I" just isn't there sometimes, not even as a spectator>> I used the word absorb and specifically not spectate. An alternate explanation: The undectablity of the I, to outside, or inside, observation does not deny its continued existence. But, unless the will is successful in dramatically changing the 'returnee' before he can recover his I, his I remains, to be rediscovered, and eventually is. Yes, the experience itself is an effect and that can create observable discrepancies before and after. A Rationale for an alternate explanation: As I followed another follower of your Psycedelia, MSD, as I vaguely recall, [how embarrassing a name in this discussion] it became clear he had a point beneath the surface. If we are our body, as you suggest, and I concur with a different slant, then no experience that doesn't destroy our body can destroy our intangibles. What is true at the 'atomic level', normalcy, is true at the subatomic, madness. The singularity of consciousness creation happens but Once per Body. This is your own philosophy. If I may be rudely blunt, your exuberance, emotional attachment, has left you in need of reweaving your philosophy. I suspect your reticence in speaking of my 'logic vs operating system' model, though still needing work, comes from this dichotomy within your own philosophy.
***Let me expand the theory. The mnemonic is a Mac. The hardware has undergone enough diagnostics to confirm it is in working order. You, the user, know what is 'working order' or should be, and the output your getting from your Mac is Not working right, is bad. You toss out applications, since a systemic problem. That leaves a problem in the IO subsystem. The hardware checks out. So, the problem lies in the operating system. Specifically, the coordination provided by the OS between parts.
The human madness version. The body works. [Hardware.] There is a knowledge, a logic, that life has to keep living. [Working order.] The madman knows something is wrong. [Bad output.] The knowledge of wrongness in the madman is a demonstration of working order by the inside 'logic' that ‘corresponds’ to the outside 'life logic'. The inputs: high emotions, old memories, intermittent contact with now; OR the outputs: non-sequential speech, idiosyncratic, non-common references, exaggerated affect--here are the problems. For example, a homeless, dumpster-diving, bizarrely appearing and talking madman finds a choice morsel in the dumpster, feels very good about garbage, remembers feeling very good at his child's birth, then goes to the street and says to a passerby how this filth, that drips down his chest unheeded, reminds him of his son. The passerby may reasonably think him a dangerous child killer. That misunderstanding occurred because his bad 'operating system', not his sane 'hardware', brought the good emotion to his good 'cpu', which correctly displayed it on his good 'monitor'. The OS delayed bringing the good perspective 'data' from the good 'hard drive', as requested by the good street 'application'.
Your friend in breakdown or those under drugs do not disappear, they are simply waiting to boot or reboot. They are working inside, just as it does outside--the life correspond the signals just aren't getting through in good time and good order.
End, finally. |
