Ran Prieur http://ranprieur.com/#9a417fe513f58988c3b5b1e84cfc57397194a79b 2017-02-03T15:30:07Z Ran Prieur http://ranprieur.com/ ranprieur@gmail.com February 3. http://ranprieur.com/#6b85e32c8830034da15c8618f8b9157c2b128587 2017-02-03T15:30:07Z February 3. For the weekend, druuuugs. I'm taking a break from cannabis, partly inspired by this dark Reddit thread from earlier this week: What's it like to be on a hard drug like meth, heroin, pcp, etc? Of course weed is much more benign -- you can't overdose, it doesn't permanently harm adults, it's not physically addictive -- but mentally it's the same sort of thing: divine grace that carries a price.

They call it "being high" and "coming down" but for me it feels like the opposite. Being sober is like skimming across a still ocean on a catamaran -- everything is fast, sharp, clean, even a bit bleak. Then a good dose of THC is like putting on scuba gear and diving to the bottom. (My favorite song down there happens to be called A Watery Down.) It reminds me of the Shakespeare verse:

Full fathom five thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made
Those are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange

There are treasures in the deep that you'll never find on the surface. Like a fractal, everything unfolds with more beauty the closer you look. On marijuana I'm a better person -- happier, more playful, more perceptive, with enough social intelligence to understand a subtext-heavy show like Mad Men. In a few sessions last spring I gained more self-knowledge than in the whole rest of my life. I see connections, and I feel connected.

Typically I'll do only one vape bowl per day, maybe two bowls several hours apart, or one dose of homemade edibles. The second day is often better than the first, and the third day can be almost as good. Around the fourth day I mostly just feel numb, I'm not finding anything of real value, and my body is protesting the constant thirst and deepening tiredness. So I come up to the surface, and then it's like having the bends. I can get stuff done (including posting here) but I'm irritable and unmotivated, and the only thing I look forward to is sleep.

For the last few weeks, as soon as I feel normal again, I've been going back down for more sunken treasures, and lately I've been doing creative work that's better than anything I could do sober. Last weekend as a daily warmup I did a trilogy on Picbreeder: Wizard, Shaman, and Demon. It's like having a really good job, but I'm feeling worn out from spending all my time either under the ocean or in the compression tank, and I need a "vacation".

This is the four week schedule I'll be trying next, or something close to it: 3 days on, 4 days off, 3 days on, 4 days off, 3 days on, 11 days off, and maybe it will be like traveling around the ocean to dive in different places.

]]> February 1. http://ranprieur.com/#d4e040c14e9a1401aad8be66a19b98ecee639a23 2017-02-01T13:10:10Z February 1. It's strange that Donald Trump was not anti-immigrant until he ran for president. Did he keep it secret all those years because he doesn't like to say controversial stuff that will get him in trouble? Was he cynically pandering to his base, and after he no longer needed their votes, he burned a lot of political capital to give them what they wanted that he didn't really care about? The only thing that makes sense is that Trump has been possessed by his followers -- or by the worst impulses of some of them.

Yesterday a reader sent me this John Robb post, Trump's Rollback of the Neoliberal Market State. Robb frames Trump's cultural agenda, closing borders and locking down human identity into fixed groups that are at war with each other, as the end of "cultural neoliberalism". That makes it sound like tolerance, inclusion, free movement, and mutable personal identity are just a blip in history, when really that's how the nice cultures have always been. It had nothing to do with global corporate rule until Bill Clinton and Tony Blair combined the two things in the 90's -- the biggest blunder the left has made since revolutionary communism.

The culture that has possessed Trump is also very old -- it's the compulsion of enraged monkey tribes to fling shit at their enemies. This release of primal energy might feel exciting, but this is seriously ugly, and I have no idea how big the fire will get before it burns itself out.

What we have to do is simple but not easy: protect and grow a culture of peace and openness and friendly curiosity, through the collapse of growth-based economics, and into whatever economic system comes next. Here's a song about it: the future's in your lap, so Keep It Warm.

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