http://ranprieur.com/#9a417fe513f58988c3b5b1e84cfc57397194a79b 2020-03-03T15:10:04Z Ran Prieur http://ranprieur.com/ ranprieur@gmail.com http://ranprieur.com/#440b67d51556589fd5403caeb5fbf3732cd8a0b0 2020-03-03T15:10:04Z March 3. So, coronavirus. This article, You're Likely to Get the Coronavirus, explains how it hits the sweet spot for pandemics: mild enough to escape containment, but still 20 times deadlier than the flu.

But I want to go back to this article, also from the Atlantic, Coronavirus and the Blindness of Authoritarianism. Back in December, Chinese medical workers tried to warn the public, they were punished for "rumors", and the virus was allowed to spread unchecked for another three weeks.

I don't think the west is immune from this. It's what we call "politics", as in, "I hate all the politics at my workplace." Politics is like corruption, in that individuals are putting themselves ahead of the common good, but it's milder. Corruption is when individuals are cynical about the system, and break the rules to increase their wealth and power. Politics is when individuals believe in the system, and work within the rules to preserve their status.

You can't stop politics with surveillance. In some future pseudo-utopia, there may be no corruption at all, and politics brings the whole thing down. Like coronavirus, its mildness makes it more dangerous.

I've been watching the TV show Hunters. It's about Nazi hunters, but it's set in a comic book alternate universe where ex-Nazis, decades after the war, are still fanatical ideologues plotting to exterminate Jews. In Hollywood, everything that's wrong with the world is caused by Voldemorts.

In real life, there are no Voldemorts, and most of what's wrong with the world is caused by Ron Weasleys: large groups of nice people who veer off into terrible behaviors because they want to be liked, and feel good about themselves.

Going back to this post about individuals as neurons in social brains, I think the quality of individuals that makes a society healthy, is not empathy, or competence, but the ability to tolerate discomfort: to listen to things that make you uncomfortable, and say things that make others uncomfortable.

In our culture, are we getting better at that skill, or worse?

]]> http://ranprieur.com/#be130c23eedf0dad73995d6c554f4ba925c16f4b 2020-03-01T13:50:09Z March 1. The weird collapse subreddit is off to a good start. Here's a breaking the ice thread.

Yesterday, leap year day, I took my first serious dose of mushrooms, five dry grams on an empty stomach, in late morning, in quiet darkness. Even on smaller doses, I find that quiet darkness is necessary, because the mushroom launch is so challenging. An LSD launch is a tease, with everything gradually getting more interesting -- but mushrooms are a gut punch. You're nauseated and tiny stimuli are overwhelming.

The peak was underwhelming. I didn't encounter any entities, I got nowhere near ego death, and I didn't even hallucinate, beyond snatches of involuntary daydreaming. At the edge of sleep, I asked the mushrooms to heal my anxiety, a realistic request, and they told me I must carry my anxiety with me, as a fish habitat.

Finally I got tired of lying in bed, vaped some weed, and went outside. That's when it got good. Mushrooms and LSD both enhance nature, but the aesthetics are completely different. On LSD, nature is heaven -- gnatclouds are companies of angels, everything looks like Dr Seuss, I'm walking on the sun.

On mushrooms, I'm walking on the moon. Terence McKenna uses the word "peculiar", which is the best word, but still doesn't describe it. Shapes are crystalline and sophisticated. Nature is fairyland, and trees are literal fairies. I could sense their personalities: stodgy pines, surly willows, elegant aspens. Not only is every tree a person, but every branch of every tree is a person. Whatever you're looking at is completely important -- but also completely unimportant, because if a branch dies, that life just moves to somewhere equally good.

I wonder how subjective this is, or how suggestible. If I say, LSD is like this video, and mushrooms are like this video, other people might say, "Yes, I've noticed that too," or, "I didn't notice that until you said it," or, "No, for me it's completely different."

I read about a study, maybe in 90's, of groups of friends in high school. They found wide differences, within groups, of every variable except one: kids in the same group all used the same drugs. Now I'm wondering, in the future when psychedelics are normal, if humans will form tribes based on shared psychedelic experiences.

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