Hacker News Reader

Comment by scottlocklin | Hacker News Reader

>I think it's no question that psychedelics are mind opening.

Having used more than my share: there's plenty of question that psychedelics are mind opening. Just because something feels profound doesn't mean it is. People in the 1800s used to think nitrous and ether sniffing was profound.

You'd think after all these years of people experiencing profundity there would be some great work of art or philosophy that people are able to take back to reality from their drug experiences, but as far as I can tell it's just burn out "trippin balls" stories, people losing their minds in various unedifying ways, and weirdos like Kerry Mullis talking to aliens.

View on HN

Isn't there some great deal of art coming from psychedelic experiences. Many bands of the sixties and seventies or art of Alex Grey. Shamans had an very important role in groups and tribes for a long time. Religious revelations could have been results of altered states of consciousness (eg moses 10 commandments).

On a more personal and emotional note I always had the feeling when tripping of great profundity but being unable to take the wisdom to the other side. I guess I would make be a bad shaman.

Yeah, that's kind of my point. Alex Gray and Deep Purple aren't exactly Vermeer and Mozart.

If psychedelics are all that profound, rather than just a drug producing chemical simulacrums of profundity, you'd have better examples than these.

Aren't they in a way the Mozarts of their time? I'm not sure what you expect and demand of psychedelics. When will be something profound enough for you? For many it was and is.

>Aren't they in a way the Mozarts of their time?

Absolutely not. Avro Part and György Ligeti are the Mozarts of their time. And they were very, very far from being Mozart.

I expect and demand that drugs which people tout as some amazing breakthrough in human consciousness demonstrate something beyond "I thought it was cool." If something you can buy for $4 in pill form really creates higher states of consciousness, and the words "higher states of consciousness" actually means something, you'd expect there to be 1000 Mozarts by now, rather than ... dipshits saying Iron Butterfly's drum solo is, like, totally cool man.

It's all very subjective what you state.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com