How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later, Philip K. Dick

I mentioned an author using a fictional society's phrasing to influence that society's thought process on ownership. It was relevant to what I was commenting to.

Please do share more about this "stupid idea" regarding "words shape thought"; as you say, I seem smart enough to share and repeat something stupid so I must be able to understand you further.

Steven Pinker coined the term "Euphemism Treadmill".

https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/1994_04_03_newyo...

It's certainly understandable that it's a concept that writers would gravitate to.

almost like the word itself doesn’t matter, but the meaning of that word? words don’t have a fixed meaning

It's not a simple cause effect relationship, but if you want a real world example of how words can shape thought and have real effects on the world, look up "death tax" Vs "succession tax".

Just because PKD said he hated LSD doesn't mean it didn't influence his writing. The peaks of many of his best works seem like bad acid trips, though the paranoia that can come from heavy amphetamine and other drug abuse could certainly have had an influence as well.

Anyway, I'm not sure how trustworthy PKD's accounts of his own drug use are.

+1 for Ubik. It's really the quintessential example of his reality bending core theme. Everytime you think you've got a handle on what's happening, he pulls the rug out from under you, all the way to the end. Some of his other books try to do the same thing, but tie things up too nicely (like Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said).

I took two tries to get into Transmigration of Timothy Archer. What got me through the second time was finding out that it was a fictionalized portrait of a real and fascinating person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Pike

I also just liked reading Dick's descriptions of the Bay Area.

if we’re ranking stuff, Ubik is definitely in the top 3. I was strictly talking about the 2 3 74 phase and all the works that came from that. In a pure PKD fashion the Three Stigmata was written way before that.

He also predicted micro transactions in Ubik. Want to take a shower? Deposit 10 credits. Want to leave your apartment? Deposit 5 credits.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the basis for Blade Runner, is really a fantastic novel too. It has been overshadowed by the film, but it’s prediction that organic life would become a status symbol as it was destroyed replaced by Capitalist simulacra seems especially relevant today. I think about it all the time when I see Instagram influencers with hobby farms or children playing Pokémon during our ongoing mass extinctions.

Don’t know if you ever read any of his non-SF stuff, but it’s worth a pop - Confessions of a Crap Artist and Mary and the Giant stand out as the most interesting to me. Both follow the same vein as his SF work, insofar as he takes a reasonable premise (mid-century America in this case), strips it to its symbols, and then parades them in front of you as a banal pastiche which improbably anneals into tantalising insight of the mindsets, wants and desires of the characters, who are transparent avatars of their culture. Mary, for instance, could almost be a piece of paper with “MARY” printed on it, but through that empty vessel one understands the thingness of the characters’ perceptions.

it depends. It captures really well the experience of a bad trip (spoiler alert: I don’t think that anything that happens after Leo meets Palmer actually happens and it’s just Leo tripping hard)

Dude read the first paragraph of "Call of Cthulu" by HP Lovecraft.

Unfortunately that ship has sailed for us, there is no going back all the way..

But you should take comfort in that you're not alone.

I have a lot I'd like to share with you, would you be into having a virtual cup of tea or coffee?

I've been through some very similar stuff. It was two years after "I" was blown to pieces before I had really integrated these strong pangs of anxiety, memories that I was nothing at all and that ultimately reality is terrifyingly absurd. It's been a long process of learning that these pangs are important learning experiences, that they are fuel for compassion for others, that curiosity and awareness transform them into something else... etc. etc. down the rabbithole of self-care for the unwilling mystic.

If you're interested in what I did with all that since then, I'd be happy to chat more and share what I've learned, where I'm at, and where I'm headed. Seconded on the cup of virtual coffee, /u/artsyca, although of course I'm perfectly happy not to crash y'all's party.

Yes, some kind of de-conditioning and "seeing the world with fresh eyes" has often been attributed to the psychedelic experience.

I'd take it all with a grain of sand, however. Just because what one experiences on psychedelics might seem "more real than real" doesn't mean it actually is. Some have described psychedelics as superplacebos.. people can be very suggestible in such states, and are prone to believing what they want to believe.

May I recommend a movie directed by Linklater called Waking Life.

> Waking Life is a 2001 American experimental philosophical adult animated docufiction film written and directed by Richard Linklater. The film explores a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of reality, dreams and lucid dreams, consciousness, the meaning of life, free will, and existentialism.[3] It is centered on a young man who wanders through a succession of dream-like realities wherein he encounters a series of individuals who engage in insightful philosophical discussions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waking_Life

You are very much not alone in feeling this. These last 4 years have only exacerbated that tinnitus of cognitive dissonance.

The "serenity prayer" is worth keeping in mind; surrender is a powerful tool.

sorry you are having a hard time. contrary to what one might believe you should be able to get an appointment with a therapist - remotely though - it should actually be easier now since a lot of people don’t like not_in_person therapy.

as a meta: i recommend the book “the power of now”. it sounds like pseudo selfhelp bullshit but at least for me it clicked beautifully - and it can be a really good initiation/transition to something more established like buddhism.

You might just be a philosopher in distress.

I’ve thought about this stuff for a long time - my grandmother started me, as a child, on the path of “why is that a cat? How do you know you’re not its dream?”, and introduced me to PKD, whose corpus I devoured the first time around while nine or ten.

I’ve seen the human world as absurdist comedy, blindfolded people shuffling around in a circle, for about as long as I can recall. It’s nonsense upon nonsense, forgotten meanings, wilful misinterpretations, and age-old traditions invented yesterday. Our meta-consciousness is senile and gibbering. Etymology provides a wonderful insight into just how screwed up we are - when you see meaning diverge, drift, and even invert across culture and language, you realise just how malleable the world, human reality, is, if you modify the symbol set.

When I first tried LSD in my late teens, it wasn’t so much “whoa, revelation!” as “yup, that looks about right”.

You can learn to live with the colourless pit of infinity hovering in your mind. You can even come to love it. You still need to do the human things, play the human game, but you now have the added perspective of understanding that there exist possibilities outside of the human game, ways of living divested of a lot of the meaningless crap. It can be advantageous, like being able to think in 3D in flatland.

I managed to stick it out as a “regular person” for about 15 years, working in an office, living in an apartment, buying stuff to try to pave over the infinity hole - but it just felt more and more wrong, like play-acting at life rather than living, like I was a sad little third-hand simulacra of a human being. Sad little robot, enter stage left, exit stage right. Didn’t fancy that role.

I live off grid now, and work with my hands, growing food, building structures and infrastructure, transforming my labour into a direct and tangible output - it has been massively helpful, as it lacks the layers and layers of abstraction that civilised life demands, and presents a clear, direct and straightforward reality.

I still sit here and think about it all, still sometimes get caught out by a nihilistic trap, but more generally have just come to appreciate existence and consciousness as the most brilliantly absurd thing possible. What a thing, to seem to be matter that thinks. Marvellous if real, marvellous illusion if not. A marvel, either way.

hahahaha. breaking news: pkd claimed that all his books are basically an expression of what he “sees” in alternate universes. so he saw himself more like a transmitter than a source. in his exegesis he goes back and reinterprets all his work through the valis filter. it’s nuts but beautiful in a poetic manner.

as for the pot healer? i think the book is dope and it’s up there in my top10.

PKD posited 50AD. The perennial philosophy posits there is only one moment. Hence, the quote included in my comment. The quote explains the connection.

PKD grazed the truth but fell short, and this is alright.

It can also be a nice bit of information for people to look into further, though :).

The more I meditate (13 years now), and the more 1/5/6 seem to be yes/no/yes. It is congruent with many meditators exerience and teaching, which of course could be influencing this conclusion, not to mention it's not measurable nor objective.

I'm not sure 2/3 are something we can ever answer.

And that spawns many interesting questions about the physical characteristics of cousciousness. Does it start and end? It is present spacially? If you don't need thought, do you need the brain to be conscious? Do you need neurons? Can something without it be conscious? Is there only one form of consciouness? Is it persistent? Is it a whole? It is homogenous? Is it something in itself, or an emerging phenomena? Does it have a support, or is it a support in itself?

Unfortunatly, people tend to immediatly reach for spiritual, religious or mystical answers to those.