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Comment by zwkrt | Hacker News Reader

I have only taken psychadellic mushrooms on two occasions. But on both of those occasions I found that they clued me into the fact that all the various mental abstractions we have built for ourselves in life and society are not necessarily 'wrong', but definitely questionable. The first time I got the very intense feeling that money, societal roles, and national borders are not real and are in fact only collective delusions. The feeling was so strong and impactful it has shaped the course of my life henceforth.

The second time I had an infinite sadness for my middle-manager boss at a tech company because I realized how he must lead a totally unrewarding and incredibly fear-laden life.

It doesn't really surprise me that they are illegal.

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The first time I took psilocybin -- it had been a fairly low dose (~1.0g I think) and it kicked in during the middle of me trying to wire up a PS3 to an A/V Receiver box and a stereo system, and a TV.

And all of a sudden I felt strangely, and began to giggle, which turned into uncontrollable, uproarious laughter.

My partner asked me if I was okay, and I said:

"Absurd. It's all so ABSURD. Look at me, trying to put the 'right' wires into the 'right' holes on these boxes of metal and plastic. What the hell even ARE humans?"

I thought about our laws, borders, our giant pieces of metal we shuttle around on strips of asphalt we've poured, making sure to carefully follow all the Big Metal Box Driving regulations.

If you could take a step back from modern human life and look it "for the first time", like a child -- you would fall over laughing too.

> If you could take a step back from modern human life and look it "for the first time", like a child -- you would fall over laughing too.

Check out the comic Strange Planet, which has a silly, alien-based take on this. Human society really is absurd

I've done it three times, and the last time I went outside while high (to acquire a donut) when I thought I was coming down from the trip (as soon as I stepped outside I that wasn't the case) and it was really eye-opening for me.

It was on the edge of comfort, I was paranoid people would notice I was high, because I realized that I didn't have all the mental and emotional barriers we normally put up when we interact with the outside world.

It truly felt like there was way less stuff between the outside world and my consciousness making all sensations and feelings way more intense and beautiful, but it also gave me an acute feeling of fragility, like I was very breakable because I was so 'open'.

I want to do it again when I'm less stressed, but I think I will take a slightly lower dose next time.

Try it with a predetermined intention. Something like “explore”, “heal”, “connect with the universe”. Mindset and setting are key drivers for psychedelic experiences.

It can be helpful to do this with someone you highly trust and is sober. If you are ever worried, you can ask them if you are doing anything weird and they can reassure you. Or if you find yourself in a situation you dont want to deal with, you dont have to. ie: you get food to buy, but are too anxious to interact with someone and actually pay, or whatever.

Disclaimer: I haven’t taken any psychedelics.

> all the various mental abstractions we have built for ourselves in life and society are not necessarily 'wrong', but definitely questionable.

If I may interject here: The mental models we, both as a society and individuals, operate on are at best incomplete and at worst inaccurate. But then again, humanly-speaking there are no and there will never be a complete or accurate nor true or even correct model — it is by design. And the most obvious (inward) reason is: cognitive biases (and therefore, evolution by extension).

That said, while on a micro scale it might seem imperfect/suboptimal, on a macro scale it’s actually beneficial because that’s (the imperfection) what actually allows us as a group of individuals to evolve and adapt.

(I haven't taken any psychedelics either.)

I think in GP's observations, "collective delusions" is the key phrase. I actually had this realization some time ago - as my mind accepted and internalized that all these mental abstractions are indeed collective delusions. We learn to intuitively expect the world to work in a certain way, but it only happens because almost everyone expects that too. Money is often referred to such a concept: it has value only as long as people believe it has value. That $10 in your pocket is only worth $10 if roughly everyone is willing to accept it in exchange for something, on the expectation that they'll be able to later exchange it with someone else. Rule of law is similar - it prevents people from seeking justice through violence, but only as long as everyone believes the law mostly works.

(This is why I consider attacks on public trust as an existential threat to society.)

I'm guessing shrooms let GP have this realization on overdrive, hitting directly and viscerally. I conclude that while not strictly necessary, psychedelics may be a fast track for one to do mental leaps, if somewhat at random.

I didn’t say that I still believed the things I felt on mushrooms, only that they impacted me. I still buy pizzas with money, but I now look at people with lots of money and boring/stressful lives the way people look at animals in the zoo—with a kind of half-hearted interest in watching them but also with a great sadness for them.

My man I hear what you’re saying but take some mushrooms and then come back around to this topic again

Honest, but somewhat pointed question.

Why are you using "collective delusions" as synonymous with social construct. My initial reaction is that the delusion was the other way around.That you were delusional (only while on mushrooms, I mean no offense) thinking social pacts were a sign of collective delusion.

I think generally the human population is well aware that these pacts can be broken at anytime. Armies can cross borders (imaginary lines), someone can take your personal property. But we use power to punish rule breakers.

Tomato, tomato, I guess. I think on mushrooms “because that’s just how it is” is a completely unconvincing argument. Which it is normally as well, but adults seem to kind of just go with it.

I've also taken mushrooms twice and in both cases was overwhelmed with empathy for another person's existence. One was a homeless person I walked by and another was a teacher I had met that night.

They definitely pry open mental models your mind has trained itself to no longer see (probably because it's too overwhelming to experience them at all times).

Actually the third person I felt a unique depth of empathy for was myself, and that experience was pivotal in my life.

I think one of the structural issues with legalizing psychedelics is that Western cultures don’t have support systems to help people integrate or even handle some of these experiences.

Case in point, Amsterdam consequently banning magic mushrooms in 2008: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dutch-mushroom-idUSTRE4AR...

I don’t know if there is an industrialized society on the planet which can integrate these types of experiences. Capital and spirituality* do not mix; science and spirituality* do not mix.

*where “spirituality” is defined as knowing that your values and ethics come from some other place than your faculty for logical reasoning or from economic utility, however you choose to conceptualize that

I don't think that's necessarily true. Trade and exchange are just emergent properties of human experience. Every society has some form of it.

If we could infuse our current economy of capital with "psychedelic values", there's no reason it can't be integrated. Terence McKenna pointed out that capitalism is a novelty-expanding engine. If we can use capitalism as a tool to build better societies, why not?

The pipeline of logistics and labor that keeps us alive is amazing, and worth preserving. We just need to introduce a different method of thought.

You know that you can buy magic mushrooms almost anywhere in Amsterdam today right?

Legally. In shops.

I think only psychedelic truffles are legal. Magic mushrooms, sold in smartshops, have been illegal since 2008. Some smartshops may ignore it though.

> Money, societal roles, and national borders are not real and are in fact only collective delusions.

Because they are. Anyways, I love psychedelics. They dissolve boundaries, they allow you to peek behind the curtain. They show you about cultural illusions and that culture is not your friend, and the like.

Money is just a way of keeping track of what fraction of future output of our civilisation we decide to award to each individual and entity.

And national borders are just lines in the sand that most powerful AIs in the world, called armies and built out of bureaucracy, machines and people drew between themselves to share resources and people they exploit between themselves so they can continue exploitation and hoarding of most dangerous tech without major conflicts, which they learned in two wars, are not good for them, because they became too strong for their own good already.

And societal roles nowadays are like red Santa Claus. Nearly pure marketing vaguely drawing from preexisting superstitions.

I can't tell you anything about your middle manager but empathy gives you feelings of other people as you imagine them, not necessarily accurate feelings of other people.

These are insights you can get while sober.

True, I ended up throwing about $500 from the top of a building on one mushroom trip...

For sure. Money, our roles and borders are nothing more than collective agreements on how we wish to see “reality”. Money is really just energy when you get down to it.

The hallucinogens reinforced your left-leaning beliefs and opinions. There's nothing wrong with that but it's not exactly revalatory knowledge that will be shared by right-leaning individuals such as myself.

Indeed I have taken hallucinogens and have had no such feelings, to the contrary I have leaned even more to the right after having taking them (although I attribute no causal role). It did produce an appreciation of the numinous, alongside the hallucinations, but that's about it.

Actually my thoughts I would have described at the time as being very conservative, albeit along the libertarian bent. I believed that there should be no intervening forces in the world to stop people from freely acting.

Apologies for the mischaracterization

It's pretty sad that people feel the need to align everything along right vs left.

I have a friend who reacts to psychedelics like this, you are the only other person I've encountered (including reading forums) who has this reaction. It seems to be very rare, I wonder if there's an underlying cause or if it's just one of those things.

Maybe right leaning people tend to self select out of trying psychedelics, everyone I know in my personal life who partakes is left leaning

Did you move far enough to the right that you'll be putting yourself in prison soon for that drug offense?

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