White supremacist changes beliefs after taking MDMA for a study
insider.com
insider.com
I really hope that you never experience it yourself, and I respect your beliefs, but I'm convinced beyond a doubt that there is nothing in there that is not chemical.
When someone’s metaphysical soul passes on, what snapshot in time are someone’s memories plucked from their Alzheimer’s-riddled brain?
But you worded it in a way that placates the insanity and undermines any value of discourse.
We don't get to Truth by saying "Whatever you feel like believing is fine"....
Consciousness is in many ways an illusion, manifested as a result of complex chemical processes passed on from our predecessors and developed over the course of billions of years....
Just because you perceive yourself as having free will does not mean you actually do... See the recent post on this site about people getting convinced they committed a crime they not only were innocent of but had never even happened at all....
But you're right in that they depend on the mind being primary over the body.
This does not prove the non existence of an immortal soul† but proves that any effect metaphysical entities have on our observable (both inner and outer) behavior is heavily mediated by neurons.
† I mean this literally as I am not sure how to conceptualize the concept of existence for metaphysical entities
We are meat meacha controlled by pudding with rudimentary intelligence. This brings us great joy, especially when raising mini-mechs, but at the end of the day, we all end up rotting in the ground.
Sure to an outside observer we can be just a pile of molecular reactions responding to outside stimulus, but doesn’t that fall short of explaining your own consciousness that you are experiencing?
Just because you can explain things simply doesn’t mean it’s a complete description. “Simple” mechanisms give rise to complex behaviors.
But anyway, shouldn't it be considered good form to keep random unfalsifiable beliefs to oneself since they can't be part of a conversation on reality?
It's literally just magical thinking, no different than believing you were created by the spaghetti Monster...
> MDMA has, for instance, been used by the Taliban to channel connection to the divine during prayer chants, according to Nuwer.
Indeed, it would be very surprising if a drug consistently made its users' beliefs more accurate.
Nothing says "it doesn't work consistently" like MK-Ultra!
> But in the case of Brendan, he had recently been exposed as a white supremacist and lost his job when he was enrolled in the study. He was full of regret about getting caught out.
> 30 minutes after taking the MDMA pill, Brendan questioned: "Why am I doing this? Why am I thinking this way?" and wondered why he had jeopardized the relationships in his life.
Case study of one here, but MDMA can change your reference point for how you think about things that are connection related. He was already in crisis from losing his job and, likely, reputation. If I had to guess, Brendan realized humans are humans, and the future of humanity doesn't rely on abstract physical traits but on deeper things.
This is to say, I think they understand what many drug users do: the drug wasn't the difference; crisis was the difference and using the right tool led him out of that crisis. Think along the lines of, instead of this event being "the end" of Brendan (eg: losing his job and reputation) he now interprets it as a new beginning. The two discoveries together can chart a path forward.
The bit about the Taliban kind of reinforces this I think. Often the Taliban exploits people in crisis from my experience. They use the guiding during the drug to chart the user to a nationalist path.
> Nuwer pointed out that Brendan's "seemingly spontaneous change" appears to be an exception to the norm. MDMA releases the chemical oxytocin, which our bodies naturally produce. The chemical causes animals to fiercely love their own, but also protect them from others — which can mean a disdain for outsiders may actually increase.
I don't even know about this mess. Animals and humans are not the same when it comes to connection. Animals require domestication or some sort of symbiosis to cooperate while humans can do this with much more fluidity. I think this bit of data needlessly complicates what they observed with Brendan.
Future test recommendation: find a human in a moment of crisis (maybe need to be specific on what kinds) and administer a drug and therapy. Help them navigate said crisis and observe the results over the next 3 months, specifically in vectors of thought. You could even go as far as to map this progress to neurogenesis.
That's why I recommended what I did for a follow on study, because I didn't accept this as fact. Most of behavioral psychology, imo, is not fact based at this point.
In other words, his change in beliefs is a symptom. The root trigger is he changed his view of himself after taking MDMA. It's a subtle but important distinction.
And yet, I bet most of these people consider themselves both smart, and concerned about ~all important matters.
Humans are blessed with a higher level of communication, there's no reason to abuse it. There's no good reason to be lazy. There's no good reason to take pride in negligence.
Step up. Lean in. Or for the sake of truth and justice, just shut up*. We've got enough noise to have to contend with fools who effectively don't know green from yellow.
* Not you, but the collective of people who believe Orwellian newspeak-y speak it ok.
p.s. Hating haters isn't exactly clean and consistent either. But that's another chat for another day.
"White nationalist" overlaps with and kinda implies "white supremacist".
After all, the idea that whites should dominate is kinda hard to explain or logically justify without introducing the concept of superiority.
I don't think this distinction is unclear.
In and of itself, a racial nationalist's beliefs might be something close to "I prefer to live in a country with my own people."
In and of itself, a racial supremacist's beliefs might be something close to "My people are inherently superior and should rule over others."
Anyway, I'm mainly just interested in this person's starting point and the effect that his trip had on him, as well as calling out the media for not being precise about these issues. Nationalist and Supremacist are not synonyms: that's lazy click-baiting journalism.
Now I am not from the US so I won't comment about history, and I can fully believe that there is some link between being a white nationalist and believing one "race" to be superior to the others, but I do not believe that this is a reason enough to disqualify the idea.
If there were some white nationalist group that espoused moving to predominantly white countries (or really starting their own country [0]), while being completely tolerant of the domestic state of affairs and distancing themselves from those who seek to turn this has-always-been-diverse country into their desired ethnostate, then perhaps the distinction would be relevant. But lacking that, it's a distinction without a difference.
[0] I don't know that there are any countries that are predominantly "white" but not better defined by a more specific term. It would seem that "white" nationalism is itself the product of "miscegenation" between various traditional nationalities. Nobody really balks at "$traditionally_white_nationality pride", or even larger pan- terms like European or Slavic pride. It's the attempt to take credit for nothing more than a lighter skin tone that is the problem.
No, it is not. Populations naturally evolve, but they never spontaneously evolve to whatever your arbitrary definition of pure white is. Nobody is orchestrating this, and "white" people (quotes because that's quite a moving target) aren't going extinct. Low birth rates aren't replacement, and unless you want to blame our standard of living, they aren't genocide either.
I guess it'd be a more interesting question if you asked who caused the upcoming global climate refugee crisis.
Supremacism in this context means wanting your group to have control in a multiethnic state. It’s not intrinsically tied to questions of inherent superiority or global domination. So not that different from nationalism.
Racial nationalism (e.g. white nationalism) is an ideology that advocates a racial definition of national identity.
In other words, it endows one chosen race of immigrants with special qualities and status that makes it "superior" to others. And this special quality of "superiority" (skin color) is not earned but rather gifted.
Sounds kinda racist to me.
Racism doesn't require a sense of superiority, but rather a preference for race(s). I'm not offended that I can't get citizenship in China. Do you think they think they're better than you?
Yes and Hitler obviously preferred aryans --- but there is obviously more to the story.
"White nationalism" is clearly not merely a statement of preference. It is the belief and objective that white people should dominate society. Why? On what basis? Because Jesus was white (he wasn't)?
"White nationalism" is not about superiority --- it is just a "preference" for oppressing others in order to achieve dominance. Thanks for the clarification/word play.
That was not a rhetorical question.
> Yes and Hitler obviously preferred aryans --- but there is obviously more to the story.
True. There are different levels of racism. Some are enough to maintain an ethnicity, and others go way beyond that.
> "White nationalism" is not about superiority --- it is just a "preference" for oppressing others in order to achieve dominance. Thanks for the clarification/word play.
Are Chinese nationalists oppressive because they don't just open the borders? It's clear that you have a different standard for white people.
No. Simply closing their border is not oppressive but just like in the US, it is not enough to produce an ethnocentric society.
It's clear that you have a different standard for white people.
No, the standard is the same. And to illustrate, you've picked a nearly perfect analog for US "white nationalists" with the Han Chinese.
What China is doing to the Uyghurs and what "white nationalists" in the US want for "non-whites" is oppression. This is the only way to achieve their ethnocentric objectives.
In both cases, the objective is built around ethnic superiority and is equally racist and reprehensible and amoral and inhumane.
> No. Simply closing their border is not oppressive but just like in the US, it is not enough to produce an ethnocentric society.
It's enough to maintain one.
> This is the only way to achieve their ethnocentric objectives.
In that part of China, sure.
> In both cases, the objective is built around ethnic superiority and is equally racist and reprehensible and amoral and inhumane.
Name one ethnicity that couldn't be construed as such. Respecting the rights of individuals is not how ethnicities are constructed. Liberalism destroys ethnicities, yet liberals have decided not to be evenhanded about it because it's not politically expedient. That's how you produce more intense forms of racism.
Because you value your kin and culture, and wish to preserve them. Or because you believe other people have in-group preference, which means your group will be worse off from increased competition. It's no different than a new pack of wolves moving into another pack's territory. From that point of view, the absence of self-superiority beliefs increases nationalism, since if the other group is equal or better, they are more competitively dangerous.
I don't think you need to see it as a zero sum game. Only that conflict, violent or otherwise, is likely, and often organized along ethnic lines.
We could look at history to try to assess how true that is, but that would be a boring debate. I'm more interested in your opinion of my first point, which you skipped: what if you value your kin and culture? When it comes to biodiversity, other species, or even obscure tribes in the Andes, valuing their preservation is prevalent and uncontroversial [0]. Why not apply this same attitude to ourselves?
Both will inevitably be diluted through immigration. Culture is of course not static, even absent immigration, so "preserving" it has limited effectiveness. But perhaps you wish to see how your culture will grow and evolve, without mixing it with a different culture? Especially since culture, just like genes, is largely continuous - to simplify, if there are two countries with distinct cultures, there is probably a third country half-way between them that already has a mix of their cultures. In this sense, by importing cultures, you're not creating a "new" culture, you're just reducing cultural differences.
The same argument holds for genes, including the part about continuity [1]. It's popular to reduce this to skin color, but human genetic diversity covers far more. For example, all of the Big Five personality traits are hereditary [2], and likely so are other personality attributes that are harder to measure or define. Given how almost no variable human traits are evenly distributed among all groups, that means immigration quite literally changes the character of a country. Again, no invocation of "supremacy" is needed, just a desire for preservation. When this desire for preservation is directed externally, for example at Kashmir [3], it has no associated taboo.
[0] At least in the present. We are all aware how different attitudes used to be, with explicit efforts to colonize and "civilize" others, or destroying old cultures and identities to replace them with the New Soviet Man and Year Zero.
[1] Genes mirror geography within Europe - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2735096/
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/tp201596
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/08/08/kashmirs-new...
I didn't respond to valuing kin and culture since it wasn't clear what you meant by that. To be honest, it's still not totally clear - when you speak of culture being diluted, it sounds like you're talking about the influence that culture has on society as a whole? Or how many people in the society have that culture?
On the individual level, it seems like someone who grows up in a particular culture has that for life. People don't suddenly become Spanish, even if they live there from 30-50 years old. So in the course of your lifetime, your kin are still going to be there for you. But maybe you meant - if your kids don't have the same culture as yours. I don't totally understand why this would be a problem, unless they wanted to join some cult or something.
So if you meant preserving culture across generations, as you also mentioned, culture isn't static. Just look at how the culture of England changes from Tudor to Stuart, or from Victorian to Edwardian to modern era. You might say "Recent history is hard to compare to since influence from other countries has touched it and technology has changed so rapidly", but further back than that is not well documented, older histories written exclusively by government bureaucrats who have a specific view of culture. And even in recent histories - in those eras of England I mentioned - religions other than whatever was officially sanctioned at the time were violently held down, so even if you can say there was "A Culture" in England at the time, it was through violent force and fear of violent force that it was kept that way.
What's great about America is the ability to hold so many cultures and through democracy be pretty stable, but I don't know if there's ever been "an American culture". Even the founding story of America - escaping religious persecution - speaks to the horrors of enforcing cultural homogeny. What if, at Plymouth Rock, they met some Native American Nationalists? (Yeah of course there were some tribes of american inidians who attacked the colonists, and some who didn't) It's easy to blame changing culture on immigrants and outsiders because the world is opening up and so many people are moving around, but shifts happen within a single "culture", culture is not static even without an external force.
You speak of conflict, of efforts to colonize, and it's true that world history is almost constant warfare. We are currently in the third longest period of peace (and probably most peaceful)[0][1] in known history. We are also in the most accepting times of other cultures. You say that conflict happens across ethnic lines, but how can you explain the long period of peace happening during the time of most cultural cross pollination? The longest time of peace was the Pax Romana, when the Roman Empire explicitly let conquered nations keep their local cultures, and travel within the Empire was commonplace.
Do I want to preserve my culture through my kids? Yes. I teach them the importance of knowing where they came from. I bought books about my ancestor who was on the Mayflower and they're proud he was there for the first Thanksgiving. Mostly, I want them to be good people, and know that the older they get the less influence they will get from me, so I try to show them how to be empathetic, kind, strong willed, and when to know which to be, so no matter what beliefs they end up with they are coming at them from a good place.
And as for genes mirror geography - yeah - people didn't move around much before the airplane. It's pretty great that common people can travel the world. And as for personality traits being hereditary - I actually didn't know that and it's very interesting. I don't know how it relates to your overall argument, but biodiversity tends to be good for the whole ecosystem.
[0] https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-b26b8004884501d83fc8c... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Peace
Nobody wants to have their own nation state dedicated to their race because they appreciate other cultures and want them to live on their own.
Find me the white nationalist who is not a white supremacist, and I will have them demonstrate being a white supremacist to you.
LOL
Possibly someone who was a hardcore PETA activist type in a crisis of conscience in some small rural place given a second chance by someone who was racist.
This is admittedly a bizarre set of circumstances that would need to happen.
Giving someone a mind altering drug in order to manipulate their political beliefs is brainwashing and totally unethical.
This guy forgot who he was.
"Giving someone a mind altering drug in order to manipulate their political beliefs is brainwashing"
Second sentence of the article.
The man didn’t forget who he was. Reading the article, it suddenly became painfully clear to him who he was, and he started to question why.
I’m quite certain that weed and MDMA aren’t quite the woke mind-control agents you seem to believe they are.
Why would they need a study for this? Literally every single person who has taken MDMA can confirm that increases the pleasantness of human touch. What a waste.