Comment by xvxvx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xvxvx | Hacker News Reader

I remember discovering McKenna in the late 90’s when I first got internet access at home. The comparison with Alex Jones is a good one: he was initially very interesting, sparking the imagination that whole worlds existed out there that I didn’t know about. But quickly it fell apart and I understood it was just horseshit, a form of fantasy.

I’ve never tripped but it sounds similar to fever dreams I had a few times when I was sick as a child, running high temperatures. Why anyone would choose to experience that is another question.

Reading that McKenna was just another for-profit bullshit artist at the end of the day is the sad part. Exploring ideas and possibilities is a noble pursuit, but only if you can admit to mistakes and failures. Deciding to carry on to make money is weak and undermines everything. His legacy could have been as someone who dedicated his life to understanding psychedelics and gave an honest, well-researched evaluation at the end of it all. Money and celebrity status ruined all of that.

Tripping is pretty different from even the wildest dreams, mostly because it changes how you think. Usually when I have a bizarre dream the non-euclidean reality is frustrating, because my mind in the dream is still the same as my mind when I’m awake.

But psychedelic drugs can trigger an openness to new ideas that is incredibly difficult to achieve while sober.

They’re also dangerous though, like the article notes. It’s like working (or playing) with fire. Even people who have decades of experience with it can suddenly get viciously burned. So I don’t really recommend it at all — intensive meditation can still be dangerous for people who are unprepared for what can come up but it’s a much more sustainable practice than drugs and can achieve similar (but better, if done correctly) states.

The article did make me pretty sad for the same reasons you called out. I used to look up to him a LOT in college. I moved past it when I discovered meditation but reading this piece really shut down the goodwill I still had for him. It also makes it hard not to view him as a weak person who never did any real personal development and just got lucky with his first few decades of tripping. I had nightmarish nihilistic mushroom trips that made me want to off myself even as a college student lol.

McKenna to Alex Jones? That is an offensively bad comparison for someone as philosophically astute and well-rounded as he was.

And tripping to a fever dream... You know, sometimes it's best to just not respond if you know nothing about a subject at all.

> someone as philosophically astute and well-rounded as he was

Just my general observation having never read anything from him: many people with generally good qualities but also with a bit of narcissism and self-importance have, when exposed to psychedelics, gone off the rails and became truth-owning preachers or outright abusers. This is to me interesting in so far as this is not the case generally for others groups of psychedelic users.

In that aspect I can understand the analogy, although I have no idea if it's correct.

> I’ve never tripped but it sounds similar to fever dreams

This sounds a bit like someone who’s never played a video game being disappointed in John Carmack.

When you’re that far removed from a certain subculture it shouldn’t be surprising when you’re unable to understand it.

Pretty terrible take if you compare tripping to a bad fever dream.

as someone who has a good amount of experience with psychedelics - there is actually a surprising amount of overlap between the two experiences, but mostly in a generalized "how they can feel" way, and not in the sense that they are the same type of experience.

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