Blog number seven

Pearce Chapters 5&6

I like how this book is very philosophical. I also like how chapter 5 started with talking about science. Science is very important and definitely reveals the truth to many things in life. This book is filled with infinitely amazing quotes. Things that make you think and rethink. I like it a lot. I can feel my brain.Even if Pearce is using other people’s quotes to get his point across… the material he’s quoting is good stuff.

For instance, “Sir Cyril Hinshelwood spoke of science as a creative art, ‘joining hands with all human endeavors, learning by its mistakes.’” As well as referencing Singer in terms of him writing about the processes of the mind and how it seemed to reflect nature. “He felt that our minds were as much the products of evolution as were our bodies, an idea both Jung and Teilhard developed.”

I think about Darwin and Natural Selection. How the heritable favorable traits remain present for survival where the unfavorable inheritable traits become less common. I certainly believe we adapt to our environments. If biological adaptations occur then psychological ones must occur as well.
Another smart statement by Popper, “Every scientific statement must remain tentative forever.” I’m a firm believe that anything can happen and everything is subject to change. Nothing is definite. Nothing is solid or forever, neither can science. I think we can only be 99.9% sure of anything in this life.

“The scientific audience is won over to a new system by intellectual sympathy. A hostile audience may deliberately refuse to entertain novel conceptions for fear of being led to conclusions they abhor, rightly or wrongly.” That is well put. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

And for the fire walkers… yeah, I can see how these people walked across a bed of deep charcoal that produced the perfect conditions for fire walking. I’d be delirious too if for three months I was forced to remain abstinent, vegiterian, drinking only water, with constant sprinklings of holy water with continual religious instruction and prayer as well as meditating and communicating with god. Oh yes, and the rhythmic drums to produce a hypnotic like state, can’t forget that. I also think it’s kind of funny that of 80 people walking, 12 failed. I wonder what it would look like to watch someone fail at that. Yikes.
Really, fire walking is a mind over matter kind of deal.

Psychedelic Society

I like the point made “if you believe something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite; which means that a degree of your human freedom has been forfeited in the act of committing yourself to this belief.” I see so many people struggle with this.
On page 59, I really enjoy how he talks about getting rid of the concepts from previous decades and that we must transcend the historical moment and basically demonstrate humanity at the end of time. I also agree that the change that occurred biologically long ago is now operating in our culture. This text was also filled with good quotes. I think the Psychedelic society is more interesting and in depth than what’s first assumed.

Law Enforcement Against Entheogens: Is It Religious Persecution?

It really isn’t a question of religious persecution when Christian Missionaries were involved in the suppression of Peyote. If it’s used for religious purposes and not abused for the reasons as to why it’s banned in the first place, perhaps those who don’t understand the religious practices should butt out.
It’s just ignorant of the westerners to treat peyote the way it’s treated. I got annoyed reading this article a little.

Whatever the government deems “illegal” is banned yet pharmaceutical companies produce how many drugs with how many absurd side effects where some result in death? Chris Rock sums up the way the government acts towards drugs in his stand up from Never Scared in 2004 perfectly. He makes some valid points... Watch the clip!

Beware, this video contains some profanity.