Oh boy, I'm sure this is gonna get me some shoutdowns here... I posted this on my LJ initially...
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I have been thinking a lot lately about people who talk about "questioning authority" but lack a critical sense of questioning. That is, they trade one set of authorities for another, discounting authority merely because it's authority, not on the merits thereof.

So...

I'm at a new stage in life. I have been many things through the years. Having been brought up (by my mother) in a Pentecostal Church, I have spoken in tongues, I have seen visions, I have heard the voice of demons. I was a creationist. I derived my own version of Pascal's Wager (including an option for Reincarnation) when I hadn't heard of it before.

For the past decade I've pretty much been a fairly strict materialist. At least when it came down to asking what I would stake my life on. I don't know if I will ever NOT be that way.

Thinking lately about the fact that we have between 300 billion to 1 trillion fucking neurons in our skull.

About the various chemical messengers: Dopamine, Epinephrine, Norepinephrine, Serotonin, Acetylcholine, Histamine, etc...

Funny that the ones I think of off the top of my head are all the monoamines (well except for ACH) according to wikipedia.

Anyways...

[Apr. 13th, 2009|12:41 pm]
[ current noise: | Trifonic - Parks On Fire | Powered by Last.fm ]

As I get older and more aware of my health, I find that I become more aware of a certain sense of darkness pervading existence whenever I take entheogens...

While this trip was by no means a "bad" one, it certainly did have that foreboding quality of mortality lurking in the back of my mind.

(originally posted to my LJ)

Each substance has its own "flavor" if you will. A sort of signature feel. What I call "Qualia"...

Overall there may be many similarities, for example, between the Psilocybin trip and the LSD-25 trip. The common motifs of "breathing walls" being the easiest example.

But beyond these superficialities lie the feeling of the drug itself.

A few years ago I'd pondered the sort of archetypes of aliens that we commonly see presented in culture. I'd also come across the theory of the Triune Brain.

First: The triune brain is an idea that essentially states that there's 3 "layers" to the brain. Each of these layers represent different stages of our evolution.

It's been 9 years since you've departed.

"April is the cruelest month..." indeed.

(And Dr. Hoffmann has been gone a year on the 29th of April)

You brought knowledge to a lot of people. Perhaps some believe in it way more than you ever did. But you gave a lot of us hope. You were a muse and an inspiration.