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Sunday, March 15, 2015

The Singularity is Here

Materialism aside, I've always lavished the weighted, sleek figure of a new device. Whether it's the smooth black of a store-bought notebook computer or the mousey compact of an 8 gigabyte iPod Nano, my enamor with high-technology has been a generational staple since close to the the day I was born. A more recent affair has been my relationship with substance; very rarely has said relationship been without purpose—whether vague or explicit—except during the odd cocaine binge or my popping an extra capsule of Vyvanse when I'm already a tweaked-out emotionless husk squat over a pile of finished homework, craving a stimulant euphoria so-as to keep on chug-chug-chugging my body and brain for fear of the alternative: natural fatigue, and comedown depression. As well, it's likely I try to avoid any potentially visceral realization that my body is beat and eternally damaged as a result of moderate abuse. As will be discussed, it never seems clear if I am making good or breaking bad in this world of liberally-sized lines, livestreams, BlogSpots, Pfizer babies, bursting housing bubbles, waning American hegemony, and the cultural return of the psychedelic. It is my wandering assertion that both drugs and technology—whether in their own respective rights or as a close synergy—are conduits and extensions of ourselves; the next logical steps in moving forward the complexity and intelligence of natural evolution.

* * *
I used to be addicted to following links. On Wikipedia especially, I would sit for hours upon hours upon hours absorbing information fragments that shot through me like visible flashbacks to memories that were not my own and lessons I could now learn vicariously through the conduit of someone elses documented experience.
The light emitting diodes would fiddle with my pupils; I would wonder, at times, if my eyes were just great black demonic puddles when the lights were out. It was that, or they would retract into two little black holes the size of one of these letters, surrounded—rather romantically—by small lagoons of darkish blue. These were my nights alone with myself, where I would recall with intellectual ecstasy and vigor one of my favorite movie lines of all time, spoken by eccentric tour guide and philosopher Timothy “Speed” Levitch:

On really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion.”

* * *

Of course, the rise in complexity is inevitably accompanied by a greater demand for stillness and rest, lest the over-exertion of human cognition run our collective psyche into a hall of endless mirrors, spawning a horde of negative feedback loops that manifest in global anxieties and dangerous (even violent?) impulses. The ultimate end-result of this sort of feedback are such common confusions as believing 'theory' and spoken or written vocabulary to be the basis of ultimate and seemingly conclusive (dogmatic) understanding, whereas it's the intangibly indefinable reality of things which predicates all theory. Theory—as a concept in itself and in order to illustrate how we have deified it—can be summed-up in religious terms as “the [Almighty] Word.”1 To counter this impetus, humans have naturally wheeled backward into the past for answers on how to balance the mind, finding a rich tapestry of practical advice in the mystic traditions of religious prayer and meditation—established ways of silencing the Word and subordinating it to (what Eckhart Tolle or any other Eastern mystic would call) the eternal Now. Yet, even here—in pursuit of mental clarity and reprieve from omnipotent thought—drugs have been utilized as a sort of express-lane into 'union with the Divine;' in layman's terms, this is the felt union with the “Great Big Mystery” we are each born into, and yet will never be able to encapsulate via mere concept or description. A Benedictine monk of the modern era—perhaps a little avant garde in his approach to religious practice—once said that “[e]cstasy2 has the capacity to put one on the right path to divine union... It should not be used unless one is really searching for God.”
“Prayer,” he continued, “is communication with God, but tends to be blocked by the internal dialogue, distractions and losing faith in oneself. Using [e]cstasy while trying to pray removes these obstacles,” he claimed. Though he only uses the drug from one to three times a year, the experience causes prayer to flow easier, while at times it has also provided him with valuable insights such as "a very deep comprehension of divine passion."
Where I believe this monk is right, I also recognize he is leaning in far too close to his ingrained dogmas when he brazenly declares how it should and should not be used, as if his 'spiritual plateau' has given him a mutually exclusive rise in religious wisdom and command. What this monk fails to recognize is that we are all—by implication of the human condition—looking for “God” (as the wide allegorical term used to describe the giant, ambiguously inexpressible and minutely-experienced infinity of Reality with a capital R), and that all things may be considered meditation if inwardly felt as such.
So, by implication, it is my assertion—on a macrocultural level—that drugs (including—but not limited to—MDMA) are the modern toolbox used to 'break the fourth wall'3 of consensual reality, thus inducing religious experience: an ecstatic recognition of ones implicit union with existence as a whole. As complexity increases, and intelligence piles on intelligence, this immediate portal into divine providence is exactly what is needed to equalize the growing hyperintelligence of our collective consciousness, as well as be sure our theories do not overcome and rule us, but rather, that we overcome and subordinate them with our acceptance of life as essentially unknowable. We do this as holy humans gifted with the creative ability to define and tentatively order almost all of what we perceive. Drugs have a proven potential to ground us in this divinely-felt reality, though in broad strokes, this can only be said of the overall trends and the ultimate majority, as there are plenty of individuals and groups that will fall off (or, perhaps, simply 'drip away') in this process. Whether it's death by overdose, or the triggering of schizophrenic psychosis as a result of predisposition, not all of us will make it through the ringer unscathed. Some of us will get lost in the hall of mirrors and forget it's just a series of reflections, convincing ourselves of strange and frightening delusions as the feedback loop grows louder. Others—trapped in this hall—will face the mirrors and face the fear with such reckless sincerity that each mirror will shatter into melting shards of glass, and we will stand in this allegorical space and realize: we are finally free. We will tune into the meditative equalizer of the collective psyche and find a level balance upon which to continue the dance of life. Sobriety is a relative term.
And by 'sobriety,' what exactly do I mean? When digging for a definition online, one source defines it as “the condition of not having any measurable levels [of], or effects from mood-altering drugs.” But—I believe—it would be unfair to say 'sobriety' necessarily means a lack of chemical intoxication, as both induced ecstatic experience—whether via drugs, meditation, or exercise—as well as 'insanity'—such as delusional schizophrenia and clinical depression4—are not qualitatively sober states of mind given the intensity of irrational behavior and thought. Typically, we would say that people in these states are 'not in their right mind,' but this often includes the relative imposition of 'right' and 'wrong.' People say this of those who are intoxicated as well, and in this respect, I think it would be wise to frame it as follows:
'Mental illness' can only be described as such if it is a negative experience with negative consequence, such as a clinically depressed individual with suicidal tendencies. This is often treated through a synergy of psychiatry and antidepressants, so in this sense, the administration of therapeutic drugs can be seen as someone using substance to find their 'right mind' because said 'right mind' was not a static given at birth. This is in stark contrast to the online definition of 'sobriety' which states that “[s]obriety is ... considered to be the natural state of a human being given at a birth.” But in the context in which I use it, 'sobriety' means nothing more than a rational balance, and as such, a new-born does not qualify as sober. When there is a lack of balance, those who are willing to take the risk can find said balance through the use of certain psychedelics in the proper set and setting, though I do not wish to sound conceited and pretend drugs are the only way to find this balance because they most certainly are not. There are many ways to plug into the meditative equalizer of the collective psyche, and drugs—I believe—are only an express lane.
This is, maybe, where technology falls neatly into the picture. Or, not so much 'neatly' as logically; with a sort of implicit and inevitable absurdity that measures itself in synonymous union with the rise of collective hyperintelligence, having acted as both its predicator and intensifier over the course of the 15th to 21st centuries (and prior, of course, but I place my starting point—rather arbitrarily—at the invention of the printing press, as it is my assertion—or, assumption?—that the printing press is what ultimately accelerated our overall advance). Though we live in the consensual (and waning) illusion of being separate egos carried about in flesh-bodies inside of a bag of skin, we linguistically recognize the absurdity of such a claim when we look down at our hand and say we have a hand, as opposed to we are a hand; or, “this is my hand,” as opposed to, “this is a hand.” In reality, the hand is an inevitable and compound part of you, though to further illustrate my point, I can utilize this same linguistic ambiguity to assert that you are saying the same thing when you pick up your phone and say, “this is my phone,” as opposed to, “this is a phone.” And, in this day and age of increasingly smarter phones with which we each have unbridled access to the entirety of collective memory, knowledge, and documented experience, it is easy to see the truth to Jason Silva's5 observation: we are already cyborgs; technology is an extension of both our intellectual capacities and our physical bodies. To further drive this point home, we have been in a self-amplifying feedback loop with our inventions since the advent of language, with said inventions acting as exoskeletons with much wider function than the basic human faculties of arms, legs, hands, and feet.

* * *

At this point, I feel it might be necessary to address—for posterity's sake as well as to further marginalize the Judaeo-Christian intuition of substance as taboo—the fact that I may never have come to these conclusions were it not for the use of drugs—which did, as stated above, break my 'fourth wall,' allowing my intellect to dive into thought and reflection from multiple and otherwise unseen angles. This came alongside my utilization of high-technology such as the internet, which exposed me to the entirety of our collective psyche—point-blank—from the day I was born.

* * *

Only a couple of nights prior to this writing, my girlfriend and I were on our way home from a friends house-warming party during which we insuffulated 2 or 3 lines of ketamine—the sedative-psychedelic and 'rising star' in the underworld drug scene—becoming deliberately lost and enamored with the misty visage of Victoria at 3 AM on a Monday night. The surrealism of a city of empty streets in an early maroon fog was truly something to behold, and the colonial vibe of old British architecture in fluid combination with the ancient totems of the First Nations people was an unbridled magic. At one point, we were gazing with psychedelic curiosity through the window of the gift-shop at the Royal BC Museum, a collection of Emily Carr books placed on a front-facing display. All I knew of Emily Carr, at this point, was of her career as a famous author born in this same city. My interest was immediately piqued, and I wished to know more, so I took the smartphone from out of my right pocket, held the 'home' button for close to a half second, and explicitly asked the device: “who was Emily Carr?
Within seconds, I had a detailed dossier on close to every detail I could have ever wanted to know.

* * *

I was brought into a world where the self-amplifying feedback loop of human progress has accelerated to such rapid intensity that we are witnessing evolution manifest within the short space of our own lives. In some cases, we also witness it within ourselves and within those around us, constantly pushing the boundaries ad infinitum until the glass sphere bursts and we realize it isn't glass, but a bubble.
Sobriety is a relative term.
Did you have your cup of coffee this morning?


1 As is stated in John 1.1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
2 Perhaps better known as the famous ethneogen, MDMA
3 "Breaking the fourth wall," in theatre and film, often means having a character become aware of their fictional nature. In this context, I use it to describe how acute transcendental experience often causes one to become aware of their own 'fictional' (or, conceptual) nature within the context of labelled and ordered society.
4 Clinical depression is not so much 'insanity' as it is a state of deeply self-conscious irrationality.
5 Jason Silva (born February 6, 1982) is a Venezuelan-American television personality, filmmaker, and performance philosopher. He is best known for his YouTube series, “Shots of Awe.”

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The world is meaningless,

there is no God or gods, there are no morals, the universe is not moving inexorably towards any higher purpose.
All meaning is man-made, so make your own, and make it well.
Do not treat life as a way to pass the time until you die.
Do not try to "find yourself", you must make yourself.
Choose what you want to find meaningful and live, create, love, hate, cry, destroy, fight and die for it.
Do not let your life and your values and your actions slip easily into any mold, other that that which you create for yourself, and say with conviction, "This is who I make myself".
Do not give in to hope.
Remember that nothing you do has any significance beyond that with which you imbue it.
Whatever you do, do it for its own sake.
When the universe looks on with indifference, laugh, and shout back, "Fuck You!".
Rembember that to fight meaninglessness is futile, but fight anyway, in spite of and because of its futility.
The world may be empty of meaning, but it is a blank canvas on which to paint meanings of your own.
Live deliberately. You are free.