PTSF 42

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Psychedelics Today. This is Joe Moore coming at you from Phoenix, Arizona. And how are you doing, Kyle? Good, Joe. How are you doing? Sunny Breckenridge to sunny Arizona. Nice. Yeah, you know, it's nice to get some sun and some extra O2. I think living in oxygen deprivation for too long can lead to some weird situations. So I'm feeling pretty good and sleeping really well. So loving it. Are there any long-term studies about mental health-related things? Depression is the only thing I've seen, like higher rates of depression at altitude. Like suicidality-wise, it's really aggressive numbers where I live in my county. Some of the higher suicide rates in the country. And it's a pretty small county. So it's noticeable. Like those suicides are only really one hop away just about every time. So it's kind of ugly. So, you know, not to mention, you know, the mountains being so high, it's like you're at a higher latitude and, you know, less sun as a result of the high mountains kind of blocking, you know, multiple hours of sun. So, you know, not only is it the O2, it's the cold, it's the darkness. Yeah. Multifactor. Economics too, I'm guessing. Oh, it's brutal. Yeah. It's a hardcore economic situation up there. Like you can either work for the resort and make, you know, $9 an hour, or like there's a massive timeshare situation you could work for and make like a reasonable salary. But, you know, you're working in the timeshare world. So you've got to feel a little weird about that. And then the restaurants and everything else, like it's insanity. Yeah. Not to mention right now, restaurant folks, like normal. Servers and whatnot are definitely at limited hours. Yeah. So, it feels bad once in a while, just looking at it, but, you know, we're trying to make moves. Anyway, I guess before we dig in, I want to say thank you to everybody. We were able to sell out our group one and group two time slots for our eight-week Navigating Psychedelics program for clinicians and therapists. Really excited about that. We just had our. The first group for both classes yesterday. They're both amazing groups. Really excited about them. And yeah, we get some new dates up in March. Do you know what the first day is, Kyle, on those? Thursday, March 11th. Cool. So two more groups starting March 11. They're available for sale now at psychedeliceducationcenter.com if you want to learn more. And you've got time to check out some of our free classes or other offerings if you want to just check us out first before jumping in. The deep end like that. And just remember, 45-day money-back guarantee. So, you don't like it, get your money back. Anyway, I think that's enough to dig in. So, we are recording here on January 8th. Just a couple days ago, I think it was Wednesday the 6th, we had a really awkward and scary situation in Washington, D.C. where a number of folks actually broke in. It seemed like with police assistance. I watched one of the videos. I watched one of the videos where the police pulled back the barricades for these folks. That's crazy. And folks actually went in and were able to get access to Congress people's email and all sorts of craziness, which should be highly confidential, I would think. Not top secret, but next level down. And yeah, it's kind of nuts. And what was going on in part, there's a lot going on here, but it was kind of like a culmination of a lot of things, hundreds of years of history. But I think in the short term, QAnon played a big part here in throwing out these wild accusations and stories that don't necessarily have any relation to reality. And yeah, psychedelics fueled some of this stuff. One of the most famous characters in a lot of these photos is that guy with the horns, some sort of, did he go by QAnon shaman or something crazy like that? I don't know. Is that the guy with like the furs and stuff, face painted? I think so. Yeah. So, yeah. So what happens when psychedelics get mixed in with like conspiracy to this degree and, you know, hardcore right-wing politics, you know, we have this bias that psychedelics are going to make people, you know, a little more soft on each other, love each other more, support each other more, you know, actively, right? Not like passively like Ayn Rand or something. And, you know, I help you by being hard on you. It's more like, I help you because you're my brother or my sister. And that's what we think. But, you know, there's data not really supporting that, right? There's that scientific American article that you sent over, title of which there is no good evidence that psychedelics can change your politics or religion. Was that a Hopkins study? Yep. I believe so with Matthew Johnson and David Yadin. And, you know, it's also good and bad, right? Because if this was true, that it shifted your politics. Politicians would be more against psychedelic research and psychedelic inclusion, I guess. I don't really know the right term there. Well, have any of your experiences shifted your perception on politics or religion in the past or spirituality? It's more about bonding with those close to me than like, all right, I need to give all my money away to, you know, feed the hungry and clothe the poor, you know, clothe the unclothed. You know, I haven't had that. It's just been like a general inclination of mine since I was really young was, you know, environmentalism and conservation, generally speaking. But leftist issues came kind of rationally to me versus like through psychedelic revelation, like healthcare to me seems like a national defense issue more so than like a humanitarian issue. You can frame that thing so many ways, like look at what's happening right now. This is the national, national defense issue. If we were looking at the US and we're executing really poorly, like Paul Stamets elucidates that really well when he talks about like turkey tail mushrooms and enoki and all these like really great mushrooms that could be used for fighting disease. Yeah. And like permaculture education probably as well. It's like, how can we strengthen our web? You know, that kind of logic. Some people can get that from psychedelic experiences. Mine just didn't necessarily go there. What about you? You know, I think, I think my accident actually, I think, informed me most about maybe my spiritual and political stance on a lot of things. But I think also time and experience has also shifted a lot of that as well. And I, you know, I think like the connection with nature, I mean, psychedelics and other, you know, experiences with like holotropic breath work definitely have like increased that nature connectedness, which I guess, you know, makes me think about a little bit more like leftist stuff. But, you know. Because we have these huge moneyed interests that'll have more money in power than we will ever have as individuals manipulating us for profit. There's a lot going on here. And on one hand, I want to be sympathetic for humans. On the other, I'm like, should. I'm thinking back to Robert Forte. Are psychedelics being used to, quote unquote, derange the population so they have less power and they're easier to manipulate for certain ends? And on one hand, yes. On one hand, no. It's good that we have a bigger, fuller picture post-psychedelic. It's not good that we don't have a clearer direction. It should be clear to folks that it's a good idea to take care of yourself, you as your own individual biological entity and spiritual entity, and then your family for sure. And then those closest to you. Like the hundred people closest to you. For me, it's kind of logical you would want to pay attention to those folks the most. Pick them up because the closer somebody is to you, the easier it is for you to help them. Though that said, $2,000 in aid to Rwanda or some other really hurt country could save gazillions of lives and possibly put a few women through school for the first time in their village's history. So it's a weird math. This is not an easy situation we're in. And I understand why Q people get deluded. And for those who don't know, QAnon is this really interesting kind of constellation of conspiracies revolving around cannibal, pedophile, Satan worshipers at the top that love harvesting adrenochrome or like adrenaline from pineal glands of children or something to get high. And God knows what they do with it. I got a little bit in trouble with them on Twitter a while back defending this. I don't know if you've heard of it. , I don't know if you've heard of it. bullshit and we get it like the mainstream can sometimes twist and and, you know, delude stuff. And, you know, and I think there is that issue of trust that we're all battling up against, against mainstream institutions. There's like a lack of trust within religious institutions, within science. And, you know, I think there is good reason to maybe feel that distrust within institutions at times because, you know, a lot of people have been mistreated and abused. And so I think that also strengthens the alternative narrative because of that lack of trust. And, you know, that's, I think that's a hard thing to then get back. How do we begin to trust science again, if they have our best interests in mind? How do we begin to trust these institutions that are supposed to be helping us when it feels like they've just been abusing everybody and taking advantage and not helping people just, you know, really looking out after their own self-interests. Right. So trust is a big deal, right? It's beautiful. It's a big deal in psychedelic sessions, relationships, you've got to trust your drug dealers, all that, your shum and all that kind of stuff. And as soon as trust seems to go away, it's really hard to repair that trust relationship. And like how many people are wildly disillusioned with, you know, the U.S. government, the international governments, like the kind of like vitriol I saw pointed at WHO was insane to me this summer, you know, when Trump was pulling back funding for WHO. The type of shit people were talking was like, it's not even that much money relative to like international aid people. And, but it's meaningful to WHO. So, you know, it's just kind of shocking there. And you know what, the amount of repair work the U.S. government's going to have to do relationship wise to have a better relationship with its people, it's going to be really hard. I don't, I don't see this being a smooth process over the next 10 years, even. Not at all. And I think that's why like somebody like Trump got in, right. Cause it was really kind of pushing against the government. And I feel like a lot of people already feel that, right. I mean, I think a lot of people that were going to vote for Bernie actually voted for Trump because of that, like kind of anti-government type of stance at times. Totally. Like burn it down is the impulse a lot of people have. I fucking understand it, but I don't necessarily think it's the right way to go. So you mentioned psychology, like the psychology behind all of this. Yeah. And I think this is where maybe like depth psychology can maybe take some lessons. So what the Nazi stuff happened in the thirties into, you know, mid forties when world war II ended, we've had many decades to evolve psychology since then. And so like Wilhelm Reich, I think in the middle of, you know, the Nazi times wrote the mass psychology of fascism kind of explaining what was going on there. And I think people have been working to understand like how they can manipulate folks more and more at a larger scale. And, you know, between social media, YouTube, all this stuff, it's become cheaper and easier than ever. It's become more democratic than ever. So like, you don't need to be the president or like the propaganda czar to do this. Now you can just have a budget and a Facebook ads account. And, you know, really, you know, there was some scenes in, uh, I think season four or five of home. And, uh, you know, there was, um, some scenes in, uh, I think season four or five of homeland, it was just like these troll mills, essentially where people got talking points for the day. And they just went hard on their talking points with all of their different Facebook accounts. And each person had like 20 accounts and, you know, like when the budgets are high enough, that stuff becomes practical. Yeah. And it's, you know, is it the oil lobby, like hiring troll farms in China, Russia, wherever Uzbekistan, like who knows, like it could be also might not be, I think that stuff is definitely happening. I just don't know what scale, you know? So yeah, like Nazi party stuff, like really paving the way for propaganda and like brainwashing and power and control and, you know, what lessons were learned by CIA, KGB, et cetera. And, you know, whatever the, uh, I think it's SVR is the new organization, but you know, what, you know, what might we have to deal with like long-term because of that, you know, and, and another thing you said is like, you went to Alex Jones at a certain point. I did too. Like I was deep down that rabbit hole. I spent a lot of time, you know, just buying it hook, line and sinker. And then at a certain point I was like, cool, like I'm not really able to convince anybody here. So let's track down my sources and like, see if I can make good, compelling arguments on my own for these stories. And I found that everything was really shallow and it was just like drawing false conclusions from like a business insider or Forbes article, just like saying that wasn't even in the article whatsoever as your source. It's like, what really you get away with that. That's insane. And then, you know, at a certain point, like, I think I was getting really, it's weird to say these two names in the same sentence, but Alex Jones and Noam Chomsky being like very different figures, one being kind of like anarcho socialist and the other one being, you know, kind of right. Libertarian with aliens spiced on top. But you know, why, why would you, you know, why would you do that? You know, it's, But, you know, why, why wouldn't we just pay attention to Noam Chomsky? Like you can back up everything he says, like everything he says is super easy to validate. And his argumentation style is like bulletproof and flawless most of the time. You know, his critiques on mass media are very, very good. Yeah. So like, why would we have picked Alex Jones? I guess it's because he had this, you know, voice and a daily update and, you know, he was a news person. His energy. I mean, he was convincing. Oh man. And I think also too, like, I don't know for myself, like I was looking for that alternative story to follow and he kind of. Right. Because they were hiding psychedelics from us. What else were they hiding from us? Right. Like that was definitely a big narrative for me. Like, why are they hiding psychedelics? Yeah. You know, I'm like. Oh, if that's true, then everything else he must be saying is true. And like, I don't believe, you know, and it's like, but at some point it became so neurotic on my end that like, I started to become paranoid that like, oh, like, who can I trust if like all these institutions you can't trust? And like, you know, there's all these like alternative agendas and like, you know, well, shit, like if the, you know, the little green men are at control and then why do anything? If the lizard people are out there, then like, you know, then I started to kind of get down this existential kind of negative thought pattern of like, don't do anything because like all the forces are against you. And at some point it just became like, it felt really toxic to just constantly be dealing with those battles in my head and taking in all that information where I kind of had to like, I guess, like cut it away and be like, I'm not actually being productive. I'm just so down this rabbit hole that it's just. Like, it's not healthy for me, actually, even if there might be some sprinkle of truth in there. Like, I have no way of validating it. And like, it's not really actually making my life any better. It's actually just making me more crazy. So I think for myself, I had to step away from it. And I think also psychedelics at some point and studying like transpersonal psychology kind of helped me to think about these extraordinary experiences a little bit more critically. And really kind of pull back and be like, what's actually going on here? And like, how do I know what is true here? Because, man, when you're in some of those, you know, non-ordinary states, a lot of things seem true. And a lot of like, I think, what is it? Terrence McKenna said psychedelics promote funny ideas. And it's like, man, the amount of funny ideas I've had about the world, you know, some of them are just so absurd. But, you know, they're fun to entertain. You know, are they actually helpful? Are they helpful in your life? Sometimes, sometimes not. Sometimes they're just funny ideas and we got to put them on the back seat to actually live. Yeah. Yeah. It's our ideas crippling you from living your life. It's probably like a fundamental thing in therapy, right? Like, you know, your beliefs about your relationship with your mother crippling you from getting into relationships with others. You know, like weird things like that. So it's like, you know, sometimes they're not ideas, right? Sometimes they're somatic things, but there's all sorts of stuff. I think we talked about this in one of the other podcasts recently, but this idea that like the laws of the land, like inform your psyche almost as much as your parental relationships. Like the landscape, you mean? I think we chatted about something like that. Like legal landscape. Like, yeah, like, you know, just think drug prohibition, for instance, and like what that's done to our psyche. Like, I hear whenever a police officer walks up to my car, if I was speeding or something, I have not a great reaction, you know, because I have all sorts of fantasies and weird ideas about what that police officer wants to do to me, even though it's probably wrong, you know, but I still get pretty freaked out. So, yeah. So, you know, obviously all of this craziness culminated in a bunch of people. Pointing guns at senators and whatnot and like scaring a lot of Americans, scaring a lot of international folks. So, you know, what do we do? I don't know. Like, I think really we need to encourage critical thinking, fact checking, you know, I'm sure a lot of the Q stuff will not hold up to scrutiny. If I spent time like backtracking, I would not be able to find anything and they'll claim it's based on. know the conspiracy covering it up because you know you know in in a way like that's what happens with conspiracy how many mk ultra documents do we lose and there's some so validity to that right so it's like oh well and that's what i'm saying about these little grains of truth every lie has a kernel of truth otherwise the lie is not gonna work yeah like i can't tell you that i have 13 lamborghinis and you're gonna believe me but i can tell you i have a couple of bitcoins and you know maybe you'll believe me right like eventually those might grow to be 13 lamborghinis probably not but you know the bitcoin price is going up so yeah a couple you're probably doing pretty well stressed out stressful but it's cool so yeah like what do we do what do we do with all that and you know the tim leary line like think for yourself and question authority totally but don't just listen to what some maniacs are saying on the internet like don't believe what kyle and i are saying like verify like well you know this is a cryptocurrency line don't trust verify yeah and that that was like every video you know this person sent me i'm like watching this person and i'm also thinking about like what we've been doing here for the past four years and i'm putting myself in this person's position i'm like we're just you know two people that have a deep interest in psychedelics and you know we have a little bit of expertise here and there but it's just like i could be totally wrong about things from time to time you know we're human we we're flawed to some extent we're gonna maybe say things that we backtrack on and do you take everything we say as truth and please don't yeah yeah like one of the great things that psychedelics have baked in is that they work you know you can have mdma or dmt or ayahuasca and you can come back and report back it's the the substance interacting with the psyche and the body nothing to do with what kyle and joe say hopefully i'm sure if you listen to 200 something episodes of our show and then take a psychedelic it's really different than if you didn't yeah so also too like i just also think about like projections like what do you what do you project onto people at times right when you see influencers or people online really think about the projections that you're putting onto a person as well totally yeah like i don't have my life together you might think i do out there and podcast like i did not so either yeah so don't be like fantasizing kyle joe living a fairytale life it's not perfect no and you know yeah like same thing with dmt somebody's gonna tell you a amazing dmt story and you're gonna be like gimme gimme gimme there's no promise that it's not gonna be a horror show same thing with ketamine like a good amount of people with im iv ketamine and get a little freaked out yeah and you know our critiques even of psychiatry like aren't really fully fleshed out like there there needs to be a lot more detail there you know what's cool is that a lot of psychiatrists want to play ball now like they're interested in okay cool how do we do harm reduction how do we really work towards mental health in a holistic way so you know things are evolving things are going in the right direction it might feel like we're taking a few steps back here and there but things are evolving in a good direction with medicine and psychedelics you know once in a while i see something in our uh a publication will put out saying like oh look this company now has psilocybin locked down 100 it's like ah that seems made up and i don't really believe it but you know cool like i'm glad you're you know watching but you know perhaps can salt with a few attorneys and you know corporate people to like cross-reference what you're saying yeah oh another line i i don't know if i talked to you about this one there's this scenario in um like the early internet like usenet was kind of like early chat rooms and whatnot and um in 93 i think it was there's this um moment called the eternal september and what was happening was i think aol started giving out a lot of those cds everywhere to like get everybody on the internet the internet internet's on a cd and what was happening was they started enabling more and more people to have access to usenet so usenet was around for years before that and there was like a strong culture around it and all of a sudden all these people with all this money poured in and they had no connection to that culture the ethos the practices any of that stuff and like you isn't that what we're seeing right now in psychedelics loads and loads and loads of people it's not just people with money it's people without much money and they're all coming to the table with all of their lived experience and they're going to do what they want to do here like we can't say oh like when you're driving a bmw you have to wear these kinds of gloves and wear these kinds of shoes you know like we we can't necessarily have that kind of control over what other people say we can say hey like probably get a handle on the history please yeah like we can say stuff like that or like hey what about these other cultures you know or like maybe just give a nod to maria sabina once in a while or like the amazonian shamanism but yeah like what what can we really expect masses of people coming into this phenomenon you know what why would we expect they're going to conform to our norms right yeah and it's just interesting too i just think about like influence i think it's interesting i think it's interesting i think it's interesting to see like influence culture in general versus like maybe how it used to be to be an expert to really do like you know either scholarly work have a lot of experience maybe really sit there and dedicate your time to writing a book or whatever that is you know like really dedicating a lot of time to whatever that practice is versus now i mean a lot of a lot of us just share stuff you know maybe not even thinking about it and it's like how do you become an expert like overnight like that um you know i just you know see a lot new more accounts up and you know people just kind of like you know starting their journey and sharing information i think there is benefit in that but just thinking about just influence culture in general um and how like you know people that may not have that much experience all of a sudden become experts interesting to think about and how yeah and how much do we uh you know believe in that and i think that kind of also ties into some of the disinformation that floats around out there about political stuff too right so i mean we're sifting through so much information nowadays and i think the the biggest piece is how do we discern information that's coming in through our filters filters all the time literally every second like we're just overwhelmed by information all the time literally every second like we're just overwhelmed by information and there's a lot of like we're just overwhelmed by information and there's a lot of garbage out there garbage out there garbage out there and there's also you know carl's the truth and there's also you know carl's the truth and there's also you know carl's the truth right so like let's back up the tape like right so like let's back up the tape like right so like let's back up the tape like i don't know a couple thousand years i don't know a couple thousand years i don't know a couple thousand years you know say you're living in a village you know say you're living in a village you know say you're living in a village somewhere somewhere somewhere you've got maybe i don't know 2 000 you've got maybe i don't know 2 000 you've got maybe i don't know 2 000 people in the village people in the village people in the village it's not really a newspaper there's not it's not really a newspaper there's not it's not really a newspaper there's not really really really tv you get your information from other tv you get your information from other tv you get your information from other humans and connection humans and connection humans and connection and um you know you follow the seasons and um you know you follow the seasons probably a little more pagan than it probably a little more pagan than it probably a little more pagan than it used to be used to be used to be than it is today and you know that than it is today and you know that than it is today and you know that information diet's pretty light information diet's pretty light information diet's pretty light and do you at that point living in that and do you at that point living in that and do you at that point living in that village like would you want to get village like would you want to get village like would you want to get updates from like babylon or egypt like updates from like babylon or egypt like updates from like babylon or egypt like oh cool oh cool oh cool like pharaoh just had another kid like like pharaoh just had another kid like like pharaoh just had another kid like what does that mean to you if you're what does that mean to you if you're what does that mean to you if you're living in some village somewhere living in some village somewhere living in some village somewhere like not much but these days it's like like not much but these days it's like like not much but these days it's like oh oh oh prince harry had another tift or like oh prince harry had another tift or like oh prince harry had another tift or like oh kanye had an affair with jeffrey kanye had an affair with jeffrey kanye had an affair with jeffrey by the way did you see that that stuff's by the way did you see that that stuff's by the way did you see that that stuff's so funny so funny so funny check that out at some point it's so funny check that out at some point it's so funny but um you know like what but um you know like what but um you know like what like what does that do to us that just like what does that do to us that just like what does that do to us that just like more trivia that doesn't isn't like more trivia that doesn't isn't like more trivia that doesn't isn't really helpful really helpful really helpful i know a lot of like um people have a i know a lot of like um people have a i know a lot of like um people have a lot of pride on having a lot of trivia lot of pride on having a lot of trivia lot of pride on having a lot of trivia in their minds like oh i know the in their minds like oh i know the in their minds like oh i know the capital for every country and i capital for every country and i capital for every country and i i know this the top forecast people in i know this the top forecast people in i know this the top forecast people in all the all the all the films from all the major studios in films from all the major studios in films from all the major studios in the last like 30 years the last like 30 years the last like 30 years you know to be good at jeopardy but like you know to be good at jeopardy but like you know to be good at jeopardy but like what does that get you what does that get you what does that get you it's not knowledge isn't wisdom you it's not knowledge isn't wisdom you it's not knowledge isn't wisdom you know bits and bites don't make know bits and bites don't make know bits and bites don't make happiness happiness happiness yeah it's you know i think we're by yeah it's you know i think we're by yeah it's you know i think we're by being so hyper connected being so hyper connected being so hyper connected you know causing ourselves a lot of harm you know causing ourselves a lot of harm you know causing ourselves a lot of harm and that there's you know that's not me and that there's you know that's not me and that there's you know that's not me saying something new saying something new saying something new it's just what are what are we evolved it's just what are what are we evolved it's just what are what are we evolved to handle to handle to handle yeah in this culture cultural situation yeah in this culture cultural situation yeah in this culture cultural situation is not it is not it is not it like our educational system did not prep like our educational system did not prep like our educational system did not prep us for this thing what where we're at culturally i mean what where we're at culturally i mean what where we're at culturally i mean it's so psychedelic i mean you know just it's so psychedelic i mean you know just it's so psychedelic i mean you know just i think about this phone you know it's i think about this phone you know it's i think about this phone you know it's like like like man this computer that's just in our man this computer that's just in our man this computer that's just in our pockets and it's an extension of our pockets and it's an extension of our pockets and it's an extension of our nervous system we get pinged all the time nervous system we get pinged all the time nervous system we get pinged all the time and it's just like and it's just like It's pretty wild to think about. And it's like all information. It's like, you know, oh, maybe I'm not actually like using my brain as much because I don't really need to remember everything. I can just pick up my phone and Google something or, you know, take some notes down on my phone to remember this and that. And it just, it's pretty crazy when I think about it and just like how much we're exposed to. And I think about psychedelics at times, it's like kind of exposes us quickly to new ideas. it's just opening up these like new neural connections new information coming in we go whoa and then to amplify that with psychedelics i mean yeah yeah i met this woman in boulder years ago i think her name was maya maybe she was really into cyborg anthropology and talked about how you know we've been merged with machines for a long time it's really hard to separate any tool right it's technically some sort of machine right and that was you know 20 2012 when 2011 when cell phones like smartphones weren't as common like they were blowing up a little bit but they you know not everybody had like three of them you know in their closet now we do for the most part and you know what does that mean that we are now an extended entity that's somewhat merged with cyber space and you know what happens when you throw psychedelics on that we're like these psychedelics spiritual cyborgs and you know perhaps if we want to go further perhaps that's what the gray alien archetype is you know it's like this is you know the merging of cybernetic like cyber culture and and spirit you know maybe who else knows like i don't know why they do all the butt stuff but you know like perhaps there's something there i don't know but being aware of what the humanity can become is really really interesting like you know musk musk just became like the most wealthy man in the world the other day yeah i saw that you know just by market cap it's all like fake money until he cashes out which you probably will never do but his whole project with neural link like merging human brains with tech like that's pretty freaky it's really like a like an innovative and freaky idea but he makes a really compelling argument around it and i think that's really cool and i think that's really cool and i you know especially because like to start it's around helping people walk again yeah i wonder what terence mckenna would be saying right now uh you know something that always always stuck out with uh terence was you know because i always had this like kind of fear around technology being integrated and he had this vision of you know obviously the web i mean he definitely talked about that space somewhere on the computer where you could have your own thing and but going the archaic revival right kind of going through the the the the the the the the but going back to somewhat of our primitive roots but having this computer screen behind our eyelids and being able to like interact with that with the world through this computer behind our eyelids and it's like that's super freaky to think about and are we getting closer to that vision that he kind of proposed maybe i mean i guess if musk figures out neural link and that starts to evolve even more i mean yeah that's where we're heading to remember like one of my favorite explanations of mckenna's dream or terence's dream was something like yeah like earth is just a big nature preserve and we can comfortably walk around the earth without really clothes on you know you close your eyes and you can connect to everybody and get whatever you need done and then you're just existing in like eden in in real space and like earth earth's diversity earth's genetic diversity and it's it's amazing situation how rare you know and precious earth is like that's that's the real gold here and that we get to interact with it is a beautiful thing pretty magical and you know that we're not focused like almost solely on saving it and protecting it is is kind of a complicated thing and yeah anyway it's it's like emerging of this idea of buckminster fuller's uh ephemeralization like because you have that smartphone you need possibly hundreds of less tools like all of your tools are in one thing now yeah you ever see those pictures of like somebody's desk it's like you know the rolodex this that the fax machine now it's just all condensed in this one machine which is pretty awesome right right and like you know the concept of laptops could go away right like you just have this little dock that your phone goes into and all of a sudden you're at your terminal your computer might not be windows or mac the way you want it but yeah like things are going to keep going away and becoming smaller lighter and tech will be better therefore using less resources so this is where like human creativity might be able to save us as population goes up exponentially which is kind of slowing down and it might top out like 10 and 10 billion i think you know human creativity can come in and work exponentially or even move faster and i think aided with tech it's going to really really accelerate you know what happens when you can model things in like you know quantum computing systems and you can model like the ideal prototype and you only need to do like two prototypes instead of hundreds to develop like the product that saves so much resources you know it's extraordinary to think about it's a psychedelic thing like oh cool i've got these parameters on this idea like please prototype it for me and i'm just like boop and you're done you know you know what the physics are and you're like it's going to increasingly cost less to do things like people are really wigged out about how much it's going to cost for mushroom therapy cost will increasingly go down and there will be innovations to access you know like we talked about with ketamine recently there will be innovations to access right i mean like remember the whole 3d printing drugs thing it's like what if you were if you didn't want to grow mushrooms you could print psilocybin for pretty cheap at home right i mean not to mention that beer bucket like the yeast fermenter thing that we've been chatting about like what does genetic editing look like in five years like when these high-end firms are doing this right now i'm like getting all these patents to like yeast and bacteria and whatever else to produce psilocybin and many other drugs yeah like that's a really interesting thing like that is really innovative it it takes a lot of the experience to be able to do that and i think that's one of the things that's really cool about this is that it's it's like you can get a lot of money expense out of chemistry and a lot of the environmental harm out of chemistry too like you don't necessarily need to spend 20 years growing peyote or whatever you can just like extrude mescaline it's nuts like that was something terence had that was really brilliant like this idea of like um our current world is we're just like extruding artifacts now like our whatever we were doing we're doing it better than ever before now that we and he didn't even really know about 3d printers all that well like we're just extruding because plastics were a big thing when he was coming up and you know it's a great analogy extruding plastics to like create artifacts and it's it's really interesting fascinating time in human history that's for sure just just thinking about all the innovation the chaos that's unfolding and yeah where are we going to go i think it's fascinating to think about i do want to make just like backtrack a little bit and just say you know i said there's a lot of garbage out there you know i hope that doesn't offend anybody you know what you would i maybe consider that you know i hope everybody continues to do their thing express however they want to express on the internet but i think there is something about that like digital hygiene that we just should be aware of like what are you consuming and is it draining you is it motivating you um is it inspiring you you know i definitely will consume a lot of quote-unquote mindless stuff when i need to just completely blank out and that's wonderful i'm so glad people are all on there making content for me to just blank out for a bit and laugh and just see something silly but um but i come back to like the digital hygiene it's like how much do i do that right and yeah digital hygiene for sure like be sure you're just not letting somebody puke infectious memes into your mind because you know memes can be used with like a virus analogy like quite well yeah that's exactly what it is it's like things self-replicating and communicating and it's you know make sure you're consuming the right ones you're really careful and you know if you're in doubt just back the clock a few hundred to a few thousand years and find the classics if if you're not so sure about q maybe read some plato socrates you know well honestly that was really helping me out um like going through a lot of the full philosophy stuff with lenny and you throughout the past like you know year year and a half however long we've been doing that for i guess really kind of helped me do some critical thinking here and there when that stuff was being shared with me um and i was actually referring a lot to some of the um you know the classical thought on how to dissect information and whatnot so i actually found that to be really useful for um you know thinking critically about some of this stuff right like those folks they're one of the first sets of people to actually take like a serious eye on reality and go okay like do i really know that how do i really know that what can i really know and these are really fundamental questions that we should be asking and um you know aristotle did a great job like he you know even though i don't necessarily like i'm definitely more of a platonist like aristotle just saying okay cool like let me see what i can do in the real world just categorizing everything like you know the first biologist categorization like all that stuff like yeah it's a really great book ray dalio one of the most successful investors ever his book principles I think is really good. And it boils down everything to like, how should I think about my scenarios? And he wants you to kind of develop your own system. But it's like, yeah, is this quote unquote, just another one of those? So you have these kind of like categories we can put things. This is one of the interesting things about Kabbalah is like Kabbalah, it can be like a spiritual practice. But one thing it also is for a lot of people is just an organizing system for people. So they can hang things on like an ordered rack. All right, this is another one of these. I'll put it on Yesod or Chesed or whatever. It's a really interesting system for that. So yeah, just being able to organize things is really helpful. Being able to say, all right, I give this like a 90% certainty for me as an individual on this particular idea. Cool, you got that figured out. Maybe you make some progress later in your life. But was coronavirus a thing? Was it a virus manufactured in a lab in China? I give that like a 3%, maybe a 0.0001%. Like, I don't even care. It's like that low of a probability that it's not even a factor for my thinking or life. Am I gonna be running ayahuasca workshops in the next two months? Absolutely not. Or breathwork workshops in the next few months? Absolutely not. So I'm taking it pretty seriously and it doesn't matter if it was made in a lab or not. Yeah, right? I mean, they're doing research on different coronaviruses. Maybe it was. And I think there could be that kernel of truth there. Yeah, maybe they were experimenting. What do we do with it even if it, does it impact your life? Does it actually even hinder your life if you even take it seriously? Right, and I guess, what does that mean if there was research being done on coronaviruses, this left the lab, got infected, versus this thing actually just naturally mutating in nature. And so could escape nature, right? Could escape nature and it could escape the lab still having the same effect on the global population. 100%, yeah. And you as a Westerner, you as a non-Chinese person, even you as a Chinese person, you can't do shit. There's no way you as an individual are gonna prove it. Maybe you could spend some money and time having a nonprofit and maybe you could make some sort of impact, but to what end? It's a lot easier to just do something more locally, like make your city and town a better place. Make your relationships better. You know, work on policy that actually helps folks and work on research that actually helps folks. These are the things, you know, like there's so much left in psychedelic science to work on. Like, do you really wanna focus on some obscure topic where people are putting misinformation on top of it? Like, that's why I backed away from the UFO topic is there's so much misinformation. It's just fucking hopeless. Yeah, and I guess something else that comes up on that topic of the virus, it's like, you know, if they were creating these viruses to think about future vaccine development, what's the risk-benefit analysis there to develop future vaccines for potential mutations of a coronavirus in the future? And like, you know, is that bad? So if the conspiracy, like if that theory was right, that it was lab produced, but it was hopefully for the benefit of the future, does that make sense? Does that necessarily make it a bad thing and that it was a government plot to expose everybody? God knows, yeah. So this is, you know, where we gotta really kind of like, where should we be putting our attention? There's this, and we're coming up to the end here, but there's this idea of like in Freemasonry, and you know, we can make analogies to how we might wanna apply that to our lives, but there's this tool that they would use. It's like a three-part. There's a ruler, and it was kind of like a ruler that like folded in, you know, had like pivots. And you know, like the analogy was use this for your life. You know, one part is for work, one part is for family, and one part is for your, you know, God, for religious purposes. So like, you've got 24 hours in a day, slice it up in three and see what you can do, you know? Like, what are we, are we committing enough time to our spiritual and religious purposes? Like, the answer's probably not. Are we giving enough time to family? You know, in America, probably not. I get distracted by all this stuff. Yeah, it's like my mind gets consumed by all this stuff that I sometimes neglect a lot of that, right? Yeah, all these shit, a lot of mind viruses just eat away your time. And you know, who's the writer? Cal Newport is this really, really cool computer scientist in Boston, wrote a book called "Deep Work," and he produces an amazing amount of scientific papers because he's not on social media. You know, he does email, you know, probably once a day, and then he's working the rest of the time. He's putting all of his attention on work as opposed to like, oh, let me do this, this, and this. Oh, cool, yep, Slack notification. Let me take a break from this reading and do that. And it's like, nah, I got all my notifications off. My phone's on do not disturb or, you know, silent almost all the time. Nice. It's, you know, all the notifications, like noises on my computer are turned off. Yeah, I was just chatting with somebody recently about this, like when in human history, have you have the access to ping anybody at any time? And, you know, I feel like sometimes with notifications on, like sometimes I'm going about my day, just swatting away notifications. And I'm like, oh, I can't keep up with everything. Like, and then I just feel so emotionally and mentally drained that I'm like, you know, this person's reaching out this, this, this, this, and it's like stuff that like, in my real day-to-day life doesn't really like affect me. And it takes away from actually what's important in front of me. And I think about that pretty often. And it's just like, you know, what's going on in my day-to-day what's important. And how do I spend more time doing that stuff versus like, you know, some, some randomness just pinging me. Cause I have this thing in my pocket and I really try sometimes put my phone away, tuck it away, try not to look at it. I mean, like, I don't, I haven't read a book in a while. I have a hard time reading. I read a book. Cause it's like, oh, the phone's like binging me and I get distracted. And then I start reading shit online, you know, it's like the attention span of people or it's, it's tough. By design. It's to make them more money. Yeah. Not you and technology was not designed to serve you. You know, initially maybe it was, but it's been co-opted by, you know, for profit entities by, by quite a lot. And, you know, let's be aware of that. You know, we are being programmed. Yeah. Who is, I forget who wrote the book "Program or Be Programmed". But he was really influential on me. Guy to New York, really, really amazing. Douglas Rushkoff was his name. Oh yeah. I listened to a few podcasts with him. I think he was on some symposia stuff, but he, yeah, he was a huge influence on me. I've been so stoked on his work for a long time. Yeah. And so, you know, it's about humanizing culture, humanizing technology, a lot of that stuff. And, you know, psychedelics can be used in really whack ways. They can also be used in really amazing ways. So let's try to be really intentional about how we can use them in amazing ways. And same thing with our, you know, standard other technologies, more mundane tech in our day to day. And yeah. I know we're at an hour, but I wanted to come back to something quickly. You mentioned, yeah, my friend Lucas has been posting a lot of stuff. On grief and, you know, we were just, I was revisiting a book and just gifted him a book by Martine Praktel, "The Smell of Rain on Dust," all about grief and praise. You know, I think he was posting a lot of that stuff, but, you know, we've been having a lot of conversations about it. And, you know, one of the things that Martine talks about is like, you know, the grief that the village like holds for the individuals and people like in his, you know, Mayan village, people would just be out in the streets crying and just like completely, you know, completely breaking down and the village was able to hold all that. And to really think about like in our lives, I think a lot of us are experiencing grief on so many levels, you know, with like climate or ecosystem destruction, climate change, what's happening with the lockdowns, people losing jobs, people losing loved ones, the government feeling like it's collapsing, all this chaos. I mean, this is so much grief. And to really think about like, where is our village that can really help contain and hold all this for each other? And one really, one thing I thought about, you know, I was mentioning to him, I was like, fuck, like, you know, I really think like part of like what Dream Shadow was, was the village for me to go there, to just completely act my neuroses out with breath work, cry, scream, and like really just be held in that. And I think about like, where in our culture is this village that can hold all that for people? And it's like really not there. And Martine shares a story. And I think in this book about how, you know, he gives all these kinds of grief rituals, going to the ocean, crying to the ocean, and kind of like these shamanic type of rituals. But, you know, one of his students was at a funeral and he writes this in the book that, you know, this person just completely broke down 'cause from Martine's worldview, the tears helped the soul travel on to the other world. So this person was praising, I think it was his mother's life or some family member's life at the funeral. And everybody, everybody around him, the family members thought he was going crazy. So the next thing he knew an ambulance showed up and they thought that this person couldn't contain the grief that they were experiencing. normal in our culture, right? Like we suppress grief and we don't really, it becomes scary to us. This person is just losing it. They have no control over how they're feeling. They're acting crazy. And it's like, you know, culturally we don't really contain grief very well. And I think that's also something we're dealing with on a collective level right now. There's so much grief in the world. And do we have the systems and that village to support our grief process as we're moving through, you know, this really tumultuous time in human history? Is it ever? Yeah. And thanks for that. Yeah, that was good. I probably should check out Prectel eventually. It's a little poetic. So sometimes, you know, if you don't like his writing style, some people don't, but I appreciate it. Yeah. All right, man. So I guess let's wrap this up and, you know, people, if you want to support us, we've got a Patreon. You can leave a small monthly donation there, patreon.com/psychedelicstoday, as low as $2 a month. You get some perks there. Check it out. What else? We've got a Facebook group where you can come join. We've got like 4,400 people there and a lot of active discussions around psychedelics. You can get a lot of support there. We've got all sorts of education. Imagination is Revelation: Psychedelics and Carl Jung by Johanna Hiller, the great Jungian scholar from Finland and a great class that you put together with Ido. What's that one? Called Psychedelics in the Shadow. Shadow. Yeah. The shadow side of psychedelia. So a lot of great interviews with folks exploring the shadow side. So yeah, that was really fun religious project in the works to, to probably work with some clergy. So if you want to stay tuned on that, get on our socials or email list and you'll hear about it and yeah, seats are for sale for our March Navigating Psychedelics for Clinicians and Therapists course. So check that out if you want to jump in and it's probably good for now. Share this with a friend, if you liked it, that's the biggest compliment you can give us. Yeah. Thank you all. And we'll see you on the next episode. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.