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 Twirling
Barred Spiral
Registered: 02/03/03
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 My Sociological Model and Theory of Society (& Psychedelics) 
#2431055 - 03/14/04 11:30 AM (19 years, 9 days ago) |
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Note: This is a sociological theory for explaining the development and workings of psychedelic culture. None of this is true in the literal sense, but merely a concept expressed in words to edify the change in society over the past 60 or so years, and where we are now.
Society works much in the same way the brain works. There are individual pieces, which provide different signals and perceptions to communicate within each other. The difference parts within the brain are able to put each other to the scientific test. Testing each other out while acting within their own context and understanding of life. Part of the problem is, society doesn?t realize that it working together to create a greater whole, unified society, or in terms the brain, a singular consciousness made up of a nearly infinite processes.
America, up until the 60?s, was a rather puritanical society. While it was high on a set of morals and order, it had not been exposed to psychedelics. Upon the discovery of LSD and psilocybin mushrooms, Leary and his colleagues saw through many of the psychological facades the more conservative leaders used (the leaders themselves might not have been aware of the mind games played, but just reacting within their upbringing). The goal was to distribute LSD to help empower human beings and realize their connection to each other. There was a tremendous success within the psychedelic community, and it gained support. Artists began experimenting and its affect within the art itself was clearly seen. People began listening to the new ideas and adapting to them. It seemed as if it was going to work, as there was tremendous leaps within civil rights, electronics, and conceptualization in science.
One important factor to remember is the way genetic, biological, and chemical makeups in people differ within a given population, and how this affects evolution. Examine the range of response to drugs themselves. On the most negative side, we see addiction, an inability to stop a compulsion even given dangerous and hurtful situations. This, as neurology is exploring (and still has an incomplete picture of), has its basis on chemical reaction in the brain causing the reward mechanism in the limbic system to expect an unachievable high (or reward) making it override all other functions in order to achieve it. It?s estimated that less than 10% of the population has this reaction from continual use of drugs which act strongly within the limbic system (namely alcohol, cocaine, opiates, amphetamines, and others).
On the other side of the reactions to drugs, I estimate a large part of the population is able to achieve an ineffable enhancement of cognitive functions. Many new ideas have been formed from the use of psychedelics as a catalyst. Again, it?s important to remember that words have a limitation in express a concept. Human beings have attached written and spoken words, or terms to ideas, items, places etc.. In order to decipher the world around them. As Huxley suggested, humans also become so accustomed to using language to decipher the world around them, that they forget the items themselves aren?t really the words themselves.
This has a significant limitation in science, as science itself is merely human interpretation of the world around them. While it allows us to understand a concept, we also become so accustomed to the idea that scientific laws and theories are real in the literal sense, when they are merely the human decoding of the actual workings of life.
This is where psychedelics play a huge part. They enable a portion of the population to conceptualize and understand the actual events themselves beyond a linguistic level. Unfortunately, society has tried to suppress this side of itself, so many of the ideas conceptualized aren?t shared, testing, and proven or disproven. In other words, the scientific process of the unexplainable goes unfulfilled.
An example of this concept in action is right here on the shroomery. We have two polar opposites utilizing psychedelics in different fashions. Shroomism manages to explore whatever his consciousness provides (and what he provides his consciousness). Swami plays the role of the scientific process of testing the theories. The two interact, share ideas for the rest of the shroomery to see, and new territory to explore.
So while it can be seen that the counter-culture revolution failed, it?s also true that it played a completely different role, exposing a new territory and chemistry for the human gene pool to explore. Some achieved understanding and peace. Others tried and just couldn?t hold onto it. Some didn?t understand but wanted to see what the fuss is about. Others had negative experiences due to their biological and personal experiences. The entire population wasn?t able to live in harmony, but those who were able to benefit from these chemicals were finally exposed to them. They shared ideas and grew in many ways. But in the course of give and take, the establishment recognized the threat and tried to protect itself through misinformation and scare tactics. It was successful in breaking up the difference factions of the counterculture, but the individuals still remained.
The 90?s brought about an electronically and informational change. Suddenly, those experienced in psychedelics could share information and ideas. People from all angles brought their own personal experiences and abilities to interact with each other. Those with neurological information provided that perspective. Those with spiritual or shamanistic experience shared that angle.
The psychedelic revolution isn?t going to come soon, because it?s already here. It?s been happening, slowly, for the past 10 or so years. We are expecting and waiting for a Leary of Mckenna to come along and guide us, not realizing that we are creating the path collectively and individually. Part of the key is for us to realize the ability and freedom to conceptualize and challenge ourselves. If we provide the rest of society our abilities and realize they are apart of us, things will change, as they have already been.
Remember, this is just a sociological theory and model. It?s not meant to be happening literally, but as a way of explaining what?s going on, and what can happen if we make it. This doesn?t require a movement, nor a creed to follow, just to for us to follow through on.
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The very nature of experience is ineffable; it transcends cognitive thought and intellectualized analysis. To be without experience is to be without an emotional knowledge of what the experience translates into. The desire for the understanding of what life is made of is the motivation that drives us all. Without it, in fear of the experiences what life can hold is among the greatest contradictions; to live in fear of death while not being alive.
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Spokesman
The HighPhilosopher
Registered: 08/05/03
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 Re: My Sociological Model and Theory of Society (& Psychedelics) [Re: Twirling]
#2431085 - 03/14/04 11:50 AM (19 years, 9 days ago) |
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Great Post man. I had also expressed on this forum how i felt like humanity was basicly like a group of cells communicating with eachother to complete a task. Humanity as a whole is like an organ that evolves as its cells evolve their communication skills. We have achived so much in our space program and its only been around for acouple decades. All because our communication and mathematics have evolved so rapidly with the help of our own technology. Drugs are a part of not only our society, but of our species. They have helped us live longer and cure once-deadly diseases. And we accept a great deal of them and ban some for several uknown reasons. But we can not deny the relationships and the help that these plants and chemicals have given us. Wether legal or not.    
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 silversoul7
Chill the FuckOut!
Registered: 10/10/02
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Loc: mndfreeze's puppet army
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Re: My Sociological Model and Theory of Society (& Psychedelics) [Re: Twirling]
#2431117 - 03/14/04 11:59 AM (19 years, 9 days ago) |
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Quote:
America, up until the 60?s, was a rather puritanical society.
A bit of a generalization, don't you think? Have you forgotten the Transendentalist movement? The Beatnicks? Spiritualism? Hell, I'd say the founding fathers were far from puritanical, being comprised of so many deists and secular humanists.
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Artists began experimenting and its affect within the art itself was clearly seen.
Art and drugs have gone together since long before the 60's. When Napoleon's soldiers brought marijuana to Europe from their conquests abroad, it became quite popular among artists, poets, etc.
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People began listening to the new ideas and adapting to them. It seemed as if it was going to work, as there was tremendous leaps within civil rights, electronics, and conceptualization in science.
The Civil Rights movement was much older than that, and some of the most important landmarks in the movement, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, happened prior to the psychedelic era. I also fail to see what psychedelics had to do with science and electronics, unless you're talking about inventions like the lava lamp or the blacklight.
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This is where psychedelics play a huge part. They enable a portion of the population to conceptualize and understand the actual events themselves beyond a linguistic level.
So can a basic education in philosophy.
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Remember, this is just a sociological theory and model.
Have you taken any sociology classes? I see no theory put forward here. A theory is something which can be tested. All I see here is an idealistic rant. No offense, but as a sociology major, I find it somewhat laughable that you call this a "sociological theory."
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"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."--Voltaire
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Twirling
Barred Spiral
Registered: 02/03/03
Posts: 2,468
Last seen: 1 year, 1 month
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 Re: My Sociological Model and Theory of Society (& Psychedel [Re: Spokesman]
#2431135 - 03/14/04 12:05 PM (19 years, 9 days ago) |
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Well said, I agree 110%. Nice sig too. It really puts things into perspective to consider things from that persepctive.
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Spokesman
The HighPhilosopher
Registered: 08/05/03
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Last seen: 18 years, 8 months
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Re: My Sociological Model and Theory of Society (& Psychedelics) [Re: silversoul7]
#2431144 - 03/14/04 12:08 PM (19 years, 9 days ago) |
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 Damn, he was just trying to express a pespective geez, did't have to bust out the "socialogy major" on em'.
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silversoul7
Chill the FuckOut!
Registered: 10/10/02
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Loc: mndfreeze's puppet army
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Re: My Sociological Model and Theory of Society (& Psychedelics) [Re: Spokesman]
#2431152 - 03/14/04 12:10 PM (19 years, 9 days ago) |
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I thought it was a nice post. I just didn't think it had anything to do with sociology. Sorry if I'm a bit defensive of the field which I've chosen to study in-depth.
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"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."--Voltaire
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Twirling
Barred Spiral
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Re: My Sociological Model and Theory of Society (& Psych [Re: silversoul7]
#2431354 - 03/14/04 01:06 PM (19 years, 9 days ago) |
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Quote:
silversoul7 said:
A bit of a generalization, don't you think? Have you forgotten the Transendentalist movement? The Beatnicks? Spiritualism? Hell, I'd say the founding fathers were far from puritanical, being comprised of so many deists and secular humanists.
Well, yes, it is a generalization. I wasn't saying this in terms of the entire society being puritans, but that there was a large portion of puritanical values. Your point is well made, and I agree with you. Certainly throughout any society, you'll find different movements which are separate from others, making it impossible to generalize across the board. I was mainly using it as an example of how values have changed dramatically in a large part of the population.
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Art and drugs have gone together since long before the 60's. When Napoleon's soldiers brought marijuana to Europe from their conquests abroad, it became quite popular among artists, poets, etc.
Of course, it can be seen in any society. I was just making a statement that LSD had an impact on the art of the 60's, not that there wasn't any drug influenced art. Nothing more than that.
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The Civil Rights movement was much older than that, and some of the most important landmarks in the movement, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, happened prior to the psychedelic era.
Again, I'm well aware of that. There was SNICK, women's suffrage, and many other movements where people stood up for themselves. Even in pre-Columbus era you had thousands of different attempts to escape persecution and oppression. I'm just saying a lot took off within the 60's, as more & more people were demonstrating. I'm not suggesting that psychedelics created the civil rights movement, and in fact I stated, "there was tremendous leaps within civil rights". All I was saying was that it gathered support as more people became aware of it.
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So can a basic education in philosophy.
Again, I agree with you. I'm suggesting that psychedelic culture plays a role within the rest of society. Without education in sciences and stimulation from other ideas, it's extremely difficult to put together anything tangible. And I'm certianly not suggesting that it's ONLY through psychedelics that advancements can be made, but that it's possible.
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Have you taken any sociology classes? I see no theory put forward here. A theory is something which can be tested. All I see here is an idealistic rant. No offense, but as a sociology major, I find it somewhat laughable that you call this a "sociological theory."
Well it's a model I tried to put together to explain the various roles psychedelics have played in modern society. I'm not suggesting that the world is going to be saved by psychedelics or that "it's the key to our future" or anything idealistic like that. The whole point is tying together how psychedelic society can influence the rest of society as a whole. It's a natural process, and I'm not saying that there needs to be a "revolution" or anything like that.
Now I do lack perhaps the fundamental foundations of social theory, so perhaps my structure is off-base from the standard model. But this can be tested, and I?ll show you how. The basic hypothesis is ?They (psychedelics) enable a portion of the population to conceptualize and understand the actual events themselves beyond a linguistic level.? I stated how linguistics work, and the connection between words and associations (look into the executive functions of the hippocampus, among others). Conceptualizing science is a very difficult process for anyone to undertake, and any influence into consciousness can help this process.
Here is an excerpt from an article on LSD and problem solving: http://www.psychedelic-library.org/staf5.htm
? In the other "artist" groups, similar techniques were used. Thus, for five people who had expressed interest in the civil-rights movement, the taped recordings were excerpts from speeches by Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin and Louis Lomax. Four others who knew little about geography and have never closely studied maps, were shown the Rand McNally atlas and heard explanations about the historical development of cities, given by a professor who had for years been interested in demography. Another group listened to Shaw's "Don Juan in Hell" while looking at John Held, Jr., cartoons and photographs from "The Roaring Twenties." Colette's Claudine novels were excerpted in another instance at the suggestion of several students who felt an affinity for French literature and Parisian Left-Bank society; they also listened to recordings from Proust, Mistinguette and Piaf.
In each of these sessions, held primarily for educational purposes, emphasis was on the development of total emotional participation with the material at hand. During the following week, this involvement was to be compounded by looking in detail at related writings, at which time intellectual and factual material could be assimilated. With this method it was discovered that students who ordinarily would have delved little into subjects about which they were only somewhat curious became extremely interested instead and followed out the leads they had been given in class and in session. In this course, incidentally, the guide-teacher abstained entirely from psychedelics during the student sessions. However, he had taken LSD when the plans for the project were in progress and it was realized that the course would be offered.
Further implications for psychedelic learning techniques are evident in a subsidiary study made at the same college with a group of four students who were having difficulties with mathematics. They were not in the "creative artist" category, but were liberal arts majors who were frustrated because their abstract thinking processes seemed impeded. When they heard about the drugs course, one of them consulted the professor about the possibility of breaking a "mathematics block" through the use of LSD. A session was arranged for all four students, together with the guide and their mathematics teacher, who restated for them the fundamental concepts of calculus, which they had been unable to grasp in class. Under LSD each student found himself able to understand calculus, the reasoning behind it, why it was developed the way it was, and why it worked. They were elated about this breakthrough and had no difficulty with the thinking behind Taylor's theorem, integration, partial derivatives and analytical geometry. In the weeks following, although they were not transformed into brilliant mathematics students, it was clear that the "block" had been broken and that they were learning.
There is an example of my statement in action. It was tested with positive results.
And I am just beginning to study psychology and sociology. I came here, suggested an idea, you challenged it from the sociological student perspective, I went through, refined my idea, tried explaining it better because of the limits of language to convey my exact thoughts, you will probably respond refute more of it or acknowledge parts of what I?m saying. The idea stimulates both of us as well as the other readers of the thread to consider it. Everyone learns something from regardless of their opinion or the statement?s validity simply because it challenges everyone to think.
And that is a part of my thesis, which just took place in this very thread.
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The very nature of experience is ineffable; it transcends cognitive thought and intellectualized analysis. To be without experience is to be without an emotional knowledge of what the experience translates into. The desire for the understanding of what life is made of is the motivation that drives us all. Without it, in fear of the experiences what life can hold is among the greatest contradictions; to live in fear of death while not being alive.
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silversoul7
Chill the FuckOut!
Registered: 10/10/02
Posts: 27,301
Loc: mndfreeze's puppet army
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Re: My Sociological Model and Theory of Society (& Psych [Re: Twirling]
#2431389 - 03/14/04 01:22 PM (19 years, 9 days ago) |
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Good response. I was trying to figure out what your theory here was. Thank you for explaining it more clearly. However, that study you cited doesn't seem to clearly back up your hypothesis. It seems to show that psychedelics help in learning, but it doesn't seem to explain why.
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"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."--Voltaire
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Twirling
Barred Spiral
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Re: My Sociological Model and Theory of Society (& Psych [Re: silversoul7]
#2431454 - 03/14/04 01:45 PM (19 years, 9 days ago) |
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Thanks for your response. That is true, it only tests the condition but doesn't explain why. I wonder if anyone has done research into it from a neurological perspective.
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silversoul7
Chill the FuckOut!
Registered: 10/10/02
Posts: 27,301
Loc: mndfreeze's puppet army
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Re: My Sociological Model and Theory of Society (& Psych [Re: Twirling]
#2431535 - 03/14/04 02:08 PM (19 years, 9 days ago) |
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I can't figure out how your theory could be tested. How do you measure the ability to conceptualize beyond linguistics, when linguistics are the only means of communicating this understanding?
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"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."--Voltaire
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Crobih
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Re: My Sociological Model and Theory of Society (& Psych [Re: Twirling]
#2431557 - 03/14/04 02:16 PM (19 years, 9 days ago) |
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Hey Twirling. Though I agree in most of the parts with you, I have to point out something very important. Society is not acting as a brain, but as an organism. It still needs CNS that will make it go on a further step of the societal development. Creating CNS is the project that my group works for a while. Anyway, keep it up!
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DoctorJ
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Re: My Sociological Model and Theory of Society (& Psych [Re: Twirling]
#2431613 - 03/14/04 02:44 PM (19 years, 9 days ago) |
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Quote:
Thanks for your response. That is true, it only tests the condition but doesn't explain why. I wonder if anyone has done research into it from a neurological perspective.
I'll get right on it as soon as I get an MRI, PET, a liscence from the DEA to manufacture Schedule I substances, and FDA approval to use a scheduled substance in human research.
how long could that take? 
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