|
motaman
old hand

Registered: 12/18/02
Posts: 6,047
Last seen: 11 days, 42 minutes
|
Wonderful world of science gives us another no-duh study
#5934321 - 08/05/06 11:44 AM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/04/DDGH3KA1TN1.DTL&feed=rss.entertainment
Wonderful world of science gives us another no-duh study - Mark Morford Friday, August 4, 2006
Hide the children. Pour some absinthe, fluff the pillows, take off your pants. It is time.
Because now we know: Getting nicely and wholly high on illegal but completely natural hallucinogenic drugs might, just might, open some sort of profound psychological doorway or serve as some sort of giddy terrifying rocket ride to a higher state of consciousness, happiness, a sense of inner peace and love and perspective and a big, fat lick from the divine.
It's true. There's even a swell new study from Johns Hopkins University that officially suggests what shamans and gurus and botany Ph.D.s and alt-spirituality types have known since the dawn of time and Jimi Hendrix's consciousness: that psilocybin, the all-natural chemical found in certain strains of wild mushrooms, induces a surprisingly large percentage of users to experience a profound -- and in some cases, largely permanent -- revolution in their spiritual attitudes and perspectives.
Not only that, but the stuff reportedly made a majority of testers feel so much more compassionate, open-hearted, connected to and awestruck by the world and the universe and God that it ranks right up there with the most profound and unfathomable experiences of their lives. I know. Stop the presses.
But let us sidestep the face-slapping obviousness. Let us look past the fact that you are meant to react to this study's findings like it's some sort of revelation, like it doesn't merely reinforce roughly 10,000 years of evidence and modern research and opinioneering and responsible advocacy by everyone from Timothy Leary to Terence McKenna to Huston Smith to the Tibetan Book of the Dead with yet another study to add to the pile in the Science of the No Duh.
You know the type -- studies that merely reinforce ageless common sense, that simply reiterate something that's been said and understood for eons. There have been, for example, recent studies that prove that meditation actually reduces blood pressure (no!) and that MDMA (ecstasy) is amazing at releasing inhibition and tapping the deeper psyche (shocking!) and that marijuana is roughly a 1,000 times less harmful than Marlboros and nine vodka tonics and smacking your family around in an alcoholic rage. You know, duh.
Because one thing painfully redundant studies like this do provide is a nicely clinical framework, a structured context from which to view a long-standing phenomenon. But here's the fascinating part: In the case of something like psilocybin, it's not so much the astounding findings that can make you swoon, it's also, well, the illuminating shortcomings of science itself.
Put another way, the scientists are trying, once again, to measure enlightenment. They are attempting to put a frame around consciousness, cosmic awe, God. And of course, they cannot do it. Or rather, they can only go so far before they hit that point where the sidewalk ends and the world spins off its logical axis and the study's participants cannot help but deliver the death blow every scientist dreads to hear: "You cannot possibly understand."
Witness, won't you, these revelations:
The psilocybin joyriders said the experience included such feelings as "a sense of pure awareness and a merging with ultimate reality, a transcendence of time and space, a feeling of sacredness or awe, and deeply felt positive mood like joy, peace and love." What's more, for a majority of users, the experience was "impossible to put into words."
It doesn't stop there. Two months later, 24 of the participants (out of a total of 36) filled out a questionnaire. Two-thirds called their reaction to psilocybin "one of the five top most meaningful experiences of their lives. On another measure, one-third called it the most spiritually significant experience of their lives, with another 40 percent ranking it in the top five. About 80 percent said that because of the psilocybin experience, they still had a sense of well-being or life satisfaction that was raised either 'moderately' or 'very much.' "
You gotta read that again. And then again. Because those statements are just a little astonishing, unlike anything you will read in some FDA report on Prozac from Eli Lily. The most profound experience of their lives? One of the most spiritually significant? Can we get some of this stuff into Dick Cheney's blood pudding? Into the Kool-Aid at the American Family Association? Into Israel and Lebanon?
But this is the amazing thing: Here, again, is hard science running smack into the hot cosmic goo of the mystical. Here, again, is science peering over the edge of understanding and jumping back and saying, "Holy crap." It is yet another reminder that our beautiful sciences have almost zero tools with which to quantify something like "transcendence of time and space" or "a feeling of sacredness and awe." And watching them try is either tremendously enjoyable or just depressing as hell. Or a little of both. It all depends, of course, on how you see it.
Here then, are your choices. Here are the three ways to look at the effects of magic mushrooms on the consciousness of humankind. Which angle you choose depends a great deal on how nimble you allow your mind, your heart, your spirit to be. Or maybe it's just how much wine you've had.
The first way is to simply presume that the lives of the study's participants had obviously been, up to their psilocybin joys, tremendously mediocre. So bland and so limp that something like hallucinogenic mushrooms could not help but be, in contrast, as profound as being licked by angels.
This is a clinical interpretation. The gorgeous experience itself means nothing except to say that normal life is terribly drab, and crazy drugs temporarily scramble your brain in occasionally positive and interesting ways, but never the twain shall meet, so, oh well, let's go back to work.
But you can also take it one step further. You may conclude that the study underscores the harsh fact that we as a species are so divorced from deeper meaning, so detached from the mystical and the divine and the universal in our everyday instant-gratification lives, that it takes something like a powerful hallucinogen to show us just how meek and limited and far from merging with God we still very much are. This is the pessimistic view. And it is, by every estimate, a very primitive and sour place to be.
Ah, but then there's the third way. This is to suggest that it's exactly the other way around, that perhaps at least some of us are, as Leary and his cosmic cohorts have suggested for decades, just inches from the celestial doorway, already on the precipice of realizing that we are, in fact, the divine we so desperately seek. Problem is, we can't see the edge through the tremendous fog of consumerism and conservatism and quasi-religious muck.
But even so, every now and then, we manage to take a tiny, unconscious, clumsy step ever closer to the edge, stumbling toward ecstasy without really knowing or understanding that we're doing so. And ultimately, sly entheogens like psilocybin are merely nature's way of clearing the fog for a moment, of letting us know just how close we are by smacking us upside the scientific head and tying our cosmic shoelaces together. And doesn't that sound like a fascinating way to spend the weekend?
-------------------- http://heffter.org
|
FunkyLoFi
Existing

Registered: 07/18/05
Posts: 1,542
|
Re: Wonderful world of science gives us another no-duh study [Re: motaman]
#5934495 - 08/05/06 12:44 PM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Neat article!
-------------------- All the people you knew were the actors
|
demiu5
humans, lol


Registered: 08/18/05
Posts: 43,948
Loc: the popcorn stadium
|
Re: Wonderful world of science gives us another no-duh study [Re: motaman]
#5934536 - 08/05/06 12:58 PM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
I dislike the way it is written. It's too informal, somewhat distracting from the meaning of the article.
-------------------- channel your inner Larry David
|
Schwip
Never sleeps.


Registered: 06/27/05
Posts: 3,937
Last seen: 11 years, 2 months
|
Re: Wonderful world of science gives us another no-duh study [Re: demiu5]
#5935009 - 08/05/06 04:12 PM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
demius said: I dislike the way it is written. It's too informal, somewhat distracting from the meaning of the article.
i agree.
but it was written as an editorial piece. it appeared in the entertainment section, not on the front page.
-------------------- -------------------------------- " If the sky were to suddenly open up there would be no law. There would be no rule. There would only be you and your memories... the choices you've made, and the people you've touched. If this world were to end there would only be you and him and no-one else. " .............. "MAN! You know there aint no such thing as left over crack!"
|
Cubenisseur
Mad Props


Registered: 12/04/05
Posts: 1,392
Loc: Indian Land
Last seen: 13 years, 10 months
|
Re: Wonderful world of science gives us another no-duh study [Re: Schwip]
#5935118 - 08/05/06 05:32 PM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
I actually like the way it was written, even in all it's sarcastic splendor.
It is just that sarcasm, that to me, summarizes the very backward nature of our government policies, scientific "pioneers", and quasi religious phonies that are simply "blind men groping an elephant" when it comes to the true nature of "reality"...
His sarcasm is as if to say that, "Please, when will it be enough for us to finally politically(legally), scientifically, and spiritually(as a societal whole) recognize and put into action a stop to the backward thoughts and actions that are destroying spiritual civilization and truly recognize such substances for what they truly are, put away are false concepts and backward notions, and fucking lighten up!"....
At least that was my understanding.
|
DadeMurphy
H4x0r

Registered: 01/29/03
Posts: 908
Last seen: 13 years, 11 months
|
Re: Wonderful world of science gives us another no-duh study [Re: Cubenisseur]
#5936463 - 08/06/06 08:58 AM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
I dig what he is saying here also, but I think maybe he is not correct in framing the scientists as clueless/spiritually bereft fools.
Surely many of the scientist administering the study suspected or knew what the outcome would be, some of them had probably taken LSD or psilocybin at some point themselves. The purpose of running such a study and 'jumping through the hoops' of scientific rigour is to provide some evidence that people with materialistic viewpoints can accept, and to help the cause of liberating psychedelics.
With this study done, more and more science can be done and the various institutions of our society might eventually open up completely to psychedelics.
-------------------- --------------------------------------------------
|
Cubenisseur
Mad Props


Registered: 12/04/05
Posts: 1,392
Loc: Indian Land
Last seen: 13 years, 10 months
|
Re: Wonderful world of science gives us another no-duh study [Re: DadeMurphy]
#5936570 - 08/06/06 10:21 AM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Good points.
It certainly is a step in a positive direction, hopefully there will be more in the future.
|
ExplosiveMango
HallucinogenusDigitallus


Registered: 07/12/05
Posts: 3,222
Last seen: 14 years, 3 months
|
Re: Wonderful world of science gives us another no-duh study [Re: motaman]
#5936745 - 08/06/06 11:54 AM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
motaman said: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/04/DDGH3KA1TN1.DTL&feed=rss.entertainment
But this is the amazing thing: Here, again, is hard science running smack into the hot cosmic goo of the mystical. Here, again, is science peering over the edge of understanding and jumping back and saying, "Holy crap." It is yet another reminder that our beautiful sciences have almost zero tools with which to quantify something like "transcendence of time and space" or "a feeling of sacredness and awe." And watching them try is either tremendously enjoyable or just depressing as hell. Or a little of both. It all depends, of course, on how you see it.
The writer seems to have his heart in the right place... but I think he demonstrates a powerful misunderstanding of scientific method.
Science should never try to explain the mystical. The mystical is by very nature unscientific, and scientific is by nature unmystical.
The mystical represents that which is perceived, or felt, but which is outside of our realm of deeper comprehension and explanation. The mystical is what will always lie just beyond all the mapped boundaries.
Science however, is an intellectual extension of the human organism for purpose of increasing capability in the immediate universe. It is a new language, one which can only be used to explain that which we can observe and understand very well. In the end it can never communicate more truth than our point of view- our observations- allow us.
Scientists being akin to blind men groping an elephant is a good analogy. Only the eyes we use to guide our scientific tendrils look outwards at the universe largely through our minds. In terms of sight, these arms are blind to the obvious, but able to see powerfully into dimensions completely invisible to the human eye. Atomic scale. Astrological scale. Electrical motion.
Sometimes the fact that these forms of scientific sight are so powerful that they cause the human mind to become blind to the obvious- that science IS in fact, just another set of blind tendrils, groping a another elephant.
-------------------- Know your self. Know your substance. Know your source. The most distorted perspective possible is the perspective that yours is not distorted.
|
2FiNiTe
ConsideratlyKilling Me


Registered: 06/12/06
Posts: 1,635
Loc: New England
Last seen: 7 years, 5 months
|
Re: Wonderful world of science gives us another no-duh study [Re: motaman]
#5937301 - 08/06/06 02:59 PM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
yay
-------------------- "Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living." General Omar N. Bradley
|
badchad
Mad Scientist

Registered: 03/02/05
Posts: 13,373
|
Re: Wonderful world of science gives us another no-duh study [Re: 2FiNiTe]
#5938229 - 08/06/06 08:21 PM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
The results of the study weren't overly surprising.
The novelty was in the study's design. It was carefully controlled, and executed well. That was the point the author missed.
-------------------- ...the whole experience is (and is as) a profound piece of knowledge. It is an indellible experience; it is forever known. I have known myself in a way I doubt I would have ever occurred except as it did. Smith, P. Bull. Menninger Clinic (1959) 23:20-27; p. 27. ...most subjects find the experience valuable, some find it frightening, and many say that is it uniquely lovely. Osmond, H. Annals, NY Acad Science (1957) 66:418-434; p.436
|
|