Hip people in the 1970s used to say, "Reality is for people who can't handle drugs." It was a snide way to invert the accusation leveled by "straight" people that drugs were a contemptible way to evade reality. These same people often packed all sorts of religious meeting places to engage in apparently superior illogical diversions.
Drugs, religion and fantasy life have all served as havens from the search for the true reality of our strange universe. The Internet is just the latest twist on the theme of escapism.
Like all escapist tools and techniques throughout the sprawling history of self awareness, the Internet has its solid, prosaic underpinnings and much content directly connected to the manipulation of what we refer to as The Real World. An escapist can't escape without acknowledging what was escaped from. You have to push off from something. And if you had no existence to begin with, how could you bemoan it or wish to be distracted from it?
Are we really here?
If you weren't here, you couldn't ask.
The true nature of here may turn out to be scientifically astonishing, but the fact remains that you have an arc of life to pursue, and you have to take a dump at regular intervals.
The Internet is a great place to be publicly obscure. It's a great place for people who can't handle real obscurity. You really want to be obscure? Shut the fuck up, take down your website and slink off into the grimy cityscape, where everyone looks the same. Go homestead in the last pockets of quasi-wilderness and don't do a documentary about it.
Hell, Thoreau was an attention whore.
Gratuitous obscurity is a sign of lazy writing. I respect people who still bother to craft coherent thoughts, complete sentences and concrete images.
Don't mind me. I'm really from the Crab Nebula. Unreal, man.
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This is a article I thought you might like....
"The undoubted mystical and religious intent of most users of the psychedelics, even if some of these substances should be proved injurious to physical health, requires that their free and responsible use be exempt from legal restraint in any republic that maintains a constitutional separation of church and state. To the extent that mystical experience conforms with the tradition of genuine religious involvement, and to the extent that psychedelics induce that experience, users are entitled to some constitutional protection. Also, to the extent that research in the psychology of religion can utilize such drugs, students of the human mind must be free to use them. Under present laws, I, as an experienced student of the psychology of religion, can no longer pursue research in the field. This is a barbarous restriction of spiritual and intellectual freedom, suggesting that the legal system of the United States is, after all, in tacit alliance with the monarchical theory of the universe, and will, therefore, prohibit and persecute religious ideas and practices based on an organic and unitary vision of the universe."
Alen Watts
I knew a guy who claimed that he did peyote with Native American shamans as part of his (highly innovative) prep school's curriculum.
I knew someone else who knew someone even elser who said that psychedelics are a shortcut to the kind of higher consciousness truly disciplined seekers will meditate to attain.
I saw some manifestations of this higher consciousness (auras and whatnot) when I had worked to exhaustion during a long period of overtime in a manufacturing job (sailmaking)
Brains are funny...
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