Hallucinogens and intelligence.

i just realized that last post jumped around a lot. sorry guys.

 

If you read it through a funhouse mirror then it makes perfect sense.

 

Psychedelics are most popular among working-class youth and older eccentrics. You don't see many very intelligent psychonauts because many psychonauts tend to skip school or be idle. On the other hand, I noticed on MySpace that many of the Goth types (who presumably use drugs) tend to have a sharp intellect and sense of fashion.

I would say the intelligence distribution of users of psychedelics more or less matches that of the general population.

 

maybe psychonauts realise how fucked up schools are, and they choose not to go waste their precious lives with that shit.

 

That doesn't mean you stop learning. I quit college for said reasons, but if I stopped learning I would just be a fuckwad.


anarchist: you think 'goths' have a sense of fashion? Crazy man, crazy lol

 

goths? so gay

 

fashion is like ball games
there are teams
all the other teams are supposed to be losers
that is what elitism is about.
hockey or basketball.

 

good point. most people i know who don't do drugs, don't do them because they were told not to, told they were "bad", and they just accept that. or they don't want to be seen as a certain kind of person. you learn by doing or thinking things in ways you never have before. so if a person looks at things from all different angles, they'll learn a lot. and if you look at it from as many angles as you can, doing drugs won't really seem that bad. and, of course, drugs themselves force you to look at things from very strange angles.

it's like asking "why are spoiled people not as smart as people who've had hard lives?" the more you experience that blows your mind, the more likely you'll learn and grow from it.

 

haha, you're welcome. you summed it up well.

 

On Goths...

Oh, the Goths: keep in mind that many of them would likely think of Deadheads, with their "peace and love" worldview, as effeminate (not that I would agree with them!).

From Goths I have debated and observed over the internet, they almost always have seemed bright to me. Their fixation with death is a bit twisted though, and I suspect many have disturbed minds (not to sound too judgmental).

Erik von Markovik ("Mystery"), who picks up more women in clubs than probably any man in the world, other than celebrities (for obvious reasons), is Goth.

On Psychonauts...

As for my comments on psychonauts which can be perceived as insulting to those who dropped out of or don't care for school (I was one in high school and early college), I guess what I am aiming at is that using drugs is an individual enterprise. It is not a collective experience. When we are using LSD, for example, we are not seeing the world "more alike." Human brotherhood, to me, is a myth. We are separated many miles by our unique minds and experiences. We do not see the same things while tripping, although some people seem to pretend to do so. Likewise, our intelligence levels are not converging because of drugs. Not even wisdom converges. What we have are certain psychological states that somewhat approximate one another.

Many geniuses have tried psychedelics, but they have done so as individuals. I have seen no evidence that users of psychedelics are any brighter than average, on average. I could be wrong, as this is merely my own perception.

 

haha deadheads, i'm not even gonna comment.

 

Anarchist, your placing way too much emphasis on stereotypes. Just had to say...

 

"well i'll tell ya this stage is a fuckin mess"

 

Hat to say it again lol

 

Another thing is most psychadelics remove a lot of a persons ego, when ego vanishes people are able to be more open minded. When people are open minded they learn more. If you balance the use of psychadelics well you can certainly become a more intelligent person because of them.

They can damage the brain if you do too much so it takes some intelligence to keep the balance but with a little caution anyone can use them well.

Then you just have ego increasing drugs that can also help, they boost confidence which is an important part of learning, some people lack the confidence to ask questions. They often end up making you an arsehole instead though

 

agreed. and uh...collecting research through myspace? why not make some real friends and pass steriotypical judgements that way?

 

I believe when people complain about stereotypes, usually they are upset about negative depictions. It is true that stereotypes can be very flawed, but if I had instead said that psychonauts are almost all gifted people (however absurd) it is unlikely this would have drawn a reaction. Besides, you can't really function in life without stereotyping: if you are a taxi driver, it is unlikely you will be serving all neighborhoods equally with no second thought. If you don't care about the type of customer you have, you place your life in peril. If you are searching for good LSD, perhaps you have an idea built into your head about who are more likely to be legit dealers based on your learned experience.

Having posted in various forums on the internet, I don't find psychonauts to be exceptional in any way -- other than their interest in something that deviates from the mainstream that happens to alter their consciousness temporarily.

If you do not separate people into groups and find patterns that make them distinct in their behavior and thoughts, you will never be good at advertising. Having set up a MySpace account to test out the waters (I then promptly cancelled it when I figured it just wasn't for me), I saw that distinct crowds (mainly extroverts) were drawn to the Web site. Many of these subgroups within MySpace I found to be unusually bright based on their interest in the arts and literature -- clearly they were not random people from the general population, which you would assume if you never stereotyped. On the other hand, I saw that the message boards were stupid and superficial, so my observations on this thread were limited to one subgroup within MySpace.

 

we all are what we are. the momen you "are" something, or subscribe yourself to a group of people, you have to be able to accept negative criticism, because you have affiliated yourself to the stereotypes. to say one is "hippie" or "psychonauts " or even "black" or "white" really doesnt mean anything at all, because those are just words brought on by stereotype.

after doing a Wikipedia search on the word "psychonaut", and i was interested to learn that many progressive and interesting humans have been considered BY OTHERS to be psychonauts. i capitalize that becuase i think that is important, because it means that they did not succumb to fad, that they were just "doing their thing", leaders, not followers. to name jsut a few:

Terrence McKenna
Carlos Castinada
Ken Kesey
Albert Hofmann
William S. Burroughs

you ought to include them into your stereotype. there is no doubt that the people listed there are exceptional, as are many other "psychonauts"...but that doesnt have anything to do with them being "psychonauts", it is because they are exceptional humans.

 

I disagree. Stereotypes have meaning and are in many cases accurate. There are stereotypes that are false or inaccurate, and merely repeated and spread because some people are intellectually lazy and ignorant.

An example of a false stereotype is when an Italian American is asked whether he or his family is connected with the mafia. As far as I know, the Italian mafia in America has been dismantled by the federal government, and even at their high point of power only a few thousand Italians, out of millions, were involved.

Another false stereotype is the assumption by some people that Jews are all rich and conspire to control non-Jews, especially through banking and the media. Historically Jews were involved in money-lending, but today, with their freedoms, Jews are involved in all occupations. There are many poor and blue-collar Jews. Historically, many anti-Semites did not personally know of or were not close to any Jews.

Out of all of the names on the list, I do know that Albert Hofmann stands out as a super-human: someone who revolutionized human society with his immense curiosity in chemistry. Not only did he discover LSD, but he sensed that the chemical he discovered could bring spiritual or psychiatric benefits to the human race.

Getting back to stereotypes, I have realized that people feed off of stereotypes and mold their behavior accordingly. I will give some examples.

Have you noticed that hippies, though in theory apolitical, appear sympathetic to environmentalism, animal rights causes, the causes of the poor and handicapped, women's and civil rights causes, and, if that weren't enough, often share very similar musical tastes and clothing styles?

What does the environment have to do with civil rights issues? But even if you can connect those two dots, how do you connect them to music and dress?

I suppose you could cluster many of these causes by rationalizing that what they have in common is opposition to the desires of greedy wealthy elites, who wish to exploit the land and minorities, but even this view seems very simplistic.

But even if people agree on all of these political causes, why must they dress so similar and enjoy similar types of music?

It's clear that one motivation for being a hippie, though almost always unmentioned, is the desire to be a part of a group, to be a part of a collective. People do this to avoid feelings of loneliness and to boost their self-esteem, in feeling accepted by the group.

 

completely agreed. that was the purpose of my last post, though i suppose you put it more diectly. stereotypes emerge becuase groups of people subscribe themselves to one persons/groups set of beliefs, usually modifying or changing their own in the process. they do this for the exact reason that you stated, to have the feelings of belonging, and to boost self-esteem. however, i do not think that this behavior can in any way be isolated to hippies, i think that it is a human trait. i have been studing human behavior for months within my own set of friends, and i have seen them contradict themselves MEER SENTENCES APART, simply becuase someone with more group authority spoke against them. GROUP THINK. its dangerous.