Ray Peat On Psychedelics

[Beastmode]

I had asked Ray before if he ever had a psychedelic experience without the use of drugs and his response was:
"Yes, I think the real psychedelic experience is a shift toward intensity, coherence, and satisfaction-expectancy; psychedelectics."

In a follow up email I mentioned how a lot of my generation (I'm 40) are turning more towards them (i.e- even taking trips to South America for ayuhasca ceremonies, psylocibin, mushrooms.) I looked up the word psychedelectics and nothing came up so asked him more on it: (his response)

"I had a seminar series in 1966 that I called the psychedelectic involution. When the change is based on integral physiology, it intensifies health as well as experience; each of those botanicals activates part of the system, leaving some good residues, but also some distortion of metabolism."

I'm going to see if he'll dive deeper into this, but as everyone knows he doesn't always continue responding.

 

[lampofred]

When your metabolism is so good that you start making up your own words to communicate.

My guess is he was saying rich and "delectable" experiences can be psychedelic?

 

[Beastmode]

When your metabolism is so good that you start making up your own words to communicate.

My guess is he was saying rich and "delectable" experiences can be psychedelic?

Haha yeah! That was my take as well. First time I've ever questioned a word he's shared. Glad I asked :)

His use of the word intensity is so different, and in quite a few email exchanges, than how my brain has been conditioned to connect it with being in a stressed state. Points back to that damn robust metabolism that's available.

 

[managing]

When your metabolism is so good that you start making up your own words to communicate.

My guess is he was saying rich and "delectable" experiences can be psychedelic?

I suspect its supposed to be a combination of psychedelic and dialectic. Dialectics were all the rage in intellectual circles back then. And it does make sense in a weird way.

 

[tygertgr]

When I hear people going on about psychedelics, mindfulness, meditation, or I guess in these parts supplement regimes, I think of certain Nietzsche passages: "this people has deliberately made itself stupid, for nearly a millennium: nowhere have the two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been abused more dissolutely."

His point in the context of the full work was along the lines that a properly functioning animal wouldn't put up with the circumstances that called for stress ameliorating practices like drugs and meditation to deal with circumstances. He touches on this throughout his writings.

Every time I see people seriously advocate for marijuana, psychedelics, or meditation, it's stressed out weirdos who refuse to make serious lifestyle changes, like quitting a job. Similar with all the crazy orthorexics and supplement-a-holics. Dude, you're just trying to avoid the actually hard but called-for fixes.

 

[magnesiumania]

When I hear people going on about psychedelics, mindfulness, meditation, or I guess in these parts supplement regimes, I think of certain Nietzsche passages: "this people has deliberately made itself stupid, for nearly a millennium: nowhere have the two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been abused more dissolutely."

His point in the context of the full work was along the lines that a properly functioning animal wouldn't put up with the circumstances that called for stress ameliorating practices like drugs and meditation to deal with circumstances. He touches on this throughout his writings.

Every time I see people seriously advocate for marijuana, psychedelics, or meditation, it's stressed out weirdos who refuse to make serious lifestyle changes, like quitting a job. Similar with all the crazy orthorexics and supplement-a-holics. Dude, you're just trying to avoid the actually hard but called-for fixes.

He sold a lot of books so he must be right.

Honestly ive never done a psychedelic to amerliorate stress. To me its about exploration and possibly expansion. It has definitly expanded my base of idea and been very helpful in my life...

Besides that life is stress and theres really nothing wrong about dealing. Its not like drugs make you unable to quit a job!

 

[Beastmode]

When I hear people going on about psychedelics, mindfulness, meditation, or I guess in these parts supplement regimes, I think of certain Nietzsche passages: "this people has deliberately made itself stupid, for nearly a millennium: nowhere have the two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been abused more dissolutely."

His point in the context of the full work was along the lines that a properly functioning animal wouldn't put up with the circumstances that called for stress ameliorating practices like drugs and meditation to deal with circumstances. He touches on this throughout his writings.

Every time I see people seriously advocate for marijuana, psychedelics, or meditation, it's stressed out weirdos who refuse to make serious lifestyle changes, like quitting a job. Similar with all the crazy orthorexics and supplement-a-holics. Dude, you're just trying to avoid the actually hard but called-for fixes.

I know of some people who've experimented with different psychedelics and/or meditations who are definitely trying to "escape" their current reality and other's who seem to be on a path of "expansion" from their current reality.

I'm most interested in how the metabolism gets distorted from usage of different psychedelics to gain a better appreciation.

 

[Experienced]

Psychedelics aside - do you think that he consumes any medicinal mushrooms?

 

[morgan#1]

"Yes, I think the real psychedelic experience is a shift toward intensity, coherence, and satisfaction-expectancy; psychedelectics."

I wonder if Derrida and deconstruction and dialectics were on his mind?

 

[managing]

I wonder if Derrida and deconstruction and dialectics were on his mind?

I think 66 was too early for Derrida (at least in North America). More likely Weber.

 

[Beastmode]

I think 66 was too early for Derrida (at least in North America). More likely Weber.

From what I gather the late 60's were pretty wild with psychedelics so it makes sense why it may peak his interest in 1966 to have a seminar on it.

I forwarded the above dialogue to Danny Roddy so it might be a topic they can discuss on a future interview. I don't know of anyone else who interviews him regularly, but if anyone does please feel free to ask them.

 

['peataphysique]

I wonder if Derrida and deconstruction and dialectics were on his mind?

Care to elaborate?

 

[managing]

I wonder if Derrida and deconstruction and dialectics were on his mind?

I dug a little deeper. Derrida didn't even publish Of Grammatology (De la Grammatologie) until 1967. First English translation was 1976. And Derrida didn't really catch on in the US until the mid 80s. Definitely Weber, which is a little more consistent with the pre-digital 1960s anyway.

Of Grammatology - Wikipedia

 

[morgan#1]

elaborate?

I go off on tangents so bear with me. I studied Derrida, etc. in undergrad. And I loved it. And in Boston at Harvard later, I went and saw John Cage. His thing was (I think) he put random words in a computer, and then it came out with “random” stuff and our minds created order out of the chaos. He would read out the random words out of the computer and lo and behold our minds are very machine-like, and order and emotions were made...ie a sentence (mind you made by a computer) made sense.

I’m really excited to open my mind, but not to force it open. Let it open naturally, because then it would be false; like the John Cage experiment. There are so many people (maybe I’m one of them) whose minds are convinced that real is real. Derrida thought that (I think) we have not touched thinking collectively. And the mind is a tricky thing. It’s very persuasive, with all of its emotions.

I don’t know if that’s what you wanted; if you want to delve into it: google Derrida, deconstruction, etc. and for a real twist punch in Krishnamurti. He’s one who believes similar. Collective mind. I think the ego has us chasing our own tails, and getting exhausted.

Bottom line, I think Ray Peat has opened my mind.

 

['peataphysique]

I go off on tangents so bear with me. I studied Derrida, etc. in undergrad. And I loved it. And in Boston at Harvard later, I went and saw John Cage. His thing was (I think) he put random words in a computer, and then it came out with “random” stuff and our minds created order out of the chaos. He would read out the random words out of the computer and lo and behold our minds are very machine-like, and order and emotions were made...ie a sentence (mind you made by a computer) made sense.

I’m really excited to open my mind, but not to force it open. Let it open naturally, because then it would be false; like the John Cage experiment. There are so many people (maybe I’m one of them) whose minds are convinced that real is real. Derrida thought that (I think) we have not touched thinking collectively. And the mind is a tricky thing. It’s very persuasive, with all of its emotions.

I don’t know if that’s what you wanted; if you want to delve into it: google Derrida, deconstruction, etc. and for a real twist punch in Krishnamurti. He’s one who believes similar. Collective mind. I think the ego has us chasing our own tails, and getting exhausted.

In Positions Derrida explains how the first task of deconstruction is to overturn the hierarchy. This is necessary to highlight the ‘conflictual and subordinating structure of opposition’.7 It emphasizes the dominance of one particular way of thinking over others, and belies the idea of fixed meaning, overturning, and therefore exposing, the existence of the binary and destabilizing previously fixed categories of understanding. However this is only the first stage. Derrida emphasizes how to remain in this phase is to remain within the oppositional structure, allowing the hierarchy to re-establish itself. If deconstruction is limited to the simple inversion of binaries, then inquiry remains trapped ‘within the closed field of these oppositions’.8 What this means is that instead of making any real change to structural conditions, what is happening is simply swapping the positions of dominant and subordinate, allowing the same conditions to persist. In order to move beyond this dynamic, and to break open the structure itself, a second stage is necessary. This second stage is where the indeterminate element of deconstruction becomes visible. Rather than resting with the inversion of the binaries, and by extension accepting a different manifestation of fixed meaning, the second phase requires us to step outside the oppositions, to remain in search of new meanings, not by repeating ideas but by analyzing how ideas are framed, how arguments are made. Speaking at the Villanova Roundtable, Derrida described this as searching for the ‘tensions, the contradictions, the heterogeneity within [the] corpus’.9 It is only through this element of endless analysis, criticism and deconstruction that we can prevent existing structures of dominance from reasserting themselves.

In this context, deconstruction is concerned not with the discovery of ‘truth’ or of distilling correct conclusions, but rather with the process of questioning itself. It is a process characterized by uncertainty and indeterminacy. For this reason, Derrida explains, deconstruction is not a ‘method’, and it cannot be transformed into one.10 One cannot ‘apply’ deconstruction to test a hypothesis or to support an argument. Rather it is an ongoing process of interrogation concerned with the structure of meaning itself. As explained in ‘Letter to a Japanese Friend’, for Derrida deconstruction is neither analysis nor critique. It is not done with a particular aim. It is not a search for a ‘simple element’ or ‘indissoluble origin’. The consequence of this is that its value is not linked to any subsequent reconstruction. As discussed above, it does not exist to take apart one structure to replace it with another, but exists simply to reveal the inner logic of that structure so as better to understand it. This has led to the charge that deconstruction is insufficiently concerned with questions of justice and ethics. Derrida is clear, however, that although deconstruction is not primarily concerned with advocacy or activism, nor is it nihilistic or anarchic. It does not reject the need for law and institutions, but rather seeks to work within those structures to reveal new possibilities. It consists of dismantling not institutions themselves, but rather ‘structures within institutions that have become too rigid, or are dogmatic or which work as an obstacle to future research’.11 Deconstruction is therefore an affirmative force that opens up possibilities that have been suppressed by virtue of the dominance of one particular way of conceptualizing justice.

Jacques Derrida: Deconstruction

Thanks, now I get what you meant.

 

[morgan#1]

Sure, yeah I did my good deed for the day!

 

[managing]

Again, I'd bet a lot of money that Ray Peat had never heard of Jacques Derrida in 1966.

Dialectics comes originally from Hegel. But he was a realist, an objectivist. Weber and Marx were the ones to take dialectics and make them political. Derrida, among others, added reflexivity to the political aspirations of dialectics, which was sorely needed to move away from a dialectics of alternative oppression.

But again, Derrida came much later. Unless RP is fluent in French and was hanging out at the Sorbonne between 1960 and 1966 (when Derrida was a junior faculty and publishing his first works) he certainly was unfamiliar with Derrida in 1966.

 

[morgan#1]

Ok managing
You picked a good name, huh

Collective mind, that’s what it’s all about.
Hey maybe that’s proof, lol

The ego makes you believe that your the one and only who can provide some sort of insight. Collective mind?

 

[morgan#1]

When you get that deep there isn’t much that your mind can think that hasn’t been thought before

That is real insight, collective mind

 

[managing]

Ok managing
You picked a good name, huh

Collective mind, that’s what it’s all about.
Hey maybe that’s proof, lol

The ego makes you believe that your the one and only who can provide some sort of insight. Collective mind?

Sure, my ego makes me want to be factually accurate instead of drinking the kool-aid. Why not. #forgetfactsvivalacollective