I only ever had one dose of THC and found it rather boring... I have to say I'm intrigued by the recent popularity of psychedelics. Will have to get the book :)
Not surprised by the religious connection; religious ritual is also a non-ordinary state of consciousness, as is meditation. It's all powerful stuff, and the world has too much of a bias towards ordinary waking consciousness, as if it was the only possibly valid state.
Congrats on the NYTimes writeup. Imagine my surprise reading the newspaper and seeing your face on the front page!
So I am actually very interested in this book and in a very paranoid way I think you wrote this for me, or at least a very specific cohort. See, I also did a bunch of shrooms during covid and then binged philosophy. There must be dozens of us out there!
My binge was just making it through Macintyre's "After Virtue" and then barely finishing Nicomachean ethics before realizing I'm not a philosophy guy, but it was a transformative experience. Sounds like this book is more focused on perception and philosophy of mind and not on virtue ethics and the quest for meaning, but I'll have to read it to find out.
About an hour ago, I was on page 229 when something made me think of Socrates. Maybe it was just your mention of "Greek," but I'd been hoping all the way through that he'd show up. And then a few lines down, there he was! Boy, did I feel smart. It was the NYT article that brought me to your book. Thank you for your courage, adventurous spirit and fine writing. (I read it aloud to myself to make sure I grokked each sentence.)
Congratulations, Justin! You deserve all the good things coming your way, and I look forward to picking up a copy of On Drugs. Will try to join the stream tomorrow if it goes late enough.
I ordered you r book based on the subject matter—I am a long-time advocate of psychedelic experiences—and the NYT article. Now, reading in this post that you have become a Christian, I await my reading with trepidation. I am open minded, but find my prejudice against Christian beliefs acquired late in life to be morally and intellectually suspect due to the readily available and atrocious history and hypocrisies those who claim to be Christians. I look forward to possibly squaring this seeming contradiction by reading your book. I have not found Christian-adjacent philosophy to ring true to my experience of life, consciousness, or conscience—so far…
Congratulations, nonetheless, on your accomplishment. Writing can be self flagellation, but publishing, and its marketing companion, is The Rack, to resort to Christianity-derived metaphors.
Congratulations on the new book, Justin, and its scintillating Hinternet launch today! Speaking of Christian belief, one of the greatest -- and most panoptic and pluralistic -- philosophers of the 20th and early 21st Centuries, Paul Ricoeur, who also happened to be my undergraduate philosophy professor and advisor at the University of Chicago, was a devout Christian whose religious beliefs always seemed compatible with his secular philosophical purview. As you doubtless know, he also wrote a -- if not the first -- secondary work on Husserl while a prisoner in a WW II Nazi war camp.
I didn’t expect you to. How could you? You don’t know me and most probably never will, but I will be knowing something of you soon by reading your book and was just expressing my thoughts here in this public forum you are choosing to enter—in a much more insignificant way, of course, than the writing, publication and, marketing of a book—but, due to the NYT article alone, I do care what you think. I was only hoping for a scintilla of “caring” in exchange for my $16.99, my subscription, and my congratulations. I suppose you writing me a terse, somewhat rude response is just that. I wouldn’t call it good marketing, but fair enough. I’m terrible at marketing, myself. Perhaps you’ll read my chapbook, here:
Another way to see it: you’re choosing to enter my quasi-public space. There’s no security at the door, but there are some rules of conduct. Whether that’s how you see it or not, even in the regular public sphere we generally hold to certain well-established norms of interaction, and one of them is that if you have prejudices about a group another person belongs to, unless you are that person’s familiar, heavens, you keep them to yourself! I know anyhow that that’s how I manage my own prejudices. Imagine for comparison that you meet a Muslim, and the first thing you say to him is: “Now I’m an open-minded guy and everything, but I kind of think you guys would like to impose Sharia law on all of us.” That Muslim would be well within his rights to reply: fuck off, bigot. I’d be well within my rights too, though this time I restrained myself.
I see your point. I was admitting to a prejudice and should expect rebuke. I make a distinction between people who were raised in a particular religion or belief system and those who take on a set of beliefs after they have come into their adult ability to be analytical and choose. I think it is not bigotry to criticize those beliefs that were chosen once a person has become a fully reasoning adult—it’s just criticism—and in this case judgement based on facts and history. I fully support 100% freedom of religion, but also the freedom from religion and the right to be critical of someone who has chosen a belief, rather than been indoctrinated into it by family and culture. I think I was civil and honest in my statement. As I said, I will be reading your book to get your POV, and I wanted to give you mine, and, since you brought up that you had become a Christian, and since that is definitely a choice on your part of a particular philosophical orientation, and that knowledge will definitely color my reading of your book, I thought it was germane to a conversation about your book to be honest about my POV.
I express one anti religious comment and I’m getting raked and compared with Tipper Gore? Yes I am an atheist because I can see, as anyone with eyes and a mind can see, the damage religion and blind belief have done—and because I just don’t believe. I do have a strong sense of noblesse oblige, but I don’t see how it applies here, as I am not criticizing less-than-privileged people who were raised in religions, I’m saying I have a prejudice against late-comers to religion who I think should know better. I’m not here to absorb abuse, so I will be unsubscribing, not that it matters to anyone but me. I’ll still be reading Justin’s book.
Dude, you aren't George Carlin and no one is giving you a Netflix special. Save the Hippy boomerslop for Facebook.
This whole libertine-moralizer posture has been an absolute disaster for our society. Please stop. You lot are so annoying you make the alt-right seem like a viable alternative. I would take some joy in the ironic greek tragedy way that you create your own antithesis, except I have to live through it too.
I only ever had one dose of THC and found it rather boring... I have to say I'm intrigued by the recent popularity of psychedelics. Will have to get the book :)
Not surprised by the religious connection; religious ritual is also a non-ordinary state of consciousness, as is meditation. It's all powerful stuff, and the world has too much of a bias towards ordinary waking consciousness, as if it was the only possibly valid state.
Congrats on the NYTimes writeup. Imagine my surprise reading the newspaper and seeing your face on the front page!
So I am actually very interested in this book and in a very paranoid way I think you wrote this for me, or at least a very specific cohort. See, I also did a bunch of shrooms during covid and then binged philosophy. There must be dozens of us out there!
My binge was just making it through Macintyre's "After Virtue" and then barely finishing Nicomachean ethics before realizing I'm not a philosophy guy, but it was a transformative experience. Sounds like this book is more focused on perception and philosophy of mind and not on virtue ethics and the quest for meaning, but I'll have to read it to find out.
Congrats and well-deserved media attention. Looking forward to getting my hands on a copy.
About an hour ago, I was on page 229 when something made me think of Socrates. Maybe it was just your mention of "Greek," but I'd been hoping all the way through that he'd show up. And then a few lines down, there he was! Boy, did I feel smart. It was the NYT article that brought me to your book. Thank you for your courage, adventurous spirit and fine writing. (I read it aloud to myself to make sure I grokked each sentence.)
Congratulations, Justin! You deserve all the good things coming your way, and I look forward to picking up a copy of On Drugs. Will try to join the stream tomorrow if it goes late enough.
I ordered you r book based on the subject matter—I am a long-time advocate of psychedelic experiences—and the NYT article. Now, reading in this post that you have become a Christian, I await my reading with trepidation. I am open minded, but find my prejudice against Christian beliefs acquired late in life to be morally and intellectually suspect due to the readily available and atrocious history and hypocrisies those who claim to be Christians. I look forward to possibly squaring this seeming contradiction by reading your book. I have not found Christian-adjacent philosophy to ring true to my experience of life, consciousness, or conscience—so far…
Congratulations, nonetheless, on your accomplishment. Writing can be self flagellation, but publishing, and its marketing companion, is The Rack, to resort to Christianity-derived metaphors.
I really do not care at all what you think about “Christian beliefs acquired late in life”.
You care enough to write a reply! BTW, congratulations on the book and actually being an open minded philosopher.
I care enough to seek to ensure that this salon not be crashed by people who know nothing of noblesse oblige. And thanks!
Congratulations on the new book, Justin, and its scintillating Hinternet launch today! Speaking of Christian belief, one of the greatest -- and most panoptic and pluralistic -- philosophers of the 20th and early 21st Centuries, Paul Ricoeur, who also happened to be my undergraduate philosophy professor and advisor at the University of Chicago, was a devout Christian whose religious beliefs always seemed compatible with his secular philosophical purview. As you doubtless know, he also wrote a -- if not the first -- secondary work on Husserl while a prisoner in a WW II Nazi war camp.
I didn’t expect you to. How could you? You don’t know me and most probably never will, but I will be knowing something of you soon by reading your book and was just expressing my thoughts here in this public forum you are choosing to enter—in a much more insignificant way, of course, than the writing, publication and, marketing of a book—but, due to the NYT article alone, I do care what you think. I was only hoping for a scintilla of “caring” in exchange for my $16.99, my subscription, and my congratulations. I suppose you writing me a terse, somewhat rude response is just that. I wouldn’t call it good marketing, but fair enough. I’m terrible at marketing, myself. Perhaps you’ll read my chapbook, here:
https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/mrs-silva-walks-to-the-azores-a-story-in-ten-cantos-a-sra-silva-caminha-para-os-acores-uma-historia-em-dez-cantos-by-michael-bickford-translated-by-bruna-dantas-lobato/
or my poems, here: <michaelmbickford.com>
See? I’m terrible at marketing.
Another way to see it: you’re choosing to enter my quasi-public space. There’s no security at the door, but there are some rules of conduct. Whether that’s how you see it or not, even in the regular public sphere we generally hold to certain well-established norms of interaction, and one of them is that if you have prejudices about a group another person belongs to, unless you are that person’s familiar, heavens, you keep them to yourself! I know anyhow that that’s how I manage my own prejudices. Imagine for comparison that you meet a Muslim, and the first thing you say to him is: “Now I’m an open-minded guy and everything, but I kind of think you guys would like to impose Sharia law on all of us.” That Muslim would be well within his rights to reply: fuck off, bigot. I’d be well within my rights too, though this time I restrained myself.
I see your point. I was admitting to a prejudice and should expect rebuke. I make a distinction between people who were raised in a particular religion or belief system and those who take on a set of beliefs after they have come into their adult ability to be analytical and choose. I think it is not bigotry to criticize those beliefs that were chosen once a person has become a fully reasoning adult—it’s just criticism—and in this case judgement based on facts and history. I fully support 100% freedom of religion, but also the freedom from religion and the right to be critical of someone who has chosen a belief, rather than been indoctrinated into it by family and culture. I think I was civil and honest in my statement. As I said, I will be reading your book to get your POV, and I wanted to give you mine, and, since you brought up that you had become a Christian, and since that is definitely a choice on your part of a particular philosophical orientation, and that knowledge will definitely color my reading of your book, I thought it was germane to a conversation about your book to be honest about my POV.
I express one anti religious comment and I’m getting raked and compared with Tipper Gore? Yes I am an atheist because I can see, as anyone with eyes and a mind can see, the damage religion and blind belief have done—and because I just don’t believe. I do have a strong sense of noblesse oblige, but I don’t see how it applies here, as I am not criticizing less-than-privileged people who were raised in religions, I’m saying I have a prejudice against late-comers to religion who I think should know better. I’m not here to absorb abuse, so I will be unsubscribing, not that it matters to anyone but me. I’ll still be reading Justin’s book.
Dude, you aren't George Carlin and no one is giving you a Netflix special. Save the Hippy boomerslop for Facebook.
This whole libertine-moralizer posture has been an absolute disaster for our society. Please stop. You lot are so annoying you make the alt-right seem like a viable alternative. I would take some joy in the ironic greek tragedy way that you create your own antithesis, except I have to live through it too.
I don't really understand this comment. By “Dude”, do you mean me?
Naw, the reddit atheist who needs to tell you how cool he is before going full tipper gore
😂