The most minuscule of actions can change everything

Our most casual interactions with others, and indeed our very existence, can lead to something akin to the butterfly effect. For often very small causes can lead to cascading larger and larger effects, sometimes without end. This leads to the whole world being changed and maybe everyone's life is different due to that one very small initial act.

So, for example, smiling at a stranger can make that stranger feel ever so slightly better. She or he in turn might thereby feel more disposed to smile at others.  And they in turn might smile at others. Just a small brief smile can cascade into large and larger effects and change countless lives.

Indeed, due to the butterfly effect, if one had never existed the world would be very different.  Maybe better, maybe worse, more probably just different.

DMT Users

I read the following article.

Three DMT Users Share — and Sketch Out — Their DMT Experience

Blaine, 26, Colorado says:

That first trip made me rethink my stance that there were no spirits, ghosts or aliens, but it didn’t convince me, and I’m still not entirely sure what to think about the entities. It did catalyze my first spiritual experience with meditation a few months later though, which convinced me for sure that there’s more to life than what we can see. Now I’m a more whole, resilient person without a trace of anxiety or depression.

Yes, I agree that there is much more to reality than we might naively assume on the surface. I think reality is beyond our ken, quite frankly. That it is ultimately mysterious, that we're all living in a kinda "dream" where our understanding, our perception, is attempting to penetrate an impenetrable fog. I think we simply cannot understand anything. And no, I've never taken DMT nor any other psychedelics, nor have I had an NDE or any mystical experience.

Jacob, Mid-30s, Southwestern U.S says:

During the peak of the experience, I had no awareness of my body, no idea if I was still breathing or if my heart was still beating. I had thoughts of a parent who recently passed away. But the astonishment and shock I was experiencing left little room for processing emotional and spiritual lessons.

As a cognitive scientist, I can comfortably assert that no living person has the faintest clue what’s going on with consciousness, so the facile idea that psychedelic experiences — especially DMT — are something akin to distortions of reality or simply outright hallucinations doesn’t have much purchase. Consciousness, in fact, is a total mystery, scientifically and philosophically speaking, and the DMT experience is something like the capstone of that mystery.

 Makes a change for a cognitive scientist to talk some sense!

 

Dark Side of the Moon is 50 today!

After Half a Century, ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ Still Reverberates

Dark side of the moon is my favourite album ever.  I especially like the "2nd side" after the track "Money" (Money is by far the worst track on the album).  Just had a bash at singing the last 2 tracks.