Limitless - 2011

The premise of Limitless is kind of simple and topical for those who keep an eye on smart drugs. What if you could tap into your full neurological capacity including the subconscious bandwidth that is the iceberg of consciousness and cognitive processing?

Mmm yes please.

This is a fun movie that I hugely enjoyed, though I kind of wondered if the choice of book name in the movie was a nod to certain group(s) who seem to have a edge when it comes to inside knowledge and making incredibly smart decisions that outwith us pedestrian mortals again and again. I have worked with people who take smart drugs and it's like competing with an Olympian in terms of Stamina, Mood and Process Capacity though I liked the individual and enjoyed working with them.

NB: The Dark Fields is a 2001 techno-thriller novel by Irish writer Alan Glynn. It was re-released in March 2011 under the title Limitless, in order to coincide with its 2011 film adaptation, the name of the book in the movie is Illuminating.

Demons, Possession, Voices, Archons, Schizophrenia & Psychosis

This is a brilliant interview by Robert Stanley with a highly experienced PhD psychiatrist, who finally began to treat people, with an understanding that the voices they heard in their head were real. You will be stunned by this information and have a more pluralistic view of demons and mental illness. One that is less about drugging people till the voices go away, or become tolerable, but actually about treating the issue as real. 

This subject is something modern psychiatry totally loses the plot about. An irony considering that logically its a mental illness to ignore reality.

Joseph Chilton Pearce: The Biology of Transcendence

Joseph Chilton Pearce is unaware of the forces that thrive off dividing humanity and even admits to believing in the Flavian dynasty created Jesus figure. However he's well informed on the corrosiveness of culture and it's anti-human dynamics that are all there to serve the power elite. He also knows that we are not by nature a warring species. I could illuminate him quite a lot on that subject. He knows, but he doesn't know why it seems.

So You Think You Can Spot A Conspiracy?

This only takes a minute and is very funny. It makes the point that humans are genetically wired to see what they trust and trust what they see. My hope from an evolutionary perspective is that this is a good thing in the long term for our species, but in the short term can lead to massive abuses of trust as I believe is the case from the power elite.

Psychologists Dealing With 9/11 Conspiracy Denial

This is brilliant. A bunch of very brainy psychological experts with PhD's and more explain why people are having a hard time dealing with the ugliness that 9/11 wasn't the conspiracy theory of a man in a cave in Afghanistan (who was shot and buried at sea with no trial). Lots of questions still remain though.

Neil Kramer - Cognitive Dissonance & Mapping Negative Polarity

James Gilliland interviews Neil Kramer. It's grown up stuff ranging from spirituality to the fragility of introducing dangerous information to comfort zone minds. Nobody thanks your for rewiring their reality to something that is more faithful. It's a fresh upload for those who follow his work.

Our Reptilian Brains (The R-Complex)

Of all the subjects that has people shaking their heads in absolute surety before heading back to the safety and reality of FOX news its the reptilian topic within the alien genre. There's an irony there in so much as the amygdala or reptile brain is very much part of human biology and neurology. 

The amygdala is the fight or flight part of the brain that chooses not to weigh up all the evidence when quick decisions are needed, and so its unavoidably amusing that people running away from the subject are deploying the part of the brain that prevents most learning about reptilian brains. 

Epistemologically it's like refusing to engage the cerebral cortex in order to study how the cerebral cortex came into being so rapidly. If one questions the veracity of evolutionary theory's punctuated equilibrium, it's an overnight appearance in terms of evolutionary time and like waking up one morning without a bicameral mind. But you wont even get that far if you've shut down the cerebrum faculties because the amygdala simply isn't up to the task. Good at erections and a rush of adrenaline if that's more your thing.

I was watching Arthur C Clarke earlier of 2001 Space Odyssey fame and wondering how an artist writer could also be so talented as to propose the invention of the earth shrinking satellite when I heard him repeat a line that if any description of the future isn't so fantastic it's unbelievable it's as likely to be not up to scratch, and I thought that an appropriate way to end this post.

The Stoned Ape

The inexplicably rapid evolution of the neocortex is akin to an organic singularity event. It's the first piece of steak to recognise it is a piece of steak. Not quite a tautology but not far off either. I came across this yesterday night by accident. Peter Webster does a lovely job of reframing a potential hypothesis for why we have a garden of Eden story in our mythology, and he provides more evidence for Terrence McKenna's stoned ape theory which hits my confirmation bias hotspot.

Empathy

Via Johnnie