Is Shirky Shirking The Obvious?

I think Clay Shirky handles some early questions here with elegance and intellectual panache but as soon as it comes to the schizophrenia of U.S. democracy with sham foreign policy interests he back peddles noticeably, passing one answer on to a deeply unrespected congress in a somewhat knock-kneed distancing of intellectual responsibility as to what the notion of an autocratic government is. Clue, its one that doesn't listen to its electorate. Hopeless, changeless and so on.

Clay evidently doesn't see that funding and propping up dictators such as Egypt and Tunisia and Libya (shall I go on?) is merely a variant of autocracy dramatized through repression abroad as a hyperpower strategy. 

Just because U.S. citizens are by and large pampered and misled sheep doesn't change the nature of pernicious empirical power or the impending doom that will visit them. This is only a matter of time. I'm also happy to write at length about US censorship too.

Clay, this isn't personal but the veil is over your eyes when it comes to the illusion you cling on to that the U.S is a model democracy.  By all means throw a Scandinavian country in there but not a dypsomaniac hyperpower lurching on the precipice. You need to get away from the Pasta and Chardonnay crowd.


I rarely agree with Gladwell but his tipping point is increasingly imminent.

LSD

LSD stops cluster headaches more effectively than big pharma drugs peddled on every high street around the world and yet it is illegal. The reason for that is that during the 60's the CIA et al were conducting unlicensed experiments on both US soldiers as well as waifs and strays that were kidnapped off the streets and imprisoned in rooms with two way mirrors where some of them were subjected to a number of experiences including sex that would normally have been rejected while uninfluenced. I've heard stories that some lost their mind as it's a molecule that requires a certain amount of respect. One where set and setting is crucial for people if proper consciousness exploration takes place.

This documentary is extraordinary in so much as there is an emerging desire from some people to reframe the propaganda that was pushed out about this neurotransmitter when the military learned that the most devastating effect of LSD is it dissolves the power of the State to kill our fellow men.


An idea not so well appreciated during the failed Vietnam war.


So they (the usual institutions) pushed it through a rush bill in the Senate where it was conflated with the drugs that the CIA much prefers to deal around the world thus creating  laws that give them distribution advantages for the much more profitable and addictive substances such as heroin and cocaine. Cocaine is incredibly interesting to me these days as I rarely meet a likeable person who is into it. Not that we didn't all dabble in our youth but it seems spiritually questioning people tend to grow out of it finding its narcissistic bent unappealing. If Cocaine is all about me, me, me. Then LSD could be described as us, us, us.

I don't condone or unambiguously proselytise the use of recreational pharmaceuticals. If life is  a patently beautiful experience of its own accord. If love and happiness are abundant, then there's no need to explore. However if a person does wish to explore then there is lots good information and people willing to offer constructive viewpoints at www.erowid.org that can be helpful and instructive in learning and securing the right information for a constructive exploration of the total infinity of consciousness. Remember set and setting. Here's that good documentary on the subject.

Quantum Entanglement

Quantum entanglement gets a whole lot more intellectually concrete under these circumstances. It only takes 15 minutes or so of time and left me shaking my head for a few days but it is as it is, in so far as it's impossible to ignore. Unless one is materially  distracted.