–“YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND [INSERT DRUG OF CHOICE HERE] – Religion Included”— My answer is more parsimonious (simple).
- Anthropomorphism provides an intuitive means of measurement.
- Intuition provides a discount on costly reason, and more costly calculation.
- Intuition that is not false is not only cheaper but often more accurate than reason, as one’s ability to reason declines.
- Anthropomorphism, intuition, avoidance or reason and solution, and suspension of disbelief during the process (what we call ‘daydreaming on one end and occult on the other’), evoke the feeling of surrendering our will (reason) to the pack, and the burden of reason (being human).
This spectrum describes the beast(child), to the human(Adult) to the post-human(Wisened). So, while I understand fire gazing, day dreaming, pondering, listening to the oral story (myth), story, novel, fantasy novel, I no longer enjoy the conflation of the fantasy novel with the pretense that such things exist, or that the dependence upon such things has literally served as a drug to manufacture inaction, incomprehension, denial of reality, and worst, the destruction of the ancient civilizations by that drug, and the dark agrees of suffering that followed. So while we can produce highs from exercise, from socialization, from study, and from success, we can also produce highs from the disciplined training of our minds and bodies to produce altered states that no other creature can produce. And further we can do so by chemical means, and now advanced chemical means, and more recently, direct neural stimulation (video games). So, many things ‘feel good’ but the fact that they feel good physically, emotionally, or intellectually does not tell us whether or not that they are personally suicidal, interpersoanly, socially, politically, civilizationally or dysgenically. Every drug user of every kind justifies his addiction and attempts to do so only confirm that addiction. Some humans require those drugs because they cannot obtain them by the means evolution provided us, or they are too lazy to do so: working with others to achieve existential transcendence rather than the illusory or experiential, that in fact harm the individual, lose his potential, denigrate his lineage, his people, and mankind. It’s not that I don’t understand you see. It’s that I understand all too well, that we seek means of avoiding action by which we transform the universe into a garden for man. Some of us transcend ourselves, our people, our civilization, and man into gods. Most of us resist it kicking and screaming all the while, physically, emotionally, intellectually.