The human

[Psychoid]

What, in your opinion, fundamentally characterize humans in general? How do you think people were living here 2000 years ago? Do you consider that humanity somehow progressed, or evolved? What do you believe is the source of our consciousness which seems so different from all the other living creatures on earth? Why this passion for psychoactive, which seems to be present in every human, even if it is sometimes (too often) killed by fear (look in the past, thousands of years ago, tribes almost always had at least one psychoactive to which they gave a lot of importance, depending on what was available in their area. For example psilocybin containing mushrooms, amanita muscaria, ayahuasca, cannabis...)?

Please share anything else you think is related, and try to stay on topic!

 

[druglessdouglas]

i dont think humans are radically different from the other chimpanzees. much of our intelligence has developed as a result of living in social groups. in any social animal group there is a pecking order. it becomes importaint to know where you are in terms of this order and that takes a lot of memory -im under so and so but above so and so. the order isnt set, you can rise and fall in status. so its very dynamic. therefor being able to accurately remember your standing with all other members in the group gives you a better chance of raising your status by moderating your interaction with the other members. if you do it right you may rise far enough in standing to breed and pass your genes on. in primates its not only the alpha that mates.
so your smart genes live on along with the smart genes of those like you and the smartness is bred in.
all this requires a certain amount of abstract thinking- primate A has to remember how all the other primates acted under different conditions and then extrapolate what they would do in other given situations. this makes them THEM. individuals with theyre own natures and characteristics. thats the easy bit. the next concept was the idea of I.
that i think was a big leap. the idea of the I required a further level of abstracting. when our ancestors were in eden, in the rainforrest with everything needed (food and water) within easy reach, we didnt have to think too far ahead. didnt have to worry too much about I because as long as you had your forrest of fruit and leafs and your social group evolution left you alone.
for some reason we left the forrest( i dont know why) and headed out accross the open spaces of the savanna. finding enough to eat would have been much more difficult. competition between individuals would have ramped up. if you couldnt think ahead you died and your genetic line ended.
we had to hunt more to survive instead of as a boost to our mineral intake. that required more abstract thinking. think ahead- eat -breed and your thinking genes get passed on.
evolution would have been working not only between individuals but between groups. with limited resources group competition is strong. groups compete and the smartest group are going to succede. human males arent much bigger than females because we havnt bred for high testosterone. being big doesnt help when resources are short but intelligence does.
so now you have to abstract a whole group of others. that takes some brain power. not only do you have to run simulations of individuals within your own group(in your mind) but now you have to run simulations of whole other groups.

Ill come back to this later....

 

[user_1919]

I think humans on this planet that lived 2000 years ago were living a much more true way of living. In todays society, humans have lost there way. We have outlawed psychedelic plants that play a cruital role in the evolution of our species. We have almost halted in the evolutionary process. We have lost our bond with nature, and have replaced it with cities. We are lost.

I believe that the source of our consiousness is culture. Before civilization was created, we had bicameral man roaming the earth, listening to halluniated Gods, until social structures were developed. Once these social structures were developed, there was a set of beliefs and ways of living. As culture gets more advanced, so does the human species. Culture is dependent on the human species, and human species are dependent on culture. (this is just an idea I have came up with, and I still do not fully understand what I am trying to say)

I believe we have this nature urge to use psychoactive plants because it aids in our evolutionary process. I also believe that we used psychoactive plants because it shows humans that there is more to life than this reality. It opens the mind up to many different possiblities. It shows man that life is much more beautiful that precieved. I am not trying to say that life is not beautiful without psychoative plants, but rather is more beautiful when you intergrate these plants into ones life. These plants are not something that humans developed, but rather put here by some external being for our consumption. The plants are part of the human experience, so the question is; why would one not want to accentuate the human experience by ingesting these natural plants? In our culture it is very prevalent; fear, and since controller have every human by a fucking chain, they have them brainwashed to believe these plants do harm, and these idiots actually believe these morons.

Well thisis just my opinon,

PEACE & LOVE

 

[druglessdouglas]

http://www.amcgltd.com/archives/011118.html

i have no doubt psychoactive plants and fungi had a pivotal role in boosting human mental development. weve all felt the conceptual leap afforded by even a modest hit of psychadelic plant of your choice. in experimenting to test the edibility of unknown plants all the oraly active ones would have been mentaly noted and recorded in the group memory. if they didnt produce too much poisoning effects and were in any way enjoyable they would have been deliberately sought out. there are chimps out there who would rip your arm off for a cigarette or a bottle of stella(me for one). BUT

i believe the idea of god lies on a different plane. in my mind its an idea of FATHER, of the alpha figure from childhood, all powerfull and just a bit angry. the provider of security and the punisher of transgresion. the IDEA stays with us int adulthood because the child never goes away. more information is just added to the memory making the original father concept harder to recognise. its just pushed deeper into our subconcious.

the devil on the other hand is in my mind an atavisim left over from the time when lots of things ate us. there was a big cat for eg (i think it was called Filocanthus) which liked nothing more than a nice homanid supper. it came into our caves and shelters in the dead of night and dragged us away by whatever it could grasp. in our primative psyche it was simply a THING. weve all felt its presence on a dark night. weve all dreamed it too. its the thing in the dark you have to get away from but never see. its my belief the devil springs from this atavistic fear of the evil thing that dwells in the dark. its also why children look under the bed for the bogyman. its the thing that will climb the tree and pull you from your nest. when the film Jaws came out, my parents went to the cinema to see it. that night my mother looked under the bed just to make sure no shark was going to sneak out and devour her in her sleep.

psychadelic plants would have enhansed our abstract thinking, and our ability to conceptualise but only in tandem with the natural stimuli. set and setting. but my experience of psychadelics tells me they dont push you forwards they rather remind you/ alow you to see what you are now and what you once were. that knowledge is what allows you to see what you could be. the rest is good old fashioned hard work.

 

[st.bot.32]

Two thousand years ago? Well at that time the mechanized Roman armies were marching across Europe and Asia, conquering villages and territories, implementing systems of taxation, building roads and infrastructure. Democracy had just fallen and Rome had come under the rule of a line of supreme emperors bent on conquest. A new blasphemous cult that didn't follow the god Jupiter or the laws of Judaism was on the rise, claiming that the Messiah had come.

Women had no rights and were treated as babymaking machines. Life expectancy was much shorter than it is today.

There were great artists, poets, playwriters and philosophers. There were "terrorist" factions fighting to free areas conquered by the Romans.

People two thousand years ago were not so different than today, they just had smaller weapons. And even those smaller weapons were quite ingenious and destructive.

I guess we've made a couple improvements. Most contagious diseases are treatable nowadays. (Hopefully) fair treatment regardless of sex or racial origin. And there is an active anti-war counterculture, which even up to 100 years ago was basically nonexistent, as war was the glorious wonderful unquestionable thing to do. And maybe if we all learn to cooperate, perhaps someday we will traverse the heavens and avoid being annihilated the next time a supervolcano erupts or an asteroid hits the earth.

Steps forward, steps backward. Can't say that man was always in harmony with nature, as all indications are that man has throughout human history annihilated species and committed acts of genocide (some recent theories suggest ancient man drove the mammoth to extinction), created deserts (check out the historical "cedars of lebanon" now almost all gone).. now we can do these horrible things on a much grander mechanized scale.

At least it isn't a boring time to be alive. A small town in the dark ages where people never went past the nearest river.. but still got to die of plague. Living in fear of a church that tortured all dissidents. Life expectancy of 35 years or so.. Now that would have sucked.

 

[st.bot.32]

psychadelic plants would have enhansed our abstract thinking, and our ability to conceptualise but only in tandem with the natural stimuli. set and setting. but my experience of psychadelics tells me they dont push you forwards they rather remind you/ alow you to see what you are now and what you once were. that knowledge is what allows you to see what you could be. the rest is good old fashioned hard work.

When you take a look at traditional abstract art from various cultures, a lot of it totally resembles psychedelic patterns.. Really good point too btw.

 

[Psychoid]

I meant people in America (edited the first post so its clear for others), cause people from europe were already mentally ill at that time. Yes, I consider the human has become mentally ill, and these mental illnesses are called: "egocentrism", "concept of private property" and "greed for power". If you think about it, money causes most of the problems on earth, and is preventing us to solve some others even though we would actually be ABLE to... but man, I don't have enough money to share, 200 billions is actually not enough to live a decent life, like I'm gonna send half of it and save a few lives...

St. bot, you say we've made some progress because "Most contagious diseases are treatable nowadays.". Don't you think we actually created more diseases over time than we cured?

in my mind its an idea of FATHER, of the alpha figure from childhood, all powerfull and just a bit angry.

Just a bit angry? I'd be mad if I was the father of humanity, seeing what it is becoming :lol:

Also drugless, you talked about the concepts of GOD and the DEVIL. I'm thinking about it, and couldn't it be simply that, every human experience positive and negative feelings and sensory perceptions in his life. I think that is why we now have this habit of always saying "that is good and that is bad". Then, there probably always have been some "criminals", that had negative influence on other people. These people were called "evil" people. And since we didn't want to accept that we all have a demon inside of us, we considered that if these people were acting this way, it was because of some external influence = the DEVIL


I have an hypothesis. I think all animals are going to develop a consciousness like ours. But we had an advantage over other animals, which permitted us to evolve faster : we had no real predator or they disapeared, or by living in groups we managed to get rid of them.

Another hypothesis: Maybe some aliens came on earth thousands of years ago, and were extremely intelligent. Some crazy alien thought it could be fun to have sex with some monkey. Then either an alien gave birth to a monkey, with some alien genes, or vice-versa. That would explain why we seem to have no bound with nature anymore (we would never had any if this theory is true): These aliens' intelligence were suited for the way they lived on their planet, which was probably different from ours. Maybe they had like a billion years of advance on humanity in their evolution, so the human would then be a result of a primitive monkey receiving incredibly evolved genes. That would also explain the sate of affairs in the world: receiving such evolved genes without having gained them through evolution, causes a lot of confusion. That would mean that within each of us there is a primitive monkey, and a very evolved alien. Maybe THAT is the human's duality

why would one not want to accentuate the human experience by ingesting these natural plants?

Could you please elaborate more please? This is interesting cause when I'm tripping I often feel like I'm more in touch with my humanity.

i dont think humans are radically different from the other chimpanzees. much of our intelligence has developed as a result of living in social groups.

There are many other animals that live in groups. Like wolves. But I've never seen a wolf writing, making music, or chopping down trees to build houses.

 

[st.bot.32]

I meant people in America (edited the first post so its clear for others), cause people from europe were already mentally ill at that time.

St. bot, you say we've made some progress because "Most contagious diseases are treatable nowadays.". Don't you think we actually created more diseases over time than we cured?

I posted a long response and after thinking about it realized I could edit it down. Basically I don't think any culture has ever really been exemplary in living in harmony with each other or nature. It is easy to glamorize but tribes in America definitely had their failings and shortcomings as well (brutal wars, torture, slavery etc)

As far as disease goes its true we worry about superviruses, but on an everyday scale disease is far less than what it was. Smallpox, TB, tetanus, measles, flu, all are killers of the past now (generally speaking).

Then, there probably always have been some "criminals", that had negative influence on other people. These people were called "evil" people. And since we didn't want to accept that we all have a demon inside of us, we considered that if these people were acting this way, it was because of some external influence = the DEVIL

I imagine also people who had schizophrenia or psychotic symptoms were considered possessed.. Much like epileptics even up to the last century were hidden away so as not to embarrass the family.

You know, reading this makes me reflect on the one possible greatest improvement we have made in the past 2000 years despite steps backward, terrible mass warfare, mass extinction, etc.

The village magician can no longer point the stick at some random person and blame them for the crops failing, for some plague or something. Or blame the strange woman with the cat "familiars" for the town's daughters getting sick, call her a witch and burn her. When GWB goes to war and believes god told him to, a large portion of the population think he is clearly off his rocker. And I think these numbers are steadily growing with time.

What I mean is that religion is less and less potent as a tool of fear and control.

Anyway I seem to be veering sort of off topic of your post about ancient tribes using psychoactives which I think is a really good discussion in itself!

 

[Goran.Hrsak]

I will be short.
People are now just like those ones before 2000 years. Philosophers-Mathematicians, Religion, Warriors, Chiefs have today only different names! Like Scientist, Priests, Army and War power, Government and presidents.

What has happened to us, "westerns"? I du not know. But I know that we used Earth and almost kill her. Bunch of unknown soldiers, "Jesus, save us, see a Persian light there, save us, Jesus.

This is only manifest of so called progression! But what we are doing? Killing each other and sucking ourselves into selves!

Psydelics are maybe gift, maybe just hallucinogenic drug but maybe astral and ethereal world. We need to rise on ourself other, better goals! We are stagnating NOW, no moves, maybe retrogression!

What to do? Psydelic isn't answer! You can use it to expand U mind, but for fun? SIN. I du not know how and why are someone using psydelics!?
Only very little % of people are in this world, accepting it, cause that world carry dangers, it's unpredictable, living with it is difficult in this "western" environment!

I speak with job colleagues, and what? Psydelics is crazy theme!! Only speaking something bout it awakes suspicion and rude words! People just doesn't got it anymore!?

90% of people are pigs, trough life are throwing pearls on themselves and feel important! So sad! I would like to get AIDS instead becoming TV star! Star from Idiot Box! Yes IDIOT BOX, brain washer machine!

I will write more but later, tomorrow. It's late.

 

[buffachino]

Transcription is a characteristic exemplified in all entities.
We have merely implemented it in an ethereal dimension of our own, one in no way removed, in order to recognise our existence as it is; Language, incarnate symbolism. Humanity is simply concordant exemplification of the universal medium. This pertains that we truly stand nowhere, for we are simply an embodiment of constant, indeterminate being.

We are really just an intensification of natural emanation, a metamorphic dichotomist exemplar in all its beauty and wrath.

 

[user_1919]

Could you please elaborate more please? This is interesting cause when I'm tripping I often feel like I'm more in touch with my humanity.

I can try. The last experience I have had on Psilocybin Mushrooms was so amazing. The 'theme' of my experience was to accentuate the human experience. Before my experience I was studying for my Biology test. It was about DNA replication and repair. Durning my experience, I was looking at a cut, and the steps of how it was repairing itself were repeating in my head over and over, at a speed that was not human, well not the speed that we can comprhend in this state. But basicially what I am trying to get at, is why not accentuate the human experience with knowledge. Why would one not want to be the most blissful it can get? Why would you not want to know knowledge and then intergrate it into a mushroom experience. Knowledge is one way of learning, but to learn it, then experience it durning a mushroom trip is even better. My goal in life is just to accentuate the human experience to be as good as possible, but always viewing it from a neutral prespective, so one does not get attached to the positive feelings, Buddhist philosphy. I don't really know how to explain this, but if we take some mushrooms, I am sure I can put it into the right words, well more less emotions felt between individuals durning an experience. Everything just makes sense on Mushrooms.

PEACE & LOVE

 

[Subtle_Nod]

I probably won't be so short.

It is said by measuring the size of various primates brain that you can predict how big their social groups will be.

The size if this social group is coined the "Monkey Sphere". Short version, it determines the actual amount of others you can interact with before they become really abstract.

Example - Your picture of your parents will be very clear. However, your internal picture of policemen might be Exactly the same for ALL policemen("Damn 5-0 ") , as you do not picture them as people, but rather an abstract concept.

I think according to the research done, people have a Monkey Sphere of 200-250 individuals before you start abstracting people out. That is the number of people most people can care about as individuals. Supposedly.

Technology has always separated us from other animals (some do use tools though). It has had at every turn, the ability to make or break us as a species. We could have killed the land by moving water away from it in aqueducts. We could have nuked the planet until we couldn't live here anymore.

I see our technology as a counterweight to nature. They need to be balanced for us to progress. Too much technology and without care for the planet and we can't live here, too much care for the planet and we overlook advances.

I see myself as separate from other primates in that we are at different stages in development, but I see myself as different from them in the same way as I am different from a human infant who has not had the time to grow and learn that I have. Eventually new generations will come that surpass me and I will die. I don't resent that.

Everything on this planet is the same. Everything in the universe is the same. It's the old hippie adage. We are all part of the same system and we cannot be understood without the rest of the system in the same way that walking cannot be understood without the ground and gravity.

There is no walking without something to do the walking, something to be walked on and a force to hold the two together.

We cannot be taken as abstractly out of the surroundings we are in, from the rest of the house, to the rest of the planet and the universe nor can be taken out of the series of events that brought us here.

In short, to fully understand even the smallest part of the system completely (humans), I think you would need at least a very good understanding of everything else, even if only a small amount on somethings and a bigger amount of others.

I guess, being human, my interests are focusing mainly on what it is to be me. My short summary is that I am no different from you or the plants. I dislike the way that man made things are referred to as unnatural.

We do not refer to a birds nest as unnatural.

I think anything we do is an expression of nature because we did not come into this natural world - we can FROM the natural world. Yes, people are destructive but so are locust. We don't stop acknowledging that they are natural.

 

[buffachino]

Isn’t individualism an abstract concept in itself?

 

[magickmumu]

I like the theory about the Aliens.
Science fiction stuff.
I don't believe it, but I like it.

What truly happened nobody knows I am afraid.

 

[Forkbender]

What, in your opinion, fundamentally characterize humans in general?

The ability to be stupid.

 

[BrainEater]

i suppose humans in ancient times often thought of themselves as a tribe. like a big family. the big, agile and strong one went for hunting if the tribe had no food. the ones with good sense of taste and smell and with a bit of dexterity maybe did the cooking. the one with a connection to the spirit world would be the one who sought for reconciliation with the evil or friendly spirits. maybe that person would be called shaman. maybe that person would be called priest.

what i want to say is that the role of the individual was maybe a bit more naturally "distributed".

nowadays it seems like people mostly try to do what they want to do, without thinking of what is necessary for the tribe.

i think mankind has done both. it has evolved but it has also evolved backwards. but as a whole i would say it has evolved greatly. well.... i'm not sure if the opposite is true also....

hard to tell... maybe mankind is at the edge of a new "quantum" step in evolution.... maybe mankind is at the edge of destroying itsellf as a species.
(by destroying the planet, by destroying peace, etc.)

i wonder if they different tribes of mankind can find a solution for mankind and not against it.

peace. :weedman:

 

[Subtle_Nod]

What, in your opinion, fundamentally characterize humans in general?

The ability to be stupid.

We are not quite unique in that though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming

 

[Forkbender]

Misconceptions about lemmings go back many centuries. In the 1530s, the geographer Zeigler of Strasbourg proposed the theory that the creatures fell out of the sky during stormy weather (also featured in the folklore of the Inupiat/Yupik at Norton Sound), and then died suddenly when the grass grew in spring.[4] This was refuted by the natural historian Ole Worm, who first published dissections of a lemming, and showed that lemmings are anatomically similar to most other rodents.

While many people believe that lemmings commit mass suicide when they migrate, this is not the case. Driven by strong biological urges, they will migrate in large groups when population density becomes too great. Lemmings can and do swim and may choose to cross a body of water in search of a new habitat[5]. On occasion, and particularly in the case of the Norway lemmings in Scandinavia, large migrating groups will reach a cliff overlooking the ocean. They will stop until the urge to press on causes them to jump off the cliff and start swimming, sometimes to exhaustion and death. Lemmings are also often pushed into the sea as more and more lemmings arrive at the shore. [6]

The myth of lemming mass suicide is long-standing and has been popularized by a number of factors. In 1955, Carl Barks drew an Uncle Scrooge adventure comic with the title: The Lemming with the Locket. This comic, which was inspired by a 1954 National Geographic article, showed massive numbers of lemmings jumping over Norwegian cliffs.[7]. The suicide myth was further propagated by Walt Disney documentary White Wilderness in 1958 which includes footage of lemmings migrating and running head-long over a ledge. An investigation in 1983 by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Brian Vallee, showed that the Disney film makers faked the entire sequence using imported lemmings (bought from Inuit children), a snow covered turntable on which a few dozen lemmings were forced to run, and literally throwing lemmings into the sea to show the alleged suicides.[8] This myth is also witnessed in a German film - The Little Polar Bear (Lars, the polar bear)--in which a group of despondent lemmings are frequently jumping off various ledges.[9]

Due to their association with this odd behaviour, lemming suicide is a frequently-used metaphor in reference to people who go along unquestioningly with popular opinion, with potentially dangerous or fatal consequences. This is the theme of the video game Lemmings, where the player attempts to save the mindlessly marching rodents from walking to their deaths.

I wouldn't consider them stupid. You just used a prejudice about something to prove a point. Which would make you: a "lemming". :wink:

 

[Subtle_Nod]

I wouldn't consider them stupid. You just used a prejudice about something to prove a point. Which would make you: a "lemming". :wink:

Sarcasm, sorry. Forgot the face.

Otherwise, I wouldn't have sent you to the page telling you they don't commit suicide.

Other animals are quite stupid though.

 

[Forkbender]

I know, it is hard to get sarcasm across if you're not face-to-face.

But what animal behaviour do you consider stupid for example?