At the risk of being "that other guy", psychedelic experiences come in many different categories of experience: ranging from mere distortions of our normal, subjective state of perceiving reality, to emotional processing, ego death, out of body and spiritual experiences. There is no formula for a spiritual experience, but there have been enough accounts of mystical experiences throughout human history that point to them being quite literally "spiritual" - ephemeral, outside of or interacting with this three dimensional space we inhabit in ways difficult to comprehend, a true mystery to this physical instrument through which we filter the universe.
I think it's a mistake to think we have it all figured out just because we've had an experience that either reinforces or contradicts our per-conceived notions of what constitutes reality.
This tale of this siege encapsulates the unwavering determination of Alexander to overcome and conquer. Anyone interested should read the accounts in Arrian and Quintus Curtius Rufus' biographies.
It's particularly striking how much skin in the game generals like Alexander had, fighting on the front lines. From Thucydides and Xenophon gives the impression that the casualties for pitched hoplite battles weren't particularly large as a proportion of the army, but it's surprising how often the general was killed in action. Alexander himself was hit in the head strong enough to be dismounted at Granicus, suffered a projectile would to the shoulder at the siege of Gaza, and nearly lost his life when he was shot in the chest by an arrow at the Mallian stronghold. Of course recounting those wounds and showing off the scars formed a part of his speech when he later tried and failed to persuade his army to advance further.
Given that everything we experience in this life is through our consciousness, equating depression to a shift in consciousness isn't heavy lifting. This is an association where I would like to see some hard science backing the link between our conscious experience and the underlying function of our wetware, the brain.
As far as subjective experience, I've witnessed myself slowly slip into a depression toward the end of a relationship I knew wasn't going to pan out. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time, but I slowly remembered sex becoming less enjoyable with my ex, the pull of my hobbies less exciting and rewarding, my global outlook on life and the vibrancy of my future becoming more dim and... depressing. This was anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure. I felt like I was wading through a dark cloud. The ability to smile organically through enjoyable interactions and activities all but disappeared, or at the very least, felt forced and somewhat "empty", like I was a poor actor. I had to give a best man's speech around this time and was shocked to hear how monotone my voice had been while delivering the speech.
Throughout all of this, I more or less kept the same routines. I was spending more time alone but still managed to schedule time with friends, I kept working out, and never slipped into a dark hole.. but I'm not ashamed to say I wasn't able to solve it alone, in fact the shift was so subtle that by the time I had become aware of what conscious state had become, I was dismayed to find that I was already doing what most people recommend to get out of a depression - stay active, spend time with friends and family, spend time in nature, exercise, etc. Which leads me to what ended up working... therapy.
I can't say I've had any major trauma's in my life aside from losing my father as a teenager, but talking over my life with a therapist helped me come across some events that triggered me emotionally to revisit, and over several weeks I started to feel the cloud of anhedonia lifting and started to enjoy life as it appeared to me again. The major conclusion being the functioning of the subconscious mind on our conscious experience plays more of a role than I expected.
YMMV, but if you are experiencing depression, consider therapy.. this is coming from someone who was already experienced in the trendiest news grabbing headlines for treating depression before I realized I had become depressed, including meditation and psychedelics.
I'm not retired, but I am shift worker in Healthcare, which means I have 3-4 days off per week. A question I often get from people when they hear that is "Wow! What do you do with all your time off?" The answer is always, "I live my life."
On my days off I catch up on chores. I take care of my body by going to the gym, yoga studio, boxing gym, or ride my bike. I spend time with friends if they are available, which is tricky because I'm only off every other weekend. I bake sourdough bread and seek perfection in extracting the perfect cup of espresso. I read HN.
I often think what I would be doing if I met your criteria for answering this questions and didn't have to work the other 3-4 days of my week, and I think the answer would be to look for meaningful work. There is a fulfillment or sense of purpose in work that doesn't come to me in the prolonged absence of it, I don't define myself by it, but as Marcus Aurelius said in his Meditations:
“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”
So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?
You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.”
> Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order
Sorry to nitpick, but spiders build the web and then cowardly hide and wait till a victim gets caught and is completely helpless. Not really a model of moral virtue.
Right... And software developers write the code and cowardly hide while sales people actually sell it. Do you just dislike spiders? Any insect could be a pest if you look at it in a certain light.
Psychedelics have the ability to bring, through subjective experience, evidence of the mystery that has been passed down through the worlds spiritual traditions; mankinds' relation to that mystery is ubiquitous throughout the worlds civilizations.
I give due respect to anything that stands the test of time, irrespective of our ability to measure it with modern instruments or understand it with our primate mind.
I started seeing the association between caffeine, jitters and anxiety now that I am in my early thirties. Like you, I enjoyed many years of symptom free caffeine "indulgence". I've switched to enjoying decaf brewed at home with beans that have been decaffeinated using the Swiss Water Method, which removes 99.9% of the caffeine by soaking the green coffee beans in an extract of green coffee + water minus the caffeine - the caffeine diffuses out without the use of solvents! I do agree that most decaf tends to not taste the same at most cafes, because decaf beans tend to sit around longer that regular beans.. sometimes even pre-ground (the horror). I've fell in love in coffee again, and I'm looking into getting a Kafatek Monolith and a linea mini for the home, but if you are getting rid of any espresso equipment at fire sale prices, let me know ;)
I also live with family. There are many cultures where living with your family is the norm until, or even after marriage.
Maybe I’m an outlier, or just got lucky, but the first woman I started dating after a failed 5 year relationship ended up being conditionally ok with it - the conditions being that living in my family’s home wasn’t my “end game”, and that I was able to take care of myself. This was coming from an extremely independent woman who lived on her own, in a country outside of where she was born since coming to the US for college. Since then, she’s come to understand that living with, and helping to take care of family shows a degree of maturity and responsibility that transcends merely taking care of n=1 (yourself).
If anyone is in a similar situation, don’t be afraid to enter the dating pool just because you live with family, don’t be ashamed of it, and respect the ignorance of those who haven’t had the burden of having to support loved ones on their shoulders.
*edit (typo)
Also, by “end game”, she meant that I was planning on moving out at some point, which I am.
Maybe I'm naive, but I don't see a good reason why government can't introduce legislation to enforce standardized packaging across product "classes" to streamline reuse and recycling - for example, all soda bottles of size x, must come in shape y, made out of polymer z. The obvious financial impact would be companies having to potentially retool their factories to facilitate that, but there can also be sensible tax rebates to prevent the corporations from crying.
The bottom line is, the cost of doing business has to take into account the environmental impacts on our planet and the consequences for our progeny.
> Maybe I'm naive, but I don't see a good reason why government can't introduce legislation to enforce ...
You are being naive, even in the European Union which has a fairly contained level of corruption the Plastic and Petro-chemical lobby are incredibly strong.
Many countries wanted to introduce a single-use plastic ban, almost immediately a campaign came out saying they were trying to kill people at hospitals where many consumables are single-use plastic (Obviously medical supplies were exempt from the ban). The single-use plastic ban was so watered down that now the only thing that will be baned are things like plastic forks and plastic q-tips.
Another example is return deposits, many European countries have very succesful glass deposit schemes usually reusing the supermarket stores' infrastructure. The natural progression of this is to create large plastic bootle/container deposits. Again this will never happen because it obviously stops the current externalization of costs in the plastic business.
There are two main forces at play against Humanity on the plastic front of our Anthropogenic calamity:
- The consumer product manufacturers (think Unilever, Pepsico, Nestle, Kraft, etc.). Their interest in plastic containers is mostly due to the reduction in production cost and transport costs. They heavily lobby against bans and any cost increase for their production chain.
- The Petro-Chemical industry (Including Big Oil companies), many of these refining business know they are getting squeezed out of the fuel business as electrical vehicle adoption is bound to increase. The Plastic production is the last remaining golden goose in their portfolio. A circular economy where most of the plastic is recycled from previously used plastic would mean that the volumes and profits of these very financially successful business would evaporate.
Both these lobbies and others will continue to resist and undermine any attempt to curb our planetary and Humane destruction until they are stopped either by public pressure or insolvency.
>The natural progression of this is to create large plastic bootle/container deposits. Again this will never happen because it obviously stops the current externalization of costs in the plastic business.
We already have that in a lot of EU countries. Every soda bottle has an additional deposit cost
(10 cents) on top of the soda itself. You pay that when you purchase it and get the 10 cents back when you take the bottle to a collection point for plastic bottles.
But even then, you often aren't returning the plastic bottles to be reused anymore, instead they're just recycled. --When I first moved to Norway in 2008, the soda bottles actually were collected, cleaned, and reused, but they stopped doing that, and now they're only recycled. --It's better than them ending up in landfills or being burned for energy, but as has been noted, plastic can only be recycled so many times, so it still ends up causing more plastic to be manufactured.
There are many glass deposit schemes, but apart from Norway and maybe Germany, other EU countries' _plastic_ deposit schemes to my knowledge are either draft proposals or rejected draft proposals? What exactly do you mean by a _lot_ of EU countries?
Here in Lithuania we have like 90% of plastic bottles have a deposit logo on them, pretty much all of the soda, beer, water, milk bottles are recycled. Most of the non recycleable bottles are from outside of EU brands, and those are generally more expensive. Collection points are also automated, where you put them on conveyer kind of belt ant it uses OCR to detect if the bottle can be recycled. Those collection points are attached to a store and you get a credit in associated store which can be used to either buy groceries or jus get your money in cash.
> ... all soda bottles of size x, must come in shape y, made out of polymer z.
This style of legislation is exactly how we get articles like this posted. Where we can't have new headlight technology in the US because the law exactly prescribes the types of headlights permitted.
Create a recycling bureau that analyzes source materials and grades recycle-ability, and then in the law require certain grades for certain applications.
I'm not sure you need those LED/LASER headlights... I don't understand what the manufacturers are thinking, those lights are incredibly bright, dangerously so - how are they even legal?
That's the version we have in the US. TFA I linked covers that in Europe they are permitted to do dynamic shaping of the light cones in order to reduce your exact complaint.
I don't know how things are now, but in Sweden there used to be standard 33cl glass and 1.5l PET bottle sizes, and when they were returned for their deposit, instead of crushing or melting them down, they'd just have their label stripped and they'd be washed and reused. You could tell old a glass or plastic bottle was by how scratched the sides were.
I don't think these were government mandates but just industry agreements. I remember Coca Cola being the first company to break the mold with custom 1.5l bottle designs
Yeah, seems to be a common theme across the world, there used to be some standard and system for reusing/recycling containers... and now it's gone. We've gone backwards on this for some reason.
The bottle recycling system in Finland and Sweden is brilliant. Each bottle has a small (5-20c) deposit tied to it's price which you get back at the ubiquitous bottle returning machines in grocery stores. This creates a pseudo-job for the homeless and youths and unemployed etc. to aggressively collect all the bottles and cans they can find in the city. It creates it's own little economy.
I'm always surprised this hasn't been expanded to other uses and more countries.
Ever see a soda or beer can? Pretty standardized. Same goes for a beer bottle, or even a lot of soda bottles. (This is my perspective in the US, but things seemed similar the week I spent in Europe and the week I spent in India.)
1 gallon milk jugs are quite standard, same goes for milk cartons.
When I was a teenager I worked in a dairy. We sold milk in both single-use containers and returnable glass bottles. The returned bottles were washed and refilled. The "problem" is that single-use won in the marketplace. The owners couldn't get it together to charge a deposit on the glass, and lost a lot of money from customers who didn't realize they had to return the glass bottle. (Edit: All of the containers, single-use and returnable, were standard and came from a distributor.)
We really only see unique packaging when some business sees it as in their best interests to design unique packaging for their product. Otherwise, beverage / food makers are just going to buy easy-to-get equipment that fills easy-to-get containers.
Europe forced automakers (indirectly) to change what plastics cars were made out of. Previously there were so many unique formulas of plastic that you’d never be able to sort them properLy.
But as has been mentioned already, plastics don’t recycle well.
Wow, sounds like you really want to encourage innovation in materials. The variety of polymers we have serve multiple uses and different functions because of their numerous unique properties (and costs).
But it is the variety of polymers that make them so bad. Surely, it is better to standardize to one material (or rather, standardize for the recycling process), than to ban the whole class of materials altogether.
I believe innovation would be encouraged by the incentive to capture a market for a specific use case with an innovation in either process, material, or diminished environmental impacts.
Corporations (and citizens) need to be accountable for making decisions that go against societies best interests - the current infatuation with profit at all costs is eerily similar to the proliferation of cells at all costs in cancer.
Not in the case of the comment you're replying to, where the use is to carry a specific size of soda and the function is to not spill the soda. I don't mind advancements in soda bottle technology being slow and careful, even if it gives an advantage to the Chinese.
Because without fancy, bespoke packaging people will be less inclined to buy copious amounts of junk food.
We need to fundamentally rethink our entire food system. For example, having every individual buy, transport, cook and dispose of their own food is a huge inefficiency, particularly now with smaller and individual households.
We need to encourage more neighborhood kitchens, with food prepared cheaply and healthily, that people can eat multiple times a day at. For starters remove the tax loophole where if you buy your own raw ingredients and cook something yourself, you pay no or reduced VAT, whereas if you buy the same ingredients at a restaurant you pay full VAT.
You seem to have thought this through pretty thoroughly, how do you intend to incentivize people to go to these communal meals vs cooking at home or getting a “personalized” meal at a restaurant?
I recommend Plutarch's Lives, I own the Oxford World's Classics translations of 'Roman Lives' and 'Greek lives' and the stories told between the two alone allow to you build a mental model of the nature of mankind, the rise and fall of empires, and the "vicissitudes of fortune".
