Tyler/Michael Pollan

  • Carbs put people on an emotional rollercoaster

  • Psychedelics disrupt the grooves of habit....get you “further out in he space of possibility”

  • People struggling with negative thought/behavior thoughts stand to benefit most from psychedelics

  • Our brains are tuned for novelty; we’re tuned to disregard the familiar

  • On psychedelics and weed, the familiar suddenly takes on greater weight; there’s an appreciation of the familiar

  • Line between profundity and banality is a lot finer than we think

  • ***Any big experience is mediated by chemicals. Should there be a distinction between the endogenous and the exogenous? “I’m not sure”

  • More lasting appreciation if it’s endogenous

  • Huxley: common “core” of religious experience across psychedelics, religion

  • Doesn’t have self-reinforcing quality

  • The sublime = beautiful and terrible at the same time

  • Awesome experience wouldn’t be awesome if you did it every day

  • Psychedelics can make you more open

  • Leads to much stronger sense of spirituality

  • Tyler: 1/20 odds that God exists (!)

  • Ego dissolution/ego inflation. Both are possible

  • “You find a key to reality” = very dangerous thing

  • Leads to dogmatism/guru complex

  • Is “guru” notion an artifact of it being underground?

  • Enlightenments on p feel objective

  • Subject object distinction goes away; all feels objective

  • Cultural container

  • Offer the “betterment of well people”

  • Siloscibin - lasts half as long as lsd; no political baggage

  • DSM = full list of psychological conditions

  • Being on LSD comparable to the consciousness of children (!!!)

  • “Regress to a primary consciousness”

  • Spotlight consciousness vs lantern consciousness (kid)

  • Guided trips are fundamentally different

  • Tyler: “New bread and circuses equilibrium” (?!)

  • Contemplative practices make you less dissatisfied with the world as it is

  • Nature relatedness goes up

  • Psychedelics help reduce tribalism? Help environment?

  • Set and setting matter. British people on acid report fewer mystical experiences bc their cultures less religious to start with (!). Strong cultural component

  • Worldview of the therapist administering impacts the type of images you see (!)

  • Space between him and nature closed down post drugs. Nature culture divide closed down

  • Some ppl say psychedelics bring us a message from nature (...)

  • We’ve objectified nature —> meat factories

  • We can’t provide meat at the rate we provide it to ourselves.

  • Whole world wants a western diet

  • Crispr might make food more productive

  • Every writer has a set of final questions and if you go deep enough into their words it will come back to that!!

  • He has a routine and sticks with it, even if it’s hard.

  • Edits every morning (the stuff from the day before)

  • More time editing than writing

  • Read great fiction. Cultivate your ear. Writing is a form of music

  • “Undistinguished prose”

  • He reads a novel every night before he sleeps. Wants brain to be in rhythm of good prose

  • Go went gone - Jenny Erpenbeck. Refugee crisis novel **********German - Go, Went, Gone

  • Fiction expands the circle of your sympathy