MrLonely said:
VoidTraveler said:
MrLonely said:
I think it's important to call him out, yes. He's being an absolutist, not voicing an "opinion". He states DMT is "DEFINITELY a metaphor".
Why is that so important? In that video he said "That's how I see it". The thing is, you're obviously aggravated because this man his an opinion that is different than yours. If this man is having an opinion that is different than yours, WHY must he be swayed or his opinion proven to be 'wrong'?
Please, calm down. I apologize if you're confused and think I'm here for reasons I'm not. I came here to more or less debate his absolutist views. Is that a problem. I don't think it's "so" important. If it was, I'd be writing a press release, not a forum post. It took me 2 clicks to get here and type out a simple rant. He's not here in my room for me to debate directly, so this forum was my next best option.
Also, I never stated my opinion and we could share the same one. The difference would be that I don't go around with an absolutist viewpoint telling people that my opinion is basically fact. He comes off as very arrogant and adamant about what he thinks to be the "Truth" - and that often includes completely disregarding every else's opinions and any opposing evidence. And to me, that's annoying.
VoidTraveler said:
MrLonely said:
If it's okay for him to go on TV and belittle everyone else's "opinions" with his absolutist views then don't get mad at me for coming on a small forum and returning the favour to him.
So because he does that you're allow to do the same thing? This forum is filled with people who are very open minded. Many don't know exactly what is going on and we most likely never find out either. It is almost as if this man insults you for having said opinion. Why care so much?
I never even stated my opinion so how can I have an absolutist view? He doesn't insult me, he insults everyone including people who may have his same opinion. I don't care so much, it seems like you do. I came here to write a few sentences and get this off my mind. You don't need to write hate about me because I want to debate his ideas. I'm not going to sugar coat my life and not say anything about everyone's opinions. If someone says something ridiculous people should be able to call them out. "Question everything" - Socrates
First of all, if you came here expecting a debate on his views, then this is what you're getting, so I'm not sure what the problem is. I think you mean to say that you came here to have your view agreed with, more than to debate it. But I digress. This could be a sentiment of absolutism except he distinctly says that it's the way that he sees it (implying that you're open to see it a completely different way). He then proceeds to tell you how it is the way he sees it, and you certainly don't have to agree. If you'd like to debate the ontological reality of the experience then that's fine, but this absolutist view has to be taken off the table, because it's quite frankly just not true. If you want to talk about someone with absolutist views, take a peak at the Martin Ball thread here in Open Discussion.
You say that you've never stated your opinion, but that seems to be because it's veiled in your hypothetical "alien taking a drug antithesis" example. It seems that you disagree with his
opinion that it's a metaphor, so we know you don't think that. Now, we probably won't ever be able to conclusively conclude how real DMT is or the reality of the entities and places, but I'll let you know what my current best tentative guess is. Similar to your perceptions of consensual reality where you take in external stimuli through your senses, filter it internally to create an internal model and then project that model back out into the world around you (or at least that's how I understand that part to work :d ), when you take DMT, you may be using other senses to retrieve external information, filter in internally, and then project it out into your immediate space. I think the key difference between the two modes of "seeing" lies in where the information is coming from. In the case of consensual reality, the information that is internalized is local whereas in the case of DMT, the information is being retrieved non-locally. Where it's being retrieved from is a bigger mystery. Perhaps a higher dimension, but who knows? This is all just conjecture.
On the other hand, because the information that can be quite symbolic is run through internal filters, there's a part of you that's tinting the way that you experience. For example, when I used to go to class, and I would come back after, even if I would meditate before going into the DMT experience, after smoking the DMT, I could hear whatever professor's class I was just in resounding around my head. The other day, I made the mistake of watching Bill Maher before blasting off, and in my biggest breakthrough to date, when the godhead came steamrolling through, in the most audible, loud, deep gigantic voice you can imagine, it was spewing just tons of political nonsense across the spectrum. So on one hand, I believe that the information is in part external, it's simultaneously mirroring what's going on in your subconscious, but they get parsed together so that they're both projected to be on display in a parsimonious kind of way. I believe that it's an interplay of this sort that makes the ontology of the experience so difficult to pin down.
Everyone's different, but for me, DMT communicates with me in more of a visual way than a linguistic way, and it has many lessons. When I say it has lessons, it seems like sometimes it literally has these pre-packaged lessons like a hyper-educational movie whether it be on racism or laziness or pollution or what have you. Because it communicates in a predominantly visual way for me, a lot of what comes across is in symbols. Their symbolic nature may not become clear until afterward, but it can be rather metaphorical at times, and more straightforward (however straightforward DMT gets) at other times. Often it's being metaphorical and not metaphorical at the same time, and this is wherein the difficulty lies. So often with the DMT experience we see that things both are and aren't something simultaneously. We can be both in and out of our bodies at the same time, we can be both hot and cold at the same time, we can see hyperspace and consensual reality at the same time, etc...so I see no reason why the experience can't be both internal and external at the same time and both metaphorical and not metaphorical at the same time. I hope this was clear, and I in no way intended to offend you at any point along the way.
My own viewpoint is similar to yours but I tend to always lean on the "but who knows? This is all just conjecture." side of things. It's a wonderful thing to have ideas, viewpoints, possible explanations. I've heard a lot of them, even the same viewpoints as Rushkoff. What bothers me about him, is he passes them off as absolutes, and that's when I get irritated. 
