A little honesty

[visualosophy]

Better to trust than be trusted
Even for those who believe white lies are
harmless. Knowing that you have intentionally decieved some-
one you care for; can you be trusted?
Now this brings me to the point of the thread.
Everyone here has or
still does consume hallucinogens in one form or another.
The question is What does it do for you?

[visualosophy]

sorry messed it up

[visualosophy]

I am on a spiritual journey
A clue that god exists
friends have told me that they have seen demons so can't the opposite be true too
They assist me in this discovery

[dial8]

So give it to us in lamens terms. What seems to be the problem?

[BuckarooBanzai]

It is impossible to live a life free of deceit and still participate in society.

[maliki]

Just because one man sees demons ?
I say he saw him self in reflection.
Deceit is nature.

[BuckarooBanzai]

DAMN that is a cool avatar!

Originally Posted by maliki

Just because one man sees demons ?
I say he saw him self in reflection.
Deceit is nature.

deceit and trust are essential to each other
nature utilizes both
that is a nice fuckin avatar..
can you imagine the wind blowing through that place..

i bet its going to be an enlightening journey!!

[Hippie3]

Originally Posted by visualosophy

The question is What does it do for you?

it reminds me that
paying the bills
is not why i was sent here...

[CoyoteMesc]

I say he saw him self in reflection.

Agreed

at a glance, the reflection in Maliki's eye looks as if he/she were looking at Visualosophy's avatar when talkin' to him.

[aumbrellaforainydays]

Originally Posted by BuckarooBanzai

It is impossible to live a life free of deceit and still participate in society.

when is being in a society always been best for the individual? you might say that there are certain perks and benefits one gets from getting a job, a rent/mortgage, a car, and money but...

what reasons do we deceive ourselves of everyday so that we can sell our fingers during time most of us want to over as soon as we can so we escape the harsh and painful reality that if you dont work you dont eat. dog eat dog. so we're based on this lifestyle of work, one nearly as fun as our previous socially required endevor, school. remember waking up and thinking, "wow, what a great day! i cant wait to go to school and get yelled at for not doing this, punished for doing that, praised for doing nothing, and ridiculed for looking like that!" so here we are on a highway to hell transporting our selves in a steel box on rubber wheels, pumping away our "hard" earned money watching it instanteously dissipate into toxic gas converted from middle east oil, paid for in blood and hate. while the jihadists laugh in their caves at how vulnerable we are without it. America! the land of the free! Ahh where one can believe anything they want, and make people believe its real because if it involves making money, then its gotta be real! How we love our money and hate people who take it away from us. but how much and where do all those hard earned dollars you gave to the government? how would you want money spent you just gave to your father? will he send you to school, give you health insurance, social security, food? or will he buy a gun and then tell you that if you're gonna be free you got to defend it without question?

are you really free if what you work for is being spent to hide the truth? that is why i dont like the system, that i, am inevitably forced to endure, since i dont yet have the resourses to build an underground hemp and rock house, complete with well, windmill, solar panel, garden, pigs, chickens, ducks, a cow, and a horse. a horse i can ride all day tripping wondering how the fuck can people do the things they do and be sane? maybe im crazy or maybe im completely fucking normal, but does working 9-5, 6 days a week, eating fast food, driving 80 miles a day, watering grass on my desert property, coming home every day to a microwaved dinner, on a plastic table-top, in front of a tube thats telling me what i should spend my money on? rant over.

[Hippie3]

truth is we all need society.
many of us would not survive childhood without medical care,
drugs and doctors and hospitals and insurance keeps us alive & well.
food, clothing, clean water, heat in the winter, cars, roads,
even boards and nails- almost everything we use is man-made
through a social process network.
you want to try life without society
have someone drop you off, naked, deep in some national forest
and come back in a few years-
odds are all they will find is your bones.

[Jetson]

Originally Posted by Hippie3

truth is we all need society.
many of us would not survive childhood without medical care,
drugs and doctors and hospitals and insurance keeps us alive & well.
food, clothing, clean water, heat in the winter, cars, roads,
even boards and nails- almost everything we use is man-made
through a social process network.
you want to try life without society
have someone drop you off, naked, deep in some national forest
and come back in a few years-
odds are all they will find is your bones.

That's a little idealistic. I think it’s our society that’s to blame for the deterioration of human potential to survive naked in the forest. But, I suppose if we cut down all the forests in the world for boards and nails, we won’t ever have to worry about that. The modern man is subconsciously self-destructive.

We will only make it so far before we digress enough to become extinct.

[TVCasualty]

Originally Posted by Hippie3

you want to try life without society
have someone drop you off, naked, deep in some national forest
and come back in a few years-
odds are all they will find is your bones.

I know a few people who would be just fine, but for the vast majority (including myself at this point) that is a true statement. But, it's true partly because the so-called national forests are not the same forests/ecosystems that sustained large populations of people who got here before the Europeans. They are fundamentally different ecosystems now. Humans aren't forest dwellers by nature anyway; we evolved in a savannah environment- that's why we like our parks to be grass interspersed w/ few trees, we feel more comfortable in that environment- but those environments are all dominated by civilization and so we instead think of tree farms as 'wilderness' but really we need expansive grasslands.

I think what bothers a lot of people is the fact that civilization is so mandatory. There is nowhere I can go to get away from it that is suitable for human habitation. There is no chance to explore an alternative or think "outside the box" because this box covers everything. It's not that I want to be permanently free of society and reject it's comforts, rather I just want the option to visit places not controlled or altered or destroyed by humans (I am referring to human-friendly places, not the "rocks and ice" parks that are pretty to look at but useless for sustaining much life) . I don't see this as an "all or nothing" problem; we can have modern medicine and technology without paving every freakin' square foot of earth or fundamentally changing complex natural processes before gaining an understanding of those processes (like damming rivers, or burning oil and coal as fast as it can be extracted, or engaging in intense chemically-based non-sustainable agriculture). Or, maybe we can't.

The things we humans have done to provide ourselves the advantages of modern society might ultimately turn out to be the things that deprive us of those advantages to the extent that we might have been better off not having developed them at all. Time will tell.

[Jetson]

I wouldn’t need anxiety medication if our society wasn't so hectic and dysfunctional. Living in a forest might do me some good.

[cheshire]

Originally Posted by BuckarooBanzai

It is impossible to live a life free of deceit and still participate in society.

dont think its possible to live without ego etc.. u would seem mad to all watching



visualosophy, what u see in ur avatar is what shrooms do to me and help me with.........

[Doctor D]

Originally Posted by CoyoteMesc

at a glance, the reflection in Maliki's eye looks as if he/she were looking at Visualosophy's avatar when talkin' to him.

Interesting observation. The colours are reversed, though. When I saw Maliki's avatar, I immediately thought "Damn! How come I can't ever find cool avatars like that?"

To bring my post on-topic, mushrooms help me to see the beauty in life. So many of my trips, I find myself repeating the exact words, "Oh my god, how beautiful!" It boggles my mind that anyone would think to outlaw something so precious.

[BuckarooBanzai]

I don't even want to consider how much cool stuff I would have to flush out of my brain if I was to make space for knowing everything I would need to know to survive "on my own in the wild."

Screw that. I like free time and I like good food and I like drugs and I like toys. I also like buildings and plumbing and electricity and 4 lane highways. I'm partial to airplanes and a huge fan of space shuttles.

I don't like worrying about where my fresh water and food are going to come from. The only hunter/gatherer activities I'm interested in is aquiring buds and other interesting consumables for the weekend.

And I LIKE society. I like interacting with different people with different motives on a regular basis. I like buying from some and selling to others. I like just being friends with some and disliking others. I LIKE using and being used. I like interacting with the group.

I think humanity and human civiliztion kick much righteous ass. And to all those who feel we just suck ass and that the poor downtroden planet should rise up and stomp us...

Well, I leave you with the words of Montgomery Burns (as a certain great Mycotopiate recently reminded me):

"Oooh, so Mother Nature needs a favor?! Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she's losing. Well I say, hard cheese."

[Jetson]

But if everyone just put in a tiny bit of effort to conserve natural recourses, and if we all were more appreciative of what the earth provides for us, and if we were more mindful of the devastating effects our sprawling industry might have on the world, then we could continue to have the cars and planes and TV and friends, and maybe even people of other country’s could eat and drink clean water.

Besides none of those material comforts are really that substantial—you could be forced to live in an impoverished country and you would eventually forget about planes and cars, you’d find other interests.
A lot of prisoners serving who life-long or 50 years sentences, after many years it becomes their home. Just like in that one movie; many of them, when let out, either commit suicide or another crime to be put back in jail. We don’t NEED any of this crap to be happy. People should try to be a little more minimalist.

P.s. I would have written a better composition but my damn roommate is watching 24. …Fucking TV.

[CoyoteMesc]

I don't care what character in a movie
learned to love prison. I don't believe
I'd ever learn to forget, just learn to deal
with it(hopefully)
You posted many "ifs". Hell "if" I'd hit the lotto
I would buy an Island and everyone would be invited. (byob.btw).hehe
I agree with buck on this one. I like what I have and "if" I were to lose it I would never forget it.."if you were born in such a place maybe you wouldnt need it, you dont miss what you never had. ya know.

I like to talk about money and it seems that folks with money always say.."Money wont buy you happiness",
well heres what I say to that, I have everything else
so bring on the money,,hahaha

I agree with the fact that people can learn to adapt. But I disagree that my comforts in life I have today aren't substanial..its like 10 degrees out side for crying out loud.

[BuckarooBanzai]

Yeah.

If everyeone does this and then when they and then maybe we could all and perhaps that would lead to…

And then, all of a sudden, people are starving and have no clean water and the implication is that it is my fault.

The nutshell of it is that because I enjoy canned cheese whiz, little mand’utpo has to grow up without feet.

Then we segue to a very broken rendition of Plato’s allegory of the cave.

Dude, this really just doesn’t convince me. I've heard a hundred variations of it and it just doesn't do anything more for me than the people who are so concerned about saving my soul.

The truth is, I'm starting to tune it out the same way I tune out the salvation kids.

[TVCasualty]

Hey wait a minute... where did visualosophy go?? It was your thread, man!

My attitude is that if we really do like our comfortable civilization, then maybe we should be very carefully assessing how we might sustain it for the long term, as things are not liable to arrange themselves that way spontaneously. If we just grab all we can and consume it at our whim, we'll deplete the necessary elements of our comfort faster than they can be replaced, and we will lose that comfort.

When we have money, we can burn through it all very quickly and have a great time, but ultimately end up at the homeless shelter, OR we can think it through and try to live off the interest. We can save the principal for the lean years which always come eventually. That means living a little bit beneath our means, which we are currently not doing. A society that is tons-o-fun but lacking the resilience born of saving for hard times is precarious at best. "Hard times" could just be a severe drought; for all our technological progress we still require rain, rain depends on the climate, and we are messing with that climate without a clear idea of the consequences. To me, this shows a faith in the resilience of our planet's ecosystem greater than that of most fundamentalists' faith in Jesus.

sustaining it for the longer term.. do you mean- until the sun explodes?

i dont think we are so special as to not have the need to become extinct.
And while saving up certainly is wise..
id hate to save up and then have everything dashed cataclysmically
and realize, last second, i could have eatin both those snicker bars, at lunch, instead of saving one for dinner.. : D

i dunno, seems our comfy and cozy condition lets us wait for death..
which is an interesting, and inspiring thing, that many people have strived and died for.. but it just doesnt seem like everything matches up.. like the people that don't have the things i have because of the advancements to the society around me, it makes me think they are just better at surviving than i am. Its not that i don't want the society.. but i do feel kinda trapped by it.. i would like to be a minimalist, but just to a certain degree.. but i could always adapt to
the ways id rather be a minimalist, i could make my own clothes and grow my own food, and still be around people who felt the same way, and running water and houses and fire.. but then there are those peoples who probably can't find seeds to plant, or cloth to sew
because of societies efforts to (trap) preserve us
i guess its easier to be trapped by society than stiffled by it..?

so what do you think humans (if they make it that long) should do when the sun starts to implode,
go down with the ship? or use machines to try to germinate the cosmos

[visualosophy]

Thanks for the compliments on the avatar
I was not sure about the types of respones I would recieve
I just wanted to see if the question would be answered with honesty
It was not about the lies in our society it was aboutsticking to the subject and one more thing

ALLOW ME TO SHED A LITTLE LIGHT your sub-conscious understood

Better to trust than be trusted
Even for those who believe white lies are
harmless. Knowing that you have intentionally decieved some-
one you care for; can you be trusted?
Now this brings me to the point of the thread.
Everyone here has or
Still does consume hallucinogens in one form or another.
The question is What does it do for you?
BE HONEST I think honesty is a crucial part of our time thats missing what would happen if we treated each other like decent human beings?
Thanks for the responses guys

well to be honest, i dont think everyone here has
or still consumes hallucinogens

but they make me pretty scared, and give me gas.
and i lose sexual interest, when im on them..

too much?

[visualosophy]

But that means that you have done them
has is the key word

[TVCasualty]

sustaining it for the longer term.. do you mean- until the sun explodes?

i dont think we are so special as to not have the need to become extinct.
And while saving up certainly is wise..
id hate to save up and then have everything dashed cataclysmically
and realize, last second, i could have eatin both those snicker bars, at lunch, instead of saving one for dinner.. : D

Sure, until the Sun explodes, why not?

The whole idea of saving is precicesly for cataclysmic events! It's like drinking all the beer before everyone has shown up to the party. I think we shouldn't spend all the money on beer; we should spend some on a stash we keep in the garage fridge, spend some on brewing equipment and grain, etc. etc. so that the party can last as long as possible (weak metaphor, but I hope it's adequate). We can only do the best we can to hand off a world suitable for habitation to the next generation, and just like we have stuff to eat and oil to burn because previous generations hadn't consumed it all, so subsequent generations might really appreciate it if we extend them the same courtesy.

[dr.gonzo]

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."

--DR. JOHNSON

It seems to me like life is an anomaly and everything eventually leads to death. we should embrace death as it is most likley the most relaxing vacation you can ever have. I always like to belive that at first you feel weightless and then you're soul is scatterd in a million difrent ways shooting out and up. As frank the tank said in old school "everybody's doing it!"

If you ever get pissed at your daily life I always find myself humming this song

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...axy+song&hl=en

[oeisa]

no one's going to try very hard to fix the planet until they feel they HAVE to. and it may be too late by then and only a few who get lucky and a few who prepared are going to survive, and in that way humans will evolve, or go extinct. either way, ranting about what-ifs and being scared is pointless. everything is as it should be in the universe, and will continue being that way forever and ever. just because our clever monkey brains managed to create a complex language system doesn't mean that every single word, concept, and sentence that comes our way reflects in any proper way at all the TRUTH about the complexity of the universe. so many people believe in so many things that are really JUST WORDS and never even stop to really ask themselves whether those words REALLY correspond properly to the way things are, naked of meaning, connotation, and emotion. this is how i define that idea of mindful silence that meditators are supposed to seek. you don't BELIEVE in all the words; you believe in what you experience and feel every moment, and you play with the words any way you want for entertainment; just don't let yourself fall into the trap of thinking it's The Way Things Are. strive to be a student of the universe, open to its teachings.

i sound preachy as hell. i hate that, but this is the only place where it feels comfortable expressing those things. everyone i know either has already heard these things from me and understands, or is so hopelessly lost in their own drama that they would just.. i don't know. i'm sure you know what 20-something-year-olds in a small town are like, what everyone in a small town in the southeastern usa is like. i'm tired of being silent from fear of "corrupting" those people who are the living embodiments of "ignorance is bliss."

this is what hallucinogens have helped me to realize. i couldn't ever explain the reason why, but they were part of the process that led up to me sounding like this.

thanks if you managed to read all the way through this. i don't write very well on drugs.

[dr.gonzo]

This one I guy I used to work(redneck) with was telling me about this other guy he was talking to about heaven and all that. he said the guy didnt belive in heaven and the redneck looks at me and said to the guy "where do think you go when you die" (like its the only place) I wanted to ask him yeah where do you go. Its like that was the only option for him when he died was to go to heaven and he never questioned it. I dont know If I admier his blind faith, or ignore him because of his ignorance to look at other religons that havent been preached to you because youre parents dragged you to church every sunday.


and then the radio came on in a rare twist.

So...So you think you can tell, Heaven from Hell, blue skys from pain.
I dont even think the redneck heard a word of it. he listined but he didnt hear it.

My other friend was seriously pissed off when I told him I belive in god but not jesus or mary or any other "middle man" and then he called me atheist and kept rambiling about blasphomy and was seriously getting ready to fight me. I belive there is someone or some force tending the light at the end of the tunnle. Just because I dont belive its jesus does not make me an atheist.

There inlies the problems. Does christianity make you want to fight anyone who defies to belive in you're religon. Are they still set up like the romans going around and beheading. Dosent your religon call for peace. Its like I cant even voice my thoughts around hear with the freedom of religon with out getting dirty looks and being stoned to death in the town square.

I just look at like this.

here's you, there's god. the direct connection.

[TVCasualty]

what everyone in a small town in the southeastern usa is like.

Careful! Some folks around here are located in smalll towns in the Southeastern US, and they ain't like everybody else in those towns! And besides, that's where the action is. If you just hang out with like-minded people and preach to the choir all the time, what good is that? Easy enough to be a hipster in Berserkeley. Takes some cajones to pull it off in Dipstick, Alabama. But that's where consciousness needs a boost most, no? I mean, without becoming another soapbox fundamentalist ranter you could just be there to answer questions or offer novel perspectives when someone wonders "Is there any more to this life thing than the Dollar S