Yeah, the Venus project is very hit and miss in terms of it's content. The methodology behind expanding the reaches of the data we gather about our resources and energy expenditure makes sense though but i guess that method isn't unique to the venus project but I'm not sure it had been proposed on a global scale before that.

I think you might enjoy the work of Manuel Castells. He has a lot of interesting, well-thought out views about network societies, the types of simulations people are running, both digitally and in the real world with alternative forms of self organization,social currencies, co-operatives etc

In a sense i think that the simulation and the model you speak of is paradoxically the world we already we live in. We are the proto-type! And by nature, new emergent behaviours will be birthed through the decay and discord that our current habits are creating.

Time to start reverse engineering the future and non linear conciousness but we'll leave that for another time

The trouble is we have the paradox of being autonomous in our behaviours, the time we spend doing things and what we do with it. Habit is so hard wired in to ourselves that it's difficult to change. I'm sure we can all relate to that on an individual level as well.

I think the key factor in this paradigm shift is the self empowerment and self conciousness of the individual.

The man made world is in a way ,our collective mind extrapolated physically ,so global disorder will inevitably be influenced profoundly by each and every one of our interactions with it as we all re-shape the world whether we are consciously aware of it or not.

One of the key thing's I've realized myself recently is the level of which we can view ourselves as a model/system in relation to the world as a model/system. If we are truly sincere in our journey to address the world's problems and areas of inefficacy, we have to address them within ourselves.

"Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself." Jung

Indeed bro.

I will only add that reverse engineering the future, and being pro-active to jump-start change, is the antithesis of waiting for emergent systems to birth themselves out of the chaos of what is. There is a lot of validity in recognizing how much of human society arises this way, but if you want to change the world, focused action is required.

It is far easier to do nothing than to do something. This is generally a good thing, as doing nothing is usually better than doing something stupid. The fact that one needs to be focused and aware of many levels of complexity to have any real effect in the world, keeps it from being a maddening chaos where every crackpot idea vies for our attention.

But, it also means that it takes really intelligent pressure applied at key junctures to accomplish even relatively modest goals. The difference between the legions of arm-chair philosophers (and generals) and the people who make a difference... is focused action.

Plenty of people talk a good talk, but underneath their rhetoric tends to be a justification for doing nothing... or being rather conservative and unambitious. The tempering of the desire to change and the enforcing of the illusion that we can't achieve our goals and must be content with whatever crumbs we can scavenge, is not accidental. It is the status quo at work. In a herd, sheep keep each other in line.

Give me a few true activists over a room full of professorial apologists any day.

A single Gandhi is worth a sea of people speculating on freedom over brandy.

I agree that we are the proto-types, and that this stuff is happening of its own accord in a decentralized manner... but I think a few intelligent people with balls can speed it up immeasurably.

This brings me to something I was discussing on the other thread with my buddy Ice House. I think it is another extreme tangent that is better off here than there... where we already scared off the OP (who never wound up posting a second time).

So my next post will be to IH and on the topic of anti-prohibition activism.

Any effective activism is strategic. Exquisitely so.

I think from what you say here that we are saying the same thing but have different interpretations for the words in question. It is possible you associate activism with the counter-productive, violent and angry anti-establishment types. But for me, as someone who grew up during a time when activism was noble and changed the world... I see it rather differently.

Activism is not the purview of anarchist punks or Earth First guys. It is the domain of Gandhi, Mandela and King. It is nearly always peaceful... and in the case of drug legalization... it is nearly entirely a political process tied to a concerted public image campaign.

This progress you are so afraid of losing was won by activists. If anything ever gets done it is by people being active. Far too many people think that their shrinking violet act and not stepping on toes is what has made the progress... this is simply not the case.

MJ activism is not really a different beast from other drug activism and is directly connected to the opening of minds to entheogens. In every country where entheogens have seen some new interest and openness... it was presaged by marijuana. In this case, politically, and in the battle for public opinion... marijuana is the gateway drug. As goes marijuana, so go the other soft drugs... and even the hard ones eventually.

You never see smart shops opening to sell mushrooms and aya ingredients in countries that haven't already decriminalized and come to tolerate weed. I know of only one exception in the liberal laws around mushrooms in Thailand, where weed is still a public enemy.

The fact is, that the push to introduce Medical Marijuana was a very thoughtful and artful meme bomb planted in the global consciousness by Dennis Peron. In a time when most activism was for total Hemp legalization, and we were fighting a losing battle to inform people about the industrial uses and historic significance of one of Earth's most bountiful and helpful plants... this was a huge and very deliberate change of strategy.

I was present at the first meeting between Jack Herer and Dennis Peron and remember the debate like it was yesterday. At the time I went in to the debate, I was firmly on Jack's side, but I saw the genius in Dennis' position. He was being pragmatic and realistic while we were foolishly thinking that facts and "what is right" would win the day. We wanted to change things overnight and tackle the central issue of Cannabis Prohibition... the industrial opposition.

Needless to say, I went out of that meeting very swayed by Dennis. I circulated both petitions, and the 1, 2 punch of the CHI & 215 allowed the latter to sneak through and become the first step away from the Drug War that the US had taken in generations. Even more prescient was that the phrase "medical marijuana" became a mind worm. Something that undermined all the propaganda against weed. No matter what your beliefs were at the time, simply saying the phrase was like an NLP program that shouted in the face of this plant being considered schedule I (without medical use). Even the backlash to challenge the law (and marijuana in general) only proved to strengthen this, as more testing was done and more and more evidence of the beneficence of the plant were revealed to everyone... This was a direct cause of the softened stance that media began taking towards weed. Soon, film and TV would be flooded with innocuous weed references.

It took a long time, but fast forward through the 90's and naughts and we are seeing the blossoming of the seeds planted in that fateful meeting.

To answer your question, I have been active in entheogens, grass, drugs in general... and a ton of other topics. I was marching against Apartheid, and occupying South African consulates. I protested wars that most of you won't even know we participated in. I think the line you want to draw between entheogens and cannabis is mostly artifice. Activism is activism for the most part. You need to both sway the public sentiment in your direction... AND be ready to ride that wave with political reform, referendum and leadership.

As much as horizontal organization gets a lot of praise now... none of these leaderless movements have achieved anything substantial. This may change, but fact is that Occupy Wallstreet, despite being more popular than the Tea Party... has achieved a fat goose-egg. Meanwhile, the fringe, reviled Teabaggers have managed to shutdown our government.

I know you will cringe, but the fact is that guys like Joe Rogan and Bill Maher have done more for entheogens than all of the MAPS guys combined. And this, despite the fact that neither one is truly an entheogen activist, and that they spread as much disinformation as actual facts. As a MAPS attendee going back to before the millennium, I say this with nothing but love and respect for them. Getting research going again is no small feat.

But, the current, unstoppable wave of public sentiment to legalize marijuana came from the vision of a single man. A genius who knew that just introducing the word medical would unravel decades of negative propaganda. He knew that as reviled as "druggies" were, no one could hate cancer and AIDs victims. Like it or not, the entheogen movement would not have been possible without medical marijuana.

If weed fails, psychedelics will have no chance. Simple as.

So, while I do recognize a number of differences in the fields, and while I am no longer even a consumer of cannabis... and find entheogens to be the most important thing going on the planet at the moment... I don't see the issues as being separate.

And, to be honest... the marijuana activism and PR that we have witnessed leading up to the landmark 2 states legalizing recreational grass... is the template for not only entheogen liberation... but for the kind of Utopian changes to monetary, political and social policy we have been discussing, across the board.

(The reason I felt this post a better fit here than on the old burden thread.)

And lets not forget that mother mary jane, along with her vast array of medical and industrial uses, is also a pretty damn powerful psychedelic

Ah, this works for me-- I'm with you Creo. I don't trust systems to resolve problems, be they economic or political. We as people must devise the solutions, our governments only provide the forum through which these solutions gain audience and support.

I may sound a bit like a curmugeon here, but there is nothing more dangerous than a good idea. Because of its goodness, we give it access, but when translated into action every idea is transformed into something inferior that can never live up to its promise.

Take the U.S. government for example (please, take it!). It is an institution generally controlled by the majority. It is a victim of its own success, because a significant number of voters are scared stupid. They will follow anyone that tells them that their fear is justified and 'someone needs to pay' for it. I feel like I'm living in the Weimar Republic.

I want to be the change and the revolution. Fuck systems. I need to purge myself of all the hatred and fear that I can. I need to open myself up and focus on what matters: human relationships and aethetics.

I feel you (both), but choosing to do nothing is still making a choice. In this case, being content with the status quo is to tacitly support the many ills it engenders.

I know how dangerous a good idea is... but to leave things the way they are is to accept the destruction of our precious biosphere. What we have now is short-sighted materialism run rampant and stealing from future generations in such a voracious way that the human race might not survive... and the destruction of our society is practically assured eventually.

I don't see how us working on ourselves (as valuable as that is) and focusing on human relationships and aesthetics is going to avert the destruction. This is coming from someone who spends a great deal of time dealing with human relationships, working on himself, and on aesthetics... the latter professionally.

So, since doing nothing is not an option as far as I am concerned... a good idea beats the hell out of a bad one. The idea is to design a system that is more robust and dynamic... a system that is immune to the corruption and greed that have colored all previous systems. We need to build a system that is self-correcting and changing to meet the realities of our current situation. The old idea of checks and balances was good, but it wasn't robust enough to deal with industrialization and the information age... those cats couldn't grok what was to come. Likewise, I am sure we are not grasping what life for humanity will be like in a few hundred years. But I think we can lay the foundations of something that will evolve towards perfection. Perfection may not be attainable, but the consistent pursuit of it is. We must embrace this philosophy of progress. What choice do we have?

I think a truly Utopian system is possible.

If not, then human civilization has no future... it is just a matter of time before the flaws in any system wind up destroying us. Whether this is in 5 years, 500 years or 5,000... the only way human civilization survives is to find something that works eventually.

HF, Thanks for your wonderful post, I do agree with you on all of what you are saying with the exception of the comparison of weed and entheogens with regards to prohibition.

Cannabis has something that our mainstream entheos, ie LSD, Mushrooms, Mescaline, and DMT don't have and that is millions upon millions of users, and a multi billion dollar industry.

So activism started the entire process, but were it not for the numbers of users there would not have been the support. Politicians must begin to embrace MJ legalization now because there are just too many voters that do. I don't believe Hallucinogens have those numbers. There are other pressures that helped Cannabis to be legalized. The cost of prosecuting the war on drugs. The over burdened prison and court systems. The potential revenues from sales.

Legalization didn't just happen because enough people said they wanted it, it happened because of citizen activists, doctors, law makers, big business, media, and voters.

I just don't see hallucinogens having support in all those areas like cannabis does, it takes support in ALL those areas to get an end to prohibition/legalization.

I live in Washington and I am owner of a MMJ collective and have been involved with MMJ for about 8 years. I find the Medical law in our state to be good and workable, I find the new 502 recreational use law to be absolute BS, its not legalization it is regulation, bad regulation.

I thank you for the great thread. I remain optimistic.

IH

I totally agree man.

Hallucinogens will never... should never have the kind of regular user numbers that weed has. And your analysis of the many factors involved in the rise of MMJ and the new push for recreational MJ are astute.

But can you imagine entheogens ever becoming legal without MJ opening the door? I suppose I can imagine it... but as a highly unlikely fantasy... and in some more progressive and sane land.

Hehehehe.

The thing is, MMJ showed everyone that the world doesn't end when people can buy, sell, grow, consume, and possess grass. Sure, some people got their panties in a bun and there have been some mildly negative collateral effects... but when placed side by side with the utter meth wasteland that much of the non MMJ states are falling into, it is clear that letting people get stoned is far better than pushing them into quicker, cheaper and easier to hide drugs. Parents in Colorado may worry about their kids using weed, but parents in Alabama have stopped worrying about their kids using meth and are hooked on the shit right along with them.

(I know the analogy is unfair and judgmental, but everyone knows what I mean.)

In my experience, once a society has accepted that the gateway psychedelic (weed) is not a menace to society... it is far easier to make the leap to mushrooms, cacti and aya. If anything, the entheogen user is often more productive and upstanding than the stoner. Smart shops in Holland came well after the Coffeeshops, but are IMHO far more cool.

I think that in the "post legal MJ" landscape, the idea that we should bother messing with people over other naturally occurring plants that have no significant health or social risk factors will be easier to swallow. So much so, that it won't take the numbers that weed took. Weed is like the legions that storm the gates... the mighty force that needs a battering ram, siege engines and must face the portcullis, murder holes and boiling pitch to breach the castle. Entheogens will be like the genteel officers who stroll in the open gates when the fighting is basically over, and march unopposed to the town square.

I see it happening via a calculated 2-fold civil rights strategy: 1) the growing religious freedom thing & 2) the rights of researchers to explore these incredible compounds. These are our 2 feet in the door now. Granted the numbers of people who will run out and join the Native American Church or some Daime type ayahuasca religion are small. The number of people who will do legitimate research on entheos is small as well. But these 2 areas will still be the MMJ of entheogens. Because once they are established, they will show people that these substances a) have valid and important uses, b) are not dangerous when used responsibly and c) can be handled and regulated in a responsible manner. (the same 3 things that MMJ showed for MJ)

When we started MMJ, the number of people who were really using MJ medicinally was marginal at best. There were a few underground circles in SF and all of 2 scenes in SoCal. It was basically Dennis Peron and Todd McCormick. Of course, that changed rather quickly, and dispensaries popped up faster than McMansions.

A trojan horse doesn't need to be extremely large to work. It only needs to open the gate.

Once open, people will see for themselves that the people who belong to the hated minority are actually their friends, family and neighbors... people they love and respect. It is the same with gay rights. LGBT people don't make up a huge percentage of the population... at this point they are estimated at less than half the population of regular weed smokers. But their civil rights are assured now because everyone knows and loves someone who is gay. Even if it is just the guys from Modern Family.

It is all about PR.

Anyway, sorry for rambling. I suppose I will tie this tangent back into the main thread by noting that the spread of new political ideas mirrors these other civil rights issues... and that any Utopian society will naturally be Drug War free.

I recently watched the Robert Reich film "Inequality For All" and recommend people watch it, because it lays out some of the key problems in, not only our political systems, but in the economic system.

I can't understand how the fact that 96% of the wealth generated since the crash of 2007 has gone to the top 1% and that 400 individuals have more money than the bottom 150 million Americans (well over 2 trillion dollars)... isn't causing people to riot and loot the wealthy neighborhoods.

<Not advocating this or any violence... to be clear>

However you see it... Income inequality is huge.

Reich shows that America was always most prosperous when this inequality was at it's lowest. From 1948 to 1978 the yearly economic growth was higher than it ever was or has been... and not only did the working class make a lot more money, but the tax rates for the wealthy were astronomical. (Shows that anyone who repeats the tired falsehood about lowering taxes and regulation being good for the economy has no concept of history.) In those years, when the economy doubled, income for even the lowest wage earners also doubled.

I won't link to the film (I am sure anyone who wants to watch it can find it), but I will link to this public domain PBS special on the documentary: http://archive.org/detai...rs-InequalityForAll-2013 where Bill Moyers extensively interviews Reich and even broaches some topics not covered in the film and has him answer some viewer questions. It is on archive.org streaming, downloadable in multiple formats, torrent, ftp, http the works. Archive.org rocks. Anyone interested in anything can have a field day there. One of the great free information sites par excellence. (music bootlegs, audiobooks, documents, ebooks, archived websites and much more)

Reich, a former Washington Insider (Secretary Of Labor under Clinton who served 3 administrations going back to Carter) details some very workable activist solution to fix some of what is wrong with the system. I would like to discuss some of them here at some point, so anyone who watches his film or this interview please chime in.

Let's start with his observation that the minimum wage in the 60's adjusted for inflation would be nearly $11 dollars an hour and with increased productivity factored in should be well over $15. Meanwhile, corporations are trying to get rid of the minimum wage altogether, and companies like WalMart pay the majority of their employees a measly 8 and a half bucks. It would be easy to make the demand to raise the minimum wage into a focused political upswell. I would guess it could go from nothing to law in 2 years or less if people did even a modicum of activism. Hard to argue against a return to the minimum wages that were normal in America's prime. The very people who tend to criticize the poor today tend to be the ones who made a decent wage when they pumped gas or did odd jobs back then. They don't seem to grok that what they made was often 2 or 3x what people today are making.

What do you all think?

Direct democracy through a internet voting system. We should be able to vote for everything that goes through congress online with our morning cup of coffee.

I live in Iceland and we already have that system ready both for congress and the city.

And the system for the city is being used. Everyone can post ideas there and then there's a discussion and voting system for those ideas. Those ideas that get most votes are then sent to city hall. Some of them have got through all the way and have become a reality.

So it's being tested and some day maybe it will take over. Hopefully.

Power to the people.
Concentrated power shold NEVER been put into the hands of individuals.

@ DMTripper

Nice. The more I hear about Iceland, the more I think I need to go live there for a while. I enjoy Scandinavia in general, so I think a stretch in an Icelandic hot spring is in my future at some point.

At any rate, you can feel proud that Iceland was ranked the safest country on Earth this year... and not for the first time if memory serves.

I would say that the rest of the world should sit up and take notice about what you guys are doing, but that would imply that people are observant and intelligent while every evidence seems to show the opposite. The US and the EU have plenty of data to show that some Scandinavian ideas like in Education and Social Welfare are orders of magnitude better than what they are doing elsewhere... but no one seems to be heeding that. In the US they are still cutting food stamps.

Good luck with your nation's direct democracy efforts. I hope they bear lots of fruit.

I followed here on the coat tails of the other thread you replied to here HF. You have incredibly all encompassing views and opinions.

That said, I'm flabbergasted that I'm even flabbergasted at reading about Iceland's super progressive online idea sharing and voting! WOW! Where have I been? This interests me incredibly, and if you move there, let me know and we can save on crate shipping costs lol.

Will do... and vice versa.