Hello all! Glad to be here with you
I’m a relatively long-time reader of the DMT Nexus, and I’m happy to finally take part in the wonderful discussions that you cultivate here. I’m writing out of interest, as I’m absolutely fascinated by entheogens, and especially DMT, and how these affect consciousness and cultural life. I very much want to learn more about everything discussed here, which is why I’ve been reading, and now I’d like to be a part of the conversation, which is why I’m here now!
But as for the proposition? Let me give you the long and short of it.
I’m a Social Anthropology student studying at St Andrews University in Scotland. I am currently doing fieldwork for how communities construct different forms of knowledge, and I am particularly keen to see how the DMT Nexus community can add to this discussion. I think there are some very interesting things to be said about spice and knowledge production.
Knowledge is certainly something to be contested today. The ‘knowledge’ and ‘truth’ that is conventionally produced from universities and embodied in degrees seems to be lacking, in favour of other forms of knowledge. Is knowledge really something achieved by repetition of habit or memorization? Is it the acquiring of ‘facts’ about the world? Is this where truth comes from?
Or is knowledge something else? Is it in other truths about the world? Or none at all?
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I love reading posts on DMT Nexus – from watching debates in the Hyperspace Lexicon to reading people’s Experience Reports. And by doing this, one of the things that has been stuck in my mind for a while now is: how do you conceive of knowledge in the world? What is knowledge at all? After reading many posts, I’ve come across like-minded philosophers who were as dissatisfied as I was with analytical, epistemological approaches to knowledge, meaning, and truth.
And so, I’m interested in finding out how people consider knowledge, meaning and truth in their own lives. How people build knowledge, or acquire it in different means and methods, and how they interpret their knowledge differently from others.
There’s this great quote that I love by R. Williams, which I found strikingly fitting for what goes on at DMT Nexus. See what you think:
‘Communication is the process of making unique experience into common experience, and it is, above all, the claim to live. For what we basically say, in any kind of communication is: ‘I am living in this way because this is my experience’ … Since our way of seeing things is literally our way of living, the process of communication is in fact the process of continuity; the sharing of common meanings, and thence common activities and purposes; the offering, reception and comparison of new meanings leading to the tensions and achievements of growth and change’ (55)Communication is central to knowledge, meaning, and truth and that’s why I’m so interested in working with you all on the forums to talk about this subject in relation to spice experiences, and experiences with other entheogens! Communication is especially key in how people conceive of experiences, and how perception is analyzed and communicated. In sharing information about experiences in the world, new perspectives are gained, and with these come new approaches to knowledge.
So, my proposal then, is to ask you one question:
how do you conceive of knowledge in the world?
Is it in the traditional approach in contemporary education, or is it something else? Is truth where the philosophers tell us it is? How do you see it?
I think a good fulcrum to work from is a post by gibran2 (29.05.10, ‘dmt and impossible knowledge’). I know this has been discussed in places before, but I think it would be worthwhile to discuss it in relation to knowledge more generally:
‘We can look at this from a purely mechanistic/materialistic viewpoint: DMT (and other entheogens, etc.) cause changes in the state of the brain. This unique brain state cannot be reached via other means. After a DMT experience, a person has knowledge derived from experience (a/k/a information) of a particular brain state of which he had no prior knowledge.
So it is true that everyone who has had a DMT experience and has memories (knowledge) of the unique brain state produced by the DMT experience has “information that would have been impossible for them to know otherwise”.’I’d be very, very interested in hearing what you have to say on the matter, and to see what you all make of this!