"The British enzymologist, J. B. S. Haldane in the 1920s, in an essay, said, "The universe may not only be stranger than we suppose; it may be stranger than we can suppose," and I suggest to you that as we look back over human history, every pinnacle of civilizationf whether it be Mayan or Greco-Roman or Song dynasty, has believed that it was in possession of an accurate description of the cosmos and of man's relationship to it. This seems to go- this seems to go along with the full flowering of a civilization. But, from the point of view of our present civilization, we regard all those conceptions as, at worst quaint, at best half right, and congratulate ourselves that our civilization, at last, has its finger on the real description of what is going on. " from https://www.asktmk.com/talks/Psychedelic+Society?query=stran...
That being said, the belief that the scientific method can build up arbitrarily accurate models of any observable phenomena is without foundation, yet some behave as if it is obviously true.
Until we have something like a unified model of physics, there is no reason to believe that statement to be true.
(and in fact, the scientific method has led to results like Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, which makes it perhaps more likely for it to be false)
Maybe numbers and language (especially written) are more important. Oh ya, and fire.
But the scientific method is way up there in important, no argument there.
Often though, we try to (or pretend we are applying this method to achieve unscientific questions (a la Karl Popper's criticisms of Scientism) or try to add up scientific answers in an unscientific way.
When we do that, we are using the (well earned and underappreciated) cultural authority of science in ways that do not promote truth seeking.
You hit the nail right on the head.
It reminds me about how we want and need security, particularly around our beliefs. What I think is true in that regard is what Adyashanti, a spiritual teacher, once noted: "The magical part is that the more you let go, the better it feels. The more you step into insecurity, the more you notice how secure and safe it is. Where you just stepped out of was unsafe. Everyone is so miserable because they seek security in things that are limited and always moving and changing unpredictably."
Something happens, and we judge it good and feel good about it. Then something else happens, and we judge it bad and feel bad about it. And so on. Our feelings are put on a roller coaster according to our judgements. But we don't have enough information to judge anything good or bad. It always remains to be seen. Deeply internalizing this results in equanimity.
Could you name one? For maximum utility in this conversation, can you pick something likely to happen more than once in an ordinary life, some common case?
Death of a loved one.
Unequivocally good:
Birth of a child.
Most people tend to experience these things more than once in a normal life. They represent a reality more real and more final than even psychedelics could manage: life and death. Impermanence.
Imagine how it would be if we didn't die. So is death good or bad?
I have a family friend whose first wife died of cancer. After mourning for years, he found another woman and married her. Unlike his first wife, she was insistent on having a baby. When their baby was born, he told us that, having held his child in his arms, he understood now that it would have been a huge mistake not to have had a child as he originally planned with his first wife. So was the death of his loved one good or bad?
> Unequivocally good: Birth of a child.
My sister was born and it must have been a very happy event. When she died it was very hard for my parents. Was her birth good or bad?
This is what the story is getting at. It doesn't make sense to assign good or bad to things. We don't have enough information yet. And we never do. It perpetually remains to be seen.
It's not apathy or learned powerlessness to accept the fact of reality that you just don't know enough to say whether something is good or bad. It's wisdom.
It's like hearing a song or a joke in a dream which seems really beautiful or funny, and turns out to be utterly dull when you wake up and replay it.
So sure, altered perceptions give the lie to some of our assumptions about the world, and can lead to some interesting insights, but they also add a lot of new assumptions which are not healthy, and certainly aren't adapted to functional life in the non-psychedelic world.
Curious though, what kind of new assumptions do you consider unhealthy?
That said, I largely agree with your perspective as well: "The opposite is also true".
Distorting perception doesn't reveal truth, it simply allows you to experience something "other" than reality. It's not that this is bad, but I don't accept that it offers enlightenment or wisdom.
Brain in a jar/The matrix style VR perception altering technology could make me experience a different world - but it wouldn't be reality. I actually could still see this resulting in wisdom under certain circumstances, so I guess I have to cede that actually :)
Or for people that are severely depressed, that your broken reality and thought loops that are deeply ingrained can actually be healed without a major neuronal shift.
Psychedelics might reveal to you that the neat little reality that you thought you had all figured out is a lot stranger and different from from what you thought it was, that your understanding of it might be all wrong, and that your place in it might not be all that cozy and secure. The experience could put everything in to question for you.
A lot of people feel threatened by that, so they try to push it away, lock it up, turn it off, or dismiss it.
Contrast that reaction to that in some other societies with a long tradition of psychedelic use. Psychedelic experiences there usually confirm the world view of the society, and tend to be very positive and accepted.