And all of a sudden I felt strangely, and began to giggle, which turned into uncontrollable, uproarious laughter.

My partner asked me if I was okay, and I said:

"Absurd. It's all so ABSURD. Look at me, trying to put the 'right' wires into the 'right' holes on these boxes of metal and plastic. What the hell even ARE humans?"

I thought about our laws, borders, our giant pieces of metal we shuttle around on strips of asphalt we've poured, making sure to carefully follow all the Big Metal Box Driving regulations.

If you could take a step back from modern human life and look it "for the first time", like a child -- you would fall over laughing too.

Check out the comic Strange Planet, which has a silly, alien-based take on this. Human society really is absurd

It was on the edge of comfort, I was paranoid people would notice I was high, because I realized that I didn't have all the mental and emotional barriers we normally put up when we interact with the outside world.

It truly felt like there was way less stuff between the outside world and my consciousness making all sensations and feelings way more intense and beautiful, but it also gave me an acute feeling of fragility, like I was very breakable because I was so 'open'.

I want to do it again when I'm less stressed, but I think I will take a slightly lower dose next time.

> all the various mental abstractions we have built for ourselves in life and society are not necessarily 'wrong', but definitely questionable.

If I may interject here: The mental models we, both as a society and individuals, operate on are at best incomplete and at worst inaccurate. But then again, humanly-speaking there are no and there will never be a complete or accurate nor true or even correct model — it is by design. And the most obvious (inward) reason is: cognitive biases (and therefore, evolution by extension).

That said, while on a micro scale it might seem imperfect/suboptimal, on a macro scale it’s actually beneficial because that’s (the imperfection) what actually allows us as a group of individuals to evolve and adapt.

I think in GP's observations, "collective delusions" is the key phrase. I actually had this realization some time ago - as my mind accepted and internalized that all these mental abstractions are indeed collective delusions. We learn to intuitively expect the world to work in a certain way, but it only happens because almost everyone expects that too. Money is often referred to such a concept: it has value only as long as people believe it has value. That $10 in your pocket is only worth $10 if roughly everyone is willing to accept it in exchange for something, on the expectation that they'll be able to later exchange it with someone else. Rule of law is similar - it prevents people from seeking justice through violence, but only as long as everyone believes the law mostly works.

(This is why I consider attacks on public trust as an existential threat to society.)

I'm guessing shrooms let GP have this realization on overdrive, hitting directly and viscerally. I conclude that while not strictly necessary, psychedelics may be a fast track for one to do mental leaps, if somewhat at random.

Why are you using "collective delusions" as synonymous with social construct. My initial reaction is that the delusion was the other way around.That you were delusional (only while on mushrooms, I mean no offense) thinking social pacts were a sign of collective delusion.

I think generally the human population is well aware that these pacts can be broken at anytime. Armies can cross borders (imaginary lines), someone can take your personal property. But we use power to punish rule breakers.

They definitely pry open mental models your mind has trained itself to no longer see (probably because it's too overwhelming to experience them at all times).

Actually the third person I felt a unique depth of empathy for was myself, and that experience was pivotal in my life.

Case in point, Amsterdam consequently banning magic mushrooms in 2008: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dutch-mushroom-idUSTRE4AR...

*where “spirituality” is defined as knowing that your values and ethics come from some other place than your faculty for logical reasoning or from economic utility, however you choose to conceptualize that

If we could infuse our current economy of capital with "psychedelic values", there's no reason it can't be integrated. Terence McKenna pointed out that capitalism is a novelty-expanding engine. If we can use capitalism as a tool to build better societies, why not?

The pipeline of logistics and labor that keeps us alive is amazing, and worth preserving. We just need to introduce a different method of thought.

Legally. In shops.

Because they are. Anyways, I love psychedelics. They dissolve boundaries, they allow you to peek behind the curtain. They show you about cultural illusions and that culture is not your friend, and the like.

And national borders are just lines in the sand that most powerful AIs in the world, called armies and built out of bureaucracy, machines and people drew between themselves to share resources and people they exploit between themselves so they can continue exploitation and hoarding of most dangerous tech without major conflicts, which they learned in two wars, are not good for them, because they became too strong for their own good already.

And societal roles nowadays are like red Santa Claus. Nearly pure marketing vaguely drawing from preexisting superstitions.

I can't tell you anything about your middle manager but empathy gives you feelings of other people as you imagine them, not necessarily accurate feelings of other people.

These are insights you can get while sober.

Indeed I have taken hallucinogens and have had no such feelings, to the contrary I have leaned even more to the right after having taking them (although I attribute no causal role). It did produce an appreciation of the numinous, alongside the hallucinations, but that's about it.