Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Speaking of wanting more, I came across some interesting things in my web searching yesterday.

One was Timothy Leary's 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness.

Curcuit 4 is the Social-Sexual Circuit. This circuit is concerned with operating within social networks, and the transmission of culture across time. This circuit is said to have first appeared with the development of tribes. Leary never associated a drug with it, but later writers have associated it with MDMA and Ecstasy.

Curcuit 5 is the Neurosomatic Circuit, the first of the left-brain, "higher" circuits which are inactive in most humans. It allows one to see things in multi-dimensional space instead of the 4 dimensions of Euclidean space-time, and is there to aid in the future exploration of outer space. It is said to have first appeared with the development of leisure-class civilizations around 2000 BC. It is associated with hedonism and eroticism. Leary says this circuit is stimulated by marijuana and Tantric practices, or simply by experiencing the sensation of free fall at the right time.

Leary claims that this model explained, among other things, the social conflict in the 1960s, where the mainstream, said to be those with circuit 4 active and characterized as tribal moralists by Leary, clashed with the counter-culturists, said to be those with circuit 5 active and characterized as individualists and hedonists.

No comments:

Castoreum

Animal scent markings are notorious for smelling terrible. But castoreum is different. It has a musky smell that some people describe as van...