I'm feeling a bit frustrated with Gaia at the moment, but this is partly because I've been busy with family lately and haven't had enough time.  I have various pods and blogs on email notification that it takes quite a while just to sort through all of that.  When I'm busy, that leaves me no time to blog.

Gaia is such a humungous community that I can feel overwhelmed.  I still feel like I'm barely beginning to get to know people.  Whereas, in some smaller online communities I've joined, the getting-to-know period was much shorter.

I came here to blog, but I also wanted to connect with other bloggers.  So far, I haven't been successful in this.  I joined a bunch of pods and have posted quite a bit.  But I get the sense that most bloggers don't post in pods much and most pod members don't blog much.  I've gained a number of friends almost all of which invited me as a friend, but even so few of them ever comment in my blogs.  I go out of my way to comment in the blogs of others, but few of those people comment in my blog in return.  Many people who are the most active bloggers also seem to be the least active commentors in other people's blogs.  And a few of the most active bloggers don't even seem all that interested in responding to comments to their own blogs.

Basically, connecting is an issue.  Deborah mentioned that the blog comments between Nicole and I felt like a private conversation.  That surely isn't my intention.  And it wouldn't feel that way if more people responded.

However, I've come across bloggers who have been around since the beginning of Zaadz... and some of them get very few comments in their blogs.  It seems that there are a few bloggers that get lots of comments and a vast majority of bloggers that get few.  I guess its just like popularity in normal life.

Another aspect to my minor frustration is that I wonder if the reason for a small number of people commenting implies a lack of interest in the topics I blog about.  There are several reasons I can think of. 

First, I tend to blog about very intellectual topics.  And, yet, the intellectual crowd around here seems mostly limited to integral folks which I haven't been drawn to blog (or post) much about. 

This bring me to the second reason.  I tend to write about very alternative viewpoints which by definition aren't shared by the vast majority.  I wouldn't be surprised that many of the books I read aren't read by anyone else on Gaia... The Melancholy Android anyone?  

For the third... I'm not the most positive and activist person even in the normal world.  And certainly not on Gaia where positivity and activism is idealized above all else.

I'm not having a pity party.  Or if I am, it isn't my purpose for blogging about this.  I want to connect with others in such a way that it causes them to be interested in connecting with me.  I want to blog, but not in isolation.  However, the more I try to reach out to connect to others, the less time I have to blog.  Should I simply do my own thing in my blog and just stop worrying about whether or not others care about what I blog about?

Part of me wonders if I fit in with the Gaia community.  As I've said elsewhere, I do resonate with the community here, but the question is whether the community resonates with me.  Whatever the case, I doubt I'd find another blogging community that I'd feel more comfortable with or in which it would be easier to connect with others.  I do like the sense that Gaia feels like a genuine community and a very active one at that.

More importantly, I'm just frustrated because my time is limited.  I always have to choose how to spend my time especially as I can be very thorough in my writings.  Should I spend more time blogging and less time posting in pods?  Should I take all of those pods off of email notification?  Should I limit myself to only one pod?  Should I stop trying so hard to connect with others and simply trust that the like-minded will find my blog on their own?

I like Gaia and don't plan going anywhere.  I'm just trying to figure out how to improve my experience here... and how to decrease my frustration.

Here is a blog post I commented on:

The Wilber-Combs Lattice and the Pre/Trans Fallacy

Posted on Jun 19th, 2008 by Balder


And here is my comment:


Thanks for posting this Balder!  This brings up some important issues I'm interested in.

And thanks Jim for your perspective.  I think you're right on target.

There is a difference between theory and experience.  And experience can be quite messy.  We don't experience these coneptual categories because our experience is always a mix of different states and stages... and also a mix of various paradigms and memes that influence our views that are entirely outside of this model.

Even scientifically testing emprical claims is tricky when it comes to all things consciousness-related including divinatory predictions.  For anyone interested in the challenges of consciousness studies, I'd recommend Lynne McTaggart's books or The Trickster and the Paranormal by George P. Hansen.

God is in the manure.  This is an idea of alchemy.  The figure that represents the alchemical/individuation process is Mercurius and he is a Trickster.  Tricksters are known for breaking the distinctions between things... especially between intellectual distinctions such as prerational and transrational.

Mercurius relates to Hermes.  And Hermes acts as a mediary between the popular distinction of Apollonian and Dionysian.  Wilber's view (or at least the model that he has created) is very Apollonian.  Whereas, Dionysus is about the transformative experience that can't be understood or controlled.  Can integral find a way to include and use the Jungian model of the Trickster/mediary to overcome this divide?

Jim, you said:
"Would it be skillful for the physician to tell Lars that he's not being rational about the situation, and that his belief that Bianca is a real woman is a "prerational" delusion?"

To play "as if" would be an act of the imagination.  The imagination is the realm of the Trickster.  Can pretending that the false is real transform it into a real positive result?  This depends on what is defined as real.  The imagination is about what is metaphorically real and this is just as important as what is rationally real.  Besides, the distinction between the two is never absolute.  So, how do we rationally speak of what is or isn't skillful means?  In considering this question, I'd agree with what Jim says here:

"I would say that we can only tell in retrospect if we can tell at all if certain manure had the potential to help one develop in a transpersonal direction, and that ultimately we may not be able to tell, because we are talking about an organic rather than a mechanical process."

And here:

"There is also a sense in which I think the PTF is like a grammatical rule that we learn to apply and then forget about."

Also, like a grammatical rule, there are many many exceptions to the rule.

Marmalade

I was thinking about the relationship of drugs, emotions, and society.  I was thinking of several different fictional futures that give different takes on this.


The most classic example is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.  The drug of choice in that novel was soma.

"Benighted fool!" shouted the man from The Fordian Science Monitor, "why don't you take soma?"

"Get away!" The Savage shook his fist.

The other retreated a few steps then turned round again. "Evil's an unreality if you take a couple of grammes."

"Kohakwa iyathtokyai!" The tone was menacingly derisive.

"Pain's a delusion."

"Oh, is it?" said the Savage and, picking up a thick hazel switch, strode forward.

The man from The Fordian Science Monitor made a dash for his helicopter."


Later, Huxley experimented with psychedelics and saw their positive potential.  So, he wrote the utopian novel Island.  The people of the island use a mushroom called moksha medicine.

"Is there any connection," Will asked, "between what you've been talking about and what I saw up there in the Shiva temple?"

"Of course there is," she answered. "The moksha-medicine takes you to the same place as you get to in meditation."

"So why bother to meditate?"

"You might as well ask, Why bother to eat your
      dinner?"

"But according to you, the moksha-medicine is dinner."

"It's a banquet," she said emphatically. "And that's precisely why there has to be meditation. You can't have banquets everyday. They're too rich and they last too long. Besides, banquets are provided by a caterer; you don't have any part in the preparation of them. For your everyday diet you have to do your own cooking. The moksha-medicine comes as an occasional treat."

Philip K. Dick wrote about the mood organ in his book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but the mood organ isn't a physical drug.  It uses a Penfield Wave Transmitter and so can instantly alter one's brainwaves.  By dialing different numbers one can create the desired state of mind: 

"well-disposed toward the world"

"businesslike, professional attitude"

"self-accusatory depression"

"awareness of the manifold possibilities open to me in the future"

"The desire to watch TV, no matter what is on it"

"ecstatic sexual bliss"

"pleased acknowledgement of husband's superior wisdom in all matters"

"creative and fresh attitude toward one's job"

Similarly, in Larry Niven's Known Space novels, he introduced the Tasp.

The puppeteer addressed himself to Speaker-to-Animals.
"You understand that I will use the tasp every time you force me to.  I will use it if you attempt to use violence too often, or if you startle me too much; you will soon become dependent upon the tasp; if you kill me, you will still be ignobly bound by the tasp itself."
"Very astute," said Speaker.  "Brilliantly unorthodox tactics.  I will trouble you no more."
"The puppeteer is right," said Speaker.  "I would not risk the tasp again.  Too many jolts of pleasure would leave me his willing slave.  I, a kzin, enslaved to a herbivore!"


In George Lucas' THX 1138, everyone is forced to take drugs that suppress emotions including sexual desire.

"Take four red capsules, In 10 minutes take two more. Help is on the way."


The Matrix trilogy is a bit different.  The Matrix is an illusion, the ultimate dystopia.  In this case, the two pills are symbolic of choice, and the red pill is more of an anti-drug as it induces waking to reality.

Morpheus: "This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."


In case you're interested, there are many other fictional drugs.  I could describe the drugs in William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch, but that would be a complicated endeavor and it doesn't quite fit in with these other fictional drug stories.