[petre]

I saw a documentary about LSD with Watts and a bunch if otger people, including A. Hoffman interviewed. What I wonder about is why do people who have consumed LSD or are into psychedelics exhibit all sorts of new age artefacts around their homes?

[s1artibartfast]

I won't deny that there's a lot of drug users who believe in new age spirituality, but there's another angle to consider too.

Some people have a genuine academic curiosity about human belief systems and the nature of experience. It is similar to how a Anthropologist might have many artifacts in their home or a religious scholar would have different religious text.

It doesn't mean that do you believe in everything, as much as that means that you enjoy being curious and engaging with different ideas.

[__MatrixMan__]

If you're open to trying one thing that you're not "supposed to" then I think it's pretty unlikely that that's the only alt-thing you're into.

[elevaet]

Maybe this is a combination of signalling and confirmation bias. You might not notice consumers who don't make these displays.

[ethanbond]

What qualifies as a new age artifact?

[petre]

Pyramids, Budhha, crystals, dreamcatchers etc. The firtst thing you notice is the colorful shirt.

[ethanbond]

Some of these are due to philosophical insights that IMO (and many others’) psychedelics can confer. In particular they’re known for generating a sense of oneness and for revealing the deeply subjective nature of reality[0]. Buddhism has been exploring these ideas in depth for millennia, so I think psychedelic usage can push people in that direction pretty easily.

Dreamcatchers — rather indigenous culture broadly, at least in the US — also has a developed philosophy of oneness with nature. Again, when you see the insights psychedelics have to confer, it makes sense to go find the people who’ve been talking about those insights for millennia. Western thought is just an entirely different train. It’s all extremely valuable IMO but we have artifacts of western philosophies all around us every day. None of these are intended to remind us of The Big Ideas that one is likely to come across via psychedelics.

Colorful shirts: This is because you just appreciate certain patterns/colors more after seeing them on psychedelics. No clue how to describe this lasting impression but it is VERY real.

Pyramids/crystals: no clue but entirely possible they just fall into the same category as shirts for that individual (alongside things like kaleidoscopes).

[0] Note this is NOT some new age woo woo about quantum whatever. It’s the factual observation (made more obvious via meditation or psychedelics) that 100% of our experience of the world occurs via the “interpretation machine” that lives mostly inside our skull. Not one of us is making direct contact with “reality” as it exists beneath human interpretation.

[philliphaydon]

Do you remember what it was? Wormwood?