+- Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum (https://www.scivillage.com)
+-- Forum: Culture (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-49.html)
+--- Forum: Law & Ethics (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-105.html)
+--- Thread: Will psychoactive drugs bring about conversion to leftism, as researchers believe? (/thread-11228.html)
Will psychoactive drugs bring about conversion to leftism, as researchers believe? - C C - Nov 2, 2021
Or: This is the nutty stuff that falls out of contemporary scientists' & sci-journalists' brains when they're high on politics & its motivated reasoning
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dypzxj/the-false-promise-of-psychedelic-utopia
EXCERPT: . . . Whether a psychoactive drug will bring about utopia or dystopia is a question not limited to fiction but rather increasingly salient in our modern world. As the likelihood that psychedelic drugs will be available medically and through state legislation has increased, so too has a common refrain popular in the 1950s and 1960s: that widespread psychedelic use will contribute to the creation of a better society—a world in which people are anti-war, pro-environment, and filled with love and appreciation for their fellow humans. Today, these claims are backed by a handful of recent studies that have found that people who take psychedelics can self-report a high relatedness to nature, less authoritarianism, and more openness and prosocial feelings, and that use of psychedelics can correlate with the same.
Journalist Michael Pollan said at Big Sur’s Esalen Institute in 2019 that researchers had told him, “sometimes very explicitly, sometimes less so, that these molecules have the potential to change the world. This was kind of stunning to me …To solve the environmental crisis. To end war. Bring peace.”
“If only we could get Trump to trip,” Pollan added.
In the protests after the murder of George Floyd, one sign read, “Cops need to do ayahuasca.” A 2020 essay in Open Democracy argued that psychedelics promote experiences of awe and ego-dissolution that could “cause subtle shifts away from self-focus, individualism, a desire for financial success and competitiveness towards more intrinsic, open, trusting, optimistic, liberal and collective dimensions of personal identity which resonate with egalitarian political views.”
But the assumption that psychedelic use will always lead to left-leaning ideals and their associated utopias is incorrect—even if this is the kind of future one personally hopes for. It’s remarkably easy to find examples of psychedelic use associated with extreme right-wing or fascist beliefs instead.
Or, just as common in today’s booming for-profit psychedelic industry, examples of when psychedelics are associated with advocacy for capitalism, IP protection, and monopolies. Take just one example: Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder, Gawker destroyer, Trump supporter, and donor of millions to Republican Senate candidates J.D. Vance and Blake Masters, is also poised to own a large portion of the psychedelic industry through his investments in mental health companies Compass Pathways and ATAI Life Sciences.
“The evidence that psychedelics will be used for system change when psychedelic advocates and reformers are using classic venture capital and pharma-industry techniques to bring it to market to mass scale—I don't see it,” said Brian Pace, a lecturer at Ohio State University and editor at psychedelic nonprofit publication Psymposia.
In a forthcoming paper in Frontiers in Psychology, Pace and Neşe Devenot, a postdoctoral associate at the University of Cincinnati, propose that any utopian claims about psychedelics will have to contend with a long list of counterexamples. “The assumption that psychedelics lead to progressive politics deserves greater scrutiny—particularly given the hype around positive implications for society,” Devenot and Pace wrote... (MORE - details)
RE: Will psychoactive drugs bring about conversion to leftism, as researchers believe? - Ostronomos - Nov 2, 2021
THAT IS THE GREAT HOPE OF WE LEFTISTS!
RE: Will psychoactive drugs bring about conversion to leftism, as researchers believe? - Syne - Nov 2, 2021
You leftists are morons.
Widespread use of psychedelics will also lead to more leftists not bothering to vote. You don't get angry protests to induce political engagement from peace-loving druggies. So the only way to usher in this supposed utopia is through an authoritarian take over of the government (read bloodshed). But we all know who has the vast majority of the guns.