Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

That's pretty wild! From what I recall, McKenna had a similar experience, in which the mushrooms basically gave him a briefing on their (and his) place in the cosmic scheme (they tend to do that, don't they?) The possibilities are fun to imagine: are the shrooms themselves aliens? Or are they more like intergalactic walkie-talkies, connecting us to some far-off intelligence... or perhaps they're "programs" simulating an alien intelligence, and which we can download using our mysteriously compatible nervous systems? Organic software that we can use to patch/debug our own consciousness...?

McKenna has talked about experiences with the "Other" in psychedelic space, and the similarities to descriptions of near-death experiences, alien abductions, etc. Obviously, these phenomena result in lots of talk about little green (or grey) men, angels, God -- the usual suspects. Well, McKenna proposed that we're actually coming face-to-face with our own souls in these scenarios, only we've become so alienated from ourselves, that we appear as the Other; we don't even recognize these experiences for what they are. I tend to agree.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

That's what I grok about crop circles...except those done by those idiots Doug and Dave.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Ah, Aristarchus, I believe. Interesting stuff. I think it was more that he proposed that the world was an orb... Still, quite a daring thing to say.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Having read a few books by Richard Dawkins, I have become interested in biological determinism in behavior. I recently finished the book The Darwin Wars by Andrew Brown and found this excerpt to be relevant to this thread. It is about a scientist who killed himself after discovering a mathematical equation for altruism.

http://www.darwinwars.com/wdhessay.html

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

bendk, your link's true-life story is astounding. It is said that "the truth will set you free." A useful suggestion from the lore of carpentry says that checking measurements twice is prudent and practical. One of my favorite songs is "I Wanna Be Your Dog" by The Stooges. But I am now beginning to wonder about the sense in this, considering human motives and impulses. If the term "alfalsism" doesn't exist, I coin it now. The future will dictate my attitude.

For now, three wags of an altruistic tail to all beings who suffer,
Rover

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Woof!

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

The first time I started to think about the idea of a "malignant universe" was when I started reading Nietzsche in graduate school (I think the work was Genealogy of Morals). I was reading Poe and Shakespeare's tragedies even before that but never thought of the universe as malignant until then.

Later, I would look at Nietzsche in relation to Darwin, Freud, and Marx, as all of them offered sobering views of reality. I also recall Hobbes short statement from Leviathan, the reference to "little odious vermin" from Gulliver's Travels, Voltaire's Candide, Faulkner's works, and others. For film, I keep thinking about the movie Hud (1963) and Night of the Hunter (1955).

Finally, I thought of two recent articles that talk about this issue in contrasting manners: "E.T. & God" by Paul Davies and "Spirituality and the Fine-Tuned Cosmos" by Rich Heffern. Both works won awards and you might find copies of both online using search engines.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Expressing the idea of being a god, even though you do not believe that, is something I find very interesting.

The idea that I am but a lone figure in this world, that all of existence is simply a creation of my own mind. The idea that I am the only one living and the rest of life, human or otherwise, is only a figment or a contrived force that has no real definitive reason for thriving, let alone existing, in such a state.

What if the one who feels this way is, indeed, God? An undoubtedly pretentious belief but interesting nonetheless. Is it possible to be the only thing that actually exists or has the ability to exist? Could it be that a consciousness could develop its own world entirely inside its own thought process and by its' thought process, and this single consciousness being all that there is? This brings about many questions when dealing with the meaning of loss and the idea of meaning itself. The one who feels this way, the one who is its own creator, could likely abandon all affirmations made by the ideas brought forth from everyday life. When dealing with death and loss it would only take convincing itself that such things are empty, they are only a part of the void that is existence because the only thing that exists is the consciousness of the being in question. So, fundamentally, that being needs nothing in life because there is no life. There is only the being itself and its thoughts.

This idea is based around the notion of pantheism, "referring to philosophical and metaphysical theories of the divine as existing and acting within the mind or the world," the only difference being that it is strictly existence within the mind. A world completely designed, structured, and inhabited by a single thought-form that is only living, and surviving, in a subconscious state. Completely alone, yet manufacturing life itself.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

It seems to me meaningless to regard the universe as either benevolent or malignant. To do so, surely, is to judge the universe in terms of something that transcends it. And what transcends the universe? The universe just is.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Does not religion (if one is religious) transcend the universe?

Regarding the universe being one's own mind and nothing else - an interesting concept with which I have tussled all my life. But it's only that - a philosophical concept.

Coda: I am not religious. Or do not think I am religious.
des