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Food of the Memes?

Graham Hancock, the author of seminal books like Fingerprints of the Gods, Underworld & Supernatural, has turned himself into a spokesman for the benefits entheogens can provide, as tools of therapeutic insight & the expansion of human consciousness –and for that he’s been blacklisted as a pariah among many academic circles, especially the ones who support the so-called Materialistic scientific paradigm.

Richard Dawkins, who became a celebrity in the nu-atheist movement thanks to the popularity of his book The God Delusion, has been the subject of Hancock’s most recent entry on his Facebook account: Not so long ago he asked Dawkins in public if he had ever tried any sort of psychedelic substance in the past, and if not whether he’d consider doing so as a challenge to his personal concept of reality.

Dawkins picked up the gauntlet in a rather cautionary way, and expressed his interest of one day trying either mescaline or LSD –provided it was done under proper medical supervision, with enough guarantees that his brain would not be permanently harmed by the experience.

So now Hancock has pointed out to this recent appearance of Dawkins on Cannes, and wonders out loud whether the coiner of the term ‘meme’ has actually given his first step down the rabbit hole –skip to 4:45 for the WTF moment…

So what do you think? Has Dawkins finally accepted the challenge to expand his own consciousness through the use of entheogens, or is he simply hijacking the psychedelic imagery in order to appeal to a trendy audience?

  1. Please, please open that riddled mind
    I doubt it but I welcome it. However, Susan Blackmore has a dubious past of taking entheogens and then professing absolute authority over knowledge and epistemological limits of the subject (although she has readily admitted this shows how constructed our notion of reality can be). The same is true with her take on parapsychology. EDIT: So I take it with a grain of salt when I hear this stuff from that group.

    1. No magic bullet
      So (I think) what you’re saying is that, for some people, there simply aren’t any ‘magic bullets’ that will help crack open their minds to explore new dimensions of consciousness.

      Which may be consistent with Dawkins previous claims that when he tried Michael Persinger’s ‘God Helmet’ he only felt a small headache.

      Or maybe it has got to do with intention?

      1. Yeah, intention and
        Yeah, intention and similarly, “defendedness.” To his credit, Dawkins did a great deal to make himself vulnerable in that performance, but I still find most of it very defended.

        Also, worldview. It was easy to dismiss witch doctors and savages as disinterested observers. Even having a moderate approach to accommodating their views does something to the Westerners who can psychologically afford to do that.

  2. i for one found that dawkins
    i for one found that dawkins psychedelic imagery totally cornball. reminds me of square representations of beatniks on old sitcoms.

    it may be a ‘cool’ grab on the part of dawkins or simply ‘look what computers can do, aren’t they neat ?’

    1. What computers can do
      Interestingly put, considering how the computer revolution was fueled by the fumes of psychedelic drugs 😉

      But yeah, with an Alex Gray paint you can see the purposefulness in the psychedelic imagery. With Dawkins’ presentation it was all a messy collage.

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