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ARTICLE
Can LSD Make You a
Billionaire?:
Silicon Valley Tripping
Goes Mainstream
It ought to come as no surprise that cultures who
consider human consciousness the consequence
of “wetware” would encourage mercenary use of
psychoactive substances as a means to trigger
more creative thought. If brains are just computers, then they can be hacked – and if the goal is to
design and build an “internet of things,” connecting every object to each other in a “global brain,”
then it seems obvious the companies in question
would encourage chemicals that loosen boundaries within the brain and “wire” new neural networks. “As within, so without,” you know – a state
of metanoia starting in the tripping brain and
spreading like a crystal through the saturated fluid
of the nöosphere.
In other words, when CNN releases unequivocally positive short features asking, “Can LSD Make
You A Billionaire?”, it’s evidence that Mountain
View and Cupertino now control America’s imagination, and the Valley’s open psychedelic culture
is just moments from its second sweep across
the mainstream. Less and less each day is it taboo to mention that the smartphone and the DNA
polymerase reaction – two of our most liberating
tools – were both inspired by LSD, a scheduled
substance. The more that we encourage innovation, we allow respected geniuses to come out of
the closet about how their major breakthroughs
happened with the help of still-illegal chemicals
the DEA insists are bad for us. Can we as a society continue to endure the dissonance between
our culture’s debt to psychedelics and our government’s delusional and self-destructive War on
Drugs?
It may still be a while before the law adjusts to
meet our scientific understanding and the proven
benefit that LSD and other mind-expanding substances provide to our collective problem-solving.
But in the meantime, it seems somewhat hopeful
just to note the major media’s reporting favorably
(not a single snide remark by CNN!) about the notso-secret cultural embrace of psychedelics by the
geeks whose fortunes we are taught to envy. Even
if the instrumental use of sacraments as “smart
drugs” seems to miss the real potential of these
chemicals as aids to deeper understanding, simply
having open conversation on their value is “one giant leap for humankind…”