An underexplored effect of psychedelics is how their use can affect both the career choices someone makes and the attitudes they have towards work in general. The LSD guru Timothy Leary famously told a countercultural audience – 30,000 hippies who gathered at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco in 1967 – to “turn on, tune…
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The sublime is a concept in aesthetics that stands for the quality of greatness that leads to experiencing positive and negative emotions (e.g. fear and wonder) at the same time. This paradoxical emotion is often experienced in natural surroundings, during confrontations with natural phenomena that overwhelm oneself due to their size or power. This is…
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In my book review of Why It’s OK to Love Bad Movies by philosopher Matthew Strohl, I outlined some of the features of ‘so bad they’re good’ movies and what distinguishes them from movies that are just bad. However, I think a point that wasn’t stressed enough in that review was how it is often…
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The hype surrounding psychedelics can be characterised as an overly positive picture of the benefits of psychedelics and an attitude of overlooking, ignoring, or downplaying the harms and risks of these compounds. We can view this as Pollyannaism applied to psychedelics. The growing psychedelic industry can be seen as following the trend of the Gartner…
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Over the years, travelling solo has gradually lost its ‘spark’. In my 20s, backpacking, staying in hostels, and meeting new people all the time felt exciting. This was a novel experience, after all, and in many ways, it sated my curiosity like nothing else. Eventually, staying in hostels became more of an annoyance than something…
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