Becoming One With the Universe is the Loneliest Experience

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Nov 302021
 

I’ve mentioned a few times on my podcast (and maybe here in the blog too?) that LSD is really neat, and provides some extremely interesting experiences. However, in the interests of informed consent, I think it’s pretty important for people to be aware of potential downsides as well. If one hears nothing but the good parts about something that has both benefits and drawbacks, they can get very skewed expectations. They may go forward without proper precaution, or do something they wouldn’t have done if they were fully informed.

I.

So, for anyone who hasn’t done LSD before, perhaps the most important downside that wasn’t widely discussed when I first tried it can be a very isolating experience.

One of the common effects of taking LSD is seeing patterns and spirals in everything. Literally. Clouds explode in every-more complex fractal spirals, anything textured becomes more and more textured, and as you look at these textures you’re drawn into deeper textures inside them, and deeper textures inside those, and so on. It’s really neat. There’s entire worlds inside of everything.

This applies to your own thoughts, too. You get lost in a thought, and spiral deeper into it, finding greater complexity and meaning, and spiral into those, finding more worlds within them, and so on, recursively. You lose sense of time and of your body, and start to feel a sort of interconnection with everything.

This all sounds great, right?

But importantly, all of this is completely internal. The deeper you go into yourself, the further away you are from everyone else. Nothing and no one can join you there. The deeper you spiral into an old fallen tree, the more distant the rest of the world is. If you go deep enough, eventually there is only you, spread across time and occupying no space, with no other minds able to reach you even in theory.

When you are one with everything, there is no other to be with. There is only you. Alone.

II.

Don’t have sex on LSD your first (or second) time. Yes, sex on LSD is amazing. The sensations also become recursive, and you spiral into them until they are your full reality. I frequently have long periods where I can’t tell where my body ends and my partner’s body begins, it’s awesome.

BUT! 1 – it will take all the energy and focus off of anything else you would have done with your trip. There’s a lot to explore in LSD space, and while sex is great, it’s not the most interesting part. Spend at least one trip really wandering around space/time and getting lost in it before your first time trying sex. Like you’d eat the delicate flavors of some truffle-glazed sushi before blasting your tongue with pixie sticks, or something, right?

And 2 – it’s actually still kinda alone. You are with a partner, and you are doing stuff that you couldn’t do by yourself, but… you are still spiraling into sensations/thoughts/emotions that take you ever further from your physical surroundings, and that includes your partner.

After my first such sex-on-LSD session (also my partner’s first), as we were returning to reality she looked at me and said “Hey… Imagine meeting you here!” And it was hilarious, because it was true. We knew we were with each other, but we had both gone into our own worlds. When re-merging into this reality, it was kinda surprising to be reminded “Oh yeah, there was this other person here the whole time, s/he was the other side of this!” It felt actually startling to bump into someone you knew and loved so well right here, despite the illogic of that feeling.

Of course the sex was great, and afterwards we had a good time comparing notes and telling each other were we went and what we saw/did. But… you aren’t together *with* the other person the same way you are when you have sex while sober. The focus is shifted from them/us as persons, to spiraling/melding sensations.

III.

So, in summary, my warning is that you will likely feel a deep isolation for at least some period of time, due to the recursive self-reflective nature of LSD.

My always-recommendation is that you never take LSD while alone, because this makes it too intense to bear. Have at least one other person around, every time, and preferably a few. Maybe plan to have things you can experience together at the same time, like cool visual art, and music.

And my first-trip recommendation is to swear off any sexual activity on your first trip (including kissing! Kissing is also amazing and you’ll get lost in it and somehow all your clothes will fall off when you aren’t looking).

SF/F Review – Hard Luck Hank: Screw The Galaxy

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Nov 162021
 

Hard Luck Hank: Screw The Galaxy, by Steven Campbell

Synopsis: A nearly-invincible mutant must save his space station (a hive of scum and villainy) from destruction by aliens.

Book Review: This novel is excellent at what it does. What it does is provide a PG-13 comedy-action-adventure story. The skill with which it executes is remarkable.

The story keeps moving at a very good clip, never dull, but not rushed either. All the major players are introduced early and well. The conflict is clear, the plot is interesting. The jokes are good, if you’re into gritty Army-of-Darkness style humor (I am). There’s the PG-13 violence of an action movie, without any gore, and the hot chicks of a PG-13 movie, without nudity or sexual situations. The protagonist is fun, and very relatable despite being a criminal. He’s the guy who doesn’t want to be bothered, but he’s good at what he does, and he’s the Big Swingin’ Dick on this station, so he’s always involved in the important stuff. It’s great for a fun wish-fulfillment action story. :) Also, the story constantly raises its stakes, in a way I found captivating.

I think the best part is that, even though our hero is invincible, the situations he finds himself in are ones were being invincible helps but will not solve his problems. The charecter thinks of himself as dumb, but he’s actually very smart, just uneducated. The major conflicts in the story are all resolved by clever use of his specialist knowledge or unorthodox use of his unusual resources. We don’t worry that he’ll die, but he can still lose, and that makes seeing how he wins interesting.

Also, of vital importance: Hard Luck Hank doesn’t overstay its welcome. It reads fast and smooth. It tells a good story in a couple hundred pages, and then it’s done.

Ultimately, the book is a success because it gives you a promise, and then fulfills that promise well. You can tell exactly what sort of book this is by looking at the cover and reading the title. If you look at this cover and think “This could be fun to read!” then you’ll be happy with the time spent on this. I can’t recommend this book the same way I recommend books that I love. It isn’t emotionally moving. It isn’t intellectually stimulating, or artistically challenging. It has no bigger message. But it IS really fun, which is all it’s trying to be. If you want a fun, light read, of the kind promised by the cover, than I definitely Recommend this.

Book Club Review: Whether people like this book or not can be predicted by its cover. If they see it and want nothing to do with it, don’t bother. If they grin and say “could be fun!” then they’ll probably like it. The conversation around the book itself isn’t very long. It can be interesting, as people work through why something dumb and fun like this is still enjoyable. But you won’t have any major insights. Only Recommended if the group is into it and wants a break from reading more substantial stuff. Otherwise, Not.

Side-note: we read this directly after The Once And Future Witches. This was a coincidence. However, I couldn’t stop seeing the parrallels between the two books. Witches is also light, wish-fulfillment fare. But in all the places Witches failed, Hank succeeded.
– Despite being invincible, his struggles were interesting because his super-power couldn’t resolve them. Witches wasn’t, because despite pretending to be vulnerable, their magic solved all their problems consistently, easily, and without cost.
– Despite being silly and indulgent, Hank leads with “Look at how silly and indulgent this is gonna be! Don’t expect greatness, this is about Manly Dudes and Stuff Blowing Up and Hot Chicks!” Expectations are low, and reader is happy. Witches takes it’s name from a literary classic, and sports an abstract cover. Reader expects something ambitious, and is dissapointed, despite the fact that it’s not bad for light fare!
– Hank is fast and compact. Witches could have been a good read if it had been equally short. Instead it dragged on for more than twice Hank’s length. I gave up on Witches less than 3/4ths of the way through, at which point I would have finished Hank more than a hundred pages ago!

Although, the comparisons aren’t fully fair. Witches is aimed at a very different audience than Hank. Hank is great for people who enjoy teenage-boy shenanigans. (again, people who love Army of Darkness). Witches is aimed at elite women readers. Perhaps being super-long and unexciting is exactly what they like, and Witches is perfect for them. The contrasts in how “light, popcorn reading” played out between the two books just kept jumping to my attention.

Existential Dysphoria

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Nov 122021
 

In discussion with a close friend of mine, she mentioned that she thinks of herself as non-binary. She is cis, sexual, beautiful, and obviously female. I was curious what she meant by non-binary.*

I.

I may have missed some aspects of it, but the primary thrust was such:  She never fit in with other girls/women. The things they were interested in bored her. The things she was interested in made them look askance at her. She doesn’t care to talk about make-up and girly stuff. She’s not a barbie doll. She hated their social dynamics. She felt far more comfortable in groups of boys, and would seek those out. She basically always felt like an outcast, and hated when other people pushed her to go play with girls, or denied her things because she was a girl. The female world didn’t fit her. And she was denied access to the male world. To this day she gets anxiety when thinking about joining any groups marketed as “for women,” and strongly avoids them.

I was a bit taken aback, not by the experience, but by that idea that this means she’s not a woman. In my view, thinking that this makes you not a woman is really sexist (and by extention, NB’s now seem even more sexist to me). We don’t need to make this about sex! We’ve had a word for this type of person for decades. It’s “Nerd.” (Or “Geek,” depending on your dialect.) The first thing I wanted to say was “That’s it? Try being a nerd growing up.” I didn’t, because I’m not an asshole. And also because I already know she was ALSO nerd growing up, and still is. It’s one of the things that binds us together. :)

The thing she described is, IMO, the experience of being a social outcast because you’re weird and different. That… can be looked at in a gendered way, I guess, if you want to force it. Especially if that’s how the people around you are pushing you to see it. But it’s not about gender, directly, is it? It’s not about feeling disgusted by your body. Not about feeling horrified when you look at yourself in a mirror. Not about feeling like something went terribly wrong and you’ve been forced into the wrong skin and can’t get it off, and no one can see that, and if only they could see that things would be better. It’s not gender dysphoria. It’s a more basic not-fitting-in with society, or the world at large. It’s existence dysphoria.

Existence dysphoria is feeling aliented from the world around you. Something went terribly wrong, and you’re living the wrong existence. The world doesn’t fit. It doesn’t have room for you, you don’t interface well with it. All your instincts and feelings are wrong, either subtely or blatently, and you are constantly being reminded of it. And no one else realizes how wrong everything is. No one can see this. If only they could see it, things would be better.

Sex and gender roles are a part of that, sure. But they aren’t the cause. Implementing gender dysphoria treatments won’t fix existential dysphoria.

II.

I don’t dislike any given non-binary person, but I find the movement as a whole to be a bit obnoxious. First, because it does seem rather sexist, as commented on above. But also, because it appropriates the extistential dysphoria experience and tries to make it about gender.

If you swap the genders in the first paragraph of Section I, you’d have a perfect description of me (and my nerd friends, of both sexes.) I was bored to death of sports and “masculine” stuff. I’m not manly. I hated the social dynamics of all the normal kids. I felt (and feel) far more comfortable around girls/women. I was always an outcast from the regular people. I will never join anything marketed as “for men” and even thinking about the type of people who would join such a group gives me the willies.

But that doesn’t make me not a man. Anyone who tries to belittle me or impy otherwise can kiss my ass. This was one of the pillars of the gender-equality movement. It was one of the reasons we fought for gender equality. It doesn’t matter what’s between your legs. You are allowed to dress how you want, talk how you want, wear make-up or not as you want. You can be interested in whatever interests you, and stereotypes be damned. It will never, ever make you less of a man/woman to have different interests. Those trying to control you like that are barbarians living in benighted intellectual squalor.

To cede that ground now seems like giving up after we’ve already won. It is saying that not only were the sexist assholes right, they were so right that we can’t even consider ourselves sexual humans any more. We aren’t men or women. We are a non-gendered other.

To make matters worse, it strengthens the stereotypes of those who don’t alienate themselves from their sex. It buys into and reinforces the idea that to be a real man you have to like sports and beer. To be a real woman you have to love make-up and gossip. In both cases, you have to dress a certain way, and talk a certain way.

And what for? The existential dysphoria mostly remains.

The best outcome is that geeks suffering from existential dysphoria find each other through these non-binary channels, connect with each other, and form their own social support networks. This is certainly a benefit. But it does not need to come at the expense of surrendering to the claims that we aren’t really men/women. Geeks have been finding each other long before non-binaryism was created.

The worst outcome is that those suffering from existential dysphoria will expect the implementation of gender dysphoria relief measures to help them, and when they don’t, sinking further into x-dysphoria. One of the major negative impacts of homeopathy is displacing actual real medicine that would have otherwise helped a patient. Non-binaryism has the same problem. Telling people to they/them you doesn’t make the world not broken. It addresses literally nothing.

III

I also find it distasteful the way non-binaryism appropriates the experience of trans people, and tries to legitimize itself off of their suffering and struggles. But I’m not trans myself, so I have very little to say about this other than what I just did.

IV

In summary, non-binaryism is yet another way for people to try to take the lives and experiences of neuro-divergents (“nerds/geeks”) and redirect them to their pet political causes (“wokeism”) while giving the neuro-divergents little of value, and harming a great many of them in the process. Same as it ever was.

*if you’re reading this, hi! I hope you don’t mind me using this as a jumping-off point for my public thoughts.

SF/F Review – The Once and Future Witches

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Nov 052021
 

The Once and Future Witches, by Alix E. Harrow 

Synopsis: A revenge fantasy wherein three sisters in the early 1900s fight for women’s sufferage while resolving personal issues, and bringing back magic.

Book Review: This book is pretty much the definition of Light Reading. It flows well, it moves quickly, and it’s not difficult to read. Interesting things keep happening. The characters are very archetypical, so you know who you’re reading about very quickly. The villians are irredemiable and flat, the good guys are unobjectionable and sympathetic. This is a good book if you’re looking for something light to pick you up. Unlike most revenge fantasies, it’s not bloody or angry, it’s actually pretty lighthearted. Which, while not what I look for in a revenge fantasy, actually worked really well for several of our readers. More about that in the Book Club section.

My one major complaint about The Once and Future Witches is the same complaint I had about Alix Harrow’s earlier novel, The Ten Thousand Doors of January (no link, because apparently I never wrote a review of it?? WTF self! We read it in book club and everything!). That complaint is that there is never any inkling of danger. We are never worried about our heroines for more than a few pages. Any time a bit of tension creeps into the story Harrow immediately dissolves it and fixes whatever the danger may have been. It’s as if she’s apologizing for letting the story develope tension.

This becomes so common that when Harrow does try to raise the stakes, we don’t believe it. We go from “never worried for more than a few pages” to “never worried.” Like, “Oh no, everything has been destroyed, and all is lost? Pff, whatever, I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Lo and behold, a few pages later it is. (Doors of January had a similar problem. Late in that book a character was supposedly killed, and no one in the book club believed he was actually dead for even one paragraph.) I guess this is the type of stroy Harrow prefers to tell, since it’s been a strong theme in two novels now, and there ain’t nothin wrong with that, per se. It just made it harder to hold my interest. I would have been fine with it in a novel of less than 300 pages. Clocking in at over 500, I just got too bored to keep going. I made it 70% of the way by the time book club day came around.

Magic also is a complete cure-all for any snag in the plot. If the heroines have a problem, there’s a magic solution. Something inconviencing you? There’s a spell for that! This is basically just an extension of the “tension is not allowed” thing, though.

Anyway, it’s fine if you want a doorstop of light reading. Personally, Not Recommended.

Book Club Review: It’s decent for book clubs. The analysis of what works and what doesn’t for different people is pretty interesting. There were readers in our book club that really loved this. The audience this will resound with is what I earlier described as the “white woke woman.” It’s basically a revenge fantasy for the tarot-loving side of Twitter. So I predit it’ll do well at the Hugos next year. :) They really loved this, and I’m glad it worked for them! It’s wonderful to find something that’s joyful and speaks to you. If you consider yourself that sort of person, I would definitely recommend this, it seems to hit all the right buttons. The conversation was interesting, as basically there was agreement as to what the flaws are, but the degree of how much a flaw mattered varied greatly. What some people found boring others found charming, etc.

One thing that was brought up was the observation that the novel seemed disrespectful to real-life suffergates. It implied that this was a problem that women just needed to try harder or just want it enough in order to solve. It seems true in the novel’s world, due to magic being a tool the women have. In the real world (it was pointed out) there are far more complications, real trade-offs to be made, and sacrafices that many women simply can’t make, especially those with children. Reducing that actual struggle to the cartoony depiction in the book felt revisionist and white-washing.

I dunno how to feel about that. It’s a fair accusation, but also it’s a revenge fantasy, so does it really matter? I’m a huge fan of The Crow, a revenge fantasy for young males, and does it really matter if it portrays society incorrectly, or that Eric is invincible and never in real danger? No, not really, the point is reveling in the revenge. So what if the real world is complicated and messy? I guess it comes down to what you were expecting from the book.

If this was shorter, I would recommend it for book clubs. A few hundred pages of this would be great. For as long as it is, it felt like it was beating a dead horse, and it wore out its welcome with the people who didn’t love it. Several of us didn’t finish it. If your book club is mostly the type of people who would enjoy this, Recommended. But for general audiences, Not Recommended.