a philosophical discussion of the fascinating series on Curiosity Stream
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
January 19, 2024
American University Psychology Professor Arthur Shapiro hosts a fascinating series on Curiosity Stream called "Illusions." The following is an open letter to the professor on the topic -- which the patient reader will find to have a connection to the subject of... "drugs!" (insert ominous orchestral fanfare here)
I'd like to thank you for the fantastic episodes on Illusions that I have watched repeatedly now on Curiosity Stream1.
If you have a moment, I'd also like to share a little philosophical speculation on the topic.
In reading the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, I begin to wonder if the very word "illusion" is not, at very least, somewhat misleading2. Let me take a specific example in order to attempt to make this point.
In the Ames Room, we see two "equally tall" individuals who appear to be different sizes3. But what do we mean when we say that this is an illusion? I think we are saying the following: "Had we seen these two people in the settings that are familiar to us, these individuals would appear to be the same size; therefore it is an illusion to see them as two different sizes." But this is in effect to argue that the individuals have a specific size that, by rights, should show up in any reference frame, and that their failure to do so therefore constitutes an illusion.
It seems to me, therefore, that the very idea of "illusion" is based on the anti-Whiteheadian assumption that there is an individual "out there" separate from perception, one of a specific length, which our perceptive equipment morphs into various illusory sizes when not viewed in the appropriate reference frames. Although perhaps not entirely analogous, this situation suggests an Einsteinian case in which two spatially separated observers disagree as to the moment that a super-fast train exits a tunnel, and even disagree as to the length of the train. Neither observer however is seeing an illusion, but rather what they by rights SHOULD see given their reference frame. That is to say, there is no universally legitimate absolute length for this train; there are only lengths that can be calculated from various reference frames.
Seen in this light, the only bothersome thing about the Ames Room is that it makes us forget what we normally take into account: namely, the reference frame from which we are beholding nature. Even little children do not cry out in astonishment when their distant grandpa approaches them as a little dot on the horizon. There are no cries of: "What happened to grandpa? He's so tiny!" Nor would adults generally refer to this as an "illusion," since it is really just the way the world works: we perceive things from a given perspective and must naturally take that into account in daily life. The Ames Room prevents us from taking that fact into account and so we blame the incongruous result on the image itself, calling it an illusion. It seems to me, however, that the image is not illusory; what is illusory is the idea that we can understand the world without taking account of the perspective from which we're beholding it. (In fact, the word "illusion" would come to mind for the adults only if the grandfather was NOT the size of a dot on the distant horizon. Only then would they have a sense of strange incongruity.)
I trust that I am not "mincing words" here. It's just that, from the Whiteheadian point of view, the term "illusion" seems inappropriate since it implies that objects exist "out there in space" separate from our perceptions of them and that these objects have specific sizes that are valid (or should be valid) in all reference frames. Whitehead, of course, would disagree. What we perceive are the qualities of the object as they appear to us in a given reference frame, not the atoms that the materialist tells us are "really out there." However, I believe that materialism is still the reigning paradigm in academia, so the point may be moot for now - but maybe someday the word "illusions" will at least require an asterisk leading to a disclamatory footnote on this topic.
To recap these speculations:
Since in Whitehead's view, there is no object "out there" apart from our perception of it, there is no standard by which we can say that any visual phenomenon is an illusion, i.e. that it is different from what it "should" be. It follows that, as stated above, any surprises that we encounter in viewing an object will not be due to an illusion, strictly speaking, but rather to our failure to properly take into account our reference frame as a viewer. What we call "illusions" therefore might better be described as "perceptions from unusual reference frames." They're not really illusory - they only appear so because we have failed to take into account our reference frame as a viewer - often because the image creator has purposefully made this task difficult, so much so that our mental equipment, geared as it is to making sense of the world, will sometimes flip between hypothetical viewpoints, in a seemingly desperate effort to make the image sensical from the standpoint of a pragmatic human being (as in the ball dropping illusion in Season 1, "Brightness and Contrast," in which a falling ball appears to move left, but only when viewed from a specific reference frame).
I will not go into the topic of the potential shortcomings of using the word "illusion," but I wonder if it does not help us pathologize the creative thinker who sees things that we say are not there - but which are actually as real as anything else, except that they are seen through a reference frame that no one else has used before, whether thanks to various drugs and/or neural quirks and/or a unique upbringing.
Just some thoughts on this interesting topic. Again, thanks for the series! I hope there will be more episodes coming soon!
Author's Follow-up: January 20, 2024
I'm going to spare Professor Shapiro any further reflections on these issues, at least until such time as I receive a reply to the above harangue. It should be understood, however, that this is no merely philosophical issue in the pejorative sense of that term. The American government has been outlawing religions over the past 50+ years based on the implicit rationale that their drug-related experiences are unreal and that there is one true world "out there" that can only be seen by the sober mind (or rather the "sober mind" as hypocritically defined by Drug Warriors, who sign off on the use of SSRIs, caffeine, nicotine and alcohol, and even attend churches in which the latter drug is employed as a part of ritual). In other words, they believe in the materialist doctrine that our pragmatic senses show us what's "really out there" and that "drugs" merely scramble and disarrange the picture of that one true reality.
If Whitehead were around today - and not bullied into silence by the reigning drug mania - he would point out that there is no world "out there" without our perception of it and that to outlaw drug-aided perception is to insist on one single valid interpretation of reality - which is, in fact, the greatest possible crime against mental freedom (not to say religious liberty) imaginable. Certainly, the philosopher William James did not believe that there is one valid reality out there. Here is what he wrote on the topic in "The Varieties of Religious Experience":
"...our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded."4
Yet modern politicians create laws that force us to disregard these other forms of consciousness and, indeed, to deny their validity a priori, without further comment or investigation.
This is why I am "hardcore" about the Drug War (as a Reddit troll once described me). The folks who are softcore have apparently been whistling why the government got rid of the First and Fourth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and even now, after that horrible fait accompli, do not see what all the fuss is about. So one has to urinate for an employer and avoid naughty medicines. So what?
But that's just it: these medicines are only naughty in the minds of children, and not just any children: the childish kind who titter when beholding the statue of David5. They see drugs as naughty and rather than recognizing this as a sign of their own childishness and ignorance, they use their political power to ensure that the entire world adopt their jaundiced attitude toward drugs. It is the ultimate form of denial - in which one not only refuses to hear the truth, but goes on to insist that the entire world adopts one's own prejudices on a given topic.
The UDV and the Native American Church have succeeded in gaining protection from our drug-demonizing federal government, but the UDV was harassed all the way to the Supreme Court before those justices voted 9-0 for the government to call off the dogs. The Native American Church was likewise harried by both federal and state governments until an act of Congress finally gave them exemption from the hate and slander of their puritanical enemies.
How ironic that America, a country founded by religious dissenters, has now made drug-hating Christian Science the one world religion, to be enforced by harsh penalties, up to and including death.
Author's Follow-up: January 26, 2024
I have a funny feeling that I've irritated Professor Shapiro, than which nothing was further from my mind, of course. I think it was Thomas Mann (or maybe Herman Hesse) who once observed that adults are really like children: they have to be spoken to with utmost diplomacy lest one unwittingly pluck an egotistical nerve, after which they will cut you like an offended prima donna at a gala ball. Of course, let me add quickly that this description applies to myself as well, no doubt in spades. Still, I thought the general tenor of my remarks was upbeat -- but I should have read them through with an ear for potential misinterpretations and implied slights. I did suggest that "illusions," ontologically speaking, do not exist -- but I was not attempting to call him out for his use of the word, which, time out of mind, has been applied by literally everyone to the images in question. Then again, it's still early days, so watch this space. The good professor may yet see fit to respond!
Sometimes I think I have a special kind of reverse super ability. Some super guys can leap tall buildings -- my super ability is the way that I can offend people without even trying. I'll walk up to them and say, "Hey, how are you doing there?" And they'll be like, "What the hell is THAT supposed to mean?"
Open Letters
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.
First America takes away the citizen's right to manage their own pain by rendering opium illegal. Then the psychiatric field treats the resultant epidemic of depression by damaging the patient's brain, i.e., by treating depressed patients with shock therapy.
Another problem with MindMed's LSD: every time I look it up on Google, I get a mess of links about the stock market. The drug is apparently a godsend for investors. They want to profit from LSD by neutering it and making it politically correct: no inspiration, no euphoria.
The drug war controls the very way that we are allowed to see the world. The Drug War is thus a meta-injustice, not just a handful of bad legal statutes.
"In consciousness dwells the wondrous, with it man attains the realm beyond the material, and the peyote tells us where to find it." --Antonin Arnaud
Countless millions suffer needlessly in silence because of America's fearmongering about drugs.
The drug war is a way for conservatives to keep America's eyes OFF the prize. The right-wing motto is, "Billions for law enforcement, but not one cent for social programs."
I've been told by many that I should have seen "my doctor" before withdrawing from Effexor. But, A) My doctor got me hooked on the junk in the first place, and, B) That doctor completely ignores the OBVIOUS benefits of indigenous meds and focuses only on theoretical downsides.
People groan about "profiling," but why is profiling even a "thing"? There would be little or no profiling of blacks if the Drug War did not exist.
In his book "Salvia Divinorum: The Sage of the Seers," Ross Heaven explains how "salvinorin A" is the strongest hallucinogen in the world and could treat Alzheimer's, AIDS, and various addictions. But America would prefer to demonize and outlaw the drug.
Critics tell me that drugs have nothing to offer us. What? Not only are they being psychologically naive and completely ahistorical, but they are forgetting that the term "drugs" is no more objective than the term "scabs." Both are meant to defame the things that they connote.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Illusions with Professor Arthur Shapiro: a philosophical discussion of the fascinating series on Curiosity Stream, published on January 19, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
You have been reading an article entitled, Illusions with Professor Arthur Shapiro: a philosophical discussion of the fascinating series on Curiosity Stream, published on January 19, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)