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On Monday 6/15, I'm hosting a workshop to kick off a reading group for classic essays: RSVP here.

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Michael Dean
michael-dean-k/

Architect-turned-writer, founder of Essay Architecture. Building pattern languages, software, anthologies, and community for essayists.

Essay Club ↗
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Michael Dean
michael-dean-k/

Architect-turned-writer, founder of Essay Architecture. Building pattern languages, software, anthologies, and community for essayists.

Essay Club ↗
Michael Dean
Michael Dean

Architect-turned-writer, founder of Essay Architecture. Building pattern languages, software, anthologies, and community for essayists.

Michael Dean
Michael Dean

Architect-turned-writer, founder of Essay Architecture. Building pattern languages, software, anthologies, and community for essayists.

Essay Club ↗
Michael Dean
Michael Dean

Architect-turned-writer, founder of Essay Architecture. Building pattern languages, software, anthologies, and community for essayists.

On evaluating insights from altered states

· 145 words

A misconception in altered states is to assume the new state is right and the old is wrong. Yes, perhaps your old thinking was illusory, but that doesn’t mean wherever you end up post-trip is true. It’s poor thinking. Just because you zoom in, zoom out, see interconnectedness, etc., doesn’t mean it’s true.

In the other direction, it's a trope for someone stoned to think something mediocre is amazing; this might lead them to believe that no serious insights can emerge from an altered state, which is equally far from the truth!

Our mind is designed to shift in and out scales; we can’t cling to our first break out; nor can we deny all breakouts because the first one was wrong. We need to oscillate back and forth, to see each insight fresh—with possibility and skepticism—to understand the true nature of something.