In a dream from today, I run a media operation out of a brothel/hostel in an unspecified Southern country.
The shower is faulty, and I yell at the manager:
“I pay you so that I can SLEEP, FUCK, SHOWER, and WORK in peace!”
I say that none of these conditions are met, but I’m exaggerating: the fucking and the working are actually going quite well.
I’m typing a news report on Lukashenko’s peace conference.
He holds a number of meetings with a diverse group of armed forces — private companies, government officials, representatives of the EU and the UN — everyone’s focused, everyone has specific asks and concerns, the resolution is peaceful, there’s decent (if a bit stale) live music in intermissions.
Meanwhile, my coworker’s project is more creative, more vague, and more long-term:
He’s inventing a new Russian vocabulary, a set of colloquial terms and corresponding symbols with psychedelic and anti-authority connotations.
He thinks language is how you make lasting contributions to the collective psyche.
He shows me hand-made models of memes he’s trying to launch into the noosphere.
The dream is obviously inspired by my two weeks in Spain:
the brothel stands in for the cannabis club,
the peace conference for the Wagner mutiny,
the meme thing for my unarticulated aspirations for Psychopolitica,
and the faulty shower for the Korean roommate
who reported me to Airbnb for something like thievery — the specific complaint was never shared with me, and after some questioning I was acquitted; but I was still warned that, were something like this to happen again, my account might get suspended.
I wake up excited to do my real-world work, feeling there’s something special, trippy about it.
But I’m never quite sure what my work is.
I’ve got some ideas floating around.
E.g., I could write out my pitch for a psychedelic revolution to the Ukrainian government.
Zelesnky recently said in a statement to Rada:
All the best global practices, all the most effective practices, all the solutions, no matter how complex or unfamiliar they might seem to us, should be applied in Ukraine so that Ukrainian men and women, all our citizens, do not have to endure the pain, stress, and trauma of war.
In particular, we must finally openly legalize, for all those who need it, cannabis-based medicines, relevant scientific research, and controlled production in Ukraine.
His representative in Crimea (who can’t be seen in Crimea) has quoted a point from a “Strategy for Economic Recovery of Crimea” that was drafted last year on Facebook:
Cultivation of medical cannabis in individual regions of Crimea (after its legalization in Ukraine). Also promoting the production of cannabis-based medical products and exporting them to other countries where the substance is legalized.
A commendable initiative, but not bold enough.
The most promising protocol for treating PTSD involves MDMA, not weed.
And research into medical use of MDMA can be used as a gateway to research into psychological, metaphysical, philosophical, and psychopolitical use of mushrooms and DMT.
Such a program would put Ukraine into the avant-garde of the Psychedelic Renaissance already underway in the West.
The kind of attention foreigners pay to Ukraine would change qualitatively: it’d turn from another one of those war zones — “a fight for democracy” or “why are we arming these people” — to a portal for something new, something that can change the world in wild, unpredictable ways.
It’d be like a UFO landed in Kyiv, and was met by a short Ukrainian man wearing khakis, holding something like vajra in his right hand.
Or I could revise an exit strategy I once developed for Putin, titled Tsar-Monk.
In an address to the nation, he would proclaim:
“The rumors that I am not real — that I am a robot, a team of lookalikes, or a mass hallucination — are all true.
I am, in fact, only an actor, a mask, a blank face, onto which you, dear friends, citizens, project your fears and desires.
When I said just last month that ‘ruling Russia is not hard at all, but is completely pointless’ — I meant it quite literally.”
He’d shrug.
“I don’t really do anything.
I do hold occasional, ritualistic meetings where nothing is ever decided, whose purpose is only to let the functionaries, the press, sometimes even ordinary people — all pre-selected by somebody else, more faceless people controlled by more faceless people, none of them really in charge — use me as a mirror for their affirmations:
“Life’s hard, Mr. President, but we’re holding up, we are doing okay.”
And maybe you are.
You might not need me.
I’m getting old anyway.
So I’m going to leave to the taiga, where a special compound has been built for me, I’m going to walk through the forest, exercise, and lay in my float tank.
I will be thinking of you.
My office in the Kremlin will be kept empty, except for a telephone if you really do need to reach out.
There’ll be a guard at the door, a Sphynx, and he’ll only let in those who answer his riddles.
If someone gets through him, and gives me a call, I will pick up, and I’ll listen to their report with a stern face, like I normally do.
In extraordinary circumstances, I may make a TV appearance, but I’ll acknowledge up front: the voice and the image will be AI-generated.
Anyway, good luck with the war.”
What would happen if he said that?
Would anything change?
Such musings are not really “work,” are they?
But writing them down and sharing them here is a part of it, probably.
This is what got me up today. Of course, I didn't do what I set out to do. Which is a shame. But it got me up. And that was a good thing. Thank you. I so want to write...
Writing well is one of the most difficult activities, IMO. I agree that language can change the way we think, since language is HOW humans think after about the age of 3, per Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (link below). I think Zelensky should hold off on legalizing cannabis and/or psychedelics, or none of his soldiers will be motivated to fight. Maybe he should work on ways to get the drugs to the Russian soldiers!
https://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html#:~:text=age of seven).-,For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially separate systems from,verbal, and speech becomes representational.