I just lost a friend to Teh Sekrit.

[Bruno]

Also, Schpongle and DMT.

I mean, I still know where he is physically, and we're still friends and all, but, well, you know what I mean.

He told me he knew he was going to walk on water some day.

You're gonna have to put him down, like a dog.

Don't worry, it isn't murder.  He's already gone.

Can't.

Need him as a reference on application forms.

Um.

Think about that for a moment.

I have.

He's one of the few friends that I've had for nearly 20 years that I still talk to other than the occasional facebook comment. My only other friend that fits that description is my new roommate, and I couldn't really use him as a reference for the house we are getting together.

For jobs, I use mostly professors from school rather than friends.

He's actually fairly high functioning, as things go. He has a business (that I helped him start), and makes decent money off of hippies at music festivals.

Basically, he's too useful to kill, even though most deals with him eventually start to turn a little Faustian after a while. He often brags about his ability to whitewash people (in the Tom Sawyer sense)

[Telarus]

Tell him that there are competing tribes of DMT machine-elves. Some want to get an idea so totally stuck in your head that they can feed off of the resulting stagnation (like beetles in the leaf-litter).

There are others who want you to be constantly mindful of the moment, ready to draw insight and creativity straight from slamming two previously unrelated phenomena together and allowing the association clouds around them to blend together (called 'semantic priming', it's one of our recognized pattern recognition tools). Obviously they desire this because it gives them sustenance from the generation of new meaning.


Then just point-blank straight-man him with "Which tribe do you think the Secret's followers are feeding?"

[edit to fix up the 'story']

[Bruno]

Do you have a link that would explain more about sub-Priming.

Google just gives me links about the financial crisis.

[Freeky]

Tell him that there are competing tribes of DMT machine-elves. Some want to get an idea so totally stuck in your head that they can feed off of the resulting stagnation (like beetles in the leaf-litter).

There are others who want you to be constantly mindful of the moment, ready to draw insight and creativity straight from slamming to previously unrelated things together and not having reflexes which immediately reject the result (called 'sub-Priming', it's one of our recognized pattern recognition tools). Obviously they desire this because it gives them sustenance.


Then just point-blank straight-man him with "Which tribe do you think the Secret's followers are feeding?"

Are you giving this as actual advice?  Is there anyone over the age of reason who would actually believe this?

[Cain]

Uh, Freeky, this is advice for someone who is taking The Secret seriously.

[Bruno]

Tell him that there are competing tribes of DMT machine-elves. Some want to get an idea so totally stuck in your head that they can feed off of the resulting stagnation (like beetles in the leaf-litter).

There are others who want you to be constantly mindful of the moment, ready to draw insight and creativity straight from slamming to previously unrelated things together and not having reflexes which immediately reject the result (called 'sub-Priming', it's one of our recognized pattern recognition tools). Obviously they desire this because it gives them sustenance.


Then just point-blank straight-man him with "Which tribe do you think the Secret's followers are feeding?"

Are you giving this as actual advice?  Is there anyone over the age of reason who would actually believe this?

If the right person told him, yeah. I don't think I have the psychonautical cred to pull it off, though.

He's taken way more Enlightenment Pills^tm than I have.

[Telarus]

Are you giving this as actual advice?  Is there anyone over the age of reason who would actually believe this?

Uh, Freeky, this is advice for someone who is taking The Secret seriously.

   

Do you have a link that would explain more about sub-Priming.

Google just gives me links about the financial crisis.

Hahaha, I got the term wrong, probably because that little DMT elves narrative just came out as I was thinking of the concept, but couldn't remember the actual name so I started riffing off of that.

The actual term is Semantic Priming (I recognize the technique from some NLP I've studied, but I've recently run across the hard references):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_%28psychology%29

Replicable Unconscious Semantic Priming

http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/priming.html

A discourse on semantic priming

Semantic priming effects with and without perceptual awareness

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Don't they have vaccines for this sort of thing yet?

I'mma buy him a copy of 'Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America'. See if that helps.

Ehrenreich found when she was diagnosed with breast cancer that a cult of optimism pervaded articles and books about the disease that made her feel isolated instead of supported. "No one among the bloggers and book writers seemed to share my sense of outrage over the disease and the available treatments," she writes in a chapter ironically called "Smile or Die: The Bright Side of Cancer." "What causes it and why is it so common, especially in industrialized societies? Why don't we have treatments that distinguish between different forms of breast cancer or between cancer cells and normal dividing cells?"

Instead of finding answers, Ehrenreich kept coming across articles by women who claimed that they owed their survival to a "positive attitude" – even though the death rate from breast cancer has changed little since the 1930s and there is no consistent evidence that staying upbeat extends the life of those who have the disease, though it may have many other benefits. She also found that "positive thinking" can exact a terrible price in self-blame if a cancer defies treatment. As the oncology nurse Cynthia Rittenberg has written, the pressure to think positively is "an additional burden to an already devastated patient."

It's kind of like the mandatory cheers that WalMart employees have to do. They want you smiling while that big scabby red white & blue dick is spooging cancer into yoor colon.

[Bruno]

Are you giving this as actual advice?  Is there anyone over the age of reason who would actually believe this?

Uh, Freeky, this is advice for someone who is taking The Secret seriously.

   

Do you have a link that would explain more about sub-Priming.

Google just gives me links about the financial crisis.

Hahaha, I got the term wrong, probably because that little DMT elves narrative just came out as I was thinking of the concept, but couldn't remember the actual name so I started riffing off of that.

The actual term is Semantic Priming (I recognize the technique from some NLP I've studied, but I've recently run across the hard references):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_%28psychology%29

Replicable Unconscious Semantic Priming

http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/priming.html

A discourse on semantic priming

Semantic priming effects with and without perceptual awareness

Thanks. I'll be sure to look into that.

[Bruno]

Don't they have vaccines for this sort of thing yet?

I'mma buy him a copy of 'Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America'. See if that helps.

Ehrenreich found when she was diagnosed with breast cancer that a cult of optimism pervaded articles and books about the disease that made her feel isolated instead of supported. "No one among the bloggers and book writers seemed to share my sense of outrage over the disease and the available treatments," she writes in a chapter ironically called "Smile or Die: The Bright Side of Cancer." "What causes it and why is it so common, especially in industrialized societies? Why don't we have treatments that distinguish between different forms of breast cancer or between cancer cells and normal dividing cells?"

Instead of finding answers, Ehrenreich kept coming across articles by women who claimed that they owed their survival to a "positive attitude" – even though the death rate from breast cancer has changed little since the 1930s and there is no consistent evidence that staying upbeat extends the life of those who have the disease, though it may have many other benefits. She also found that "positive thinking" can exact a terrible price in self-blame if a cancer defies treatment. As the oncology nurse Cynthia Rittenberg has written, the pressure to think positively is "an additional burden to an already devastated patient."

It's kind of like the mandatory cheers that WalMart employees have to do. They want you smiling while that big scabby red white & blue dick is spooging cancer into yoor colon.

CANCER CAN BE FUN!!!!!!!!!!

[navkat]

^^^Sounds like a meme.

Here's another:
CANCER IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO FIND YOUR PERSONAL STRENGTH.

[Bruno]

I think you just blew my mind.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

CANCER IS SPIRIT HELPING YOU LEARN TO BE STILL

CANCER BRINGS OUT YOUR NOBLE NATURE

YOU NEVER KNOW WHO REALLY LOVES YOU UNTIL YOU'RE EATEN UP WITH CANCER

[Triple Zero]

CANCER IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO FIND YOUR PERSONAL STRENGTH.

WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER, AMIRITE???

[Freeky]

Uh, Freeky, this is advice for someone who is taking The Secret seriously.

I DISBELIEVE.