Digital Shamanism

---

Mark Pesce talks about Virtual Reality, Psychedelics and Mind Forms Reality.

Where we’re going, the simulated and the real are going to get really blurry. And we don’t have any tools of mind. Western culture, which is based on this objective external reality — it’s not hard, it’s all become very soft, and it’s all flowing together. So we need to now start to find ways of describing what’s going on. And so what we need to do — I found in my own investigations — is to take a look at cultures that describe the world magically, that understand that perception shapes what you are, and you shape what you see. And that they’re not separate areas, they’re not separate domains, and you have to consider them as a whole.

My own explorations had led me to understand that in fact, in a world where anything you want is true, the only way to deal with this is by learning how to deal with your will. Dealing with will is what magic has, in all cultures, always been about. This is why the shaman doesn’t go insane when the world just disappears — they’re ready for it. Because they understand that where they are isn’t bound up in their idea of the world. -Mark Pesce

---

► Listen on DSound
► Listen from source (IPFS)