I made a mind node tree about Elliot’s lying essay.
I like the phrasing “relationship with reality”. Jordan Peterson also uses a similar phrase, he calls it “instinct for meaning”. I’m interested in exploring the idea “relationship with reality” specially with regards to drug use. I’m thinking of these two drugs mainly: Alcohol and increasingly marijuana now. People (claim to) use these drugs to calm down after a stressing day at work or at weekends to clear out all the build up of stress from their week of work. I think this model which explains build up of stress is wrong. On rethinking I think this model is partly right. Build up of stress is approximately build up of outstanding criticisms and problems and stress is a feeling which arises when one is not able to handle
those problems and criticisms. The wrong part of the model is that it explains that stress is like a fluid that keeps filling up in a bucket and needs to be released by forgetting about stressors and ‘chilling out’ (mostly with friends) by using these drugs. The releasing method is what I have trouble with. I think that is wrong. Stress is not like a liquid you that you can pour out by forgetting while chilling out. Maybe one can misinterpret and overestimate the problems so forgetting about it and coming back fresh can be useful.
These explorations of mine relate to “relationship with reality” in following way: by using these drugs to forget about problems one is losing relationship with reality. This results in not improving. They could’ve improved by trying to understand how emotions work and how to manage emotions. They could’ve tried to understand how they give irrational emotions more role in their reasoning which leads to problem. For example they might be letting the feeling of stress mean a lot more than it does. By making this choice of popping a drug to manage their emotions immediately they are decreasing their capacity of doing a better project.
Drugs like alcohol and pot are not problem solving!
I’m always open to the possibility that I’ve made some basic mistake and probably haven’t said what I wanted to or what I thought of. Because of this reason I am not sure if you are agreeing with me or saying something which agrees with what I said. Can you clarify please?
what are people confusing here? They don’t think something like these drugs help them actually problem solve do they? A common idea going around is drugs make you more creative (Alcohol is excluded in this idea. Included are: Pot + psychedelics). Related idea is micro-dosing.