Drugs Are Prayers

The thing about “mental states” is that every single person is in a different one from everyone else all the time.

Sure, there are comparable, repeating, cyclical conditions. And you can’t cooperate without a simplifying system that at least TRIES to predict what kind of state someone is in and what they’re going to do.

But the felt reality of any state is unique and never happening again.

So much of “society” is pretending people’s mental states are tractable and praying not to be surprised.

Our own, those of others, same thing.

Drugs.

Caffeine. Nicotine. Alcohol.

The various kinds of speed and opiates deployed like simple remedies.

Psychiatric drugs. Psychedelic drugs.

These are not predictable inputs and outputs of an economic system.

They’re prayers.

We don’t control the outcomes.