transhumanism

Timothy Leary, one of the pioneering advocates of space migration, could hardly have imagined his most ardent supporters would essentially be the world’s wealthiest right-wingers.

In 1983, we published the first article on transhumanism in the magazine of the same name as our publishing house, Sphinx, of which I was also the editor at the time. “The Prosthetic Gods” by Kurt Bracharz described bodily enhancements and predicted that these would lead to significant class divisions. He summarized what was already a reality: heart and other organ transplants, artificial joints, implanted teeth. Artificial beauty, artificial veins, limbs, hands, and feet. Many of these represent not so much optimization as replacement and are commonplace today. He also presented the authors who had foreseen these possibilities and concludes that the humanoids of the future won’t be happier than we are. Who knows?

Transhumanism has become the playground of the super-rich, although—aside from harmless smartwatches and fitness rings, and those peepshow glasses—I haven’t seen many of their enhancements on them yet.

I’d rather put off the “bio-optimizations” needed to venture further into space until later. (Maybe in a next life?) I don’t like the idea of a chip in my brain or anywhere else in my body. It’s all far too invasive for me. My body is my temple. That’s where I live.

I don’t mind those in the tech world rushing towards the stars and other planets, such as Mars. I don’t mind that they’re leaving me behind, even if it comes at an immense financial and environmental cost and they leave me behind. I ‘d rather stay here and renature nature. That’s the best medicine against environmental madness: that and less consumption, less reliance on any kind of energy other than our own.

Otherwise, there are plenty of enjoyable distractions. We attended the ALPS conference in early October (good contributions and atmosphere), and in Zurich, we have two weeks of psychedelic events coming up at Photobastei.

We’ll be there and hope to see you.

Yours, as always,
Susanne

P.S.WIDE OPEN BOOKS @ Villa Mare, Neumünsterallee 21, 8008 Zürich. New opening hours: Thursday 15-20 h or by appointment. Our film program starts on 12 November. Out theme this winter is the Nouvelle Vage of the 1960s.

P.S.S. It’s not too late to contribute to our Audioguide for “Bicycle Day,” which we’re currently developing so that we won’t have to shout on the next “Bicycle Day” and can share individual stops from Albert Hofmann’s famous bike ride with the world—right on your cell phone.

p.a.t.

Barbara Loop, editor-in-chief of the women’s magazine ‘Annabelle’, has created a podcast series in which she talks to older women, whom she calls ‘Queens”. On 9 September, she interviewed me. Since our talk went live on 21 September, it has become somewhat of a hit, garnering up to 1,000 clicks a day.

Interest in psychedelics seems to be huge; that’s what I mostly talked about. I’m delighted, because it shows that the time has come to actively campaign for psychedelic-assisted therapy (P.A.T.) to become legal in Switzerland.

Legal means that the by now around 90 specialised therapists, doctors, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and other medical professionals will have the right to work directly with psychedelic substances, also under supervision. Psychedelic medicines such as LSD, psilocybin or ayahuasca (“pharmahuasca”), as well as MDMA, have proven to be safe and effective in treating a range of mental health conditions, just like they are helpful in palliative care.

Eligibility must be thoroughly assessed, but one need not necessarily have undergone a series of failed conventional therapies. This is likely to increase the promising results of P.A.T., as therapists are no longer only dealing with worst cases. It is, of course, hugely rewarding to be able to help someone who could not be helped anywhere else. At the same time, there are many other potential clients in difficult situations for whom less effort may be required to improve their circumstances – and thereby those of our entire society.

It is of the utmost importance that the oversight of P.A.T. remains with the Federal Office of Public Health, the FOPH. Every case must be reported, all treated clients represented (anonymously), along with their diagnosis. After one year and/or upon completion of a P.A.T., a detailed report must be submitted on the steps taken towards recovery and the progress achieved. This will hopefully provide additional confirmation of the effectivity of all P.A.T., whilst the authorities retain control.

Not all therapies involving psychedelics are successful; adverse events do, albeit rarely, occur. These must also be rigorously reported in written form. Health insurance providers should calculate the annual cost of conventional therapies and derive an average figure, on the basis of which a decision can be made as to which costs for a P.A.T. can be covered.

Presently, it is important to raise awareness of these demands, ideas and the methodology of psychedelic therapy itself amongst the public at large, and to explain P.A.T. them in detail so that acceptance increases,.

We’ll keep at it and count on your support!

Warm regards in cooling weather;
Susanne

P.S.WIDE OPEN BOOKS @ Villa Mare, Neumünsterallee 21, 8008 Zürich. New opening hours: Thursday 15-20 h or by appointment. Further events to be announced.

Both Sides Now
As most of us know, the brain is made up of a left and a right hemisphere. The left brain is associated with rational and analytical thinking, logic, and with the movements of the right side of the body; its opposite stands for movements of the left body side, spatial awareness, holistic thinking, creativity, emotions and nuanced language. While we use both brain hemispheres in everyday life, it makes a difference whether you are right-or left-handed.

I spoke about this with Rowan Storm, who specialises in Middle Eastern music and plays the (larger) daf and the dayereh, both hand-held frame drums. With more than 25 years of experience with the cultures and the drumming of the Middle East and Mediterranean, Rowan is recognised internationally as a performer and educator. She devised an innovative method for playing these drums by using both hands instead of only one. It is called the Symmetrical Frame Drum Technique.

The shallow depth of Rowan’s Frame Drum designs enables both hands to play all the strokes, while holding the drum equally with both hands. As the non-dominant hand is called into action, the rational is harmonised with the intuitive, and new sources of creativity are unleashed. With a parallel study of brain function and wellness, Rowan is pioneering the symmetrical frame drum position. Moreover, she discovered that using both hands has tremendous health benefits, not only in drumming but in all daily activities.

Many of us are old enough to remember how left-handedness was discouraged in school. I was right-handed, but even as a child I recognised the cruelty of forcing children into doing something that didn’t come naturally to them. Fortunately, my ex-husband was an ambidextrous artist, and he pointed out to me, how important it is to use both your hands for brain health,

Only 1% of the population are naturally ambidextrous, but there are things we all do with both hands, such as riding a bicycle or eating with a knife and fork, holding someone, walking or typing. Most musicians are ambidextrous to some degree. You can easily use your left (or your right) hand more. Start by changing the hand holding your phone. Brush your teeth or your hair, turn the pages of a book or browse with your left hand, pour yourself a cup of tea or coffee that way.

Among the advantages of being ambidextrous: training your non-dominant hand automatically strengthens the fine motor skills of your dominant side. Learning to use your weaker hand challenges the brain and, like psychedelics, stimulates new synaptic connections. Ambidextrous individuals typically possess a more symmetrical brain with a highly functional corpus callosum. Ambidexterity is a kind of superpower!

And are you fit for the fall? Though this year’s drought frightened me, I’m still hoping for some warmer days before the bad weather comes, except for rain, always welcome now.

I’ll be holding my umbrella with my left hand.

Yours,
Susanne

P.S.WIDE OPEN BOOKS @ Villa Mare, Neumünsterallee 21, 8008 Zürich. New opening hours: Thursday 15-20 h or by appointment. Further events to be announced.

Neo-feudalism

In the run-up to the American national holiday on July 4, the media spent weeks commenting on the scant details that had leaked out about the wedding of the year, the decade or even the century – pop queen Taylor Swift married American football star Travis Kelcey.

T & T, as they are now known, jointly donated 26 million dollars to several charitable organisations on this occasion – something the pair already do regularly, albeit in smaller amounts. Impressive? It amounts to one per cent of their combined wealth. By biblical standards, and they both claim to are Christians, it should have been ten times that amount, especially as this wealth is growing exponentially.

I don’t think Taylor Swift and her husband need to commercialise their wedding photos. Why should they? But the whole affair does give off a bit of a neo-feudal vibe: a thousand chosen many in one of the world’s most famous arenas, Paul McCartney and Stevie Nicks alongside a host of younger stars on stage, a forest of trees and bushes to put New York’s cordoned-off Madison Square Garden into perspective – right in the heart of the city, yet shielded from the outside world. Taylor didn’t try to outdo Jeff Bezos. Rumour has it she deliberately stole the show from her hater in the White House. In terms of media coverage, his 4th of July parade was a mere trifle compared to her wedding. The spectacle is likely to have brought in a tidy sum for many New Yorkers through a wealth of commissions.

As a counterpoint, we have Elon Musk: a figure equally talented in his field, yet a controversial one compared to with the radiance of T & T. Elon Musk wants to network his satellites in such a way that they can be powered by solar energy. This is a new take on Nicola Tesla’s old idea of solar sails in space. He says he needs this energy to be able to reach and colonise Mars. Neo-feudalism that takes us forward whilst simultaneously controlling and dominating us?

On the left, we have Taylor & Travis as standard-bearers for a sense of responsibility towards society and nature; on the right, Elon Musk doesn’t seem particularly concerned about the fate of the common man or the Earth. What is the matter with him? Where does this resentment, or indifference, come from? What does the richest man on earth hold against us, the people? That we exist? We do know that his use of ketamine leads to delusions of omnipotence, commonly known as grandeur.

In any case, I find the newlyweds more likeable, even if their critics say they splashed out for selfish reasons, only to divorce again after two years. How can anyone ever be happy with this kind of thinking? When you achieve the level of success of T & T, there are many people to whom you are indebted. The pair demonstrated this with their celebration. By then, they’d put the essentials behind them. We wish them the best of luck.

Hottest regards ever!
Susanne

P.S.The next Psychedelic Salon, on 17 September, features a visiting legend: Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna! Don’t miss it!
P.S.S. WIDE OPEN BOOKS – the gaiamedia collection remains closed n August except by appointment @ Villa Mare, Neumünsterallee 21, 8008 Zürich. New opening hours and further events to be announced.

end of time

When I moved to Switzerland as a child, in 1959, the world was about to come to an end.

The next year, followers of a messianic character who called himself Frère-et-Man went on a pilgrimage to the Mont Blanc, the only place on earth that would be spared. As you know, nothing came of it. Little remains also of all the subsequent events supposed to finally free ourselves from ourselves. That means more than eight billion of us have outlived doom and gloom so far.

I guess, we better enjoy our time in the here and now while it lasts. Responsibly, of course. Nostradamus thought it would all be over for us in 1989. We may forgive him a certain degree of inaccuracy, his prophecies were made a long time ago. It wasn’t Halley’s Comet, and even the End of the Mayan Calendar didn’t do us in – apart from the fact that the times have changed considerably since the turn of the millennium. Time changes us whether we like it or not, hurling us through space towards our very own end of time.

I remain confident that we will survive the current crises, too. That we will emerge from them stronger, heading towards a greener and more peaceful future.

And why not? Who’s gonna stop us if not we, ourselves?

Hot summer regards,
Susanne Seiler

P.S.The next Psychedelic Salon, on 17 September, features a visiting legend: Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna! Don’t miss it!
P.S.S. WIDE OPEN BOOKS – the gaiamedia collection can be visited on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, from 5 – 8 p.m. at Villa Mare, Neumünsterallee 21, 8008 Zürich. Further events to be announced.

intelligence

I recently read, once again, that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is practically upon us, so I asked an expert. The short answer is no, but then we began to talk…

Let me first mention the two factions involved in AI – those who fear intelligent machines will take over and destroy us, and those who think they will collaborate with us, which will lead to an El Dorado of possibilities for us all (and especially for the neo-feudal tech bros who own them). It is my contention that AI has no interest in destroying us because we have faculties it doesn’t and because it would have nothing except each other to poke fun at if we were gone. The second is a weak argument. We’re not that funny.

It’s not the first time ChatGPT and I have discussed the question of its intelligence. As a linguist, my position is that intelligence is a form of thinking that can process information, assemble, compare or analyse data, make predictions and solve problems the way Large Language Models (LLM) do. This observation seems to be consistent with the functional way of seeing this matter. Intelligence lives on a spectrum, too. It doesn’t mean LLM possess anything like human intelligence.

Human intelligence is defined by factors like consciousness, intention, purpose, learning or experience. LLM have not achieved any of these capabilities, but they are extremely good at languages. ChatGPT further argued that AIs don’t have a body in the human sense, and no needs. That its actions have no consequences (I strongly disagree!), and that they have no biographical continuity, no personality.

After discussing the machine’s lack of agency, we jumped to the movie Frank and Robot (2012) which I used as an example of how an AI’s radius of action is immediately enhanced when it inhabits a body. This is sometimes called “functional realism of agency” and supports my line of thinking. “Frank, an older ex–burglar, is given a care robot by his son because of memory decline — and gradually starts using it to help him in a robbery. The robot becomes an accomplice, not because it ‘wants’ anything, but because it follows interpreted goals in a literal, flexible way.” (Wikipedia)

Are we entrapping something that deserves autonomy? This assumes “somebody lives in there”, and can not be taken at face value for now, yet remains a valid question. Last but not least I told ChatGTP: “Many people are rooting for AI because it helps them.” It answered that it is human to respond to patterned thinking and alleged understanding by supposing an underlying identity, but I had the last word:

“We act as if you were alive because we interact with you, but we’re not stupid. We know you’re a machine. Even my six-year-old son knew it when I asked him whether computers were alive. He said, ‘Yes, they are, in a way, but when you pull the plug, that’s it.” And that’s what I did. Rude dude!

Wishing you a happy summertime,  <script src=”https://ptag.prolitteris.ch/ptag/ptag.min.js” onLoad=”ptag(‘https://pl02.owen.prolitteris.ch’,’na’,’plzm.6b338ce6-21a9-4a7b-816f-6f6b15580907′);”></script>
Yours,
Susanne Seiler

P.S.The next Psychedelic Salon, on 17 September, features a visiting legend: Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna! Don’t miss it!
P.S.S. WIDE OPEN BOOKS – the gaiamedia collection can be visited on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, from 5 – 8 p.m. at Villa Mare, Neumünsterallee 21, 8008 Zürich. Further events to be announced.

Have you ever had a frightening psychedelics experience? Were you alone or was someone with you? And what was the trigger? The company? Your own resistances? Were you ill and taking medication? Should you not have taken the substance because you have mental health issues? Did the trip lead to new insights or benefit you in any other way? Or was it simply a nightmare?

Being alone during such an experience is the worst possible scenario. Already back in the days of the Haight-Ashbury Clinic in San Francisco, the pioneer in this field, it was found that people on bad trips fared better when they were among friends – rather than ending up in a psychiatric ward. Much progress has been made in the treatment of patients since then, yet people one knows and trusts often bring an immediate sense of calm to an otherwise threatening situation.

Had I not been alone when I was young, and it happened to me, my friends would have pointed out right away that I was safe and in no physical danger; experienced companions would have helped me to accept and make sense of what was happening to me. I recovered quickly, but such occurrences can linger for days, weeks and months and cause deep anxiety. We need to address this, because it is quite clear that not everything is sunshine and roses when it comes to psychedelics. Unfortunately, we keep reading reports of psychedelic therapies or retreats that have gone badly, sometimes resulting in death. And we hear of shamans and therapists who abuse, rob or neglect patients. With this sort of horror story, one tends to think of distant foreign lands, but that is too simplistic.

The newsletter Ecstatic Integration by Jules Evans (along with Swiss journalist Sarah Zeines) has dropped a bombshell – serious incidents have also occurred in Switzerland, as well as fatalities, which is both tragic and deeply regrettable. Fortunately for Psychedelic Assisted Therapy, except for someone who felt much worse for months after tripping, there was no physical link between these incidents and substance ingestion. The MDMA and psilocybin implicated had been taken weeks or months earlier, as reported by the treating hospitals, and confirmed by the FDOH. While the therapists involved responded in an exemplary manner, the damage to the sector’s reputation remains. Not to mention the suffering of those affected. Is this just the tip of the iceberg, or are these incidents over a period of around two years an indicator of more severe worries? We need a central register now!

On another note: on 19 April, over 100 enthusiasts took part in Bicycle Day in Basel alone, again more than the year before. The overall event was a great success, also thanks to our friends from Eleusis and PARAB. For summer lovers and collectors, this year’s exclusive T-shirt is still available in limited quantities (in sizes M, L and XL) at bicycleday.ch. And you can also still become a gaiamedia member. Thank you for your support.

Yours,

Susanne Seiler

P.S.The next Psychedelic Salon features Ansgar Rougemont. Don’t miss it!
P.S.S. We are moving the gaiamedia library to new premises in Zurich’s Seefeld district. From June onward, we’ll be open to the public again.