Why Qualiadelic?
Posted: Monday, October 05, 2009
by Tony Brussat
http://qualiadelic.com
People always ask me, why Qualiadelic? Where did it come from?
Well, almost immediately upon reading about the concept of qualia, which comes from neurobiology, I realized that ideas and symbols are qualia, too.
Just like colors, or smells, or other aspects of our perception known as qualia, we are in a special relationship with ideas. Both an insect and a plant evolve together -- the insect's ability to sense a particular color or shape or smell evolves at the same time as the plant evolves it's ability to project that quality.
But still, why Qualiadelic?
Well, let's just say that I am a student of psychedelia -- altered consciousness, the doors of perception and all that 60's stuff. As a kid I did a lot of experimenting with drugs, but I was a light-weight. I gave them up, but I never gave up my fascination with altered reality.
In graduate school, when I was studying rhetoric and the social construction of reality, I stumbled upon new ideas about ritual, and I saw its potential as a source of personal and social transformation. I soon realized that ritual was the source of symbols for self and society.
Not long after this I read about qualia. Some epiphanies about consciousness and ritualing soon followed. Basically, I felt it was very psychedelic. And thus, the Qualiadelic Experience was born.
The combination of Conscious Ritualing and the awareness of Qualiadelia is the secret to drug-free transformation of consciousness (of course, it can be a drug experience, too, if that's what you desire). It is a simple tool, Conscious Ritualing, but not with out its dangers: it is bound to be resisted by the caretakers of some of our more monolithic traditions. After all, it is the way we change.
This resistance to change is common in traditions. Most traditions go back a long way, to a crisis of some sort of other, which was averted by means of ritual. Whatever we did to escape disaster we began to repeat, even when the danger wasn't present, and whatever it was we did spontaneously the first time we continued to do afterwords with a certain controlled spontaneity. Eventually, the repeated ritual became part of a tradition, and as the tradition grew, as happens all too often, the spontaneity receded and the control increased.
So it is that the caretakers of tradition tend to resist change, and so it is that they may feel threatened by the playfulness of the Qualiadelic Experience. Alas, we are killing our planet with entrenched traditions (and bad habits) that need to change. The only way forward is to make a change in consciousness.
Be Qualiadelic. Be Conscious. Change the routine.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Wow. I tried to stay with you here. I started wondering about memes, as written by Dr. Wayne Dyer in "No Excuses". This is a well researched article, for sure.Hey Kate -- you're right, memes are a huge part of this synthesis. I'll have to look at "No Excuses." My information about memes came from Richard Dawkins, the sociobiologist who, I think, coined the term. If you are willing to accept meme-theory, it is only a small step to thinking about ideas as actually living beings, which to me explains a lot about human consciousness. Thanks for working through my article.
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