Erik Davis on High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies
It’s not that there are multiple perspectives on reality. In that view, there’s one world, and then everybody’s got their own perspective. But what if it’s weirder than that? What if it’s the case that our perspectives, and particularly when those perspectives are wedded to actions, actually produce different, let’s call them dimensions of the real? That it’s not just that we have different perspectives, but we’re actually kind of building, constructing, different kinds of worlds. Now, are they ultimately part of one world? Yeah, but not in a simple way. I don’t believe that when you say, “I know the real world that they’re all a part of because it’s science,” or, “It’s physics,” or, “It’s economic structure,” or, “It’s human evolutionary psychology.” Everybody has their pet frame. What does it mean to try to navigate the world when you acknowledge the power and validity of many different perspectives and try to stay open and awake as you pass through this kind of chaos?