Conspirarists Part Cuatro

Alternative Educator Two : The Baptist

Life is arguably meaningless. It is especially meaningless for those who have not found their own meaning in it. Life is less meaningless if you have found something to enjoy, take care of or work for, but that’s neither here nor there. On the day-today basis we are definitely tired of our unfulfilling jobs, feeling alone, and advertising that tells us that it’s our fault we’re unhappy.

This time we have a proper academic to tell us how to deal with it all.

The Baptist’s work is about the idea of incorporating eastern philosophy into psychology, to further the expansion of the mind. Something, something about lost arts of understanding that were known to oriental masters in the bygone days but somehow we lost them…because…. He presents his lectures in video format, but I found the presentation to be boring and started skipping to find the juicier stuff. By pure luck I skipped to the exact moment where he said “…for your sense of realness has to be transformed in therapy, and that is why psychedelics are important” and I knew I hit bingo. This is so fantastic! He’s not simply justifying a drug habit, he’s making it out to be an innovative method of dealing with all this cruel meaningless world.

See, he’s not exactly saying it is new, but he strongly calls on “the charm of the ancients”[1][2] as supporting evidence for this opinion by referring to the olden shamanic rituals and their importance.

But dear reader, you’re informed, you’re sceptical and you might say “well, some aspects of psychedelics and their interconnectedness with brain chemistry might be beneficial (although not yet fully tested) to treating those with illness that we don’t quite have an understanding of”. And I would say you’re thinking way more into this than the dude. He doesn’t specify what kind of therapy this applies to, neither does he reference any particular drug trials that he found would support his ramblings. In the context of his ‘lecture’ (which I have gone back and listened to, as not to be accused for plucking quotes out of context) psychedelics are apparently an essential gateway to remould your perception. Instead of, like, eh, sitting down and just analysing for a bit. Drugs!

He doesn’t dwell on this and moves on with the topic adding a continuous “we will get to that”, which we will get to, nah, I did a prank, we’ll talk about it right now. I mentioned how listening to his lecture is really boring. It is a part of a series of x number of lectures, but he does not (as convention has it) list what information will be presented in what lecture, just that “we will get to it”. In my personal experience regardless of the subject academic presentation starts with an introduction of a concept, followed by either showing working to get to the conclusion or uses the concept as a building block to get to a coherent point.

Having to “get to” an array of topics obfuscates the main goal of the lectures pretty darn quickly.

According to his public profile information the guy is a bona-fide academic and have previously lectured as a job, which why it strikes me as odd that his presentation is so unstructured.

The more I looked at the available information about his career the more questions I had. His academic career had big gaps, which isn’t suspicious in itself. Maybe he tried a career change, or what have you. His academic journal publications are on fairly consistent topics. His goodreads-recommended list also follows his general specialty, almost to a fault. His main body of work consists of youtube videos of his lectures, with quite few “wow, this is amazing” comments considering the dense academic-esque language. I suppose if I was unfamiliar with either philosophy or psychology, and put this in the background while scrolling Instagram[3] separate sections of his speech would be new to me and especially if I was enchanted by the name of his lectures[4] I suppose I could be persuaded that this information is fantastic to the point of being revolutionary.

Let’s say, I am persuaded by the lectures, and I’d like to have access to more of this dude’s work. Well, I could google to see if he has written a book, or perhaps he has a blog available, or even the transcripts of his lectures. I could do that and find nothing. This is…really really weird. He clearly uses notes in lectures, and he does have a book out but it’s a collaboration book about “what is the concept of zombies really” but otherwise, there’s very little evidence of his writing. Disregarding that the academic world goes by ‘publish or be damned’ not being able to have any free access for this supposed academic’s written ideas is too irregular not to be suspicious.

….

Do you know, if after paying £250 for “exclusive access” to this dude somehow improves your personal life, grand. But none, NONE of this information is new or revolutionary. That’s not even the problem here. Even the bad credentials can have a pass.

What’s truly upsetting is that this “new alternative” thinking uses obfuscating terminology to present what is in substance, very watered-down demi-spirituality that promotes drugs & supplements.  It also substitutes one kind of authority (the old establishment™) for another (new age dark intellectuals rejected by the establishment™), but just because it sounds different people buy in.

I’m not even sure straight up education is enough to immunise against this.

[1] The idea that the ancient civilisations/people held secrets of untold wisdom and weren’t like us, in ways that could not be specified. It’s very convenient, because thinking that people in “the past” MIGHT have had same fears, motivations and concerns makes them very ordinary, and therefore less marketable.

[2] It’s worth noting how “it was better back in the olden days” can refer to any unspecified time in the past, regardless of whether it was better or not, factually.

[3] Like a true millennial™

[4] Very meta lecture titles, very high-intellectualism™