Ziirp, I feel like you're being a little judgmental, maybe of me, or just of people in general. How do you know I don't do charity work or otherwise donate my time and energy towards helping others? In fact I specifically believe one should dedicate time and energy to helping others, and I do that. I could do more, of course, but where's the line? I still need to support myself, as do you, and everyone else, and I need to enjoy my life as well since I have an opportunity to do that, which I am thankful for. How do you go from me saying I have a good job that lets me enjoy my life optimally to me not doing enough for other people? You're making some serious assumptions here. As far as taking psychedelics for particular reasons, the first time I took them, it was to see what would happen, and it unexpectedly changed my life because of the radical perspective shift, it led to me changing tracks rather completely. After that I took them specifically for spiritual purposes, believing every experience was revealing more and more to me... this period was fun but largely delusional. In some cases I actually got something useful from them, but most of the time I was just having tripping thoughts. Over time, I adjusted to where I am now. I use them for recreation, and as an aid to going to see music or playing music, they make it easier to get into listening and dancing and they enhance my creativity and help me discover new things in playing. In general, psychedelics have helped to shape my life a lot over the years, for a variety of reasons large and small, but I'm not going around proclaiming they're sacred or that I'm not often using them out of hedonism. Which by the way there's nothing wrong with.
I agree that many western people are superficial and live only for themselves, but not everyone is like that, here or anywhere in the world. Making a generalization like that is a perfect example of one of the big problems in the world, one of the big problems that always faces the world... it separates people into groups and causes people to stop regarding individuals in a group as individuals, and pre-assigns them characteristics without any attempt to see the individual as separate from others in the group. The end result is us vs them mentality, ethnic hatreds, bigotry, classism, etc. Instead of dropping out and leaving it behind, why don't you try to improve the situation? Being a positive and inspiring person helps to bend other people in that direction. As I've heard said elsewhere, be the change you want to see. You can't force others to change, you can only change yourself directly, so for our world to change, all you can really do is make that change in yourself, and hope it helps others to make the same change.
By the way there are problems in non-western countries too. Plenty of people there are going to just be looking out for themselves too. People are people, everywhere. China and India are contributing largely to the industrial society-based problems too. Everywhere there are all types of people. I think it's a little naive to think otherwise.
