The forest of unread books: A future library in Norway
26 October, 2020
Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash
She was walking down the forest path with a roll of white cloth in her hands. It was trailing behind her like a long veil.
<p> It was sweeping needles, leaves and soil lumps, drawing a pattern on the sandy pathway. The whiteness of the cloth contrasted with her black attire and the dark thick forest. As the path went up and down, the crowd following the woman at a distance would lose sight of her, only to see her again in a short while, like a white signpost. </p><p>Once the procession reached the clearing surrounded by old trees, the woman in black kneeled down in the centre. She began to wrap something with the cloth, already quite tatty after the walk. Her face was tense and her hands were shaking as she tried to tie up the bundle with a string. Eventually, she brought her emotions under control, tightened the knot, and held the bundle to her breast. The onlookers formed a circle around her, maintaining, however, a respectful distance. They didn't want to disturb this intimate moment: a moment of farewell.</p><p>The people who gathered there to view the ceremony sat on the moss and May-dewed grass. They walked carefully, making sure not to trample on dozen-centimetre-tall spruce trees with red ribbons tied around their tops. One could already see this year's bright green growths on the saplings.</p>
<p>The woman in black was the 49-year-old South Korean writer Han Kang, who won the Man Booker International Prize 2016. The thing she wrapped with the white cloth was a manuscript. When the spruce saplings with red ribbons grow, they will become her book. It will happen, however, in the year 2114. Until then, for nearly 100 years, Kang's manuscript, in a tatty cloth, will have remained hidden from public view. Neither the writer nor her 18-year-old son will live to see its publication. The onlookers who gathered that day in the Nordmarka forest in the hills outside of Oslo won't bear witness to it either. 'Future Library' is being created for the generations to come, in the hope that in 100 years' time humanity will still exist and want to read books.</p><p>Future Library<em> </em>is a project conceived by Scottish conceptual artist Katie Paterson. Each year, on the clearing where future books are growing, a writer selected by the Future Library Trust hands over their manuscript. Its content, form, volume and other details – except the title – will remain secret for 100 years. The first contributor who arrived in Oslo in 2014 was Margaret Atwood, renowned for her dystopian representations of the future. She was followed by British novelist David Mitchell, Icelandic poet and novelist Sjón, Turkish author Elif Shafak and, in 2019, Han Kang. The next contributor is Karl Ove Knausgård, who will hand over his manuscript on the forest clearing in May 2020. From among all the writers, he will have the shortest distance to cover to get there: he is a Norwegian, born in Oslo and still living there. There is space for 94 more authors.</p>
<h3>59°59'10.0 N 10°41'48.6 E</h3><p>Take Line no. 1 (<em>T-bane</em>) in downtown Oslo. While still within the city limits, the train goes above ground and up the hills overlooking both the fjord and the capital. At the end of the line, Frognerseteren station, follow the signs to the restaurant. Once there, follow the forest road lined with streetlights – in winter-time they light up the cross-country skiing route. After a slightly more than kilometre-and-a-half-long walk, enter a much narrower and steeper path. It is the start of the trail that climbs up to Frønsvollen hill. After 100 metres, you will see a sign in both English and Norwegian: 'Future Library Forest' / 'Framtidsbibliotekskogen.' You are here.</p><blockquote>A forest<br>of unread books<br>growing over 100 years<br></blockquote><p>Katie Paterson didn't expect her idea to turn into something more than three lines of text in the haiku-like form: that is how she tends to note down her project-related thoughts. Future Library has become, however, a large-scale undertaking; or, perhaps, it is still becoming one since there seems to be no form that could contain the project that unfolds over 100 years.</p><p>"I began by drawing rings," she tells me. "I would draw tree's growth rings, imagining each to be a subsequent book chapter. I was pondering the relations between the tree and the book, the forest and the library – their interfusion. As I immersed myself in thoughts, I would doodle more rings on the sheets of paper."</p>
<p>Paterson is 38 years old. Her art often engages with the cosmos and brings to mind scientific research projects, like her map of the sky with 27,000 dead stars or clocks that tell the time on different planets. Some of her artworks – for instance the bulb that emits the light of a full moon, or the spinning wheel that contains all the colours of the universe – were created in collaboration with scientists and engineers. She even invited the European Space Agency (ESA) to one of her projects. They helped her return to space a Campo del Cielo meteorite, which had travelled through our solar system for 4.5 billion years before it fell to Earth. Recently, NASA has expressed their wish to collaborate with her. One might look at Paterson through the prism of the places where she has exhibited: Tate Britain, Guggenheim Museum in New York, The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, or Turner Contemporary. This doesn't make much sense, however, since what is equally important are her open-air projects, located far from famous galleries. One fine example is "Hollow"<em> – </em>an installation in the grounds of University of Bristol, which is composed of 10,000 wood pieces, each from different tree species from all parts of the world. Another project invites people to go to the beach and make sand replicas of the most famous mountains. Participants are provided with special Kilimanjaro- or Stromboli-shaped molds, and when the high tide washes their replicas away, they might ponder time and transience, which also come to mind in the context of Future Library.</p>
<p>"Immediately after receiving the invitation to become a writer for Future Library, I imagined the world one hundred years from now. The world a long time after I myself have died, when my child, however long they manage to hold on to life, will likely no longer exist, and neither will any of the ones I love, any of the human beings who are living and breathing together with me on the Earth in this moment. It was a frighteningly lonely image to conjure. But, cutting across that desolateness, I kept on imagining. Imagining the world one hundred years from now which, since even in this moment time is owing without fail, will arrive as an inevitable reality. The trees of the forests around Oslo, that will grow thick and dense in those hundred years. The leaves and branches of spring, the afternoon sunlight that will shine down on them. The evenings and cold, still nights that will come without fail," said Han Kang quietly, standing in the centre of the clearing, surrounded by the spruce trees that will become books, and one of them – her book.</p><p>To understand how much can change over the coming century, imagine that in May 1914 – 100 years before the first manuscript was handed over to Future Library – the Great War hadn't broken out yet. It turned out to be the First World War, as 25 years later humankind decided to prove that it is capable of even more horrendous acts. Soon, such terms as the Holocaust, D-Day, or Little Boy came into use. People didn't even dream of the internet or mobile phones, not to mention mobile phones with internet access. It wasn't until 1926 that Henry Ford started to close his factories over Saturdays and Sundays, thus introducing the idea of the 'weekend'. In most European countries, women were granted suffrage after 1918. In the US, the 19th Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote in 1920. It wasn't until 1964 that the US abolished racial segregation. 100 years is a very long time.</p>
<p><em>"Sometimes I imagine the world in the year 2114. I guess that the most optimistic scenario is the one in which no radical changes take place; the one in which everything stays almost exactly the same, with minor differences only," says Paterson.</em></p><p><em></em>The curators decided to equip Future Library with a printing press and instruction manual in case 100 years from now humans lose their ability to produce paper books (provided, of course, that humankind survives). On the eve of Han Kang's manuscript handover, an informal dinner for Future Library's friends was held in a theatre in Oslo. At this small event, attended by slightly over 40 international guests, Anne Beate Høvind, the project technical director, entered the stage and discussed some unexpected practical problems. As she explained, the presses intended for industrial printing are not supposed to be turned off. "Once switched on, the machine operates continuously. When switched off, especially for a long time, it starts to rust," she clarified and added, smiling: "The printing problem hasn't been solved then. Well, I'm going to worry about it later, in about 10 years…"</p><p>Overpowered by emotions, Han Kang didn't come to dinner. On the following day, she admitted to having a moment of doubt as to whether to condemn her book, the writing of which took such an immense effort, to a 95-year-long oblivion. Kang has a delicate voice. When she speaks, it is as if she was whispering. She seems fragile and shy, yet in her works she deals with the thorniest issues.</p><p>Kang's most recent work, published in English under the title <em>White Book</em>, is an attempt to confront her own history. The narrator is her older sister, whom she never got to know since she died only two hours after birth. Their parents said that if she had survived, they wouldn't have decided to have more children. When Kang's mother was pregnant with her, she seriously considered having an abortion. The idea for the book, in which each chapter is a description of something white, was conceived far from Kang's hometown, but close to the editorial office of "Przekrój". She was working on it during a four-month residency at the University of Warsaw's Faculty of Oriental Studies. Although she felt lonely and isolated, since she didn't know the local language, she took to Warsaw at first (and liked it "till November", as she emphasized). She enjoyed strolling around the Łazienki Park, but the ubiquitous remnants of World War II kept haunting her. She was thinking about destruction and reconstruction, and realized that her sister's spirit was part of her. And since for her the colour white represents both life and death, she decided to hold a roll of white cloth during the manuscript handover ceremony in the Nordmarka forest.</p>
<p>"On the one hand, it felt like a wedding ceremony, with the cloth as a veil. It was a wedding of the book and the forest. On the other hand, it seemed like a ceremony celebrating the birth of a child, in this case a new book. At the same time, I had a strong impression that it was a funeral, with the cloth as a mourning dress: the funeral of my book," observed Kang.</p><p>At the ceremony, Kang, almost whispering, shared her dimly optimistic vision of the future: "And the moment I eventually write the first sentence; I have to believe in the world one hundred years from now. In the uncertain possibility that there will still be human beings who have survived, and who will read what I write. I have to hope that human history will not yet have vanished as a phantom, that this planet will not have become a huge ruin or grave of humans. It is a hope whose foundation is shaky, like the assumption that the people who run this project, and the writers of the present and future, who will die and be born in the course of the next hundred years, will continue this work as though carrying embers forward. Yet I have to believe, even in the tenuous possibility that a paper book's fate will be to survive long enough to reach the world one hundred years from now."</p><p>The story of Future Library is not only a story about faith and hope, but also fear. If predictions prove correct, in 2114 those humans who have survived will be too busy fighting for water or habitable land to think about an art project that dates back 100 years. According to the Australian think tank National Centre for Climate Restoration (Breakthrough), so many regions will become inhabitable around 2050 that great masses of people will have to move, nations will dissolve, and the world order as we know it today will collapse. Over a billion people will be forced to migrate and two billion will have limited access to water.</p><p>The coming of the Anthropocene, the epoch in which human actions exert an impact on natural processes, has been discussed for almost 100 years. Although the term itself hasn't been officially recognized yet, the Anthropocene doesn't seem to care much. One million animal and plant species are at risk of extinction, glaciers are melting, and the temperature is rising regardless of the fact that the term hasn't been accepted.</p>
<p>Half a century ago we landed on the moon. We boasted about being able to see from there a man-made artefact: the Great Wall of China. It turned out not to be true: the Great Wall is too narrow to be seen from the Moon with a naked eye. We can see from space, however, Dubai's artificial palm-shaped archipelago for the rich, Almeria's greenhouses with roofs made of white plastic (which cover an area half the size of Warsaw), open-pit mines, the cutting-down of the Amazon Rainforest, the illuminated India–Pakistan border, and the earliest evidence of the Anthropocene: the Pyramids of Giza. It isn't necessary to fly into space, however, to see what is happening on the Earth. 18 of the 19 hottest summers – those with the highest average temperatures – have been reported since 2001, with 2016 as the warmest year on record. This data is provided by NASA, but the numbers given by Climatic Research Unit and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are almost the same. In their October 2018 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) alerted us that there are 12 years left to prevent the catastrophe. 12 wasted months later there are 11 years left, and the clock is ticking…</p><p>Paterson claims, however, that Future Library makes her optimistic: "It is the forest that has such an effect on me. Whenever I'm there, I'm reminded of how old it is. Primeval forests are beyond time – when humans enter them, it is as if they travelled into the distant past. Hopefully, the forest we planted will be like that as well: the saplings on the clearing will grow as tall as the trees surrounding them. My optimism is tempered, of course, when I see what happens to our planet. I know that a lot of my projects immediately bring to mind climate change. This is also true for Future Library. I'm perfectly aware that the Earth is in horrific crisis, but it is not the struggle against the crisis that should define my art. My goal is to stir people's imagination. I'm interested in the entanglements and interfusions. The forest is turned into paper, the paper into a book, the book into a library, which, in turn, connects future readers with the authors who lived in the past. Future Library is mostly a project about time. It has to do with the environment and ecology as well, of course, but I'm not vain enough to claim that I can change the world through art."</p><p>Nevertheless, she does change something. While you're reading this text, the manuscripts are held in a safe in Oslo Public Library, Deichmanske Bibliotek. Han Kang's new work lies next to the oldest book in the collection: a handwritten manuscript of the Vulgate bible of Aslak Bolt, written in 1250. Next year, the library will relocate to a new facility situated next to the famous Oslo Opera House in the Bjørvika neighbourhood, which has been undergoing urban redevelopment, or rather, has been built from scratch. Bjørvika – until recently an industrial port area – in now a modern neighbourhood, characterized by steel and glass design. The final touches are now being put on office and apartment buildings. The Opera House, the new Munch Museum and the new library are meant to be the flagships of this revamped neighbourhood, situated by the fjord.</p><p>On the top floor of the new library, which will be fully operational by spring 2020, there will be a room made from wood. In this specially-designed room there will be 100 removable drawers, where manuscripts will be kept. Those which already hold manuscripts will be delicately illuminated. Each author will be able to choose their drawer. Han Kang was the first to chose. Other writers who have already handed over their manuscripts will come back to Oslo and have their pick.</p>
<p><em>As Paterson explains: "The room is made from the trees cut down in the Nordmarka forest to plant new trees for Future Library. Manuscripts will be safe there. As for the forest itself… well, there is not much we can do. Ideally, we should leave it alone."</em></p><p><em></em>It is not a coincidence that this project was developed in Oslo. It is, in fact, a municipal project: the only person who could officially accept Han Kang's manuscript is the mayor of the capital of Norway—Marianne Borgen. Only in Scandinavia can a high-ranking official show up on the forest clearing, get there on foot and without security, and instead of turning their speech into a rally, thank previous generations of politicians, who 120 years ago decided that Nordmarka should be under protection and that it should be the people's forest.</p><p>In 2018, electric cars accounted for over 49% of all new cars bought in Norway. The government exempted their owners from the car tax and the 25% VAT, while Oslo city council waived parking fees and congestion charges. This exemplifies how systemic solutions are far more effective than individual spurts. Which doesn't mean, however, that you, Dear Reader, should go back to using plastic straws or drinking water from plastic bottles, waiting for politicians to tackle the climate crisis.</p><p>Future Library is one of the projects that accompanies the redevelopment of the Bjørvika neighbourhood. As Høvind clarifies: "The city council announced a competition for public art projects that engage with the nature of time." A few steps away from the Opera House, you can also find the Losæter city farm.<strong> </strong>On this quite big plot of land, local people grow vegetables and fruit. There are chickens roaming around the rows and a beautiful arc-shaped bakery made from wood and glass. The city employs a farmer who takes care of the land, relying on traditional agricultural methods. This project was conceived by the American artist Amy Franceschini. The room of unread books is not far from the farm.</p><p>Paterson expresses her hope that "future generations will somehow benefit from the project." "These are just books," she says, "but they show that we think about those who haven't been born yet. They demonstrate that not all of us want them to inherit nothing but havoc and devastation."</p>
<p>Høvind also imagines the world 100 years from now: "I'll be dead … that's all I know. I'm scared, but I do whatever I can because of a sense of great duty. I believe that we need projects rooted in cathedral thinking," she explains.</p><p>'Cathedral thinking' is a term that applies to projects that don't unfold over years, but over generations. It is thinking and designing in a non-egotistical way, where the satisfaction is derived from the process itself, not the final result. As its name suggests (and as those who haven't come across the term before can quickly infer), cathedral thinking has its roots in the Middle Ages and the building of cathedrals. The idea and its execution were separated by hundreds of years, and subsequent generations continued to work on the same design. The builders knew they would never witness the final effect of their work. At that time, such future-oriented thinking was motivated by the desire to secure one's place in heaven. Today we need it to make heaven on Earth. Or, at least, to escape hell.</p><p><span></span>Cathedral thinking optimistically assumes that the future matters, stoically forcing us to ponder the meaning of life and the passing of time. "I'm sure I won't have a chance to read the books collected in Future Library, but this young boy here… who knows?" Paterson points at her son, who is sitting on her lap. "His life is still being measured in months, not years. He is intimately related to this project. I was in the forest while pregnant – back then spruce saplings hardly protruded above the ground. Last year we went there together again, and I had to carry him around. This year he was the loudest participant of the ceremony. He will be growing together with the forest."</p><p>Han Kang closed her speech on the Nordmarka forest clearing with the following words: "If it is possible to call prayer the moment when, in spite of all the uncertainty, we have to take just one step towards the light, in this moment I feel that perhaps this project is something close to a century-long prayer." She could reveal only one fact about her book: its title. "My Dear Son, My Love," she whispered.</p><p><em>Translated from <a href="https://przekroj.pl/kultura/las-nieprzeczytanych-ksiazek-klara-kowtun-and-piotr-zelazny" target="_blank">the Polish</a> by Joanna Mąkowska.</em></p><p>Reprinted with permission of <a href="https://przekroj.pl/en/" target="_blank" style="">Przekrój</a>. Read the <a href="https://przekroj.pl/en/culture/the-forest-of-unread-books-klara-kowtun-and-piotr-zelazny" target="_blank" style="">original article</a>. </p>
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13 October, 2020
- Book sales are on the rise, with 675 million books sold in the US last year.
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Why social media has changed the world — and how to fix it
MIT Professor Sinan Aral's new book, "The Hype Machine," explores the perils and promise of social media in a time of discord.
30 September, 2020
Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images for Somerset House
Are you on social media a lot? When is the last time you checked Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram? Last night? Before breakfast? Five minutes ago?
<p>If so, you are not alone — which is the point, of course. Humans are highly social creatures. Our brains have become wired to process social information, and we usually feel better when we are connected. Social media taps into this tendency.</p><p>"Human brains have essentially evolved because of sociality more than any other thing," says Sinan Aral, an MIT professor and expert in information technology and marketing. "When you develop a population-scale technology that delivers social signals to the tune of trillions per day in real-time, the rise of social media isn't unexpected. It's like tossing a lit match into a pool of gasoline."</p><p>The numbers make this clear. In 2005, about 7 percent of American adults used social media. But by 2017, 80 percent of American adults used Facebook alone. About 3.5 billion people on the planet, out of 7.7 billion, are active social media participants. Globally, during a typical day, people post 500 million tweets, share over 10 billion pieces of Facebook content, and watch over a billion hours of YouTube video.</p><p>As social media platforms have grown, though, the once-prevalent, gauzy utopian vision of online community has disappeared. Along with the benefits of easy connectivity and increased information, social media has also become a vehicle for disinformation and political attacks from beyond sovereign borders.</p>
<p>"Social media disrupts our elections, our economy, and our health," says Aral, who is the David Austin Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.</p><p>Now Aral has written a book about it. In "The Hype Machine," published this month by Currency, a Random House imprint, Aral details why social media platforms have become so successful yet so problematic, and suggests ways to improve them.</p><p>As Aral notes, the book covers some of the same territory as "The Social Dilemma," a documentary that is one of the most popular films on Netflix at the moment. But Aral's book, as he puts it, "starts where 'The Social Dilemma' leaves off and goes one step further to ask: What can we do about it?"</p><p>"This machine exists in every facet of our lives," Aral says. "And the question in the book is, what do we do? How do we achieve the promise of this machine and avoid the peril? We're at a crossroads. What we do next is essential, so I want to equip people, policymakers, and platforms to help us achieve the good outcomes and avoid the bad outcomes."</p>
<h3>When "engagement" equals anger</h3><p>"The Hype Machine" draws on Aral's own research about social networks, as well as other findings, from the cognitive sciences, computer science, business, politics, and more. Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles, for instance, have found that people obtain bigger hits of dopamine — the chemical in our brains highly bound up with motivation and reward — when their social media posts receive more likes.</p><p>At the same time, consider a 2018 MIT study by Soroush Vosoughi, an MIT PhD student and now an assistant professor of computer science at Dartmouth College; Deb Roy, MIT professor of media arts and sciences and executive director of the MIT Media Lab; and Aral, who has been studying social networking for 20 years. The three researchers found that on Twitter, from 2006 to 2017, false news stories were 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true ones. Why? Most likely because false news has greater novelty value compared to the truth, and provokes stronger reactions — especially disgust and surprise.</p><p>In this light, the essential tension surrounding social media companies is that their platforms gain audiences and revenue when posts provoke strong emotional responses, often based on dubious content.</p><p>"This is a well-designed, well-thought-out machine that has objectives it maximizes," Aral says. "The business models that run the social-media industrial complex have a lot to do with the outcomes we're seeing — it's an attention economy, and businesses want you engaged. How do they get engagement? Well, they give you little dopamine hits, and … get you riled up. That's why I call it the hype machine. We know strong emotions get us engaged, so [that favors] anger and salacious content."</p>
<h3>From Russia to marketing</h3><p>"The Hype Machine" explores both the political implications and business dimensions of social media in depth. Certainly social media is fertile terrain for misinformation campaigns. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Russia spread false information to at least 126 million people on Facebook and another 20 million people on Instagram (which Facebook owns), and was responsible for 10 million tweets. About 44 percent of adult Americans visited a false news source in the final weeks of the campaign.</p><p>"I think we need to be a lot more vigilant than we are," says Aral.</p><p>We do not know if Russia's efforts altered the outcome of the 2016 election, Aral says, though they may have been fairly effective. Curiously, it is not clear if the same is true of most U.S. corporate engagement efforts.</p><p>As Aral examines, digital advertising on most big U.S. online platforms is often wildly ineffective, with academic studies showing that the "lift" generated by ad campaigns — the extent to which they affect consumer action — has been overstated by a factor of hundreds, in some cases. Simply counting clicks on ads is not enough. Instead, online engagement tends to be more effective among new consumers, and when it is targeted well; in that sense, there is a parallel between good marketing and guerilla social media campaigns.</p><p>"The two questions I get asked the most these days," Aral says, "are, one, did Russia succeed in intervening in our democracy? And two, how do I measure the ROI [return on investment] from marketing investments? As I was writing this book, I realized the answer to those two questions is the same."</p>
<h3>Ideas for improvement</h3><p>"The Hype Machine" has received praise from many commentators. Foster Provost, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, says it is a "masterful integration of science, business, law, and policy." Duncan Watts, a university professor at the University of Pennsylvania, says the book is "essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got here and how we can get somewhere better."</p><p>In that vein, "The Hype Machine" has several detailed suggestions for improving social media. Aral favors automated and user-generated labeling of false news, and limiting revenue-collection that is based on false content. He also calls for firms to help scholars better research the issue of election interference.</p><p>Aral believes federal privacy measures could be useful, if we learn from the benefits and missteps of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and a new California law that lets consumers stop some data-sharing and allows people to find out what information companies have stored about them. He does not endorse breaking up Facebook, and suggests instead that the social media economy needs structural reform. He calls for data portability and interoperability, so "consumers would own their identities and could freely switch from one network to another." Aral believes that without such fundamental changes, new platforms will simply replace the old ones, propelled by the network effects that drive the social-media economy.</p><p>"I do not advocate any one silver bullet," says Aral, who emphasizes that changes in four areas together — money, code, norms, and laws — can alter the trajectory of the social media industry.</p><p>But if things continue without change, Aral adds, Facebook and the other social media giants risk substantial civic backlash and user burnout.</p><p>"If you get me angry and riled up, I might click more in the short term, but I might also grow really tired and annoyed by how this is making my life miserable, and I might turn you off entirely," Aral observes. "I mean, that's why we have a Delete Facebook movement, that's why we have a Stop Hate for Profit movement. People are pushing back against the short-term vision, and I think we need to embrace this longer-term vision of a healthier communications ecosystem."</p><p>Changing the social media giants can seem like a tall order. Still, Aral says, these firms are not necessarily destined for domination.</p><p>"I don't think this technology or any other technology has some deterministic endpoint," Aral says. "I want to bring us back to a more practical reality, which is that technology is what we make it, and we are abdicating our responsibility to steer technology toward good and away from bad. That is the path I try to illuminate in this book."</p><p>Reprinted with permission of <a href="http://news.mit.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">MIT News</a>. Read the <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2020/hype-machine-book-aral-0924" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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8 must-read books on the psychedelic experience
Psychedelics are going mainstream. Here's your reading list.
15 September, 2020
Photo: Yellow_Cat / Shutterstock
- Hundreds of millions of dollars are pouring into psychedelics companies right now.
- With loosening restrictions on clinical research, new therapeutic modalities are being investigated for anxiety, depression, and more.
- The psychedelic literature is rich with anecdotal accounts and clinical studies.
<p>UC Berkeley <a href="https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/09/14/uc-berkeley-launches-new-center-for-psychedelic-science-and-education/" target="_blank">recently announced</a> the launch of its center for psychedelic research and education, thanks to an anonymous $1.25 million donation. This follows Imperial College London's 2019 founding of <a href="https://www.imperial.ac.uk/psychedelic-research-centre" target="_blank">The Centre for Psychedelic Research</a> and Johns Hopkins's <a href="https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/" target="_blank">Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research</a>. The U.S. company, MindMed, which is working on clinical studies on ibogaine's efficacy in treating addiction, is <a href="https://www.investors.com/news/psychedelics-drugs-eye-legalization-wary-pot-stocks-dive/" target="_blank">planning an IPO</a>. A host of similar Canadian companies have already entered that country's stock market. </p><p>What a long, strange trip it's been. </p><p>As psychedelics are catapulted into the mainstream, the following eight books cover a range of related topics, including clinical research and anecdotal tales. Whether you're an advocate, a newbie, or just curious, these books provide a great education on the therapeutic and spiritual potential of the psychedelic ritual. </p>
Huxley on Psychedelics
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="860039e99016c9c251594b7ad04606db"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I6xp0XxVvOk?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><h4><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1786495503?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank">Am I Dreaming? The New Science of Consciousness and How Altered States Reboot the Brain</a> — James Kingsland</h4><p>Science journalist James Kingland takes a broad view of altered states of consciousness, including lucid dreaming, virtual reality, hypnotic trances, and microdosing (and larger doses) with psychedelics. His journeys with ayahuasca, LSD, and psilocybin recount intense personal experiences and are worthwhile for anyone interested in the science behind these substances. In the end, Kingsland reminds us the real work of any trip is done in sobriety.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"In some ways the trip is the easy bit. The hard work starts when you try to integrate the lessons you have learned into ordinary life."</p><h4><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015YMP9Z4?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank">Drugged: The Science and Culture Behind Psychotropic Drugs</a> — Richard J Miller</h4><p>Northwestern pharmacology professor Richard J Miller was exposed to the power of psychedelics while attending Woodstock. This "religious experience" inspired his career in pharmacology. He wanted to discover how substances can alter neurochemistry this profoundly. In "Drugged," Miller investigates a range of mind-changing substances, including coffee, opium, cannabis, and antidepressants. The chapters devoted to psychedelics provide a great overview of their clinical and spiritual applications. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The powerful effects of natural products such as <em>Amanita muscaria</em> or ergot suggest that they contain important chemical substances that, if isolated and understood from the structural point of view, might provide us with new insights into disease mechanisms or potential therapeutic opportunities for treating diseases." </p><h4><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1585421669?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank">Hallucinogens: A Reader </a>— Edited by Charles Grob</h4><p>UCLA Medical Center professor of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, Charles Grob, was the first researcher approved to clinically study MDMA and ayahuasca in the '90s. His pioneering (and continued) work in these fields has pushed the field of psychedelic research forward. This 2002 collection features the writings of Ralph Metzner, Terence McKenna, Huston Smith, Rick Strassman, and an interview with Dr. Andrew Weil. The book closes with three exceptional essays by Grob on the psychology of ayahuasca, the politics of MDMA research, and psychiatric research with hallucinogens.</p><p>As Weil says of his experiences with psychedelics,</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"It can give you a vision of possibility, but then it doesn't show you anything about maintaining that possibility. When the vision goes, the drug wears off, you are back where you were, you haven't learned anything but you have seen that something is possible. It is then up to you to figure out how to manifest the possibility. </p><h4><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0892819790?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank">Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers</a> — Richard Evans Schultes, Albert Hoffman, and Christian Ratsch</h4><p><strong></strong>This 1998 encyclopedia of psychedelic plants and fungi is the bible of cosmonauts. Everything is covered: history, culture, pharmacology, therapeutic applications, regional distinctions, chemistry, maps, and tons of photos. This resource should be in any serious cosmonaut's library. While grounded in research and respectful of the cultures that practice plant medicine, the trio of experts also understand their broader context.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The psychic changes and unusual states of consciousness induced by hallucinogens are so far removed from similarity with ordinary life that it is scarcely possible to describe them in a language of daily living. A person under the effects of a hallucinogen forsakes his familiar world and operates under other standards, in strange dimensions and in a different time."</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDI1MjY4MC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMzg4NTI0Mn0.RQrM6gXAQnTp3OnORYCoEBGbjURBokn3087h9fPJo8A/img.jpg?width=980" id="16186" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="49b39302865a91343241b9db84437677" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="William Seward Burroughs" />
American writer William Seward Burroughs (1914-1997), author of the cult novel "Naked Lunch."
Credit: Evening Standard/Getty Images
<h4><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1620556979?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank">Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocbyin, and Ayahuasca</a> — Dr. Richard Louis Miller</h4><p>Richard Louis Miller has been a clinical psychologist for over a half-century. He's also the host of a popular syndicated talk radio show, where he discusses health, mindfulness, and politics. This platform led him to explore psychedelics in a broad scientific and political context. </p><p>This book is a collection of interviews from his show, featuring David Nichols, Stanislav Grof, Charles Grob, Roland Griffiths, Amanda Feilding, and Dennis McKenna. They cover a range of issues, such as MDMA as a therapy for PTSD, the efficacy of the current psychiatric paradigm, and psilocybin in depression treatment. These invaluable conversations include this important insight from MAPS founder, Rick Doblin.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The fundamental problem with our drug policy is that it ascribes good and bad qualities to drugs themselves—"this is a good drug, that's a bad drug"—when really it's the relationship that you have with the drug that determines the value of it and whether it's harmful or helpful." </p><h4><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002LCSVB0?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank">The Doors of Perception</a> — Aldous Huxley</h4><p>Aldous Huxley's landmark 1954 book on mescaline remains fundamental to psychedelics advocates. Huxley wanted to experience mystic visions, a feat mescaline offered. Yet he never fell prey to the whims of useless metaphysics. This stunning essay details a political and spiritual thinker applying pragmatic as well as transcendental understandings of the psychedelic vision.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The other word to which mescalin admitted me was not the world of visions; it existed out there, in what I could see with my eyes open. The great change was in the realm of objective fact. What had happened to my subjective universe was relatively unimportant."</p><h4><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608682048?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank">The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness</a> — Alan Watts</h4><p>When you get the message, hang up the phone. That summates the British philosopher's take on psychedelics. While his lane was more meditation and philosophy than drugs—though he was known for enjoying a drink—Watts has plenty to offer on altered states. Watts applies a critical eye to the slacker looking to get off on drugs, yet also recognizes the essential need for connection to nature in an ever-speedy society—this book was published in 1962. That's the thing about reading Watts: it always catches up to you, wherever you happen to be, trademark humor and all.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"It is not really healthy for monks to practice fasting, and it was hardly hygienic for Jesus to get himself crucified, but these are risks taken in the course of spiritual adventures." </p><h4><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0872864480?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank">The Yage Letters Redux</a> — William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg</h4><p>This correspondence between two of the Beat generation's top writers is a gem. Burroughs spent months traveling around South America looking for the legendary ayahuasca (yage), long before private planes shuffled Silicon Valley execs to glamping retreats. That meant purchasing bootleg ayahuasca and having colorful run-ins with locals. Many remember Burroughs as a junkie—he had his moments—but the writer also meticulously documented the pharmacology of his drugs. Kerouac owned the road, but Burroughs claimed the sky.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Yage is not like anything else. This is not the electric euphoria of coke which activates the channels of pure pleasure in the brain, the sexless, timeless, negative pleasure of opium. It is closer to hashish than to any other drug. There are also similarities between Peyote and yage. But while hashish intensifies all sensual impressions, yage distorts or shuts down ordinary sensations, transporting you to another level of experience."<br></p><p><br></p><p><em><em>W</em><em>hen you buy something through a link in this article or from <a href="https://shop.bigthink.com/" rel="dofollow" target="_self">our shop</a>, Big Think earns a small commission. Thank you for supporting our team's work.</em></em></p><p>--</p><p><em>Stay in touch with Derek on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/derekberes" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DerekBeresdotcom" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://derekberes.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Substack</a>. His next book is</em> "<em>Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy."</em></p>
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David Epstein: Thinking tools for 'wicked' problems
Join the lauded author of Range in conversation with best-selling author and poker pro Maria Konnikova!
04 August, 2020
UPDATE: Unfortunately, Malcolm Gladwell was not able to make the live stream due to scheduling issues. Fortunately, David Epstein was able to jump in at a moment's notice. We hope you enjoy this great yet unexpected episode of Big Think Live. Our thanks to David and Maria for helping us deliver a show, it is much appreciated.
<p><br>--<br><br>In this Big Think Live session, <strong>Malcolm Gladwell</strong> and host <strong>Maria Konnikova</strong> will explore the quirks of the human mind, the ins and outs of writing about psychology, and the nature of storytelling through the framework of Gladwell's podcast series <a href="http://revisionisthistory.com/seasons" target="_blank">Revisionist History</a> and his latest book <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316478520?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank">Talking to Strangers</a></em>. <br>
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Ask your questions for Malcolm Gladwell during the audience Q&A!
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<strong>Join the stream at 12 pm EDT on Tuesday, August 4.</strong>
</p><h2>STREAMING LINKS</h2><p>
<strong><a href="https://edge.bigthink.com/live_streams/106" target="_self">Big Think Edge</a> | <a href="https://youtu.be/_jb0pM9FrZk" target="_blank">YouTube</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom/posts/10157549491758527" target="_blank">Facebook</a></strong>
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<strong>Malcolm Gladwell</strong> is the author of five <em>New York Times</em> bestsellers: <em>The Tipping Point</em>, <em>Blink</em>, <em>Outliers</em>, <em>What the Dog Saw</em>, and <em>David and Goliath</em>. His newest book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316478520?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank"><em>Talking to Strangers</em></a> (2019), is a darker-than-usual look at the miscommunications and assumptions that occur when we interact with people we don't know, told through historical case studies like Sandra Bland, Bernie Madoff, and Adolf Hitler. Gladwell is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, an audio content company that produces the podcasts <a href="http://revisionisthistory.com/seasons" target="_blank">Revisionist History</a>, which reconsiders things both overlooked and misunderstood, and <a href="https://brokenrecordpodcast.com/" target="_blank">Broken Record</a>, where he, Rick Rubin, and Bruce Headlam interview musicians across a wide range of genres. Gladwell has been included in the TIME 100 Most Influential People list and touted as one of Foreign Policy's Top Global Thinkers.
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<strong>Maria Konnikova</strong> is the author of two <em>New York Times</em> bestsellers: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143109871?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank"><em>The Confidence Game</em></a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/014312434X?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank"><em>Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes</em></a>. Her new book is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/052552262X?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank"><em>The Biggest Bluff</em></a> (June 2020). While researching <em>The Biggest Bluff</em>, journalist Konnikova became an international poker champion and the winner of over $300,000 in tournament earnings—and inadvertently turned into a professional poker player. She is a regular contributing writer for <em>The New Yorker</em>, and her writing has been featured in Best American Science and Nature Writing and has been translated into over twenty languages. Maria also hosts the podcast <a href="http://thegriftpodcast.com/" target="_blank">The Grift</a> from Panoply Media, a show that explores con artists and the lives they ruin, and is currently a visiting fellow at NYU's School of Journalism. She graduated from Harvard University and received her PhD in psychology from Columbia University.
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