[FRIAM] Narrative bending

[uǝlƃ ☣]

In light of the news from Denver: https://ballotpedia.org/Denver,_Colorado,_Initiated_Ordinance_301,_Psilocybin_Mushroom_Initiative_(May_2019)

And coming off our recent discussions of phase transitions, narrativity, experts' tendency to dig in under failure, etc, I found this essay interesting:

https://aeon.co/ideas/how-jungs-collective-unconscious-inspired-alcoholics-anonymous

> Wilson (who was receiving the ‘Belladonna Cure’ at Towns) reported that the room lit up with a great white light and he experienced a frightening ecstasy. He described ‘a new world of consciousness’ and of ‘God and His world’. Following discharge from the hospital, he never drank again.

Of course, at least here in Oregon, our liberalism is being exploited by hucksters posing as alcoholism treatment specialists. If you're arrested for DUI, the court forces you to pay $$ to a treatment program, which seems chock full of sleazy people making money off others' misfortune. Many of these victims are low income and *must* have a car in order to keep their job. The sleazy huckster "counselors" then foist Alcoholics Anonymous on these people, relying on the heartfelt anecdotes of the ex-alcoholics who comprise the majority of the staff. 

My favorite mathematician (Raymond Smullyan) has a good argument that Christianity, absent all the sleazy stuff associated with it, is a defensibly spiritual conception (if you subtract Hell from the mythology). And I buy his interpretation. So I'm not a fan of trashing Christianity. However, if these sleazy court-appointed ... [ahem] ... therapists would ... were competent enough to ... talk about the deep psychological changes that have been (scientifically) demonstrated to change one's behavior, and presented AA as one (questionable) method by which to achieve a spiritual experience capable of such deep changes, then I'd be OK with it.

But they do not, for the most part.

Luckily, more reasonable voices are getting louder: https://psi-2020.org/

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