Mind Meld 24 | Tales of a Technodelic Utopia with R.U. SIRIUS

Featured art credit – Akimov Mikhail

Photo credit – EVE BERNI

R. U. Sirius (Ken Goffman) a writer, editor and musician. He is best known for co-founding Mondo 2000 magazine and penning books like Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House.

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Discussions about the future are almost always framed in terms of a tug of war for tomorrow between the forces of utopia and dystopia. Prognosticators love to promise us either the apocalypse or immortality, but when have things ever never been that cut and dry? For a more realistic vision, you’ve got to leave room for plenty of gray area (though I’d love to believe we’re about to come to our senses, cast aside the fossil fuels, build forests of organic vertical farm-filled skyscrapers, make art all day and drink ayahuasca all night).

Despite the nuance and uncertainty of it all, there are a few technodelic unicorns out there with a novel and compelling view of where we’re collectively headed. One of them is most definitely our partner in this mind meld, author and countercultural creative, R.U. Sirius (Ken Goffman). He’s written books like Transcendence, the Disinformation Encyclopedia of Transhumanism and the Singularity, Timothy Leary’s Trip Thru Time andCounterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House. R.U. was also co-founder and Editor In Chief of the far ahead of it’s time, Mondo 2000 Magazine.

Musings in this mind meld :

• Are we headed for dystopia with sprinklings of utopia, or the other way around?
• How has the “future” turned out to be different from what RU thought it would be?
• Ken’s journey from the 1960’s to cyperpunk 
• Change is usually more jagged and gradual than we’d like to imagine 
• For real progress, powerful technologies need to coalescence together
• Is the cyberpunk vision future is coming to fruition? 
• Mondo 2000 – the Jetsons on DMT
• Black Mirror’s creepily accurate dystopian images of the future 
• Could psychedelics fill in the spiritual and existential gaps in a transhumanist future? 
• Is “Big Pharma” poised to cash in on psychedelic medicine?
• The noble and important work of MAPS 
• Why shouldn’t we be focusing on expanding consciousness along with technology and lifespan? 
• Humans are learning to parse information better and absorbing more from less
• Where are the modern-day heroes of counterculture pushing forward thinking and creativity?
• Is there such a thing as a guru?
• Too many people are letting splintered, shallow information make up their philosophical worldview without a practice 
• Going back to classic philosophers for knowledge and solid logic
• Reality and the future are always more muddled than you think they’ll be