Is Elon Musk using psychedelic drugs? If not, should he?

 Is Elon Musk using psychedelic drugs? If not, should he?

By Hal Brown

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Psychedelic artwork by the New Illuminati, CC 2.0

I looked at RawStory this morning and saw this on the subscription RawStory+ which I don't subscribe to. 

The article is by Bobby Azarian is a cognitive neuroscientist affiliated with George Mason University and a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, BBC Future, Scientific American, Slate, The Huffington Post, Quartz, and others. His research has been published in journals such as Cognition & Emotion and Human Brain Mapping.  Visit his website at www.bobbyazarian.com.

Even though to read this article from the RawStory website you need RawStory+,  you can read it without a subscription if you go the RawStory Twitter page here.

Excerpts:

• Well, as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. The Elon I used to know and root for is not the man I see today. I see a person who is out for revenge. I also see someone who is behaving in a way that is increasing division and political polarization.
• ... the aim of this article is to cause a shift in how Elon sees the world, such that he is inspired to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. If a new perspective on life and the universe can convince him that the human progress he wants to achieve requires unification, it could motivate him to use his causal power to help bring us together under a common goal and a shared worldview — one that aligns our interests.
• The old saying, “United we stand, divided we fall,” tells us that doing so is not a choice, but a matter of survival. Overcoming our shared existential threats will ultimately require the full causal power of the collective human network.
• But for Elon to have the sort of awakening that motivates someone to adopt a radical new perspective and approach to doing things, he must be open to undergoing such a transformation. Science has shown that psychedelics — like LSD, DMT, and psilocybin (the psychoactive ingredient in “magic mushrooms”) — have the power to prime a person’s mind for exactly this type of transformation.

Azarian references this article which shows how taking LSD and similar drugs can increase empathy and political perspectives:

I think Musk has proved himself to be in a state of empathy deficiency. How he got there at some point in his psychological development is impossible to know. Perhaps his being on the autism spectrum has something to do this this. Consider:

What makes all this more than an excuse to suggest just that Musk needs an assist to enhance his empathy and taking psychedelics might be the key to increasing his moral and prosocial behavior, thus lessening or eliminating his immoral and anti-social behavior, is that Musk himself has promoted the use of psychedelics.

Click above thread

Here's another article: 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk Believes Psychedelics Are Better Than Pharmaceutical Medications

Going beyond Musk to other politicians who not only lack empathy but seem incapable of it the politician who comes to mind is Donald Trump, but clearly Ron DeSantis is also right up there. What we see in all three of these is an element of sadism and cruelty. The cruelty of Trump and DeSantis is evident in how they treated people trying to enter the United States at the Mexican border.

Trump is in my opinion and that of many other psychotherapists a malignant narcissist. I think DeSantis probably fits into this category as well. Musk is different in that while he is narcissistic he also is on the spectrum.

None of these people are about to get any kind of therapy, let alone psychedelic therapy.

Addendum: My state has just legalized the therapeutic use of psilocybin (aka Magic mushrooms).

I welcome comments to any of my blogs. Even though this page has a comment feature very few people ever use it. The best way to comment is to do so on Mastodon (but you have to join first) or on Facebook if have a page here.

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Tales told by two idiots full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

Tales told by two idiots full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

By Hal Brown 

Archives on Right >

Posting, i.e. Tooting, now on Mastodon - see right column there

DonkeyHotey, background from InPixio

One of the two specimens shown above in the DonkeyHotey caricatures was a threat to American democracy. Hopefully we will soon know how close he came to turning our country to a fascist dictatorship and whether justice will prevail so he pays a price for this.

With Trump, putting him in  certain perspective, he's a tragic comic figure. He's a pure idiot who stumbled into a position of power by malignant guile and grift which was enabled by the gullibility and fears of his base. Add luck to that and we have the spectacle of a grandiose narcissist that began his presidential campaign riding down a golden escalator being cheered on by people who were paid to be there and who survived the "I could grab them by the pussy" incident. 

All this could have been the subject of the exploits of comic strip character.

The other, who like Trump belongs on a petri dish in a CDC lab where highly contagious microbes are studied is Elon Mush (typo or Freudian slip) Musk. He's not a garden-variety idiot. Rather, he is a rare breed because he's an idiot savant with a reported 155 IQ. 

When it comes to having a human version of hoof-in-mouth disease (which can be fatal in animals) he's just as much of an idiot as Trump. Both have recently engaged in a self-defeating crime spree against themselves. Anyone reading this follows the news so I don't have to list what they been doing.

Giving credit to caricaturist DonkeyHotey, a name meant to be pronounced Don Quixote, for leading me to think of this comparison: both Musk and Trump remind me of the Cervantes character:

From Wikipedia:

In the course of their (Don Quixote and Sancho Panza) travels, the protagonists meet innkeepers, prostitutes, goat-herders, soldiers, priests, escaped convicts and scorned lovers. The aforementioned characters sometimes tell tales that incorporate events from the real world. Their encounters are magnified by Don Quixote's imagination into chivalrous quests. Don Quixote's tendency to intervene violently in matters irrelevant to himself, and his habit of not paying debts, result in privations, injuries, and humiliations (with Sancho often the victim).

Trump has had several "squires" (aka sycophants) who we could say have been akin in their loyalty to him Sancho Panza was to Don Quixote. Musk has none. The reason for this difference between the two of them is fodder for psychohistorians. 

I'd hazard a guess that Musk never mastered the ability to put aside his obnoxious authoritarianism with people working under him. Trump has the need to be worshiped up close and it appears that Musk only is comfortable wielding power without letting anyone get close to him. It may be possible to gain some insight into his personalities by analyzing his three marriages and why the first two ended in divorce. From YaHoo News:

Excerpt: His first marriage was to author Justine Wilson in 2000, ending in an acrimonious divorce in 2008. In an article for Marie Claire in 2010, she claimed: “Elon's judgement overruled mine, and he was constantly remarking on the ways he found me lacking.

"‘I am your wife,’ I told him repeatedly, ‘not your employee.’ ‘If you were my employee,’ he said just as often, ‘I would fire you.’”

From Cervantes to Shakespeare's Macbeth and the title the of my blog today. Here's the actual version of the altered quote in context:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

 I can't envision Trump or Musk uttering something like this on their deathbeds. They are both as shallow as the puddle left on the street after a light summer drizzle which will fast evaporate when the hot sun comes out. 

Deep people, those we consider to be self-aware and introspective, live their lives informed by knowing they are mortal. They consider that when they die their legacy will be the good that they have done for their children and for those who were in a position to do so, for society.

Addendum:

This excerpt is relevant to today's blog:

Donald Trump may be very wealthy, but he's rapidly turning into a sad and pathetic figure. According to this report in the Washington Post, the former president tends to wander aimlessly around Mar-a-Lago, bored and lethargic, depending on his attendants to call around to allies to ask them to deliver "affirmations" and cheer him up. One former adviser characterized his new life as sad, saying he wanted to replicate the grandeur of the White House but it's more like "a Barbie Dream House miniature." Ouch.

This is not a picture of someone gearing up for an arduous presidential campaign. It's a picture of an old man trying to grapple with the fact that he's retired and doesn't have much of a purpose anymore.

Musk and Trump vying to win the Gold Cup for Chaos Creation

 Musk and Trump vying to win the Gold Cup for Chaos Creation

By Hal Brown

Follow the latest news about Mastodon here

Archives on Right >

Why I was banned from Daily Kos

Posting now on Mastodon - see right column there 

Caricatures by DonkeyHotey

As I finished writing this and was watching MSNBC reporting on what Musk was doing on Twitter Mastodon was mentioned at least 10 times.

I think it was Jonathan Lemire on MSNBC this morning who said you can take any story about how Elon Musk or Donald Trump, through aspects of their personality, thrive on creating chaos and substitute one name for the other and the story would still be true. 

Yesterday I wrote about Trump and Musk here:

Click image to enlarge

I wrote about how the media normalizes megalomania and other psychopathology here so I won't cover the same ground again.

I think that over the past week we have both Musk and Trump to thank for making things better in a sense since they, for want of a better metaphor, have gone from being a "mere" train wrecks to being train wrecks where the toxic and flammable tank cars exploded engulfing everything around them in flames and deadly chemicals.

With the World Cup final game approaching I wondered it it could end in a tie. I looked it up (here)

World Cup games can no longer end in a tie now that the tournament has advanced to the Round of 16. Draws are only permitted in the group stage where there is a point system used to determine who advances out of the group. If a game ends in a tie at the end of regulation time, the match goes into extra time with two 15 minute periods. There is no golden goal so teams are guaranteed to play both periods for a total of 30 minutes plus stoppage time. Here’s how FIFA explains the “overtime” rules.

Between Musk with his making the news for kicking journalists off Twitter and Trump and his card con it seems like they are in the extra time part of the World Cup for Chaos game.

Musk gets a goal, Trump gets a goal, Musk, not to be outplayed, gets a goal, Trump comes up with an insane kick and scores, and it goes on and on.

I tried to figure out (here) what would happen if a World Cup final game remained tied indefinitely. From all I could tell it would continue until one team broke the tie.

This could mean that a game would end when enough players died. In a one on one game Musk has the edge because he's younger and presumably likely to live longer than Trump. Not to wear out the metaphor, but if US marshals came to arrest Trump I think he would forfeit.

Addendum:

Here's a recent toot I made on Mastodon:

I was writing about Elon Musk being nuts and then Trump posted a Superman video

I was writing about Elon Musk being nuts and then Trump posted a Superman video

Another example of the

Media making megalomania mainstream

by Hal Brown

Follow the latest news about Mastodon here

Archives on Right >

Why I was banned from Daily Kos

Posting now on Mastodon - see right column there 

If I posted this I'd be a candidate for a rubber room at Bellevue:

These are available for free.

.

As an early member of Duty2Warn and a retired psychotherapist I have written a lot about Trump's psychopathology and very little about Elon Musk's because the former was a danger to democracy and the later I viewed as a sideshow even though he got tons of media attention and it become evident how deranged he was.

Update: The idiocy of this is:

"MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT! My official Donald Trump Digital Trading Card collection is here!" the ex-president posted on his Truth Social account. "These limited edition cards feature amazing ART of my Life & Career! Collect all of your favorite Trump Digital Trading Cards, very much like a baseball card, but hopefully much more exciting. Go to collecttrumpcards.com/ & GET YOUR CARDS NOW! Only $99 each!

Presumably the worthless Trump University issued a diploma on paper to their grifted graduates, some of whom paid $35,000 for the Trump Gold Elite" package, which promised personal mentorship from experienced instructors "handpicked by Trump that would make them rich. Sycophant suckers in the card con don't even get something they can frame or stick on the refrigerator.

People are posting images like this from a tooter on Mastodon

There are articles all over the Internet mocking him. Hear' a good one from Steve Benen on MSNBC who wonders if Trump is really serious about running for president.

Even Fox New news is treating this like it shows Trump to be a fool: 

Trump roasted after 'major announcement' turns out to be digital trading cards

This is how the Murdoch owned NY Post put it:

The 45th president’s new NFT* collection depicts — who else? — himself in various forms of, well, highly virtual reality.

Trump is featured with a chiseled chest wearing a cape, triumphantly riding an elephant and sporting a dapper James Bond-style tuxedo in the cards, according to his announcement on Truth Social.

“Hello everyone, this is Donald Trump, hopefully your favorite president of all time — better than Lincoln, better than Washington, with an important announcement,” Trump said in a tone-deaf video linked to the post. “I’m doing my first official Donald J. Trump NFT collection.”

The former leader of the free world then urged fans to buy the so-called Donald Trump digital trading tokens — which he described as “much like a baseball card” — for “only” $99 each.

*A non-fungible token is a : a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied 

The word I am reading the most frequently to describe this grift is cringeworthy.

HERE'S MY ORIGINAL BLOG STORY

I wasn't planning to write a blog story about Elon Musk today. I just put together an image that I posted on Mastodon for this toot:

Click above to enlarge image

By now if you have been paying attention you know Trump is teasing an announcement with a video on Truth Social showing him opening his shirt to reveal a Superman t-shirt. On "Morning Joe" Joe  reminded viewers that Trump had wanted to open his shirt to show a Superman t-shirt underneath when he left Walter Reed after he had Covid. 

Someone apparently didn't think this was a smart thing to do when so many people were dying of the disease and they managed to dissuade him. This was reported on in the media, The Murdoch NY Post for example.

Yesterday my favorite columnist, Heather "Digby" Parton, wrote 

Elon is the new Trump: But how long can he hold the No. 1 Troll title? on Salon

Thought bubbles added

Today Igor Derysh wrote, also on Salon: 

Free speech warrior Elon Musk bans, vows “legal action” against student for tweeting public info

Musk is so committed to free speech he wants to use the power of the state to suppress public info about him

This is from The Intercept: HOW ELON MUSK SAYS HE CATCHES LEAKERS AT HIS COMPANIES - 

Musk has boasted of entrapping a Tesla leaker by watermarking emails, and he is threatening any dissidents still at Twitter.

In Musk and Trump we have two headline hogging people who meet the criteria for being a malignant narcissist. The malignant part is being sociopathic. The narcissism part means that they are so full of themselves that they often behave in ways that are self-defeating. 

Musk and Trump are grandiose narcissists whose lifeblood is getting attention. They have no deeply held political beliefs. They have no empathy for those who they hurt . They will dominate the news for at least the short-term future. 

This will not please people like Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Lauren Boebert (story), and Louie Gohmert (story) who hope to have the media spotlight on them when the new Congress convenes.

In the greater scheme of things Elon Musk is irrelevant though his craving for attention has been correctly compared to a toddler's tantrum the same way Trump's antics have.

Trump is only truly relevant in the longer term if he runs for president either as a Republican or an Independent.

Yesterday I wrote in my blog about DeSantis that Trump would be the easier candidate for Biden (or whichever Democrat runs) to beat than the other Republican's who have been mentioned as likely GOP candidates. I wrote:

There is one outcome we can hope for, though we can't to anything to make it happen. This is that Trump loses the primary, whether to DeSantis or anybody else, and decides to run as an Independent. His psychopathology strongly suggests he would do this. He doesn't have any loyalty to the GOP or anyone in it with the exception of his dwindling number of sycophants. 

Doing this keeps him in the public eye until Tuesday, Nov. 7th 2023 when he splits the vote assuring an easy Biden win. He can have his rallies and spew his hate speech and paranoia to his cheering cult.

Ye got media attention for his ludicrous announcement that he's a candidate. 

There's nothing to keep Elon from doing the same thing. He isn't running for president, at least not yet. After all if Ye and do it and Musk knows he isn't the brightest bulb in the pack. Why shouldn't the richest person in the world who could buy Trump many times over and who has reported 155 IQ do the same thing?

"Elect Elon" isn't a bad alliteration but "Make America Musk" might appeal to him as a slogan for a Twitter blue baseball cap.

One person train wrecks and a huge traffic pileup

One person train wrecks and a huge traffic pileup

By Hal Brown

Archives on Right >

Why I was banned from Daily Kos

 

Is it any coincidence that all of the people who have become one person train wrecks and the large group that has become a huge highway traffic pileup are Republicans? I can't think of a Democrat but would be happy if readers can find one to add to my list.

In a quick glance at RawStory this morning I saw these articles:

The first one is about the coming battle in the House for who will be Speaker. I consider this just the beginning of what will be a huge traffic pileup for the House GOP as they begin their investigations into Hunter Biden, who everyone has heard of but few care about, to Alejandro Mayorkas who nobody has heard of but will once the hearings start.  Their eventual goal may be to try to impeach President Biden, an effort that might be successful in the Republican controlled House but will go nowhere in the Senate. 

What it all adds up to is a gridlocked (to use another traffic term) legislative agenda in the House which you better believe Democrats will publicize to their advantage when popular bills go down to defeat.

The individuals who have the most ginormous train wrecks Donald Trump and Elon Musk who are the most publicized. The lack of judgment and self-defeating grandiose narcissism of these two is 

If Herschel Walker loses he will be added to the list. Hell, if he wins, covering his putting his foot in his mouth as a Senator will prove irresistible to media.

Other train wrecks who make the news who come to mind are Kari Lake (read story) and Ye (who is apparently going to run for president with 

Nick Fuentes and Milo Yiannopoulos helping in his campaign ). 

I predict that there will be many opportunities for the likes of Jim Jordan (read yesterday's blog story about the soon to be chair of the GOP Judiciary Committee) and other House Republicans, especially those in the Freedom Caucus who crave attention like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Matt Goetz, to vie for the dubious distinction of becoming headline grabbing train wreck of the day or week.

The reason some of the individuals who will crash and burn will be due to calculated attempts to gain notoriety and to stand out in a crowded field. Keep my highway metaphor, compare it to someone driving 100 MPH in attempt to beat everyone else to a destination.

Most of them also just happen to meet the many of the clinical criteria for having a narcissistic personality disorder.  This is from The Mayo Clinic:

Symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder and how severe they are can vary. People with the disorder can:

• Have an unreasonably high sense of self-importance and require constant, excessive admiration.
• Feel that they deserve privileges and special treatment.
• Expect to be recognized as superior even without achievements.
• Make achievements and talents seem bigger than they are.
• Be preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate.
• Believe they are superior to others and can only spend time with or be understood by equally special people.
• Be critical of and look down on people they feel are not important.
• Expect special favors and expect other people to do what they want without questioning them.
• Take advantage of others to get what they want.
• Have an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others.
• Be envious of others and believe others envy them.
• Behave in an arrogant way, brag a lot and come across as conceited.
• Insist on having the best of everything — for instance, the best car or office.

At the same time, people with narcissistic personality disorder have trouble handling anything they view as criticism. They can:

• Become impatient or angry when they don't receive special recognition or treatment.
• Have major problems interacting with others and easily feel slighted.
• React with rage or contempt and try to belittle other people to make themselves appear superior.
• Have difficulty managing their emotions and behavior.
• Experience major problems dealing with stress and adapting to change.
• Withdraw from or avoid situations in which they might fail.
• Feel depressed and moody because they fall short of perfection.
• Have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, humiliation and fear of being exposed as a failure.

My modified migration to Mastodon

My migration to Mastodon

By Hal Brown

Archives on Right >

Why I was banned from Daily Kos

Update: Dec. 12, 2022

This is what Twitter is doing to those who tweet a link to Mastodon 

This is what someone posted on Mastodon:

If you’re wondering about Mastodon’s impact, Twitter is now automatically marking links to mastodon as “sensitive” (aka dangerous) and forcing users who get them to “appeal” the claim. In case Elon didn’t seem desperate enough for you already…

Below is a screen grab of what they tweeted with their identity blocked out by me.

Those who want to view or join Mastodon can do so at web addresses for Mastodon servers including these https://mastodon.social/explore

https://masto.ai/explore

https://mastodon.world/explore

https://mastodon.online/explore

https://universeodon.com/explore

Anyone who wants to promote Mastodon on Twitter may be able to avoid their algorithm tagging their tweet by 1) not using the word Mastodon 2) trying to outfox them by tweeting something like "I have a new home." 

Original Story

This is what my Mastodon profile looks like:

In case you haven't heard, Twitter is in trouble. Two alternative sites I joined are Tribel and Mastodon. I will focus on Mastodon here because I find it to be the most engaging  and interesting of the two.  People I respect and am familiar with like Robert Reich, George Takei, Kathy Griffin,  Dean Obeidallah, and Joy Ann Reid are posting there.

As far as I'm concerned if Kathy Griffin was the only celebrity posting there I would be hooked on the platform. I don't think I ever missed an episode of her "My Life On The D List" TV series.

She recently made the news by being suspended from Twitter by Musk:

He then reinstated her the next week:

Many people post under their real names as I do. A number of them would not be familiar to most people but have profiles on Wikipedia, for example Jennifer Taub, Matt Blaze, Jeff Jarvis, Tanja Bueltmann, and T. Ryan Gregory. 

 Stephen Fry posts there. His name might sound familiar.

He's the English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director and writer known for among other things playing Jeeves in Jeeves and Wooster.

If you are curious about the background of someone who posted (or "toots") there you can click on their name. Most of them are candid about their backgrounds.

I had a seven part dialogue with one poster who actually had business dealing with him about whether Elon Musk was autist or not. 

I don't know how many there are but there's a large group of former Twitter employees who post on Mastodon.

There's a news section which highlights articles being discussed on Mastodon:

If you are curious enough by now, you can try Mastodon out by joining here: 

If not read more about it. Mastodon has been in the news. For example, click images to read articles:

Many users of Mastodon and Tribel have closed their Twitter accounts entirely. I haven't because I like to monitor what is going on there and keep an eye on what Elon Musk is doing. At resenting he's using polls to determine whether or not to reinstate banned accounts. This is from HUFFPOST: 

Oh Look, Elon Musk Is Letting More Banned Accounts Back On Twitter

Chief Twit rules by polling now.

I couldn't resist putting on a reply to the most recent tweet from earlier this morning:

For those of you who don't mind clicking on Twitter you can see the replies to his tweet here.

It's highly unlikely he'll see my reply considering there were over 30,000 replies, but perhaps a few people will. I think if you use an illustration more people may look at what you tweet. It took a brief web search to find these two drawings.