Once you open the doors of perception...

The Doors of Perception is book in which Aldous Huxley expertly records his experiences with mescalin. Huxley describes a loss of concept and the profoundness that comes with pure perception. He gains a greater understanding into the origins of religion and is able to recognize the relentless reality which plagues schizophrenics. Without an escape from reality, we literally lose our minds. The concepts, symbols, language, etc. we develop provide a necessary vacation from the overwhelming nature of reality.

The following quote comes from the section of the book, after the account of his experiment, where Huxley reflects on the greater implications of mind-expanding experiences.

"That humanity at large will ever be able to dispense with Artificial Paradises seems very unlikely. Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul. Art and religion, carnivals and saturnalia, dancing and listening to oratory—all these have served, in H. G. Wells's phrase, as Doors in the Wall. "

It seems to me, that now more then ever the human race is finding more and more solace in 'Artificial Paradises'. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. Our mind developed in such a way as to protect us from the harshness of reality. It seems only natural that as the development of technology continues our evolution, we begin to supplement the distractive powers of the mind. Music, movies, video games, virtual reality, etc. are increasingly more common in technologically advanced socieities. Taken to the extreme, we will one day be able to completely artificially recreate everything the mind needs to be content, and there we be no reason to do anything unpleasurable (all actual necessities - food, water, etc. - will be taken care of automatically). It is at this point where societies will cease to care about reproduction, and the human race will cease to exist... at least physically.

Below is a scan of an article discussing the previous viewpoint in reference to why we have yet to encounter any aliens. The article was in the April-May 2006 issue of Seed magazine. Seed tackles scientific issues with a political spin. It is usually worth the read. Cheers.