me:me sous rature's Acceptance Remarks 

“We would like you to consider applying for our Summer Fellow position…” the email flickered on my aging screen. Could this be for real? Consider? How could I turn that down? 

Salutations cognitosophers! I am most delighted and excited to accept the Alchemind Society’s 2002 Summer Fellow position. It is a gift that I shall unwrap with gusto as my work progresses. It has always seemed a little odd to me that the desire to take an interest in one’s existential reality, especially when combined with an attempt to engage in it, is considered by so many to be subversive–surely an active disinterest in reality performed under the guise of a heavily practiced indifference is the most subversive thing possible… 

In the ever more distant past, I experienced the stifling atmosphere of British boarding (aka ‘boring’) school life. Dissenting opinions merited severe castigation, and, to a developing teenaged mind, this seemed unbearable–I did not even like the person they were so intent on manipulating me into being…another “brick in the wall,” if you will…  Although I now retrospectively realize that the gravity of my situation did not even compare to what is inflicted upon large portions of the world’s population, it did at least inspire in me a deep-rooted sense of the importance of the fundamental right to freedom of thought, speech, and expression. 

A strong dose of philosophy and anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada enhanced my interest and involvement in issues pertaining to cognitive liberty. Fortunate enough to be one of the few undergraduates given permission to propose, design, and run their own for-credit course (“Cognitive Liberty: Psychedelic Perspectives”) in a pilot project at the university, I rapidly came to see that most people take their freedoms for granted, often to the point of failing to notice when those freedoms are being encroached upon. Alchemind is an incredibly vital organization, most necessary in a new millennium where a world reeling from a perceived attack against its freedoms ironically limits and erodes those freedoms of its own choice, under the pretense of preserving and increasing liberty.

Some say it is too late to turn the tide back but, as we all know, tides flow in two directions. Defeatism, of course, is the most crucial weapon in the arsenal of those one fears, and it costs them nothing. As a dynamic group of people interested in speeding up the reversal of this tide, so that we may perhaps see significant change in our own lifetimes, the Alchemind Society is an expansive network of people determined not to give in to the diet of patently absurd ideological positions we are fed on a daily basis.

I am therefore most honored to have been asked by the Society to develop a course that will enable interested persons to raise the topic of cognitive liberty on their campuses in an intellectually challenging and rewarding manner. The opportunity to have a positive effect on the world we inhabit should never be turned down. 

Consider?

me:me sous rature
(aka. Mark Bryan)
Summer Fellow 2002