Posthuman Blues

I've been meaning to write about dreams and Kenneth Ring's notion of the "encounter-prone personality." Ring is a proponent of the "imaginal realm," an interzone between empirical reality and the imagination. I'd like to know if access to the imaginal hinges on endogenous DMT and, if so, whether psychological factors play a role in its production. I'm increasingly swayed by the idea that normal waking existence is far less significant (at least to the unconscious) than we generally assume.

And I'm interested in the apparent dearth of suburban folklore. If mythology functions as a social utility, the sterile milieu of contemporary "stripmall culture" heralds a new relationship between ourselves and all things "imaginal." We could be losing -- or at the very least suppressing -- some vital archetypal dialogue, effectively bulldozing the collective unconscious in favor of more Starbucks drive-thrus and Home Depots.

World folklore is inundated by accounts of nonhuman intelligences whose machinations penetrate and underscore our own. Recklessly driving such beings to virtual extinction might leave irreparable scars on the psychic landscape. Or it may give them reason to fight back.