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Zusammenfassung von Stealing Fire

Name: Stealing Fire
Rating: 3.9 (154 reviews)
Author: Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal

Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal

How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work

3.9 (154 Bewertungen)

28 Min.

Worum geht es in Stealing Fire?

Stealing Fire (2017) explores the controversial and exciting pursuit of altered states of consciousness. From tech entrepreneurs to BASE jumpers, meditators to festival-goers, it takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the revolutionary nonconformists trying to change the way they experience the world.

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What’s in it for me? Discover how new tools can alter your consciousness and boost performance.

Have you ever wondered how extreme athletes stay in the zone during their death-defying feats? Or how units of Navy SEALs can make collective split-second decisions during a mission without uttering a word?

Whether through the thrill of the game or years of training, high-performing individuals have found ways to achieve a state of mind that the authors refer to as ecstasis – a Greek word which roughly translates to “standing beyond oneself.”

In these blinks, we’ll examine how some people have achieved states of ecstasis in the past, and we’ll encounter new research and technology aimed to make ecstasis accessible to everyone – without the risks of skydiving, hallucinogenic drugs, or long decades spent in a monastery.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

what surfing and MDMA have in common;
why a data visualization expert in Jalalabad trades beer for information; and
how dolphins get stoned.

The quest for non-ordinary states of consciousness is thousands of years old.

Nearly two and a half thousand years ago, Alcibiades, a young Greek politician and army general, threw an unforgettable party at his Athens villa. To get his guests in the mood, he served up a special drink called kykeon, which was normally reserved for a select few of Greece’s elite.

See, this mind-expanding drink was meant to be part of an exclusive, nine-day ritual held each year called the Eleusinian Mysteries. Alcibiades wasn’t invited, but he managed to steal some kykeon anyway to ensure his own soirée was memorably wild.

Rumors spread. Alcibiades fled Athens and was sentenced to death in absentia for blaspheming the secrets of Eleusis. But just like the Greek myth of Prometheus, who was punished eternally for stealing fire from the gods of Olympus, Alcibiades’s fate didn’t deter those who came after him from seeking out ways to alter their consciousness. After all, he did get away with it.

The key message here? The quest for non-ordinary states of consciousness is thousands of years old.

We don’t know exactly what it was in kykeon that gave its drinkers such spiritual, cathartic experiences. One theory is that the barley in it was contaminated with the ergot fungus – the same one used to make LSD today. Regardless, this type of ecstasis clearly wasn’t intended for the plain Janes and average Joes of ancient Greece.

Today, twenty-first-century Prometheans are changing that, but their own versions of kykeon take many forms.

The authors met with all sorts of individuals – from military personnel and elite athletes to tech entrepreneurs and health-care providers. Their research showed that across the board, people are seeking ways to improve performance by changing their sense of reality and achieving some form of ecstasis.

Trial lawyers have experimented with psychopharmaceutical drugs. Military officers have spent weeks at meditation retreats. And stock traders on Wall Street have shocked their brains into ecstasis with electrodes.

When you add up the money we spend trying to get out of our own heads, you end up with an Altered States Economy of about $4 trillion annually. This includes legal substances like alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine; illicit drugs like cocaine, methamphetamines, and heroin; and pharmaceuticals, psychiatric counseling, video games, action sports, music, and film. Throw in pornography and social media, and there you have it.

But how well do we really understand the mechanics of ecstasis?

We know flow when we see it, but training ecstasis is still a bit of a mystery.

In 2004, the US Navy’s SEAL Team Six was in Afghanistan on top secret business. Their mission? To capture an Al-Qaeda operative known as Al-Wazu.

Al-Wazu had broken out of an American detention center and was recruiting new members for Osama Bin Laden. The SEALs needed Al-Wazu alive; he’d be a valuable intelligence source. They had to act fast, carefully, and silently – all as a team. They found Al-Wazu in his compound, armed but asleep. He was captured without anyone firing a single shot.

MDMA, surfing, and meditation can help people with PTSD.

The Navy SEALs are just one example of a group that uses what we currently know about non-ordinary states to explore their practical potential.

To make sense of the various efforts in ecstasis research, the authors have identified four main forces of ecstasis: psychology, neurobiology, pharmacology, and technology. We’ll look at each of these areas in the next few blinks. Let’s start with psychology.

Artificial intelligence can use neurobiological data to detect successful teamwork skills and combat suicide.

The more we learn about the human body, the more complex the relationship between mind and body appears.

We now know that emotions don’t just originate in the brain. They’re also influenced by the heart, which has 40,000 neurons, and the stomach and intestines, which contain 100 million neurons.

Psychedelic drugs can help achieve a state of ecstasis.

When wildlife photographer John Downer planted cameras underwater to document the behavior of bottlenose dolphins in the wild, he was surprised to see them so relaxed. Then he took a closer look at the footage.

The dolphins appeared to be playing some kind of game – each would chew on a pufferfish before passing it to one of their dolphin friends. Desperate, the pufferfish played its last UNO card and released a cloud of lethal nerve toxin. Too much of this toxin is deadly, but just a little happens to make dolphins pleasantly stoned.

New technology is bringing ecstasis to a wider audience – without the usual risks or commitments.

Alan Metni started out his career as a lawyer, but he soon found that he much preferred jumping out of airplanes; his dream was to fly. Metni completed thousands of jumps and was so hooked on the thrill of flying that he started looking for other ways to train even more. For him, flight was an instant ticket to ecstasis. The thrill of the jump didn’t compare to any other experience.

However, jumping out of a plane can be dangerous. There are frequent fatal accidents each year, and they happen to some of the most experienced flyers. Not everyone is prepared to take those risks.

Gatherings like Burning Man are an opportunity to use non-ordinary states to overcome pressing problems.

For one week every year, a pilgrimage of ecstasis innovators takes place in the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada. It’s frequented by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, from Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin to Tesla’s Elon Musk. Artists, musicians, and performers exhibit their consciousness-altering creations. And inventors like Mikey Siegel showcase their prototypes.

This event is Burning Man. It’s a massive exercise in constructing a city from nothing – as one enormous group.

Hedonic Calendaring helps you determine when and how to access ecstasis.

Many of the people we’ve discussed so far are at the forefront of disruptive innovation; they’re pioneering new ways to harness the four forces of ecstasis. But let’s step back and take a look at which tools have begun to be adopted more broadly.

In psychology, meditation has been rebranded as mindfulness-based stress reduction, and it’s turned into a billion-dollar industry.

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Über den Autor

Steven Kotler is a New York Times best-selling author who specializes in human performance. He’s been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes and has appeared in over 100 publications, including the Atlantic and the Harvard Business Review. His other books include The Rise of Superman, Bold, and The Art of Impossible.

Jamie Wheal is the founder of the Flow Genome Project, an international organization that researches human performance. He has given talks at Stanford University, Imperial College London, and the United Nations. Wheal is also the author of Recapture the Rapture.

Wer Stealing Fire lesen sollte

Burning Man enthusiasts
Entrepreneurs curious about performance hacks
Psychology buffs interested in alternative therapies

Kategorien mit Stealing Fire

Psychologie Wissenschaft Technologie & Zukunft Motivation & Inspiration Persönliche Entwicklung

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