“Cognitive psychologists sometimes talk in terms of two distinct types of consciousness: spotlight consciousness, which illuminates a single focal point of attention, making it very good for reasoning, and lantern consciousness, in which attention is less focused yet illuminates a broader field of attention. Young children tend to exhibit lantern consciousness; so do many people on psychedelics. This more diffuse form of attention lends itself to mind wandering, free association, and the making of novel connections—all of which can nourish creativity. By comparison, caffeine’s big contribution to human progress has been to intensify spotlight consciousness—the focused, linear, abstract, and efficient cognitive processing more closely associated with mental work than with play. This, more than anything else, is what made caffeine the perfect drug not only for the age of reason and the Enlightenment but for the rise of capitalism, too.”
― This Is Your Mind on Plants
― This Is Your Mind on Plants
“How can you possibly expect to write anything when you can't concentrate? That's pretty much all writers do: take the blooming multiplicity of the world and our experience of it, literally concentrate it down to manageable proportions, and then force it through the eye of a grammatical needle one word at a time.”
― This Is Your Mind on Plants
― This Is Your Mind on Plants
“Keeping secrets from young ears only plants seeds in between them,”
― Demon Copperhead
― Demon Copperhead
“Sometimes your traumas are the reason you know how to help.”
― Just for the Summer
― Just for the Summer
“The war on drugs is in truth a war on some drugs, their enemy status the result of historical accident, cultural prejudice, and institutional imperative.”
― This Is Your Mind On Plants: Opium—Caffeine—Mescaline
― This Is Your Mind On Plants: Opium—Caffeine—Mescaline
Anna’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Anna’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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