In this piece, Forrest examines the topic of effectiveness. Allow yourself a clean mental slate with regards to what effectiveness means to you, and allow Forrest to define the word in a perhaps more thoughtful framework than you've considered before.
It is an imperative of both morality and self-preservation to improve our circumstances. British philosopher David Pearce’s 1995 work The Hedonistic Imperative speaks to this outrageous scope of suffering not so much being a condition of modernity, but more so a condition of being human.
To my mind neurohacking means using the best of what is known about how the brain and mind work from all fields and disciplines in the service of realizing humanity’s deepest potentials, starting with self-realization and moving outward.
Just about every civilization throughout history has practiced some form of neurohacking - deliberately upgrading their physiologies to positively affect their mind and psyche. The consumption of probiotic rich and fermented foods, for example, goes back over 10,000 years.
Today, the emerging field of human microbiome research has indicated that gut microbiota may play an important role in influencing brain development, behavior, and mood in humans.
If neurohacking is about upgrading the hardware our consciousness runs on, we would be remiss not to mention these technologies of altered states.
The world is more complex, more interconnected, the problems are bigger, they’re harder, and that means the people doing the problem-solving have to have capabilities that are commensurate with the scope and magnitude of the problems.
Neurohacking is all about using the right tool for the job. While racetams and transcranial stimulators more directly interface with our brain and neurochemistry, there are other less obvious ways to impact our psychological well-being and subjective experience.
Chief among these is by getting familiar with the gut, and understanding the relationship between its microbes and our brain function and mental health.
Nootropics. You might have heard of them. The “limitless pill” that keeps Billionaires rich. The ‘smart drugs’ that students are taking to help boost their hyperfocus. The cognitive enhancers that give corporate executives an advantage. All very exciting. But as always, the media are way behind the curve.
Whereas biohacking concentrates on the body, and consciousness hacking explores the inner experience, neurohacking is somewhere in the middle, focusing on the mind-brain interface - the intersection of neurology and consciousness. Specifically, neurohacking involves applying science and technology to influence the brain and body in order to optimize subjective experience.
