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I will be illustrating what some counter-culture philosophers, anthropologist, biologist and artist call The Fall, or The Fall into History. I will combine evolutionary biology, philosophy and shamanism in order to cast a different light on the emergence of the human soul and also the emergence of power, oppression and hierarchy. The aim is to deconstruct current norms, such as the norm about truth within science, which is a subject of discussion in western philosophy. A watertight theory of what truth is, and how it relates to the world around us has not been formulated within philosophy and has been a matter of debate since the Greeks. Yet objective truth, gained through repeatable experimentation, or correlative truth about objects in relationship to each other backed by a tradition of theory is the basis of method for science. Ideology, a term more familiar in politics, such as scientific materialism, determines what science proves, thus determines the worldview presented to the people – different ideologies would prove different things, resulting a different worldview. The way we see the world determines the experiences we will have, and the experiences we will have determines the way we live our lives – in other words, our destiny. With science’s central role within our culture, the scientific worldview is adopted without individual reflection. This provides science with an immense power, economic power, political power and social power. One could argue that science has the same power, as the Christian churches had during the Dark Ages. The reactions that this text has gotten thus far, frustration, confusion, approval and a general defense towards the readers own values regarding the subjects discussed, is the exact aim of this project. It is these reactions that reveal the hold that our culture’s values has on us as individuals. So I challenge you the reader, to reflect on your own reactions, what do they say about you and the way you see the world? In the text, what is presented is a fusion of scientific facts and speculations on those facts which to my mind answers questions regarding the psychology of humankind, why our society is like it is and a possible solution to our troubled relationship to Nature, a relationship which’s resolution would bring us what we need direly; Salvation. This theory also casts a light on the problems we inherit from history; Western culture is the crowning disaster of this draconian trajectory through the ages. As the norm of truth is removed, I feel that a great creativity is possible and one can intuitively add the connections that arise out of the trance of such creative writing. The theory presented is called the Stoned Ape and was thought up by Terence McKenna, an American art historian, philosopher and psychonaut that has gained underground fame as a counter-culture writer and lecturer between the 60s and the 90s. What happened to Paradise?

SLUTSATS

The problem with our world is not as trivial as
gender inequality, racism or climate change, those are but symptoms of a
greater and deeper problem. The entire psychology of humankind suffers from a
deep imbalance, derived from a severed connection with Nature. When we cut
ourselves off from nature and we walled ourselves in cities we lost our splendor.
Today we live in a patriarchic society that is actively engaged in war,
structural racism, suppression of the feminine and destroying the environment
in order to produce endless varieties of products to be bought by vast masses
of people who spend their entire life working for the benefit of the political
and economic elite, which oppress and shut down the mind of its slaves in order
to control them for whatever other pursuit they have besides power and greed.
So if the mushroom did help humans evolve consciousness and form a harmonious
relationship with Nature, why is it not a part of our culture? Well it might
seem like an ignorant question, but it is rhetorical. The unifying quality of
psychedelics is that they are boundary dissolving, meaning that they dissolve
personal boundaries caused by trauma, boundaries between people such as
partners, friends and groups and it erases boundaries between fantasy and the
perceived world. But most importantly for the topic, it erases the boundary
between your humanness and your social self, in other words it dissolves
cultural programming. And what is culture? It is a set of values and norms, in
other word it is a list of “you have to do this” and “you are not allowed to do
this”. This is the main reason why psychedelics are illegal, as it erases the control
of culture, meaning that people who use them and are politically conscious will
realize the corruptness of the world they live in. If large groups would
organize themselves, backed by the depth of spiritual resolve, they would
become a power that could threaten the control of patriarchy. What is the
history of psychedelics in Western culture? It is very short, the researcher
Gordon Wasson and his wife Valentina found the Mazatec people in the Oaxaca
region of Mexico. Gorgon Wasson had already done considerable research on Amanita Muscaria, but what he found with
the Mazatec was a different mushroom which they had revered within their
culture for thousands of generations while it had been forgotten in most of the
world, namely the Stropharia Cubensis.
They spoke to the head shaman, later to become famous herself, Maria Sabina. A
specimen found its way to the already famous chemist Albert Hoffmann, who had
already synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) as a cure for alcoholism,
from ergot rye. Hoffmann synthesized psilocybin in pill form, which then later
found its way back to Maria Sabina. She tried it, and all she had to say after
was “It has lost its Spirit, but it could help me do my work during winter when
there is no mushroom to harvest”. The future of psychedelics as medicine and a
therapeutic tool seemed promising. Even the government had interest in them,
the CIA thought it could be used as a kind of truth serum, but it seemed to be
unpredictable because at some doses it caused the subject to become so
unattached that even simple questions could not be answered, some experienced
great trauma and others became highly perceptive and impossible to extract any
information from. In the sciences it dawned on people invested in this research
that it was a useful tool for cognition as well as therapy, and sessions with
scientist that had hit dead ends in their research were made available. The
results showed promise and many of the subjects had great success in their
research. It all seemed very promising until it was shut down by the
government, and LSD was made illegal. Strangely, without any research,
psilocybin was also made illegal together with many other substances that
hadn’t even been looked at independently for their medicinal value. Instead LSD
hit the streets and campuses of America and sparked the hippie revolution of
the 60s. Because of the ravings of researcher and later political figure,
Timothy Leary, the government perceived the psychedelics as a threat to control
and order and pushed for a fear and smear campaign of anti-drug propaganda
which later justified the unscientific prohibition against any psychedelic as a
class 1 drug, in other words no medical value whatsoever. This short period of
history shows clearly the intention of the governments towards any kind of a
psychedelic. These days’ things are starting to shift again. A 50 year
prohibition against cannabis is lifting in many states as a medicinal issue, in
some it is even allowed to be used recreationally. But cannabis is a minor
psychedelic, and major psychedelics are still illegal except for some cases of
allowed religious use, such as peyote in Native American ritual or Ayahuasca
for the Brazilian Church Santo Daime who recently won a lawsuit against the US
government. Research on psychedelics has also picked up in the most recent
years, the institute MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic
Studies) was started and has done promising work on the therapeutic values of
LSD, psilocybin and MDMA. In my own honest opinion the real potential of
psychedelics is not its ability to cure depression or mental illness, which it
does beautifully, but its ability to cure the sickness that we call Western
culture. If, let’s say, psilocybin was taken under the right circumstances –
that is to say, with a clear intention, proper ritual context with an
experienced shaman and in nature – the result would be deep personal insight
and healing, a journey through a titanic dimension of visual and emotional beauty
and a reestablished connection with the natural mind. If each and every one of
us would go through this experience the world we live in would be dramatically
changed and changed for the better. But no longer will we skip naked through
the crystalline river-streaked and lush grassland of Mother Africa, herding our
cattle, experiencing the Ineffable Mystery under the full moon next to a
roaring bonfire that speaks to us about the past that has been and hints the
future to come. The world of then is too different from the world of now.
Terence McKenna used to say during his lectures, “What mushroom will loom large
in the future of mankind, the mushroom of Oppenheimer (he referred to the
mushroom cloud of the nuclear bomb) or the dung-growing psychedelic mushroom of
Wasson and Hoffmann?”, McKenna saw that the dark and violent mentality of
Western culture would bring humanity to a bloody end if the impulse for
positive change did not stop it before the end. It is this trend of legalization,
research, protest against discrimination and inequality and surging
spiritualism that might just save us - the first rays of hopeful light are
shining upon those who work for a better future for all life in this Earth. And
as always, the future really does lie in your own hands…