To better understand why, in McKenna’s view, psychedelics are illegal, it may be helpful to examine why the world today operates on a dominator instead of a partnership model, and what exactly these terms mean.
What?? No! That won't be helpful at all!
Why not start with the discourse at the time they were banned. What was said? Should we take it at face value? Did the illegality emerge once and spread, or did it "evolve" separately, in lots of different places?
Plenty of policy gets passed due to specific, contingent circumstances right at that moment. It often comes down to the judgment of a few people thinking on a very short time-horizon.
Before reaching for some sort of grand dialectic theory, we should at least find out whether the "reasons" aren't wholly contingent. What if we just got stuck with this policy because of some specific set of circumstances, and we still have it due to sheer inertia?
It's true that there were contingent circumstances that led to the modern prohibition of psychedelics back in the 60s.
However, you seem to be overlooking the overarching theme of prohibition that goes back many, many centuries in Western culture. There is a lot more to this than simply a modern governmental overreaction.
Jonathan Ott, in his Proemium, says it far better than I can:
" Despite overwhelming scientific and experiential evidence to the contrary, human beings are conceived of as a special creation apart from other animals, and we are enjoined to subdue the world, which is matter. This horrible superstition has led to the despoiling and ruin of our biosphere, and to the crippling neurosis and guilt of modern people (Hofmann 1980). I call this a superstition because when people have direct, personal access to entheogenic, religious experiences, they never conceive of humankind as a separate creation, apart from the rest of the universe. "Every thing that lives is Holy," us included, and the divine infuses all the creation of which we are an integral part. As the dualistic superstition took root in our ancestors' minds, their first task was to destroy all aspects of ecstatic, experiential religion from the archaic ("pagan") world. The destruction of the sanctuary of Eleusis at the end of the fourth century of our era (Mylonas 1961) marked the final downfall of the ancient world in Europe, and for the next millennium the theocratic Catholic Church vigorously persecuted every vestige of ecstatic religion which survived, including revival movements. By the time of the "discovery" of the New World, Europe had been beaten into submission, the "witches" and "heretics" mostly burned, and ecstasy was virtually expunged from the memory of the survivors. For the Catholics, and for the Protestants after them, to experience ecstasy, to have religious experiences, was the most heinous heresy, justifying torture and being burned alive. Is it any wonder that today we have no place for ecstasy?
In the New World, however, the Age of Entheogens and ecstasy lived on, and although in 1620 the Inquisition in Mexico formally declared the use of entheogenic plants like peyotl (see Chapter 1) to be heresy and the Church vigorously extirpated this use and tortured and executed Indian shamans, ecstasy survives there even now. It bears witness to the integrity of the New World Indians that they braved torture and death to continue with their ecstatic religion- they must have been bitterly disappointed in the "placebo sacrament" of the Christian Eucharist, which is a placebo entheogen (Ott 1979b)- and it is largely as a result of the modern rediscovery of the shamanic cult of teonanacatl (see Chapter 5) by R. Gordon Wasson in Mexico in 1955 that the modern use of entheogens, in many respects a revival of ecstatic religion, began. Even though myriad justifications for the modern laws against the entheogens have been offered up, the problem modern societies have with these drugs is fundamentally the same problem the Inquisition had with them, the same problem the early Christians had with the Eleusinian Mysteries- religious rivalry. Since these drugs tend to open people's eyes and hearts to an experience of the holiness of the universe... yes, enable people to have personal religious experiences without the intercession of a priesthood of the preconditioning of a liturgy, some psychonauts or epoptes will perceive the emptiness and shallowness of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition; even begin to see through the secular governments which use religious symbols to manipulate people; begin to see that by so ruthlessly subduing the earth we are killing the planet and destroying ourselves. A "counterculture" having ecstatic experiences in California is quite as subversive (Einhorn 1970) and threatens the power structures in Sacramento or Washington just as much as the rebellious Albigensians or Cathars, Bogomiles, Fraticelli "de opinione," Knights Templar and Waldenisians threatened the power structure in Rome and Mediaeval times (Cohn 1975)."
Thank you very, very much! Promoting these sorts of ideas is my main contribution to HN (since I am not a professional programmer, but merely a techie dabbler and lover of mathematics)
However, the real credit should go to people like Jonathan Ott, Charles Grob, Stanislav Groff, James Fadiman and Benny Shanon. Terence McKenna too, of course, but I find his views are less appealing and less convincing to the typical HN demographic. There are far more academically credible authors who write deeply about these things than TM.
Comments
What?? No! That won't be helpful at all!
Why not start with the discourse at the time they were banned. What was said? Should we take it at face value? Did the illegality emerge once and spread, or did it "evolve" separately, in lots of different places?
Plenty of policy gets passed due to specific, contingent circumstances right at that moment. It often comes down to the judgment of a few people thinking on a very short time-horizon.
Before reaching for some sort of grand dialectic theory, we should at least find out whether the "reasons" aren't wholly contingent. What if we just got stuck with this policy because of some specific set of circumstances, and we still have it due to sheer inertia?
It's true that there were contingent circumstances that led to the modern prohibition of psychedelics back in the 60s.
However, you seem to be overlooking the overarching theme of prohibition that goes back many, many centuries in Western culture. There is a lot more to this than simply a modern governmental overreaction.
Jonathan Ott, in his Proemium, says it far better than I can:
" Despite overwhelming scientific and experiential evidence to the contrary, human beings are conceived of as a special creation apart from other animals, and we are enjoined to subdue the world, which is matter. This horrible superstition has led to the despoiling and ruin of our biosphere, and to the crippling neurosis and guilt of modern people (Hofmann 1980). I call this a superstition because when people have direct, personal access to entheogenic, religious experiences, they never conceive of humankind as a separate creation, apart from the rest of the universe. "Every thing that lives is Holy," us included, and the divine infuses all the creation of which we are an integral part. As the dualistic superstition took root in our ancestors' minds, their first task was to destroy all aspects of ecstatic, experiential religion from the archaic ("pagan") world. The destruction of the sanctuary of Eleusis at the end of the fourth century of our era (Mylonas 1961) marked the final downfall of the ancient world in Europe, and for the next millennium the theocratic Catholic Church vigorously persecuted every vestige of ecstatic religion which survived, including revival movements. By the time of the "discovery" of the New World, Europe had been beaten into submission, the "witches" and "heretics" mostly burned, and ecstasy was virtually expunged from the memory of the survivors. For the Catholics, and for the Protestants after them, to experience ecstasy, to have religious experiences, was the most heinous heresy, justifying torture and being burned alive. Is it any wonder that today we have no place for ecstasy?
In the New World, however, the Age of Entheogens and ecstasy lived on, and although in 1620 the Inquisition in Mexico formally declared the use of entheogenic plants like peyotl (see Chapter 1) to be heresy and the Church vigorously extirpated this use and tortured and executed Indian shamans, ecstasy survives there even now. It bears witness to the integrity of the New World Indians that they braved torture and death to continue with their ecstatic religion- they must have been bitterly disappointed in the "placebo sacrament" of the Christian Eucharist, which is a placebo entheogen (Ott 1979b)- and it is largely as a result of the modern rediscovery of the shamanic cult of teonanacatl (see Chapter 5) by R. Gordon Wasson in Mexico in 1955 that the modern use of entheogens, in many respects a revival of ecstatic religion, began. Even though myriad justifications for the modern laws against the entheogens have been offered up, the problem modern societies have with these drugs is fundamentally the same problem the Inquisition had with them, the same problem the early Christians had with the Eleusinian Mysteries- religious rivalry. Since these drugs tend to open people's eyes and hearts to an experience of the holiness of the universe... yes, enable people to have personal religious experiences without the intercession of a priesthood of the preconditioning of a liturgy, some psychonauts or epoptes will perceive the emptiness and shallowness of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition; even begin to see through the secular governments which use religious symbols to manipulate people; begin to see that by so ruthlessly subduing the earth we are killing the planet and destroying ourselves. A "counterculture" having ecstatic experiences in California is quite as subversive (Einhorn 1970) and threatens the power structures in Sacramento or Washington just as much as the rebellious Albigensians or Cathars, Bogomiles, Fraticelli "de opinione," Knights Templar and Waldenisians threatened the power structure in Rome and Mediaeval times (Cohn 1975)."
http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pharmacotheon/pha...
This was an excellent insightful post thank you
Thank you very, very much! Promoting these sorts of ideas is my main contribution to HN (since I am not a professional programmer, but merely a techie dabbler and lover of mathematics)
However, the real credit should go to people like Jonathan Ott, Charles Grob, Stanislav Groff, James Fadiman and Benny Shanon. Terence McKenna too, of course, but I find his views are less appealing and less convincing to the typical HN demographic. There are far more academically credible authors who write deeply about these things than TM.