Less than ten pages into PiHKAL--a book that could rightfully be considered the chief canonical text of the modern psychedelic movement--author Alexander Shulgin, popularizer of MDMA and primum mobile of almost every club drug to have gained clout since its subsequent scheduling in the mid-eighties, presents an argument that is considered by many as one of the strongest recapitulations avail able of the plight of the latter-day psychonaut.

"Our generation," Shulgin begins, "is the first, ever, to make the search for self-awareness a crime..." The concept of self-awareness, as invoked here, is really just Shulgin's yuppie-friendly way of introducing the mystical value of entheogens into the argument, and as the argument evolves so does it become more apparent that what he really means is the soul.

Indeed, with the burgeoning popularity of memes in the post-Huxley/Leary/McKenna tradition (Books by author ikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pinchbeck">Daniel Pinchbeck and the Mayan Fifth Sun theory come to mind as good examples), the connection between the religious and psychedelic experiences is less mysterious and more obvious than ever.

The problem with developing an argument in these dimensions--as Shulgin carries on to do in the remainder of PiHKAL's introduction--is presenting the evidence as a boon rather than a liability. In our present fallen age, love has become a four letter word, the closest equivalent to the classical conception being available at $10 a hit late Friday nights at the dance club, and with God being dead some 150 years running, appeals to Him are about as unlikely to persuade  as appeals to any corpse.

What's more likely is that by pandering to a body of thought considered definitively unenlightening to the current hustle/bustle affairs of homo economicus, the economic man, the inspired rants of even the brightest explorer are tarnished by the veneer of pat ancient tradition.

This isn't to say that the mystical quality that life gains under the influence affords us nothing of value to discuss. Plenty of cultures have organized themselves to some degree around a sacramental soma and maintained functionality for many decades more than our own. In fact, our own culture is included, if you choose to believe the somewhat dubious hypothesis that the body of Christ may in fact have just been a vessel delivering ergot fungus, an often tapped source of the LSD precursor LSA, or the somewhat less dubious assertion that alcohol is important to our social construct.

So what are we to do if the manifest jargon fails to induce any excitement in the uninitiated, the first pass description of a trip fails to render entheogens as the dynamic and interesting objects they are? This question is tough and is at the heart of the failure of the overarching socio-political structure in accepting their usage. The answer, though, is simple: we must realize that man cannot help but concieve of the world in a mystical manner and, accordingly, there must still be some god or another that would welcome our words.

The economist Brian Arthur makes plain the direction to look in an insightful quote about developmental economists: "They're the missionaries of this century. But instead of bringing Christianity to the heathen, they're trying to bring economic development to the third world." The god we are looking for is the modality of economic thought itself!

As a deific candidate, economics is unintuitve. Categorically, though, "the economy" has all of the properties neccessary for godhood: it supercedes the lowly individual existence (in fact we are all very nearly always doing things not of our own accord in service of our master) and it requires some degree of faith to maintain and assert its existence.

In the series that follows this post, an attempt will be made to rationalize entheogenic culture to this confusing god. It is my sincere hope that by further expanding the network of jargon used, by connecting a few errant ideas, by further exploring the mystical corners of our daily life and discovering once again how and what to worship here and now, with or without the various sacremental somas available to the science-minded populace, a broader picture will emerge of the latent and untapped potential of drugs in our society.

At the heart of this exploration are some books that shake profoundly the notion of the simplicity of cognition and the cultural organizations around us. For those interested in reading them, they are Rational Mysticism by John Horgan, The Origin of Wealth by Eric D. Beinhocker, Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett, and Godel, Esher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstatder.

       

Written by :

Chip Dingo