I saw a recent post on LinkedIn talking about Dr. Richard Alpert, a professor who went to Mexico to take psychedelic mushrooms in the 60’s and attempted to make their consumption popular in the US. The American now goes by the name of Ram Dass as he adopted the Hindu religion and identity fully. The comment section was full of praises for the “spiritual leader” and how insightful he is and how it inspired them to consume psychedelic drugs.
It’s rather odd to see these types of posts in LinkedIn, but aren’t uncommon in gatherings involving coffee or drinks as someone starts mentioning Terence McKenna or Joe Rogan. Interesting enough this topic was mentioned in one of my history classes. The idea was that if you look at cave paintings in Europe, out of no where complex geometrical patterns like triangles and squares appeared out of nowhere. These images don’t appear in nature so they weren’t imitated from their environment. They also had what seems to be abstract images like human bodies with the head of animals (Egypt and Greek mythology comes to mind). The class went over some experiments where individuals who had never seen these paintings or taken psychedelic drugs were giving these drugs in a control setting where they described their experience. The result is that in their psychedelic trip they saw similar geometrical patterns as those in the cave paintings and also individuals with human body and animal heads, in the case that I remember was a fox head in the human body of a business suit.
So, one of the ideas that Joe Rogan advocates (taken from Terence McKenna mainly) and this study was exploring was the impact of psychedelic drugs on human evolution. The idea of the “stone ape theory.” The idea is that food changed our brains and we evolved higher faculties dues to these psychedelic drugs, or simply kick started human culture and art, which in turn added the evolutionary pressure for modern humans.
It’s an interesting idea, since it also seems that the human brain is able to take in certain drugs through receptors that all other animals and primates lack (I’m taking this out of memory, also something presented on same history class mentioned above). But one of the problems I see with this ideas that none of the advocates seem t0 agree with is that if consuming X mushroom changed human evolution by changes caused in the brain, then you have to accept Landmarkian evolution. Now, this might be true since new studies show that epigenetic changes canoccour not only with diet but through emotional responses even. Example: if a pregnant rat is subjected to lots of stress from loud sounds the fetus will start developing the muscles of the fetus and take resources away from brain development. You can take a clone of that same fetus and have the pregnancy happen in a relaxing environment and the fetus will have resources allocated to the brain and less to the muscle. tests on the fetuses after birth show that the first mice is strong and stupid while the second is smart and not as strong. The idea is that these emotions are giving the genes messages of what the outside environment is like and focus on aspects that will allow the organism to survive by making epigenetic tweaks. The documentary “Ghost in our Genes” makes the same case with humans and nutrition in specific times in our parents lives (pre-teens in the fathers when sperm starts to be created and pregnancy with the females, messages the mother received from the grandmother during the mothers time in the womb and the pregnancy of the mother with her child.
So possibly Lamarkian evolution could be in play here, but the advocates of stone ape theory NEVER address this, They stand by Darwinian evolution where changes on the individual like developing muscles by working out or specific substances that affects the parents brains shouldn’t affect their children. This tells me they don’t even understand their supposed evolutionary mechanisms they claim to be advocating or overall can’t make a coherent argument.
Anyhow, the stone ape theory is interesting in the context provided by my history class, when I actually read the works of Terence McKenna on the other hand (which is one of the main leaders of pushing the use of psychedelic drugs and claims it was an engine for human evolution) I was completely disgusted. Basically the guy is a hippie that believes humans used to live like the bonobos, in peaceful gatherings with mass sexual orgies between all members, and this behavior was induced by brain changes caused by psychedelic drugs, but because we stopped consuming it we became like chimpanzees, more aggressive and status seeking but with a superior brain capable of abstraction, gift to us from psychedelic drug use of previous generations. And to be true to our true bonobo like nature and regress our society to a primitive state we should all start taking psychedelic drugs and embrace all the ethic and culture of those dirty tree huggers. No thank you. I’m more liable of believing the Killer Ape Theory that states that it was tribal conflicts and the need for organized hunting and warring raids that created evolutionary pressure for a complex brain capable of abstraction, logic, language and group morality and empathy for the purpose of group cohesion (this is a common theme in many evolutionary books, Google search for the evolution of morality should yield results on it).
These druggies tend to have a hard time making coherent arguments and slur their speech more often than not, I’m not convinced they’re the pinnacle of human evolution or they could make a thriving society.
But back to Dr. Richard Alpert. The use of psychedelic drugs causes our neurons to sprout new axons and interconnect with other neurons. Done in natural conditions (like socializing, experiencing a good story, art) these interconnections are very positive for the brain and is linked with intelligence. The problem with psychedelic drugs is that these axons are no longer discriminating with who their connect. Parts of the brain that remained compartmentalized are now communicating with each other, and this is why the hallucinations of the drugs can increase by listening to music, which causes visual stimulation.
Now, these new revelations are being seen as a positive by most articles being published on the subject, which they reference to the positive effects of more brain interconnection caused naturally by implicit learning as mentioned above. We know the body functions in compartmentalization also and is interconnected with specific avenues. If fluids that belong in one part of the body start leaking into somewhere they don’t belong we have a health problem. The same probiotics that increases our health if they’re in our gut will start attacking the body and cause an infection if they appear somewhere else in the body, say someone eye. This interconnection is not necessarily a good thing, you can’t just assume that it’s going to benefit the brain. Can you seriously claim that a brain system that is causing hallucinations by activating parts of the brain focusing on visual inputs is a positive?
No, Dr. Richard Alpert and the likes of him claim that the use of psychedelic drugs have enlightened them into seeing the world how it really is. They claim their “ego” has disappeared, they tend to use the term “ego-dissolution.” And after taking the drug they can see we are all “interconnected,” they claim a spiritual awakening and tend to gravitate towards hippie culture or rotten nonsense from the East. But what is the argument they’re making? They have an introspective analysis that made them change their world view. They found their answers “within them.” Not the scientific revolution of the West or the legacy of critical thinking, logical structures and rhetorical analysis, but that they took a god damn drug that distorted the natural structure of the brain and causes hallucinations by stimulating brain areas that take information from the outside world through the sense by internal processes of the brains that may have nothing to do with the outside world or confuse auditory and visual pathways by linking them together.
Essentially, psychedelic drugs permanently damage the brain by having neurons grow extra axons into areas they’re not supposed to be wired with. The “ego-dissolution” they experience is this brain damage as cells from one area are stimulating others that shouldn’t have been connected, creating a malfunctioning brain that confuses this malfunctioning with consciousness enhancement or spirituality. Their “guide” like Richard Alpert or Terence McKenna are literally a self-inflicted brain damaged baby boomers promoting rotten nonsense from the East and justifying their drug use and worldviews caused from their brain damage.
The human ego is thought to have originated in the Lavantine plain where our ancestors transformed from ape like Skul-Qafzeh ancestors to Cro-Magnon. The appearance of the ego is not the nonsensical modern use that replaced the words vanity, affectation, conceited, or pretentions with simple “ego.” Ego is supposed to mean a self-perception that you are an individual that is different and separate from your community and world at large. We believe the ego started appearing when we saw individuals remains carrying jewelry or buried with personal property. So, it’s this idea of ego, individuality separated from the world, that is the mark characteristic in our human evolution that turned us away from apes into modern humans and started seeing an explosion in technology. Seems to me that what these psychedelic drugs are doing in reality is a type of lobotomy of sorts, since destroying your ego one of the most dehumanizing things they could do to themselves, in all probability putting in charge more primitive parts of the brain by creating direct connection into the newer cerebral cortex parts.
Are these drugs truly pushing human evolution forward if they are destroying on of the pillars that distinguishes us from the beasts and made us modern humans? And what are we to gain with the loss of our ego? To spend our lives seeking some “spiritual” path provided to use by foreign nonsense revered for being ancient? Those men are dead, and this is my world now. I shall pick the ideas I wish to play with, and I shall retain my humanity, along with the brain that was carved through the evolutionary pressures of my ancestors, not some artificially inseminated enlightenment that is the product of introspection after permanent brain damage.
