Food Of The Gods: A Radical History of Plants, Psychedelics and Human Evolution

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What could genetic engineering make possible, like combining the positive or mind-altering aspects in one single plant? In our culture, private drug taking is viewed as dubious; solitary drug use is viewed as positively morbid; and, indeed, all introspection is seen this way. Finally, McKenna does not talk of other methods, some explicitly shamanic/religious, such as trance-dance, fasting or meditation; others perceived as more universal, such as art and exercise, to achieve 'altered' states of consciousness. He gets some things hilariously wrong, with regards to the development of language he says that women developed language more than men because men don't need much language to hunt whereas women needed lots of language to describe edible plants (as if men didn't go on days long hunts and didn't also forage for food). The historical and health impacts of our seemingly harmless drugs of choice like caffeine and sugar cannot be overstated.

Most people are addicted to some substance and, more important, all people are addicted to patterns of behavior. The costs of drug education and drug treatment are small relative to routine military expenditures and could be contained. To pretend that the right to the pursuit of happiness does not include the right to experiment with psychoactive plants and substances is to make an argument that is at best narrow and at worst ignorant and primitive. Terence will present a pseudo idea, and then ramble off into barely related topics until you want to die.

Not going to do a book review except to say it is a very interesting read - you'll have to read it yourself! The drive for unitary wholeness within the psyche, which is to a degree instinctual, can nevertheless become pathological if pursued in a context in which dissolution of boundaries and rediscovery of the ground of being has been made impossible. Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was an American ethnobotanist, mystic, psychonaut, lecturer, author, and was an advocate for the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants. As an odyssey of mind, body and spirit, Food of the Gods is one of the most fascinating and surprising histories of consciousness ever written. The chapters about our future are hopeful, it remains to be seen how close we will go towards extinction before we hopefully get our shit together as a species.

My feeling is that McKenna has been so seduced by the beauty of his own psychedelic experience and the rush of information received through sometimes overwhelming revelation (see 'The Invisible Landscape') that he let his own academic rigour be swayed by the poetry of the vision. A daring work of scholarship and exploration, it offers an inspiring vision for individual fulfilment and a humane basis for our interaction with each other and the natural world. To those who find themselves asking lifes more philosophical questions, think for themselves, have an interest within psychoactive substances, wonder where we come from and challenge the norm then this is a book for you. An eloquent proposal for recovering something vital-a sense of the sacred, the transcendent, the Absolute-before it's too late. These things are hard to prove, but no doubt, some of early humanity liked to get high, just as many animals do, whether by accident or intention.An odyssey of mind, body and spirit, Food of the Gods is one of the most fascinating and surprising histories of consciousness ever written. Like fish in water, people in a culture swim in the virtually invisible medium of culturally sanctioned yet artificial states of mind. They allowed human beings to leap ahead of other species, and it was mostly women, the plant gatherers of society, who did this. It can get too specific in history topics and a little boring for me, but I’m sure some people love that. Ample anecdotal evidence supports the existence of a preference for intoxicated states among elephants, chimpanzees, and some butterflies.

Again and again, and in various ways, we find Soma intimately connected with the symbolism and rituals related to cattle and pastoralism.He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, philosophy, culture, technology, environmentalism, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. And once you realize that Terence can't even provide interesting accounts of drug trips, you start to think very hard about your life and why you're 200 pages deep in hell. Founders of sects could find many inspirations by getting high and getting in contact with whatever their already damaged, possibly already mentally ill and sober voice-hearing and vision seeing, minds wanted to imagine.

The premise that spoke to me most was how our society has gone from a partnership model with nature to an abusive one. Before the brainwashed hippy types that read McKennas books start pointing fingers and condemning me for saying this I've read stuff where even these South American Indian shamans that guide white people through Ayhuasca sessions have said they believe that it effects whites differently than other races. Soma, a conscious-expanding, ecstacy-inducing drug of prehistory, is said to have played an important part in the establishment of consciousness. Qui compare una carrellata spropositata di stereotipi sulle sostanze stesse, sulla cultura patriarcale, e sul cristianesimo: insopportabile. No matter if they get secretly drugged by the shamans before a session or the witch doctor floats the room with psychoactive smoke, if they take it together in a ritual, they get welded together by this experience.

Since reading that and Food of the Gods I've enjoyed many hours of listening to recordings of McKenna's lectures. His referaces to existing material is very well referanced and the overall book is presented superbly. Thus started a centuries-long conspiracy to suppress consciousness that continues to this day through corporate advertising and television. This divide, which McKenna also represents as being entirely black and white, is yet more baseless idealism, and a clear example of the "noble savage" trope. I'm also not into how McKenna for a guy that thinks outside the box still blindly accepts the out of Africa theory for the origins of humanity.