WEBVTT 00:25.620 --> 00:35.460 In seeking, admittedly as a propagandist for ways in which I could make the psychedelic experience 00:35.460 --> 00:41.620 palatable to the intellectual establishment, I've tried to look at ways that it might have 00:41.620 --> 00:50.980 influenced us or contributed to our situation that would appeal to the theater of rational discourse. 00:50.980 --> 01:00.960 And here's the story. It's about a poor, a primate, poor and of humble origins, who 01:00.960 --> 01:09.720 sets out on a great adventure. And along the way, there are many pitfalls and there are helpers and 01:09.720 --> 01:16.700 hindrances. And finally, the great pearl of consciousness is attained and the little primate 01:16.700 --> 01:20.960 is vindicated and so forth and so on. So all evolutionary theory is, 01:20.980 --> 01:29.140 narrative of this cheerful sort. The human relationship to the grasslands, the mushroom, 01:29.140 --> 01:38.340 the cattle began slowly seven or eight million years ago. And there was a vectoring of factors 01:38.340 --> 01:50.020 together over millions of years so that by 100,000 years ago, which is my date, but you have nomadic 01:50.020 --> 01:50.980 pastoralists. 01:50.980 --> 01:56.020 You actually have domesticated cattle, human beings domesticating cattle, 01:56.020 --> 02:02.180 living with them in the grassland, in a desert round, in a situation of established tradition and 02:02.180 --> 02:09.620 cultural values. And here's why psilocybin is the suspect. 02:11.060 --> 02:17.860 Psilocybin measurably increases visual acuity. If you take low doses of it, 02:19.460 --> 02:20.740 doses so low, 02:20.980 --> 02:26.500 that you can't feel them, you do better on standard eye tests. 02:27.940 --> 02:34.660 This was demonstrated by Roland Fisher in the 70s. They had an apparatus in which there were two 02:34.660 --> 02:43.220 parallel bars and by punching a button, you could signal when the two bars were no longer parallel. 02:44.100 --> 02:50.020 Consistently, people on low doses of psilocybin could detect this variation before 02:50.020 --> 02:52.020 they could feel the effect. 02:52.020 --> 02:56.660 And Fisher said to me in his heavy Viennese accent, he said, 02:56.660 --> 03:03.860 and so we see, my young friend, that here we have proof that through the use of the drug, 03:03.860 --> 03:07.860 we are getting a better picture of reality than if we leave it alone. 03:09.060 --> 03:15.140 Which he thought was a big ha-ha, you know, but which I took very seriously. 03:16.180 --> 03:19.700 Because the kind of visionary acuity that's being 03:19.700 --> 03:27.460 promoted there is edge detection, which is precisely a lion moving through the tall grass 03:27.460 --> 03:33.300 toward you. You get one, you know, you get one chance to see it. And if you're 03:33.940 --> 03:36.740 dreaming or lose your edge, you're dinner. 03:38.420 --> 03:42.980 Similarly, a gazelle sneaking away through the bushes 03:42.980 --> 03:46.500 is trying to evade your peripheral vision. You get one shot. 03:47.940 --> 03:49.700 If you see it, you eat. 03:50.260 --> 03:52.260 If you don't, you don't. 03:52.260 --> 03:58.340 So imagine, I don't think you have to be a rocket scientist to see that if there was something 03:58.340 --> 04:03.700 lying around in the early proton hominid environment that was like a pair of vegetable 04:03.700 --> 04:11.860 binoculars, and these people were hunters, that those who tolerated the psilocybin in the diet 04:11.860 --> 04:17.060 would have a measurable advantage over the non-psilocybin-using individuals. 04:17.060 --> 04:17.940 Step one. 04:18.900 --> 04:22.420 Increase of visual acuity means greater hunting success. 04:23.540 --> 04:31.940 At the second level, psilocybin, like all alkaloids, 04:31.940 --> 04:38.180 CNS stimulators, central nervous system stimulators, creates what's called arousal. 04:39.060 --> 04:43.940 And arousal is something we're pretty familiar with. I mean, it's a double cappuccino. 04:46.240 --> 04:47.440 You're restless. 04:47.440 --> 04:49.280 Your attention is on you. 04:49.280 --> 04:50.240 You're on the environment. 04:50.240 --> 04:51.120 You're moving around. 04:51.120 --> 04:52.720 You can feel your body. 04:52.720 --> 05:00.320 And in highly sexed animals like primates, it means male erection, consistently. 05:02.080 --> 05:08.480 Well, so then if you haven't had the good offices of the Church of England and 10,000 years 05:08.480 --> 05:15.360 of religion shoved down your throat, usually erection leads to what anthropologists without 05:15.360 --> 05:17.680 a trace of humor call increased instances of sexual arousal. 05:17.680 --> 05:18.400 So, if you haven't had the good offices of the Church of England and 10,000 years of religion, 05:18.400 --> 05:19.200 usually erection leads to what anthropologists without a trace of humor call increased instances 05:19.200 --> 05:26.750 of copulation, which, again, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that increased 05:26.750 --> 05:32.430 instances of copulation will lead to increased instances of pregnancy. 05:32.990 --> 05:40.430 It's promoting a higher birth rate through a higher, a slightly higher sexing of the, 05:40.430 --> 05:45.870 and it's not a problem because the very same people who are having more children 05:46.910 --> 05:49.870 seem miraculously to be having better luck hunting. 05:50.670 --> 05:53.950 Because they are seeing better in the field. 05:54.510 --> 06:02.910 So they can support the added burden of another child in the course of the lifespan. 06:02.910 --> 06:10.670 Well, do the demographic mathematics and you see then that those individuals reluctant 06:10.670 --> 06:14.590 to admit psilocybin into their diet would begin to be outbred. 06:15.390 --> 06:19.150 Because their neighbors are having more children than they are and 06:19.150 --> 06:22.590 and raising them to sexual maturity, 06:22.590 --> 06:25.010 which is the name of the game in evolutionary theory, 06:25.010 --> 06:27.410 get your offspring to sexual maturity. 06:28.870 --> 06:30.910 So there would be a tendency to outbreed 06:30.910 --> 06:34.690 the non-psilocybin using members of the population. 06:35.870 --> 06:40.330 The sexual stage raises many interesting issues 06:40.330 --> 06:45.330 because one of our big problems politically as a species, 06:47.330 --> 06:48.610 I'm sure I don't have to tell you, 06:48.610 --> 06:52.610 is gender conflicts. 06:52.610 --> 06:55.530 And the fact that we're not utilizing 06:55.530 --> 06:58.010 the female portion of our population, 06:58.010 --> 07:00.910 its creativity, its integrity, and so forth, 07:00.910 --> 07:03.490 has been through cultural factors 07:03.490 --> 07:06.210 messed with and suppressed and all that. 07:07.690 --> 07:12.690 So this theory has something to say about this as follows. 07:13.350 --> 07:18.350 All primates tend to form male dominance hierarchies. 07:18.610 --> 07:22.510 And this simply means that the hard-bodied, 07:22.510 --> 07:26.910 long-fanged young males are in charge. 07:28.290 --> 07:31.550 They control the females, they control the food supply, 07:31.550 --> 07:35.630 they control the elderly, the young, the ill, 07:35.630 --> 07:39.150 the homosexual, the handicapped. 07:39.150 --> 07:42.210 Everybody is under the thumb of the alpha male 07:42.210 --> 07:46.690 and his henchman in primate land. 07:46.690 --> 07:47.890 And that's how it is. 07:47.890 --> 07:50.170 As we sit here, I mean, we have a bunch of 07:50.170 --> 07:52.790 fancy rhetoric and so forth and so on, 07:52.790 --> 07:56.130 but basically our world is ruled by mafia's 07:56.130 --> 07:58.150 run by middle-aged fat guys 07:59.150 --> 08:03.150 who have very evil friends who carry out their orders. 08:03.150 --> 08:05.410 But we have a lot of conflict about this. 08:05.410 --> 08:06.910 Why is it even an issue? 08:06.910 --> 08:10.570 Why don't we just accept this level of brutishness? 08:10.570 --> 08:13.730 The psilocybin has a very interesting effect 08:13.730 --> 08:16.050 on sexual expression. 08:16.050 --> 08:17.150 This raising, raising the level of sexual expression, 08:17.890 --> 08:25.510 of the level of sexual tension or activity this arousal phenomenon in the 08:25.510 --> 08:32.230 presence of a psychedelic which is dissolving boundaries it's you can tell 08:32.230 --> 08:39.790 by looking at human culture that our sexual behaviors are not under genetic 08:39.790 --> 08:48.130 control and what I mean by that is this most important of all matters in 08:48.130 --> 08:53.970 evolution how we have sex and how we propagate and how we choose mates 08:53.970 --> 09:04.110 there's no rules and in the human world we have monogamy we have polygamy we 09:04.110 --> 09:09.270 have polyandry we have cultures where brothers share 09:09.270 --> 09:09.770 a 09:09.770 --> 09:15.270 brides this is assumed this is culturally validated very interesting 09:15.270 --> 09:23.090 that this most important matter is culturally determined in us apparently 09:23.090 --> 09:30.830 in the primates in the advanced primates the sexual expression is freely it is at 09:30.830 --> 09:36.270 what I would call near a point of disequilibrium you know push somebody 09:36.270 --> 09:39.270 just a little bit this way and there are rabid monogamous 09:39.870 --> 09:42.830 this and then you push them just a little bit thisencies that again 09:42.830 --> 09:46.310 exactly what is that 09:46.310 --> 09:51.150 the Tyler simply 09:51.150 --> 09:51.930 bean 09:51.930 --> 09:59.910 growing 09:59.910 --> 10:03.490 this is so clear 10:03.490 --> 10:04.750 or sexual expression is so close to this equilibrium point acceptance of psilocybin into the diet 10:04.750 --> 10:09.590 the pattern of male dominance and for perhaps a hundred thousand years male dominance increased and for perhaps a hundred thousand years this delicate relationship that has a way of transforming the system with male dominance drive us back to miejsce and the precise point of the body in this endless repertoire of sillus and to don't bother dangerously 10:09.770 --> 10:19.530 dominance was chemically suppressed by an item in the diet. Not genetically removed, 10:19.530 --> 10:28.910 but chemically suppressed. And I believe that a chimp style gave way in human beings to 10:28.910 --> 10:38.170 a bonobo style for as long as the psilocybin using ritual was maintained. Who knows how 10:38.170 --> 10:46.790 long? 100,000, 50,000 years. But point being that it's in that window of opportunity that dance, 10:46.790 --> 10:57.170 poetry, theater, altruism, philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, music, everything about us that makes 10:57.170 --> 11:05.410 us human emerged in the situation of chemical suppression of male dominance. And I think a 11:05.410 --> 11:08.010 kind of equilibrium paradigm. 11:08.170 --> 11:15.170 Where men and women were at peace with each other, human beings were at peace with the 11:15.170 --> 11:23.210 land, everything was hunky dory. What led to the descent into hell.