Hominin evolution occurred in an ever-changing, and at times quickly changing, environmental landscape and entailed advancement into a socio-cognitive niche, i.e., the development of a socially interdependent lifeway based on reasoning, cooperative communication, and social learning. In this context, psychedelics’ effects in enhancing sociality, imagination, eloquence, and suggestibility may have increased adaptability and fitness. We present interdisciplinary evidence for a model of psychedelic instrumentalization focused on four interrelated instrumentalization goals: management of psychological distress and treatment of health problems; enhanced social interaction and interpersonal relations; facilitation of collective ritual and religious activities; and enhanced group decision-making…integration of psilocybin into ancient diet, communal practice, and proto-religious activity may have enhanced hominin response to the socio-cognitive niche, while also aiding in its creation. In particular, the interpersonal and prosocial effects of psilocybin may have mediated the expansion of social bonding mechanisms such as laughter, music, storytelling, and religion, imposing a systematic bias on the selective environment that favored selection for prosociality in our lineage. ~ Psychedelics, Sociality, and Human Evolution
With this evolutionary account in mind, one could argue that drug use (again, psychedelic use especially) is a part of human nature but in a way that offers several important advantages. Hence, we don’t have to view psychoactive drug use in negative terms (e.g. as a form of unhealthy escapism). Instead, we can view consciousness alteration as helping to solve certain problems in healthy ways, which in turn leads to diverse benefits, including group bonding and the expansion and enhancement of fulfilling activities like comedy, laughter, art, music, sex, and storytelling.
Clipping
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clippings > A positive framework of psychoactive drug use
[https://www.samwoolfe.com/2025/01/drugs-the-human-condition-altered-states.html]
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clippings > The resurrection of Jesus could have been a mass hallucination
[https://aeon.co/essays/i-now-think-a-heretical-form-of-christianity-might-be-true]
It’s perfectly rational for an atheist to hold that Christianity was sparked by some kind of rare mass hallucination, preferring that explanation on the basis that, while improbable, mass hallucination is less improbable than a resurrection.
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books > the:humans (Haig, Matt)
A homo sapiens was a primitive hunter who had woken each day with the knowledge he could kill. And now, the equivalent knowledge was only that he would wake up each day and buy something.
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books > the:humans (Haig, Matt)
Two mirrors, opposite and facing each other at perfectly parallel angles, viewing themselves through the other, the view as deep as infinity. Yes, that was what love was for.
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books > the:humans (Haig, Matt)
Magazines are very popular, despite no human ever feeling better for having read them. Indeed, their chief purpose is to generate a sense of inferiority in the reader that consequently leads to them needing to buy something, which they do, and then feel even worse, and so need to buy another magazine to see what they can buy next.
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books > alien:clay (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
The greatest privilege of power is being able to overlook that you’re even wielding it.
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books > fifth:science (Exurb1a)
All explanations are an attempt by humankind to divide itself from the world. An explanation without including the explainer is as a tree without the trunk. One is inseparable from the other. No system of knowledge can avoid this limitation. Numbers are not the true face of measure. Words are not the true description of things. The world is the explanation.
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books > fifth:science (Exurb1a)
The core of heroism isn’t bravery, or even self-sacrifice. It is a commitment to what one knows to be the virtuous course of action, despite whatever the consequences may be.
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books > fifth:science (Exurb1a)
Inaction is the primary refuge of those who prefer their own constructed realities to the beautiful chaos of the real world.
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books > fifth:science (Exurb1a)
“I do not want to take any more photos. I don’t like photos. I don’t want to remember any of this horseshit. What the fuck are we doing with all this? Trying to make celebrities of ourselves, everyone screaming down everyone’s throat and no one stopping to shut up. I don’t like photos. I don’t want any more taken of me.”