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

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In 1906 the Pure Food and Drugs Act was passed; it made Cocaine and Heroin illegal and set the stage for the legally sanctioned suppression of the synthetic and addictive compounds found in the opium poppy and the coca bush. I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to convince you why this book is FUCKING AMAZING - so you'll just have to trust me. If you can suffer through it, I dare you to try to come up with one thing you learned from hearing him speak.

Have you ever thought about the mind altering power of purified sugar, the politics of coffee, and the parallels between these and what we consider to be more dangerous drugs like cocaine? Ma ciò che ho maggiormente detestato è il pressappochismo con cui McKenna tratta qualsiasi altra prospettiva di vita e sociale che non sia la propria: la seconda parte del saggio è incentrato sulla decadenza e la scomparsa della società sciamanica, e di come l'utilizzo originario di allucinogeni sia stato sostituito dall'utilizzo di sostanze fortemente assuefattive e dannose, diretta conseguenza dell'avvento di una civiltà del dominio incentrata sul controllo della popolazione attraverso suddette sostanze. And now take ten thousand or even more years in which apes and human ancestors consume certain mushrooms, herbs, fruits, weed, etc.This book was my choice and it seems to be the best choice for a beginner of Terence McKenna, as the book 'Food Of The Gods' explains a lot of Terence's theories and ideas. Maybe it's unfair to judge McKenna on this point, as this book is more than 20 years old, so he didn't have access to the same information we do today. Plus whites have much more powerful imaginations and the ability to create both in and out of their heads. Through psychedelics we are learning that God is not an idea, God is a lost continent in the human mind.

McKenna thinks popular fears of the consequences of the legalisation of drugs are analogous to Establishment fears of the eradication of slavery or emancipation of women in the past. 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. I sincerely hope, that every reader will understand it correctly, yet i understand that this is impossible. Because of the plant’s long association with the Arabs, Linnaeus, the great Danish naturalist and the inventor of modern scientific taxonomy, named the plan Coffea arabica.

McKenna is anything but; he literally believes that widespread use of psychedelics is the only thing that can save the planet from imminent apocalypse caused by human greed and egoism. There is very little substantive basis for determining which specific drugs are dangerous and should be outlawed, and which are harmless or even beneficial in certain conditions.

Some of his ideas are way out there, but if you give him a chance and go there with him, without judgement, the ideas will inspire some pretty interesting questions. His other books include Food of the Gods, The Archaic Revival and, with Dennis McKenna, The Invisible Landscape. It is an issue concerned with the most basic of human freedoms: religious practice and the privacy of the individual mind. What could genetic engineering make possible, like combining the positive or mind-altering aspects in one single plant?He lives in Occidental, California, and is co-manager of a botanical garden in Hawaii for endangered tropical plants. 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. how can we explain the legal toleration for alcohol, the most destructive of all intoxicants, and the almost frenzied efforts to repress nearly all other drugs? Il saggio di per sé è incentrato su un'idea estremamente suggestiva: spiegare la nascita dell'autocoscienza umana come frutto dell'assunzione inconsapevole da parte dei nostri antenati di allucinogeni, grazie agli stimoli e alle suggestioni che questi avrebbero apportato alla mente umana, e in conseguenza del formarsi delle prime civiltà umane incentrate su un uso del tutto conscio di queste piante, attraverso la presenza di sciamani e riti collettivi che avrebbero permesso una complementarietà totale tra uomo e natura, in virtù dell'intima connessione tra allucinogeni e l'animo Gaiano. It's the same style of writing as a highschooler with a thin grasp of an essay topic and too much access to a thesaurus.