Contents:
- Against the Assumption of Suppression of Psychedelics in Pre-Modernity
- Motivation for this Page
Against the Assumption of Suppression of Psychedelics in Pre-Modernity
December 15, 2020
Cyberdisciple wrote:
Most entheogen scholars treat the topic of suppression in pre-modernity as if the suppressors themselves were sober and wanted to suppress the altered state entirely.
I think that this attitude transposes the rhetoric of modern Prohibition and War on Drugs into a pre-modern context.
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The attitude shapes research, by shaping the sorts of questions the researcher allows themselves to ask.
Many researchers automatically assume that some authority (usually the Roman Empire or the Catholic Church) was opposed to the altered state entirely and sought to suppress psychedelics.
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The researchers who think this way treat their research as telling a story about suppression. Their story becomes one-sided.
They do not think to look for evidence in the mainstream Roman Empire society or the mainstream Middle Ages or the mainstream Renaissance.
Any evidence they find in those contexts automatically becomes a sign of an oppressed group or a fringe survival or a secretive elite.
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As a matter of research assumptions I do not assume that there was suppression of drugs.
I am interested in looking for evidence more broadly than most researchers.
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I find that many entheogen scholars are committed to demonizing the mainstream of past societies.
I think that they have internalized the rhetoric of modern Prohibition, War on Drugs, and the counter-culture, and project that idea onto the past, consciously or unconsciously.
Because the entheogen scholars understand drugs to be counter-cultural today, they think that they were counter-cultural in the past.
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I’m interested in the question: “what does it mean for drugs to be a part of mainstream culture?”
I’m not interested in trying to find a drug counter-culture that just so happens to mirror 20th century counter-culture.
Many entheogen scholars seems to be interested in finding a drug counter-culture in pre-modernity.
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/ end of main part of Cyberdisciple’s posting
My Comment
My Comment at that article is copied to the present site:
How the Amanita Paradigm Was a Failure and Was Discredited and Replaced by the Psilocybin Paradigm
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2023/04/21/how-the-amanita-paradigm-was-a-failure-and-was-discredited-and-replaced-by-the-psilocybin-paradigm/
Motivation for this Page
Need a local page at my site to take notes.
To focus on only the main paragraphs.
From many of my pages, I want to point to my own local page rather than Cyberdisciple site.
See Also
The Self-Defeating Entheogen Suppression Assumption
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/05/02/the-self-defeating-entheogen-suppression-assumption/
How the Amanita Paradigm Was a Failure and Was Discredited and Replaced by the Psilocybin Paradigm
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2023/04/21/how-the-amanita-paradigm-was-a-failure-and-was-discredited-and-replaced-by-the-psilocybin-paradigm/
The Egodeath theory 