McKenna was a super interesting guy and his Wikipedia is worth a rabbit hole. In my teenage years I read all about his stoned ape theory which postulates that the consumption of psychoactive substances by our early human ancestors caused the development of the capacity for complex language systems, essentially causing our separation from the rest of the animal world on a sophistication level. I don’t remember if he came up with it or just popularized it, and I may be misstating it, it’s been a while.
He has tons of material on the subject and it is quite convincing, however I realized much too late that it’s been more or less debunked and is not accepted in the scientific academic world.
Like I said, worth a deep dive for sure but he does wander onto the path of pseudoscience, particularly with regards to the DMT stuff. He has the intelligence of Sam Harris mixed with the woo of Carlos Castaneda, and listening to him speak just might put you into a trance-like state of mesmerization.
i read the original book where i think he came up with the theory (food of the gods) and while there were some interesting questions and thoughts, it was overall a pretty laughable and stupid book. zero evidence, just hypotheticals stated as factual reality. and i say this being extremely pro-psychedelic. we can have discussions about the benefit and importance about them without including weird pseudoscience. the book was also poorly written, mckenna frequently goes on tangents mid-chapter. he’s got cool quotes i guess, but he’s hard to take seriously for me.
McKenna was a super interesting guy and his Wikipedia is worth a rabbit hole. In my teenage years I read all about his stoned ape theory which postulates that the consumption of psychoactive substances by our early human ancestors caused the development of the capacity for complex language systems, essentially causing our separation from the rest of the animal world on a sophistication level. I don’t remember if he came up with it or just popularized it, and I may be misstating it, it’s been a while.
He has tons of material on the subject and it is quite convincing, however I realized much too late that it’s been more or less debunked and is not accepted in the scientific academic world.
Like I said, worth a deep dive for sure but he does wander onto the path of pseudoscience, particularly with regards to the DMT stuff. He has the intelligence of Sam Harris mixed with the woo of Carlos Castaneda, and listening to him speak just might put you into a trance-like state of mesmerization.
i read the original book where i think he came up with the theory (food of the gods) and while there were some interesting questions and thoughts, it was overall a pretty laughable and stupid book. zero evidence, just hypotheticals stated as factual reality. and i say this being extremely pro-psychedelic. we can have discussions about the benefit and importance about them without including weird pseudoscience. the book was also poorly written, mckenna frequently goes on tangents mid-chapter. he’s got cool quotes i guess, but he’s hard to take seriously for me.