Arrogant Aya? Monkey Magic...

Having recently finished off my mid-year assignment load, I am now reading more “co-curricular” material. Some weeks ago this led me to a couple of journals I had purchased while attending the last Entheogensis conference at Melbourne Uni over the summer holidays. In the first of these there was an article that caught my eye, not least of all because it was authored by Dennis McKenna – perhaps best known for being the brother of the fairly eminent alternative culture figure Terrence McKenna, but also (indeed, more so) an accomplished scientist in his own right. In this article (Dennis J McKenna, ‘Ayahuasca and Human Destiny’ 1 Entheogenesis Australis Journal 63) he speculates concerning the future importance of Ayahuasca as a teacher of humanity. Amongst other notions, he points out that Ayahuasca (or its constituent ingredients) is now ineradicable – having escaped the confines of the Amazon and spread into greenhouses and backyards all over the planet. It is capable of surviving on planet Earth so long as it can sustain life. Here we have a narrative of nature’s potentiality fulfilled through the vines clingy growth around the world.    

Against this he paints modern humans as savage apes who heedlessly destroy the environment without the least sense of symbiosis with their surroundings, completely disrespecting the natural, having been ‘seduced by the delusion that we are somehow important in the scheme of things. We are not.’ (65) He highlights how our false sense of importance justifies, in our minds, our assumption of superiority over nature and the concomitant ills that spring from that such as rampant pollution, decimation of habitat and species, destruction of the atmosphere, etc. He juxtaposes this with ‘one of the most profound and humbling lessons that Ayahuasca teaches – one that we thick-headed humans have the hardest time grasping – [which] is the realization that “you monkeys only think you’re running things.”’ (64) We aren’t actually the main characters in the show, even if it seems to us that we are, and we should stop acting like it. I find this position a logically contradictory one, however. If we are not important, and not “running things,” why should it matter what we do? We may continue to pollute and do whatever we like because, at the end of the day, it is only our illusion we are in control, when actually we’re not.  

I should preface my critique with the admission that I have never had Ayahuasca. I don’t doubt that it would have important lessons to teach me and might make me disagree with the sentiments I am about to express. To the psychonaut experience is the only criterion for authority and in this sense I am badly lacking – indeed, if I experienced the Ayahuascan teaching of humanity’s inherent inferiority, I’m sure my arguments would fall to the ground in a confused heap of so many letter (which is all they are, after all). Be that as it may, I shall now proceed with my criticism.     

When McKenna says ‘[w]e assume that we dominate nature’ (64, emphasis added), he says it in such a way that suggest that we in fact don’t. His entire argument is built around the idea that we are not important and as such should step out of the way of the natural processes taking place around us. This is one of the great teachings of the Ayahuasca brew. Indeed, the misunderstanding of our importance (which is, according to him, an illusion) leads to great catastrophes done at our hands. McKenna rightly condemns our involvement in ecological destruction, emphasising that ‘we are responsible for the greatest loss of habitat and the greatest decimation of species since the asteroid impacts of the Permian-Triassic boundary’. (65) I want to draw attention to the beginning of that quote: we are responsible. It is an uncontested fact that we have an impact on the world around us, an impact the likes of which no other species can be said to have ever caused. In light of this, I do not understand how McKenna can argue that we aren’t “running things,” at least to an extent. If we have the capacity to remove all life as we know it from the face of the Earth, how can one argue that we are unimportant? Indeed, the whole fact that Ayahuasca is telling us this now must show that we are important, at least important enough to be told that we are not. Far from spreading the notion of humanity’s peripheral role in the existence of life, I think that in this time of great change we should wake up and take full responsibility for that which is occurring around us – it is nothing but the manifestation of our own action and thought, something which we must face up to sooner or later. This is not to say that we should attempt to radically alter our lifestyles or make any big changes – indeed, relinquishing conscious control is sometimes the most empowering act one can do (recently I have come to see this as another one of the sentiments behind the exchange between Krishna and Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita).

It seems to me as if McKenna is stuck between two positions: on the one hand, he successfully dodges the implicit arrogance which comes with the claim that we must “save the planet,” which contains the same egotistical premise at its core as the chauvinist assertion that “the planet is ours to dominate.” On the other hand, he goes too far in suggesting that humanity does not have any greater significance in the grand scheme of things. We should not merely see our destiny as being the ‘stewards of nature’. (65) However, I do not wish my criticism to be misunderstood as a dislike of either McKenna or his ideas. Indeed, they yield very interesting insights into notions such as symbiosis with nature or perhaps even an overcoming of the natural/artificial dichotomy; it raises some interesting questions. This issue is an important one, and not least of all because of the political implications which it may yield – indeed, this coming Sunday will be the unveiling of the Carbon Tax in Australia; a political measure which draws its entire momentum from this debate concerning climate change/global warming.  

Personally, I consider the coming period of change nothing to be afraid of, though the powers-that-be may think they have good cause to make us fear it. In this sense, perhaps, I am in total agreement with McKenna – we shouldn’t approach this problem with the apocalyptic view promoted by the “death cult.” I liken the situation to the process a foetus goes through just before it leaves the womb and completes its birth. Our home planet, which, like the womb, has been a temperature-controlled, protective, place where we have developed from single cell organisms through stages of fish, reptile, and mammal forms with seemingly unlimited nourishment, is now slowly changing to become less hospitable. We might interpret this as the first contractions of a greater birth that has yet to be completed (we could see the Great Flood as the water breaking in some older (re?)birth...). In birthing situations, the worst thing that the parties involved can do is panic. Just as one should approach that final near-death light with a clear mind and without (too much) emotional attachment, so too must the foetus relax as it is moved towards that light which is the world as we know it. The baby-to-be endangers both itself and its mother (indeed, it is the mother that is pushing it out) by clinging too strongly to the very walls which are contracting around it, the world it is destined to leave. In this sense, we must honour and respect the Earth as our birthplace and mother (and not condescend to it in the save/dominate sense) and therefore/but equally fully acknowledge the need to move on at some stage... perhaps, some stage soon...

The baby must leave the womb, or else both mother and child perish.