Daniel Pinchbeck - How Soon is Now?

Hello, and welcome back to Psychedelics Today. This is Joe, your host. We have on the show today Daniel Pinchbeck, author of the recent book, How Soon Is Now?, which I really think is one of the best books I've read in the last handful of years, related to the ecological crisis and the various kinds of hopes there are that we can get through this thing. And psychedelics are core to Daniel's, I guess, bringing up in the intellectual world. He was a writer in New York, or is a writer in New York, but at that time was kind of a materialist, secularist writer, you know, working in the literary scene, trying to, you know, scratch up the ladder. And it worked out, in my opinion, really well for him, because he's kind of this literary icon in the psychedelic world, in a lot of ways. He was instrumental, along with a couple other folks, in forming Reality Sandwich and Evolver. I've spent a lot of time with Evolver and, you know, near the later days, I had to get out of there, but for the, you know, just because there's a little draining coordinating events on my own all the time. So, you know, he was instrumental along with a couple other folks in forming Reality Sandwich and Evolver. But I really appreciate what I've learned from that in terms of coordinating events and marketing and building communities. So, you know, I feel like I could get dropped off in Marshall Islands or something and have a really cool community in a few months there. So we go all over the map here. This might be a little different from what you're used to on our show, but I promise it does relate to psychedelics. And I think you're going to like it. Let us know what you think either way. We'd really like to know. Contact us through our website, psychedelicstoday.com or email us psychedelicstodayemailatgmail.com. And I think that's good enough for the intro of Daniel. We have a lot of links in the show notes. Pinchback.io is his website. So we hope you enjoy it. So if you're interested in supporting the show, there's a few ways. Number one, you can like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. You could also leave a review on iTunes. It only takes a few minutes. And the best way you could support us and support the psychedelic movement from our side is by checking out our Navigating Psychedelics class. It is a really comprehensive class. It's a really comprehensive class. That features, I think over, yeah, we're pretty much on target to be over 10 hours of lessons and masterclasses. So we're actually reaching out to all sorts of experts in the field of psychedelics for exclusive content, exclusive lessons from them in different aspects of psychedelics from Ibogaine to ayahuasca integration and just approaches from different psychiatric points of view. We'll announce that in the next few weeks. So if you're interested in the next few weeks, we're really excited about it and really happy to be able to bring what we think is some of the better psychedelic education or most comprehensive psychedelic education available on the web. And you can find that from psychedelics today.com or psychedelics today.teachable.com. And we'd love to have you again. If you have questions, feel free to reach out, enjoy the episode and see you next time. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to psychedelics today. Today on the show, we are talking to Daniel Pinchbeck, author of the recent and fantastic book, How Soon Is Now? I first ran into Daniel's work accidentally at 2008 or 2009 Horizons New York conference. And Daniel, you spoke about this future possible utopia with different permaculture eco villages spinning up around different subspecialties or different lifestyle categories or whatever it was. And that just kind of blew my mind. I think shortly after that, I started jumping into that whole evolver project. I think I got in kind of early, right after one of those early Atlanta meetings, just was psyched on it and had a great time organizing for a while. And, you know, the organization got a little strange for a bit and then I bailed. It seems like you've been through a ton since then doing a bunch of different books, breaking open the head was breaking open the head your first book. Yes. Cool. And that fantastic book 2002. And yeah, for those who don't know, Daniel got paid, I think it was by the Village Voice to go to Africa to look into iboga and the Bwiki tradition. And that was Vibe. Okay, fascinating. And that was like 2000 ish. Yes. Fascinating story, you know, going from kind of atheist to just going, what the hell's happening out there? Let's figure this thing out. Really cool story. And, you know, the book was published in the early 2000s. And then you became kind of involved with the ayahuasca world. And you've always had this message about ecological collapse, the pressing issues around modernity. And how do we address these as a culture? It seems like part of the conversation has always been psychedelics need to be a part of it, at least to transition some people over to more conscious awareness and creativity around solving a lot of these problems, organizing in different ways, whatever. It is. I don't know. So let's let's kind of jump into how soon is now or like how maybe psychedelics kind of pushed you towards that, writing that book. Was there any immediate impulse for how soon is now writing of it? I'm just going back to like, sort of the whole history of my work, I guess, like, you know, breaking open the head. I started writing in my late 20s. It came out when I was like 35. And I started as a secular materialist. And at that point, in the media culture that I was part of, psychedelics were totally repressed and ridiculed. And, you know, nobody thought that there was anything serious about the psychic experiences or, you know, shamanism. And so I dived in, and I discovered that, you know, that it was the most incredible subject, so powerful and rich and important and healing for the individual and so on. You know, by the time I finished that first book, I'd had so many, you know, deep visionary experiences, but also, you know, psychic and paranormal experiences. And I realized that the whole mainstream society was not the same. The whole mainstream society that I was in really couldn't trust any of the information or the paradigm. And then I also had learned about these prophecies that these indigenous cultures have around our time, that sort of visionary Western psychedelic thinkers like Terence McKenna and Jose Arguelles were also fascinated with. So that led me to my second book, 2012, The Return of Quetzalcoatl. And that was like a five-year undertaking, came out in like 2006, 2007. That book looked at it, you know, as, you know, that these prophecies that these cultures have are related to what's happening at Clemson. What's happening psychologically, what's happening spiritually, what's happening technologically. All of that is sort of one process of consciousness undergoing like an evolution or transformation. And then I felt that finishing that book, that all made sense to me now, but I didn't really understand what would be the way that our society could actually change in a positive direction. It seemed too overwhelming and too hopeless. And, you know, people in the New Age talk about the age of Aquarius or the fifth dimension. But I felt that that was kind of avoiding the fact that, you know, there's like animals and plants and billions of people and a world that's running out of resources and changing rapidly. So, like, how could we actually reconstruct human society so that it would be for the benefit of, you know, everybody and also, you know, regenerate, replenish the ecology of the Earth? So that was the big idea of the third book. And it took me like 10 years, actually, to get there. And in the meantime, I started. And, you know, as you said, Evolver, which, you know, went through many iterations, but it had a for-profit aspect and a nonprofit aspect. And the nonprofit aspect were these communities, which I still think was a really great model. And I'm happy that you got a lot out of it. Yeah, I'm really thankful for that part. I still want to do it again with more capital and maybe a different team. So I'm still thinking. Absolutely. And, yeah, so then this book, you know, but everything, you know, has sort of began with certain insights that I had that many people have through psychedelics, which is kind of the artificial nature of our society, the kind of the way our technologies are kind of domination technologies rather than, you know, synergistic or symbiotic technologies are the sense that, you know, we're doing, you know, that the world could be much more amazing and humans could be much more connected with each other and with the planet than they are now. Those have all been the inspirations that have led me, you know, through psychedelics. It's like a through line through all the work. Cool. And you had, I remember, so I've been following you on, you know, social for a while and you had this period where you started talking about neo, I don't really want to call it neo-Marxist, but it's kind of like, yeah, iterations beyond what Marxism was. And like, how do we take communist thoughts like scientifically, like how do we like go beyond? move towards something that's, you know, more equitable, fair, less creepy. than straight Marxism and how that might tie into new communities or new ways of organizing. And I always thought that was fascinating. It was like challenging. I'm like, ah, shit, I don't really want to go there. He probably has some good points. Could you speak a little bit about like those writers? I don't really want to call them the new left, but what do you? Sure. I mean, yeah, I think Marx is actually one of the most brilliant thinkers we've ever had. The way, you know, just as with psychedelics, there's been a sort of demonization and repression culturally. So like to talk about his ideas seriously, you know, gets you scoffed at in many areas. You know, I mean, I critique his ideas, you know, I explore them and critique them in the new book to a certain extent. I mean, the book is meant to be very approachable and readable. It's not meant to be like deeply academic. But, you know, part of Marx's idea was that, you know, the proletariat would be victorious. There would be what he called a dictatorship of the proletariat. And that would be the end of anything political. And one of the things I got into in the book was the work of Hedda Arendt, who was a political philosopher, who basically felt that philosophy had made a mistake in rejecting politics, and that politics was actually a deeply human impulse in reality. And, you know, the word comes from polis, which was the Greek city-state, where the free people would come together to, you know, sort of negotiate and make decisions together. So we're inherently political beings. It's just that now, because our whole. The political structure that we have is so corrupt, we're so distanced from it, you know, most of us, that we don't even want to think about it. We just think about it with contempt or with disgust or whatever. So I liked her whole idea of rehabilitating the political. And I liked Marx's idea of, yeah, like an equitable, you know, more equitable redistribution. I mean, I'm not totally anti-capitalist. I think that capitalism is obviously an evolutionary stage, and it's unleashed. And I think that capitalism is obviously an evolutionary stage, and it's unleashed. But to survive as a species and go forward, we now have to understand where it's failing us and redesign some of the underlying aspects of our financial system. I mean, people are always going to want goods and services, you know, but those goods and services have to be provided in such a way that it doesn't lead to ecological and social destruction. So, yeah, so finding that balance is a crucial thing. And what else? Yeah, that's something that the post-Marxist left includes people like Antonio Negri, who I wrote about in the book. I guess Slavoj Zizek is part of that, but Negri wrote a beautiful, series of beautiful books with an American political philosopher, Michael Hart. One of them is called Multitude. And they kind of look at how they're really, you know, Marx's idea of the proletariat overthrowing the financial class isn't really, doesn't seem to be the way things are going. And actually, no, they sort of constitute, they try to sort of imagine or construct kind of a new revolutionary subject, which they call Multitude. And so they make a distinction between Multitude and Empire. And they talk about how, now that we've transitioned from material production and manufacturing, that was so popular in Marx's time, it was the hegemonic form of production. Now it's immaterial production is the hegemonic form of production. And I found that to be very, very important. And I found that to be very, very fascinating, because most people in our world are not making, you know, chairs and sewing machines anymore. We're making images and memes and social technologies and ways to, you know, new ways to conduct effective, you know, relationships, commercial relationships, you know, Airbnb, Uber, you know, Facebook. We have like, it's the era of the sort of platform where the wealth flows. So those who figure out the platform on which exchanges are made, and the point that Negri makes about this time of where immaterial production is hegemonic, is that what immaterial production produces most kind of profoundly is subjectivity itself. So, you know, that's clear. We even know what's happened with this election, how like Fox, Breitbart, you know, have kind of produced a level of subjectivity that programmed and indoctrinated people into a set of beliefs and values. And that's what, you know, media does all the time in a mass industrial, post-industrial society, because it's such a big influence. Anyway, I'm just yapping away here, but it reminds me too of like, there's a weird overlap between people like Peter Thiel and Terence McKenna, where the future of technology is like democratization, dematerialization, you know, just what would the next one be? Ubiquity, less material objects floating around in space and more. These kind of immaterial things like VR experiences that don't really exist in real space time, take up increasingly less and less space. And, you know, how does artificial intelligence play into that? It's going to be really interesting. And I think something a lot of people might be missing is just how much stuff is going to change over the next 10 to 15 years, even if we stay business as usual capital. It's going to be a lot poorer, poorer climate change is going to displace gazillions of people. People are going to be uprooted. People are going to be upgrading their bodies in new and interesting ways through genome or straight surgery. You know, what is that? You know, it's a super weird future we're charging into and it's going to be, it's almost like a bifurcation of the human species to like, you know, someone's going to stay sapiens. And I'm sure you read the new books, Homo Deus and the previous sapiens. And that's kind of like the direction of that book. And that has enormous implications for, I think, people. People trying to think about the future like yourself and others. And he, I think, misses the mark, but I think he at least throws up some flags, say, look out here, look out here. There are hard planetary limits, but I don't think he touches that too much in his book. But you, you definitely do, you know, the club of Rome report, which people should know about came out, was that I think in the seventies saying that there are, you know, we're finite planet and we have to be concerned about resources running out. Eventually we can't just keep doing business as usual. Else we're going to run into some very serious crisis downstream. And, you know, we're seeing that in places like Syria and the refugee camps and, you know, they're not getting funding to feed themselves. Um, so I am really interested in like who, who you might have as like influences around your permaculture data. Do you have any friends or, or like colleagues that you've bumped into to discuss the permaculture ideas? Yeah. I mean, you know, the book was like a 10 year. Efforts and maybe I don't even remember other people that I've met in a way, but you know, yeah, I've, you know, I have friends who do permaculture and spoken to teachers and stuff like that. I wouldn't call myself an expert though. Sure. Yeah. People should really dig into permaculture if you're curious about solutions. One of the more fascinating segments of the book, you kind of got into it with Duncan Trussell and a few others is Tamara really cool eco village in Portugal, which I believe is kind of a permaculture eco village. Do they call it that, or is it something else? The permaculture aspect maybe is coming later. I mean, um, originally it was started by these German radical, uh, activists, philosopher types who were trying to figure out why the sort of utopian dreams of the left and the green movement had failed and to analyze it deeply. And also, you know, sort of communities, you know, communes and so on, they began to realize that there were core issues around love and sexuality where they call it arrows, which hadn't really addressed. People were not really ready yet. They were not really ready to fully bring it into their forebrain, to their consciousness and understand what was, what was under, uh, happening. And so this led to kind of, uh, kind of clotting, you know, like, like, like relationships getting clotted, like possessiveness, jealousy, anger, uh, envy, and so on. And this led to the breaking apart of different, uh, you know, social efforts and experiments. So they basically broke away from society and tried to incubate a new social design and, you know, tried very quickly. Courageously, you know, different, different ways to do that, but ended up with a model which now works very, very nicely of a kind of, uh, community that's based on non-possessive relationships that are rooted in authentic communication held to a high standard of, uh, truth and trust and transparency. And they've, uh, constructed a number of social tools that allow for this experiment to thrive. Uh, so one is called the forum, like people like 30 or 40 members of the community come into kind of a circle every day. Or every other day. And they, they work through things that individuals are going through and there are back people's situations. And, uh, you know, they've also, in a way it's like a sort of neo-tribal situation where children are cared for cooperatively. So women have to ask permission to have children, uh, of the community. But if they get that permission, they know the child will be taken care of. And I think one of the reasons why like polyamory or open relationships don't necessarily work very well, a lot of people in our society is, well, first of all, the economic structures don't really, you know, are really built for them. And, and second of all, you know, women have a lot of anxiety because if they have a child and they lose their significant other, then their, their whole adult life is basically, you know, they're, they're, they're, they don't get to manifest their own creative potential. They're, they're just looking after somebody. So, so to create a system where, you know, children are taken care of, therefore women are liberated and emancipated, I think is one of the things that allows for open relationships to actually function. Yeah, it's. that was actually an interesting part of the book. I actually had my father read your book with me so I could have some sort of back and forth with a different generation to like say, what, what should I ask Daniel when I get the opportunity to talk to him? And that kind of reform of sexual relationships, partnerships, poly stuff was one of the more challenging parts to him. He said, it's, it's challenging to me personally, but he's, he's right. It's like, it's not, he's absolutely on point, but it's like personally very scary for a lot of folks. Yeah, it is scary. Cause like, I mean, you know, and also, I mean, people have, you know, many people have gotten far down the road. They have an ego investment in monogamy and, you know, sometimes you have to accept that that's the situation and it's fine. I mean, it's something, many people have beautiful relationships in that way. But on a social level, we can see there's, there's some huge problems. I mean, you know, the whole question of toxic masculinity, sexuality was like basically the underlying motif of this, of this horrible last election, you know, whether it was Bill Clinton and grabbing the pussy or Andrew Wiener and the sexting or Bill O'Reilly and the sexual harassment or Roger Ailes and the sexual harassment, uh, Bill Clinton and his philandering. It's like this, this toxic pool of masculine sexuality is kind of driving us into cultural oblivion right now. And one could say, Oh, like men should just like keep their dicks in their pants and, and just be monogamous. But that's obviously not going to happen because we're not meant, we're not built to be monogamous. And so if we don't construct, you know, uh, not even women are apparently according to sex at dawn. But, uh, if we don't construct a social design that, that allows people's authentic natures to, to be, uh, expressed, then you end up with quite tremendous deformations. You end up with a global sex trade, you know, you end up with, uh, also all sorts of nightmares. So, you know, bringing that up to consciousness so that we can understand and integrate it and then recreate our social systems to support, you know, people's expressive, you know, authentic, uh, expressions of desire is something that's crucial, I think for the survival of the species. And, uh, tomorrow really sees itself as a peace, uh, research center first, but they believe that we'll never have peace on earth until we have peace in love and peace between the genders. I think it's a, it's a very important, uh, and I agree. It's a very challenging area. You actually just posted a fundraising effort from them. Could you mention what that is? Yeah. They're bringing a bunch of, I mean, they're always trying to do different seminars and conferences, but they're bringing a bunch of indigenous kind of leaders to, uh, Tamara, uh, with over the summer and August for some type of, uh, conference. Cool. We'll post a link for that. Yeah. This whole thing about like relationships and sex, it seems like, um, you know, it's just like a very societal thing, um, to change that. I was thinking when you were talking about, you know, these kind of, um, maybe more tribal, there is a, uh, a Mayan shaman who, who spoke about how the women in the culture in the particular tribe that he was living in, the child would suck the breast of every woman. And then the mother would be last. So that child has, you know, all the mothers in the community to take care of them. It's like, well, yeah, I don't, if we were to move forward with this, like, you know, you kind of have that backlash of like the communes, the communes in the sixties, like it didn't work out. Like how do you, how would you even go about starting like a new kind of cultural thing about that? You know, it seems difficult. Yeah. Well it is starting. I mean, it's happening already. Uh, and uh, yeah, I mean that argument that I used to get a lot is about the, oh yeah, there were communes were failed experiment. Free love was an experiment. Psychedelics were failed experiment. I mean, that's the nature of experiments when you start experiments that usually fail. Like the first time, you know, you try to create something new, the lab, it blows up, you know, the second time, you know, you create something, but it walks for a few feet, then collapses. So, um, so yeah, this is an ongoing experiment and there's a legacy of efforts and Tamara does seem to me like the best model. You know, I mean, I don't think personally I would want to live there. It's such a refined kind of frequency, but I want to spend more time there, but I've seen people now taking those practices to Canada, to towns in Canada and that inspiration is moving around. You know, more and more adults that I know of who maybe are part of the extended, like Burning Man family are becoming, uh, you know, non monogamous but trying to bring a lot of consciousness and attention to bear on it. So it's an ongoing, and then even the New York times had an article in open marriages like a month ago, you know, so there isn't a cultural conversation that that's starting to happen and it just needs to keep, uh, keep growing, you know? Yeah. There's this book. I think it was called we are gods. It was about the communes that in the sixties up in Vermont, but you know, some of the feedback with those folks was that there was no structure back then. You know, it was almost like this like new process and it was all exciting, but there's no structure to contain it. And I think you are right. It's an experiment. So what'd you learn from there? And then how could you make it a little bit better? Maybe structure is good for some of these communities. Yeah. And also, um, I guess trying to figure out, you know, um, I'm just, um, strip away the social conditioning and the social programming, um, you know, understanding, you know, aspects of masculine and feminine nature that are really deep. So I haven't read your book. I know Joe has and I've listened to a few podcasts that you were talking about your book. So I know that like a little bit about it, but, um, for, you know, the folks that are listening to this, could you just give like a, you know, what was your overall message for writing the book and what kind of stuff did you get into? Yeah, I guess there, well, there's two major kind of ideas or themes. One is that, you know, people are so scared to think about what's happening ecologically that they just prefer to avoid it and be totally distracted. But, but I suggest that for those, you know, for those people who are ready, we can actually say, okay, like we're in this circumstance rather than hiding from it. Let's see it as a rite of passage, as an initiation, as a mission, you know, kind of like, you know, mission impossible or avatar or something, and then actually enjoy it because it's an incredible challenge and opportunity for, um, spiritual personal growth for, for collective development. Even if we, you know, have to make less money or something and put our energy in something different for a while. Uh, and then secondly, this idea that as a result of this initiation that we're going through collectively, which is unavoidable, I would say we're going to have, we're going to transition from the current sort of hyper individual paradigm, uh, hyper consumers paradigm to one where we become aware of ourselves as kind of, uh, aspects or, or cells of, of a planetary super organism that comprises humanity in a symbiotic relationship with the earth as a whole system. And ultimately if humanity is going to thrive on the planet, we're going to redesign our government systems, economic systems, technological systems so that they, they work, they mesh harmonically with, with the planet as a whole, as a whole. And then the book seeks to ask the question like, okay, well let's say that's what we have to do. And what does that require? Like technically what does that mean in terms of, in agriculture, in terms of industry, uh, in terms of energy production socially, what does it mean in terms of, you know, governments, a political system, financial system with the, how do we exchange value in a less destructive way? And then what does that mean in terms of our state of consciousness or, you know, which is, uh, you know, our, our habits, behavior patterns are, you know, very much kind of imprinted upon us by society, by the media. So how would, how would those have, to be changed, reframed and how could we make the whole thing into something really, really like a positive, like deep, you know, adventure story for humanity, like a new mythology or for a new, for new culture. It seems like we're in the process of creating a new birth narrative. Yeah. Yeah. I want to go back to something you said in the beginning about like, you know, the people that I think it's like the age of Aquarius, maybe the new age belief that we're going through this transition, but then also believing that and then maybe not doing anything, nothing about it versus like actually taking action. Like you said, like, Oh, maybe we are going through these transitions, but what about all the plants and the animals? You know, a lot of them are dying off. Um, what are your thoughts on that? Oh, wait, I know. Are you going to keep going with us? Sorry. So like people that just think it's, you know, maybe we're going through this transition. I don't really need to do anything. It's just the age of Aquarius or, you know, these things are lining up in the stars versus like actually, okay, this is happening. So, you know, we need to take action. Yeah. I mean, I think, um, I mean, I guess that's the shift internally that I'd like to think people have to go through. Uh, and, um, it's very difficult because even now, you know, there's still tremendous rewards, you know, like, uh, within the system, if, if you conform in certain respects, like a lot of, a lot of the cultures that I know of are just not receptive really to, to, to the types of changes that are necessary. Hmm. Cool. Thanks. Yes. I just always think about this, it's like kind of like shadow work, you know, people might just want to think that these things are happening. And then there's like, ah, it's just going to figure itself out versus like, you know, are we part of the process when we actually have to make the change and actually do the work? Yeah. I mean, like I just met, I just had breakfast with somebody who, um, actually I'm really inspired by my book and he was an entrepreneur and he had a company that was doing like, like these suitcases that had like sensors and artificial intelligence added to them. So you know, they could, you couldn't lose your suitcase. And so he built this company, sold it, and then he read my book and he was like, okay, how do I apply some of these ideas? So he just developed a whole model for a company that is about reforestation, but using sophisticated technologies like AI and sensors and robotics. Because a lot of reforestation is very crude. You can just scatter seeds or plant trees, but if you really want to create a healthy forest, there's a whole complex ecosystem that needs to be reengineered. And now with the Paris agreements, governments in Europe are willing to pay a lot of money for reforestation in the global south and so on. So he has a plan for how to do that and a business model around it. And so that's, I think, amazing. I know a lot of people try to do stuff like that in different fields. That's got to be really helpful. I know it's like really dark times, animals being removed from the endangered species list that really shouldn't be. I have a friend that does a lot of satellite imaging talking about how damaged are soils, how stubborn are soils, and how can the Forest Service work with them? And her opinion is that stuff's just totally dune. And I had this long argument with her about you can't just spread pessimism. You really have to talk about these solutions. It sounds like, Daniel, you're exposed to a lot of really interesting entrepreneurs that are doing interesting work that feels really optimistic. I know it's always this balancing act, like, okay, world's over in five years, or like, you know, maybe we can do another couple hundred years as humans on the planet. Like, it's this weird juggling act right now. To me, it feels like psychedelics have to play some sort of role. In helping us balance those emotions. Do you still, like, I know you've kind of stepped away from psychedelics a bit, but how do you feel like it's still an important piece of our evolving culture or evolving species? Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I mean, yeah, I haven't really stepped away. It's just that it's hard for me when I've, you know, already written about a subject. I kind of like, like I said, my piece on it in a way. Sure. Well, actually, I now have a contract to write a book on ayahuasca. So I need to dive back in. At some point. But I think, first of all, it's very hard for your, like, people like your friends to grasp, to handle this without some perspective that you can say is mystical or spiritual or even psychic. You know, because if you shift from the materialist perspective, which, yeah, from that perspective, it really does look like we're totally screwed, to sort of a Jungian, shamanic, you know, mystical perspective, then you realize there's deeper things happening. You know, it's almost like. We're in, like, a story that's unfolding, like a myth. I mean, even Trump, you know, so many things about Trump's election are, you know, mind-bogglingly, you know, kind of, like, fantastical. Including his name, like the Trump, like the Trump card in the deck, you know, or the Secretary of State is Rex Tillerson, which can be shortened to T-Rex, you know. The woman who just, you know, released all these documents around the Russian tampering was reality winner, you know. So it really feels like we're kind of. My friend Jonathan Zapp wrote some really fun pieces about it for Reality Sandwich, how Trumpocalypse suggests that we're living in a kind of simulated reality, like the Matrix. And that's a very psychedelic kind of insight. Like, when you take psychedelics, you can very easily realize that, you know, this is somehow like a cosmic dream that's unfolding, you know, very, very much like a dream in the dream world. And we're all part of a collective process, a gigantic imagination that's weaving something into manifestation. And I think that gives you a bit more hope, or even a lot more hope, and grounds for optimism. Because if this creative imagination that we're all expressions of has, you know, brought us to this level of complexity and nuance and sophistication, it's probably not just going to, like, wipe us out, you know, in a second and blow us up on the rocks. It's not really a very good story, you know. I mean, a better story would be that, yeah, like, we figure it out. Like, we break through. We grow into something different, you know. We get into contact with our extraterrestrial brethren. You know, this whole thing that we're in is just almost like a prelude to something that could be really, really incredible. You know, where we set up other planets, where people develop their psychic abilities, where people have the time, the liberated time, to really cultivate their unique essence. But somehow we need to go through this crisis, or bifurcation, or speciation. You know, we're on a certain threshold that seems to be happening now to liberate our true potential, you know. Or that's just a made-up story, too, and it's all going to go to hell. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, being willing to, there's another McKenna line about, like, could have been one of his buddies, too, but something about just becoming increasingly comfortable with uncertainty and just charging ahead anyway, and how that kind of nicely pairs with bravery. Psychedelics can instill some sort of bravery, but it's like, I don't know. Yeah, well, that's the whole idea. They're tools of initiation. I mean, like, the other night I was talking to a young woman, and she was saying that when she took ayahuasca, the first few times she did it, it was, like, really beautiful, and it was, like, harrowing and horrible, and she felt like her mind was being, like, torn apart, so she was losing her mind. And, you know, I was like, well, you know, what does that mean, actually, like, losing your mind? Like, I've lost my mind. You know, I mean, I've had experiences on psychedelics, ayahuasca, where there was no more sense of meaning, or everything just seemed totally language, thought, everything just seemed like, you know, like, nonsense, you know, nothing. And then you go through that, and you break through that, and you break that apart, and you surrender utterly, and then you're reconfigured, you know, and reconstellated. And that's, you know, in shamanism. Yeah. So they talk about it as, you know, kind of, like, shamanic dismembering, you know, and then being willing to go into that, you know, and go through it. And then the reintegration always tends to be, you know, really profound and give you a new insight, a new sense of wholeness, actually. So that seems to be what's happening on the global level. Absolutely. It seems to correlate really well with the Joseph Campbell hero's journey, and then, like, back to your book. And your book is almost like that cleaver, just saying, not this, not this, not this, not this, maybe a couple of these things, super broken in all these spots. Thank you so much. That was really what I was trying to do in the book. And I really, I'm sort of in shock at how slow it's been to get it out into the public, because I, it was such, it felt to me that everyone would just immediately be like, oh, like, that's the necessary book that we all have to read. And instead of being able to get reviews, like the New York Times, and so on, or New Yorker, or anything, you know, it's been really disheartening. I've been, like, demoralized. I'm now about over it. But, like, you know, watching people like Milo Yiannopoulos get all this TV time to talk about hate-filled garbage spewing from this idiocy perspective, and you spend 10 years writing something that tries to show, you know, that uses, you know, as much critical analytical intelligence like it brings to bear on what is the solution paths out of this, and you can't get any fucking time on a network. You can't get on, you know, CNN. You can't get on the ABC. You can't, you know, you can't get on the, you can't get written up in the New York Times. It's been extremely disheartening, you know. Why do you think that is? Well, I'm not entirely sure. I mean, this book didn't come from a mainstream publisher, so it has less clout. It came from Watkins, a beautiful publisher who I've loved working with, but, you know, they don't buy big advertising in the papers, which obviously influences. You know, my last book, 2012, got kind of demolished in some of the mainstream. Like, the New York Times wrote a really bad review, and I was, you know, sort of put in this category of being like a doomsday thinker, which was total bullshit, because the book was saying the opposite. And so they created this sort of construct around me that makes it totally impossible for them to then actually look at what I'm saying or take it seriously. I mean, it's really extreme. Like, I knew about, you know, so I used to work in journalism. I wrote for the New York Times. I wrote for, you know, the New Yorker slightly and Wired and Rolling Stone. I knew all these journalists, maybe 80 to 100 journalists. I knew all these editors, so I'm still connected with them on Facebook. I probably wrote to all of them. I begged them to just, you know, I said, look, I've worked on this for 10 years. Can you just give it like three hours of your time? Sent them the fucking galleys, wrote them again really nicely, sent them the fucking book. Basically, not one of them has done anything, and it's just been like a total shutdown situation. So I think, first of all, for them to recognize that the system that they're in, that they've invested their life energy into, is a bunch of bullshit, is too hard for them. And secondly, to take the time to think about, you know, a path out of it is something that's just beyond them. I don't know what else it could be. Right. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. Is it like too controversial or just too much for people to deal with? Because it just seems like there's just a lot of garbage out there nowadays and a lot of meaningful people with a lot of like great ideas. It seems like it just gets lost and, you know, just the bullshit reality stuff is like heightened and tossed out there. And people. People love it, you know, it's like. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's also a lot of, you know, intelligence that's not meshed with wisdom, you know, so like. Yeah. Um, you know, there's a lot of, you know, like, I mean, you know, a film review of The New Yorker can be written brilliantly, you know, critiquing some Hollywood film or whatever. But, you know, I mean, that's, you know, Peter Russell's work. Loosely familiar. He did some really cool stuff a bunch of years ago, from what I remember. Yeah, I mean, apparently he's now gotten very demoralized and thinks it's hopeless. But he had this whole theory around, which I talk about in the new book, that sort of revolutions, successive revolutions in culture and society have been happening at exponentially quicker rates. So we had like the agricultural revolution was like thousands of years. The industrial revolution was hundreds of years. The information revolution was like tens of years, decades, and maybe half century or less. And he believes that we're on the cusp of another revolution. Which he talks about as the wisdom revolution, which would be, yeah, kind of like now injecting our, you know, information technologies, our industrial technologies, our systems with a more, you know, coherent, holistic perspective that takes like long cycles of time. And, you know, all the things that I talk about in the book into account. So that's sort of like, you know, where we're teetering. People are just not quite ready to go there. Hopefully my book will help. Help like a critical mass make the shift. What's something that makes you really optimistic about, you know, the next handful of years? There has to be a couple things. Well, I mean, I think it's, you know, I see a lot of incredible progress happening. Like I see a lot of people waking up. I mean, I have a, you know, 15-year-old daughter and her level of sensitivity and her friend's level of sensitivity is much higher about many things than it was when I was their age. So, yeah, I think there's, you know, there's potential in the whole blockchain revolution. There's potential in using kind of technologies, you know, as you said, you know, discerning, you know, where they could be of tremendous value, like, you know, drones that can plant forests or trying to deal with coral reefs or something, you know, or like, you know, but then also, you know, so, yeah. So, so I think there's, there's a leap in awareness happening. I definitely feel that psychedelics are helping to catalyze that. Ayahuasca is helping to catalyze that. There's more models of what an alternative utopia and, you know, workable utopia could be like, like Tamara, that can now be templates for other larger societies to follow. You know, it's definitely like beautiful Star Wars-like, you know, kind of situation, you know, but it's all these things are happening at once. You remember the transition town movement? Yeah. It's interesting to me, the Tamara thing almost sounds like the, the early-ish stages of transition town where they started bringing trainers to that town in England to then go back out and become kind of like trainers elsewhere. So it's really interesting to me that it sounds like that's happening almost naturally. Sounds really optimistic. I know transition kind of got a flat tire somewhere. I don't know why. You know, it's really cool that they're expanding because Tamara, to me, sounds like transition. Plus far more depth in, in social intelligence and social process. One issue with transition, well, first of all, there wasn't so much of an explicit, you know, kind of mystical idea or spiritual idea. Right. The other thing is that it was very linked to pink peak oil. You know, there were a lot of thinkers. Directly linked. Yeah. People saying that, you know, we were about to hit peak oil and actually, you know, we're still probably going to hit peak oil. But. It didn't, it didn't somehow happen. Like they found enough unconventional force sources of fuel, which unfortunately have also been more ecologically destructive and so on to kind of keep the whole machine going for the present time. Yeah. That's an interesting point. Yeah. I was always like, I really wish transition would succeed, but it just felt really almost shallow because yet like peak oil was like the only thing. And it was really peak everything, peak despair, everything was kind of hitting the fan at the same time for those guys. And they didn't really, as a group acknowledge it, they only wanted to stick with oil and climate. It's still going, right? I mean, there's still, there's still. Yeah, it's still alive for sure. I was actually thinking about spinning one up here in my town because, you know, our whole economy is based on having a regular snowfall and if that gets disrupted, it's a big deal. And it's interesting because in the short term, I think the models actually show we'll get a shitload more snow for, you know, 2050 or period and then stuff might get really bad, but we'll see. So I'm, so we're, we're trying to somehow discuss like this vision of psychedelics. How do we progress the field of psychedelics? How do people get involved? And I'm wondering if you have any advice for some young people that might want to get involved in this psychedelic world that you know a lot about, like how to, you know, maybe dip their toes in lightly before jumping in headfirst, you know, quitting their jobs and such. Well, I mean, it looks quite likely that, you know, psychedelics are going to have, you know, are going to be able to be part of different therapies and so on. Like, you know, there's, you know, NYU. I believe has a center, right, for like psychedelic psychotherapy, the terminally ill cancer patient study with psilocybin. Johns Hopkins, I know, is now doing that study, even just with religious leaders with psilocybin, which is really fascinating to see what types of experiences they have, creativity studies. So it's like, yeah, Imperial College in London. So there are career opportunities opening up. My gut instinct is that in the next 10 years, psychedelic thing is going to move. It's going to move from the margins more and more towards the center for various reasons. I mean, one reason is as climate change intensifies, we're going to have a lot of environmental refugees who are going to be traumatized. And the best tool for, you know, actually rehabilitating people and treating trauma seems to be, you know, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, which is having tremendous success rates with veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars of treatment of first forms of PTSD. I've got more than 60%. So I would see that in the future, we would be treating, you know, environmental refugees, war refugees, you know, with psychedelic psychotherapy to, you know, be able to assimilate them, you know, into society. So, yeah, and I think that's going to become part of the future. I really do. I don't think, I mean, you know, unless everything is totally haywire, but, yeah. I think there's a lot of potential for growth there. And the studies for psychedelics for creativity are really fascinating. I mean, the whole field is exploding. Right. One thing Stan Grof said forever ago is that, you know, we kind of already knew a lot of this stuff about the therapeutic data. And it's almost kind of boring that we're doing it over again. And I'm wondering if they're like outside of creativity. Well, actually, maybe that's it. Could you expand maybe a little? A little bit on creativity. Like, I know it's influenced stuff, you know, like Alex Gray and other artists, but anything else? Ultimately, it could also be scientific research into paranormality. There's one group I know who are studying or who want to study using scientific methods, whether the entities people encounter in like psychedelic states have any kind of independent validity. So they're just beginning to think about how you would try to establish that scientifically. You know, for me also, there's. It's kind of like, you know, what Rudolf Steiner talks about as like esoteric science or spiritual science, like, you know, maybe also, you know, I really liked Tom Roberts' book, The Psychedelic Future of the Mind, you know, maybe ultimately there's a shift away from just healing to self-actualization and, you know, whether you can use psychedelics and maybe even, you know, technologies for like, you know, brainwave entrainment or who knows what, electromagnetic stimulation. To help people, you know, really massively move through different states of consciousness in a very precise way. I think that could be really fascinating. Could you unpack the Steiner thing a little bit? I know you've talked about it on other shows, and I think you mentioned it here, there in the book. But like, what is it specifically about the Steiner work that interests you? He's kind of like a natural mystic in a sense. But I'm like. Was he talking about personal growth and artistic expression? Or what might I be missing there? Oh, gosh. I mean, that's a huge area. I read the biography by Gary Lachman, and I didn't totally get the Steiner spirituality. Like, I wanted to. I was like this close, but I just didn't really catch it. Like, I've studied a lot of the esoteric work from other traditions. Like, Golden Dawn Crowley stuff. But, like, I didn't really see how it related to, like, what Steiner was talking about in terms of personal development or anything like that. I mean, there's so many different avenues to discuss there. But, I mean, I guess. you know steiner as you said he was a visionary like when he was a kid he could kind of see into these astral dimensions really easily he realized that people around him didn't have that capacity so he got a doctorate in philosophy he waited till he was like 40 years old to start discussing his own uh research and uh he was part of the anthroposophical sorry the theosophy movement for a while then he broke off and started the anthropos anthroposophie anthropos how do you say yeah but anyway um yeah and but both theosophy and anthroposophy were kind of new kind of integrations of western and eastern ideas mystical precepts and um so it's like you know it's uh you know for for him like they're you know he's sort of an esoteric christian he sees uh you know christ's uh existence as a as a crucial uh world event uh that came when um kind of you know sort of the material world had crystallized the ego had crystallized uh to a point where it required like a new spiritual uh impulse uh so that was like the drop of this new seed of of a new impulse into humanity uh he talks about these super sensible perception super sensible organs of cognition that we have higher order possibilities of our of our thinking processes and he gives names to some of them he talks about as like uh imagination inspiration intuition that these are aspects of our cognitive processes that we can actually nurture through esoteric practices he created a whole series of you know practices i mean i don't really do his practices but i'm right thinking about him all the time he also said that the mission of his life on earth was to bring the knowledge of reincarnation back to the west and not only do uh people incarnate again and again as like tibetan buddhism talks about or something uh but that also the planet itself incarnates again and again and that each incarnation is like a new level of consciousness that affects like all classes of living things and so on and um yeah i mean uh it's just endlessly fascinating and and uh mysterious and quixotic and really like fits totally in with experiences particularly that i had on ayahuasca and dmt and i really you know felt that he was the best interpretive grid that i that i found but you know with any interpretive grid i mean you know we have people who become believers in something and it's more recognizing that like there are these different occult kind of overlays you know whether it's golden dawn or crowley or young or whatever and it's not necessarily like you know trying trying i think part of the trick of becoming more conscious at this point in time is you know not confusing the map with territory like enjoying the map seeing where the maps help you seeing where the maps you know overlap and provide a fuller picture but not getting stuck in any particular like mapping you know but yeah there's so many things about steiner's work that if it's taken in that way not as something like you're literally believing oh this is the way uh he's an incredibly profound and powerful and helpful thinker and you know a lot of his ideas have been really influential you know biodynamic agriculture for organic farming uh the waldorf schools have become the largest independent education movement in the west um you know those integrate his spiritual philosophy and a lot of very uh spiritual philosophy and a lot of spiritual philosophy and a lot of spiritual subtle ways just hearing you lay that out it sounded like before you even mentioned i was going to dmt that it sounded like this is yes it was these are the things that can happen when you do um psychedelics in a in a safe intentional way you could you can kind of cultivate these things over time seemingly naturally um and you can do it you know without psychedelics i mean you know breath work is a very powerful modality i mean i recently did a workshop i'm working with this amazing guy bobby klein in fact we're doing a event in tulum in september together and he's an intuitive healer who works with guides who runs a spa down in tulum and we did an event in england and we were just doing breath work with a group of people and people were having you know totally profound experiences you know without kind of the shock of your system that psychedelics provide and i think in the future we're actually going to see a lot more focus on not just psychedelics but all the psychedelics that we're going to see and i think that's going to be a these different modalities that maybe are a little bit subtle a little easier on the system uh that have to move people through uh different altered states of consciousness and you know um you know as as rilke said you know don't drink wine become intoxication you know i mean you know once you've you know integrated the psychedelic experience you don't necessarily have to keep going back all the time and doing it and doing it and doing it it should become something that that you know you recognize you're you're part of all the time in a way you know what would you say to those folks that would say you need to keep going back to do it because i know there's definitely some folks that you know want to keep going back and doing the work and you know their story i think it becomes a little bit like uh another form of like uh you know consumerism or spiritual materialism i mean um you know if you're doing it you know because you're becoming a shaman or or just because you have a deep understanding of what's going on in your life you're going to have to kind of explore those subtle realms uh but you know there are also dangers to to psychedelics that uh we don't even have ways of thinking about yet they can they can definitely impact the subtle body and you can feel a lot of people do too many psychedelics they're a little bit like ruptured somehow you know something a little bit broken in in their uh mechanism and um you know and yet and yet there's psychedelic people and and you know psychedelic people definitely have a have a wisdom that they've gained or a curiosity or something a spark you know but but you know it's it's it's these things are complicated um you know i mean i hung out recently with this guy christopher's last name dark night early dawn yeah and he you know went through very profound like he put himself on high school and did a lot of psychedelic stuff and he was like oh i'm going to go to high school and he was like oh i'm going to go to high school and he was like oh i'm going to go to high school and he like i felt like i was meeting somebody with at a very evolved spiritual state in fact you guys should have him on the show he's got a new book coming out uh you know but um a lot of people i think when they just keep doing the psychedelics they're they're not really they're just treading water they're even losing ground and so you have to really just evaluate you know is this you know is my life getting better my relationships getting better and i you know and i i've made mistakes also like uh i found some psychedelics began to have negative effects on my character uh they can feed people's kind of megalomaniacs and they can feed people's kind of megalomaniacs and they can uh make you feel a little bit indifferent to to different things happening in the world there's anyway it's very subtle they're they're very complex tools and um you know they they should be also approached with uh caution and respect yeah would you mind sharing some of those negative effects i'm sure some people are probably interested to hear like what some i didn't discuss that in the book i mean i felt that they made me uh like lsd made me a little bit more like impulsive and sort of quick to anger and reactive over time i think in a way like uh um you know yeah i mean it it it inflames maybe the the shadow aspects of my psyche around sexuality too uh so uh i approach with more caution though yeah cool thanks something we didn't really share um daniel was that uh kyle and i are kind of long time holotropic breathwork um people so we've spent a lot of time in breath work and that's part of our mission here is to bring breath work to the psychedelic conversation because i think it's really missing and um it's it's good to hear that you're kind of chatting about that with some um the guy in tulum sounds like a really interesting dude a clinical psychiatrist i pulled him up bobby klein was it yeah um does he have a particular method that he works in uh does he have a particular maybe you know he did a breath work i've done a few breath works with him and it's not exactly the uh holotropic method but it's his own modification of it cool was it a breath work uh i've done a few breath works with him and it's not exactly the like three hours ish wasn't that long okay cool maybe an hour interesting um cool so we're coming up in the end of the time to record here um i know you have a podcast how soon is now podcast um are you still doing episodes there yeah yeah for sure cool um what kind of folks are you chatting with on there uh who am i speaking spoken to um i did one with marion williamson did one with you know different you know lesser known people who i consider to be have great ideas or significant you know approaches a friend of mine aldor lada who runs a economic uh sort of think tank and non-profit called the rules.org uh yeah just all sorts of different interesting characters yeah cool i'll have to check it out since i like the book so much i'll have to take in um any any kind of messages you want to leave the listeners with i hope that they will be inspired to buy the book for themselves i think it'll be really of value to them yeah i'm probably going to start gifting it to some folks just uh because i know the message does need to get out there for sure i mean kyle any closing things on your end no i'd like to say thanks for uh your time and i feel like i could probably talk about this stuff for hours with you you're really interesting and yeah thanks for your time there you have it psychedelics today daniel pinchbeck i've been really excited about talking to him for a while since reading the book i read it over the winter and really couldn't stop thinking about the various things he raised there there's so many different things that can make us feel more hopeful of psychedelics being one of them but there's all sorts of non-drug stuff like breathwork yoga all this stuff permaculture and social process technologies like they're developing at tamara in portugal there's plenty of other people going at it too the internet's made so much possible so much change possible and people are really excited about it and i'm really excited about it i am hopeful i do think we need to work and we can be it's okay to be afraid about the ecological collapse but we need to use that fear for action it's kind of fuel to get involved in all of these things really just pick a cause you know is it um stop and frisk in new york city is it the crazy drug sentencing disparity between mdma and marijuana is it uh just overall the legalization effort on drugs do we want them all regulated and pure the way we want to buy them you pick maybe it's a death penalty who knows but pick something and go at it get involved get on the organization's email list it's helping and maybe you can be a volunteer or a big wig that starts talking to senators or something who knows anyway thanks again for tuning in please do check out our class navigating psychedelics it's a great resource and we're really excited about it we launch it on august 8th and you'll be hearing a lot more about it on the show and um we think it's probably the best way that you can currently support the show so really check that out psychedelics today.com and feel free to hit us up if you have any questions psychedelics today email at gmail.com take care everybody be safe out there talk soon Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.