From: Rick Knight (rknight@platinum.com)
Date: Mon Jul 21 1997 - 08:53:41 MDT
Anders Sandberg commented:
Something that might be used to support (or falsify) McKenna's theory
is to compare societies where psychotropic drugs have been used with
societies where they have been rare or not used, and see which have
had the fastest memetic evolution. As a suggestion, what about
comparing Greece and Rome (fairly non-psychotropic as far as I know)
with India (some use, at least) and the indian civilizations?
According to McKenna the amount of novelty among the Atztecs would
have been larger than among the Greeks.
Rick Knight responds:
I am sensing an underlying assumption that Greco-Roman = psychedelics
= successful empire and Indians/indigenous = psychedelics = where are
they now? I don't know that I can automatically exalt ancient empires
whose influence still dominates our cultural thinking (at times to our
detriment) over ones that have vanished. Your conclusion appears to
be over-simplifying so I'll just ask for more information so that I
may reaccess. This thread is getting interesting now...
Rick
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