By: Cameron MacKenzie
Imagine that the human mind is like a ski slope. When you're young it's all fresh powder with nary a track to be found. As you get older you find yourself taking the same routes down to the bottom, and by the time you get into middle age those routes are so deep that it's impossible to ski any other way. You start each day at the top by seeing the same problems, you solve them with the same processes, and you continue to arrive at the bottom with the same conclusions you've always had. This is the way Michael Pollan, in his book How to Change Your Mind, describes the decision-making process, and while it may (or may not) be effective, it is, at the very least, limiting, predictable, and ditch-dull boring.
But if we want to change, how can we? How to Change Your Mind is about the increasing use of psychedelics to affect mental change, and I've been reading it with interest—less because I’m anxious to join an ayahuasca circle and more because I need to break out of some old patterns.
There are a lot of charlatans out there trying to convince us that we can reset everything from the way we eat to the way we love, all in order to fit some societally-mandated version of "better,"--as though it's possible to want different things based on sheer force of will. I don't believe that. I think the illusion of control is dangerous in all aspects of life, but the way Pollan approaches the idea of change relies more on being passive than active–it's about letting go in order to allow unpredictable things to arrive.
There continues to be a big stigma around psychedelics. "Never follow a hippy to a second location," runs Jack Donaghy's sound advice to Liz Lemon in 30 Rock. But I think the stigma has more to do with the psychedelic experience itself. As Pollan describes it, the psychedelic experience is both overwhelming and impossible to control. Things happen to you–to your mind and your body–and there's little to be done other than accept what's occurring and find a way to understand it.
But the price our culture puts on control is such that people would rather ignore or avoid ever feeling passive than to come to terms with the phenomenon. How much can we ultimately control? Relatively little, I think, but the impression that we are in control–that we have control–is essential to our sanity, to our sense of self. To who we are. And that's something we've built, carefully, year by year, decision by decision, going down the ski slope the same exact time every time, until we don't see any other sensible way to act, to think, or to be.
Of course this kind of inflexibility is not only boring, but dangerous. The world around us can change in an instant, requiring new thoughts, new reactions, new behaviors. And if we're unwilling, or unable to change, the whole rolling carnival could leave us by the side of the road, confused, isolated, and angry. I've been there before. I'll try almost anything to avoid being there again. Even follow a hippy to a second location.
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