THE BEST WAY TO PREDICT THE FUTURE IS TO CREATE IT.
The Past, Present and Future of Psychedelic Tourism in Oaxaca (Part 5)
(This is the third chapter of a travelogue in which I visit the highlands of Oaxaca in order to investigate its psychedelic tourism scene. If you wish to start the story from the beginning, you can find the first chapter here.)
The Past, Present and Future of Psychedelic Tourism in Oaxaca (Part 5)
by Crow Qu’appelle
I woke up early again. When it was about seven I went up to the restaurant and ordered a coffee. After the caffeine kicked in, I was ready to write. I´m useless before coffee.
I was in a good flow state by the time I was ready to eat. I ordered some chilaquiles at the restaurant, and they were delicious. If you haven’t been to Mexico, you probably don´t what chilaquiles are, so let me bring you up to speed.
Chilaquiles are a kind of breakfast nachos, but they’re not made with corn chips. They’re made from fried corn tortillas, covered with salsa, pico de gallo, cheese, and a special type of cream. Like nachos, they come with an infinite number of possible toppings, and different regions all find some way to make them their own.
Oaxaca is famous for its mole sauce, for instance, so you’ll find chilaquiles with mole here. And in every part of Mexico, the same idea applies. The variety is endless.
That said, there are two main types of chilaquiles - rojos and verdes, which refer to two different types of salsa, one red and the other green. Neither of them is very spicy, but the red is sweeter and the green is more sour. People usually prefer one or the other, but I like ´em both.
It used to be that chilaquiles were thought of as food for poor people, who couldn´t afford to waste day-old tortillas. But now things have come full circle, and chilaquiles have become something that Mexicans take pride in, just like Quebeckers take pride in poutine.
Believe it or not, the same thing used to be true of mezcal. Now it´s a highly prized liquor that can run you up almost $200 a bottle in Toronto, but it used to be seen as moonshine for campesinos. Well, let´s be real. It WAS moonshine for campesinos.
Now, though, the world has realized how awesome that moonshine is, and Oaxaquenos today will boast if their abuelo was a mezcalero, whereas a generation ago they would have kept that fact to themselves. I think that there’s a lesson to be learned here.
In Canada, it used to be that if someone was a quarter native, they would hide that part of their heritage. Now, people who are 1/16th native want strangers to know about it. Think about that.
My point is that everything goes in and out of style, including ideas. That means fashion is way more important than intellectuals tend to think. Most people want to have the opinions that will win them the approval of their peers. In sociology, this is called the social desirability bias, which is probably the best term sociologists have ever come up with. I mean, who doesn´t want to be socially desirable?
I guess the reason I´m writing this is because I can´t stop thinking about something called The Archaic Revival. This is a term invented by Terence McKenna to describe the phenomenon of post-WWII counterculture, in which many things practiced by ancient indigenous cultures seemed to re-emerge in the collective consciousness in a very pronounced way. Take the fact that some many people these days are pierced and tattooed. For many generations, such things would have been markers of a lower social class, if they were heard of at all. In the eyes of my grandparents, for instance, it certainly wouldn´t have been socially desirable to be pierced and tattooed. But things change. And no one where is this more evident than in attitudes towards politics and religion. Right now, it seems to me that things are changing very quickly, but then again, I live in a bubble where most people I interact with either share my ideas or are at least open to them. Believe it or not, my beliefs are quite normal in Mexico. It really is a country of anarchists. And the president is on record saying that if leprechauns didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent them.
As an anarchist, I distrust all politicians on principle, but goddam it’s hard to hate someone whose response to COVID was to wave an amulet around. Can you imagine if everyone had just done that?
You see where I´m going with this? Over the past few hundred years, belief in leprechauns has been decreasing, and it’s not hard to guess why. The industrial revolution has resulted in an ever-greater percentage of Earthlings being corralled into cities where they have little connection with nature. Is it any wonder that belief in the existence of nature spirits would dwindle?
But AMLO is living proof that it is no longer socially undesirable to believe in leprechauns. He is wildly popular, perhaps the most popular president in the history of Mexico. Not long ago, many middle-class Mexicans would probably downplay their own mystical beliefs, because middle-class people in every country tend to want to take their cues from the best educated people, and mystical creatures are rarely studied in institutions of higher learning. Don’t ask me why.
My point is this: if something has existed for thousands of years, chances are it´s not going to go away. Even if you don’t actually believe in leprechauns, you can acknowledge that the idea of small, forest-dwelling magical creatures has existed in innumerable cultures for time immemorial. That is simply a fact. It is also a fact that the social desirability bias means that people who don´t believe in leprechauns will tend to pretend to believe in leprechauns if that´s the way the winds are blowing, and vice-versa. The one thing that we can be sure of is that attitudes will change. The pendulum can only swing so far before it starts swinging the other way. And that´s where we´re at now. A major cultural shift has taken place, and most people are playing catch-up. And the truth is that no one truly knows where this crazy road will take us. Let me say that again. No one knows. No one.
Nevertheless, I like make predictions. Why, you ask? Well, it’s simple. The best way to predict the future is to create it. And I’d much rather be the master of my own destiny than whatever the alternative is.
What we can be sure of is that the future will be constructed out of the same stuff as the present is, and what the past was. What do I mean by this? I mean that the world is made out of ideas. That means that the future will be made of ideas.
Money is an idea. It has power because people have faith in it. Government is an idea. It has power because people believe in it.
In many ways, we have no choice but to believe in it. Reality is what you can get away with, and it’s damn near impossible to get by without money if you’re trying to live in the modern world. So I wouldn’t say that money is an illusion, or anything like that. It is a type of conceptual technology that requires the faith of its users in order to function. That´s pretty fucking trippy if you really stop and think about it. The world runs on an immaterial fuel called money, and it requires us to believe in it in order for it to function.
I really have come around to the idea that capitalism is simply the cult of money. Money is the God of the industrial age.
Soon, however, the U.S. dollar will crash, and the faith that people have in money will be shaken to its core. With this crisis will come opportunity, and the new normal will be built out of the ideas which happen to be lying around. Nevermore exists to prepare for this exciting moment of revolutionary possibility. We know that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
If you think about money, about how it moves people, plants, animals around the world, one must marvel that something immaterial could wield such power over sentient beings with bodies and minds and spirits, all of which are things that money does not possess. How could something so unreal wield power over real people?
In practical terms, nothing is less unreal than money, especially if you are poor. But it is real only because people believe in it.
For most of the world´s people, money is a vengeful God who must forever be appeased with constant sacrifices in the form of time and energy. This is called work. They believe in this God because they must, and play their part in its game because they have no other choice. Many know that the game is rigged, but they nonetheless believe in the system and the myths which sustain it.
But what if that changed?
What if we believed in something else?
What if we believed in something that gave us power instead?
This is heresy! I love it...Kman