Alteration is a mind set. Everything around us must be changed: clothes, looks, nature, consciousness. We strive to change everything for the better, to fit in better, to live better, and open our mind. We were once hunter-gathers, now we are a mass of sedentary animals linked by agriculture and globalism trying to forget the old ways or teach them as a thing of the past. It is inherently human and inherently natural. Evolution and natural selection for advantageous traits and alters the gene flow of entire species over long periods of time. The beaver falls trees and builds dams for homes and a more suitable place to live and breed, termites build mounds, bees build hives; animals alter their environment in both loud and subtle ways. Many animals eat plants to alter their consciousness as well; the Jaguar gnaws on roots of Banisteriopsis caapi or ayahuasca in South America. But the greatest at altering appearance, environment, consciousness and anything else is without a doubt Humans. We have the intelligence, and use it to artificially select for things we like; we can block natural selection to keep things alive for our use. Altering our perception goes far back into our history, through every colony, tribe, and ancient people. What is fascinating is how every culture (besides Eskimo, as Pollan points out) converged on the use of psychoactive chemicals and “...this suggests that the desire to alter one’s experience of consciousness may be universal” (Pollan, 139).
Like
many other plants, marijuana has been altered by us. We altered it to produce
what we need and want out of the plant. We can get hemp to weave clothes and
textiles, and we can get a psychoactive drug - usually not in the same plant.
Its captivating to think that we altered the same plant for two different uses completely
“...the first more or less spiritual in nature and the other, quite literally,
material.” (Pollan, 158) Marijuana does not get the kudos is deserves for its
plasticity. It just goes to show how humans can alter everything around us to something
we need and drag life forms unwillingly (or willingly) with us. Even today with
the war on drugs* raging and marijuana forced into basements, sheds, and
mountain sides, were still altering it for our benefit. This time we are after
THC, the active cannabinoid in marijuana, and its concentration in the plant. Over
the years we have distorted the plant so the THC content is much greater and
therefore it can satisfy us (we alter the plant so its better at altering us).
No one really knows why marijuana has THC in the first place, some say it was
waiting in the wings for us to figure out its magic and then it was taken under
our protection and has co-evolved with us to suit our needs. The opposite end
of the spectrum breeds an argument that“...its unlikely that...’a plant would
produce a compound so that a kid in San Francisco could get high.’” (Pollan,
156). This party believe the plant produced THC as a deterrent for grazers –
the unassuming patron may get an undesired effect and not want to return, or
forget where they got the plant all together. Whatever its history and evolutionary path it
can be clearly identified as under artificial selection by humans at the
present day.
In Pollans The Botany of Desire, he chooses Marijuana as his psychoactive
plant to profile. The plant is notorious all over the world and has a rabid fan
base both for and against it. Arguments are made in conflicting parallels. It
is a poison and a medicine. It is a vice and a way free. It can inspire and it
can trouble. This is what draws us to plants like marijuana, kava, ayahuasca, peyote,
khat, coca, opium and many more. This air of mystery, of objectivism, of stigma
and history. “The bright line between food and poison might hold, but not the
one between poison and desire”(Pollan 114). These plants offer chance and
chance alone; the chance to broaden your mind or to harm and drag us down. No
matter the case we are drawn to this gamble to gain experience and to learn all
we can from the world, our world. What Botany
does well is bring in multiple viewpoints from such greats as Huxley and
Charles Baudelaire and allows the reader to see various points of view on the
same drug. Some think it is a gateway to understanding, tolerance and beauty others think it gives a false sense of enlightenment. No matter
Huxley, Baudelaire, Pollan or anyone elses opinion about these psychoactive photosynthesizers one thing is certain – the collective human fascination brought them
to the walk the dull line of poison and desire.
The want
for alteration is not just a human experience; were just the best at it. The
use of psychoactive drugs to alter our consciousness is a controversial one but,
if indigenous tribes and history teaches us anything, it is not new idea nor a evil one. We
have always been curious about what something with so many question marks and stigma can do for us. And that is whatever your subjective experience might teach you. Some people are inspired and manufacture the most beautiful
ideas and art and believe the mind is broadened, others think it is a false idol that breeds pretentiousness, and some
think it is a thing of savagery that has no place in the modern globalist world. The developed world is labeling and dubbing what is right and wrong, leading people to lead a life of selective altercation (altering in ways that is thought to be accepted and modern), forgetting what communities and societies have been intrigued by for years. Despite the conflicting views from every party, the curiosity is, and will always be there, and that is a beautiful thing to behold. We may live
in a sedentary present, but the mind is always moving, changing, and stretching
for experience, and a life we may never have. Alteration is more than just changing
everything around us and about us; Alteration is a mind set.
* On the war of drugs: "The results are gruesome at every level. We are creating a vast prisoner underclass in this country at huge expense, increasingly unable to function in normal society, all in the name of a war we have already lost." -Fareed Zakaria
* On the war of drugs: "The results are gruesome at every level. We are creating a vast prisoner underclass in this country at huge expense, increasingly unable to function in normal society, all in the name of a war we have already lost." -Fareed Zakaria
Zakaria Fareed. Incarceration Nation. Time. 2012. Accessed March 26 2012.<http://www.fareedzakaria.com/home/Articles/Entries/2012/3/25_Incarceration_Nation.html>
