Psychedelics and Human Consciousness.

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Is the reason humans are so weird compared to other animals, who seem much more interested in basic survival while humans are distracted by all sorts of things in their environment, to the point they engage in a variety of pointless activities that really have nothing to do with anything except releasing chemicals and hormones in the body, because thousands of years ago, our ancestors stumbled upon what is known as magic mushrooms or psilocybe cubensis and it altered their perception so much, they began to sought out even stronger plants, feeling it wasn't enough, they began cultivating their own plants, searching for an even more intense experience. These body altering plants had an influence on their DNA and started altering their evolution and that's why we see humans are so reliant on imagination and a feeling of magic while other animals are so busy trying to survive, they have no time for imagination and magic. They are simply too tired from all that hunting or foraging, dealing with harsh conditions in their environment.

Maybe it's these mind altering plants of all kinds that have led humans to be so "far out" compared to the other animals? Obsessions triggered by reliance on the chemicals on these plants also led to other discoveries, like agriculture and textile production. Who knows, maybe it even had something to do with selection of genes that enable us to have such a broad method of communication, including verbal.

Did this have something to do with how we evolved abstract thinking skills?

Any of you ever study this stuff? What do you all think?

I think that curiosity, not related to sex or food foraging, is indeed typically human.
I think that imagination, the fact of fancying things which do not actually exist is also typically human.

However, i think that sex & food motivation may have given (and still now gives)
- a reproductive advantage which favours the curious and imaginative individuals,
- and favours groups open to curiosity and imagination of other groups’ individuals.

Maybe we should feed monkeys with magic mushrooms to see what happens, just curious

I'm a bit skeptical about this. Other animals are known to like drugs too. Lab rats desire drugs. Bears are also known to recognize and use a variety of herbal medicines when they're sick, including painkillers. Dolphins and bonobos desire sex just for pleasure too, so they use sex like a drug, just like our own species does.
Animals seek immediate pleasure too, but they only do after having satisfied more important priorities such as finding food and shelter.

You start with a band of chimps. Get them to drop acid.

Then...presto chango...a million years from now the chimps will have evolved abstract thinking, and will be flying space shuttles.

Dont see how you get from A to B.

Sounds like Lamarkian evolution to me (inheritance of acquired characteristics). I dont see how natural selection would fit it into it.

Especially since chimps already live a natural pharmacy anyway (ie the African rainforest). They encounter the same whacky berries that our ancestors did.

I suggest all the conservatives eat some shrooms,then vote.

See,just look how happy these conserves are.One good dose,and they become liberals and want to feed the birds.

I believe Thales when he said 'Know thyself and you will know the universe and the gods'. This definitely applies with hallucinogens far more than any other class of drug I've been familiar with. In my own case though, regardless of how much it caused me to use my own mind more effectively, it didn't cause huge political swings. I know a lot of people similarly who ate upward of 1,000 hits of acid in their lives, did a lot of other stuff as well, and while some of them ended up as lawyers they were relatively conservative before and about as if not slightly more conservative after.