THE SOUL OF REASON

The material presented here is taken from a working paper titled The Soul of Reason:  An Argument for a New Post-Modern Realism in Social Theory and Philosophy.  (D. H. Bowles 2020)

XII.  A New Horizon

The lessons of the past still echo in the present.  One important lesson that pre-modern history teaches us is that, for the preservation of social hierarchies, the human capacity for primary mystical experience must be pre-empted by elites, and that the irrefutable authority and legitimacy of the experience must be framed for the masses in the context of parochial, authoritarian religion.  “There is so much authority that comes out of the primary mystical experience that it inevitably threatens existing hierarchical structures.” (Roland Griffiths, quoted by Pollan, 59)

Another lesson is that the primary mystical experience poses an existential challenge not only to parochial religious authority, but to secular political authority as well; our 20th century encounter with psychedelic drugs teaches us that very clearly.

Contemporary research is strongly reinforcing the lessons of the early decades of the 20th century experience (1950s and early 1960s) that these substances have powerful therapeutic efficacy for a wide range of psychologically-based disorders, including anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and eating disorders.  But, as noted, Griffiths ground-breaking 2006 Hopkins study was not aimed at the study of the efficacy of psychedelics for any psychological ‘disorder,’ but at their capacity to reliably produce ‘mystical states of consciousness,’ the effects of which were judged to be highly beneficial to ‘so-called’ healthy normals, based on both objective and subjective measures.

What’s the therapeutic model for that?  “We’re all dealing with death,” Griffiths told Pollan at one point.  “This will be far too valuable to limit to sick people.” (405)  Bob Jesse (one of Griffiths’ co-investigators and the second person cited by Pollan as instrumental in the 21st century renaissance) has an answer to that question; that is, he has a therapeutic model:  he calls it “for the betterment of well people.” (45)  But really, that’s more of a slogan than a therapeutic model.  The devil, as always, lies waiting in the details.

The first question that must be addressed is who, or what, is the therapeutic subject:  the individual, or society?  It’s a question fraught with political implications.

Leary was all too often willing to say out loud to anyone in earshot what everyone else believed but knew better than to speak or write about candidly:  it’s one thing to use these drugs to treat the ill and maladjusted.  Society will indulge any effort to help the wayward individual conform to its norms. But it is quite another to use them to treat society itself as if it were sick . . . ” (Pollan 213-14)

And yet, the indications of social disorder were everywhere to be seen at the time, and they are certainly no less evident now.  So the answer to the first question is . . . probably both.  But then . . . could we ever dispense with social order and hierarchy altogether?  The answer to that question is unlikely to be “yes,” any more than we are likely to be able to dispense with the ‘left-brain’ functionality that confers on us as individuals a sense of self and time and purpose and analytic capability.  The challenge before us is to learn to integrate these ‘left’ and ‘right’ brain capabilities–the consciousness of self and the consciousness of not-self–constructively . . . at both the individual and the social levels.

Two distinctly different models of social change were in active development and use during the 20th century period of widespread psychedelic research and experimentation.  Both models relied on the dynamics of individual ‘treatment’ to ultimately change society itself.  One model was very visible and well-known:  we could call that one the “bottom-up democratic enlightenment-of-the-masses model” deliberately employed, albeit it with different approaches, by both Leary and Kesey.  The other model we could call the “top-down, elite conversion model” that was propagated for many years by the mysterious and shadowy figure of Al Hubbard.  Neither of these models would seem to recommend themselves, going forward.

So where does all this leave us now?  If we take the accounting of altered states offered here seriously . . . well, it obviously has radical implications for the view of human nature and social ontology that informs our social theory.  It is perhaps the case that at the beginning of this essay I overstated what I proposed to accomplish.  To adopt a social and moral ontology of what could be called transcendental individuality and expansive community is not necessarily a solution to the problems of the enduring tension (of social ontology), of distribution, (i.e. stratification) of relativism, and of consciousness.  But it clearly has the potential to make them a lot more tractable.  To explicitly recognize the existence and value of our capacity for not-self consciousness, and to cultivate it with deliberation, has almost incalculable implications for our ability to respond collectively to the problems of parochial conflict, of global maldistribution, and entrenched indifference to environmental degradation.

Further, I would argue that what I also referred to early in this essay as “the intellectual tradition of pragmatist and original institutionalist economic and social thought,” which we also refer to as evolutionary social theory, is uniquely positioned to deliver on that potential.  This tradition already claims William James as integral to its intellectual pedigree, and has–dating from its origins with Veblen–explicitly specified the importance of both innate and environmental explanatory factors in its methodological approach to the analysis of social evolution and development.

We are indeed poised here, gazing out on a new horizon.

References & Bibliography

Table of Contents

Conceptual Schematic of the Argument

Abstract

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