Why past civilizations were non-materialist: more thoughts on 'Why Materialism is Baloney'

[Brian Quass]

In his thought-provoking book "Why Materialism is Baloney," Kastrup speculates about why past civilizations have so often embraced a non-materialist outlook on life. Specifically, he suggests (as I understand him) that harsh conditions might have affected their brains in such a way as to impair local awareness, thereby giving them, by default, a greater access to the universal mind, or rather non-local consciousness. 

While this may have been so, I'd like to propose another reason why past civilizations might have embraced a non-materialist outlook as a matter of course, and that is the fact that, to them, there were presumably no such things as "illegal plants,"  psychoactive or otherwise. They simply used those plants (and perhaps fungi) that were found to "cure their ills."

In the Western world, to the contrary (at least since opium was made illegal in the states in 1914) our governments have sought to prevent citizens from using plants that might give rise to greater awareness, plants that might otherwise link us with the vast unitary unconsciousness (or at least give us the intuition that such a realm exists).  Yet when these "primitive" peoples were surrounded by the great pharmacopoeia of Mother Nature, they freely made use of ALL efficacious substances, without first deciding that some were off-limits because they tended to produce transcendence in the user.  To the contrary, transcendence was generally seen as a great gift from the gods and part and parcel of why a given substance was efficacious in the first place. If substances were placed off-limits, it was because they were so holy in their transcendent effect that they had to be administered only by priests or priestesses (as in the Eleusinian Mysteries).

Thus everyday medicinal plant use exposed the people to transcendence without fanfare -- in a way that modern Western governments no longer allow.

To sum up (and elaborate) by rewording the initial question a little bit:

Q: Why don't Western civilizations observe the transcendent realm that was so obvious to most "primitive" civilizations?

A: Because law-and-order politicians have outlawed transcendence by outlawing the natural substances that unequivocally provide it. 

It must be noted that the politicians have succeeded in doing this partly by appealing to the mindset of scientific materialism.  After all, if scientific materialism is right, then there's no such thing as transcendence anyway, hence the so-called "medicinal" use of natural psychoactive substances does nothing but produce crazy hallucinations.  So the drug war makes strange bedfellows: both materialists and right-wingers disparage those medicines whose mechanism of operation involves inducing transcendence in the user. Of course, their first step in disparaging these medicines is to saddle them with the pejorative label of "drugs."

[RHC]

Nothing is inevitable, but it certainly starting to look like the next thing to be de-criminalized, if not legalized is going to be some of the entheogens.  You really have to wonder how thats going to change civilization?  Since unlike NDEs people seem to quickly forget the details of these experiences maybe not at all.

[Ben Iscatus]

I didn't know that entheogens were going to be de-criminalized. Interesting! It occurs to be that in our hunter-gatherer days, ingestion of these may have been common and that our current abstention from them in ordinary civilized life may actually be abnormal for our species. Perhaps the medical establishment will one day set an RDA to go with our multivitamins...one mushroom a day for the avoidance of existential angst...

[RHC]

There is at least some noise being made about it in California, God bless-em. Not going to happen overnight but I bet some of them get re-classed for medical use fairly soon, next Democratic administration, cross your fingers.

[Dana Lomas]

Outside of selective clinical research trials, such as MAPS and others, there are now more and more therapists offering psychedelic psychotherapy in their clinical practice. However, due to the legal and punitive implications, it remains very much an underground movement. Nonetheless, given the preponderance of promising results so far, in treating ptsd, depression, addiction, etc, it seems only a matter of time before the demand for these therapies will force governments to take notice, at least in terms of considering decriminalization for therapeutic use in a licensed clinical practice, where the relative ineffectiveness of conventional therapies in treating these conditions is reaching crisis proportions. If interested, here is a recent interview with three such therapists currently working underground, in which, unfortunately, due to having to remain anonymous, voice-masking software makes it a bit difficult to understand at times.

[Sci Patel]

There is, IMO, a huge convergence point coming that will tip the scales against materialism:

- Psychedelic Therapy

- Rise of non-Westerners as part of the scientific community

- The diminishing of current political lines where religion plays, to some, an antagonistic role. This has been the driving force of the "skeptic" community

- Quantum Biology, while not immaterialist in & of itself, could be a major blow to current neuroscientific materialist pictures

- The increased awareness of philosophy even in the Western scientific community. You can find more and more non-materialist opinions being vocal, putting their papers up on public domain sites, and all of that is showing future scientists that materialism is not the default position of science.

- The retirement of varied persons in the field carrying on the legacy of mechanistic materialism & behaviorism. One data point in the positive is the American Psychological Association publishing Transcendent Mind a few years back.

[Jim Cross]

Since materialism has been around since 800-200 BC, I doubt it will going away completely anytime soon.

But modern physics already is non-materialistic in the sense that the basis of the world is not smaller versions of the stuff that looks solid to us, but instead waves and vibrations.

[Sci Patel]

I didn't say materialism will vanish, but even if a good percentage of STEM academia reject it that will essentially spell its slow but sure ending.

[Ben Iscatus]

But modern physics already is non-materialistic in the sense that the basis of the world is not smaller versions of the stuff that looks solid to us, but instead waves and vibrations.

Yes Jim, and fields. I mean, what is a Higgs Field really? It's an idea.

[RHC]

I think you are right Sci.  Inviolate Scientism doesn't seem to be as entrenched in younger and non-western scientists.  At some point there will be a tipping point effect into a philosophical live and let live attitude. Practically speaking more papers will get published in more mainstream journals and research money will start to be more available.  Hope so anyway.