i mean i think the animist move is to attribute personhood to bags of white powder just as much as cups of dreadful-tasting plant brew
but 1. what is personhood
and 2. is it harder to feel with synthetics?
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i ask because a dear friend and medicine sister asserted recently that she trusts plants because they "have an intention" and that a chemical we had taken together left her with "just her own mind" and she didn't trust her own mind
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now first i want to say that this is an awakened statement in my view. the first thing that happens in practice is that you stop trusting your own mind; the second is that you start trusting it again
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but also it got me and wondering: do plants have more intentions and if so why?
personally i have found it quite easy to speak of ayahuasca as "mama", for instance, psilocybe as
"los niños".
but then, is gender a sign of personhood? I DON'T THINK SO
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as an animist, do i attribute *intention* to all things?
or is it enough, as i have argued elsewhere, to attribute *curiosity*?
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and then: is it harder to relate to chemical allies because their experiences are so different? i have no idea what it's like to bubble in a beaker
I mean, I don't really know what it's like to grow in a jungle and twine around a tree either though
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or -- is it harder for us to attribute personality to white powders because they're so neutral?
i recall a friend bringing acid dropped on flower petals to burning man one year, and it was very gentle!
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we might say, "the flower petals catalyzed a "set""
or we might say, "the flower petals provided a scaffold on which we could construct the cocreation that is personhood"
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and then correct ourselves:
"on which we and the acid could construct the cocreation that is personhood"
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people as places!! i think the best way to understand the self is as a place -- others as well!
and that includes psychedelic people ofc
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Replying to @touchmoonflower
acid ime has quite a bit of personality in some sense but i would hesitate to describe it as a *person* exactly. acid strikes me very strongly as a *place*, to which i travel and in which i have sometimes left things i need to retrieve later
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