DividedQuantum said:

I am fully appreciative of the psychedelic experience, and visionary states, and I will even entertain notions of teleology in certain conversations or debates for the fun of it, but is it not possible that it is a coincidence that psilocybin evolved in fungi and acts as a neurotransmitter in human/animal nervous systems?  Is that really so blasphemous (to some) to suggest?  Given that scientists estimate that there could be all told over a million species of fungus globally, and possibly 30-50,000 species of mushroom in North America alone, it doesn't seem implausible that this phenomenon is nothing more than a confluence of compatible molecules.  Even if you believe in some orderly force governing evolution, it would still be possible that this is just chance.

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mustangbob3 said:

mushrooms benefit from us picking them as we then spread the spore mass as we travel.

mushrooms use us and other animals as vehicles , i can remember watching some seminar by paul stamets where he talks about mammals and humans in particalar having a symbiotic relationship with all psilocybe sp

so even if it was not intended by the mushroom, we and the mushrooms have evolved together and the 'effects' are our attractant and the mushroom benefits from attracting us

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CosmicJoke said:

mustangbob3 said:

mushrooms benefit from us picking them as we then spread the spore mass as we travel.

mushrooms use us and other animals as vehicles , i can remember watching some seminar by paul stamets where he talks about mammals and humans in particalar having a symbiotic relationship with all psilocybe sp

so even if it was not intended by the mushroom, we and the mushrooms have evolved together and the 'effects' are our attractant and the mushroom benefits from attracting us

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What's particular about mushrooms?  Why couldn't the same thing be said of a chicken?  Why don't we say that chickens have evolved to be tasty to be spread about as we travel, that it's a symbiotic relationship, and the effects are our attractant and the chickens benefit from attracting us?  Are battery cages and factory farming the result of a symbiotic relationship?

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i would agree but we are not talking farming/cultivating, killing or even moving the living component (mycelium) just aiding the sexual function(the mushrooms purpose is to release spores to reproduce) of the mycelium (moving spore mass on us and with picked mushrooms as well as other mammals pooping out said matter) and thats quite different in my mind

a good comparison would be collecting seeds of plants and spreading them(sometimes unintentional like with burdocks and other plants that the seed pod has hooks to attach on to clothes or fur) and there by the plants benefit. in the mushrooms case is would be truly symbiotic as the human benefits and the mushroom suceeds/benefits in spreading spores.

and sorry evolved was a strong word to use

CosmicJoke said:

I think it's serendipitous that we get high off of shrooms and that they have the potential to be radically psychologically healing for us. I see egocentrism behind the idea that the mushrooms are meant for us.  Why does everything have to be all about us? The whole idea rings of narcissistic, self-important hypnotism.

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CosmicJoke said:

I have no doubt that animals and humans have aided in the spreading of fungi, but to tie it back into PS&P,  we're looking at more metaphysical or anthropological arguments for the symbiotic relationship... We have one in which there is a God intended cosmological, teleological explanation for their purpose, our enlightenment, as MtG has suggested, and perhaps another as McKenna would suggest "The secret faith of the 20th century is nostalgia for the archaic, nostalgia for the Paleolithic, and that gives us body piercing, abstract expressionism, surrealism, jazz, rock and roll, and Catastrophe Theory. The 20th century mind is nostalgic for the paradise that once existed on the mushroom-dotted plains of Africa, where the plant-human symbiosis occurred that pulled us out of the animal body and into the tool-using, culture-making, imagination-exploring creature that we are."
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McKenna seems to suggest that our symbiotic relationship with mushrooms evolved us out of being merely emotional-territorial primates into time-binding, semantic, tool using, Hermes-minded human beings.

Is there not reason to be skeptical that this is but psychedelic mythology?  These arguments seem to be saying that because we love and find meaning from psychedelics, they are at the crux of our evolution or ontological existence.

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Quote:

Is there not reason to be skeptical that this is but psychedelic mythology?

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There's plenty of room to be skeptical, and it will remain an untested idea, but if there are natural compounds which can amp up brain activity, and an animal discovers and consumes them for that express purpose then there is logic in the idea that altered brain function over time would produce permanent changes. In this regard one must consider a variety of compounds with no essential nutritional value which humans are prone to consume.

The next thing that comes to mind would be whether such hypothetical changes would have an overall beneficial effect in so much as the quality of being is concerned, or if the tendency to consume such things has produced an animal which is essentially a drug fiend.

Quote:

The 20th century mind is nostalgic for the paradise that once existed on the mushroom-dotted plains of Africa, where the plant-human symbiosis occurred that pulled us out of the animal body and into the tool-using, culture-making, imagination-exploring creature that we are."

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