And now it's time for you to read Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and the Evolution of the Noosphere by Richard Doyle at Penn State...a book that so thoroughly and eloquently makes the case for "ecodelics" as "eloquence adjuncts" that contributed to the evolution of syntactic language, art, and religion under sexual selection for brain fitness that
1) I immediately befriended Doyle, who has become a priceless friend and mentor over the last ten years;
2) it became, in a glorious recursion of its own thesis, by far my most-recommended book; and
3) I suffered a "Where have you been all my life?" phase of intense frustration that it didn't exist ten years *sooner* when I was trying to pitch a PhD thesis on the mutually-reinforcing drivers of intelligence, social complexity, ecological complexity, language, culture, and behavior as the pattern underlying an emergent telos in evolutionary processes that could be generalized to the origin of life itself and used to predict our future relationship to technology.
Having a "NOW we can share EVERYTHING!" (Half Baked) moment right now but it may just be due to the fact I'm up at 5 am editing this damned essay for Aeon *again*...anyway, hope we talk soon and kudos to you for helping spread the gospel of tripping proto-humans.
Apropos of nothing here are a few conversations I've had on record with Doyle. He's a gem.
Thanks for these recommendations! I have much more reading/listening to do on this topic. And Richard was on episode 2 of Future Fossils?? I now see how integral this theory is to your larger project, especially point 3 (there's so much to expand on with how language/psychedelics/evolution will accelerate and shape the next century... I was tempted to get into that here, but decided to scope it to a response to the theory itself).
I swear I had a "send this to Michael Garfield for critical feedback" note attached to this essay, but I've been sitting on this one since May 2024 and was itching to get it out. I'm sure a future conversation of ours will shape a future version.
I wonder how the takeaway lands with you (the Babbling Idiot & the Tribe section). Let's talk soon.
If we eventually evolve into time-traveling elves, and if that happens within our lifetime, then I will come back to May 27, 2025, the moment you first saw this post, and I'll read it out loud to you in a Terence McKenna costume.
Epic analysis. I loved it, especially since you're the first one who introduced this theory to me a few years ago. A few thoughts:
- It's hilarious that Rogan serves as the ultimate example of spreading the meme-able yet flimsy three-point summary of Stoned Ape theory. Like McKenna's idea found its way to the central node in the armchair philosopher network. The ultimate evidence of its spreadability
- The modern version of being a "babbling idiot" that spurs on the tribe is to dive deep into boundary-pushing ideas and emerge with coined phrases (2025's version of "linguistic grunts"). Most will be discarded a but a glorious few will drive our collective thinking forward. Sign me up.
- The Internet enables 1) mind-opening ideas (intellectual psychedelics) to catalyze more citizens into babbling idiots; 2) fellow babblers to meet each other, and 3) melts all limits to how far the best linguistic grunts can spread. Thus accelerating the babblers' impact on culture.
As I always like to say, "Language isn't just descriptive, it's generative." I typically mean that in terms of the individual. But the Babbling Idiot theory makes that case at the societal level.
And now it's time for you to read Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and the Evolution of the Noosphere by Richard Doyle at Penn State...a book that so thoroughly and eloquently makes the case for "ecodelics" as "eloquence adjuncts" that contributed to the evolution of syntactic language, art, and religion under sexual selection for brain fitness that
1) I immediately befriended Doyle, who has become a priceless friend and mentor over the last ten years;
2) it became, in a glorious recursion of its own thesis, by far my most-recommended book; and
3) I suffered a "Where have you been all my life?" phase of intense frustration that it didn't exist ten years *sooner* when I was trying to pitch a PhD thesis on the mutually-reinforcing drivers of intelligence, social complexity, ecological complexity, language, culture, and behavior as the pattern underlying an emergent telos in evolutionary processes that could be generalized to the origin of life itself and used to predict our future relationship to technology.
Having a "NOW we can share EVERYTHING!" (Half Baked) moment right now but it may just be due to the fact I'm up at 5 am editing this damned essay for Aeon *again*...anyway, hope we talk soon and kudos to you for helping spread the gospel of tripping proto-humans.
Apropos of nothing here are a few conversations I've had on record with Doyle. He's a gem.
https://evolution.bandcamp.com/album/solpurpose-conversations-episode-2-richard-mobius-doyle (2013)
https://michaelgarfield.substack.com/176 (2021 also with Sophie Strand and Sam Gandy)
https://michaelgarfield.substack.com/h-01 (2024)
Thanks for these recommendations! I have much more reading/listening to do on this topic. And Richard was on episode 2 of Future Fossils?? I now see how integral this theory is to your larger project, especially point 3 (there's so much to expand on with how language/psychedelics/evolution will accelerate and shape the next century... I was tempted to get into that here, but decided to scope it to a response to the theory itself).
I swear I had a "send this to Michael Garfield for critical feedback" note attached to this essay, but I've been sitting on this one since May 2024 and was itching to get it out. I'm sure a future conversation of ours will shape a future version.
I wonder how the takeaway lands with you (the Babbling Idiot & the Tribe section). Let's talk soon.
…i refuse to read this essay until you perform it in terrence mckenna drag…i need more meaningful elves in my life…
If we eventually evolve into time-traveling elves, and if that happens within our lifetime, then I will come back to May 27, 2025, the moment you first saw this post, and I'll read it out loud to you in a Terence McKenna costume.
Epic analysis. I loved it, especially since you're the first one who introduced this theory to me a few years ago. A few thoughts:
- It's hilarious that Rogan serves as the ultimate example of spreading the meme-able yet flimsy three-point summary of Stoned Ape theory. Like McKenna's idea found its way to the central node in the armchair philosopher network. The ultimate evidence of its spreadability
- The modern version of being a "babbling idiot" that spurs on the tribe is to dive deep into boundary-pushing ideas and emerge with coined phrases (2025's version of "linguistic grunts"). Most will be discarded a but a glorious few will drive our collective thinking forward. Sign me up.
- The Internet enables 1) mind-opening ideas (intellectual psychedelics) to catalyze more citizens into babbling idiots; 2) fellow babblers to meet each other, and 3) melts all limits to how far the best linguistic grunts can spread. Thus accelerating the babblers' impact on culture.
As I always like to say, "Language isn't just descriptive, it's generative." I typically mean that in terms of the individual. But the Babbling Idiot theory makes that case at the societal level.
Thanks Will, this one's been brewing for a few years, so it feels good to get it out.
- It would've been wild to see what McKenna would've been like online in the 2020s.
- Will be interesting to compare the amount of slang/language mutation in the 19th vs. 20th century.
And such a good point on scaling "language is generative" up to culture.