I attended a four day rave-style music festival featuring drum and bass, psychedelic llamas, and lots of drugs. It offered key lessons on modern life from a sub-genre of our species: Homo ecstasticus.
As the late, great, Humphrey Lyttelton put it: "As we journey through life, discarding baggage along the way, we should keep an iron grip, to the very end, on the capacity for silliness. It preserves the soul from desiccation."
You're like the Joan Didion of our times...keen sense of observation...willing to go the distance...crucially skilled at parsimony and discernment...sober person among the stoned.
Hello BK, Your Boomtown article made me so happy. Even though I would never be caught dead at anything like Boomtown, this post provided an affirmation and neat summary of a good life, and how lucky and grateful I am with mine at age 73. Your writing provides some of that daily "exploration, simple pleasures, and pleasant surprises - flukes - and moments where the anxious futures ... are obliterated in our minds, at least for time ... by a feeling of ... joy in the present moment." (And of course, I have the book.)
I love retirement: cooking everything from scratch, savoring the simplicity, moving plants around the garden like furniture in the house, looking at some arty thing I did years ago and appreciating it, no matter how amateur (which allows me to try my next project), watching and listening as birds gather around three small bird baths outside my window, walking around the garden, seeing what needs care and what’s thriving—thanking nature for the beauty of what’s thriving--and so on.
I also like the computer and owning a home often feels like running a small business.
Awesome! Another topic near and dear to my heart, thanks for highlighting! Have not been to a festival since before Covid and getting the itch to go worship at the church of ecstatic escapism. I am jealous.
The psychedelic experience is amazingly powerful, and imo, is much of the reason these festival exist, as sorts of churches for those practicing such rituals. These experiences often deliver mystical insights and inject powerful sense of meaning. Recent research is explaining why.
These drugs act by down-regulating the brain’s default node network, which is responsible for conceptual thinking, planning, daydreaming, self-reference and rumination. It is a mode of thinking where we deal only with existing ideas and models we’ve created to succeed in the world. Our modern world, and especially these damn phones, seem to keep us in the default mode network for too much of the time, creating much mal-adaption and mental illness. Our economy requires much specialization to do tasks over and over, and most have little/no actual bearing/meaning on our existence aside from the paycheck they provide. Prime default mode network territory.
Some amazing recent research has led to some mind-blowing conclusions about all this. In their recent book Better In Every Sense, the authors detail how the default mode network can be consciously down-regulated. The practice to do so, they call “sense foraging” and this encompasses a multitude of spiritual/therapeutic practices like mindfulness mediation, use of psychedelic drugs, saunas, nature therapy and many forms of prayer. The authors contend their research validates that all these practices accomplish the same thing — breaking out of repetitive thought patterns we become stuck in the overactive default mode networks. Sense foraging redirects the mind to the senses, which only then can open to new possibilities to form new concepts and new models. The authors contend their work demystifies all this and should allow those skeptical of woo-woo New Age stuff to try from their menu of options.
But all that said, psychedelics are magic on another level too. The meaning and purpose they elicit, and in particular the mystical experience they sometimes divine…is hard to describe any other way than magic. So, don’t knock em til you try em, just keep it safe! Cheers
You have a more diverse panoply of interests than I might have guessed. I commend your article and your Civil War devotion as a child. Marc R is also a very inventive extemporiser and the lamented David G was a brilliant commentator. Great article. Hopefully you took your shots 😉
I assume that this escapism has been a feature of all societies to a certain degree. It's hard to picture Mayans or Minoans had to seek release from their lives, but must have. Are you aware of any such evidence Brian?
Evidence for cannabis cultivation in China from the Neolithic link below https://www.jstor.org/stable/4253540. In Britain, Neolithic grape cups are believed to have had a similar function ( examples in Devizes Museum) .
Genuinely loved that article from beginning to end, thank you. I used to run a refugee aid installation at Boomtown. The place is a melting pot, with a representative from every aspect of society. It's the only place in the world where you can be dancing in euphoric elation one second, and the next, wiping your mate's own faeces from his eyes because he forgot how to portaloo. The freest city on earth is a dystopian fiction based on our reality :') I love it, and I love your writing.
Two observations: (1) It is difficult (impossible?) to be rational all the time. (2) Some the best anthropologists were novelists—their keen observations of the human condition led the way to great stories, well observed and well told. Think Dickens and many, many others. And so, Brian, I think your next book should be a novel.
Thoroughly enjoyable piece. Your ability with words is very impressive. As a teen in the ‘60s and a twenty-something in the ‘70s, I completely enjoyed unwinding to great music and the fun of hanging with friends. Later I was lucky enough to have a job that made me able to add a weekend onto a week long business trip a couple of times each month. I’m sure that exploring cultures and experiencing unusual circumstances kept me sane…well, maybe I over credit my sanity. 😎
A modern day version of “Dead Heads” and a ”Parrot Heads”. And while the song was never meant as such, a modern day version of Jimmy Buffet’s “If the Phone Doesn’t Ring It’s Me” is more like “If Microsoft Teams does not start…its me”
Much of the contemporary escapism into ecstatic unselfing bounces between twin walls of psychopathology (substance addiction and other compulsions) and largely fake freedom of sanitized / safe thrills.
The latter is very visible in the changes within the bdsm/fetish scene (which is another contemporary outlet for the homo ecstaticus/ludens) which is getting increasingly gentrified by concerns about psychological safety /emotional harm under the guise of inclusivity and "trauma aware practice".
Finding some sort of middle path that doesn't require athleticism of "extreme sports" practitioners feels hard, so I guess it's going to be a search for quiet awe in my dotage.
This was a delightful read, probably one of my favorites of yours, because I feel SEEN hahah. I've been regularly escaping the Arc B asylum for a bit of unselfing revelry since 2008. In addition to events like Fairieworlds in the U.S. and the entire town of Glastonbury with it's many festivals, I would include as escapist, unselfing destinations: sci-fi and fantasy themed conventions like DragonCon, kink/BDSM events like KinkFest, Renaissance faires and pirate festivals, etc. Temporarily escaping the prison of the constructed self is a feature of each of these activities, too.
I am currently working on a new two-part article about my recent week-long participation in an anti-lithium mining encampment in the remote mountainous region of Northern Portugal, which served an activist, political purpose, but also functioned as a deeply necessary and authentic time and space for collaborative creativity, communion, and collective celebration. It was a beautiful and healing, if exhausting, week that restored a sense of meaning, purpose, belonging, and awe that the shovel-in-a-gold-rush festival marketers will never be able to truly capture.
As the late, great, Humphrey Lyttelton put it: "As we journey through life, discarding baggage along the way, we should keep an iron grip, to the very end, on the capacity for silliness. It preserves the soul from desiccation."
You're like the Joan Didion of our times...keen sense of observation...willing to go the distance...crucially skilled at parsimony and discernment...sober person among the stoned.
What a compliment!
You earned it! I just noticed. :)
Hello BK, Your Boomtown article made me so happy. Even though I would never be caught dead at anything like Boomtown, this post provided an affirmation and neat summary of a good life, and how lucky and grateful I am with mine at age 73. Your writing provides some of that daily "exploration, simple pleasures, and pleasant surprises - flukes - and moments where the anxious futures ... are obliterated in our minds, at least for time ... by a feeling of ... joy in the present moment." (And of course, I have the book.)
What a lovely comment. You made my day. Thank you!
Bravo! 👏 I felt happier and lighter just reading about Boomtown. I would’ve liked more of the psychedelic llama, though! 😵💫🦙💖
Interesting. Brave of you. I’d find Boomtown horrifying: loud, raucous, chaotic, ie, unpleasant.
I love retirement: cooking everything from scratch, savoring the simplicity, moving plants around the garden like furniture in the house, looking at some arty thing I did years ago and appreciating it, no matter how amateur (which allows me to try my next project), watching and listening as birds gather around three small bird baths outside my window, walking around the garden, seeing what needs care and what’s thriving—thanking nature for the beauty of what’s thriving--and so on.
I also like the computer and owning a home often feels like running a small business.
Awesome! Another topic near and dear to my heart, thanks for highlighting! Have not been to a festival since before Covid and getting the itch to go worship at the church of ecstatic escapism. I am jealous.
The psychedelic experience is amazingly powerful, and imo, is much of the reason these festival exist, as sorts of churches for those practicing such rituals. These experiences often deliver mystical insights and inject powerful sense of meaning. Recent research is explaining why.
These drugs act by down-regulating the brain’s default node network, which is responsible for conceptual thinking, planning, daydreaming, self-reference and rumination. It is a mode of thinking where we deal only with existing ideas and models we’ve created to succeed in the world. Our modern world, and especially these damn phones, seem to keep us in the default mode network for too much of the time, creating much mal-adaption and mental illness. Our economy requires much specialization to do tasks over and over, and most have little/no actual bearing/meaning on our existence aside from the paycheck they provide. Prime default mode network territory.
Some amazing recent research has led to some mind-blowing conclusions about all this. In their recent book Better In Every Sense, the authors detail how the default mode network can be consciously down-regulated. The practice to do so, they call “sense foraging” and this encompasses a multitude of spiritual/therapeutic practices like mindfulness mediation, use of psychedelic drugs, saunas, nature therapy and many forms of prayer. The authors contend their research validates that all these practices accomplish the same thing — breaking out of repetitive thought patterns we become stuck in the overactive default mode networks. Sense foraging redirects the mind to the senses, which only then can open to new possibilities to form new concepts and new models. The authors contend their work demystifies all this and should allow those skeptical of woo-woo New Age stuff to try from their menu of options.
But all that said, psychedelics are magic on another level too. The meaning and purpose they elicit, and in particular the mystical experience they sometimes divine…is hard to describe any other way than magic. So, don’t knock em til you try em, just keep it safe! Cheers
Dear Brian. I hope this finds you well.
You have a more diverse panoply of interests than I might have guessed. I commend your article and your Civil War devotion as a child. Marc R is also a very inventive extemporiser and the lamented David G was a brilliant commentator. Great article. Hopefully you took your shots 😉
I assume that this escapism has been a feature of all societies to a certain degree. It's hard to picture Mayans or Minoans had to seek release from their lives, but must have. Are you aware of any such evidence Brian?
Evidence for cannabis cultivation in China from the Neolithic link below https://www.jstor.org/stable/4253540. In Britain, Neolithic grape cups are believed to have had a similar function ( examples in Devizes Museum) .
Thanks Paul.
Genuinely loved that article from beginning to end, thank you. I used to run a refugee aid installation at Boomtown. The place is a melting pot, with a representative from every aspect of society. It's the only place in the world where you can be dancing in euphoric elation one second, and the next, wiping your mate's own faeces from his eyes because he forgot how to portaloo. The freest city on earth is a dystopian fiction based on our reality :') I love it, and I love your writing.
How wonderful - and what a description of one moment to the next! Thanks for reading and for the kind words :)
Great article- and the search from ecstatic unselfish stretches back to the Neolithic and possibly beyond with hemp residue found on Neolithic "grape cups". Further data here https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/3/2/article-p63.xml
Two observations: (1) It is difficult (impossible?) to be rational all the time. (2) Some the best anthropologists were novelists—their keen observations of the human condition led the way to great stories, well observed and well told. Think Dickens and many, many others. And so, Brian, I think your next book should be a novel.
Thank you. I have considered a novel, but I think I'll do one more big idea nonfiction book...then might try my hand at fiction!
Thoroughly enjoyable piece. Your ability with words is very impressive. As a teen in the ‘60s and a twenty-something in the ‘70s, I completely enjoyed unwinding to great music and the fun of hanging with friends. Later I was lucky enough to have a job that made me able to add a weekend onto a week long business trip a couple of times each month. I’m sure that exploring cultures and experiencing unusual circumstances kept me sane…well, maybe I over credit my sanity. 😎
A modern day version of “Dead Heads” and a ”Parrot Heads”. And while the song was never meant as such, a modern day version of Jimmy Buffet’s “If the Phone Doesn’t Ring It’s Me” is more like “If Microsoft Teams does not start…its me”
Much of the contemporary escapism into ecstatic unselfing bounces between twin walls of psychopathology (substance addiction and other compulsions) and largely fake freedom of sanitized / safe thrills.
The latter is very visible in the changes within the bdsm/fetish scene (which is another contemporary outlet for the homo ecstaticus/ludens) which is getting increasingly gentrified by concerns about psychological safety /emotional harm under the guise of inclusivity and "trauma aware practice".
Finding some sort of middle path that doesn't require athleticism of "extreme sports" practitioners feels hard, so I guess it's going to be a search for quiet awe in my dotage.
This was a delightful read, probably one of my favorites of yours, because I feel SEEN hahah. I've been regularly escaping the Arc B asylum for a bit of unselfing revelry since 2008. In addition to events like Fairieworlds in the U.S. and the entire town of Glastonbury with it's many festivals, I would include as escapist, unselfing destinations: sci-fi and fantasy themed conventions like DragonCon, kink/BDSM events like KinkFest, Renaissance faires and pirate festivals, etc. Temporarily escaping the prison of the constructed self is a feature of each of these activities, too.
One of my favorite things about living in Europe is how I can get this human need for liberation and connection and ectasy met in unmonetized, more authentically anarchic spaces, which I wrote about in https://open.substack.com/pub/jdgoulet/p/why-im-yearning-for-our-post-collapse?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=10bxpq.
I am currently working on a new two-part article about my recent week-long participation in an anti-lithium mining encampment in the remote mountainous region of Northern Portugal, which served an activist, political purpose, but also functioned as a deeply necessary and authentic time and space for collaborative creativity, communion, and collective celebration. It was a beautiful and healing, if exhausting, week that restored a sense of meaning, purpose, belonging, and awe that the shovel-in-a-gold-rush festival marketers will never be able to truly capture.