Healing of the Nation

Approach

Become a tree, mushroom, bee or flower with pollination models and mycelial economics

By Tabita Rezaire in Black Fantastic at the Southbank Heyward Gallery, London till September 18

Psychedelics have been totally colonised, of course. But mushrooms even have the answer for that.

Dr Zelner didn’t just quit the rat race. He found a way to disable the money trap.

‘The Pollination Approach’ that he originally outlined in a landmark article for MAPS is a new community based healthcare structure, inspired by the vastly successful Frome Model that you can read about in this issue’s Medical section.

He further acknowledges that if community, business, economics and health are interconnected, then it’d only truly work if systems other than healthcare change too. Especially if we’re to avoid a psychedystopia like that set out in illustrated story We Will Call it Pala, which my Reichian body work coach would call ‘evocative’.

Wielding his understanding of biomimetics, Dr Zelner says “Fungi control the allocation of resources to plants, and they don’t set it all up so one can get much bigger than the others,” he says, “The social shift is from a disconnected pattern to a connected pattern, where people in social organisations are linked in multiple ways – which is also nature’s pattern, the mycelial network, the root networks if you will, of mushrooms. Resources are circulated through the entire system, keeping money local and creating economic multipliers.”

It’s the kind of thing both Banksy and my dad would agree on.

Dr Zelner’s Transformative Capital Institute is allocating funds to those kind of projects.  

“None of us needs to take on the responsibility to change the world. Incremental, emergent change is how life’s process works”

Regenerative economics, the ‘community and wellbeing first’ business strategy has also been completely colonised. You can do an MSc in it. Zenner says, “I’m not anti-capitalist, but in regenerative economics shareholders can’t be prioritised above all. I saw the phrase crop up in a traditional venture capital firm report, saying they like my pollination approach and it could help double their profits. Obviously there’s a conflict there.”

He continues, “Wellness has been colonised,” of course, “any change we can make through the policy process is incremental at best.” Ranting at your Twitter feed about the latest moral-political infraction is finally over.

“None of us needs to take on the responsibility to change the world, says Dr Zelner, “Incremental, emergent change is how life’s process works. Positive action at a micro level is regenerative. Individual behaviours quickly become a pattern shift. You are a pollinator.”

And yes, psychedelics could still be the healing of the nation as ‘The first lady of LSD history’ Dr Erika Dyck stated in this rallying Charcuna piece. “Psychedelics help people question their beliefs, and we are socially constructing this reality. They shift people from disconnection to connection. It’s an embodied experience of the regenerative pattern.”

We don’t need to get everyone on board immediately. “Tipping points happen only at 15-20% of a network,” advises Dr Zelner.

Switching to ‘steward ownership’ is one way socially-minded firms new and old can limit their exposure to extracting finance. The format allows a business to legally put purpose over shareholder returns, capping revenue-based financing returns after eight years. Late in 2021 Europe’s Synthesis Institute raised its Series A round of $7.25 million investment funding under a stewardship model becoming the first psychedelic company to do so.

Back around the neighbourhood, Dr Zelner’s local Brooklyn Psychedelic Society are drawing up a Frome-style health co-op to great excitement. 

I grew up near Frome, and my parents remain active in community life: amateur dramatics, parish council, village hall management committee, ‘walking football’ for the boomers. The internecine clashes within village life have inspired endless hours of situation comedy over the years, plus recently a lockdown viral sensation. 

Research from Imperial College, no less, says psilocybin treatment for depression increased nature awareness and softened any authoritarian politics amongst the test group. I ask Dr Zelner if psychedelics can even heal neighbourly squabbles. 

“I don’t have as many funny stories as I’ll probably have this time next year,” he grins, “The Brooklyn project is very new and run by a guy called Colin Pugh. They’re still at the phase where they’re figuring out if to be a traditional co-op, versus a non-profit co-op, how to engage the existing membership of their traditional psychedelic society…” 

Maybe a dose of non-dual thinking will still be required before life’s committee meetings.

Till then, we can but dream.