Kool-Aid Corner #17
To finish: trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life
Graph of the Week
A model of ‘psychedelic instrumentalisation’ by early humans, and of the evolutionary consequences of its intergenerational recurrence…
Figure 1: ’A model of psychedelics instrumentalisation by early humans, and of the evolutionary consequences of its intergenerational recurrence. The left side represents the process of instrumentalisation, which can occur repeatedly across the life-span of a generation of hominins. The right side represents the process of niche-construction supporting gene-culture coevolution across generations as populations construct and bequeath transformed ecological and social environments that exercise selective influences on following generations (Odling-Smee et al., 2003). The left side of the diagram portrays potential selective advantages conferred by psychedelic use under the socio-ecological conditions in which our ancestors evolved. The right side illustrates the process of selective feedback through which psychedelic instrumentalisation could have enhanced the creation and evolution of the human socio-cognitive niche. The four coloured boxes on the left represent the major aspects of the emerging human adaptive complex that created the socio-cognitive niche; these involve skills and processes potentially amplified by psychedelic instrumentalisation, with the two-directional arrows between the boxes representing the interconnectedness of these competence realms that coevolved in creating our unique adaptation mode. The emergence and persistence of this adaptive complex across human evolution permitted the progressive construction of socially modified environments (represented by the green box at the right side of the diagram) that in turn selected for enhancements in the same underlying human propensities and capabilities (represented by arrows with a plus [+] sign) that sustained the socio-cognitive niche.’
From: Psychedelics, Sociality, and Human Evolution by José Manuel Rodríguez Arce and Michael James Winkelman, published in Frontiers of Psychology, September 2021.
My bookshelf weighs a ton
Notable new purchases for the occult library. It’s supposed to be strictly second hand snap-ups only. But I’m flagging on that to be honest. It’s now more in the spirit of a second hand bookstore. This week: The Entropy of Bones by Ayize Jama-Everett
You’ll probably have to get it from/in America or off of Amazon
Ayize Jama-Everett handled the psychedelic racial awareness training on Vital. There’s a bit of a syncronicity here because I came across his name before in relation to my martial arts side hustle Battles of London (‘The brand making fight clothing cool’ says Men’s Health). I was going to hassle him for a short story for our print mag. But, y’know, lockdown.
Reading the signs, I bought this one because it had a snake on it.
The cover’s actually by John Jennings, a top-flight comic artist (and more) who Jama-Everett’s created a graphic novel with. Actually, one of the things I admire about The Entropy of Bones is that Jama-Everett must get told all the time ‘Why isn’t it a graphic novel?’ and that he’s nonethless written two others in the same vein (series, in fact).
Anyway, what’s really good about The Entropy of Bones is it’s about getting into your body. Which is admittedly also in danger of bnecoming psycedelic rhetoric, one of the unofficial themes of this Unofficial Vital Student Zine.
Plus there’s lots of other five star biz too, like: super-powered martial arts, smokeable psychedelic fungi, international-level decadence, weed farming and jungle drum ‘n’ bass.