Plant-Human Symbiosis and the Fall of Humanity

Trevor Smith, Guest Writer
Waking Times

There are many mysterious anomalies about human evolution yet to be adequately explained. These include the human brains rapid expansion in size and complexity, why this accelerating expansion suddenly stalled roughly 200,000 years ago and our brains have been shrinking ever since, and why our rare glimpses of genius goes hand in hand with our species wide insanity.

“I believe that the lost secret of human emergence..the undefined catalyst that took a very bright monkey and turned that species into a self-reflecting dreamer..that catalyst has to be sought in these alkaloids in the food chain that were catalyzing higher states of intellectual activity.” — Terence McKenna

Tony Wright and Graham Gynn are authors of Left In The Dark- the book that presents Tony’s research outlining a radical re-interpretation of the current data regarding human evolution and, they contend, our recent degenerated state we call “civilization”. You can read the book for free here. Despite such a young and extreme proposal positive reactions are growing and include such minds as Dennis McKenna, Stanislav Grof, Colin Groves, Michael Winkelman and many others.

The following is a discussion with Tony Wright on these anomalies and more, followed by some further information on his theory.

Trevor Smith: After two decades of research and radical self-experimentation you’ve come to a synthesis between the ancient data and information coming out of modern science. Paradoxically this all seems to indicate a humongous problem, and simultaneously explains why we would be oblivious to it in the first place: we are all suffering from species wide neural retardation, and are now too deluded to even realize when faced with the mountain of evidence. Is this the general idea?

Tony Wright: Yes. It should be virtually impossible to find any supporting evidence for such a profound theory if there was no real problem with the development and structural integrity of our neural system in the first place. If there were only ancient accounts of the diagnosis, or any supporting biological data, or initial support from some of society’s sharpest minds, then it should at least ring alarm bells. That all those elements exist and in addition our collective behavior has long been thought by many to be insane indicates something really serious just doesn’t add up. If everything is fine then the theory would be a no-brainer to refute, and we should at least have no fear in thoroughly checking it out.

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Katherine Milton’s findings suggest that we have lost around 95% of the complex plant bio-chemistry and nutrients that were present during our evolution for tens of millions of years. When considered within the context of the design, development and function of most complex and chemically sensitive thing we know, these factors in combination can only result in a massive failure.

The Chemistry of Patriarchy

It sounds unlikely that our left hemisphere is a dominant yet damaged version of the right, however there is evidence from various fields to support such a seemingly wild notion. Simon Baren-Cohen has discovered evidence that the left hemisphere is more susceptible to testosterone damage and that higher levels of testosterone in the womb are linked to a lower level of empathy and less social skills. His theory is that autism is an extreme form of the male brain; the male brain being ordinarily less empathic than female brains in the first place. Estradiol is made from testosterone by the enzyme aromatase and plays an important part in the “masculinisation” of the brain, or in this case, the damage to the left hemisphere. So the degree of masculinisation is determined by the amount of testosterone available and the degree of aromatase activity.

The book elaborates: “As we have already seen (see Chapter Three for the link with oestrogen dependent cancer), the activity of aromatase is inhibited by plant flavonoids and, more importantly, by melatonin. Less melatonin leads to more aromatase activity, which in turn leads to increased masculisation of the brain and, at the extreme end of the spectrum, autism (which appears to be becoming much more common). Our ancestral fruit-based diet would have been rich in aromatase inhibiting factors – and in the past our pineals would have pumped more melatonin too. The degree of masculisation of the male brain we see today, therefore, may well be an aberration that has had huge consequences for us.”

Males therefore appear to be the most damaged. Where this manifests in a greater degree of left-brain dominance it can be a disaster, as is evidenced by the abundance of fear and control in our male dominated society. Perhaps it is no surprise then that we live in such a patriarchal society where it’s the old men, chronically deficient in plant chemistry and suffering from years of testosterone driven over-masculinisation, who send the young to war and are currently running our society into the ground through they’re greed and lack of empathic understanding.

Could it just be a coincidence that we see competitive and aggressive behavior all over the place and the biological data seems to predict this sort of behavior in the first place? To make matters worse much of the food we now consume contains the very same hormones that would have been inhibited, along with others that have many detrimental effects.

If humanity were a single patient displaying the range of behavior we are collectively capable of and turned up at the neurology/psychology department of a prestigious hospital, what would they think of our mild to severe tendency for self harm and suicide? Or our oblivious destruction of the very environment that sustains us?

Treating the hundreds of apparently ‘distinct’ behavioral, psychological and perceptual symptoms without at least checking for a general/structural cause would be grounds for serious negligence and a raft of law suits even if there were no smoking gun regarding evidence/mechanisms for a developmental/structural cause? In our case the evolutionary data and biological mechanisms are equivalent to fairly complete cctv footage of a serious accident, and the myths and spiritual traditions of many disparate cultures are eye witness accounts which include, once the dogma is stripped away, methods to treat the condition. Shamanism, psychedelic plants, yoga, meditation, fasting and sleep deprivation are just some examples of these techniques aimed at regaining some of this lost perception.

No Bicycle says:

Very interesting. I have always wondered how the complex neuro-transmitter mimic chemicals evolved in plants and fungi, that dramatically change, some would say diminish, brain function.

I think the depth and extent of the author’s vision of a complex symbiotic evolution is new. However, to invoke this as a complete explanation for consciousness evolution is wrong. Yes, it appears the envisioned mechanism provided the physical basis for a metabolism to support higher consciousness

dimitri says:

Thanks. This needed to be said, especially about the artificial dosing of the brain. Too many currently are jumping onto this obscene chemical expansion of consciousness bandwagon. Most are probably just laying the groundwork for “research” funding while denying that this funding has strings attached, one of which is ongoing interest in mind/behavior control by TPTB.

Trev says:

Hey No Bicycle, thanks for taking the time to read it.

The author never implied that this was an explanation for consciousness. I understand how this could be interpreted as being a somewhat materialist/reductionist theory at the surface, however Tony personally thinks the brain is like an instrument or violin, and our consciousness is the sound. Of course, this is just a crude metaphor which dimly approximates the ineffable and mysterious thing that we call “consciousness. He is not saying that we are merely our brains or neuro-chemical makeup.

He doesn’t outline anywhere a biological mechanism for consciousness itself. But, obviously, the precise structure of our brain does have a monumental impact on our state of consciousness, and any change to that system- like say loosing the unimaginably complex biochemical intake provided by the forest environment- will result in massive changes in our consciousness.

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Back to chimps… evolution is not so one-dimensional, its more like a complex labyrinth. Just because primates eat a lot of fruit doesn’t mean they should be more evolved than us (although there has been fascinating studies done on primate intelligence surpassing humans in some ways..in our current state at least!).

Evolution works on much larger time scales, and species do not start off on some kind of equal footing. Our physiology (as the book and other places explain) indicates that we were eating a high amount of fruit for millions of years.. We are even more adapted to digesting it than chimps! When we were forced out of the forest by the climate drying or other factors the traits that were dependent on that symbiosis being maintained were the ones that began eroding.

Our brains are the most complex and sensitive thing in the known unvierse…How could the brain somehow be separate or unaffected by the biochemical environment that was flooding us 24/7 and literally building/fueling our development on a sub-cellular level, for millions of years? This is what people who think it didn’t have an impact seem to be assuming. How could suddenly loosing all of that not result in drastic changes?

How could the factors that led to primates developing such an unusually large brain be completely different from the factors that led to us developing an unusually large brain? There is already many connections between forest biochemistry- particularly fruit- and intelligent brains. Just see parrots, primates, monkeys, fruit bats, etc..Cetaceans and dolphins seem to have gotten there through another pathway.