Other - Cannabis, Forgetting, and the Botany of Desire

[~lostgurl~]

A new entry has been added to Drugs Archive

Description:
60 min.

This is a lecture given at the University of California at Berkeley by Michael Pollan, the author of The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World, among other books.

It covers a wide area of ground, touching on topics such as the co-evolutionary relationship between humans and psychoactive plants, the effects of psychoactive plants on human culture, and the War on Drugs.

The main focus of the lecture is on cannabis. Pollan notes that cannabis as we know it today has had two main lines of evolutionary descent: one for hemp fiber and one for medicine. The hemp plant line of descent started in China and traveled west to Europe and then on to America. The medicinal/intoxication line of descent began in Central Asia and then moved on to India and then down to Africa. From Africa it came to the New World (first in South America) with the slave trade. It also spread from Egypt to Europe with Napoleon's army returning to France.

Along the way, we changed the plant by selecting for either better fiber or a better drug.

And the plant changed us. It changed us individually by its medicinal effects, but it also changed us collectively.

Pollan discusses some of the cultural effects that marijuana has had and then moves on to what we have learned about the brain through studying cannabis. Particularly, he discusses endogenous cannabinoids and the role they play in forgetting, noting that the ability to forget is a mental operation that is almost as important as the ability to remember.

Pollan then raises some interesting ideas about the importance that cannabis and other psychoactive plants may have played in philosophy and religion. He then concludes with some comments about the War on Drugs.

To check it out, rate it or add comments, visit Cannabis, Forgetting, and the Botany of Desire
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