Then (1992), Food of the Gods
The Dominator Culture Argument: McKenna's Political Analysis
The 'dominator culture', organized around male hierarchy, warfare, property, and ego, emerged when agriculture replaced the earlier hunter-gatherer-forager partnership with psychoactive plants. The suppression of plant medicines is one feature of the dominator system.
contested
McKenna drew substantially on Riane Eisler's Chalice and the Blade (1987). The archaeological evidence for a pre-dominance partnership period is disputed: evidence from Çatalhöyük and other Neolithic sites does show less hierarchical social organization, but scholars including David Graeber and David Wengrow (The Dawn of Everything, 2021) have shown that the narrative of a peaceful Neolithic before patriarchal domination is itself a simplification. The argument that psychedelic suppression is connected to broader social control has been substantially supported by Ehrlichman's 2016 Nixon admission and the racial targeting documented in drug war history.
Sources
- McKenna, Food of the Gods (1992)
- Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade (1987)
- Graeber & Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything (2021)