Willful Intoxication
"The non-skeptical elicitation of potentials for how things could be […] involve an element of transformation or even disfiguration.” Holbraad, 2014
The arrival of Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind was a watershed moment, one that many in the field of consciousness research had anticipated with a mix of excitement and caution. Pollan, a writer celebrated for his investigations into the intersections of food, culture, and modern nutrition, brought an air of accessibility and curiosity to the subjects he explored. Yet, when he turned his attention to psychedelics, it seemed even he was astonished by what he found: a vibrant yet understated community of researchers, therapists, and self-styled psychonauts who had rekindled an inquiry once thought extinguished. These were not the countercultural radicals of the 1960s but middle-aged, post-hippie seekers delving into the psychopharmacological mysteries of mystical experiences. The resurgence felt at once playful and profound, as though opening a Pandora’s box that challenged entrenched assumptions about the mind’s potential. But what exactly had been unleashed, and to what end?
The burgeoning belief in the transformative power of psychedelics gained further traction with the release of a Netflix documentary series toward the end of the pandemic. Unfamiliar with such discourses—largely because the cultural environment in South Korea actively suppressed knowledge about drugs¹—I found the emergent and expansive nature of these conversations, filtered through translated online spaces, surprisingly accessible. I felt like a wanderer, indulging in the luxury of peering through shop windows along the streets of public discourse, online articles, and news media. The compounds, the minds, the histories of amateur experimenters all seemed to radiate with the energy of discovery, filling me with excitement—though not without a quiet unease. The space felt overwhelmingly dominated by white men, eager to explore and share their ideas of truth and wisdom, leaving me to question whose voices and perspectives might be missing from this narrative, although I am not here to complain. I assume that my unease stems from the inability to fully immerse myself in the shared perceptions and grammars of thought of those who have seemingly undergone a similar trajectory in their life course—an experience often marked by friction and confusion.
It didn’t take long for me to discover that in Taiwan, the 2020 translation of the book (改變你的心智) had ignited a movement that spanned diverse sectors, including drug dealers, psychiatrists, and academic writers in social medicine. This phenomenon, dubbed "the Pollan Effect," sparked a surge in psychedelic discourse, fueling collective efforts to reintroduce hallucinogenic substances into clinical practice and weave them into the fabric of everyday life—often within the anonymity of cyberspaces. My partner, who spent much of his life in Kaohsiung, had no direct connection to these movements, yet our relationship encouraged me to delve deeper into how these conversations took shape within the specificities of the social patterns of Taiwan.
Rather than viewing these developments as isolated or contrasting models, they can be understood as situated responses to distinct sociocultural conditions. In Taiwan, the psychedelic movement reflects a convergence of global narratives and local contingencies, where the reintroduction of altered states of consciousness intersects with technological mediation and historical legacies. These dynamics foreground questions of how collective practices are shaped by, and in turn reshape, the material and symbolic environments in which they operate.
What has compelled me to deeper contemplation is not merely the therapeutic practices themselves, but the disjunctures, tensions, and transformations they expose, further complicated by the pharmacological dimensions of therapeutic care. These spaces challenge prevailing logics of governance, medicalization, and normative sociality, often in ways that remain partial or unresolved. The interplay between institutional structures and the aspirations of those involved in these movements provides fertile ground for exploring how such spaces generate new forms of relationality, material practices, and epistemologies. In doing so, they provoke broader questions about the conditions under which possibilities for reconfiguring political and social life emerge, as well as the constraints that simultaneously shape and limit them.
Later on, I had the opportunity to converse with Karen Yan, philosopher of science and the principal investigator of a project examining the ethical, social, and legal dimensions of the medical use of psychedelics in Taiwan. While we shared various concerns and questions that have propelled our own approaches from different angles, we both recognized the necessity of understanding the cultural particularities that are prevalent across East Asian regions, particularly in the historical trajectories—the Opium War in the 19th century, and the postcolonial impact from the War on Drugs initiated by the US—that have shaped the relationship between social patterns and individual uses of psychoactive drugs embedded in these forms of life.
For the past year, I have been closely following the discourses, activities, and political implications of knowledge production across psychiatry, psychotherapy, ethnobotany, and neuroscience hovering over the psychedelic communities in Taiwan. This engagement has illuminated how regional boundaries often dissolve through the exchange of information and resources across borders. Actors as diverse as psychiatrists at Mt. Sinai Hospital, psychedelic researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Imperial College London, grassroots psychedelic collectives in New York, shamans from the ayahuasca rituals in the Amazons, and philosophers at Hamburg University all play partial but significant roles in these processes. Through their contributions, imaginaries of care are selectively refracted through various cultural, institutional, and disciplinary lenses, shaping the realities that surround individuals.
Against this backdrop, with this paper, I aim to explore the epistemic complexities underpinning the psychedelic movement in Taiwan, focusing on the interplay between psychoactive plants, medical concepts derived from scientific research such as neuroplasticity or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and emerging frameworks alternative to the semiotics of modern psychiatry for understanding the human psyche and hallucinogenic experiences. The central question driving this inquiry is: What kinds of relationships emerge through altered states of consciousness—processes of epistemic and ontological transformation in psychedelic medicine? Moreover, how does this transformation reshape social patterns among collectives in Taiwan, both at institutional and interpersonal levels? The latter question aligns with the broader scope of the research but is not fully addressed or explored in this paper.
Hype of/in the Altered States
The term "psychedelics"—coined by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond to describe “mind-manifesting” substances—includes drugs like LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, DMT, and MDMA. After decades of prohibition due to their association with countercultural movements, these substances have re-emerged in clinical research, driven in part by a stagnation in the development of new compounds for psychological disorders. This resurgence gained momentum following FDA-approved studies in the 1990s, which highlighted their potential for treating mental health conditions. This renewed interest, dubbed the “psychedelic renaissance,” has seen major institutions establishing psychedelic research centers and pharmaceutical companies exploring these substances as novel mental health treatments.
While much of the research on psychedelics has focused on American and European contexts, Taiwan has also experienced a resurgence of interest in psychedelic medicine. In 2023, this interest coalesced around PsyTrans, a research initiative at National Yang Ming University dedicated to examining the ethical and social implications of psychedelic medicine. Building on this momentum, Taichung Veterans Hospital hosted a conference in 2024 that explored the potentials, risks, and neuropharmacological properties of psychedelics. Their focus centered on how the heightened neuroplasticity—referring to the nervous system's ability to adapt its structure or function in response to prior stimuli—induced by psychedelic medicine might result in enduring effects at both individual and collective levels, and whether particular regulatory frameworks could align with the country's ethical and political systems.
Yet, these movements have emerged alongside mainstream discourses that long predate them, perpetuating stigmas around psychedelics by emphasizing the potential harms associated with substances classified as highly toxic and hazardous. It remains unclear whether there are direct causal links between the severe criminalization of psychedelics and the destructive legacy of the two Opium Wars, which profoundly shaped East Asian geopolitics. However, it is not difficult to imagine how generations affected by the widespread addiction and economic disruption of that era might caution their descendants against hallucinogenic substances.
Following Taiwan's cultural liberalization in the late 1990s, subcultural spaces began to flourish, and the use of drugs such as ketamine and MDMA rapidly infiltrated youth culture. This period is vividly depicted in films like Millennium Mambo, capturing an era where participation in black market exchanges and drug trafficking became a norm among teenagers seeking affiliation with local gangster networks. In response, the government distributed educational manuals aimed at helping young people resist involvement in such activities. Despite these efforts, underground rave scenes and self-experimentation spaces fostered the expansion of collective practices and attitudes toward psychoactive substances.
Thus, it may be more accurate to describe Taiwan’s underground psychedelic scene as having already been in motion, operating alongside recent institutional efforts to build on psychopharmacological insights largely developed in the West. This parallel sphere of experiential knowledge has both complemented and critiqued formal medical research. While clinical studies predominantly emphasize the therapeutic potential of psychedelics for mental health treatment, informal practices and firsthand accounts have shed light on the nuanced dimensions of hallucinogenic experiences and their diverse applications. As clinical approaches increasingly align with the curiosity fostered within these informal spaces, such accounts are now recognized as valuable insights, revealing the profound symptom relief psychedelics can offer and providing guidance for both patients and practitioners.
These shifts in the accepted and encouraged domains of psychopharmacology are relatively recent, emerging against the backdrop of mounting nationwide mental health challenges. Issues such as intergenerational trauma rooted in colonial violence, rising suicide rates, and the prevalence of depression and anxiety have become increasingly visible. While national health insurance systems have eased some of the burden for individuals with physical injuries and somatic illnesses and traditional herbal medicine has received some degree of institutional support, discussions around psychosis and related phenomena — both longstanding and newly emergent — have often remained marginal, framed as side effects of rapid modernization and the rush to keep pace with global industrialization.
It was not until the late 2010s that biological psychiatry — long dominated by biomedical, cognitivist, and neurobiological models of the mind, which often posit a defined endpoint: a "healthy subject" free from presumed pathologies — began to revisit psychoanalytic frameworks. This resurgence followed the decline of what Arthur Kleinman refers to as the "psycho-boom" of the 1980s in regions across China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, which had given way to more positivist psychological approaches for several decades. This shift enabled the elaboration and treatment of traumatic symptoms through alternative forms of psychotherapy, and further reflections of the lived experiences among those who have undergone the White Terror incident in the 1940s in which dozens of thousands have been massacred by the Kuomintang political party, and the following military dictatorship throughout the 1950s towards the 1980s . However, psychotropic medications remain far from achieving widespread social acceptance, leaving the field at a crossroads between tradition and innovation.
Against this backdrop, it is quite noteworthy that the growing interest in psychedelics has begun to intersect with local botanical knowledge, particularly concerning plants containing psychoactive compounds, further fueled by Western travelers seeking "exotic" retreats for healing, accelerating a rediscovery of indigenous and traditional practices. These phenomena are found actively in the online forums and ethnobotanical exchanges that highlight the importance of cultural and contextual factors—commonly referred to as "set and setting," a concept originating in 1960s psychedelic research and later expanded by contemporary scholars who emphasize the psychological, social, and cultural parameters shaping individual responses to psychedelic drugs. Such discussions expose the limitations of conventional diagnostic approaches, as participants move away from framing their experiences within the recurring psychological and somatic symptoms outlined in diagnostic manuals. Instead, they explore the chemical structures, botanical sources, and relationships with these substances and their environments, as revealed through experiences during a ‘trip’—experiences often too extraordinary to be neatly arranged within the existing grammar of knowledge.
In dozens of online messaging channels I participated in and that seemingly have proliferated within a short period of time, participants have actively shared knowledge about cultivating psychoactive plants, emphasizing both functional and cultural practices and providing practical guidance and encouragement on horticultural techniques while fostering shared sentiments throughout the process. They frequently discussed adverse effects from challenging trips, engaging in active dialogues on risk reduction and harm prevention. In some cases, these interactions evolved into intimate relationships that extend beyond the digital space to in-person gatherings.
Through a collective understanding of the interconnection between the material stability of the ecological system and human health, these collaborative efforts have heightened awareness of climate and geopolitical issues, underscoring the broader implications of their work, although this observation might be biased due to my own engagement in the conversations. Yet, this shared engagement highlighted a deeper recognition of the symbiotic relationships between humans, plants, and their environments, contributing to a more organic understanding of psychedelics and their role in contemporary life.
Reality (?) Check
I think back to those weeks on a farm in Philadelphia, at Jo’s place. Among the attendees were several people I had met in Taiwan, all deeply engaged in the psychedelic movement. This gathering was organized by the Asian Psychedelic Collective, bringing together individuals who had built a sense of shared rapport.
Jo had migrated from Korea to the U.S. as a high school student in the late 1990s. Her journey was marked by severe health challenges, culminating in a liver transplant. Eight years ago, she met Dennis, a Singaporean who had spent much of his life traveling and training as a Buddhist monk following a difficult divorce. Together, they moved to a farm in Philadelphia, where Jo brought her parents from Korea to create a communal living space.
The farm exuded a hauntedly vibrant aura reminiscent of the Millbrook mansion that had shaped the 1960s psychedelic movement, where Timothy Leary lived with his friends and family after being expelled from the Harvard psychology department for his subversive experiments with psychedelics. However, it diverged from Millbrook’s legacy in its architectural and interior design, which was deeply intertwined with the traditional aesthetics of Tibetan Buddhism. Jo’s parents, now seemingly in their 70s, served us Korean dishes prepared with ingredients from their hometown, while Dennis enthusiastically encouraged everyone to immerse themselves in the rhythms of planting, growing, harvesting, composting, and tending to the farmland. The three-day gathering had us sleeping in tents just beyond their property. I must admit, it was bitterly cold and profoundly uncomfortable, forcing us to confront the raw, unmediated reality of nature far removed from the conveniences of urban life.
One morning, compelled by nature’s call, Dennis guided me to a small wooden cabin near the barn. Inside, a simple curtain provided privacy, and I braced myself for what I assumed would be the unpleasant odor of a composting toilet. Instead, I was met with the subtle, earthy scent of soil and the quiet work of microbes, decomposing human waste into something new. Relieved, I lingered, realizing that waste is not inherently odorous or polluting but simply matter in transition—a cycle of decomposition and renewal. This insight remains with me, each word I write now feeling like a trace of thought returning to the metaphorical soil, mingling with the dead leaves and water that sustain life. I aim for these reflections to mirror that process—contributing, however modestly, to the endless cycle of creation and decay that underpins existence.
Several months earlier, during my first encounter with Formosahuasca—an analogue of the Ayahuasca brew originating from the Amazon—I faced a similar sense of transformation. My thoughts seemed to shift and dissolve, oscillating between moments of clarity and confusion. The visions were astonishingly vivid: colors, sounds, and textures that defied logical explanation, overwhelming my perception of reality. RC, who had invited me to his farm in the lowlands of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, during the sweltering summer heat, repeatedly stressed that the plant had chosen me. The experiences it offered, he insisted, were lessons to absorb, not puzzles to unravel. Still, I found myself unable to resist the urge to rationalize, searching for explanations rooted in memory or consciousness.
Afterward, I began to wonder: Is reality itself a construct of the mind, designed to make sense of the world? This idea, while seductive, felt insufficient. A conversation with my New School colleague Miguel over a cigarette weeks later helped me see its flaws. To believe reality is solely the fruit of one’s consciousness risks solipsism, erasing the existence of others and their experiences. Gradually, I reframed this understanding: reality is relational, a product of the interplay between perception and memory, self and environment. A tree is not just a tree; it is the sum of sensory impressions and fragmented recollections pieced together into coherence.
Still, certain visions from my Formosahuasca journey remained cryptic, seemingly detached from my own sense of self. These fragments felt like memories that weren’t mine, perhaps derived from the plants themselves. Could it be that the non-human communicates in ways we do not yet understand? This possibility drew me deeper into questions about existence, interconnection, and my place within this vast web of being.
This realization, which marked an intense shift in how I perceive and relate to the concept of reality, brought into focus the intricate web of social patterns that shape, and often dictate, the norms, rules, and seemingly mundane choices that define our daily relational lives. It was as though the transformation demanded an inquiry into the structures of thought and habit that bind us to the worlds we inhabit. One lens through which this transformation became apparent was the evolution of linguistic terms used to describe psychedelics in Taiwan—terms that carry within them the traces of shifting cultural and social expectations.
In the current ethical and political moment of Taiwan’s psychedelic movement, the term most widely used is 啟靈藥 (Ji-Lin-Yao). The characters themselves resonate with layered meanings: 啟, signifying "to open, to initiate, to enlighten"; 靈, suggesting "spirit, soul, or qualities of a mystical nature"; and 藥, a word that straddles the dual meanings of "poison" and "medicine." Yet this term, imbued as it is with connotations of spiritual awakening, stands in contrast to the language of an earlier time. From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, psychedelics were more commonly referred to as 放心藥 (Fang-Shin-Yao), a phrase that translates to "a drug that releases one’s heart.”
This earlier term reflected the sensibilities of a period in which subcultural spaces—especially those frequented by individuals marginalized along lines of gender, sexuality, and class—offered temporary relief from the pressures of societal conformity. Within these spaces, the anonymity of the crowd became a site of dissociation, a way to momentarily shed the constraints of expectation. The term itself was coined by Josephine Ho, a figure revered as the godmother of Taiwan’s queer movement, who spoke of the liberatory potential of these experiences, framing them as a form of resistance to the authoritarian residues within Taiwan’s then-nascent democracy.
The newer term, 啟靈藥, by contrast, shifts the focus inward, emphasizing a spiritual and individual journey that does not necessarily pinpoint the significance of agency, carrying with it the weight of introspection, framing psychedelic experiences as both material and transcendent. This change in terminology, albeit subtle, seems to reflect a reorientation—from the collective dissociation of earlier subcultural movements to a more depersonalized and, perhaps, universal exploration of the self.
Discussions around these terms and their implications often also arise in online forums, where participants share reflections and argue over their meanings. In one such discussion, an extended debate unfolded regarding the political implications of 啟靈藥. RC, local botanist based in Kaohsiung, drug experimentalist, and diligent gatekeeper for new members, oversees the general management of the chatroom, observes that:
“In the earliest days, these natural plants, mushrooms, and substances were considered divine agents in religious practices, a channel for shamans to connect with the spirits of heaven and earth. The Chinese character for "shaman" (巫) itself is a pictograph of two people linked between heaven and earth, symbolizing a substance used to solve everyday problems—whether for healing or for communicating with the unseen world. For them, it wasn’t simply a "medicine" for "curing diseases.” Today, some of these substances are returning to legitimate medical research. We are at a critical stage where these substances are moving away from being classified as drugs. The term "psychedelics" has evolved into different names, although the substances themselves haven’t changed—only our names and perspectives have.”
What does this encounter reveal about the "reality" constructed among participants in Taiwan’s underground psychedelic networks? During my fieldwork, Chia-Ying Kuo, an anarchist psychiatrist involved in grassroots movements and psychedelic research, introduced me to RC, a self-taught chemist he had not met before. RC’s meticulous approach to extracting plant compounds, his candid stories about local networks, and his unassuming enthusiasm left a lasting impression. His offer of Formosahuasca, brewed with ingredients he had personally gathered and processed, facilitated a natural rapport. My participation seemed to bridge empirical inquiry with lived experience, as RC’s practice blended technical precision with intuitive improvisation, making space for political, ethical, and existential questions to emerge organically.
Our conversations, initially rooted in the pragmatics of extraction and synthesis, soon veered toward the uncanny. RC spoke, almost as a confessional aside, of his spiritual sensitivities—his capacity to perceive the dispositions of others, to discern futures, and to glimpse the mental tapestries of living beings. It was a casual revelation, delivered without insistence, yet it cast a shadow over what followed. Two weeks later, he handed me a small pouch of finely ground peyote, suggesting that its use might grant wisdom and the space to process cognition.
The trip was anything but serene. From the outset, I was seized by an insidious paranoia, a gnawing suspicion that RC, through some arcane mechanism of will or ritual, had drawn me into his sphere of influence, positioning me as both observer and subject within an experiment of his own design. His presence loomed within my mind, expanding like an invisible cast, until the boundaries between self and other dissolved entirely. What remained was a void—not an absence, but a purity, a field of infinite whiteness in which the murmurs of the mind fell silent. The forest in Xitou, where I wandered for twelve hours, seemed alive with the resonance of this dissolution, as if its trees bore witness to the unraveling of my ego.
Upon my return, RC sent a message to ensure my safe landing. I could not reply, uncertain whether my paranoia had truly lifted or merely transmuted into a subtler form of doubt. My partner responded in my stead. The next day, a typhoon descended upon the island, and as we drove home through torrents of rain and wind, the atmosphere seemed charged with significance, a kind of cosmic punctuation to the previous day’s unraveling. RC, undeterred by the storm, informed us that he intended to take the same journey himself. Hours later, I asked him where he had been. His reply was quite meticulous but cryptic:
I usually don’t have any free time to use the substance, but since the typhoon gave me some uninterrupted time, I took the chance to use it quickly.
13:00 - Took 20g
14:20 - Effects started to kick in
Every one of my journeys carries an experimental nature. For this cactus journey, I had been listening to the "Manjushri Bodhisattva Mantra" for half a year, and I wanted to see what would happen if I listened to the mantra while under the influence. Here’s what happened—something supernatural.
On my wooden table, I saw a magnificent palace. Then, my consciousness entered the palace, where I saw many small animals—mostly foxes, and other creatures that didn’t seem to belong to Earth. They looked at me with disdain but still had to stay with me and listen to the mantra. I’ve never seen animals during a journey before, let alone so many at once, so I was quite shocked. However, their apparent disdain for me made me withdraw from that state automatically.
After that, my cat Pudding fell into a large cardboard box and couldn’t climb out, meowing constantly. At first, I thought it was a hallucination, which confused me for almost an hour before I realized it was real and pulled him out of the box. Once I rescued him, I continued exploring the conscious world with my eyes open and closed. I gained many answers and uncovered “bugs” in the physical world, but I became too greedy, wanting to bring them back to reality. The moment I opened my eyes, all those memories collapsed—it seemed like fate.
Finally, I looked up some information. It turns out that Manjushri Bodhisattva is said to guide beings in the animal realm (the “beast path”). It’s likely that I really entered His world, as I had never seen animal imagery during a journey before.
There is an openness in RC’s narrative, a willingness to oscillate between domains that others might insist are irreconcilable: the empirical and the mystical, the chemical and the divine. His approach mirrors what Donovan Schaefer describes as the dual nature of the pharmakon—both remedy and poison, a mode of critique that demands both surrender and vigilance. This oscillation, however, is not peculiar to RC but is emblematic of the broader ethos within the underground psychedelic community, where the boundaries between science and spirituality dissolve as readily as the ego under the influence of entheogens.
The resurgence of the term "spirituality" in modern discourse, as evidenced by its dramatic increase in usage from the late 1990s onward, reflects an undercurrent of desire—a collective yearning for ways of knowing that escape the confines of secular rationality. This resurgence, perhaps counterintuitively, coincides with the narratives of disenchantment that Max Weber so famously articulated, where the "iron cage" of capitalism emerged as an unintended consequence of Protestant asceticism. Weber traced the arc of religious innovation through centuries, noting how a constellation of beliefs, practices, and dispositions gave rise to the rationalized economic systems of modernity. Yet, alongside this disenchantment lies its paradoxical shadow: the persistent re-enchantment of the world, now diffused through new practices, languages, and technologies, including the psychedelic renaissance.
RC’s explorations exemplify this tension between disenchantment and its subversion. His journeys, framed as experimental engagements with the unknown, inhabit a space where the chemical and the mystical, the empirical and the divine, are not oppositional but intertwined. This liminality recalls the reflections of Peter Berger, whose 1968 lecture at the New School for Social Research proclaimed the impending extinction of religion in the face of a global secular culture. Berger envisioned a future where faith, reduced to insular sects, would struggle to survive the homogenizing pressures of modernity. Yet the late 20th and early 21st centuries witnessed not the death of religion but its transformation. As Simon Critchley has observed, mysticism—once confined to the monastic cloister—has diffused into aesthetic practices, where religious intensity finds expression in secular forms of ecstatic experience. In this sense, RC’s engagement with plant consciousness and altered states is emblematic of a broader cultural shift: the migration of spirituality into domains once considered strictly scientific or material.
Harvard Divinity School’s recent $16 million initiative to study psychedelics in society underscores this migration. Projects like Michael Pollan’s exploration of psychedelics as tools for cognitive and ethical transformation reflect an institutional acknowledgment of what might once have been dismissed as marginal or esoteric. These efforts frame psychedelics not merely as therapeutic tools but as catalysts for rethinking the intersections of law, ethics, and cultural practice. The language of "bootcamps for future leaders in the psychedelic space" gestures toward a reconfiguration of societal norms, where spirituality and science collaborate in shaping new modalities of existence.
RC’s narrative, then, is part of a larger mosaic. His journeys into the Manjushri Bodhisattva’s animal realm evoke William James’s pragmatic insight that "thoughts are thinkers." The vividness of his visions—the palace on the wooden table, the disdainful foxes, the cat rescued from hallucination—suggests a world not static but alive, suffused with collective cognition and intelligence. Nietzsche’s animalist perspective, articulated in The Joyful Wisdom, echoes here: to enter these altered states is to confront the porous boundaries of human and nonhuman, self and other, mind and material.
In the language of plants, as RC intuits, lies a truth beyond words. The communicative modalities of plants—their bioelectric signals, chemical exudates, and interspecies interactions—challenge the anthropocentric limits of our understanding. Michael Levin’s work on bioelectric interfaces and the modular intelligence of living systems hints at this broader truth: that cognition and memory are not confined to the human mind but distributed across networks of living matter. Levin’s notion of the "electric face," prepatterned in the bioelectric fields of cells, suggests a pre-linguistic form of collective intelligence, a morphospace where the boundaries of individuality dissolve.
RC’s gestures—his careful brewing, his casual confessions, his texted reassurances—become acts of translation between these worlds. In his hands, the raw chemical structures of plants are not merely substances but conduits, opening onto a realm where thought and matter, spirit and science, converge. Yet this is not to say that RC’s practice escapes the gravitational pull of disenchantment entirely. The temptation to systematize, to extract universal insights, lingers, as does the paradoxical danger of greed—the desire to bring back too much from the ineffable, to collapse the mystery into the known.
It is in this unresolved tension that RC’s practice finds its resonance. Like the resurgence of "spirituality" in contemporary discourse, his journeys reflect a refusal to accept the boundaries imposed by secular modernity. They gesture instead toward a collective reawakening, a recognition that the disenchantment of the world is never complete and that, within its interstices, lies the potential for new forms of enchantment. Whether through the language of plants, the algorithms of bioelectricity, or the whispers of an ancient mantra, RC’s explorations remind us that the pursuit of knowledge—scientific or spiritual—is always, at its core, an act of inspiration, a willingness to step beyond the familiar and into the unknown.
On Political Action
Even centuries after the well-known debate between David Hume and Immanuel Kant on the relationship between morality and reason—Hume asserting that "Reason is wholly inactive," and Kant countering that reason, though limited in accessing metaphysical truths, is vital for human freedom and moral action—humanity continues to grapple with its perceived superiority over other beings. This ongoing struggle questions not only our philosophical assumptions but also the existential footing upon which we claim dominance. Are we truly as exceptional as we believe?
The rise of phenomenology has expanded our understanding of reason. No longer confined to abstract logic, reason now encompasses embodied experiences: the gestures we make, the symptoms we express, and the social interactions that bind us. It suggests that reason operates not merely as a detached mechanism for calculating outcomes but as an intricate web of thoughts and feelings, entangled and mutually influential, motivating or inhibiting intentional actions. These actions, in turn, cascade into collective patterns, challenging the boundaries of individual agency.
Yet, despite this enriched understanding, there has been no complete paradigm shift in how we conceive the relationship between humans and non-humans. The legacy of moral philosophy and social critique has long centered humans in the narrative of reason and action, relegating non-humans to the periphery as mere backdrops to the human drama. This anthropocentric framework persists, even as contemporary anthropologists working within the context of the Anthropocene increasingly emphasize the agency of non-humans. From speed bumps shaping traffic behavior to parapsychological imagery challenging materialist assumptions, these studies often fail to escape the “all-too-human” lens, which risks reducing their insights to normative or ideological manifestos of human action. This shift has yet to resolve the deeper arrogance embedded in human exceptionalism. If anything, it has intensified our anxiety about will and agency.
As we begin to recognize the distributed and interdependent nature of agency—extending beyond human beings to objects, technologies, ecosystems, and even ideas—we confront a troubling question: what is left of our sense of control? If reason, once heralded as the pinnacle of human capability, is now seen as part of a broader, more chaotic network of relations, where does that leave us in the hierarchy of existence?
This anxiety is not merely philosophical; it is palpable in the crises of our time. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and the unraveling of ecological systems demand that we rethink agency and responsibility. Can we, as Kant suggested, act on principles that transcend individual interest and resonate with other rational beings—or even with beings that defy the category of rationality altogether? Or does Hume's skepticism about the power of reason to motivate action prove more prescient in an age when humanity's will often falters in the face of its own destructive tendencies?
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the Acacia plant. It’s grown so quickly these past few days, in a way that seems almost surreal—like time itself has accelerated amidst the relentless churn of political turmoil and the confusion it leaves behind. We often say that plants grow stronger under stress, but I wonder if those measurements are skewed by the subjectivity of human observers, failing to see the interconnectedness of what we call the environment.
The plant stands taller now, stronger and greener—a luminous, mystical green that lingers in my thoughts. I recall Isabel’s words: “When the leaves bow downward, it means the plant is struggling. Be gentle and care for it better.” It reminds me of what plant cognition studies suggest—that the relationship we form with plants can be as deep and personal as those we have with people. The connection I feel with the Acacia feels as profound, if not more so, than many human relationships I maintain. As I prepare to leave for Europe, I find myself worrying: will it get enough light? Enough water? Will Gretchen care for it well? My concerns are not trivial; they reflect the growing sense that this plant, in its quiet presence, has become a part of my life’s fabric.
Two questions persistently linger throughout this research: What can I do in this world? and What can ineffable experiences contribute to shifts in decision-making processes? Amid these inquiries, one certainty emerges: certain experiences can dissolve the boundaries of reality and heighten a profound desire to create. Creation, here, transcends the production of completed works and extends into intentional behaviors, subtle actions that ripple through existence.
An encounter with the cactus revealed the simultaneous pain and beauty of the real, impressing upon me that my body is but a fragment of a broader spectrum of perception. This introspection broke apart the coherent picture of reality, leaving behind a loosely woven network of existence—threads connecting cellular beings, electrical signals, and flowing patterns that shift and expand. Within this fragmentation, the ineffable exerts a force, urging the creation of further ripples, a dynamic play of boundaries that are at once fluid and persistent.
These ripples contrast starkly with the creeping despair left in the wake of shattered pride, particularly in the Americas and Europe, where hope has often been reduced to a desperate vapor. My own certainty in the belief that life’s meaning lies in the smallness of daily responsibility—tasks, intellectual trajectories, and questions of earthly complexity—has similarly been shaken. I recall my younger years in South Korea, when despair had overtaken me so fully that I no longer wished to exist. In those moments, the words of Han Kang, the first Asian woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, just weeks before Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, was my lifeline. Her "intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life" anchored me. Through her writing, the entanglement of memory, narrative, and the material traces of mundane life created a bubble of meaning, binding me to the faces of loved ones and the textures of daily existence.
Now, those dormant historical associations have reawakened, resurfacing in contemporary contexts across news media and scholarly discourse. They serve as constant reminders of the absurd theater in which we live, one I refuse to let end without action. The plants, willingly surrendering their forms to merge with mine, offer a profound warning: Descartes’s cogito does not belong solely to humanity. Their gesture implores us to abandon arrogance and to heed the conscience that calls for attention and care—a conscience we too often dismiss as trash, left to decay within the deep timelines of geological strata.
The urgency of this call is echoed in messages from Chia Ying, Tzimei, and Florence, who express concern for those left on Korea’s streets. Lukas, fresh from witnessing the strength and turmoil of protests in Seoul, extends this urgency to other regions like Georgia, Palestine, and countless violent battlefields. These messages, for me, are the vapors of Formosahuasca, permeating the air, dissolving the boundaries between self and other, and urging action.
In reflecting on Derrida’s concept of pharmakon—remedy versus poison—it becomes clear that his framework, and its descendants, often overlook the ambiguity of this duality. This ambiguity is mirrored in the mimetic violence of addiction discourse and the scapegoating mechanisms that marginalize the most vulnerable. Yet, there are ways forward, rooted in the absence of ego. The concept of ekstasis—standing outside oneself—offers a vision of consciousness that transcends the self. It is a state of unification, where the separation between subject and object dissolves, enabling compassion.
Ironically, it is in this ecstatic emptiness, this suspension of identity, that we recognize our shared vulnerability. Compassion arises not as a distant virtue but as a visceral acknowledgment of our interdependence. To co-suffer is to admit that we too need help. In the phenomenal realm, all existence is conditioned, arising in mutual dependence. This co-constitution of all things reveals a profound equality within the larger web of life.
Ultimately, the ineffable invites us to risk our identities, to dissolve into the shared fabric of existence, and to recognize the absolute equality that binds us to each other and to the non-human world. It is within this fragile, dynamic, and interconnected web that the work of creation—of intentional, compassionate action—must unfold. Perhaps this is what the plants are teaching us, and this is what the world now demands.
