What does it take to cultivate a sense of wonder, curiosity, and delight in our differences rather than fear, rage, orviolence? This was the main inquiry of a dynamic and wide-ranging conversation featuring Ramzi Fawaz (University of Wisconsin, Madison) organized by the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry and co-sponsored by the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.The dialogue considered how the fundamental qualities of psychedelic experiences—including the disorganization of ego, the dramatic intensification of sensory experience, and a sense of cosmic interconnection with the universe—might offer tools for better apprehending and negotiating human diversity and in an increasingly xenophobic world. The recorded conversation is now live as a special episode of the first season of Fawaz’s Nerd from the Future Podcast.
In Fawaz’s own words from the episode’s introduction: “The room was packed with an amazingly diverse audience of faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, and many Bay Area community members interested in plant medicines and psychedelic healing practices.”
The event drew from Fawaz’s work on a new book currently in progress, titled How to Think Like a Multiverse: Psychedelic Pathways to Embracing a Diverse World. The book will “explore how the key elements of psychedelic therapy, including emotionally transformative experiences with plant medicines and deep interpretations of the experience afterwards, overlap in many ways with the approaches we use to teach about art, literature, and culture in the humanities classroom.” Fawaz explains, “Basically, I make a case for thinking about humanities education as a kind of psychedelic therapy—but one where we use art and culture, instead of drugs, to change peoples’ lives for the better.”
The Nerd from the Future episode is now available on Spotify, and it will soon be available on the Berkeley Talks podcast, which spotlights lectures and conversations happening across the UC Berkeley campus.
Marlena Gittleman is a Future of Higher Education Postdoctoral Fellow with the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry.