4
" The questions of God – meaning in Milton’s phrase “The god who hung the stars like lamps in heaven” – I don’t think psychedelics can address that definitively, but there is another god, a goddess, the goddess of biology, the goddess of the coherent animal human world, the world of the oceans, the atmosphere, and the planet. In short, our world! The world that we were born into, that we evolved into, and that we came from. That world, the psychedelics want to connect us up to… Our individuality, as people and as a species, is an illusion of bad language that the psychedelics dissolve into the greater feeling of connectedness that underlies our being here, and to my mind that’s the religious impulse. It’s not a laundry list of moral dos and don’ts, or a set of dietary prescriptions or practices: it’s a sense of connectedness, responsibility for our fellow human beings and for the earth you walking around on, and because these psychedelics come out of that plant vegetable matrix they are the way back into it. "
― Terence McKenna
7
" The phytochemicals, antioxidants, and fiber- all of the healthful components of plant foods- originate in plants, not animals. If they are present, it is because the animal ate plants. And why should we go through an animal to get the benefits of the plants themselves? To consume unnecessary, unseemly, and unhealthy substances, such as saturated fat, animal protein, lactose, and dietary cholesterol, is to negate the benefits of the fiber, phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that are prevalent and inherent in plants. "
― Colleen Patrick-Goudreau , Color Me Vegan: Maximize Your Nutrient Intake and Optimize Your Health by Eating Antioxidant-Rich, Fiber-Packed, Color-Intense Meals That Taste Great
13
" The ceremonial differentiation of the dietary is best seen in the use of intoxicating beverages and narcotics. If these articles of consumption are costly, they are felt to be noble and honorific. Therefore the base classes, primarily the women, practice an enforced continence with respect to these stimulants, except in countries where they are obtainable at a very low cost. From archaic times down through all the length of the patriarchal regime it has been the office of the women to prepare and administer these luxuries, and it has been the perquisite of the men of gentle birth and breeding to consume them. Drunkenness and the other pathological consequences of the free use of stimulants therefore tend in their turn to become honorific, as being a mark, at the second remove, of the superior status of those who are able to afford the indulgence. Infirmities induced by over-indulgence are among some peoples freely recognised as manly attributes. It has even happened that the name for certain diseased conditions of the body arising from such an origin has passed into everyday speech as a synonym for " noble" or " gentle" . It is only at a relatively early stage of culture that the symptoms of expensive vice are conventionally accepted as marks of a superior status, and so tend to become virtues and command the deference of the community; but the reputability that attaches to certain expensive vices long retains so much of its force as to appreciably lesson the disapprobation visited upon the men of the wealthy or noble class for any excessive indulgence. The same invidious distinction adds force to the current disapproval of any indulgence of this kind on the part of women, minors, and inferiors. This invidious traditional distinction has not lost its force even among the more advanced peoples of today. Where the example set by the leisure class retains its imperative force in the regulation of the conventionalities, it is observable that the women still in great measure practise the same traditional continence with regard to stimulants. "
14
" The major religious fundamentalisms—Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu—certainly all demonstrate intense concern for and scrutiny of bodies, through dietary restrictions, corporeal rituals, sexual mandates and prohibitions, and even practices of corporeal mortification and abnegation. What primarily distinguishes fundamentalists from other religious practitioners, in fact, is the extreme importance they give to the body: what it does, what parts of it appear in public, what goes into and comes out of it. Even when fundamentalist norms require hiding a part of the body behind a veil, headscarf, or other articles of clothing, they are really signaling its extraordinary importance. Women’s bodies are obviously the object of the most obsessive scrutiny and regulation in religious fundamentalism, but no bodies are completely exempt from examination and control—men’s bodies, adolescents’ bodies, infants’ bodies, even the bodies of the dead. The fundamentalist body is powerful, explosive, precarious, and that is why it requires constant inspection and care…
Nationalist fundamentalisms similarly concentrate on bodies through their attention to and care for the population. The nationalist policies deploy a wide range of techniques for corporeal health and welfare, analyzing birthrates and sanitation, nutrition and housing, disease control and reproductive practices. Bodies themselves constitute the nation, and thus the nation’s highest goal is their promotion and preservation. Like religious fundamentalisms, however, nationalisms, although their gaze seems to focus intently on bodies, really see them merely as an indication or symptom of the ultimate, transcendent object of national identity. With its moral face, nationalism looks past the bodies to see national character, whereas with its militarist face, it sees the sacrifice of bodies in battle as revealing the national spirit. The martyr or the patriotic soldier is thus for nationalism too the paradigmatic figure for how the body is made to disappear and leave behind only an index to a higher plane. Given this characteristic double relation to the body, it makes sense to consider white supremacy (and racism in general) a form of fundamentalism. "
― Michael Hardt , Commonwealth
