Encounter #10 — The Imposition of Autonomy and the Prospect of a Transformative Rite of Political Passage

The Bullshit Artists

In this episode, Rory initiates the conversation by informing Jack that, during the time between their last encounter and this one, he has had an intriguing thought that he’d like to explore together now. To that end, he begins by digging into an issue from Jack’s published work that, he says, has always bothered him: Jack’s claim, as Rory understands it, that it is immoral for a public schoolteacher, as an agent of the state, to impose through his or her pedagogical practice the development of autonomy (in the robust psychological sense) on a student.

Jack and Rory examine and disentangle this claim without coming to any firm conclusion, but that’s fine: the point, as Rory goes on to explain, is to extrapolate this line of thought from the classroom and into the contemporary global political arena. That is, if the human species is truly in a dire and vanishingly brief moment in which drastic, transformative change must be rapidly undertaken if there is to be any hope of the species’ survival, then how, if at all, can the imposition of autonomy (or even postautonomous development) on the global population be justified? Can we, in other words, legitimately force folks to evolve their consciousness? In the course of considering this question, Jack and Rory work through a number of practical and theoretical concerns too numerous to detail here.

Ultimately, though, they arrive at the point where Rory can offer the thought that originally sparked this conversation: what if a U.S. President, in his or her official capacity, were to invite—not coerce—the populace to participate in a unifying ritual involving the consumption of psychedelic substances? This celebration could be supported by a variety of cultural sources, and the supplies and infrastructure could be provided by the state. Such an event could serve as both a reconstitution of the body politic and as a collective rite of passage into a higher state of consciousness that would take us beyond what Albert Einstein called “the predatory phase of human development,” namely, the individualistic capitalist one that currently threatens our species with extinction. Jack is enticed by this notion, and the episode draws to a close with many questions left to be explored.