Biologist, capoeirista, writer, neuroscientist, visionary: Sidarta Ribeiro has collected many hats in his 51 years and balances them all in his new book, “Manifesto Dream, Ten Urgent Exercises of Apocalyptic Optimism”. The theme is the same as the bestseller “The Night Oracle” (2019) and some of the more than a hundred scientific articles she has published: the importance of dreams for survival.
Simply put, it is as if dreams were generators of scenarios and solutions based on past experience: “Dreaming about a better future is at the essence of dreaming, whether during sleep or wakefulness”, says Siddhartha, as he is better known.
The neuroscientist explains that dreaming recruits brain areas related to empathy, that is, our better nature, capable of counterbalancing the violent inclinations equally inherited from human ancestry. Hence his optimism, albeit apocalyptic.
“The dizzying explosion of planetary suffering […] it is a mark of the extreme time we live in. Overcoming this explosion of suffering through an expansion of consciousness is the task of the generations that are alive now – and for that we need to relearn how to dream, both metaphorically and literally.”
Dreaming is also reconnecting with your own mind and body, reactivating the introspection that fades between selfies, stories and likes. To get there, it is worth making use of everything that human ingenuity has already created, from ancient practices of yoga and meditation to the teachings of native peoples and cutting-edge modern science. Ideas are not lacking under so many hats.
You are a student of dreams, the subject of your bestseller that talks about the need to reconnect with this psychic activity. In the new book, he reiterates that we need to relearn how to dream, but in this case it sounds more like political imagination, social innovation and the reactivation of solidarity. Is it just a metaphor, or is there a deeper connection between these two senses of “dreaming”? Yes, there is a deeper connection, as dreaming of a better future is at the heart of dreaming, whether during sleep or wakefulness. The dream experience, like night travel or waking daydreams, is a state of mind that recruits the same brain regions that are necessary for empathy. The dizzying explosion of planetary suffering, both among human beings and among many other species, is a mark of the extreme time we live in. Overcoming this explosion of suffering through an expansion of consciousness is the task of the generations that are alive now – and for that we need to relearn how to dream, both metaphorically and literally.
In the first chapter, you state that “the ten richest people in the world could easily, after a few phone calls of few words, have contained the contagion [da Covid] across the globe, preventing death and the emergence of more transmissible and lethal variants.” Doesn’t this statement imply attributing superhuman powers to those who hold most of the world’s wealth? No superhuman powers, on the contrary: ancestral human responsibility. Since the Paleolithic, human beings have been distancing themselves from other animals due to the progressive increase in their ability to cooperate. The ethic of care was as or more important to the success of our lineage as the ethic of competition.
Today, the planet’s problem is not scarcity, but the distributive inequality not only of material goods, but also of immaterial goods. Too much money is toxic and addictive, and it can be assumed that the planet’s roughly 3,000 billionaires and billionaires are, with a few honorable exceptions, utterly dependent on money.
If a person has billions of reais and instead of using them to improve the planet, he prefers to make an effort to earn more money – and suffer for it! –, that person is sick. Recognizing this is necessary. It’s great that Bill and Melinda Gates have donated a portion of their fortunes to worthy causes, but surely their peers can do much more. Chuck Feeney [fundador do Duty Free] donated all his fortune in life. MacKenzie Scott [ex-mulher de Jeff Bezos, fundador da Amazon] is going that way.
Even if billionaire people invest 99% of their fortunes in improving the planet, their living conditions will not change at all. It is important to keep in mind that the current capitalist system does not save anyone from psychic suffering, not even the materially richest. Money addiction brings anxiety, depression, loneliness, mistrust, paranoia and a huge fear of death.
The money god worshiping human civilization is sick and needs healing. Competition at all costs and limitless accumulation have a dangerous evolutionary inertia. If we want to stay on the planet, the strongest will need to take care of the weakest – and not destroy them as they do today. We have plenty to spare, both in wealth and in knowledge. Now we need balance, wisdom, sharing and tolerance. The good news is that we have all this in our planetary cultural baggage.
Without intending to lessen the severity of the climate crisis or minimize the effects of a world nuclear war, it is unlikely that the human species will become extinct even in the worst scenarios. It emerged from less than 3,000 individuals that came out of Africa and proved extremely adaptable. Does not brandishing the threat of extinction reinforce the alarmism that engenders pessimism and immobility, as several climate scholars warn? When the house is on fire, don’t wait. As the I Ching says, “if there is something to be done, haste brings good fortune.” On the other hand, in an emergency, you need to keep a cool head. How do we get out of the evolutionary snooker we’ve gotten ourselves into? It’s not enough to just act, we need to know how to act.
Less important than knowing whether the extinction of the human species will be a sudden hecatomb or a slow and stinking decline of our potential, we need to urgently map and lucidly carry out multiple adjustments of conduct. Only in this way will we be able to escape the many gloomy futures that loom on the horizon, such as the panorama outlined in the excellent film “Medida Provisoria”, directed by Lázaro Ramos.
We need these behavioral adjustments not only to overcome the hell that already exists on this planet for billions of human beings and tens of billions of non-human beings, but to carry out right here, on Earth, a truly dignified and sublime trajectory, a legitimate heir of the best and wisest contributions of our ancestors – and our commitment to those who will come after us.
You say our ancestry has sick parts, like the aggressiveness and male territoriality that is at the root of patriarchy, and benevolent parts, like cooperation and solidarity. Isn’t there a certain myopia when glorifying the wisdom remaining in traditional peoples and their shamans, as if we only see the healthy part of them? The glorification of any particular perspective is a mistake. The necessary and urgent effort is towards a great cultural synthesis capable of treating and curing, with all the tools at our disposal, from the oldest to the most recent, a set of ancestral ills that are highly toxic to society.
At the same time, we need to rescue, nourish and articulate the countless original and traditional knowledge to the explosive accumulation of scientific knowledge of the present moment. What we need at this moment is the good and the best of all spheres of human knowledge, inside and outside traditional knowledge, inside and outside science, inside and outside religions, including all perspectives.
You point out as some of the main evils of the contemporary world the brutal disconnection of people with their own body and mind, the absence of introspection. It talks about age-old techniques like yoga, meditation and breathing, but how doable can this prescription be for more than 7 billion people? You also mention marijuana and psychedelics: wouldn’t they be more appropriate paths these days, since prohibition was overcome? Self-knowledge practices and entheogenic medicines [etimologicamente, algo como “gerador do divino interno”] they are not mutually exclusive, on the contrary, they are synergistic. Capoeira, chi kung, yoga, meditation, breathing and so many other riches of human culture can be even easier to access than the pharmacological path, as long as there is access to good quality training.
It is important to remember that the use of entheogenic medicines is not limited to the chemical action of these substances, but also requires integrative psychotherapy. The most important in both ways is the quality of the teachings practiced and the human bonds involved.
On the other hand, there seems to be an excess of hope surrounding psychedelics in particular, as well as the risk of their monopolization by the biomedical industry and layers of intellectual property. What’s missing to inject realism into the so-called psychedelic renaissance? Psychedelics are powerful inducers of changes in nerve connections, and as such are powerful tools of mental transformation. However, without good human support and adequate contexts of use, which allow the subjective experience to be navigated in the direction of love, well-being and the ethics of care, psychedelics can be ineffective, like a strong wind that hits a sail. loose, does not move the boat and may even capsize it.
I am skeptical about the ability to capture psychedelics by predatory capitalism, as their use involves very low and very occasional doses of substances of natural origin, present in fungi, plants and animals. The most expensive and most value-added part of psychedelic therapy are the people in charge of building and protecting the context of use, whether shamans, psychotherapists, psychiatrists or neuroscientists. We need to invest in the training and performance of these people.
You open the book with the myth of Angulimala, the finger-collecting thief who is regenerated by meeting the Buddha, and you say that it should serve as an inspiration for all oppressors: “It is always possible and desirable to stop committing irreversible evil.” Does your optimism include President Jair Bolsonaro (PL)? Intimately, every person on this planet is trying to do their best. The distance between this individual perception and what each person actually generates around him, in other people, gives a measure of the distortion of perceptions of evil and goodness.
I don’t have the optimism to think that all the oppressive people on the planet will be able to enlighten themselves, much less Bolsonaro. But I firmly believe that a sufficiently large number of people, of all genders, races and social classes, can and must awaken.
The knowledge gathered from the human species has the potential to profoundly restructure our way of being in the world, in order to increase general well-being and regenerate biomes. The inequality of material and immaterial goods is growing explosively, the environment is in upheaval and we have little time to act before the process is irreversible.
The conditions are right for a big leap and time is pressing. It is the greatest task of the generations that are alive. We need to build that dream for those who will come after us.
