This week’s readings and podcast lecture hit my own blind spot. Sometimes as people we actually forget how things and information get to us. We forget about all the processes that happen between the source and us, yet the whole process itself holds a very high value, it helps us understand and learn. As professor Amanda highlights „So the reason, that you have access -you ,anyone listening to this podcast has had-the reason you have access to ayahuasca experiences today is because indigenous people were enslaved during the Amazonian rubber boom.“ This particular sentence stood out to me because it showed me the real truth behind not only ayahuasca but also other things present in my life. It hit my so called blind spot that all of us have (it’s the spot that we can’t see but we need others to show us where it is). Never before, would I think deeper into looking why and how certain „food“ came to us – what was its journey. As we can see ayahuasca’s foodway has been touched by many and had a very horrific past connected with it but does many people despite Indigenous peoples and the exploiters now? I believe that the general public does not realize how ayahuasca came to them or what Indigenous peoples had to go through and still do. It is just a substance that helps them heal right?…no story behind it(consumerism can sometimes blind us). It fascinated me how one „food“ can have so much story. Every substance, thing, person or animal has a history, which brings me to point that Amanda in Tamara’s podcast indicates “Everything can be a person“ it is just the way we look at it. Sometimes we need to dive in to the other entity that is not us and try to see and get to know the life or processes that they have been through and that is when „perspectivism“(Amanda) enters our lives.
So from time to time ask yourself: What is the story behind the chair I am sitting on? Or the banana that I have just eaten in order to discover the real truth that can be so well hidden.
What a great post! Thank you for your insight into this. It’s true, that especially in Western society there is an enormous gap between what we use, wear, eat, and buy, and the origins of these things. I wonder if we might value our goods more if we were forced to make them ourselves, or only bought from people we knew personally that had made/cooked them for us. What a different world it would be in terms of consumerism and knowledge and appreciation.
Your reflection reminds me of the film “The True Cost,” which is on Netflix, I believe. It looks at how fast fashion brands exploit foreign workers and upsell clothing to us in the West, sometimes at the cost of the clothing workers’ lives. Worth a watch. Thanks again 🙂
Hi! I really enjoyed your post and it’s discussion on our lack of connection with the things we consume every day. I completely agree with your point of view, and I’ve also become aware of just how far our food has to travel, how many people handle it to get to us, how much energy it uses. It’s sometimes overwhelming just how much we don’t know about our own lives, and that figuring out the information is quite attainable if we put our minds to it, but we are constantly preoccupied with other things.
It would be interesting to see the resoning behind the tourists going. I know that it was mentioned that they went in order to heal psychological traumas etc. But do they understand the system that they’re supporting, the effects they have on the communities, and the changes they are creating in these people’s lives? I wonder if more information will be disseminated, and people will start asking for ‘real’ shamans that are experienced so as to start going back to ‘normal’.