Psychedelics, Fatherhood and World Crisis
Workshop with Sebastian Job
Join Sebastian Job, psychedelic old hand and new father, in a meditation on being human, and raising humans, in our slice of world time.
Psychedelics and fatherhood. Are these two not poles apart? The first, obviously, is unpredictable, irreverent, irresponsible, maybe even, at an extreme, onanistic. The second, obviously, demands sobriety, responsibility, predictability, a steady hand on the wheel. But perhaps this ‘obviousness’ closes too many doors. What if consciousness, marinated once and thrice in psychedelic seas, could allow us instead to catch the child and the man, and therewith the disordered world, in their becoming?
Part personal reflection, part intertextual conversation with his daughter’s voice, this workshop will also involve group activities… in which dads and kids will be conjured up, dissolved, and conjured again. We will try to grapple, lightly, with the gravity of being children in the time of mad kings, and with the responsibilities incarnate in overthrowing them.
Dr. Sebastian Job is an Australian cultural anthropologist, researcher, and academic who specializes in the study of entheogens (psychoactive substances used in a sacramental or spiritual context) and their intersection with ecology, politics, and Western psychology.
A core guiding interest in his modern research is how psychedelics can address the global ecological crisis. In publications like DMT, Ecocide, and the Western Psyche, he argues that entheogenic experiences can help dismantle the psychological and capitalistic defense mechanisms driving environmental destruction, offering an altered standpoint from which humanity can reconnect with the Earth.