Fear of change is driving the social divide: UBC’s Davis
Champion of diversity to receive social awareness award Thursday at library
From Nepal to Nunavut, Polynesia to Peru, National Geographic adventurer Wade Davis has spent 40 years studying people.
During that time the anthropologist/ethnobotanist and the B.C. Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of B.C. has produced 17 films, 275 published articles and 20 books.
It’s his recent book, Wade Davis: Photographs, that is being celebrated with the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness. The award will be presented to Davis on Thursday at the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library. Also that evening, historian Rolf Knight will be given the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award. The presentation and author readings will begin at 7 p.m. and is open to the public.
Reached recently at his home in Vancouver, Davis — who became internationally famous with his book The Serpent and the Rainbow — had just returned from what was his second trip around the world this spring.
As an expert on indigenous cultures and a champion of social diversity, the 64-year-old Order of Canada recipient didn’t flinch when asked about the rise of nativism in the U.S. and Europe.
Davis said a big reason for the cries to put a lid firmly on the melting pot is people’s fear of that old bogeyman called change.
“It seems that the social divide, which becomes the political divide, is between those who are fundamentally comfortable with the outcomes of that tremendous pace of change and those who aren’t,” said Davis. “When people feel their backs are against the wall and the world is coming at them too fast, they don’t understand, they get scared and uncomfortable and they look for scapegoats, and the scapegoat always becomes the other.
“That is why small groups have been demonized through history. It is so much easier to blame the other, and the whole Trump nativistic thing is based on that.”
Those familiar with Davis’ work will know he has fully immersed himself in indigenous cultures, including psychotropic rituals. One of those rituals is all the rage these days. From Hollywood types to hipsters, the hallucinogen ayahuasca is driving a tourism industry.
“Ayahuasca is many things but pleasant is not one of them,” said Davis, who first tried the Amazonian concoction in 1974 at age 20.
He said it rightly scares the hell out of even those who have been using it for generations and are insulated by what he calls the “protective coat of ritual.”
“The indigenous people in the Amazon I have spoken to or the shaman don’t think of it as benign or fun,” said Davis, who last used the blend of ayahuasca vine and chacruna shrub a handful of years ago. “They use language like: ‘You’re nursing from the breast of the Jaguar mother when she tears you from her nipple and flings you to the vipers that rip your flesh.’ ”
Davis also warned of the inevitable opportunists who arrive when a revenue stream is identified. Davis said plenty of self-professed shamans are what he calls “mail-order mystics” who pop up and can be predatory: “Sleazeball guys hitting on women who are intoxicated.”
So you might want to find another path to self-awareness.
It is so much easier to blame the other, and the whole Trump nativistic thing is based on that.