Culture
PT476 – Reinventing Organizations, Lessons From Burning Man, and Batman & The Joker
January 9, 2024
Featuring: Mike Margolies
In this episode, Joe interviews Mike Margolies: community catalyst; conversation creator; Founder of Psychedelic Seminars; and Co-Founder and Co-Steward of the Global Psychedelic Society.
In this episode, Joe interviews Mike Margolies: community catalyst; conversation creator; Founder of Psychedelic Seminars; and Co-Founder and Co-Steward of the Global Psychedelic Society.
The Global Psychedelic Society was created for all of the different psychedelic societies that have sprung up over the world to connect, share resources and information with each other, and be housed in a central hub so people can find them more easily. He talks about Frederic Laloux’s book, Reinventing Organizations, and modeling the GPS around the “Teal” concept of organization, where employees are encouraged to show up as their true, honest, and most powerful selves; where it’s more about relationships than hierarchy; and more about embracing a mycelial – and psychedelic – way of thinking and interacting with each other. He breaks down how this way of thinking has progressed from the earliest ways of organizing, and discusses its three main principles of self-governance, wholeness, and evolutionary purpose.
He then talks about the Boom Festival: its “Liminal Village,” its inventive Kosmicare harm reduction program, and how drugs are not as decriminalized as people think in Portugal; and Burning Man: how it all came together for him this year when he didn’t even want to go, his experiences with the rain and a friend’s dreams warning of floods, what he learned from the ghost of a lost friend, and how that resulted in the concept of Batman doing a striptease to Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose.” Is the Joker simply a manifestation of Batman’s shadow material and his desire to be a hero? Yea, this one gets weird…
Notable Quotes
“It’s great that we’re here and we’re advocating for psychedelics and we’re building these psychedelic organizations, but if we’re here advocating for psychedelics and psychedelic research and policy and community, how do we actually embody that in our day-to-day life, in our work life? What does it mean to be psychedelic?”
“The key here is it’s not about the power dynamics, it’s about relationships. So if you don’t take someone’s advice seriously, they’re not going to take your advice seriously. So it’s less based on someone [having] power over someone and the hierarchy; it’s more relational. And that’s what it’s based on. In this kind of organization, you’re talking about a network of relationships. …Teal is not about everyone having equal power, it is about everyone being fully powerful.”
“If our intention is we want to help people not get hurt by drugs, then let’s take action to help people reduce the risk of drugs. Clearly, law enforcement [and] adding harm is not preventing harm.”
Links
Tripsitter.com: Drug Policy in Nepal: A Closer Look At Asia’s Top Psychedelic Tourist Destination
Wikipedia.org: Legal status of psychoactive cactus by country
Psychology.fandom.com: 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness
Theguardian.com: Arid land to a fertile Eden: permaculture lessons from Portugal
The Surrender Experiment: My Journey Into Life’s Perfection, by Michael A. Singer
Psychsems.com: Michael Pollan & The New Science of Psychedelics
