What Biohacking Borrows from Shamanism – Manvir Singh, Ph.D. : 967

<p><strong>IN THIS EPISODE OF THE HUMAN UPGRADE</strong>™<strong>...</strong></p><p>… you’ll find out about the relevance of shamanism in a modern world and why high performers are turning toward shamanic practices to get ahead.</p><p>The show’s guest, <a href="https://www.manvir.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Manvir Singh, Ph.D.</a>, is an anthropologist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, France. He studies universal or near-universal cultural practices, including music, shamanism, and witchcraft. For the past seven years, he’s conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Indonesia. </p><p>He recently wrote&nbsp;an article in WIRED magazine titled, “<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/health-business-deprivation-technology/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Shamanification of the Tech CEO</a>,” noting some curious parallels.</p><ul><li>“Silicon Valley austerity continues to grow more extreme. By 2020 intermittent fasting was no longer enough, and dopamine fasting—an abstention not just from food but from any form of stimulation, including music, eye contact, and playing&nbsp;<em>Magic: The Gathering</em>—had taken off. These self-denial fads are often touted as biohacking innovations. Yet as an anthropologist who has studied austerity in some of the most remote regions of the world, I see them as part of a larger pattern: the self-shamanification of tech CEOs.”</li></ul><p><br></p><ul><li>“Analyzing an old dataset of 43 nonindustrial societies, I&nbsp;<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318255042_The_cultural_evolution_of_shamanism" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">found</a>&nbsp;that shamans in 81 percent of the societies observed prohibitions on food, sex, or social contact. Given that these data were collated from reports by travelers and anthropologists, they are probably an underestimate. Silicon Valley deprivation, it turns out, is less a strange, new development and more the most recent manifestation of a ubiquitous shamanic practice.”</l