ESSAY text by DANIEL PINCHBECK artwork by RAM HAN american author daniel pinchbeck is a regular contributor to purple. he writes about psychedelics, shamanism, and technology as the path to a better understanding of the self and to reconstructing our relationship with nature. When considering the future from where we are today, we tend to toggle between dystopian outcomes. Our culture, in fact, wallows in dystopia. We marinate in apocalypse. Films and TV series envision every conceivable dreadful outcome, from control by robot overlords to nuclear winters, from zombies to plagues, from evil extraterrestrial attacks to ecological meltdowns. Overwhelmed by negative projections, people — particularly young people — feel disempowered, cynical, depressed, anxious. This perfectly serves the interests of those possessing power. When people feel dejected and hopeless, they are unlikely to find solidarity around any world-changing wmission or movement. They will, instead, sullenly submit to what seems inevitable, escaping…