From Burning Man to Samoa: Thoughts on Belonging, Healing & Change

Immediately after getting home Friday night exhausted after the burn, I took an overnight flight to honor the legendary activists and regenerative organic pioneers Will Allen and Kate Duesterberg of Cedar Circle Farm. Among other things, Will and I got arrested planting hemp seeds on the DEA’s lawn in 2009, as part of an action and movement that ultimately freed this incredible crop to be grown everywhere in the US. We made ceremonial shovels for the occasion that read:

DEA Hemp Planting 2009
Reefer Madness Will Be Buried
American Farmers Shall Grow Hemp Again [iii]

Check out the endnote below to dive deeper into this cannabis portal.

And then after a few days back home with my amazing nonbinary kid Maya, I flew with Mia to Samoa to visit for the first time SerendiCoco, our sister coconut oil project there. SerendiCoco works with fair trade and regenerative organic farmers to supply a substantial portion of our coconut oil, which gives our soaps their incredible flash foam and lather, that cleans well even in hard water conditions. Our activism with hemp was foundational in our journey to embrace regenerative organic agriculture for all of our major raw materials, primarily coconut, palm, olive and mint oils. [iv] Coconut oil is experiencing an unprecedented and sustained price spike, and is our number one material (we’re also dealing with huge tariffs on our sister mint and tea tree projects in India and South Africa respectively). Necessity is the mother of invention, and we’ve been inspired to expand and set up one of the world’s largest Dynamic Ag Forestry systems in Samoa, where we’ll intercrop complementary species like cocoa and smaller fruit trees with the coconut palms, where cows forage and eat the grass and weeds, speeding the fertility cycle while they do.

At Burning Man, I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to our map of the world showing all the different cultures that celebrate more than two genders, as the point is that there’s a lot of them. But surprisingly and synchronistically, turns out Samoa is one of them, with a long cultural tradition of Fa’afafine and Fa’afatama, where children born male who exhibit feminine gender expression, or born female who exhibit a more masculine mode, could choose to assume the role of Fa-afaine or Fa’afatama. [v] There’s a range of gender expression, from more feminine to more masculine.

Andrew is our number three at SerendiCoco and an amazing human being, and is super excited to help us manifest our dream of a huge DAF there. Tammy is another Fa’afaine who works with us, and then Georgina was another sweet Fa-afafine who rented us our car. It was so refreshing to see a culture deal with the reality of gender diverse people in such an awesome way, creating space and a sweet sense of belonging. [vi] Paraphrasing Etuale Sefo, leader of Serendicoco and other major enterprises in Samoa: “Why would we ever care who and how they want to be? We were brought up to know there was nothing weird or wrong about it. It’s been this way for many generations.”

The population of Samoa is 98% Christian—Congregational Christian, Catholic, Mormon and Methodist are the main denominations. Coupled with the clearly cross-cultural reality of LBGTQ+ people, I hope the United States soon catches up to countries like Samoa and the others around the world that recognize and celebrate more than two genders, and create the deep sense of home and belonging that we take for granted for our wonderful fabulous siblings. [vii]

In another amazing synchronicity, it turns out that Samoa was a German colony, and when I googled “from where did Germany import coconut oil in the 1800s?”, and as I suspected Samoa was a primary source. The second generation of my German Jewish soap-making family, my great-grandfather Berthold Heilbronner and two of his brothers, introduced liquid castile soap to Germany around the turn of the 20th century, with coconut oil as the main ingredient, as it remains today. They were likely sourcing from Samoa as the only options at the time were Samoa and Papa New Guinea, via a German company that had set up a plantation there. Dried copra coconut meat was shipped to Germany to be pressed into oil, which my family purchased to make our soaps. I was like wow how very cool, that higher up the ancestral octave, we get to do this in a totally righteous regenerative organic and fair trade way, to the benefit of the Samoan people and land there.

[i] I thought Jamie Wheal’s blogs ( here and here) after the MAPS Psychedelic Science conference in June were pretty on point for the more left libertarian amongst us, about ambivalent feelings of where the psychedelic healing movement currently is at in this crazy tragic national moment. I’m included in his critique, where he depicts me in my burning man vibration (I prefer Sparkle General brah!) representing one pole in the movement, occupied on the other by veteran wounded warrior leader Marcus Capone, co-founder with his wife Amber of VETS, who are at the spearpoint of the movement to integrate psychedelic healing, especially ibogaine therapy, into the American medical system.

While there’s some truth to this, we are much more similar than Jamie’s analysis suggests. Marcus and Amber are personal friends, Marcus and I surf together, and we were one of the first significant boosters and supporters of VETS along with Heroic Hearts Project, founded and led by the incredible Jesse Gould. I felt the call to serve strongly myself and got in early to West Point, following in the footsteps of my dad who served 8 years in the Navy and attained the highest enlisted rank of Chief Petty Officer; but I ended up having a different direction and mission in life, now synchronistically shared with Marcus, Jesse and many other veterans. Marcus and Amber on their side very much enjoy burning man and we’re hoping to camp together next year.

[ii] I had the insight when talking to a new friend toward the end of striking the camp, who expressed how good he felt after multiple days of hard work navigating intense weather, that it’s like the satisfaction of the esoteric freemasons, who inside the mason guilds built the great Medieval cathedrals of the time and taught their ways to those ready to receive. In my limited understanding, their highest vibration was “co-creating with God” engaging on the Great Work… where our labor is truly for each other and the Most High, building the cathedral-temple-ceremonial teepee-foam dome, from hammering in the mats of the sacred floor, to cooking the food to blasting foam, and like a Tibetan sand painting washed away at the end. The sacred portal opens and closes, and in its highest vibration Black Rock City vibrates on this level (and vibrates at plenty of lower frequencies too… the haters aren’t wrong just one sided). I’m not a free mason and just read a Jungian inspired book once by someone who was, but in my idiosyncratic take, the Great Work is like the birth pangs of the coming of the Cosmic Christ, where we midwife the coming of the great collective awakening of love, empathy, understanding and respect on this planet, and join the community of awakened worlds in God’s great Cosmic Being. We are given free will and can choose to make this a Heaven of Earth if we want to, to stop worshipping at the altar of greed and power, and focus instead on truly taking care of and celebrating each other and our magical Earthly home.

[iii] We knew that DEA would confiscate them and wanted to send a message. This action corresponded with the discovery of the former USDA chief agronomist Lester Dewey’s diaries chronicling the US government’s own hemp breeding trials on Arlington Farms in early 20th century, where the Pentagon now sits. This came in handy when the Japanese cut off our supply in WWII, and the “Hemp for Victory” program was launched to supply all the ropes etc that the Navy needed. But that program was then shut down and forgotten in the fog of drug war hysteria. We got a major feature in Washington Post that helped educate and raise awareness.

In the lead up to the 2016 Hemp History Week, a major annual event Dr. Bronner’s co-founded and leveraged to speed up the recommericialization of hemp farming, we were invited to foam the Marines at Camp Pendleton north of San Diego where we’re based, at the end of the legendary mud run there. We were excited to do so, but a Marine general was upset that our soap label banner prominently called out “Hemp,” which is a key ingredient making the lather more emollient and less drying. He said we had to change it, and Mia wondered what we should do… I was pretty bummed and thought this is exactly why I chose not to serve in the military because of asinine regressive rules as well as not trusting a given Commander in Chief from deploying into unnecessary war. But then said, OK well let’s use white tape to change “HEMP” to “PIMP” so then we were 18-in1 PIMP Soaps, with a cadre of volunteer Marines helping us. Next day though the same general was upset again and said we couldn’t be “Pimp soaps” either, so we changed to Pump.

Also while on the hemp cannabis subject, back in 2002 to 2004, we were the main architects and supporters of the hemp industry’s successful litigation against the Bush administration’s DEA, when after 9/11 the right wing thought they had a blank check to shut down the hemp industry, California’s medical marijuana dispensaries, Oregon’s euthanasia law, etc. In many respects the time we’re in now reminds me of then, and the bullshit campaign to scare and convince Americans and the world we needed to invade Iraq, when we clearly had our boot on Saddam’s neck already. Anyways, it was a stressful time when supposedly edible hemp seed and oil was now a schedule 1 substance, and I cut my teeth on a crash course in Administrative law. Our lawyers were awesome and we won a series of legal battles culminating on Bob Marley’s birthday Feb 6th 2004, with a unanimous decision in the ninth circuit. The decisive issue was that the government was not similarly trying to ban poppy seed bagels on account of trace inconsequential opiates, and they flunked the “arbitrary and capricious” standard; the hemp industry had addressed the issue of false positives in drug tests for marijuana through good manufacturing protocols reducing trace THC in resin residues to de minimum levels. The government had actually raised the drug test thresholds for opiates to accommodate the poppy seed industry.

But the main point I want to highlight, is that the DEA was also making the argument that what was going to stop the hemp industry from taking the trace 0.3% THC in hemp flowers, the maximum allowed, and make concentrates that were psychoactive. We argued convincingly that why would that at all make economic sense, but fast forward to today, with marijuana regulated like nuclear waste driving up costs at every turn, it actually does make economic sense to work with much less regulated hemp flowers as a starting point. There are now a slew of “hemp” beverages and gummies available in red states that are made with hemp resin and have THC levels comparable to what you would find in a California dispensary. And states like Texas first considered banning them, but then ended up realizing this isn’t a big deal, and is just regulating instead.

I also want to honor native Texan and true cannabis warrior Richard Lee, the mayor of Oaksterdam, who was rocking in recent years with Republicans Against Marijuana Prohibition in Texas that he co-founded with his mom, after being such a trailblazer in Oakland, CA, helping manifest the first dispensaries. He put his life savings behind the 2010 California ballot measure Prop 19 that would have legalized in California but narrowly failed, and helped shift the national conversation that paid off big in Colorado and Washington in 2012. Richard was parapalegic and used cannabis to help with the pain, and passed away in late July. Thank you Richard!!!

I was actually in Texas in April this year and met up with Marcus and Amber who were lobbying the Texas legislature to pass the awesome ibogaine therapy legislation in partnership with Americans for Ibogaine, founded by Bryan Hubbard and former Gov Rick Perry. This passed nearly unanimously, and a national movement to replicate is underway in other states. I was happy to toast the occasion with a “hemp” THC beverage that I thought was going to be shortly banned, but in fact is very much still in legal flow there.

[iv] Hemp “grows like a weed” and lends itself well to organic crop rotations, but all too often is grown in a chemical intensive way, with toxic pesticides and synthetic fertility . Palm oil by contrast symbolizes all that’s ecologically and socially destructive about industrial agriculture, and rightly so how it’s generally grown in huge plantations, where rainforest and wetlands are destroyed, huge amount of GHG’s released, and farming communities disrupted and forced to work for slave wages on the plantations. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with palm, which can be grown in a totally right regenerative way. And in fact, we work with a thousand farmers in Ghana with Serendipalm, our sister palm oil project there.

[v] In Samoan culture, faʻafafine and faʻafatama identities are a well-recognized part of the diverse, non-binary gender spectrum, with roles and responsibilities integral to the community, including caregiving, education on taboo topics, and even holding leadership positions such as chieftain titles. A faʻafafine is a person assigned male at birth who identifies with and performs the roles traditionally associated with women. They are often respected for their strength, hard work, and ability to navigate sensitive social issues, bridging cultural gaps in discussions about gender and sexuality. Historically, faʻafafine have often had relationships with heterosexual men, rather than identifying as gay, though expressions of identity vary. A faʻafatama is a person assigned female at birth who identifies with and performs the roles traditionally associated with men. Similar to faʻafafine, they are integral to community life, often taking on caregiver roles for elders and serving as educators on sexual matters. These roles reflect a broader Samoan understanding of gender that extends beyond the Western binary of male and female. Faʻafafine and faʻafatama are not marginal but are seen as integral and often respected members of society, including in leadership roles. The existence of faʻafafine has deep roots in Samoan history, with figures like the warrior-chief Nafanua sometimes held up as icons of this identity. While there are common characteristics, there is a wide spectrum of expression within these roles, and not all faʻafafine or faʻafatama present or behave in the same way. When migrating to societies that do not recognize these gender identities, individuals may adapt their self-identification to fit Western terms like transgender, non-binary, or gay.

[vi] Many Fa’afafine and Fa’afatama are also gay in sexual orientation. As a Biology major, the cross cultural and universal fact of homosexuality was a major question in evolutionary theory, as how could such an obviously “suicidal gene” that interfered with having offspring, still be selected for in the game of inches that is evolution? Clearly whatever the reasons, which we don’t know for sure, it must be incredibly valuable from a fitness standpoint. EO Wilson theorized in Sociobiology that non-reproducing children we’re very helpful for overall family and community health.

[vii] My non binary kid Maya recently shared the great new rock doc show Trash Theory, and we watched the episode on Bronski Beat and Smalltown Boy together, and appreciated the power and activism of lead singer Jimmy Sommerville, and the pathos and sadness at the heart of this song about the archetypal reality of abuse, bullying and suffering LBGTQ+ youth face growing up both at home and at school, all too often kicked out of their homes and rejected by their families.

I also want to shout out Billy Elliot for being such a magnificent movie about a gender non-conforming kid in his arc to become his true glorious self as the greatest ballet dancer in Thatcherite England, dancing lead swan in Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake in the incredible finale. And just prior to that scene, as the father descends with so much self sacrificing love into the coal mine in the doomed coal mining town, it’s like Billy is the Son of Krypton blasting free of his doomed home world to bless us with his strength, courage and beauty.

[viii] His primary points are: one, growing crops for fuel, whether ethanol or bio-diesel, converts land / destroys wilderness / evaporates carbon sinks, and we should meet our energy / transportation needs through renewable solar, wind etc otherwise; two, we should lower our demand for meat due to inefficient conversion of primary feed grains and the land required to support livestock, arguing in particular that we should lower our demand for beef due to the large amount of land that cows detrimentally graze as well as the large amount of GHGs they emit in the form of methane from burps; and three, that chemical intensive industrial agriculture and factory farming of animals that maximize yield out of a given acre of land is the best form of agriculture from a climate perspective, and we should dismiss regenerative farming which utilizes less or no synthetic fertility and pesticides. He spends time discussing the development of “alt proteins” that seek to replicate the taste, texture and price point of meat with efficient plant-based feedstocks, and extols the genetic engineering of crops to boost yields.

Definitely reducing consumption of meat, via choosing plant based or alternative proteins, is hugely important and necessary. But getting livestock especially cows out of their feedlots and cages and integrated back into regenerative farms in mixed pasture cropping systems, is the path to a sustainable future, not factory farming and CAFOs. In pasture cropping, cows rotationally graze pasture for a few years before crops like corn are planted in a rotation that continues to build fertility; and then after a few years of cropping, that land is returned to pasture for few years and rotationally grazed again. This builds soil carbon not only in the living tissue of all the microbial life that support nutrient cycling processes in healthy soil, but also in the form of humus, recalcitrant long term carbon that makes rich living top soil vs dead inert dirt. Through the miracle of photosynthesis, grasses and other plants convert CO2 into carbohydrates that make up the roots, shoots and leaves, but 20 to 40% of these carbohydrates are exudated by roots to feed the micro-biota in soils that synergistically provide essential nutrients. Grasses grazed by ruminants in the right climates routinely slough off their deep roots that help build rich top soil and sequester atmospheric carbon, helping at global scale to mitigate climate change.

Synchronistically, the “Return of the Herd” cover story of the August 28 issue of Science Magazine that I get every month, featured the incredible ecosystem benefits of reintroducing Bison in Yellowstone, and generally its well understood that the incredibly deep and carbon-rich soils of the prairie co-evolved with millions on millions of buffalo, bison and other ruminants grazing grass, moved through the landscape by predator pressure in compact herds, never staying and overgrazing any one part. The cycles of rest and recovery are crucial for pasture / wild grasslands, and appropriate grazing increases soil nutrient flows and availability, and over time this ecosystem interaction between grasslands and grazing makes the incredible carbon rich topsoils of the prarie. Grazing, like fire, if not managed correctly, or on lands that did not co-evolve with ruminants, is very destructive; but if managed correctly on appropriate lands, can be beneficial.

So regenerative farming seeks to replicate this wild grazing ecosystem dynamic in farming ecosystems, through making sure cows graze in a way like buffalo do in the wild. Other key tenets of regenerative agriculture include feeding and keeping soil covered with nitrogen fixing cover crops, diversity of crop rotations, and minimal soil disturbance. Gabe Brown, the regenerative hero in the recent movie Common Ground (and prior film Kiss the Ground), has demonstrated on his ranch how adopting a regenerative grazing and cropping approach, has resulted in soil that is incredibly carbon rich (especially compared to his neighbor), and full of microbial and invertebrate life, and has helped thousands of other farmers and ranchers do the same. Through these practices, the life, fertility and nutrient cycling of soil goes into hyperdrive, and farmers are able to reduce their synthetic fertility and pesticide inputs over time, eventually eliminating them. We can farm in a way that is beneficial to soil and ecosystem health, without poisoning the land, immiserating animals, and creating huge dead zones in river deltas from agricultural runoff and other negative ecosystem impacts.

Eating is an agricultural act, and we should significantly cut our meat, dairy and egg intake, and make sure come from regenerative farms like Gabe’s. Ideally the number of cows, pigs and chickens are reduced to where they are mostly feeding on inedible forage or crop residues versus primary grains. Right now over half of American ag land is devoted to growing feed for livestock that inefficiently convert plant calories and protein to meat, dairy and eggs. If we do reduce, then there’s plenty of farmland to regeneratively farm in nature’s image, without the need for synthetic fertility and pesticides that are poisoning our bodies and ecosystems, and driving us off the climate change cliff.

Tragically, Gabe like way too many farmers and farm workers, has Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma from exposure to toxic herbicides and pesticides over the course of his early non regenerative career. So it was extra depressing to see that Michael Grunwald also just authored a recent NYTimes editorial touting Glyphosate’s safety, BayerMonsanto’s primary weed killer, which they genetically engineer crops to tolerate massive amounts of. Totally predictably, this has led to widespread resistance in weeds, meaning more and more of not only this toxic weed killer is sold and sprayed, but also the ag-chemical industry has “stacked” resistance to even more weed killers they sell, like 2,4 D and Dicamba, so more and more of these poisons can be sold and sprayed as well. Sales are booming but threatened by the MAHA movement, so Grunwald is the latest journalist to be recruited to regurgitate pesticide industry talking points. He deflects and brushes over the fact that Glyphosate does produce cancer, BayerMonsanto is paying out billions in settlement money, and regenerative agriculture reduces reliance on this and other toxic herbicides and pesticides.

[ix] There have been a couple articles in Lucid News trying to make hay about the c3 educational and c4 campaign money in the Massachusetts Question 4 campaign, but there’s no there there. Every campaign I’ve ever been involved in has a mix of deductible c3 money, which can be used to educate generally about an issue but not endorse any specific ballot measure; and non-deductible c4 campaign money, that can be used to specifically advocate for voting yes or no on a given ballot measure. Heroic Hearts Project was the crucial educational c3 campaign partner in Oregon and Colorado, and was playing the same role in Mass. Everyone who experiences the healing power of psilocybin therapy in OR and CO should be on their hands and knees thanking Jesse Gould and the other rock stars at Heroic Hearts.