Dominator Culture

McKenna spends a good deal of the book discussing the role of human beings as dominators, or the dominator culture as he calls it. Dominator culture promotes inequality not only among human beings, but among nature's organisms. It supports the notion of human beings as superior beings who feel entitlement or an innate right to manipulate the world around them.

McKenna describes several examples of dominator attitudes. Some are very obvious, such as the enslaving of people to work in the production of sugarcane fields to feed the new sugar addiction. Some are less obvious, such as the hypocritical attitudes toward drugs (e.g. tobacco vs opium) that allow the culture to pick and choose values.

The dominator culture is particularly evident in sexual roles and stereotypes. Under the partnership model, group sexual activity was common and there was an open and non-proprietary approach to sexuality. In...