Look at almost any great story we tell, and you will notice certain rules that guide our favorite characters. Joseph Campbell's Journey of the hero, has become familiar to most of us. And when the hero experiences the devastating "dark night of the soul," hits a wall, and must seek out a wise, shamanic figure for a vision quest to survive. The power of story is our best life-lesson tool we have as a species. We engage with narrative on a primal level; even a bad story will hold our attention and imagination more effectively than the same information delivered in a textbook. On Dagobah, Master Yoda explains to Luke that the dark cave he senses "…is strong with the dark side of the Force. A domain of evil it is. In you must go." Luke responds, "What's in there?" Yoda replies, "Only what you take with you." This is the exact, universal rule of psychedelic healing: set and setting. The cave merely holds up a mirror to his own fear, trauma, and the weapons he carries inside his own mind—just as the psychedelic experience mirrors what we carry inside ours. Lucas brilliantly used the mystique of the Force in place of a psychedelic substance to apply a familiar storytelling device known as the vision quest. Even our most popular, sanitized blockbusters rely on substances that help our bodies and minds adapt to our current situations. With countless generations of storytelling setting an example of what heroes do, and the constant use of these sacred plants for centuries, we inherit these experiences as the foundations of our survival. These stories are the moral compass of our collective DNA, revealing exactly who we are. We also instinctively know what villains do. Kind of like a leader who puts his self-interest over the people he's supposed to protect. The story teaches us the behaviors of all these characters. It is why we instinctively know that modern atrocities—like the weaponization of ICE, hunting people down, and tearing families apart—go against everything that is good. In all of our movies, television shows, books, and poetic ballads, such cruel, authoritarian behavior is universally recognized as evil. It has never been condoned or celebrated by the characters we look up to. When a government acts like the villains in our most sacred myths, they are acting against human nature itself.