Salvia Divinorum Scotland - Experience - Selfish Indulgence?

<body stylesrc="../../../technical/backgroundforotherauthors.htm" background="../../../technical/paperwords.jpg" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" vlink="#000080" alink="#800080"> <p align="center"><font size="5" color="#008000">Salvia Divinorum Scotland ~ Experience ~ Selfish Indulgence?</font></p> <hr> <p><strong><font size="4">Sheer bloody indulgence</font></strong></p> <blockquote> Well, first my ‘day-glo/bubble writing’ after-comment was firmly ironic. I’m sorry I was unclear, but my point was really quite straightforward. Yes the concept ‘psychedelic’ – like anything, cannot stand in isolation. My point is that it is common-sense, everyday, generally accepted <i>institutions </i>generically which actually and crucially define the psychedelic at all! So when you say that "...becoming ‘more psychedelic’ <i>will</i> happen in spite of the existing institutions" – you are really saying exactly what I said, you are just turning the words around without changing my content - or taking my point. </blockquote> <blockquote> <a name="clarifications"></a> There are two ways I can hopefully clarify this. First – <i>institutions</i> are by definition part of the social, <i>external</i> mindset which individuation transcends – and as individuation happens, that which even gives it human definition are the internalised institutional concepts that are transcended. You say that psychedelicising society happens <i>in spite of</i> existing institutions – well, quite – from the individual perspective that is exactly right. I simply said that defining psychedelia <u>at all, </u>without reference to existing institutions, is impossible, so psychedelicising society happens exactly <i>because of</i> existing institutions. It is a dialectical movement – not, following your (perhaps unintended) implication, a fixed reaction. </blockquote> <blockquote> Second way: In a culture where eating carrots and potatoes is <i>institutionalised</i>, Salvia D, and MaryJane are taboo ‘power-plants’ because they change the focus of human attention/alter human value judgements. <u>All Food Does This!!</u> We live in a culture where the carrot/potato mindset is ‘common-sense’ and institutionalised. If we lived in a society where SD and MaryJane were institutionalised – carrots and potatoes could well be taboo ‘power-plants’. That institutionalised culture would have a very different <i>common-sense</i> emphasis from ours, and carrots and potatoes could well be ‘trippy’ to such denizens – in other words – psychedelic. Now, extrapolate this, and you will see what I was saying all along. </blockquote> <blockquote> As for wanting/hoping that existing institutions will not interfere with the rights of the individual – well, what <i>rights</i>, and why <i>hope</i>? This is not a facetious comment – my point is that your phrase trips out neatly, but it begs enormous questions that require answers and justification – and my precise point – <i>actions</i>. Let me put it this way. If your everyday, individual actions all have actual consequences flowing from them, which of your actions, in your terms, have consequences which infringe on the <i>rights</i> of <u>others</u>? I can tell you for sure that many of them <u>do</u>. My suggestion is that the global context of potential catastrophe that faces us is exactly a consequence of an individual failure, writ large, to follow through such questions, and <i>to intelligently re-balance our daily actions from an <u>individuated</u> perspective</i>. Now a few postings back you seemed to think that such a perspective was pretty much irrelevant to you, because you already don’t buy Nike etc. My response was that this question is by no means an easy one, or limited to a couple of ‘daily actions’. On the contrary – absolutely everything that you do, buy, consume, process, communicate – has consequences flowing from it. Some of the consequences flowing from institutionalised common-sense attitudes, identified with by most people here in the UK (and elsewhere of course), have absolutely horrific consequences flowing from them. Try ‘third-world’ debt and starvation, the emptying of the seas, melting icecaps, the mass slaughter of the flesh industry – just for starters. It is exactly taking personal responsibility in these questions that is at issue. Only this will ‘save us’ – and it starts with ME, the real seat of WILL – not government, institutions – or any other responsibility dissolving device. </blockquote> <blockquote> <a name="dontcare"></a> Now, from this perspective, I don’t care how skilled an individual gets at consuming power plants and traversing hyperspace – IF the moment they get back, they mindlessly eat a steak, drive a 3 litre car to the local shops, and buy some sweatshop produced cheap clothes. Their voyages mean less than nothing to me when their actions <u>unnecessarily </u>hurt my world, hence me. This is what I am driving at when I say that shamanic voyages, loftily divorced from concrete <i>healing</i> actions, are sheer bloody indulgence. </blockquote> <blockquote> Now I am glad your site gets many hits a day <i>as long as</i> the consequences that flow from that are positive to our world. If not, I couldn’t give a shit (or maybe <em>I’m appalled</em>). Likewise – you sending plants across Europe could be a great thing – IF it helps shift peoples actual daily actions into more compassionate, thoughtful and impeccable execution. Again – if not… </blockquote> <blockquote> And none of this says anything about everything else that you will actually DO in this shared world of ours, today, next.. It is you who will judge this, not I nor anybody else – but I hope you take my point (directed at large of course) – that <u>all </u>of our actions create the world we are in. They are our institutions, and if they need changing – who else should change them if not us? If it is not you, then yes – you are alienated, and asking that <i>institutions</i> leave you alone and your rights intact - avoids entirely your responsibility in making them in the first place, and the daily, ongoing efforts required to ensure that they do exactly what you want them to do. </blockquote> <hr> <table border="0" width="100%"> <tr> <td width="10%"> <p align="left"><a href="../../../experience/selfishindulgence/index.html#notkidding"><Back</a></td> <td width="14%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../../experience.html">Experience</a></td> <td width="15%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../../home.html">Main Menu</a></td> <td width="15%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../../salvia.html">Salvia Menu</a></td> <td width="26%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../../salvia/effects.html">Salvia Effects</a> / <a href="../../../salvia/effects/feedback/index.html">Feedback</a></td> <td width="13%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../../menu2.html">Menu 2</a></td> <td width="10%"> <p align="right"><a href="../../../contact.html" title="contact details and links to information on salvia prices and availability">Contact</a></td> </tr> </table> <p> </p>