The Danger of Language
quote from Aldous Huxley

Language is what makes us human. Unfortunately, it is also what makes us all too human. It is on the one hand the mother of science and philosophy, and on the other hand it begets every kind of superstition and prejudice and madness. It helps us and it destroys us; it makes civilization possible, and it also produces those frightful conflicts which wreck civilization.

It is one of the ironies of our destiny that the wonderful thing which Helen Keller so eloquently describes as a giver of life and creator of thought is also one of the most dangerous and destructive things that we can have.

It is dangerous to try to impose symbolic order and meaning upon the world before you really understand what the world is like. Nevertheless, we shall always do this because it is very difficult for human beings to tolerate the mysterious as such-- what theologian Rudolpf Otto calls the Mysterium Tremendum of the world. It is so terrible and inexplicable that he has always to put up a smoke screen of symbols between it and himself. In one of its functions, it may be said that language is a device for taking the mysteriousness out of mystery.

We may say that the proper relationship between words and things, I presume, is that words should be regarded as arbitrary symbols standing for things. But the men of the Middle Ages looked at it the other way around. They regarded things as being illustrations of some general abstract principle to be found in Aristotle or in some part of the scriptures.

In our own time, we find that all the most horrifying aspects of contemporary life have arisen precisely from this wrong relationship between symbols and words. All the totalitarian tyrannies of our time have been based upon the wrong relationship o things and words; words have not been regarded by them as symbols arbitrarily standing for things, but things have been regarded as illustrations of words.

Take, for example, the whole Nazi racial doctrine. This would have been impossible if individual Jews and Gypsies had been regarded as what they were-- each of them a separate human personality. But they were not so regarded. Instead each of these persons was reduced to being merely the illustration of a pejorative label; the word "Jew" or the word "Gypsy" was regarded as a category. And the individual humans, who were of course the only realities, were assimilated to this category; they were made to be merely illustrations of a bad category, which as such could be exterminated with a perfectly good conscience.

We see the same thing under Communist regimes, where individual humans beings are lumped together merely as illustrations of capitalism, imperialism, cannibalistic bourgeoisie, and so on, and as such are regarded as something sub-human which it is permissible to destroy. There is no doubt at all that this tendency is one of the most dangerous which we have to face. It is one of the highest prices we have to pay for the inestimable benefit of language. We are forced to accept-- because we accept the grammar and syntax of our language-- the idea that whole classes of real individual things are in fact merely the expressions of some diabolic principle.

After all, one can say that wars can really only be fought if the purely human individuals engaged in them are disregarded and the opposit side is simply equated with the concretization of a bad abstraction. This is in fact what all war propaganda is: it is making people on our side believe that people on the other side are merely the concretization of very bad abstractions.

Heroic Doses
by Skald

I like Terrence McKenna's term "heroic doses".... which he uses to describe what is necessary for achieving shamanic-level psychedelic visions. This is a clear distinction between "recreational" drug use and "shamanic" or "spiritual" use.

For example, its perplexing to hear people boast of taking Ketemin at a party and then dancing... My few experiences with Ketemin were in Nepal and it was a completely out of body experience-- definitely no chance of dancing or talking.... Perhaps I took a much bigger dose than most people do??

Another interesting tidbit from McKenna that I liked: he mentions that another distinction between recreational and shamanic use is that the neo-shaman approaches the experience with a great deal of respect and awe..... and even dread. This certainly describes the experiments with the salvia extract. It takes considerable time (weeks) to psyche myself up for the session. Though I have never had a "bad trip", I find the power of salvia to be very unnerving..... and the visions are thoroughly bizarre.

So bizarre that I had thought them unique, until I came across an obscure quote from an old colonial anthropologist. He writes that the Indians (in Mexico) who use Salvia regularly cite visions of "spiritual dwarves". Meanwhile, Terrence McKenna writes of "elf-infested space".... yet another parallel to the strange "PeeWee's Playhouse Micro People" that visit every one of my salvia visions.

Just what the hell is going on? McKenna believes that certain plants open a doorway ... that these beings are real and are trying to communicate. I'm reminded of that Richard Gere movie, "The Mothman Propechies", when I read McKenna's comments.

Of course, maybe its all crazed speculation.... probably is. But it is certainly an interesting phenomenon..... and damned more engaging than TV and Wal-Mart.


[At the moment, Salvia is completely legal and can be bought on the internet. Check out the Herbal Shaman link on the sidebar. Also, I highly recommend scanning the Erowid site (see sidebar) and reading about salvia before trying it. I recommend the 10x extract. Finally, use a sitter (a friend to sit with you and assure that you remain safe).]

Missionary Rage
by Skald

Excerpt from Journal:

"Fuck!!! Just walked by two Christian-Fucking-Evangelists in Banglumpoo... screaming, bug-eyed, red-faced, and angry.... pouring sweat..... pounding their bibles.

Can I never escape these freaks? I travel half way around the world.... to a 90% Buddhist country,..... and still I'm harangued by these goddamn redneck bible thumpers. Is this some sort of curse I suffer from? Why do they always pick me out of a crowd? Perhaps they sense that, below my pious exterior.... Im a vile drug using subversive?

I have no idea... but I do know that these people are vermin. Locusts. Cultural cancer. I wish the Thais would drive these bastards into the sea .... drive them back to whatever southern American backwater they came from.

I hate seeing them here. Hate to see them trying to undermine Thai Buddhism. Hate to see them spreading their lies, their homophobia, their anger, their fear of sex..... their puritanical terror.... Hate to see them setting up charities and "helping" people, because it is only bait on a hook-- a con game for harvesting more members in their cult.

This is really the last place I expected to find these pests. Despite the shock, I am at least consoled by the utter idiocy of the evangelists: screaming like drunks... they know nothing of Thai culture..... one of its greatest taboos is the public display of anger. Thais detest volatile, enraged displays in public. And so these fools are at least undermining their own cult-- which is a consolation I suppose. It was fun to watch the Thais skirt away from them like they were diseased lepers.... their only audience was a small collection of drunken and combative tourist-- trying to argue with them.

All in all, it was another fine moment in the history of missionary Christianity.

God bless them, every one."