So I was tempted to start my blog by just coming right out and saying
how
much I hate people who refuse to think about their world. I was going
to
blast out at those people consumed by entertainment and shopping to the
exclusion of the human condition (which is NOT represented by “The
Bachelorette,” no matter what you may say), and call them worthless
excuses
for citizens and a waste of metaphysical energy.
But I can’t just be mean. It alienates readers and fans, and it
bolsters
those who dislike me in their argument that I’m hopelessly out of touch
with the mainstream audiences that I will be courting in my chosen
career.
(Parenthetical: With any luck, I’ve already alienated some with the
first paragraph, and now the rest can hold on for the ride for a bit.)
Besides, I know that I’m strange. This isn’t an affectation or a
“lifestyle” choice. I am wired differently, and I have also been to the
other side on occasion. That sort of thing makes one a bit strange. So
I
have some sympathy for those people who have not had the types of
experiences that would enlighten them to the “wiring under the board,”
to
invoke a bit of Terence McKenna.
Some weeks, I have already written my blog before I read everyone
else’s
(I read them before they go up, not to change content but to be sure
we’re
following some semblance of journalistic standards in grammar, style
and
spelling, and to be sure we aren’t libeling anyone or saying things
that
might be inappropriate for a college newspaper). Other times I have an
idea, but I write mine after I’ve edited everyone else’s. That’s what
happened this week, and it made me think a little.
Jacque expressed the need to not think, and Aaron expressed his
concern
about people not thinking. And Jess and Bish mentioned political stuff
that
I wasn’t going to mention, but that was, in any case, weighing on my
mind.
War, the State of the Union and Measure 28 had a way of engaging us
newsy
types that was exhausting, regardless of one’s political opinion.
And so, in reading the blogs and fleshing out my own idea about
hating
the non-thinkers, I was struck by Aaron’s question: If not thinking
about
the human condition, what are you doing? For me, it turns into this
question: If you’re not doing important work in the world, why do
anything
at all? Are you really just wasting time, filling the years until death
with TV shows, movie trivia and purchases of more tchotchke crap from
Target?
Do you sense a purpose, or question a purpose, or feel that maybe
there
would be a reason to think about questioning a purpose?
I do, but then I’m strange. But the questioning of the purpose, the
“who-are-we-and-why-are-we-here-and-is-there-even-a-we” type of thing,
informs everything I do, from my interaction with the clerk at Hunky
Dory,
where I buy my cigarettes (DON’T START SMOKING, KIDS, IT’S BAD), to my
highest-level news decisions. If not a purpose, then what?
(Parenthetical: See, the topic of this week’s blog informs what I do
in
the newsroom. I am cognizant of the need to make this not just
personal,
but also about my role as a student journalist.)
The years I spent after high school, tripping around the country and
San
Francisco, were spent primarily in the formulation of my cosmology —
my
sense of who, what and where the universe is; my ideas, whether based
on
experience or intuition, about what the basic building blocks of
creation
are and how humans fit into that and how we might overcome; my
knowledge,
whether by book or journey, of other realms of reality and other
paradigms
of existence. There is more to reality then what you can see, taste and
touch, y’all; although I’m sure many of you know that. It’s not a
secret,
it’s just often ignored.
During those years, I was pleased to discover that books, expertise,
research and authority only yield a small quantity of such knowledge.
Direct experience is really the only professor with any ability to
lecture
coherently, and my adventures were often rewarded with good grades.
After a bit of experiencing, reading and learning, I was stoked to
hear
“Re:Evolution,” a song by The Shamen (off of 1992’s “Boss Drum,” the
techno
band’s follow-up to their killer 1991 debut, “En-Tact”) that features
psychedelic guru Terence McKenna doing spoken word preaching over
amazing
rhythm and synth. His words seemed to sum up, crystallize and express
my
own thoughts about journeying to the other side in search of knowledge.
So
now, as an interlude in this long blog, you’re going to get a quote
from
that song:
“This is what shamanism has always been about — a shaman is someone
who
has been to the end, it’s someone who knows how the world really works,
and
knowing how the world really works means to have risen outside, above,
beyond the dimensions of ordinary space, time and casuistry, and
actually
seen the wiring under the board; stepped outside the confines of
learned
culture and learned and embedded language, into the domain of what
Wittgenstein called ‘the unspeakable,’ the transcendental presence of
the
other, which can be sanctioned in various ways to yield systems of
knowledge, which can be brought back into ordinary social space for the
good of the community.
“So in the context of 90 percent of human culture, the shaman has
been
the agent of evolution, because the shaman learns the techniques to go
between ordinary reality and the domain of the ideas: this higher
dimensional continuum that is somehow parallel to us, available to us,
and
yet ordinarily occluded by cultural convention – out of fear of the
mystery, I believe – and what shamans are, I believe, are people who
have
been able to decondition themselves from the community’s instinctual
distrust of the mystery, and to go into it, to go into this bewildering
higher dimension, and gain knowledge, recover the jewel lost at the
beginning of time; to save souls, cure, commune with the ancestors and
so
forth and so on.
“Shamanism is not a religion, it’s a set of techniques, and the
principal technique is the use of psychedelic plants.”
McKenna’s words resonated and gave further meaning to what I was
doing:
I was learning, however slowly, to be a shaman. I had some experience
with
the other dimension, and I needed now the tools to bring this knowledge
to
the social space in an effort to create the good. This is why I came to
college: to create the good, and to enter the social space through the
media. I’ve talked with other students who also have the sense that
they
chose journalism in an effort to change the world.
So I was terribly pleased, when I came to college, to discover a
bonus:
Some of my own examinations about my cosmology were mirrored in the
world
of philosophy, and I quickly grabbed philosophy as a second major after
journalism. Some of philosophy is crap, I’ll readily accuse, as people
get
bogged down arguing about minor details that really have no bearing
because
they were thought up from an armchair rather than being borne of
experience. To me, that is philosophy: Trying to explain and contain
(because by inscribing it in language, you are necessarily containing
an
idea) direct experiences in such a way that they make sense in a larger
picture that you are in the middle of painting.
But here’s the critical bit (yes, I’m al
most finished for this
week):
What I’ve since discovered — after working in the news and after
taking
plenty of philosophy classes, and after having endless discussions with
various friends and relatives trying to explain philosophical ideas,
and
after having plenty of direct experiences of making a difference to one
person in the way their mind works after a cool conversation — is that
much of the work of creating the good is done on a day-by-day,
one-on-one
level. Much of the ability to make change lies in how you act when you
talk
to the clerk at Hunky Dory, where you buy your cigarettes (DON’T START
SMOKING, KIDS, IT’S BAD), or in what ideas you choose to relay to your
friend when you’re discussing “The Bachelorette.”
In short, there is as much possibility to change the world in the
culture of supposed “not-thinking” as there is in the world of politics
and
supposed “thinking.” It all depends on how you approach it, and as a
result, I really don’t at all hate the people who talk about movies and
shopping all the time.