Walsh, Hughes and Santa Claus

Walsh

"In the West there is currently a strong tendency to deny religious significance to any drug experience, and psychedelic use by shamans has led people to dismiss them (Walsh 194)." Yes, that would seem to be the case in most instances. However, not all Westerner's would dismiss the shamans religious experience solely because they ingest hallucinogenic drugs. Some Westerner's may refute the religious significance associated with shamanism not only because shamans consume drugs to attain altered states of consciousness; rather, some people may demur the notion or claim which asserts that a person has literally undergone a metaphysical passage, and then proceed to take issue with the religiosity of such an experience altogether. Suppose for a moment that a persons doubt of a spiritual or mystical shamanic experience stems not from any ethnocentric or cognicentric belief that they may harbor, but from a firm disbelief in any God or deity altogether. Consequently, this ideology negates any subsequent dialogue about other planes of existence, metaphysical travels, or any divine religious experience as wholly nonsense, whether it is an indigenous shamanic practice or an Abrahamic religion under discussion. Now, such a criticism neither rejects the notion that humans can reach altered states of consciousness nor renders all conversations about shamanism completely out of bounds. Once again, the contention here just simply takes issue with the religious experience conceptually, opposed to accepting or dismissing it based on the shaman's consumption of a psychedelic substance. Indeed, I think this observation is relevant to the matter at hand because a lot of the readings thus far (not just the Walsh readings) have discussed the shaman's transcendental experience by either inferring or outwardly claiming that such experiences literally have supernatural or spirtual characteristics.

Hughes

I actually enjoyed the Hughes reading for once. I had no idea that Louis Armstrong smoked weed. I had to laugh when I saw the picture on page 166; man, he looks so baked. But anyhow, Cannabis isn't conducive to producing creativity? Really? Perhaps the person that made this statement hasn't heard a pothead speak his/her mind. If they had, maybe they would know that whatever is churning about in that charcoal fried brain of theirs certainly has creative characteristics, and is probably capable of expressing creativity in some fashion. At any rate, I enjoyed the discussion concerning drug intake and creative musical expression. A lot of my favorite musicians are byproducts of experimenting with drugs, such as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jim Morrison, Jimmy Page, etc. Additionally, I liked the quote on page 172 by Timothy Leary. Leary notes that "We have to distinguish between the experience, a new experience,-and whether you can communicate the experience."

Santa Claus

The Santa Claus reading was a little out there. He made so many bizarre claims, I'm not particuarly sure what to specifically mention. Actually, I'm not really interested in entertaining this subject-matter or attempting to critically analzye it. I didn't enjoy this handout at all.