Week Six Blogs - I Know, Drugs, drugs and more drugs

We didn't really focus on the Hughes reading on Tuesday because I wanted to explain in more detail how and why the Fly Agaric mushroom has been interpreted. Santa is a fun way of introducing the symbolic and hidden practices of shamans, and as many of you mentioned, is quite entertaining. Your blogs, however, raise questions concerning the use of drugs in Western cultures -- a culture which both Blake, Wilbert and Josh S. remind us is monophasic as opposed to ployphasic. Their discussion also raises the question of who decides which drugs are good or bad, legal or illegal, and why these decisions are made. An interesting perspective from all of you, and one we'll return to after the Huxley reading.
Allison, Suset and Lance all discuss the idea that artists are artists first (i.e. they need artistic talent), and seem to turn to drug use later in their career. Mobius, the artist in the movie we watched is one example, and after trying the mushroom only once, has spent the rest of his life attempting to communicate this experience (a notion which both Ken and Ashley describe).
Hughe's "positive" approach to drug use is mentioned by Ben, yet Tyler indicates that Hughes has also peppered his chapter with warnings against their use. Ben also brings up the question of whether cultures have been, or are being, passified by drugs in order to prevent an uprising. Good question -- people obsessed and addicted to drugs are pretty passive. Yet Tobe suggests the opposite -- that perhaps drugs represent an "untapped potential for artistic and intellectual creativity ... that some people don't want us to discover." I wonder if these disparate views have anything to do with the difference between additive drugs and entheogens ( non-addictive drugs used for spiritual awakening by polyphasic cultures and shamans).