Shamanetics

All of which returns us to the fundamental situation: human beings, runnin' around all crazy with these mind things. However shadowy and hazy the picture of evolution may be, however limited our understanding of the thermondynamic realities that give rise to the peculiar organization of matter that we call life, all this pales in comparison to the dearth of information that exists as to the development of mind, culture, and especially language. This is not to say that theories don't abound. Theories do abound. But it's all guesswork and supposition. And yet language is the basis of all systematization of experiential evidence. All science, mathematics, logic and psychology are at root an attempt to accurately describe experience through modeling in specialized language systems.

Just this morning on the bus I was reading an author exploring shamanistic practices of the radical redefinition of reality in the context of hallucinogenic plants. The author's contention was that these rituals displayed an authentic archaic understanding of reality as defined by language, a stance he portrayed as being antithetical to modern scientific thought. It is common for science to be set up in this manner, the cold seperate voice of disenchanted modernity, allied firmly against the spiritual traditions of our ancestors. Although science certainly presents itself this way, I think it is an attitude that ignores the reality of the fact that science itself is a practice of creating reality out of language. The neoshamanist who relegates science to the position of another killjoy institution of the Patriarchy is comitting exactly the same error as the closet social-darwinist physicists who insist that science has (or at least should) set us free from any superstitious belief in agencies or forces that defy understanding or operate outside of the tiny slice of phenomenological possibility that are accounted for by our formalized languages so far.

The final integration must recognize the reality and power of science as what it is (and now wouldn't be a bad point to start seeing as how we're already dipping our curious toes into the vast and mysterious pool of the genome) and demonstrate that it's fundamental nature as a language based device for illuminating, understanding and transforming reality correlates on all levels to the philosophical techniques of all ages, including shamanism and other mystical practices. The seperation is created by the distinctions we enforce from both sides, and is enforced by the false claim that it is in fact the seperation which has given rise to the distinctions.

klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.