Not In My Experience"Well, first my ‘day-glo/bubble writing’ after-comment was firmly ironic..."
- Well, this could run and run. It’s probably best simply to refer back to what’s been said <(1)[...] and <(2)[...]. Then readers can find their own degree of irony.
My point (in an area where there is common misunderstanding) was to simply give a counter interpretation, that is, to crucially define what’s really implied by the term ‘psychedelic’ [...]>
You said, "The ‘psychedelicising’ of society will not happen in spite of existing institutions" [my italics]. I said "...becoming ‘more psychedelic’ will happen in spite of the existing institutions ". On the following page I cross-refer back to these points then address your clarifications. …From here I hope it’s clearer that I have a very different emphasis and I am not really saying exactly what you said and just turning the words around without changing your content – or taking your point.
Like I say, I feel that I have given a definition of what I mean by the term psychedelic, and it’s one that is not overly preoccupied with or dependent on existing institutions, which I think yours is. You are looking to make the argument that we need to re-build our institutions urgently. I’m more concerned with our tendency to do anything other than face the psychedelic experience [...]>
You can insist all you like that I am alienated from our existing institutions. You can insist all you like that I’m avoiding my responsibility in "making them in the first place". I’ve spent enough time making my counterpoints <[...] and it’s not a point that particularly interests me.
Why? – Because I’m principally interested in experience. As a plant person experience is the primary data of importance. "All rationalization and intellectualization and analysis is secondary [...]>"
So you say I’m alienated and I say I’m not. But my experience is the touchstone that informs me that I am not alienated in any sense that I deem to be significant, and, in the light of that, your insistence seems more like speculation, - perhaps (even) projection <[...] but then that would be my speculation.
Even more speculative is the comment "I don’t care how skilled an individual gets at consuming power plants and traversing hyperspace – IF the moment they get back, they mindlessly eat a steak, drive a 3 litre car to the local shops, and buy some sweatshop produced cheap clothes <[...]". This is speculative because it’s not based your own experience of what (true...) power-plants do, nor is it based on any empirical observation of the behaviour of other (true…) plant-people.
In fact, your point seems (ahem) to forget the real miracle of the true plant allies. The thing that nobody will really understand without engaging with the experience, the thing that it is difficult to remember without re-engaging with the experience, is that it is about the expansion of consciousness. It truly is. And connected with this is everything that that implies [...]>
So returning from a mind-expanding experience in order, the moment one gets back, to continue with mindless behaviour is a contradiction in terms. I’ll concede that over time, there may be a tendency to forget, but that’s only what I’ve been saying all along.