Red Pill Junkie — February 2, 2014

[red_pill_junkie]

Burnt State jumped in:

Jeff Davis
It's funny how you found the diversity comment a little confusing, but finished up by stating that you wish everyone was just like you, and if you're not, please keep those nasty opinions to yourself. Personally, I just wish people would get their shit together and learn how take personal responsibility to a level greater than walking to their mailboxes. It's too bad that the latter is precisely what the government is presently encouraging. Just sayn'.

I am all for diversity as long as I don't have to pay the differential fee.

No, Jeff, not "just like me" - that's not the intention when I request polite discourse. I just ask for people to keep their ignorance and hatred to themselves and save it up for the meetings where everyone wears a sheet over their head. When we critique the concept of "politically correct" language we are almost always making the claim to not take responsibility for what falls out of our mouths. I think that's problematic, but how people decide to keep their problems to themselves is totally up to them.

 

[red_pill_junkie]

Jeff Davis replied back:

Burnt State
No, Jeff, not "just like me" - that's not the intention when I request polite discourse. I just ask for people to keep their ignorance and hatred to themselves and save it up for the meetings where everyone wears a sheet over their head. When we critique the concept of "politically correct" language we are almost always making the claim to not take responsibility for what falls out of our mouths. I think that's problematic, but how people decide to keep their problems to themselves is totally up to them.

You are judging those who hold different views than you do as being racists. Is that not judgmental? Ever heard of the word integrity? People have EVERY RIGHT to their opinions, and the defense of those opinions, just as you do, and no, just because they exclaim vehement disagreement with your positions on equality or diversity, or God forbid they cast judgments of their own, they are politically incorrect. Yep, that's diversity at it's very best. Us against them.

 

[red_pill_junkie]

Burnt State replied back:

Uh, no, obviously everyone who holds a different view than mine is not a racist. I'm not sure this conversation is going anywhere at all. My claims are around politically correct discourse and how that phrase gets bandied about campuses by people often working against the principles of equity and diversity. Yes everyone can speak freely and publish all kinds of junk but in businesses, schools, in the mass media and civic gatherings of any sort our language should always honour the unique identities of others and not degrade them. PM me if you need to go further into this.

 

[red_pill_junkie]

More from Burnt State:

trainedobserver
The comments about hoaxers, charlatans, and Castaneda reminded me of this documentary:

I confess to know little about Castaneda except that he was working on being a new Aldous Huxley and that his book covers were wildly inviting. I had no idea that he had descended into cult leader status and worked on ruining lives to fuel his ego. The whole Heaven's Gate connection in this article was quite an eye-opener among other things:
The dark legacy of Carlos Castaneda - Salon.com

This site has been working to uncover the truth of this tensegrity guru for quite some time:

Sustained Action

 

[red_pill_junkie]

Jeff Davis replied back:

Burnt State
Uh, no, obviously everyone who holds a different view than mine is not a racist. I'm not sure this conversation is going anywhere at all. My claims are around politically correct discourse and how that phrase gets bandied about campuses by people often working against the principles of equity and diversity. Yes everyone can speak freely and publish all kinds of junk but in businesses, schools, in the mass media and civic gatherings of any sort our language should always honour the unique identities of others and not degrade them. PM me if you need to go further into this.

Sure, didn't mean to get the better of you. Social engineering BLOWS.

 

[red_pill_junkie]

Nameless to the rescue!

Burnt State
I confess to know little about Castaneda except that he was working on being a new Aldous Huxley and that his book covers were wildly inviting. I had no idea that he had descended into cult leader status and worked on ruining lives to fuel his ego. The whole Heaven's Gate connection in this article was quite an eye-opener among other things:

The dark legacy of Carlos Castaneda - Salon.com

This site has been working to uncover the truth of this tensegrity guru for quite some time:

Sustained Action
Seems to me be wrote some really engaging books but is really the hoaxer/charlatan supreme.

Burnt I don't think a bit of meta trawling and some soundbitey summations can do justice to something you evidently claim to know little about. Casteñada's writing have brought pleasure and, insight and inspiration to many and are very much a fondly remembered part of peoples growing up like when you first read Catcher in the Rye or came across your dad's playboy.

What is it with people in this thread, its cool to engage in conversation but people are just nut jumping on a dudes every single word like he's Al Qaeda. jeez people lets see a bunch of you dummies writing blogs and coming on the Paracast for an interview. I swear I will rip two assholes out every single one of your meaningless , petty regurgitative narrow cliché minded fake sceptic, pedestrian chemist store psychology high school science bull sheet ego inter web trawling nothingness.

Not everything can be defined from the fricking internet people.
Read different books, watch different films, have different experiences, pray to new gods, DO SOME FUCKING DRUGS.

(Not aimed at you Burnt, you know I love ya man).

 

[red_pill_junkie]

Burnt State replied back:

nameless
Burnt I don't think a bit of meta trawling and some soundbitey summations can do justice to something you evidently claim to know little about. Casteñada's writings have brought pleasure and insight and inspiration to many and are very much a fondly remembered part of peoples growing up like when you first read Catcher in the Rye or came across your dad's playboy.


What is it with people in this thread, its cool to engage in conversation but people are just nut jumping on a dudes every single word like he's Al Qaeda. jeez people lets see a bunch of you dummies writing blogs and coming on the Paracast for an interview. I swear I will rip two assholes out every single one of your meaningless , petty regurgitative narrow cliché minded fake sceptic, pedestrian chemist store psychology high school science bull sheet ego inter web trawling nothingness.
Not everything can be defined/divined from the fricking internet people.

Read different books, watch different films, have different experiences, pray to new gods, DO SOME FUCKING DRUGS.

(Not aimed at you Burnt, you know I love ya man).

Well, i cam agree with many of your sentiments in here, especially when it comes to exposing yourself to a diversity of experiences while on planet earth before you begin your ascension, but Castañeda seems to have devolved in the later portion of his career. What started as a very interesting fictive exploration into shamanism, which certainly had a powerful impact on the masses, doesn't mean we can discount his own ventures into cult status, getting the harem of women folk, having them all cut their hair and dye it blond so they can be appropriate witch sex vessels for the holy nagual's semen and then they all went out and committed suicide following nagual's departure from the earthly realm. Somewhere in there we have to separate the man from his art. Perhaps, if there were only the books and not the personal history i could throw more admiration his way. But like Woody Allen, the movies are brilliant, but the personal life - another story altogether.

I once had a very brilliant creative writing prof. that i admired greatly - in fact i still think he's Canada's greatest living poet, whose genius surpasses most ardent literary practitioners that try to rub words together. But when i found out about his lecherous, drunken hustling of female students in the class my estimation of the man dropped significantly.

I have no doubt many people love the man that C.C. was when he was the writer of the books that freed the minds of many and allowed them to explore issues of identity and conformity on levels they might not have dreamed of doing, but the actual man, the one who started Cleargreen Inc., who started his cult of human exploitation and charged handily for it...well that kind of assumed godhead needs some type of critique, no?

(and Namless, with love right back at you, you also know i have much respect stacked in your corner, especially for your impassioned, creative, dynamic responses - this forum is richer for your voice, dude)

yes, pray to new gods, indeed...

 

[red_pill_junkie]

To be continued, fellas. I'm effing TIRED right now

 

[Wade]

The word "Heroic" comes to mind.

 

[red_pill_junkie]

Continuing...

Jeff Davis replied back to nameless:

I have to agree with MR. State as Castaneda did in fact really seem to degenerate immensely, and fairly early on, well before The Eagle's Gift which is where I parted company with CC. I read the first three multiple times. I was enamored with CC and his shamanistic (that's misguided teenager lingo for, "he's deep, like nobody I've ever read, and totally supports the use of psychoactive substances) entry into the realms of ethereal Toltec warriors and the secret mechanistic quasi physically interactive astral world of "seeing" the luminous egg what it truly is...thinking back, those were some SERIOUS drugs I was doing in those days!

I clearly remember having the larger paperbacks and having ASR & JTI underlined throughout profusely. I understood things like "erasing personal history", and "death as a hunter"...but NOTHING has EVER spoke to me like the "loss of self importance"

I don't care what anyone states to the contrary, Castaneda has made an exceptionally powerful contribution to the literary arts with at least his first 4 books, the first and second rings...not so much...albeit they are essential to the core "carrying ons".

BTW, @whoever stated as much originally, did Obama really state that smoking a joint was no more harmful or dangerous than drinking a brew!?

I jumped in & provided this link:

Obama: Marijuana No More Dangerous Than Alcohol

 

[red_pill_junkie]

manxman jumped in on the legalization of pot discussion:

america is actually leading the way on this one, legalization, you will still do a months jail here for an eight of pot, i never take pot out of the house, and have mine delivered 9 times out of 10, legalisation will bring prices right down, cost's £200 an oz here just for bush, if you can find it, mainly resin, £120 an oz.

To which I pointed out the irony in THIS

DEA, Sinaloa Cartel in Secret Cooperation for Years | TIME.com

 

[red_pill_junkie]

Jeff Davis found the Obama link surprising

red_pill_junkie


He's not jumping in the legalization bandwagon just yet. But he also knows the world is not gonna wait for America to make up their mind.

Holy shit! I cannot believe it...I MEAN I CANNOT BELIEVE IT!!!! President Obama got SOMETHING RIGHT for once...

 

[red_pill_junkie]

More from Jeff Davis:

manxman
america is actually leading the way on this one, legalization, you will still do a months jail here for an eight of pot, i never take pot out of the house, and have mine delivered 9 times out of 10, legalisation will bring prices right down, cost's £200 an oz here just for bush, if you can find it, mainly resin here, £100/120 an oz.

It's so ridiculous! Making pot illegal, as it is most places in these parts, only serves to create a problem by inflating the price of tomatoes, or asparagus for that matter. Do you know where the best place to routinely find wild asparagus is? In the ditches next to roadways. Stick with me my friend and you'll be picking asparagus in no time.

Well, it certainly beats being in the ditch for no reason anyhow.

 

[red_pill_junkie]

nameless decided to clarify some of the things he wrote earlier:

To clarify and put what i said into context whilst actually looking at the words i wrote properly, I don't give a flying fuck about Carlos Casteñada. I really dont. But in the context of my own path those books meant something in its place as part of a series of events and if you read The Don Juan papers you may understand. What I do care about and what I won't let people sully or re-manipulate are my memories and past experiences. I am aware of my own influence and am not going to turn people off shit particularly if I think there is something worth gleaning from it.

Burnt your evocation if Woody Allen was wrong on so many levels.

And let me just say I agree wholeheartedly with you, nameless

 

[red_pill_junkie]

PS from nameless:

But as always we digress and turn this into some slanging (slagging?)match or other BS based on word context, ego and some bullshit political stance.

 

[red_pill_junkie]

manxman offers his opinion:

there would not be drug cartels if drugs were legalised, there wouldnt be a need for DEA either.

its not a perfect solution, but the government WOULD be in control of liscences, and duties/taxes.

To which I replied that, IMO, the drug trafficking is not the source of the problem; it's just the most visible symptom of the problem. To me one of the main problems is the huge inequality in the distribution of wealth, which will always coach people from the lower strata from society to escape their poverty by any means necessary. Thus, if all the illicit drugs were to be legalized tomorrow, the would just move on & cash in on the next illegal commodity the white market would refuse to offer.

 

[red_pill_junkie]

trainedobserver wanted to go back to the issue of Castañeda:

red_pill_junkie
I say more power to him. If all came out of his imagination --or he stitched together several different philosophies in order to concoct a myth of his own-- then that shows he was a brilliant storyteller.

Aren't brilliant storytellers that present themselves and their "work" dishonestly called liars, frauds, and charlatans? Aren't we shortchanging ourselves when we accept fantasy (which his writings are) as some sort of sacred text, or higher interpretation of reality? Art is one thing. Dishonest representation of art as truth, particularly when it is presented as a shamanistic instruction manual encouraging potentially dangerous drug use, borders on the diabolical.

Why do people want to continue to view figures like Castaneda, Crowley, and Hubbard in a positive light after they have been exposed as liars, criminals, and manipulative jerks concerned more about sating their own lusts than advancing their readers spirituality or well-being? I can't see any difference between Castaneda and Imbrogno for example.

 

[red_pill_junkie]

manxman, going back to the pot issue:

always find the 'american way' with drugs alittle crazy, the main growers, transporters and distributors into america are all C.I.A. factional controlled, yet you spend trillions of tax dollars, defending the C.I.A,s territory from usurpers with the DEA, keeping the C.I.A.'s contractors/partners margins as high as possible, the 'laundry' wall street simply needs the money.

 

[red_pill_junkie]

Jeff Davis replied to trainedobserver:

trainedobserver
Aren't brilliant storytellers that present themselves and their "work" dishonestly called liars, frauds, and charlatans? Aren't we shortchanging ourselves when we accept fantasy (which his writings are) as some sort of sacred text, or higher interpretation of reality? Art is one thing. Dishonest representation of art as truth, particularly when it is presented as a shamanistic instruction manual encouraging potentially dangerous drug use, borders on the diabolical.

Why do people want to continue to view figures like Castaneda, Crowley, and Hubbard in a positive light after they have been exposed as liars, criminals, and manipulative jerks concerned more about sating their own lusts than advancing their readers spirituality or well-being? I can't see any difference between Castaneda and Imbrogno for example.

This is one of those skeptical lines in the sand, so to speak. One that I respect, but due to personal bias can't seem to fully come to a "burn the witch and be done with it" sort of resolve. Whereas I fully agree that Castaneda became a mess as his life progressed, I am honestly not so certain that there is not great intrinsic value within his first several books. It would seem on a philosophical level, that there was great depth and meaning that many were drawn to, and by, apart from drug use. In the realm of Castaneda he is self descriptively terrified by the drugs initially, and then comes to understand that the drugs are in no way routinely necessary, but rather used to invoke the perceptive gateways required to attain the alternate perceptions that he did. The seer or sorcerer later becomes non-routinely familiar with on a disciplined or mechanistic level of alternate perceptual access wherein ongoing drug use does not come into play. If memory serves me, wasn't it Don Juan that was the big tequila fan? Maybe it was Genaro. Either way, elicit drug use is not actually an ongoing theme in any of the Castaneda books as great discipline was descriptively exercised in preparation for these initial visionary experiences. However, as culture often chooses the appearances it wishes to endorse, as the 60s rolled to an end and the colorful continuation that was the 70s proceeded to flourish in a slightly more so intellectual and sophisticated sense, it became the norm to associate Castaneda's literary works with psychedelic recreational drug use. The tragically hip.

Personally, I'd still like to just once see like a crow...those really were much simpler times.

 

[red_pill_junkie]

Polterwurst jumped in to the thread --thanks very much, vato

Hey. Just wanted to drop by and say thanks for asking my questions, Chris, and thanks for answering them, RPJ. Great episode. Now go on with these wonderfully mind-boggling, thought-provoking discussions please.

Man, I love this forum...