Future Loop Foundation
08/08/07 22:12 |
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This is quite the best electronica I've heard in a
long, long time. Beautiful, intelligent, sensitively
done. Lovely.
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Letcher vs. Pinchbeck, Round One
08/08/07 19:52 |
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As something of a birthday treat I got to meet Daniel
Pinchbeck this weekend at the Big Green Gathering.
Daniel, as I’m sure you’ll know, is the
New York journo turned psychedelic guru, author of
'Breaking Open the Head' and '2012: The Return of
Quetzalcoatl', both of which recount his psychedelic,
ever more shamanistic adventures. It’s fair to
say that we got on well but that at times our
extended chai-tent discussion was ‘full and
frank’.
Though we clearly both enjoy intellectualising about psychedelics we part company over just how far we are prepared to go. Daniel is a champion of 2012, the McKenna-instigated idea that some major ‘ingression of novelty’ or ‘global transformation of consciousness’ is due to happen in our Olympic year (read Shroom to get the low-down on why). Though, given the current state of the world, I would rule nothing out, I am not a fan. To me it smacks of a re-hashed (pun intended) Judaeo-Christian millenarianism, pitting the psychedelic saved versus the unenlightened masses. It promotes quietism, navel-gazing while Rome burns. If the ship’s going down, I wanna be fighting all the way.
I sense that Daniel thinks my academic scepticism an impediment to spiritual advancement, a symptom of being stuck in the head, a wilful refusal to accept the evidence of my senses. On the contrary I reject any clichéd anti-intellectualism that pits questioning as opposed to spirituality. To me the two are inseparably bound. My scepticism is as vital to me as an organ or a limb – the lodestone by which I steer my way along the narrow path. I’d no more throw it away than I would my glasses. I’ll always be the one asking difficult questions. Always, always I wanna know, what if we're wrong?
What experience, Daniel asked in return, would it require for me to abandon my scepticism? ‘None’ was my reply – for though I have had my fair share unusual experiences I question them all. What if I were simply deluding myself? ‘Then’, he barked back, voice raised, heckles up, ‘you are denying the truth of experience!’ The trouble is (and you don’t need to be a philosopher to work this out) we can be, and very often are, easily fooled by experience. A complex mix of perception and expectation, experience can never be an indubitable foundation upon which to act with certainty. Think faces in the clouds.
What lies at the heart of our disagreement is, I think, a cultural difference. It seems to me not insignificant that all the global psychedelic gurus have been American (barring Huxley, of course, but he was living in LA at the time – and no, I don’t think Laing quite made the grade). Theirs is an optimism born of the New World; ours is an Old European scepticism, a world-weary ennui from having been round the block. We’ve seen it all before. We’re done with gurus and prophecies. Technology to save the world? Pah! It never fucking works.
In the end we agreed to disagree, a tense stalemate. I look forward to the next bout, though perhaps we’ll only really know who’s right come December 22nd 2012.
Though we clearly both enjoy intellectualising about psychedelics we part company over just how far we are prepared to go. Daniel is a champion of 2012, the McKenna-instigated idea that some major ‘ingression of novelty’ or ‘global transformation of consciousness’ is due to happen in our Olympic year (read Shroom to get the low-down on why). Though, given the current state of the world, I would rule nothing out, I am not a fan. To me it smacks of a re-hashed (pun intended) Judaeo-Christian millenarianism, pitting the psychedelic saved versus the unenlightened masses. It promotes quietism, navel-gazing while Rome burns. If the ship’s going down, I wanna be fighting all the way.
I sense that Daniel thinks my academic scepticism an impediment to spiritual advancement, a symptom of being stuck in the head, a wilful refusal to accept the evidence of my senses. On the contrary I reject any clichéd anti-intellectualism that pits questioning as opposed to spirituality. To me the two are inseparably bound. My scepticism is as vital to me as an organ or a limb – the lodestone by which I steer my way along the narrow path. I’d no more throw it away than I would my glasses. I’ll always be the one asking difficult questions. Always, always I wanna know, what if we're wrong?
What experience, Daniel asked in return, would it require for me to abandon my scepticism? ‘None’ was my reply – for though I have had my fair share unusual experiences I question them all. What if I were simply deluding myself? ‘Then’, he barked back, voice raised, heckles up, ‘you are denying the truth of experience!’ The trouble is (and you don’t need to be a philosopher to work this out) we can be, and very often are, easily fooled by experience. A complex mix of perception and expectation, experience can never be an indubitable foundation upon which to act with certainty. Think faces in the clouds.
What lies at the heart of our disagreement is, I think, a cultural difference. It seems to me not insignificant that all the global psychedelic gurus have been American (barring Huxley, of course, but he was living in LA at the time – and no, I don’t think Laing quite made the grade). Theirs is an optimism born of the New World; ours is an Old European scepticism, a world-weary ennui from having been round the block. We’ve seen it all before. We’re done with gurus and prophecies. Technology to save the world? Pah! It never fucking works.
In the end we agreed to disagree, a tense stalemate. I look forward to the next bout, though perhaps we’ll only really know who’s right come December 22nd 2012.