Terence McKenna often talked about the shortcomings of words to convey meaning. Whenever we want to communicate, we consult our internal dictionary to put our thoughts and feelings into words, and we hope that the person we speak to has the same definitions in his or her internal dictionary, and knows which one to pick. Unfortunately we all have internal dictionaries that have many different definitions for each word. Hence spoken and written language often leads to misunderstandings.
In this context we might wonder what either Heartcore or Silv considers fundamentalism. In the past I've read several long essays on the subject of fundamentalism. There are in fact many types of fundamentalism.
Heartcore mentioned "this community", but what does he mean with that? The psychedelic community in general? Everyone who happens to hang around on this particular forum? Or only a small group on that forum? Or perhaps just an individual?
Name-calling is generally useless, whether one calls another person a fundamentalist or a snotty kid. It's called argumentum ad hominem ("personal attack") and has no place in serious philosophical, religious or political debate.
I think Heartcore would agree that when talking about Christians his words tend to be provocative, purposefully using words that are offensive without any specific purpose, for example: "christenhonden" (literally "Christian dogs", which has the meaning of "Christian bastards"). By taking such a strong position, opposition is likely, even from fellow psychonauts.
It's fine to be utterly convinced of one's viewpoint, so that one will patiently continue any rational debate that may arise. But when the conviction is expressed in a way that is too overbearing, sooner or later a conflict will occur. I'm talking from personal experience here.
I have often felt angry these past few months. Whenever I read another outrageous statement from a Christian politician I become very angry. Now, if during such an angry phase someone would call me a fundamentalist, I think I would be pretty pissed-off myself. I'm afraid some of the anger we all experience at this time was misdirected, resulting in this particular conflict. Instead of feeling angry at those in control (i.e. religious and political leaders, not the followers) the anger was exchanged between psychonauts.
When I organized a psychonaut meeting last year, I learned that people have very different opinions on psychedelics, religion and spirituality. That evening I learned that each individual is passionate about a particular aspect of entheogens and psychedelic scholarship. This is the result of each individual's unique upbringing, experience, personality and current phase in life. You can't always make another person passionate about your approach. Some watch The Pharmacratic Inquisition and believe all of it, while others are not that impressed, doubting some of the evidence, or are simply not interested in this subject. Since I have a background in religion (Hinduism) and astrology, the Pharmacratic Inquisition and related videos, books and websites were very interesting to me. But I can imagine others aren't, or prefer another approach.
So that was all I wanted to say. Not taking sides here, nor trying to resolve anything, simply throwing in my 2 cents regarding communication and disagreements.
Gee, I don't think I've written such a long post here in months. I will send a copy to Heartcore and Silv.
Caduceus Mercurius
