Blog 8...

First I would like to ask whose negativity is causing the computer malfunctions today...haha

Well I notice that a lot of others share my belief that the end was rather abrupt. Don Juan appears to have failed in some ways of getting Carlos to step outside the box a lot more. Up until the very end he still seems to be clinging to what he defines as normal, he finds himself doing "odd" things but it takes so much time questioning them, that I feel he doesn't learn much at all from his experiences.

As Einstein said, "I tried not to let school get in the way of my education."

I feel as though this whole idea of listening to de jure rules seems to be at the root of a lot of problems in the world. Too many times people follow rules without actually knowing why the rule even exists. For instance, (a little off point) yesterday I was watching a documentary about attempts to legalize cannibis for medical use. One of the speakers brought up that one of the reasons it has not been legalized is that nobody is alive from when it was legal to have an explanation for how things were. In a sense many drug laws are enforced by tradition and nothing else.

Cocaine was made illegal thanks to Southern politicians claiming that black men would use it and rape white women. Opium became illegal when women would venture into Chinatowns to use it and neglect their duties in the home. Cannibis was associated with radicals. Absinthe was in direct competition with wine. After many of the grapes in Europe succumbed to a disease, many people turned to Absinthe, when the crops were replaced and wine began being produced again, the vinters needed to get people to take their product. As Absinthe had an association with the radical crowd, it wasn't hard to convince politicians worldwide to start anti-absinthe laws. Switzerland and America passed theirs in 1910. France in 1915.

In a sense my argument is that if people would actually look at the reasons why things are illegal, they might have a different opinion. I for one have seen gambling destroy far more lives than even alcohol, but gambling can be controlled and regulated to bring in money for the state a lot better than cannibis which could easily be grown in a backyard.

Anyway, my point is that I think experience through mistakes has a lot more value to it than following rules. (within reason of course) One finds that many rules are completely pointless. They also find that the rules that are "good" are good for good reasons. Granted, when dealing with the substances that don Juan is, one must proceed with caution, which is why there are some rules, more than likely gathered from generations of experience.

Furthermore, the fact that don Juan uses the crow speaks a lot more about breaking rules than one may first realize. In many Native American myths, the Crow is a trickster as is the Coyote, the Fox, and in Africa, the Rabbit. All are seen as learning through making mistakes, sometimes deadly ones. They are also almost always associated with Shamans. To me it seems that the whole process of experimenting to learn is in the prehistoric root of the Shamans. Living in this personal anarchy is dangerous, but at the same time the rewards to ones knowledge and perception are worth the risk to those who have a solid intent.

Think of the first hominid who ran right at the fire instead of away from it and came back with burning log which made meat more tender and easier to eat. If it weren't for that experiment we would never have evolved a larger brain because our jaw muscles shrunk because we didn't need to tear into raw meat with our teeth. We would still be trying to hunt lizards to eat instead of sitting next to a computer trying to figure out why Carlos Castaneda left his teacher.