Anti semitism in the psychedelic world

[jikuhchagi]

Until as a species we learn to see everything and everyone else as being nothing more or less than who we really are, I suspect we'll never rise above the pattern of history our species has demonstrated. The fact of the matter is the  deep within our collective being, we loathe what we are and take it out by trying to find that which is different in others, when we are all really part of the same thing. How many millinea (sp?) have we been killing one another? How long have we been saying you're different from me? Its a shame, but the truth of the matter is far more disturbing than just isolated incidents that affect us as individuals, IMHO.

Sometimes its best to look inward than out.

[laughingwillow]

JRL: Remember what you advised me to do awhile back concerning the bullshite spewed by others on line? Feh-get-about-it! Those folks cruise the net looking for people to mess with. They're anonymous idiots with a keyboard.

I'm with jiku on this one. That last line of his really hits home with me.

lw

[JRL]

I hear you guys, but sometimes a bit of righteous indignation is called for, IMO. And it really is not that I am taking this so personaly on an emotional level, but rather I wanna stand with the truth.

I have been very ambivalent about my heritage in the past, but in the past years I have embraced it, but on my own terms. Sometimes hate needs to be confronted I feel. I will fight to defend my home.

[senorsalvia]

Yep JRL,  I can really grok that comment about ambivalence and yet having a yearning to display that righteous indignation when faced with idiocy...  My family never placed any particular emphasis on ancestory, though Pops did take a certain pride in the fact that there's a smidgeon of Native America amongst our clan....  The way I always looked at it, was like what with most immigrant European cutures that came to AmeriKKKa, and then adding on my own counter-cultural/hippy tendencies...  I always figured I'd find backlash, repression, and the like....  Add on decades of media insistence that liberalism is a mental disorder;  throw in years of Republican repression and economics, and damned if I am not sorta surprised that peeps of   'our ilk' aren't residing in some AmeriKKKan Gulag of an interrment camp :wink: -----------  sal

[cenacle]

I think individuals and individual actions make up the collective, comprise and define it. Maybe I would modify the feh-get-about-it to pick your battles. Some are worth fighting, some aren't. It depends on what is being said or done to whom, and in what context, in my view.

Chat rooms are valid communities, and they can be destroyed by hate. The SPF chat has had its share of assholes over the years who come in, take over with their spew, and chase people away, while making others cringe to speak freely and comfortably.

The fact is, in my opinion, Joe should not feel his heritage, whatever it is, is something to be hidden or ashamed of. Nobody should. Someone spewing hate in a chat room against members of that chat is not supporting that community; usually such people are not there to do things like that. Usually they're bored, maybe angry at the world, who knows, but coming into a chat room which is part of a community devoted to tolerance is just not going to work.

To the larger point, to say humanity as a whole is self-loating is to generalize about a species of currently 5 billion in number and whatever amount have come and gone, and to assume that growth and change is not possible. I wonder about how we treat each other too. But when I see that black people in the US are not in chains, women have the right to vote, handicapped people have access to buildings, gays walk in my neighborhood holding hands, I think, OK, sometimes we do act on our better nature.

But to tie my two points together, I believe it was individual actions that led to those situations being true now. Enough people decided nobody should own another based on race, gender should not be a factor in who gets to vote, sexual orientation is a personal choice. Someone spoke out, then another, then another. That's how it works. So, Joe, speak out, let your truth, your love of SPF community and tolerance for others, shine. Then when you're out there in the world, don't worry so much. If you are a praying man at your temple, say one for the haters too.

[laughingwillow]

I'd be a lot more concerned with racist actions in the real world. The net makes some folks feel like they have free reign to say what they will, from behind the safety of their keyboard while using a screen name. And nobody is going to change that. Maybe that's partly why I'm such a hermit.

lw

[laughingwillow]

Btw, I'm not saying that on-line trash isn't worth the effort of a little education, but rather not worth the emotional drain on which they seem to thrive.

lw

[JRL]

And I agree. It really didn't cut that deep because it was so obviously stupid. I was more disgusted than anything. Like finding a possum in your house or something.

[senorsalvia]

I found a very young three-legged possum near my front steps years ago...  Used to carry him around in a burlap sack.  One day, a guy approached me saying "whatcha got in that sack??  A pound of herb?"  I replied no, I have a three-legged possum named Tri-Power in there...  The dude tossed out a twenty and bet me I was bluffing.....  I poured 'ole Tri-power out on the picnic table and snatched the dudes twenty...  He looked at me and shook his head.  Told me I was one sick and evil SOB..  I asked him why he had to call me all that....  He replied....  " Man, it's just not right to tear off an animals leg just to win a few bets :lol:  :roll:   -----  A few weeks later, when the lil fella had gotten stronger, I took him to the woods and let him go..........  sal {possum supporter} :lol:

[judih]

and that's a perfect example of racism. You admit you've got a slight difference (a 3-legged possum in this case), and the immediate response is that you're 'bad', 'evil', 'sick'.

Human beings are notorious for intense dislike of anything not part of the mediocre scope of daily behaviour.

Plays (The Enemy, Antigone) have been written about it. Novels have been written about it. The outcast is created, not born.

So, yeah, the hurt that a stupid comment can cause to me, depending on my state of vulnerability at that particular moment, has kept me away from net chats for a few years.

Somehow, for a long time, i was absolutely open on the net - my sixth sense filling in gaps and constantly being exercised. In such a psychically friendly state of net-being, a hateful comment or attack would often leave me with a roaring storm in my solar plexus.

Who needs it? There's enough hatred and attack in my daily life. Don't need a net fool who knows nothing yet speaks as if s/he has the truth on his tongue. (Actually, in fact it's always been 'he's' involved in trying to force me to confess my wrongdoings, my crimes, not 'she's')

So, not being one to search for fights, i tend to back away.

i like my stimulation nurturing and i tend to gravitate to my essential nutrients - humour, intelligence, poetry and sync.

That's why i'm a reader here and an occasional writer. i've been undernourished lately - expending more than i'm taking in.

and back to the topic - take it away.

how y'all doing?

[laughingwillow]

Right on sistah j.

JRL: Re-reading your opening statement concerning what happened in chat and how it has soured your view of the psychedelic movement leads me to conclude that your anger, while valid may be misplaced. I fail to grasp the real connection between the on-line chat community and the consumption of sacraments. The chat community appears to be the problem here, not psychedelics. I've never understood why a person would put him/herself in that position with a group of anonomous strangers all wanting to talk/be heard at once. But that's just me.

[TooStonedToType]

You don't eat a good possum all at once!

But in regard to the subject at hand:
I've though it curious before to see what appear to be orthodox jews sitting quietly and praying at dead shows.  No one bothered them and in fact they seemed welcomed.

[laughingwillow]

You hit the nail on the head there, tstt.

When I stop to think of it now, over the years I've seen quite a wide range of theological practices going down at dead shows. The first coming to mind was a group of SKINNY dudes dressed in white robes who were sitting/praying in a circle on the heli-pad behind the stage area during a Dead/Sanatna weekend at Angel's Camp in Calaveras County. To be honest, they looked like starving Afgani's to me, but the sacrament has a crazy way of making incredible the norm....

Another was the hairy urban wizzard who asked me to mind his magic wand one day in the City before a Jerry show. I was stuck holding that damn wand while the early effects of the sacrament came at me like a freight train.
     
lw

[JRL]

Well, it wasn't just the chat room, I guess my encounter with the possum just brought to the foreground something that had been bugging me for a long time.

Indeed mostly psychedelians are an accepting lot and I have heard of the orthodox dead heads. Judih might be right, ya got to pick the times to let the chakras opened, lest you get blind sided.

LW, did he ever come back for his wand?

[judih]

how cool to be left holding a wand
would have liked to see a kirilian photo of that experience.