Mrs. De Rios talks about how out of hundreds of shamans and ayuhuasca healers, most USA anthropologists who went to study this based much of their reports and research on the two or three "curanderos" that were NOT healers, but instead were con artists scamming tourists from around the area. This led to an explosion in drug tourism of american and european tourists in the 70's and 80's who visited these famous "healers" to get drug experiences. This turned the traditional home area of the healers into a tourist trap, causing the shamans to move and displace themselves, ending their stability and driving away people who were looking for actual shaman work.

I cannot explain it right, but it happens every day.

Getting high is a marketable commodity, probably the first and most widely distributed kind of economy. Exploitation is inevitable. The only hope for any substantive cultural preservation is for that with substance to die down in popularity and sex appeal, and revert back to the underground. The advantage is generally speaking, authentic manifestations of culture are never lost to even the most crass commercialism, because there are always authentic folk preserving it off the radar until the hype dies away. There are plenty of legitimate shamans sitting around naked in Brazil putting together tropical plant concoctions to send people off on spiritual vision quests. HOWEVER, the key to shamans is that they are, like Priests in a Church, always present during the Sacraments. The Catholics/Orthodox us bread and wine, but under a consecrated situation and tight supervision of the distributing and overall experience. Shamans are no different, in actuality, for all intents and purposes Christian priests are post-Roman shamans of the west (after all, don't let all those teetotaling Baptists fool you, Catholics/Orthodox are a drinking religion, ask the Russians/Georgians or the Italians/Irish, in fact, never ever challenge a Georgian to a drinking contest, he will win, drink you under the table, and show up early for Mass BEFORE work the next morning ;) ). Shamans guide and mentor the individual or groups through a self-reflective psychoactive experience. It is crucial. People shouldn't fuck with shit on their own, the inward man has many hidden pathways, tunnels, and alleys and one could find ones' self irreparably lost. Lord knows I've learned my lesson, and yet conversely I've had to serve as babysitting shaman for several seriously lost people. Like Hunter Thompson said, "You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug."

Only read the first chapter so far, I bought it in a charity shop because I like the cover and although it's not bad it seems like the cover is misleadingly interesting as the story seems to be quite standard supernatural detective meets rag tag gang of misfits type stuff, if it gets better I'll let you know.

rereading this for one of my classes

read this today :3

Has anyone read Morrissey's Autobiography?

so i quit on game of thrones because i hated the way he constructed his sentences. it's true.

i think i wanna read winston churchill. looks like that sucka could *really* write prose.

I sure as hell hope the fuck not ;)

Best book I've read all year, numbnuts.

From the beginning:

"My childhood is streets upon streets upon streets upon streets. Streets to define you and streets to confine you, with no sign of motorway, freeway or highway. [...] We live in forgotten Victorian knife-plunging Manchester, where everything lies wherever it was left over one hundred years ago."

Who said it: Morrissey or Alan Partridge?

rereading one of the funniest books ever



really awesome. everyone should.

Grim. Real grim. It's pretty incredible how this isn't more world known.

After this though it's the third G.O.T book.

It is widely taught and included in most high school curricula around the world, but alas, the curricula is getting so expansive that peoples' natural inclination is to ignore huge chunks and segments of history, because it is too hard for non-historian types to keep that must history coherently in their minds.. People have to skim by default, and a lot of significant details tend to get lost in the process. I think the average American adult/parent would be overwhelmed if they actually had to retake American high school, even in the "worse" schools, where the curriculum is more expansive then it might seem from the outside..

I feel sorry for your mother..

Firstly where would Mao's reign and more specifically his Great Leap Forward be on a curriculum around the world? America doesn't seem to, the UK doesn't. In fact I suspect most of Europe wouldn't. Asia may do but that's it.

Secondly, history is pretty long so it's not a bad thing to focus on a few key events. Especially events relating to your own country, by that I mean within schools teaching.

The Cultural Revolution in most schools, be it the US or Europe, tends to be around 10th/11th grade World History, post-World War II sections, usually in the context of discussing aspects of the Cold War. There is also usually World History in 6th/7th grade, but the Cultural Revolution is a bit intense for middle-school kids so its not always part of the formal curriculum frameworks.

here are the standards where I teach in California..
http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/docum...socscistnd.pdf (pg 46, 10.9:4)

here is another chosen at random..



http://www.ksde.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=esCgbNTivg8%3d&tabid=171 5&mid=12309&forcedownload=true (Page 8, "Cold War and Beyond")..

Its in plenty of international curricula, though its up to the individual teachers for in-class emphasis. In other words, I agree with you but disagree. The framework is already in place, but I agree with you that more teachers need to emphasize this in their day-to-day implementation of the dense curriculum.



Agreed, but how should we assess students on this? It is A LOT of information for "standardized tests" and when you fly through the year, in fact, think about all thirteen as a process, A LOT of details get lost in the process. We ask a lot from our kids today, probably WAY more then even moderately well-educated parents might now. I'm willing to wager that over 60% of the parents of my students would NOT pass my class, but think they would because they passed their own history classes 20 years previous.

I don't know about the rest of Europe but the Cultural Revolution and the Cold War isn't taught in schools in the UK.

I think the emphasis in history as taught in schools should be more that it's always a debate. We don't know anything about anything really. But this isn't taught until children get to college level.

You hippies might say that THEY don't want US to be taught to think and question.

I learned absolutely nothing in school about Canada.