DM>   INQUIRY: 
DM>Though I have some appreciation for your exploratory reach, I've 
>still not absorbed your specific motivation. Our brains do seem, 
>as is sometimes said, to have capacities some beyond what we can 
>exploit. I might assume that like a computer system, we are locked 
>out of certain (sort of) classified areas with some future dependencies 
>or (still missing) keys. My main question centers around the 10,000 
>years of chemical leverage already expended. If such efforts have 
>led to so little, how might we justify continuing to follow this 
>approach? In most cases, mental breakthroughs seem to have been 
>accomplished during everyday naturalness.... 
Well, the first 8000 got us up to Aristotle.  IMHO, the ecological 
changes wrought by the landed aristocracies' pursuit of profit had 
lead to the disappearance of the Amanita fungi and other herbs you 
mention from the area, so that by the time of Justinian, Eleusis's 
experience was probly just a ritualistic shell of what it was. 
 
I am not arguing that people become acid heads, nor do I see these 
ancient Greeks that way. Komos was not held every week, so lots of 
time was available between psychedelic experiences to reason out a 
bit of substantive truth.  The trial of Socrates was reasonable if 
you believe: that Alcibiades had been using the sacred Kykeion for 
parties as charged, and Socrates was behind this secularization of 
a religious experience. 
 
I am saying that Dionysianism postulated as necessary for a fuller 
life and the understanding of it, the use of psycedelics.  This is 
also part of the aim of Stoicism, to examine existance, and one of 
the ways of doing that, is a seasonal 'trip' or sabbatical.  Both, 
IMO, present a highest ethical standard of any organized religion, 
or political system. 
 
My motivation is: to do the right thing, at the right time, in the 
right way, for the right reasons.  ONLY Stoicism and Dionysianism, 
[which lead to the works of Zeno, Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, and 
Marcus Aurelius] provide the ethical basis to see what is.  I find 
it is the happiest way to live- as they suggested. 
 
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 * OFFLINE 1.58 * I got the right answer!!!!  What was the question? 
--- Maximus 3.01
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