Rise of the electric shaman?

Today I was listening to a documentary about shamanism. The thing in specific that interested me was talk about mind altering substances that allow access to different levels of reality.

As I understand it, not all shamans use psychotropic substances some use drums and dance or even fasting to obtain the altered mental states needed.

I listened to the man on the radio talk about the process of trance that overtakes a shaman as he works and I couldn’t help but think that I knew what he was talking about a little better than maybe I should.

Now, I have never taken psychotropic's but I did know what he was talking about. you see, i play video games, i play them allot and some times i play them late at night way more than i should. Last Halloween of all nights i was playing the well known Team Fortress 2. The game is a first person shooter, its done in a comic book style, it has very bright colours and is played very fast.

That night as I played the game in the dark while tired something happened to me, and I suspect i am not the only one that has experienced it. the game became crisp and sharp and everything else dropped away into the background. gamers call it playing hard but i think its more than that, i think at that moment when you realise you are being consumed for that instant by the totally overlapped reality of the game, i think that that is the beginning of a shamanistic experience, i know that the place a shaman goes is far more intense than the video game induced trance but i can see the course and i think that anyone who has played guitar hero for any length of time knows what i am talking about here.

please excuse my babbling but this is an idea that has been forming for a few days now.

If everything shamans go through is to change consciousness and access other levels of reality then maybe its not to strange to use video games for this, maybe the repeated actions and light movements are ideal for the level of focus that may change your state of mind.

jut like dance or music video games give your brain something to focus on while your soul adventures.

are there other ways to free your mind? is electricity and the great inventions that it powers a new tool for the shaman?

Remember the hippies?

  The Hippie movement started in the early to mid 1960’s originally in America but soon like all good ideas spread to more countries very quickly.

THIS page on Wikipedia has some great historical information about the movement.

As the 60’s faded so did the movement and most the hippies got jobs and became respectable members of society. To this day there are dedicated believers in the ideals as well as stoned teenagers who think they are making a statement and hippy hating jokes that for some reason appear to still be relevant.

The movement was born out of dissatisfaction with society, government and the state of the world in general. the Hippies stood for change, honesty and wanted a revolution, a revolution of the mind.

The Hippy mind set is still alive and well on the internet with the Open source software movement headed up my many an aged hippy.

I must apologise for rambling on but my thoughts turned to hippies recently when the rather controversial Digital Economy Bill was passed recently over here in the united kingdom, i wont go into any great detail about the bill but it puts things in place that tighten the controls over digital copyright as well as putting more stress to internet service providers to enforce the existing laws.

it’s a strange thing because the DE Bill introduces a strange dynamic because it is a law that has been forced through by an industry and serves to do little other than highlighting existing laws.

it is in short the first step towards the death of creative freedom on the internet. soon enough there will be procedures and fee’s and contracts even to blog. it is the end game, assuming your guilt of copyright theft, guilty until proven otherwise. this will reduce the numbers of people contributing to the internet as a whole.

so, my question is, where have all the hippies gone? the world is in a much worse state now than when it was in the 60’s and with wars declared on phantoms, politicians taking it upon themselves to enforce laws that protect the music industry what can not protect its own products. lies, tyrants and oppression is everywhere. We are in short due for that revolution of the mind now more than ever.

 

In the 60’s the movement did not spread as widely as it could have done because so many people where against the idea of creative and spiritual freedom. this time however its 2010 and  everyone i know at work and in my personal life wants change and freedom so come on hippies, save us. I am not convinced that there is a more qualified group anywhere.