Letters to the Editor
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Fools Rush In
I have written (on Strayshot.com) that Castaneda was an exceptional writer of fiction, and that the fact people are arguing about whether he "pulled a con" is a testimony to his skill. I mean, he was writing about people flying around like witches, and visiting other worlds, and there are so many gullible people reading it that when they discover it wasn't really a log of ordinary reality, they begin to put up "exposes," about what they have realized.
What they haven't realized is that they were fools not just once, not just twice, but three times. First they took it all literally, then they exposed their naivete, and finally, they never really saw the third choice. If they had, they wouldn't feel cheated. They would feel gifted. But I digress. In the piece (I linked to) the author mentions the field of visionary art, and that of phenomenology, and specifically Dr. Harold Garfinkel, with whom Carlos studied at UCLA. (See Interview with Warren Sack, which includes some of Garfinkel's ideas.)
Castaneda was influenced by Talcott Parsons' concept of glosses, or systems defined not by objective reality, or by possible realities, but by a process of expectation, or habituation.
This was part of a renaissance in consciousness that hit in the 1960s, as existential thought began to move into the mainstream. All of a sudden there was a freedom from essentialism, which was fundamentalism. This thinking starts with who you are supposed to be, and you have to become that. If you look at it closely it rather resembles the idea that you are the property of your parents and and then, of the state. This accounts for the disconnect between the stated belief in individual liberty by conservatives, and their movement toward strict and even oppressive social control, driven by the fundamentalists.