On being cracked

One has to have lived in material poverty, indeed it helps to be still living that way, to find an aesthetic and qualitative spiritual benefit in the state of being cracked.   Marechera cracked and thereby shed a lot of light. The cracking of the robust spirit leads to the production of a third eye.   "We feel each other through our wounds," says Bataille.

This coming generation won't be cracked, because it won't experience on the prolonged grind of material poverty.  War is also remote from consciousness, just as the conditions of violence, hardship and desperation are distant from everyday life.

In calm and undisturbed cultural conditions, shamanism not to occur.   Its absence is not necessarily to the benefit of people, since in the absence of shamanistic sensibilities, intimacy also loses its meaning.  One does not seek to be on intimate terms with another when one already has everything -- everything, except a symbol of completion, meaning a person of the opposite sex to append to one's lifestyle.

When I mention to people that I met Mike on the Internet, and that I hadn't seen him in person the day before we moved in together, and that our life together has been perfect every since, they often express surprise that such an outcome is possible.   Affluent people don't "feel each other" nearly as well, it seems.  Their lives are insulated in too many ways, and likely they've never been down to the bottom of their soul, where they've discovered their true identities, after having been a little cracked.

There are those who implicitly understand a shamanistic sensibility (although they don't call it that), and those who don't.   Those who don't often cannot understand the need to maintain a sense of inner consistency in one's overall intent.   A harsh environment commands that one does so, for the sake of one's self-preservation.   It's the same reason soldiers are taught always to carry water with them.  This is not to favor rigidity, as if one ought simply "open one's mind" and one day carry water through the desert, another day brandy, and the third day coconut liqueur, just to vary the routine and show that one is capable of  including different possibilities.   The consistency of shamanistic principles is directly related to psychological survival.   One must have need of a very basic level of survival first, in order to discover these principles -- and then one sticks to them.

As Nietzsche noted, a harsh environment is necessary for the fullest quality of life:

But what if pleasure and pain should be so closely connected that he who wants the greatest possible amount of the one must also have the greatest possible amount of the other, that he who wants to experience the "heavenly high jubilation," must also be ready to be "sorrowful unto death"?[The Gay Science : First Book, 12. The Goal of Science, Friedrich Nietzsche ]

By contrast, although very gentle environment might seem to be the one necessary factor conducive to existence, ultimately, it doesn't necessarily bring as much depth to life, or as much pleasure, or gratitude.