Robbins Rants
Tom Robbins is the author of numerous books, including Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, Still Life with Woodpecker, Skinny Legs and All, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Another Roadside Attraction.
THE TIN CAN was invented in 1811. The can opener was not invented
until 1855. In the intervening 44 years, people were obliged to access
their pork ÕnÕ beans with a hammer and chisel.
Now, the psychedelic can opener, the device that most efficiently
opens the tin of higher consciousness, was discovered thousands of years ago and put to beneficial use by shamans and their satellites well before the advent of what we like to call Òcivilization.Ó Yet, inconceivably, modern society has flung that proven instrument into the sin bin, forcing its citizens to seek access to the most nourishing of all canned goods with the psychological equivalent of a hammer and chisel. (IÕm referring to Freudian analysis and the various, numberless self-realization techniques.)
Our subject here, however, is creativity, and I donÕt mean to suggest
that just because one employs the psychedelic can opener to momentous effect, just because one manages to dip into the peas of the absolute with a lightning spoon, that one is going to metamorphose into some creative titan if one is not already artistically gifted. The little gurus who inhabit certain psychoactive compounds are not in the business of manufacturing human talent. They donÕt sell imagination by the pound, or even by the microgram. What they ARE capable of doing, however, is reinforcing and supporting that innate imagination that manages to still exist in a nation whose institutionsÑacademic, governmental, religious and otherwiseÑ seem determined to suffocate it with a polyester pillow from WalMart.
Taken From: Learning How to Learn
