I resonate with the realism in your post, HF, but it's difficult to translate some of your analogies to the world of entheogens users.
In martial arts, or in the military, you have ranks. They are bestowed according to practice, discipline, convention and tradition. It's easy to allow or deny privileges according to the promotion ladder, and that ladder is essential for the proper functioning of an academy and the relations between the academy members. The skills and knowledge can be evaluated easily. But I cannot see a way to do that in the context we are discussing, not without falling into arbitrary pits and improper judgements.
In a community like the Nexus, and other than the moderator attribute (that actually might have or not to do with the experience of the person with entheogens) the only objective measure you have is the number of posts, and a certain overall quality, content and consistency in the posted contents. But we will agree that it's not possible to assign reliable ranks according to the number of posts. If I think about myself, I might have by now more posts than the majority of users, but I still am, by any means, a freshman. And I will stay a freshman for a very long time. And there are hundreds of people here who have a deeper personal understanding of the entheogenic experience than I do, regardless of for how long they've been around or how much they've posted. Ok, this is pretty obvious.
Once we go past the line that separates whoever has experienced a psychedelic properly (yet another tricky word) from whoever hasn't, we do require more humility and flexibility in order to discuss entheogens and tag their users than in martial arts, craftsmanship or any socially established discipline. Because the "noob" who doesn't know what an alkaloid is, or how to grow a plant, or what does set and setting imply, may as well have a deeper gift and an instinctive understanding of how to deal with the experience, of how to learn from it and integrate it in his or her life, than most of us do - no matter how many books we have read, how many substances we have tested or how many times we've broken our teeth in the kitchen.
I understand and agree with a the proper understanding of elitism, but some key factors are very slippery to judge. And defining a discipline when it comes to entheogens use, beyond strictly technical aspects, is as tricky -if not more- than doing it in a religious structure.
In martial arts, or in the military, you have ranks. They are bestowed according to practice, discipline, convention and tradition. It's easy to allow or deny privileges according to the promotion ladder, and that ladder is essential for the proper functioning of an academy and the relations between the academy members. The skills and knowledge can be evaluated easily. But I cannot see a way to do that in the context we are discussing, not without falling into arbitrary pits and improper judgements.
In a community like the Nexus, and other than the moderator attribute (that actually might have or not to do with the experience of the person with entheogens) the only objective measure you have is the number of posts, and a certain overall quality, content and consistency in the posted contents. But we will agree that it's not possible to assign reliable ranks according to the number of posts. If I think about myself, I might have by now more posts than the majority of users, but I still am, by any means, a freshman. And I will stay a freshman for a very long time. And there are hundreds of people here who have a deeper personal understanding of the entheogenic experience than I do, regardless of for how long they've been around or how much they've posted. Ok, this is pretty obvious.
Once we go past the line that separates whoever has experienced a psychedelic properly (yet another tricky word) from whoever hasn't, we do require more humility and flexibility in order to discuss entheogens and tag their users than in martial arts, craftsmanship or any socially established discipline. Because the "noob" who doesn't know what an alkaloid is, or how to grow a plant, or what does set and setting imply, may as well have a deeper gift and an instinctive understanding of how to deal with the experience, of how to learn from it and integrate it in his or her life, than most of us do - no matter how many books we have read, how many substances we have tested or how many times we've broken our teeth in the kitchen.
I understand and agree with a the proper understanding of elitism, but some key factors are very slippery to judge. And defining a discipline when it comes to entheogens use, beyond strictly technical aspects, is as tricky -if not more- than doing it in a religious structure.