Teachings of don Jake

I was just rewatching the Teachings of don Jake and I finally realised what was going on, ie. the similarity to Castaneda's don Juan stories. The berry thing wasn't an accident at all - Jake fed everyone the berries deliberately to take them on a shamanic spiritual quest! Only Daria went and spoilt it by not eating hers, and then calling 911 just as they were getting really into their journey into another reality.

Jake & Helen had probably done this before when they were students, and decided to go on retreat again to seek spiritual renewal to overcome Jake's mid-life crisis / stress problems.

I thought the berries really brought out the best in Quinn, I think people like her benefit greatly from being dosed with hallucinogenic drugs (lets face it, she has nothing to lose). She might have a revelatory experience, and with a big enough dose her neural pathways might even get scrambled into something resembling intelligence.

It's kind of sad that Daria didn't take any, she might have turned into a great leader or something. I think we saw a rather straight-laced Daria in this episode, she might at least have sat out the trip and taken notes. She could have become the new Carlos Castaneda.

-Shez.

Shez said:

No, Jake actually screwed up. He is totally clueless regarding wilderness survival, and he probably thought that the berries were something other than what they turned out to be. The Morgendorffers were lucky that his random selection was of something merely2 hallucinogenic rather than truly poisonous.

Daria is probably familiar with her father's lack of woodscraft and decided not to risk eating some random plant he had harvested. She "made her Wisdom save", in D&D terms. The other Morgendorffers muffed theirs ...

Considering that they were alone in the woods, far from help, this "other reality" might well have turned out to be the one Daria imagined visiting in "Ill". American Indian shamans didn't have as high a mortality rate on their "vision quests", but then again (unlike Jake) they knew what they were doing.

I really don't think that either Jake or Helen would deliberately feed random hallucinogens to their daughters.

Quinn IS intelligent, she just applies her intelligence to looking cute and dating boys.

She did exercise competent leadership. She rather competently called 911 and saved the lives of her family.

As opposed to the usual "wild and crazy" Daria? :)

Her notes probably run something like this:

Note#1: Never eat anything Dad picks. Note#2: Avoid future camping trips.

Being Daria is hard enough.

Sincerely Yours, Jordan

On Wed, 12 May 1999 01:32:26 +0100, some letters randomly coalesced from individual pixels, claiming to be from Shez , and it said:

Heh heh, they might as well have ended up on Holiday Island.

Anyway, these "don Juan" stories sound cool, can you give me an actualy title to look for?

There's a whole bunch of them, starting with The Teachings Of Don Juan, and A Separate Reality. I don't think it's necessary to read them in sequence though, in fact I've never got round to reading the first one. I started with the third one (Journey To Ixtlan), which is still my favourite and deals with the handling of perception. Another one I like sets out an intriguing alternate theory of the reality (The Fire From Within).

Whether or not don Juan (variously described as a shaman, seer, or sorcerer) actually existed, and whether the events in the books really took place, has always been a matter of controversy. Like the bible perhaps, a lot of it is a matter of faith. It's worth noting though that Castaneda was dosed with datura drugs (eg. jimson weed) by don Juan, and these are known to give a type of hallucination that you mistake for reality, so Castaneda may well have believed that various bizarre events had taken place when they hadn't. (It's also worth noting that even hardened druggies advise staying away from datura drugs, the consensus view is they're just too dangerous.)

-Shez.

Shez wrote:

I recently read "The Teachings of Don Juan." Even if it's just a fictional account, it makes for a good read. (It's a short book, anyway, but it has good pacing.) The one idea in the book that really stuck with me was don Juan's advice to "follow only a path that has a heart." (May not be exactly right, but I'm not going to get the book right now to double-check.) It means more than it says at face value, but it's something for me to keep in mind in daily life.

Hey, I learned a valuable lesson, and I didn't even have to inhale! ;-)

rich.

Jane: Usually when I have this dream I'm wearing pink taffeta.

Hmm.... wouldn't you die of asphyxiation then?

(hey, he didn't say WHAT he didn't inhale)

Dagny- cynic, general loony

http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697

"I'm not different for the sake of being different, only for the desperate sake of being myself. I can't join your gang: you'd think I was a phoney and I'd know it." Vivian Stanshall

Dagny said:

Fortunately for him, Hilary is by his side, reminding him every now and then to keep breathing :)

Sincerely Yours, Jordan

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This last sentence has got to be the best bit of advice I've seen on usenet for quite a while. With jimsom weed, you never know if you're going round-trip or one-way.