Shaman vs Spacemen

[brujaja]

@Der_Trihs

I rather suspect there’s not much overlap between the sort of people who try to commune with vegetation and those who want to colonize space.

I beg to differ! I am confident that we will find some variety of machine elves wherever we go!

Besides, my desire to visit hyperspace, and my desire to see/meet alien lifeforms, come from the same deep-seated desire to communicate with non-human entities.

[brujaja]

@Czarcasm

Wait til you see where you end up when you try to run Google Map through your Ouija Board.

You mean instead of through a Magic 8 Ball, as it is here on Earth?

[Steken]

Which “shamans” are you talking about?

Thing is, used to be that people thought “shamanism” was one and the same all over the world and throughout all of history, but as it turns out (see Alice Kehoe’s Shamans and Religion: An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking), it’s a whole bunch of different things at different times and in different places.

There’s a world of difference between the cosmology of a Samoyedic “shaman” and a Yup’ik “shaman” and an Aymara “shaman” and that patchouli-smelling, argan oil-peddling Austrian hippie “shaman” lady working in the New Age bookstore 'round the corner.

In any case, if the day ever comes when we colonise other planets (I highly doubt it, and I think you’re completely off-base in writing that humanity “looks destined for space migration”), I’m sure we’ll bring both drugs and religion along with us. Wouldn’t be the same without 'em.

[Grestarian]

@Steken

In any case, if the day ever comes when we colonise other planets (I highly doubt it, and I think you’re completely off-base in writing that humanity “looks destined for space migration”), I’m sure we’ll bring both drugs and religion along with us. Wouldn’t be the same without 'em.

…and some will use religion as their drug
…and some will worship their drugs…

@Czarcasm

BTW, if the OP is going to make assertions, such as the possible need for shamans on a space journey, asking why that particular magic caste should be singled out among all the others for inclusion on the trip is certainly reasonable.
…
You still haven’t explained why your particular brand of psycho soup shaman/magic should be the one picked above all the others that exist out there to be brought along on a migratory journey into deep space.
…
Let’s stuff our spaceship with every foolish notion ever conceived, just in case one of them turns out to be a miracle cure! Why focus only on your particular psycho psoup and the shamans that pserve it to the tourists? Seeems a little closed-minded to me, don’t you think?

I nominate Buddhism instead. It seems to me that…

[ul]
[li]the asceticism borrowed from Hinduism could stretch out the nutritional rations – y’know, just in case we get ‘there’ late.[/li][li]the denial-of-worldly-goods thing goes well with packing minimal personal belongings in the cargo hold, thereby conserving fuel[/li][li]that Zen thing about concentrating on emptiness and focusing on nothing would be facilitated by the knowledge that your vessel is surrounded on all sides by all the emptiness and nothing you could ever want. Makes it really easy to visualize, huh?[/li][/ul]
[As a martial artist, I’m admittedly rather biased about this one.]

@Grey

If you can lift a human into space, establish an enclosed ecosystem and exploit space resources then you can drag along a few hundred acorns.

It seems to me that’s how we all got HERE: The Golgafrinchan B-Ark having been sent out with a passenger-load full of freeze-dried nuts…

—G!
What is…six times…nine?!?