Nietzschean Typology thread.

1.

The aim of this thread is to sketch a Nietzschean typology, rank-ordering human beings into basic types and subtypes.

2.

In Lampert's _Leo Strauss and Nietzsche_, there's a section titled A TYPOLOGY OF MORALS WITH ONLY TWO MORAL TYPES, in which he writes:

"At issue is the great Nietzschean theme of the genealogy of conscience, the history of morals that lays bare our spiritual past as the conflict between an instinct to obedience and an instinct to command. These two instincts define the two basic types of human beings and the two different moralities that fit or belong to them." (op.cit., page 73.)

These moralities are what Nietzsche called master morality and slave or herd morality. (I propose that we call the latter "herd morality", for even though it's basically the same as slave morality, the slave--the man of ressentiment--is not simply a herd animal; the man of ressentiment is a master type who has been enslaved--someone who still has chaos within him, a blond beast within him, which however is caged, suppressed, so it can only lacerate _itself_. The slave is the man who resents all chaos, all creativity, all will to power--but it's really his own suppressed will to power which secretly rages against itself! [Men of ressentiment and herd members tend to adopt the same morality, but for different reasons. Herd morality is not really decadent. Sure, the third class Nietzsche mentions in AC 57 consists of people with a significantly lower level of vitality than members of the first and second classes; but they are still "healthy peasants and healthy half-human animals" (WP 1051).])

3.

So now we have the two most basic types, the master type and the herd type. But in section 57 of _The Antichrist(ian)_, Nietzsche distinguishes not two but _three_ basic types:

"In every healthy society there are three types which condition each other and gravitate differently physiologically; each has its own hygiene, its own field of work, its own sense of perfection and mastery. Nature, not Manu, distinguishes the pre-eminently spiritual [_geistig_, also "intellectual"] ones, those who are pre-eminently strong in muscle and temperament, and those, the third type, who excel neither in one respect nor in the other, the mediocre ones--the last as the great majority, the first as the elite." (ib., Kaufmann translation.)

In the OP of a thread about this to which I will link below, I wrote in 2010:

"I think said muscular strength follows from said strength of temperament, as those with a stronger temperament naturally exert themselves more. We have then _two_ qualities: intellectuality and strength of temperament. The three types are then 1) those who stand out for the former quality; 2) those who stand out for the latter quality; and 3) those who stand out for neither."

And, in an even older post I quoted there, I wrote:

"In Hindu thought there are the three _gunas_, or modes of nature. They are rajas, sattva, and tamas. The highest of these is sattva, the lowest, tamas. Let us first consider the middle one, rajas. [...] It is the 'lust to rule' or 'passion for power' (_Herrschsucht_) praised by Zarathustra in his speech Of the Three Evils. It is the will to power--the will to dominion (lordship).
'Will' is a resultant. It results from a coordination of forces, which stimulate each other. If these forces are not well coordinated, or if they are simply lacking, the result is a chaos or absence of forces, respectively. In both cases, the result is _tamas_, inertia. So tamas is the lowest level of will to power--the impotence to power, as Nietzsche calls it in The Antichristian.
Sattva on the other hand is the highest level of will to power."

How is sattva (Being, harmony) the highest level of the will to power? The key to answering this question can be found in the following passage:

"The teaching _mêden agan_ ["nothing in excess"] applies to men of overflowing strength [Kraft]--not to the mediocre. The _enkrateia_ ["temperance"] and _askêsis_ ["exercise; asceticism"] is only a stage toward the heights: the 'golden nature' is higher.
'Thou shalt'--unconditional obedience in Stoics, in the Christian and Arab orders, in the philosophy of Kant (it is immaterial whether to a superior or to a concept).
Higher than 'thou shalt' is 'I will' (the heroes); higher than 'I will' stands 'I am' (the gods of the Greeks).
The barbarian gods express nothing of the pleasure of restraint--are neither simple nor frivolous nor moderate." (Nietzsche, WP 940 whole (1884). Compare BT 4: "overweening pride and excess are regarded as the truly hostile demons of the non-Apollinian sphere, hence as characteristics of the pre-Apollinian age--that of the Titans; and of the extra-Apollinian world--that of the barbarians.")

"Nature" literally means "birth". The "golden nature" are those who are born in harmony, with their great strength not overflowing but kept in check by itself. Elsewhere, Nietzsche writes:

"[A]n ascetic life is a self-contradiction. Here a ressentiment without equal is in control, something with an insatiable instinct and will to power, which wants to become master, not over something in life but over life itself, over its deepest, strongest, most basic conditions; here an attempt is being made to use one’s force [Kraft] to block up the wells of one's force[.]" (GM III.11 (1887).)

Now contrary to such asceticism, the _enkrateia_ ["temperance"] and _askêsis_ is used, not to block up the _wells_ of one's force, but to form _banks_ around one's force, _channeling_ it (see WP 915, where Nietzsche speaks of "wanting to make asceticism natural again: in place of the aim of denial, the aim of strengthening; a gymnastics of the will"). Thus in the chapter "Sublimation, _Geist_, and Eros" from his _Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist_, Kaufmann writes:

"Reason and the sex drive are both forms of the will to power. The sex drive, however, is an impulse, and in yielding to it in its unsublimated form, man is still the slave of his passions and has no power over them. Rationality, on the other hand, gives man mastery over himself; and as the will to power is essentially the '_instinct of freedom_' (GM II 18), it can find fulfillment only through rationality. Reason is the 'highest' manifestation of the will to power, in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fully.
While Nietzsche thus comes to the conclusion that reason is man's highest faculty, his view is not based on any other principle than the power standard. Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty which abstracts from the given, forms universal concepts, and draws inferences, but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses, to organize their chaos, to integrate them into a harmony--and thus to give man power: power over himself and over nature. In human affairs, too, Nietzsche points out, it is reason that gives men greater power than sheer bodily strength." (op.cit., pp. 198-99.)

Sattva, rajas, and tamas correspond perfectly to the logos, thumos, and erôs (reason, spiritedness, and desire) from Plato's _Phaedrus_ (or the nous, thumos, and epithumia (intellect, spiritedness, and appetite) from the _Republic_), respectively.

4.

I will now link to the OP I mentioned. The reason I did not do so before is that it moves from three to four types. For in AC 57, Nietzsche refers to the Laws of Manu--the oldest known codification of the Hindu caste system; but there are not three, but _four_ main castes, and I wanted to stick to three types, for the time being. Now, however, I'm ready to move to four.

We have seen that there is a basic division of people into masters and herd animals, and that the masters can in turn be subdivided into philosophers and warriors (to use the terms Nietzsche uses in AC 56). In my old OP, I concluded that the two lowest Hindu castes are simply _specializations_ of the herd animal type (http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2165970#p2165970). Now in his _What Nietzsche Means_, George Morgan wrote:

"Nietzsche makes specialization the criterion of mediocrity and 'slavery': his lowest caste [of the three, not four] would include professional and business men as well as farmers and artisans. In short, nearly the whole of modern industrial society would become the foundation of the 'culture pyramid'--that is why in the long run he welcomes the development of this society." (op.cit., page 372.)

So it's fitting, if ironic, that Nietzsche lists only three castes: the specializations of the herd do not really divide it into distinct types; they're all mediocre. Still, I think there are two distinct temperaments among the herd, which we need to take into consideration.

The typologist David Keirsey distinguishes four distinct temperaments: the Rational, the Idealist, the Guardian, and the Artisan. But because he's politically correct, he presents them as all equal; and because his books fall in the category of self-help books, he says little if anything negative about each temperament. I, on the other hand, naturally rank them from high to low.

The most basic division is that between sensing and intuition. "Intuition" here does not have the popular superstitious meaning, but is rather the standard translation of Kant's term _Anschauung_: beholding with the mind's eye. The Rational temperament's form of intuition is thinking, that is, focusing on ideas; whereas the Idealist's form of intuition is feeling, that is, focusing on emotions. An emotion, mind you, is not a sensual feeling, like a touch, but a spiritual feeling. The distinction between thinking and feeling in this sense is the most basic subdivision of "intuition".

Now it may seem obvious to associate the Rational with the philosopher, but strange to associate the Idealist with the warrior. Well, first it should be noted that the word "idealism" is here used, not in the strict philosophical sense, but in the popular sense; and second, one should think of Social Justice Warriors and the Romantic view of chivalry (compare the modern meanings of "gentle" and "noble"). In how far such types are driven by genuine sympathy and in how far by a desire to raise their personal reputation is an interesting question. In fact, I'm inclined to regard the Idealist as a type driven primarily by the former, and the highest of the two herd temperaments, the Guardian, as one driven primarily by the latter. After all, the former is about something internal--one's own "heart" or "soul"--, whereas the latter is about external things--other people's opinions.

Now the Artisan may also be concerned with other people's opinions, but for this type, it's not about their _judgments_ but about their _perceptions_. A Guardian wants to be judged positively, whereas an Artisan just wants to be perceived, whether positively or negatively--even as a clown. The deepest need of the Guardian is security, which in society usually requires the favourable opinion of one's milieu; whereas the deepest need of the Artisan is stimulation. (Of the Rational, it is knowledge, and of the Idealist, identity--having a uniquely beautiful soul...)

5.

The next step is not the addition of a fifth caste or class, though it is about what's below the fourth. Below the fourth are the casteless, the out-castes--the drop-outs from all classes. When a member of any of the four classes degenerates, he's no longer worthy of being in any of the classes; he should be considered a chandala, a pariah, an "untouchable". And such drop-outs are like the Qlippoth of Qabalah, or the fallen angels of Christianity: the higher they fell from, the lower they end up:

1. healthy philosophers
2. healthy noble warriors
3. healthy herd animals (temperament A)
4. healthy herd animals (temperament B)
5 a. degenerate herd animals (temperament B)
5 b. degenerate herd animals (temperament A)
5 c. degenerate noble warriors
5 d. degenerate philosophers (e.g., Schopenhauer?)

It's easy to see why a drop-out from a higher class is worse than one from a lower class: a degenerate Social Justice Warrior, for example, can do much greater harm to society--to the class system--than a degenerate hedonist. The hedonist will just be occupied with his own depraved pleasures, whereas the SJW will rally against the whole class hierarchy, in the name of "justice" (equality).

As for the difference between morality of contentedness [herd morality] and morality of discontentedness [slave morality], Morgan writes:

"[W]hereas the healthy _have_ the virtues of rising life--that is the meaning of health--the decadent merely _need_ the virtues of decline. That is, they do not necessarily possess habits appropriate to their condition. Nietzsche believes that in fact they usually choose what is bad for them, since decadence _is_ disintegration and maladjustment. We must therefore distinguish Decadence Moralities proper, which are characteristic _expressions_ of decadence and therefore increase it, from those modes of life _appropriate_ to decadence, which he prefers to call 'hygiene'. If a decadent chooses the latter he must have some remnant of healthy instinct.
[...]
The hygienes which Nietzsche considers more or less appropriate to decadence have this in common, that they tend to eliminate ressentiment rather than express it, and do so by diminishing pain. Such modes of life, he believes, were taught by Jesus, perhaps by Epicurus and Pyrrho, and more realistically by Buddha, 'that profound physiologist'." (_What Nietzsche Means_, pp. 149-50.)

Think of typical Christians, who glorify the forgiveness of Jesus as the ideal, but are themselves really vengeful. Nietzsche somewhere calls the Buddhist "the perfect cow". Slaves tend to praise herd morality as the only good morality, but only to take revenge on the "evil" masters. About herd morality (which he calls Flock Morality), Morgan writes:

"Its cardinal teachings are 'equal rights' and 'sympathy with all suffering', and its ideal is a condition of comfort and safety for all, in which pain has been abolished--in short the complete absence of anything to fear. That would be the final consequence of 'the imperative of flock timidity'." (op.cit., page 154.)

To be sure, though, this is merely the state of herd morality _today_. It has evolved, and it used to see some value in master morality (because warriors are necessary to protect the herd against external threats). So I suppose slave morality can be at odds with herd morality: namely, when the latter is not yet ready for its own "final consequence". And in fact, the Dutch Nietzschean Menno ter Braak said that the Dutch Nazis exemplified "'opposition out of principle'; hating for the sake of hating (for the sake of the pleasure which ressentiment gives those who are incapable of stylizing it); loudly roaring that one wants what one does not want at all, because the fulfillment would only limit the opportunities for hatred" (Ter Braak, "National Socialism as a Doctrine of Rancour"). So the ultimate consequences of herd morality would not just make it obsolete (BGE 201, towards the end); they would deprive the man of ressentiment of his sole pleasure...

Connecting sensualism/idealism to drives/reason.

Keirsey's four temperaments remain difficult to identify with Nietzsche's three classes, even for me. To be sure, in AC 56 Nietzsche calls the philosophers and the warriors "the _noble_ classes"; and in BGE 14, he ties "plebeian tastes" to "eternally popular sensualism", and says that "the charm of the Platonic way of thinking, which was a _noble_ way of thinking, consisted precisely in _resistance_ to obvious sense-evidence". This corroborates my identification of Nietzsche's noble classes with Keirsey's intuitive temperaments, and of Nietzsche's third class with Keirsey's sensing temperaments. What that leaves obscure, however, is the connection between sensuality and the instinct to obedience on the one hand, and between intuition and the instinct to command on the other. Now Nietzsche writes:

"The most spiritual men[!] feel the stimulus and charm of sensuous things in a way that other men--those with 'fleshly hearts'--cannot possibly imagine and ought not to imagine: they are sensualists in the best faith, because they accord the senses a more fundamental value than to that fine sieve, that thinning and reducing machine, or whatever we may call what in the language of the people is named 'spirit'. The strength and power of the senses--this is the essential thing in a well-constituted and complete man: the splendid 'animal' must be given first--what could any 'humanization' matter otherwise!" (WP 1045 whole (1886-87).)

The exact phrase "the most spiritual men", _die geistigsten Menschen_, is used in AC 57 to describe Nietzsche's highest class. And indeed, in BGE 14, he suggests that "the Platonic way of thinking" appealed to men who had "stronger and more demanding senses than our contemporaries, but who knew how to find a higher triumph in remaining masters of their senses". And in GS 372, titled "Why we are no idealists", he writes:

"Formerly philosophers were afraid of the senses. Have we perhaps unlearned this fear too much? Today all of us are believers in the senses [Sensualisten], we philosophers of the present and the future, _not_ in theory but in praxis, in practice... [...] In sum: All philosophical idealism to date was something like a disease, unless it was, as it was in Plato's case, the caution of an over-rich and dangerous health, the fear of _over-powerful_ senses, the prudence of a prudent Socratic.--Perhaps we moderns are merely not healthy enough _to be in need of_ Plato's idealism? And we are not afraid of the senses because----"

Why? Because our senses are not powerful enough! Could it be, then, that there is a connection between overflowing will (WP 940) and over-powerful senses? In _Twilight of the Idols_, "The Problem of Socrates", section 9, Nietzsche presents the Socratic problem not as a problem of senses but as a problem of _instincts, drives, or desires_:

"Socrates understood that all the world [i.e, the Greek or Athenian world] _needed_ him--his means, his cure, his personal artifice of self-preservation... Everywhere the instincts were in anarchy; everywhere one was within five paces of excess: _monstrum in animo_ [the monster within] was the general danger. 'The impulses [Triebe, "drives"] want to play the tyrant; one must invent a _counter-tyrant_ who is stronger'... When the physiognomist had revealed to Socrates who he was--a cave of bad appetites [Begierden, "desires"]--the great master of irony let slip another word which is the key to his character. 'This is true,' he said, but I mastered them all.' _How_ did Socrates become master over _himself_? His case was, at bottom, merely the extreme case, only the most striking instance of what was then beginning to be a universal [or: general] distress: no one was any longer master over himself, the instincts turned _against_ each other."

Socrates became master over himself by being "_absurdly rational_" (section 10). But not all rationality is absurd. As long as one's drives are powerful but not over-powerful, one just needs to be reasonably rational, not absurdly rational.

What is the connection between the senses and the drives? Sensuality means susceptibility to the arousal of one's drives. Contrariwise, philosophical idealism focuses on ideas--what one perceives with one's mind--as opposed to what one perceives with one's senses. And in Hegel, reason is the faculty with which one beholds the Ideas. The drive naturally aroused in a healthy heterosexual man by the sense perception of a fit, fertile woman is the drive to engage in direct sensual contact with her: to see her, hear her, smell her, taste her, and touch her... (According to Freud, adult, genital-centered sexuality is the repressed form of "infantile sexuality", i.e., total sensuality, susceptibility to stimulation all over the body.) The Socratic "cure", the way Socraticism employs rationality against this, is to present as an alternative the pleasure of using one's reason to have intercourse with beautiful _ideas_ instead.

All of this suggests the hypothesis that the intuitive temperaments are not less, but _more_ sensual than the sensing ones. One may want to compare Keirsey's Eysenckian conception of introversion and extroversion: extroverts turn outward because they are not easily stimulated; introverts turn inward because they are easily overstimulated.

Connecting strong/weak drives to commanding/obeying.

If I'm right about the connection between the senses and the drives, the connection between the senses and the dynamic of commanding and obedience is not hard to find. For what happens when someone who is very temperamental (like Nietzsche's warriors, who are "strong in temperament") meets someone who is quite tepid? The former probably pushes the latter around--in fact, he need not even do so physically, he can just _order_ them around!

"In the beginning, the noble caste was always the barbarian caste: their predominance did not lie mainly in physical strength but in strength of the soul--they were more _whole_ human beings (which also means, at every level, 'more whole beasts')." (BGE 257. Cf. WP 1045.)

1. From homogeneous herd to heterogeneous herd.

My reading section 9 of Dawn gave me a new idea with regard to my Nietzschean hierarchy of the Keirsey temperaments. Suppose that, at first, there was only a herd, consisting of a single type. This type was surely a Sensing type, because iNtuition is a mark of a certain sophistication. Now the morality of custom demands that every herd member diligently honour the community's customs. But there will naturally be a difference in diligence between members. Some will simply be lazier than others. The lazier ones will be more lax. These are Keirsey's Artisans--in Jungian terms, Sensing-Perceiving (SP) types. They will be less exacting, more relaxed and open to distractions, loosening of mores. But Keirsey's Guardians (in Jungian terms, Sensing-Judging (SJ) types) will be horrified of any breach of custom, certain that God will punish the whole community for it. So they start _commanding_ the Artisans... Ordering them around, because they always need a kick in the behind. "Today is Tuesday and you haven't put on your blue cap yet! Do so right now!" And the Artisans would reluctantly obey. I already said it years ago: the great commanders are the great obeyers. The first commanders, the Guardians (which is a perfect name for them, considering that their first special function was to be the custodians of custom), were in the beginning simply those who obeyed the customs best. Then, as the best obeyers of custom, they came to represent its demands. It was only later that the Idealists (iNtuitive-Feeling or NF types) made their appearance, not to mention the Rationals (iNtuitive-Thinking or NT types). It turns out that _Hitler_ is usually typed as an introverted NFJ, by the way, and that there are many examples of "tenderhearted" NFs having a somewhat similar historical function. (Hitler supposedly loved animals, which would mean that he, too, could be tenderhearted.) I'm strengthened in my suspicion of the accuracy of Keirseyan/Jungian typology in correspondence to the Nietzschean hierarchy of types!

P.S. The SPs are also more obviously "Sensing" types than the SJs.

[Under construction/To be continued.]

2. From heterogeneous herd to heterogeneous herd with spiritist guides.

Above, I quoted the following passage:

"The most spiritual men feel the stimulus and charm of sensuous things in a way that other men--those with 'fleshly hearts'--cannot possibly imagine and ought not to imagine: they are sensualists in the best faith, because they accord the senses a more fundamental value than to that fine sieve, that thinning and reducing machine, or whatever we may call what in the language of the people is named 'spirit'. The strength and power of the senses--this is the essential thing in a well-constituted and complete man: the splendid 'animal' must be given first--what could any 'humanization' matter otherwise!" (WP 1045 whole.)

Not only is this conception of "what in the language of the people is named 'spirit'" as a "fine sieve", a "thinning and reducing machine", in full agreement with Nietzsche's description of "the basic will of the spirit" in BGE 230; it's also entirely reminiscent of what Aldous Huxley writes in _The Doors of Perception_:

"Reflecting on my [mescalin] experience, I find myself agreeing with the eminent Cambridge philosopher, Dr. C. D. Broad, 'that we should do well to consider much more seriously than we have hitherto been inclined to do the type of theory which Bergson put forward in connection with memory and sense perception. The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main _eliminative_ and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.' According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born--the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things. That which, in the language of religion, is called 'this world' is the universe of reduced awareness, expressed and, as it were, petrified by language. The various 'other worlds', with which human beings erratically make contact are so many elements in the totality of the awareness belonging to Mind at Large. Most people, most of the time, know only what comes through the reducing valve and is consecrated as genuinely real by the local language. Certain persons, however, seem to be born with a kind of by-pass that circumvents the reducing valve. In others temporary by-passes may be acquired either spontaneously, or as the result of deliberate 'spiritual exercises', or through hypnosis, or by means of drugs. Through these permanent or temporary by-passes there flows, not indeed the perception 'of everything that is happening everywhere in the universe' (for the by-pass does not abolish the reducing valve, which still excludes the total content of Mind at Large), but something more than, and above all something different from, the carefully selected utilitarian material which our narrowed, individual minds regard as a complete, or at least sufficient, picture of reality.
The brain is provided with a number of enzyme systems which serve to co-ordinate its workings. Some of these enzymes regulate the supply of glucose to the brain cells. Mescalin inhibits the production of these enzymes and thus lowers the amount of glucose available to an organ that is in constant need of sugar. When mescalin reduces the brain's normal ration of sugar what happens? Too few cases have been observed, and therefore a comprehensive answer cannot yet be given. But what happens to the majority of the few who have taken mescalin under supervision can be summarized as follows.
(1) The ability to remember and to 'think straight' is little if at all reduced. (Listening to the recordings of my conversation under the influence of the drug, I cannot discover that I was then any stupider than I am at ordinary times.)
(2) Visual impressions are greatly intensified and the eye recovers some of the perceptual innocence of childhood, when the sensum was not immediately and automatically subordinated to the concept. Interest in space is diminished and interest in time falls almost to zero.
(3) Though the intellect remains unimpaired and though perception is enormously improved, the will suffers a profound change for the worse. The mescalin taker sees no reason for doing anything in particular and finds most of the causes for which, at ordinary times, he was prepared to act and suffer, profoundly uninteresting. He can't be bothered with them, for the good reason that he has better things to think about.
(4) These better things may be experienced (as I experienced them) 'out there', or 'in here', or in both worlds, the inner and the outer, simultaneously or successively. That they _are_ better seems to be self-evident to all mescalin takers who come to the drug with a sound liver and an untroubled mind.
These effects of mescalin are the sort of effects you could expect to follow the administration of a drug having the power to impair the efficiency of the cerebral reducing valve. When the brain runs out of sugar, the undernourished ego grows weak, can't be bothered to undertake the necessary chores, and loses all interest in those spatial and temporal relationships which mean so much to an organism bent on getting on in the world. As Mind at Large seeps past the no longer watertight valve, all kinds of biologically useless things start to happen. In some cases there may be extra-sensory perceptions. Other persons discover a world of visionary beauty. To others again is revealed the glory, the infinite value and meaningfulness of naked existence, of the given, unconceptualized event. In the final stage of egolessness there is an 'obscure knowledge' that All is in all--that All is actually each. This is as near, I take it, as a finite mind can ever come to 'perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe'."

Huxley took the phrase "the doors of perception" (from which The Doors, in turn, took their band name) from William Blake's _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, in which it says:

"Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed."

And Terence McKenna starts his text for The Shamen's "Re:Evolution" song as follows:

"If the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed."

This should serve to establish a connection between Huxley's book and McKenna's text (not to mention Blake and Morrison). Now in the course of that text, McKenna says:

"[I]n the context of ninety percent of human culture, the shaman has been the agent of evolution, because the shaman learns the techniques to go between ordinary reality and the domain of the ideas, this higher dimensional continuum that is somehow parallel to us, available to us, and yet ordinarily occluded by cultural convention out of fear of the mystery I believe, and what shamans are are people who have been able to de-condition themselves from the community's instinctual distrust of the mystery, and to go into it, to go into this bewildering higher dimension, and gain knowledge, recover the jewel lost at the beginning of time, to save souls, cure, commune with the ancestors and so forth and so on.
Shamanism is not a religion, it's a set of techniques, and the principal technique is the use of psychedelic plants. What psychedelics do is they dissolve boundaries, and in the presence of dissolved boundaries, one cannot continue to close one's eyes to the ruination of the earth, the poisoning of the seas, and the consequences of two thousand years of unchallenged dominator culture, based on monotheism, hatred of nature, suppression of the female, and so forth and so on."

If the typical shaman is an NF type, then we may have found the origin of "that sublime inclination in the man of knowledge which takes a profound, many‑sided and thorough view of things and _wants_ to take such a view: as a kind of cruelty of the intellectual conscience and taste" (BGE 230, Zimmern translation. The Kaufmann translation is really terrible at this point). In fact, in the second Appendix to _Heaven and Hell_, the sequel to _The Doors of Perception_, Huxley writes about religious cruelty against oneself:

"[I]n spite of its obvious disadvantages, almost all aspirants to the spiritual life have, in the past, undertaken regular courses of bodily mortification.
[...]
Fasting was not the only form of physical mortification resorted to by the earlier aspirants to spirituality. Most of them regularly used upon themselves the whip of knotted leather or even of iron wire. These beatings were the equivalent of fairly extensive surgery without anaesthetics, and their effects on the body chemistry of the penitent were considerable. Large quantities of histamine and adrenalin were released while the whip was actually being plied; and when the resulting wounds began to fester (as wounds practically always did before the age of soap), various toxic substances, produced by the decomposition of protein, found their way into the bloodstream. But histamine produces shock, and shock affects the mind no less profoundly than the body. Moreover, large quantities of adrenalin may cause hallucinations, and some of the products of its decomposition are known to induce symptoms resembling those of schizophrenia [as do psychedelics]. As for toxins from wounds--these upset the enzyme systems regulating the brain, and lower its efficiency as an instrument for getting on in the world where the biologically fittest survive. This may explain why the Curé d'Ars used to say that, in the days when he was free to flagellate himself without mercy, God would refuse him nothing. In other words, when remorse, self-loathing and the fear of hell release adrenalin, when self-inflicted surgery releases adrenalin and histamin and when infected wounds release decomposed protein into the blood, the efficiency of the cerebral reducing valve is lowered and unfamiliar aspects of Mind-at-Large (including psi phenomena, visions and, if he is philosophically and ethically prepared for it, mystical experiences) will flow into the ascetic's consciousness."