to answer your specific questions
1) i think what we are talking about here is the trash that litters the mountain.
Fluorescent tents, discarded climbing equipment, empty gas canisters and even human excrement litter the well-trodden route to the summit of the 8,848-metre (29,029-foot) peak. "It is disgusting, an eyesore," Pemba Dorje Sherpa, who has summited Everest 18 times, told AFP. "The mountain is carrying tonnes of waste.
what we are talking about is visual and auditory phenomena without content or context. these are shells. the most they can signal is "i saw the shifting fractal grid too!" these are surface phenomena.
2) this is a larger question and i think it relates closely the cultural cowardice thread. part of the reason we retreat is we are confronted time and again by the imperfections of human hearts and human acts. to return to psychoanalysis, the discipline gained a huge impetus of energy, interest, insight and ideas from its encounter with psychedelics in the '60s. no one can deny the impact of that, but, and this is where Danny is right, and why he's panicking and is right to panic, it was abused on a massive scale.
thousands of leering Fritz Perls running round. this is why Danny is talking about borders, because it
is borders, properly maintained, which protect us from these kind of abuses. on the other hand, borders
prevent us from getting to where we need to go. all of this is the most exquisite and high-risk tightrope act. you need to keep questioning yourself and you need to keep listening to criticism.
you have to have faith in the experience and the utmost suspicion of yourself.
3) i think my last post covered this.
4) it's what i try and do. that's my job.