Monday, March 17, 2008

What is needed is a Radical Openness to New Ideas of all sorts

"Business as usual is no longer an option. There is no middle way. There is no Ozzie and Harriet third millenium scenario. The choices are either a hideous, nightmarish world, a Soylent Green kind of world. A world where people of privilege defend that privilege with tremendous establishments of armament and propaganda and the rest of the world slips into poverty, starvation, desparation and death.

This is the kind of world that rationalists fear, and it's also the only kind of world they can imagine because they are bankrupt of inspiration and ideas. So the entire effort of the Establishment has become one of holding down panic, keeping the ball in play, keeping ordinary people and ordinary populations quiescent through drugs which are not psychedelic, through forms of media which are not transcendental and inspiring, but which are narcoleptic and deadening.

This is the fiction that we live in. This is why our situation feels so schizophrenic. Of course as we go through this presidential election the contradictions are heightened almost to the point off nausea because what is under discussion is what manner of fine-tuning shall be applied to the social machinery in order to make it possible to hold together the illusion of business as usual - and the answer is there is no such fine-tuning, it's all finished. Instead what is needed is a radical openness to new ideas of all sorts." Terence McKenna

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Terence never fails to astonish me with his insights. I can't believe he's been gone for nearly 8 years now.

I'm wondering from where was this quote taken and from what year? Thanks.

Dedroidify said...

So would I, if anyone can help? ;)

I think the person who forwarded it to me found it on deoxy. But there are no details there about where the quote is from.

Anonymous said...

OK, no worries - thanks anyway.

BTW love the blog and I appreciate the amount of work you do to update it with new brainfood.