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Visionary, ethnobotanist, entheobotanist, writer, linguist, shaman, philosopher, psychonaut and psychedelic explorer Terence McKenna, speaking in Seattle -- at the time of the infamous anti-capitalist inspired Battle of Seattle -- spoke the following words and advised in no uncertain terms, "Culture is not your friend". McKenna was of course talking about corporate culture, the type which seeks to hold hostage and keep from you sounds, shapes, patterns, colours and images that would otherwise be free for all to share.
The following is, in all likelihood, exactly the sort of thing to which McKenna was referring when he suggested the creation of art as part of the fight back against corporate culture and the mass psychology of fascism:
As the man says, don't give up on solutions.
What civilization is, is 6 billion people trying to make themselves happy by standing on each other's shoulders and kicking each other's teeth in. It's not a pleasant situation. And yet, you can stand back and look at this planet and see that we have the money, the power, the medical understanding, the scientific know-how, the love and the community to produce a kind of human paradise. But we are led by the least among us - the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary. We are led by the least among us and we do not fight back against the dehumanising values that are handed down as control icons.
This is something -- I mean I don't really want to get off on this tear because it's a lecture in itself -- but culture is not your friend. Culture is for other people's convenience and the convenience of various institutions, churches, companies, tax collection schemes, what have you. It is not your friend. It insults you. It disempowers you. It uses and abuses you. None of us are well treated by culture.
Yet we glorify the creative potential of the individual, the rights of the individual. We understand the felt-presence of experience is what is most important. But the culture is a perversion. It fetishises objects, creates consumer mania, it preaches endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding in the form of squirrelly religions and silly cults. It invites people to diminish themselves and dehumanise themselves by behaving like machines - meme processors of memes passed down from Madison Avenue and Hollywood and what have you.
How do we fight back? It's a question worth answering. I think that by creating art -- art -- man was not put on this planet to toil in the mud. Or the god who put us on this planet to toil in the mud is no god I want to have any part of. It's some kind of gnostic demon, it's some kind of cannibalistic dema urge that should be thoroughly renounced and rejected.
By putting the art pedal to the metal we really, I think, maximise our humanness and become much more necessary and incomprehensible to the machines.
Terence McKenna - Culture is not your friend
The following is, in all likelihood, exactly the sort of thing to which McKenna was referring when he suggested the creation of art as part of the fight back against corporate culture and the mass psychology of fascism:
"What price for freedom? Fascist martial law."
As the man says, don't give up on solutions.
16 comments:
watching that excellent video I couldn't help thinking that the best way to beat this thing is not to try and challenge it on a conventional battleground of its own choosing
that's what They've been preparing for for years
we're going to have to be smarter than that
next week is going to be interesting, and not necessarilly in a good way
Welcome back to Grate Britain, Stef.
Some thoughts on the issue of choosing (or not, in fact) pre-ordained battles and battlegrounds, posted in response to LWTC247, here.
We are going to have to be very much smarter than that.
Tweeting:
Making like cops, spooks and State sponsored agents provocateurs and following #G20 happenings on Twitter: http://twitterfall.com/?trend=g20
--
less than 20 seconds ago from DestroyTwitter
Great vid, great tune. Reminds me a little of the Stereo MC's.
That is a cracking video. Reminds me of the Stereo MCs too.
Good video but like a number of diamonds, it has it's flaw, which funnily enough, is captured here in the still of the video.
"Indoctrination" (religious symbols fly past).
Yeah, the scourge of religious indoctrination is to blame. That is, the religious beliefs empirically characterised by a massive PLUNGE in uptake.
Errrrm...
Yours in indoctrination...
lwtc247
Not sure what neuvoresistnace there is Stef. If it features pnp junctions, I’d treat it with it with caution. I’d say to beat the c Nuts, we must stop paying tax, stop giving them out labor and stop purchasing their crap, but as know, I’m a traditionalist
As for McKenna...
'Art' is the answer??????????
Oh dear :S
Must watch out for cultures kicking each others teeth in. Strangely, I've never actually seen that.
Art SUCKS
We have...
the money
the power
the medical understanding
the scientific know how
the love and the community
to produce the kind of human paradise.
The money is fake. The power rests with the holders of that fake money, out medical understanding is miserable as is out willingness to pay for others to have it, the scientific know how must be the one permeated with fraudulent results propped up by statistical fiddled and speculative (usually baseless) fairy tales. The love - ah yes, the 30 minute 'meeting to sleeping' silver screen relationship between 'partners' and the over 50% divorce rate. Sounds like a great recipe for paradise, but it sounds slightly familiar.
With ya though on the despicable leaders tho :)
Did the "oou oou, wooooou" monkeys in the audience. I love USan audiences.
“Culture ..linked to.. tax collection schemes”?? – HUH? Binyam Mohammed was linked to Al Quada. So am I via - to OBL himself - via the elastic in my underpants.
"None of us are well treated by culture." said the USan. Pingu grew tired of sandstorms.
culture fetishises objects? - Hummmm.. what was that about Art? Here then, throw that Van Gogh, thos strattavarius (yes I did watch the apprentice) and that syndey opera house on the pyre.
"The God who put us on this planet to toil on the mud." Yeah Terry, I'm sure the people who toil in the mud do so because of God and not because some capitalist scum system that's done rather nicely for you is to blame. And your 'mud' hours are... how many exactly?
So go do some art, but not the kind of idiotic rubbish you just spouted to your rather selected fawning monkeys.
Woooooouuuu, yeah man! Ou ou ou.
Here Ant, here's some real videos for ya.
Enjoy...
Peter Schiff Was Right Again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq1N70vym1g&feature=related
we must stop paying tax, stop giving them out labor and stop purchasing their crap, but as know, I’m a traditionalist
that'd be a damn good start
I'll take batman on the queens balcony or tony blair being pelted with magenta cocks over the kind of dull and predictable window smashing I've just seen on national tv.
The McKenna video was interesting, looked him up and found this:
Timewave zero is a theory that purports to calculate the ebb and flow of novelty in the universe as an inherent quality of time...
According to McKenna, when "novelty" is graphed over time, a fractal waveform known as timewave zero or simply the timewave results. The graph shows at what times, but never at what locations, novelty is supposedly increasing or decreasing...
Important graphic points in 2009, appear around 19 April, 29 August and 23 October 2009, indicating the possibility of significant events around these dates[1]...
With April the 19th not far away I can't wait for what's coming next, is abject poverty for all a novelty???? :) Only time will tell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_theory
Suffering from a severe lack of time in conjunction with spending lots of time AFK for one reason or another.
Will respond to recent comments later, all being well.
Thanks to everyone who has stopped and taken the time to leave a comment.
@lwtc247:
"Indoctrination" (religious symbols fly past).
Yeah, the scourge of religious indoctrination is to blame. That is, the religious beliefs empirically characterised by a massive PLUNGE in uptake.
It could reasonably be argued that any teaching based on written materials hundreds of years old is a form of indoctrination, in just the same way that such an idea could be levelled at things like the national curriculum.
@Dunt like art:
Must watch out for cultures kicking each others teeth in. Strangely, I've never actually seen that
The metaphor appears to have become lost in translation.
@Ever the Thorn
Ignoring for a moment the inherently nihilistic tone of your comment....
The money is fake.
Fake though it may be, money/gold tokens/whatever have historically been accepted (against better judgement) as tokens of exchange.
The power rests with the holders of that fake money
The power rests with the people who, unfortunately, are not yet quite as organised as the holders of that fake money.
out medical understanding is miserable
Miserable it may be but the collective medical knowledge of the planet could be harnessed to make many lives considerably less miserable.
as is out willingness to pay for others to have it, the scientific know how must be the one permeated with fraudulent results propped up by statistical fiddled and speculative (usually baseless) fairy tales.
When the generation of profit is the primary motivating factor in anything that is done, it seems fairly obvious that honesty and integrity will be left trailing in the dust. It's a systemic issue relating to capitalism.
The love - ah yes, the 30 minute 'meeting to sleeping' silver screen relationship between 'partners' and the over 50% divorce rate. Sounds like a great recipe for paradise, but it sounds slightly familiar.
We are very far removed from any sort of organic and natural way of organising human relationships. Social relationships are little more than monetary considerations, so it is hardly a surprise that institutions consumer friendly arrangements such as nuclear-family marriages are as doomed to fail as they are condemned to succeed against all odds.
"The God who put us on this planet to toil on the mud." Yeah Terry, I'm sure the people who toil in the mud do so because of God and not because some capitalist scum system that's done rather nicely for you is to blame.
Such is the hierarchy, much of which hangs off the legacy of the Divine Right of Kings, the god given right to own everything and subjugate everyone in one's own interest. The separation of church and State isn't quite as clear cut as many might like to believe.
@TheBaron
McKenna is an interesting character and in his time covered a wide range of issues, including his slightly more esoteric Timewave Zero and novelty theory.
If you've got a bit of spare time on your hands, there's lots of video and audio of McKenna doing the rounds on the web. He was pretty good on language and linguistics too.
I can think of worse ways to spend a few hours.
Speaking of indoctrination....
Britain to deploy Google against terrorists news
London: Seeking new ways to combat the growing scourge of terror, the British government may have come up with a new idea - deploying internet search engine Google against terrorists.
A report in The Register says the UK Home Office's Office for Security and Counter Terrorism (OSCT) plans to work with "approved" Islamist Web sites to "flood the Internet" with pro-Western viewpoints.
The idea itself is about as old as the search engines themselves – the OSCT will train operators of the pro-Western sites in search engine optimization. The strategy aims to ensure your site comes up high on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live Search results pages.
The theory is to ensure that young British Muslims searching online for say, "jihad," will be directed to pro-Western Web sites instead of Al Qaeda mouthpieces.
"In order to support mainstream voices, we work with local partners to help develop their communication, representational and leadership skills," an unnamed Home Office spokesman told The Register. "This support could include media training, which can help make their voices heard more widely, and support the development of skills which allow communities to be more effective in debate."
Experts, however, are skeptical that such strategies would be effective. A recent study by the International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence (ICSR) said, "It is unlikely that any but the most callow wannabe terrorist would use a mainstream search engine to find banned material."
The report, entitled "Countering Online Radicalization," expressed doubts that curbing Islamist material online would impact terrorist activity in any meaningful way.
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