Terence McKenna on 'What is Cool"

Anyone familiar with McKenna knows that he frequently bashed modern culture and all its trappings.
He often went on tirades about the silliness, nay, the outright idiocy of advertising, marketing and consumerism.
He quoted the George Orwell maxim that "Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket".

His sense of humor was outstanding, sublime in my opinion..

In this short and very funny talk, he discusses how society is convinced that "cool" can be purchased. The sales and marketing machine has tried to commodify it. But "cool" can't be bought, and that's precisely what makes it cool.




On culture:

"We are led by the least among us. The least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary...."

a reply to: ColeYounger

he was a great man, he is one of those few that cause me to strongly wish for reincarnation to be real so that we may have his soul amongst us for one more round.

he came to my mind just the other day as i was pondering evolution, i had just read this thread www.abovetopsecret.com... and it got me thinking that if evolution as that thread postulates, is always a direct result of a change in the environment, then just what could have changed in our environment that would have told the body to evolve intellect equaling humans, and one of the most intuitive conclusions i could reach was mr McKenna's stoned ape theory,

i find myself agreeing with McKenna more often then not, including his views on culture.

Very well said. Built not bought essentially.

I've been called cooler than the other side of the pillow on many occasions.

I could listen to him talk for hours, and have, actually. He had a great way with words, and thoughts.

a reply to: ColeYounger

Nobody has had more of an impact upon my thinking than McKenna. I spend, on average, an hour or two a day listening to his talks and have done so for the last couple of years and yet I still feel as if I am only just scratching the surface.

For some great articles on McKenna please see here and for a list of his audio talks see here.

He was Kool with a capital 'K'.

I think downfall of 'culture' today is this phenomenon of business and corporations creating/developing 'culture' for their self interest. It is like an artificial culture. Also people have to work too hard to make a living nowadays.. and no time for living.. unless of course you are one of 'those' guys.