Culture is an intelligence test, those signing up are failing the test.

This is rather powerful five minute excerpt, it's Terence Mckenna (he died 14 years ago this day today). Part of Mckennas wrap as he became a warhorse of the lecture circuit was educating people about culture in such a way as they had probably not thought of it before. And I think he has a point. Below the video is the transcript.

Direct youtube link



The conclusion that I reach vis–à–vis the individual and civilization is this: culture is not our friend. culture is not your friend, it's not my friend. Its a very uncomfortable set of accommodations that
have been hammered out over time for the convenience of institutions.

A young man gets his first dose of the news that culture is not his friend when told he is to be given an air ticket and some training and then sent to an exotic location to kill it's inhabitants
under the name of some political ideal. You have to be fairly dense at that point to not get the message that culture is not your friend, it is using you for its purposes; you would never dream of doing what it now conceivably right and righteous course of action. Well that’s a black a stark an enormous example of what I'm talking about, but I think that everyday in thousands of ways we betray our impulses towards wholeness towards community, towards freedom towards the spirit by genuflecting to cultural values that are squirely, or simply wrong-headed or obsolete.

Culture is not your friend, it's an illusion. What kind of an illusion is it? It's a childish illusion. Recently I had a physical examination with my doctor and after it was over he leaned back in his chair and said "you know most people back in the 19th century at your age were dead" yes, quite true; people live a great deal longer in the 20th century. And consequently I think part of what drives alienation is culture is like being taken in a crap game. If you play long enough you will work out that you are being screwed. And of course if you die shortly into the game it never enters your mind. Some of you may have seen the little saying that hangs behind bars in Minnesota, "we get too soon old too late smart" well some of us are getting smart earlier and earlier. And what is seen through to then is that culture victimizes, ideology victimizes, these things are all con games. Culturally defined reality is some kind of intelligence test, and those that are joining are failing the test.

We have to stop CONSUMING our culture. We have to CREATE culture. DON'T watch TV, DON'T read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your OWN roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are -- NOW -- is the most immediate sector of your universe. And if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are dis-empowered. You're giving it all away to ICONS. Icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that, you want to dress like X or have lips like Y... This is #-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion. What is real is you, and your friends, your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And, we are told No, you're unimportant, you're peripheral -- get a degree, get a job, get a this, get that, and then you're a player. You don't even want to play that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.

Anyone know why the video is not embedding?

I swear the code was

xxx

here ya go.

The more I listen to Mckenna the more a genius I think he is. Considering he said most these things over 20 years now.

Direct link

Thanks for posting this, love it

ZeuZZ
The more I listen to Mckenna the more a genius I think he is. Considering he said most these things over 20 years now.

Direct link

edit on 6-4-2014 by ZeuZZ because: (no reason given)

I knew that when it was time to play outside with my friends. A game of kids baseball was tops in my days. Saturday morning TV was filled with dreams for children to play the day out with. Those days are long gone. It's like grab your baseball bat, insert some nails in it and hit the ghettos for fun and pleasure anymore these days.

minkmouse
Thanks for posting this, love it

I made it by combining two grassroot clips users have uploaded to youtube, after asking their permission of course.

Always think my cultural background is trash ,it encourage people to hate foreigners.Never believe the "culture" thing when I was a kid.

I am not a American.

Lo I've more or less always felt that way. Been a loner for as long as I can remember, and wouldn't be otherwise even if I could. A small group of friends is more than enough for me lol.

I guess spelling 'ilntelligence' is another intelligence test that I just failed at.

More brilliance from the man.

“We all must try to understand what is happening. We need to try to understand what is happening. In my humble opinion, ideology is only going to get in your way. Nobody understands what is happening. Not Buddhists. Not Christians. Not government scientists. Not… you know. No one!… understands what is happening. So, forget ideology. They betray. They limit. They lead astray. Just deal with the raw data and trust yourself. Nobody is smarter than you are. And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you? People walk around saying ‘Well, I don’t understand quantum physics but somewhere somebody understands it’. That’s not a very helpful attitude towards observing the insights of quantum physics. Inform yourself. What does inform yourself mean? It means transcend and mistrust ideology. Go for direct experience. What do YOU think when YOU face the waterfall? What do YOU think when YOU have sex? What do YOU think when YOU take psilocybin? Everything else is unconfirmable rumor, useless, probably lies. So, liberate yourself from the illusion of culture. Take responsibility for what you think and what you do.”
- Terence McKenna

Damn I miss this guy. My first "real guru" that I found on my own while seeking actively.

He really nailed it.

Modern culture is taught to be okay with what the state wants, even if the state wants genocide.

Its a run away freight train and you all bought tickets.

I am bookmarking the link, and will look at it as soon as I get home, I am on my way out. I have enjoyed his lectures before.

Just a thought that I always have come up concerning this subject-

I am an individualist by nature, independant, solitary.... part of me always sort of wishing I could learn to "fit in" and go with the flow at times, trying to study culture and collective movements to see how to do that, but somehow never quite being able to break out of my tendancy to think for myself and do my own thing.

I don't feel a need to fight against that and free myself, it just seems to happen without my effort.

But something I observe is that not all people are the same, and not all people handle independance and individuality in a responsible way. There are some people, I swear, do not seem to have the intellectual or emotional skills for choice making that allows personal power to be channeled in a way which is respectful of self and others, productive and creative.

They are the ones that collect a bunch of automatic weapons and open fire at their high school or college; they are the ones that consider it perfectly reasonable to lure people into their car and rape and murder them. Or to have ten kids with no male partner and reap in welfare.

Every time I hear a religious person claim that without religion and it's moral rules and condemnations, everyone would go around raping and killing each other, I wonder if this assertion is based on what they have inside them. -and I don't much want to take their restraining religion away from them, if you know what I mean.

It looks like the focus here is the pressure of culture to commit these crimes in a collective way, through war.

If you consider that those attracted to that might be because they already have those drives within them (it just gives them an acceptable way to live it) then maybe war is one way we clean up the gene pool a bit....? Let the predators get together and kill each other, or encourage them to roam amongst the women and children in a solitary hunt? Hmmm....

reply to post by ZeuZZ


I love listening to Mckenna. I used to play one of his many lectures online on headphones, while lying on the bed at night before sleep. It was kind of entering a trip by itself.

reply to post by ZeuZZ


"Culture is an ilntelligence test"

Looks like someone has already failed it then.

When you choose to partake in a society which lives the wrong way you turn yourself into a cancer-cell for this planet. A cell with a defect who unknowingly only contributes to making things worse and which then spreads their bad values over to their offspring, hence making more cancer-cells.

McKenna and Alan Watts have so much wonderfully articulated wisdom for us. I agree with Terrence's sentiment here, but also think about this illusion and how we can use our illusion for bettering ourselves and planet. Culture is a vehicle that can transport us to a wide array of things superficial and ever so complex. I would argue that culture has some value, at least whenever it brings people together for positive change. The arts and the visionaries are an important part of culture.

Culture to me, is a mass of energy containing all the influences and reflection of a society. It is both active and passive and the passive end of things are reactionary to what is around, whereas the active end is where we can make a difference and influence. So if no conscious efforts are created to fill culture with worthiness, then one becomes a victim of everyone's passiveness which is detrimental because the void these days is being fed so much crap that it can choke us.

The counter-culture can still be defined as a culture imo, and that's okay. We should scrutinize the contents of our culture, be wary of it's influences that are negative and sift through what we feel is important and what is destructive. It is tough because our culture has become stained with hate, greed, apathy and desperation, and these factors spread and influence others. Instead use your illusion to make a positive difference. Whether we like culture or not, it is an inevitable facet of our lives unless one becomes a recluse, which is okay too, but usually doesn't happen on a wide spread level.

A couple of good McKenna sites.
McKenna Source
2nd source

speculativeoptimist
McKenna and Alan Watts have so much wonderfully articulated wisdom for us.

I'm very glad you just mentioned Alan Watts. As a minor point in fact the only main two people I consider with worthy enough viewpoints to upload youtube productions to their vocals are Mckenna and Watts. Here is a video I made from an Alan Watts talk about the illusory nature of egotism.

Relevant quote and video I made on this subject:



"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 dehumanizing values that are handed down as control icons.

This is something, 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 fetishizes 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 dehumanize themselves by behaving like machines - meme processors of memes passed down from Madison Avenue and Hollywood…

"Part of what psychedelics do, is they de-condition you from cultural values. This is what makes it such a political hot potato. Since all culture is a kind of con game, the most dangerous candy you can hand out is candy that makes people start questioning the rules of the game."

~ Terence Mckenna, "Into the valley of Novelty" 1997.