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We do not birth our children into the world of nature. We birth our children into the world of culture.

Terence McKenna

It is not easy to measure the ocean, but we can be measured by it, confront it, and be in it.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Confront Easy Measure Ocean
This is what they have suppressed so long. This is why they are so afraid of the psychedelics, because they understand that once you touch the inner core of your own and someone else’s being you can’t be led into thing-fetishes and consumerism.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Afraid Culture Emotional Long Psychedelic Suppressed Understand
If we were to place our power at the service of our imaginations rather than our primate politics we would create a civilization worthy of the name.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Civilization Create Imagination Names Political Power
The artist’s task is to save the soul of mankind; and anything less is a dithering while Rome burns. Because of the artists, who are self-selected, for being able to journey into the Other, if the artists cannot find the way, then the way cannot be found.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Anything Artist Burn Country Journey Mankind Self
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.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Billion Blowing Civilization Kick Mind People Shoulder Six Stand Themselves
Ego is a structure that is erected by a neurotic individual who is a member of a neurotic culture against the facts of the matter. And culture, which we put on like an overcoat, is the collectivized consensus about what sort of neurotic behaviors are acceptable.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Against Blowing Culture Ego Fact Member Mind Neurotic Structure
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.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Degree Game Job Player Told Unimportant
How can we know who is the other until we know who is the self?
TERENCE MCKENNA

Know Other Self Until
And what is the primary datum? It’s the felt presence of immediate experience. In other words, being here now is the primary datum.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Data Datum Experience Felt Immediate Primaries
You are not naked when you take off your clothes. You still wear your religious assumptions, your prejudices, your fears, your illusions, your delusions.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Assumption Clothes Naked Off Prejudice Religion Religious Take
The long night of human history is drawing at last to its conclusion.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Conclusion Draw Drawing Human Last Long Night
To the degree that you avert your gaze from this truth, you build the potential for pain into your life. Everything is this act of embracing the present moment, the felt presence of experience, and then moving on to the next felt moment of experience. It’s literally psychological nomadism is what it is.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Act Degree Everything Experience Literally Moment Movement Potential Present Truth
Don’t worry. You don’t know enough to worry. . . . Who do you think you are that you should worry, for cryin’ out loud. It’s a total waste of time. It presupposes such a knowledge of the situation that it is, in fact, a form of hubris.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Cryin Enough Loud Out Think Waste Worry
Chaos is what we’ve lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Archetype Chaos Dominant Fera Lost Name Our Our World
This is the message of your life and my life – it’s that nothing lasts. Heraclitus said it: Panta Rhei. All flows, nothing lasts. Not your enemies, not your fortune, not who you sleep with at night, not the books, not the house in Saint-Tropez, not even the children – nothing lasts.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Children Last Life Message Moving Nothing Pain
We are the inheritors of a million years of striving for the unspeakable.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Ingheritor Million Strive Unspeakable Year

We do not birth our children into the world of nature. We birth our children into the world of culture.

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We do not birth our children into the world of nature. We birth our children into the world of culture.

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