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 MCKENNADon’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.
More Terence McKenna Quotes
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For talking monkeys to speak of truth is hubris of the highest degree. Where is it writ large that talking monkeys should be able to model the cosmos? If a sea urchin or a racoon were to propose to you that it had a viable truth about the universe.
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Nobody is smarter than you are. And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you?
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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.
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The psychedelic inner astronaut sees things which no human being has ever seen before, and no other human being will ever see again. But in fact this has no meaning unless it is possible to carry it back into the collectivity.
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What was created by the era of the proper gentleman was excellent table manners and genocide over most of the surface of the planet.
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And what is the primary datum? It’s the felt presence of immediate experience. In other words, being here now is the primary datum.
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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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What we call reality is in fact nothing more than a culturally sanctioned and linguistically reinforced hallucination.
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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.
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Our assumptions are the edges of our worlds.
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Think about our dilemma on this planet. If the expansion of consciousness does not loom large in the human future, what kind of future is it going to be?
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There is no knowledge without risk taking.
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We have to recognize that the world is not something sculptured and finished, which we as perceivers walk through like patrons in a museum; the world is something we make through the act of perception.
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For all we know, we know nothing.
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Worrying is betting against yourself.
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