A Quote by Terence McKenna
To my mind this makes psychedelics central to any political reconstruction, because these are the only force in nature that actually dissolve linguistics structures; lets the mechanics of syntax to be visible, allows the possibility for rapid introduction and spread of new concepts; gives permission for new ways of seeing; and this is what we have to do, we have to change our minds.
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Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.
Only the rare expands our minds, only as we shudder in the face of a new force do our feelings increase. Therefore the extraordinary is always the measure of all greatness. And the creative element always remains the value superior to all others and the mind superior to our minds.
The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind. Our mind works largely by metaphor and comparison, not always (or often) by relentless logic. When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor not because the new guideline will be truer to nature (for neither the old nor the new metaphor lies "out there" in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition.
New ways of seeing can disclose new things: the radio telescope revealed quasars and pulsars, and the scanning electron microscope showed the whiskers of the dust mite. But turn the question around: Do new things make for new ways of seeing?
In fact, technology in, and of, itself does not cause particular kinds of change. It is, essentially, an enabling or facilitating agent. It makes possible new structures, new organizational and geographical arrangements of economic activities, new products and new processes, while not making particular, outcomes inevitable.
We have to find new ways to work without permission, new ways to turn corners and go through doors that are closed off to us to create our own audiences and our own material independently.
We are at a critical point where rapid change is forcing us to look not just to new ways of solving problems but to new problems to solve.
The change is radical it gives us new natures, it makes us love what we hated and hate what we loved, it sets us in a new road; it makes our habits different, it makes our thoughts different, it makes us different in private, and different in public.
I want to stay open. I don't want to shut down the possibility of new ideas, new ways of seeing the world.
Experiments in the visual arts (the invention of new ways of seeing things), are made because, due to the way the apparatus that makes up the mind is made, old processes and patterns have continually to be broken up in order to make it possible to perceive the new aspects and arrangements of evolving consciousness. The great enemy of intelligence is complacency.
Songwriters, we're always looking for new concepts, fresh concepts, and there are only so many ways you can talk about partying, really.
New ways of seeing can disclose new things? But turn the question around. Do new things make for new ways of seeing?
I like intersections. They're the nature of New York, and there's always the possibility that when you're at one you can meet someone new. Have I ever met anyone new at an intersection? No, but I like the idea of it. I like cities because if you're stopping on the corner to wait for a light to change, there's the possibility that you and somebody else can talk. And if you and that somebody else start to talk, then you can start to argue, and if you start to argue, you might start a revolution.
Each day that we live, we're taking in new information, ideas, concepts, experiences, and sensations. We need to consciously stand guard at the doors of our minds to make sure that whatever we're allowing to enter will cause our lives to be enriched, that the experiences we pursue will add to our stockpile of possibility.
Real progress in understanding nature is rarely incremental. All important advances are sudden intuitions, new principles, new ways of seeing.
It's not like it's a brand new vocabulary that permits to have a new reality. It's rather a new vocabulary that lets us see that our lives have always been more complex than traditional categories allow. So, I think, you know, maybe the introduction of new words permits us to rethink what we've taken for granted about what forms bodies take, what the name is for certain kinds of sexual, intimate relations, how we think of a life.
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