[00:00:00 - 00:00:05]	 Okay, I really want to thank a few people. I especially want to thank WFMU.
[00:00:05 - 00:00:11]	 There are quite a few radio personalities on WFMU who really helped publicize
[00:00:11 - 00:00:20]	 Franco Toole and Doug Shulkin, who's the director there. Let's see, Fabio and Dave
[00:00:20 - 00:00:23]	 Mandel, quite a few other people. So I really thank you. It's one of the hippest
[00:00:23 - 00:00:29]	 little radio stations around, 91.1. So WFMU, thanks a lot. I also want to
[00:00:29 - 00:00:34]	 thank Rick Doblin of MAPS, which is a group called the Multidisciplinary
[00:00:34 - 00:00:38]	 Association for Psychedelic Studies, a very serious organization in Charlotte
[00:00:38 - 00:00:42]	 that does a lot of pioneering work and encouraging serious research into
[00:00:42 - 00:00:45]	 psychedelic drugs, something that hasn't been done seriously enough for a long
[00:00:45 - 00:00:51]	 time for obvious reasons, and they do wonderful work. So anyway, kudos to Rick
[00:00:51 - 00:00:54]	 Doblin and MAPS in Charlotte, North Carolina, for those of you who want to
[00:00:54 - 00:01:03]	 check them out. All right, on to the main event. I don't know, every time I
[00:01:03 - 00:01:08]	 introduce Terrence, I go through a few changes. Terrence is certainly
[00:01:08 - 00:01:11]	 remarkable, and there are quite a few things that are remarkable about him.
[00:01:11 - 00:01:16]	 Whenever I think I've heard his rap and I figure out I know what he's going to
[00:01:16 - 00:01:23]	 say, he'll blow my mind and do some rant on monogamy, monotheism, and monotony, or
[00:01:23 - 00:01:28]	 he'll, at the Seeds of Change conference in San Francisco last year, he delivered
[00:01:28 - 00:01:34]	 an incredible political tirade against militarism and dealing with issues of
[00:01:34 - 00:01:39]	 overpopulation, and so he's full of surprises, even though we know generally
[00:01:39 - 00:01:43]	 the territory he covers. He's capable of pulling the rabbit out of the hat on
[00:01:43 - 00:01:48]	 many occasions. One reason for that is that he has the good fortune, I guess, of
[00:01:48 - 00:01:53]	 being part of that white tribe of the Irish who are the best white rappers,
[00:01:53 - 00:02:02]	 certainly, overall, you know, of any white ethnic group. And I've got to admit that
[00:02:02 - 00:02:05]	 I don't always agree with Terrence. Of course, I don't always agree with anyone,
[00:02:05 - 00:02:12]	 not even myself, on different days, but I have a hard time sometimes accepting
[00:02:12 - 00:02:18]	 ideas about the singularity at the end of history in 2012. I'm a little too earthy
[00:02:18 - 00:02:23]	 or earthbound or limited in my ability to fantasize that way, although I always
[00:02:23 - 00:02:30]	 enjoy the intellectual ride. I also can't quite accept his blanket dismissal of
[00:02:30 - 00:02:36]	 many spiritual, all spiritual traditions and techniques, and even though the
[00:02:36 - 00:02:39]	 psychedelic experience has been a centerpiece of my life in many ways, or
[00:02:39 - 00:02:45]	 one of them, I also, more than Terrence, am very wary about some of the potential
[00:02:45 - 00:02:50]	 downsides, physiologically, psychologically, even ideologically. But nonetheless,
[00:02:50 - 00:02:54]	 that's not really the point, and you're not here to hear me, you're here to hear Terrence.
[00:02:54 - 00:03:02]	 But Terrence is the only person really putting himself out on the line with an
[00:03:02 - 00:03:08]	 incredibly courageous stand, really defending the psychedelic sacrament
[00:03:08 - 00:03:14]	 experience, which has, after all, been one of the centerpieces of many, many
[00:03:14 - 00:03:17]	 cultures around the world, whether it's Ayahuasca in the Amazon or Soma in the
[00:03:17 - 00:03:24]	 ancient Vedic texts of India or psilocybin in ancient Mexico or so on,
[00:03:24 - 00:03:30]	 peyote. These have been incredibly important substances in many, many
[00:03:30 - 00:03:34]	 ancient religions and are still widely used today, as most of you, I'm sure, are
[00:03:34 - 00:03:40]	 aware. So Terrence has really put himself out there, and I think, see, more and more
[00:03:40 - 00:03:45]	 young people are taking to his message. And I worry sometimes that he'll become
[00:03:45 - 00:03:51]	 too popular and that the ruling elites who somehow so far ignored him, thank God,
[00:03:51 - 00:03:55]	 for the most part might suddenly pay more attention, and that worries me a
[00:03:55 - 00:03:57]	 little bit, but I know that Terrence wants to get the message out to as many
[00:03:57 - 00:04:04]	 people as possible. So perhaps they're seduced by the sinuous syntax into
[00:04:04 - 00:04:07]	 not quite comprehending what he's talking about. Let's hope that that's the
[00:04:07 - 00:04:13]	 case. Anyway, and as a spokesperson, I can't imagine a better
[00:04:13 - 00:04:18]	 spokesperson. What an orator. You know, that's what I think Terrence turns me on.
[00:04:18 - 00:04:23]	 Most is his incredible ability with the English language. If you can imagine a
[00:04:23 - 00:04:30]	 combination of Plotinus, James Joyce, Lord Buckley, Ice-T and Charlie Parker,
[00:04:30 - 00:04:36]	 that would give you some idea of Terrence's abilities. Anyway, so let's
[00:04:36 - 00:04:41]	 bring him out and see if he lives up to my rep.
[00:04:42 - 00:04:45]	 [Applause]
[00:05:01 - 00:05:11]	 All right. So I trust the mic is adjusted, you've been through that, been there, done
[00:05:11 - 00:05:18]	 that. Good. It's great to be back in New York on a spring evening. I can hardly
[00:05:18 - 00:05:29]	 restrain myself to pour into the matter at hand. However, before I do, I want to
[00:05:29 - 00:05:36]	 thank JP for that lengthy disclaimer and introduction. Now you know where he
[00:05:36 - 00:05:44]	 stands, and I think I know where I stand. The occasion for being here, if there
[00:05:44 - 00:05:51]	 needs to be an occasion, is that the invisible landscape is finally out in
[00:05:51 - 00:06:02]	 the new edition. It hasn't been available since 1975, and somebody said to me, you
[00:06:02 - 00:06:07]	 know, it's really good that the invisible landscape came out last because you
[00:06:07 - 00:06:13]	 actually sort of went downhill from there, which I sort of agree. I think it's
[00:06:13 - 00:06:20]	 the best piece. It's also the least compromising. It's not something you can
[00:06:20 - 00:06:28]	 shout about from four feet behind the footlights. It's more the brothers
[00:06:28 - 00:06:37]	 McKenna's collective stab at immortality. Anyway, it's available. I think it's a
[00:06:37 - 00:06:43]	 very interesting book. I hope you'll read it. It's the companion volume to True
[00:06:43 - 00:06:49]	 Hallucinations, which has been out in hardback for a year, but is now also out
[00:06:49 - 00:07:01]	 in paper. So much for the necessary self-promotion. Okay, this is called
[00:07:01 - 00:07:07]	 either Vertigo at History's Edge or End. I'm not sure which because I hurried
[00:07:07 - 00:07:14]	 past the poster this morning when I wrote down the title. My notion with this
[00:07:14 - 00:07:22]	 lecture is to talk about is there any reason why smart people should hope. In
[00:07:22 - 00:07:31]	 other words, can one combine intelligence with hope and not betray one or the
[00:07:31 - 00:07:38]	 other? Is the only reasonable position of intellectuals and people steeped in
[00:07:38 - 00:07:45]	 Western tradition and history, one of total hand-wringing, head-scratching
[00:07:45 - 00:07:54]	 despair? This is the official position of the culture, as a matter of fact. Hope is
[00:07:54 - 00:08:04]	 very unsheathe, or it was until recently. There is now, I think, a turning of the
[00:08:04 - 00:08:11]	 corner on this issue in the culture. First of all, simply because despair has
[00:08:11 - 00:08:18]	 been done very well by a number of people. The French got there first. Nobody
[00:08:18 - 00:08:26]	 is going to beat them at that game, and we've been at it since 1950, and I think
[00:08:26 - 00:08:34]	 the various positions have now been run through. So is there a reasonable basis
[00:08:34 - 00:08:41]	 for hope, and how deeply do we have to reconstruct the premises of our world
[00:08:41 - 00:08:50]	 view in order to legitimately believe in the human enterprise ourselves and each
[00:08:50 - 00:08:57]	 other? Well, the answer is you've got to go deep. We've been on a bummer for a long
[00:08:57 - 00:09:04]	 time. Western civilization enshrines as its central mystery the law of
[00:09:04 - 00:09:10]	 thermodynamic entropy, which is a huge bring-down. It basically says everything
[00:09:10 - 00:09:19]	 falls apart, everything dissipates into less structure, less order, everything is
[00:09:19 - 00:09:26]	 fleeting, and from materialism we've learned to accept the idea that death is
[00:09:26 - 00:09:36]	 the yawning grave, your compost, that's it. A series of very quote-unquote
[00:09:36 - 00:09:45]	 existential presumptions have been built in to Western civilization over the past
[00:09:45 - 00:09:51]	 three or four hundred years with greater and greater ferocity, and this
[00:09:51 - 00:09:58]	 hopelessness is a concomitant to the rise of hierarchical managerial
[00:09:58 - 00:10:07]	 structures in Western society. In other words, a precondition for hierarchical
[00:10:07 - 00:10:16]	 management of society is a docile, confused, disheartened population
[00:10:16 - 00:10:25]	 stabilized in an economic system that places a premium on low awareness,
[00:10:25 - 00:10:33]	 repetitious, uncreative lives, and this is the kind of situation in which many many
[00:10:33 - 00:10:44]	 people, more and more people, find themselves. So because I have an innate
[00:10:44 - 00:10:51]	 intuition that the universe is a more positive enterprise than that, and
[00:10:51 - 00:11:00]	 because I think a fair examination of nature would support this anti
[00:11:00 - 00:11:06]	 existential position, I sort of wanted to talk about this this evening and show
[00:11:06 - 00:11:13]	 how some of the things in my shtick which are most misunderstood and most
[00:11:13 - 00:11:23]	 misrepresented are in fact in orbit around this attempt to empower optimism
[00:11:23 - 00:11:30]	 in a domain of believability. I mean it's easy to be an optimist if you're
[00:11:30 - 00:11:38]	 a nitwit, but you know to be an optimist and be cool, this is the challenge. It's
[00:11:38 - 00:11:48]	 not easy. I think that our worldview has overlooked two fundamental facts
[00:11:48 - 00:11:55]	 about the nature of reality, and the absence of these two fundamental facts
[00:11:55 - 00:12:03]	 in our models of how the universe works is what has given us such a downward
[00:12:03 - 00:12:13]	 trajectory into factionalism, existential despair, a broken connection to nature,
[00:12:13 - 00:12:19]	 and in some cases to each other. Two fundamental things were overlooked and I
[00:12:19 - 00:12:26]	 want to discuss them and then show how the recovery of these things feeds in to
[00:12:26 - 00:12:34]	 a legitimate optimism. Okay the first thing that science overlooked, and by
[00:12:34 - 00:12:40]	 science I mean the entire Western value package, the science, the politics, the
[00:12:40 - 00:12:46]	 religion, the aesthetics, because it is all derivative of Renaissance science and
[00:12:46 - 00:12:54]	 transformed classical values. What was overlooked was what I call the
[00:12:54 - 00:13:00]	 conservation of novelty. Now what I mean by this is something very easy for you
[00:13:00 - 00:13:08]	 to convince yourself is happening. The conservation of novelty is simply that
[00:13:08 - 00:13:19]	 over time the universe has become more complicated. New levels of complexity
[00:13:19 - 00:13:30]	 become the foundations for yet deeper levels of complexity, and this phenomenon
[00:13:30 - 00:13:38]	 of the production and conservation of what I call novelty is not something
[00:13:38 - 00:13:45]	 which goes on only in the biological domain or only in in the cultural domain
[00:13:45 - 00:13:57]	 or only in the domain of physics. It is a trans categorical impulse in reality,
[00:13:57 - 00:14:05]	 meaning it's everywhere, everywhere. The universe was born in a state of great
[00:14:05 - 00:14:12]	 simplicity. There were no atoms, there were no molecules, there were no stars,
[00:14:12 - 00:14:20]	 there was only a plasmic ocean of energy. The physics for describing this were
[00:14:20 - 00:14:29]	 very simple. As time passed you could almost imagine complexity crystallizing
[00:14:29 - 00:14:37]	 out of a universe that cools. As it cools new properties emerge, what David Bohm
[00:14:37 - 00:14:46]	 called emergent properties come out of the universal mix. Atomic systems form.
[00:14:46 - 00:14:52]	 This creates an entirely new domain of matter different from the plasma that
[00:14:52 - 00:15:02]	 preceded it. As the universe cools matter aggregates into stars. Stars cook out
[00:15:02 - 00:15:09]	 heavier elements, among them carbon. Carbon sets the stage for four valent
[00:15:09 - 00:15:19]	 complex polymer chemistry that sets the stage for life. Simple life sets the
[00:15:19 - 00:15:27]	 stage for complex life. Complex life sets the stage for multicellular advanced
[00:15:27 - 00:15:34]	 animals, land animals, so forth and so on. You see what the process is here. It's
[00:15:34 - 00:15:41]	 that each emergent property becomes a building block for a new set of
[00:15:41 - 00:15:45]	 phenomena. The the
[00:15:45 - 00:15:52]	 contrast sense of atomic systems allows the physical world. The generation of
[00:15:52 - 00:15:58]	 carbon chemistry allows the organic world. The complexification of advanced
[00:15:58 - 00:16:05]	 animals allows the conscious world of human culture and civilization. Now
[00:16:05 - 00:16:11]	 interesting to note about this is it's fairly obvious. I don't think we have to
[00:16:11 - 00:16:16]	 beat each other over the head with it. It's pretty clear that it's true and
[00:16:16 - 00:16:23]	 that it's happening. Yet science has never joined us in this perception of the
[00:16:23 - 00:16:31]	 obvious. Science believes in evolution but in biological systems but
[00:16:31 - 00:16:37]	 defines it as a completely non-progressive process where random
[00:16:37 - 00:16:48]	 mutation meets natural selection and out of this comes an ever differentiating set
[00:16:48 - 00:16:54]	 of forms. But an orthodox evolutionary biologist will be quick to tell you you
[00:16:54 - 00:17:01]	 mustn't make the intellectual error of thinking of this as progress or advance
[00:17:01 - 00:17:11]	 or movement toward a goal. These are all teleological ideas that science expunged
[00:17:11 - 00:17:20]	 from its evolutionary theory. So it is biological process is not seen as
[00:17:20 - 00:17:27]	 progressive and yet what I'm saying to you this evening is that not only is
[00:17:27 - 00:17:35]	 biology progressive but it emerges out of an antecedent progressive process the
[00:17:35 - 00:17:41]	 evolution of physical matter and the physical universe of stars and so forth
[00:17:41 - 00:17:52]	 and it anticipates a deeper advance into progressive integration in the form of
[00:17:52 - 00:18:01]	 culture, language, human beings, the creation of material culture, the
[00:18:01 - 00:18:08]	 elaboration of the arts and sciences so forth and so on. Okay that's and that's I
[00:18:08 - 00:18:16]	 think fairly obvious and yet science by denying it gives us no arrow of purpose
[00:18:16 - 00:18:24]	 in the felt world of human existence. When you go to the universities and you
[00:18:24 - 00:18:31]	 ask what is history you will be told it's a trendlessly fluctuating process.
[00:18:31 - 00:18:37]	 Well this is fascinating if it's a trendlessly fluctuating process it is
[00:18:37 - 00:18:44]	 the only process ever behaved ever observed to behave in that fashion.
[00:18:44 - 00:18:51]	 Processes by their very nature have an innate predictability so that's the
[00:18:51 - 00:18:58]	 first thing that I think science and the worldview derivative of it has overlooked
[00:18:58 - 00:19:05]	 that from the very birth of the universe there was a progressive advance into
[00:19:05 - 00:19:12]	 complexity that built on previously achieved levels and adumbrated those
[00:19:12 - 00:19:18]	 levels brought them to still a deeper expression of novelty and
[00:19:18 - 00:19:27]	 complexification until we arrive at this moment in this city and I submit to you
[00:19:27 - 00:19:35]	 this is the most complex moment in the most complex place in the universe to
[00:19:35 - 00:19:46]	 date because we have the physical world the natural world the your basic human
[00:19:46 - 00:19:53]	 world your basic post-industrial human world the world of electronic human
[00:19:53 - 00:20:00]	 integration the world of post modernity we are living we are the inheritors of
[00:20:00 - 00:20:06]	 all the complexity that preceded us okay so then that brings me to the second
[00:20:06 - 00:20:17]	 point empowering optimism of a fairly radical sort and again I appeal to your
[00:20:17 - 00:20:23]	 observational intelligence nothing is going to be asserted that runs counter
[00:20:23 - 00:20:30]	 to intuition but what is asserted runs counter to the description of reality
[00:20:30 - 00:20:36]	 that we're getting from science the second point it relates to the first it
[00:20:36 - 00:20:46]	 is this not only has novelty conserved itself and built on what had been
[00:20:46 - 00:20:53]	 achieved in the past to move toward the future but and of the two points this is
[00:20:53 - 00:21:01]	 the more important each stage of advancement into novelty into complexity
[00:21:01 - 00:21:09]	 into concrescent has preceded more quickly than the phase which preceded it
[00:21:09 - 00:21:19]	 the universe is in a state of asymptotic acceleration of some sort and this has
[00:21:19 - 00:21:27]	 been completely ignored not ignored denied by science I mean science says
[00:21:27 - 00:21:31]	 that everything interesting happened at the beginning of the birth of the
[00:21:31 - 00:21:39]	 universe in a few very short eras a number of physical states came and went a
[00:21:39 - 00:21:44]	 number of sets of physical laws superseded each other but after a few
[00:21:44 - 00:21:51]	 minutes the universe settled in to a steady cooling along the the lines which
[00:21:51 - 00:21:57]	 we see around us and then science says that at some unimaginably distant point
[00:21:57 - 00:22:03]	 in the future the stars will burn out and tropic heat death will set in all
[00:22:03 - 00:22:08]	 structure will dissipate and the whole thing will sort of evaporate away like an
[00:22:08 - 00:22:22]	 alka-seltzer tablet to maintain that kind of an entropic view of the universe you
[00:22:22 - 00:22:30]	 have to completely ignore the importance of biology now it so happens that we
[00:22:30 - 00:22:37]	 live around a very stable star that probably has a life span of seven or
[00:22:37 - 00:22:44]	 eight billion years but this has given us a false sense of the stability and
[00:22:44 - 00:22:52]	 the enduringness of matter the lives of most stars are on the order of half a
[00:22:52 - 00:23:01]	 billion to a billion years life has been active on this small planet for a
[00:23:01 - 00:23:12]	 billion and a half years as a process with inert tenacity life is as
[00:23:12 - 00:23:20]	 persistent as the stars themselves in fact more so now we know that stars are
[00:23:20 - 00:23:27]	 simply large nuclear furnaces which eventually use up all their fuel and run
[00:23:27 - 00:23:36]	 down but what life is we're not at all sure hardly to speak of intelligence
[00:23:36 - 00:23:45]	 life and intelligence are the wild cards in the universal deck we now aspire to a
[00:23:45 - 00:23:51]	 planetary civilization to the electronic storage of information for
[00:23:51 - 00:23:57]	 eons and we have only been at this global cultural game for about 50 years
[00:23:57 - 00:24:08]	 it's very clear to me at least that life is a process as important in shaping the
[00:24:08 - 00:24:13]	 eventual destiny of the universe as physics or chemistry and that
[00:24:13 - 00:24:22]	 intelligence also plays a role there well if you have a universe that is
[00:24:22 - 00:24:30]	 building on consent achieved novelty and building faster and faster then you have
[00:24:30 - 00:24:39]	 a universe which is consuming its share of time if you will a universe which is
[00:24:39 - 00:24:47]	 building toward its conclusive de no more much faster than the entities the
[00:24:47 - 00:24:58]	 beings embedded in it might suppose and I said that in order to hope you have to
[00:24:58 - 00:25:06]	 dump the whole scientific view of the universe you also have to take your own
[00:25:06 - 00:25:15]	 human much more seriously as a way to let us escape from moral obligation to
[00:25:15 - 00:25:22]	 ourselves and each other science proclaimed the ephemerality of the
[00:25:22 - 00:25:28]	 human experience that we arose on a minor planet around an uninteresting
[00:25:28 - 00:25:34]	 star in a typical galaxy we are no more than animals we will have our moment we
[00:25:34 - 00:25:41]	 will sputter out we will leave a greasy trace in the shales and that will be it
[00:25:41 - 00:25:49]	 and therefore talking about higher values love ethical obligation and so
[00:25:49 - 00:25:55]	 forth it's thought to be terribly old-fashioned I take an entirely different
[00:25:55 - 00:26:03]	 view harking back to the Renaissance humanists with a vengeance and I think
[00:26:03 - 00:26:14]	 that human beings on this planet and the kind of society that we live in is an
[00:26:14 - 00:26:27]	 enunciation of the approaching ascent into higher levels of novelty nothing is
[00:26:27 - 00:26:38]	 unannounced nothing comes unexpectedly if you know how to read the signs and for a
[00:26:38 - 00:26:44]	 very very long time the human species has been knitting itself together
[00:26:44 - 00:26:50]	 claiming technologies which allow the manipulation of energy letting its
[00:26:50 - 00:26:56]	 population run uncontrolled to force an ever-expanding cultural and
[00:26:56 - 00:27:06]	 technological frontier the presence of ourselves on this planet is the major
[00:27:06 - 00:27:13]	 evidence that a transcendental process of some sort is underway here if this
[00:27:13 - 00:27:22]	 were a planet of chipmunks glaciers butterflies and caribou herds Darwinian
[00:27:22 - 00:27:29]	 evolution with a few twiddles would be perfectly adequate to explain what is
[00:27:29 - 00:27:36]	 going on here but an acceleration of process in a limited domain of biology
[00:27:36 - 00:27:44]	 beginning about a million years ago indicates to me that we are now entering
[00:27:44 - 00:27:51]	 the short epoch meaning these periods in which the evolution of novelty
[00:27:51 - 00:27:59]	 occurs so rapidly that transitions from one domain to another actually can be
[00:27:59 - 00:28:08]	 noted within the lifetime of single human being it's an enormous act of
[00:28:08 - 00:28:19]	 intellectual acrobatics to deny that we appear to be failing toward catastrophe
[00:28:19 - 00:28:25]	 at a thousand miles an hour with nobody able to figure out where the break is I
[00:28:25 - 00:28:33]	 believe governments scientific industrial democracies are simply now managing the
[00:28:33 - 00:28:40]	 terror of apocalypse because they have no clue as to how to halt direct manage
[00:28:40 - 00:28:48]	 or control the processes that they have set in motion population growth
[00:28:48 - 00:28:54]	 extraction of minerals toxification of the environment the raising of middle
[00:28:54 - 00:28:59]	 class expectations in the hearts of billions of impoverished people in the
[00:28:59 - 00:29:06]	 third world the institutions which created this situation have no notion as
[00:29:06 - 00:29:12]	 to how to direct and control it this is why we're not getting any kind of
[00:29:12 - 00:29:18]	 leadership from the top why everything is managed toward a steady state
[00:29:18 - 00:29:26]	 meanwhile technology which is the downloading of human ideas into the
[00:29:26 - 00:29:34]	 domain of matter is proceeding unabated around the clock I mean we have hardware
[00:29:34 - 00:29:40]	 for which we have not yet written software because we have no idea how to
[00:29:40 - 00:29:46]	 take advantage of the machines that have already been put in place there is no
[00:29:46 - 00:29:52]	 one planning the evolution of our integration into our technology you are
[00:29:52 - 00:29:59]	 free to write any kind of software you like no one can foresee then the
[00:29:59 - 00:30:06]	 consequences of all of this technological development software wetware hardware
[00:30:06 - 00:30:13]	 being stirred together the planet has shrunk to a single informational point
[00:30:13 - 00:30:21]	 the passing of every day every week brings us closer and closer to a kind of
[00:30:21 - 00:30:28]	 informational tangentiality with each other well I believe following the
[00:30:28 - 00:30:34]	 dictum that nothing is unannounced that we can from what is happening to us now
[00:30:34 - 00:30:42]	 extrapolate toward this adventure in transformational novelty that is now
[00:30:42 - 00:30:52]	 looming ahead of us with such presence that it casts an enormous shadow over
[00:30:52 - 00:30:59]	 the three-dimensional landscape of historical becoming and we as moderns
[00:30:59 - 00:31:07]	 are very conflicted about this because the only vocabulary we have to deal with
[00:31:07 - 00:31:16]	 something like this is the vocabulary of discredited religion before the rise of
[00:31:16 - 00:31:23]	 science before the rise of technology when when religions presided over a much
[00:31:23 - 00:31:34]	 more slow-moving and easily managed world great thinkers of all persuasions
[00:31:34 - 00:31:42]	 through meditation and divine inspiration whatever saw that man's
[00:31:42 - 00:31:50]	 journey was a journey from the demonic to the divine and that history was
[00:31:50 - 00:31:59]	 somehow the stage of human redemption that view died with the rise of secular
[00:31:59 - 00:32:10]	 capitalism and industrial democracy and yet here in this at the height of the
[00:32:10 - 00:32:18]	 trajectory of the enterprise of science and materialism news comes from the
[00:32:18 - 00:32:25]	 rainforest from the Aboriginal peoples of the world that there are technologies
[00:32:25 - 00:32:31]	 of a different sort that have been in place since at least the last ice age
[00:32:31 - 00:32:39]	 these are neurotechnology quasi symbiotic relationships with plants
[00:32:39 - 00:32:46]	 pharmacological approaches to manipulating human memory aspiration
[00:32:46 - 00:32:55]	 aesthetic concerns so forth and so on these psychedelic intimations have been
[00:32:55 - 00:33:04]	 presented to us as the naive suppositions of primitives the landscape
[00:33:04 - 00:33:15]	 of the union unconscious chaotic events happening in the human brain-mind system
[00:33:15 - 00:33:22]	 so forth and so on these are all reductionist explanations I believe that
[00:33:22 - 00:33:32]	 what these psychedelic states are are actually a sense to a higher order of
[00:33:32 - 00:33:40]	 information and by a sense I mean the word in the dimensional context as a
[00:33:40 - 00:33:47]	 mathematical idea that here we are deployed in a three-dimensional matrix
[00:33:47 - 00:33:57]	 the past fades into unknowability the future fades into one no ability and
[00:33:57 - 00:34:02]	 only the crudest and least interesting of processes like the rising of the Sun
[00:34:02 - 00:34:13]	 and the tides can be propagated into the future with confidence what shamans see
[00:34:13 - 00:34:21]	 in contrast to this is a hyperdimensional universe of information
[00:34:21 - 00:34:31]	 they see the past the origin and they see the goal the culmination the place
[00:34:31 - 00:34:37]	 where the Ouroboros make takes its tail in its mouth we who are locked in
[00:34:37 - 00:34:43]	 linear history don't have this perspective and what we have in its
[00:34:43 - 00:34:53]	 stead is immense anxiety immense anxiety about the future we map the unknowable
[00:34:53 - 00:35:01]	 future onto the presumed experience of our own death and vice versa and we
[00:35:01 - 00:35:08]	 build up a universe that is characterized by existential abysses the unknown
[00:35:08 - 00:35:14]	 future the inevitability of death and it's and the impossibility of
[00:35:14 - 00:35:19]	 intellectually assimilating what that means shamanism isn't like this
[00:35:19 - 00:35:27]	 shamanism is a fractal point of view what fractals are are structures that have
[00:35:27 - 00:35:35]	 their subsets embedded in them subsets embedded in them so the course of the
[00:35:35 - 00:35:40]	 history of an entire people can be known by looking at the history of an
[00:35:40 - 00:35:50]	 individual or a family all subsets refer to levels above and below them this is
[00:35:50 - 00:35:55]	 entirely different from the kind of linear history that we get in a
[00:35:55 - 00:36:03]	 hierarchical scientific society it is more characteristic of experience and
[00:36:03 - 00:36:10]	 this is a very important point because the two phenomena that I tried to call
[00:36:10 - 00:36:16]	 your attention to that argue for hope are the self-evident accumulation of
[00:36:16 - 00:36:23]	 novelty and the self-evident acceleration of that accumulation of
[00:36:23 - 00:36:29]	 novelty well now notice the phrase self-evident these are not things that
[00:36:29 - 00:36:34]	 you have to study advanced mathematics to perceive these are not things revealed
[00:36:34 - 00:36:41]	 to the holders of advanced degrees this is stuff that one can tell by feeling
[00:36:41 - 00:36:49]	 into the world the structure of linear society has disempowered the individual
[00:36:49 - 00:36:57]	 we are all now we have bought the the habesian notion that we are social atoms
[00:36:57 - 00:37:04]	 in a vaster machine than ourselves with a greater purpose than we can know and
[00:37:04 - 00:37:11]	 this is actually hogwash as you move away from the human individual the
[00:37:11 - 00:37:16]	 consciousness about what is happening becomes more and more low-grade and
[00:37:16 - 00:37:23]	 amoeba like you have the consciousness of the Giuliani administration the
[00:37:23 - 00:37:29]	 consciousness of the American government the you see as you as you widen the van
[00:37:29 - 00:37:36]	 it becomes more and more primitive more and more simply a matter of stimulus and
[00:37:36 - 00:37:42]	 response but you the suppose the irrelevant atom at the center of this
[00:37:42 - 00:37:50]	 process make very subtle judgments take in information of all sorts compare
[00:37:50 - 00:37:56]	 contrast way understand seek evidence this is the subtlest thinking that's
[00:37:56 - 00:38:03]	 going on but we don't reclaim our own mind we look for institutional guidance
[00:38:03 - 00:38:11]	 and yet it was institutions that guided us to this moment so the character then
[00:38:11 - 00:38:21]	 of this next advance into novelty is from my point of view now easily discern
[00:38:21 - 00:38:32]	 it is a boundary dissolution this is what is happening this is why great
[00:38:32 - 00:38:39]	 wealth and great poverty must come to terms with each other it's why the first
[00:38:39 - 00:38:46]	 world and the third world must come to terms with each other it's why gays and
[00:38:46 - 00:38:52]	 straights must come to terms with each other boundary dissolution is what is
[00:38:52 - 00:38:59]	 happening and this is been going on for a long time but it affected our
[00:38:59 - 00:39:06]	 peripheral technologies first almost without us noticing it we've gone from a
[00:39:06 - 00:39:12]	 world where information moved at the speed of a horse's gallop to a world
[00:39:12 - 00:39:19]	 where all information is cotangent space is only an illusion of the plebs
[00:39:19 - 00:39:26]	 everyone else with their with their computer networks and their connections
[00:39:26 - 00:39:32]	 knows that the world has become a kind of virtual point and yet still we
[00:39:32 - 00:39:41]	 maintain the most toxic of all the fictions to come out of the Dominator
[00:39:41 - 00:39:50]	 experience the fiction of the individual ego this maintenance of the fiction of
[00:39:50 - 00:39:58]	 ego is what is exacerbating a smooth transition into a new world order
[00:39:58 - 00:40:05]	 because people have one foot in the dematerialized collectivist virtual
[00:40:05 - 00:40:14]	 feeling toned experience based future but they also have one foot in the
[00:40:14 - 00:40:24]	 computer I'm sorry in the consumer fetish objectified constipated linear
[00:40:24 - 00:40:30]	 acquisitive class conscious sex conscious race conscious past and each
[00:40:30 - 00:40:36]	 one of us is a union of these opposites each one of us is trying to make some
[00:40:36 - 00:40:46]	 kind of a alloy of our hideously dysfunctional cultural past and the
[00:40:46 - 00:40:54]	 incredibly compelling yet frightening dimensionless boundary list polymorphic
[00:40:54 - 00:41:02]	 polyamorous future and to my mind then the role that psychedelics play in all
[00:41:02 - 00:41:10]	 this is critical because they are catalysts for change if you are not
[00:41:10 - 00:41:17]	 moving as fast as the general wave of novelty psychedelics will bring you up
[00:41:17 - 00:41:23]	 to speed society will go from being utterly incomprehensible and horrifying
[00:41:23 - 00:41:32]	 to simply being horrifying if you are up to speed and you with the with the
[00:41:32 - 00:41:40]	 cultural wave and you then avail yourself of psychedelic you become a
[00:41:40 - 00:41:50]	 force for spreading calm spreading understanding because make no mistake
[00:41:50 - 00:41:55]	 about it as we close distance with the transcendental object at the end of time
[00:41:55 - 00:42:03]	 there is going to be a lot of vibration accumulate on the superstructures of the
[00:42:03 - 00:42:11]	 social airfoil if the airfoil cannot be redesigned in flight as we approach this
[00:42:11 - 00:42:20]	 barrier we will be ripped to pieces this is it you know HG Wells said in 1905
[00:42:20 - 00:42:26]	 history is a race between education and catastrophe and it is going to be a
[00:42:26 - 00:42:34]	 photo finish you know if we end up a smear through the shale and nature
[00:42:34 - 00:42:40]	 concludes that intelligence is something never again to put into the hopper then
[00:42:40 - 00:42:46]	 it will be an enormous tragedy because we didn't go down without a struggle we
[00:42:46 - 00:42:56]	 have the technologies the ideology the compassion for each other and caring
[00:42:56 - 00:43:05]	 world we are not a lost cause yet but we may end up a lost cause and people then
[00:43:05 - 00:43:11]	 say well what should be done you know the Tolstoy in question what then should
[00:43:11 - 00:43:17]	 be done well I came up through the whole Berkeley thing in the 60s and all that
[00:43:17 - 00:43:24]	 and I'm very wary of hortatory political prescriptions for what should be done I
[00:43:24 - 00:43:30]	 mean we saw that the best impulses in Marxism turn into the most
[00:43:30 - 00:43:38]	 horrifyingly regimented in totalitarian societies goodwill is not enough so what
[00:43:38 - 00:43:50]	 is to be done I think the answer to this is not only nothing but considerably
[00:43:50 - 00:44:00]	 less than nothing and what I mean by that is that the real solutions to our
[00:44:00 - 00:44:11]	 problems lie in a series of negatives do not believe ideology has poisoned this
[00:44:11 - 00:44:21]	 planet ideology is bankrupt it's a skin game it's a shell game it's only for
[00:44:21 - 00:44:31]	 marks and marks it's it is beneath your dignity as a body to get mixed up in
[00:44:31 - 00:44:36]	 ideology I mean after all where is it writ large the talking monkeys should
[00:44:36 - 00:44:43]	 understand the nature of being anyway so belief is an incredible cop-out on
[00:44:43 - 00:44:50]	 intellectual truth-seeking because belief precludes believing in its
[00:44:50 - 00:44:55]	 opposite and so this is a self limitation you've become your own cop
[00:44:55 - 00:45:02]	 and the ideologies of the 20th century are so shoddy and hobbled together or
[00:45:02 - 00:45:08]	 toxic to human values they're not worth believing in anyway so deconditioning
[00:45:08 - 00:45:16]	 ourselves from belief some people call it cynicism I call it good sense I'm
[00:45:16 - 00:45:22]	 not a cynical person but I know shit from Shinola and I don't expect people
[00:45:22 - 00:45:27]	 who don't to get a lot of respect from the rest of us I mean what does it mean
[00:45:27 - 00:45:32]	 if you're an optimist and that means you can't proclaim the difference between
[00:45:32 - 00:45:40]	 boot polish and excreta it's ridiculous okay don't believe the the next thing
[00:45:40 - 00:45:46]	 which comes out of that and isn't even stronger prohibition don't follow
[00:45:46 - 00:45:55]	 following is a is a tasteless position to find yourself in pets follow vice
[00:45:55 - 00:46:05]	 presidents follow and bad acts follow so you know why follow all of all of
[00:46:05 - 00:46:13]	 these gurus geishas Roshi's and Rishi's are simply flim-flam artists they've had
[00:46:13 - 00:46:19]	 thousands of years to get these cons together and run them on you believe me
[00:46:19 - 00:46:25]	 I know I'm a recovering Catholic you have to fight your way free of belief
[00:46:25 - 00:46:32]	 and then do not follow do not follow it's a it's an obsolete tasteless thing
[00:46:32 - 00:46:39]	 and there's no human dignity in it whatsoever then a harder one a more
[00:46:39 - 00:46:46]	 radical one the one that might get me shot do not in some profoundly
[00:46:46 - 00:46:55]	 metaphysical sense consume do not consume for obvious reasons and then not so
[00:46:55 - 00:47:01]	 obvious reasons the obvious reasons are that the fetish for objects made of
[00:47:01 - 00:47:08]	 matter is wrecking the planet if everybody on earth had what the people
[00:47:08 - 00:47:14]	 in the front row here have there wouldn't be enough metal glass plastic
[00:47:14 - 00:47:19]	 and petroleum in the planet to provide that kind of lifestyle to the billions
[00:47:19 - 00:47:27]	 of people who now aspire none of this stuff brings happiness anyway I recently
[00:47:27 - 00:47:33]	 had the experience of having my 75 Ford Granada blow up on me in the middle of
[00:47:33 - 00:47:42]	 the night and so I had to buy a new car so I I went down a year and up a brand
[00:47:42 - 00:47:51]	 and I got a 74 BMW and cost me two grand and I guarantee you once you have the
[00:47:51 - 00:47:56]	 little thing on the steering wheel the quaternities sign you don't need the
[00:47:56 - 00:48:07]	 $90,000 model what we should all do is buy and don't consume anything which
[00:48:07 - 00:48:12]	 hasn't already been made it's a lot of shit that's been made it's all over the
[00:48:12 - 00:48:19]	 place I see it in Manhattan going for a bundle if if we what we need to do you
[00:48:19 - 00:48:31]	 see is retool our values so that what is new is odious tasteless de class a
[00:48:31 - 00:48:40]	 embarrassing and not to be found in the better home the older things are the
[00:48:40 - 00:48:46]	 better they are here's a 50 year old chair fine here's a 500 year old chair
[00:48:46 - 00:48:54]	 how much better we need to cease to consume and I'm somewhat facetious in
[00:48:54 - 00:48:59]	 suggesting that we all become a feci and now those of Chippendale furniture and
[00:48:59 - 00:49:05]	 that sort of thing that isn't the plan either but the endless fetishism for
[00:49:05 - 00:49:11]	 consumer objects is wrecking the planet and then finally well no not finally
[00:49:11 - 00:49:17]	 there's one after this but another negative and this is a slightly more
[00:49:17 - 00:49:24]	 difficult to follow requires a little cogitation it's insidious we shouldn't
[00:49:24 - 00:49:34]	 watch we shouldn't watch watching is some kind of voyeuristic sadomasochistic
[00:49:34 - 00:49:39]	 peculiarity that we are permitting ourselves because we think there are too
[00:49:39 - 00:49:46]	 many of us to do but I don't think this is true I think watching is an
[00:49:46 - 00:49:56]	 incredibly disempowering thing millions of people live half awake larval lives
[00:49:56 - 00:50:02]	 watching six and a half hours of TV a day and as long as they stay in their
[00:50:02 - 00:50:09]	 homes you know shopping by phone and fax everybody is happy but they
[00:50:09 - 00:50:15]	 participate not at all in the society they're the marks and they consume they
[00:50:15 - 00:50:22]	 consume the media the entertainment the clothes the styles the brands they are
[00:50:22 - 00:50:29]	 the morons who are keeping this system running and I assume that largely the
[00:50:29 - 00:50:34]	 people here tonight are not we're the people who grind out all this stuff I
[00:50:34 - 00:50:41]	 mean I feel I do this I write books I produce ideas they are grist for the
[00:50:41 - 00:50:46]	 marketplace Harper and Bantam don't care what I'm saying what they care about is
[00:50:46 - 00:50:53]	 how the books are selling you know product number 32 45 a sub F how is it
[00:50:53 - 00:50:59]	 doing in the marketplace do not watch because when you're watching you're not
[00:50:59 - 00:51:05]	 at the center of things largely what I'm talking about here is reclaiming
[00:51:05 - 00:51:13]	 experience reclaiming experience this is what's been taken from us this is why the
[00:51:13 - 00:51:22]	 new music and dance culture is so important this is why drug culture is so
[00:51:22 - 00:51:30]	 important this is why the celebration of sexual minorities is so important this
[00:51:30 - 00:51:35]	 is all about coming to grips with who you really are and how you really feel
[00:51:35 - 00:51:43]	 and then experiencing it you know you are not owned it is not he or she or
[00:51:43 - 00:51:49]	 them or it that you belong to and we have been told that we have to fit in we
[00:51:49 - 00:51:57]	 have to make sense this is not true we are creating a world that celebrates
[00:51:57 - 00:52:03]	 diversity that celebrates the uniqueness of every person the
[00:52:03 - 00:52:10]	 classification of our species is a process directly dependent on the
[00:52:10 - 00:52:16]	 complexity that we each bring to the process the diversity that is spreading
[00:52:16 - 00:52:23]	 through society is a concomitant to the boundary dissolution and I really
[00:52:23 - 00:52:34]	 believe that that science's inability to make sense of human beings in the world
[00:52:34 - 00:52:43]	 as part of nature to make sense of art love hate aspiration fear the failure to
[00:52:43 - 00:52:49]	 make sense of this is the failure to come to terms with the transcendental
[00:52:49 - 00:52:56]	 aspect of reality we are the best evidence there is that something
[00:52:56 - 00:53:02]	 extraordinarily unusual is happening on this planet and that it's not something
[00:53:02 - 00:53:08]	 which will go on for millions of years it began about 20,000 years ago it's a
[00:53:08 - 00:53:17]	 self-advancing self-expanding self-defining process and it takes no
[00:53:17 - 00:53:23]	 prisoners you know there there is no going back there is no going back from
[00:53:23 - 00:53:29]	 the momentum that history has imparted to the human imagination there is only a
[00:53:29 - 00:53:36]	 going forward into what is called a forward escape through art through
[00:53:36 - 00:53:42]	 design through management and integration that we have to push the art
[00:53:42 - 00:53:47]	 pedal to the floor we have never designed our society we have never
[00:53:47 - 00:53:53]	 managed our societies or our lives we have never tried to make what we were
[00:53:53 - 00:54:00]	 serve an aesthetic agenda and that's why we've created a mess in the absence of
[00:54:00 - 00:54:07]	 an aesthetic agenda what we've created is animal house on a global scale so now
[00:54:07 - 00:54:18]	 it's time to pay the piper and just in closing the catalyst now is a combination
[00:54:18 - 00:54:26]	 of technologies solid-state technologies and pharmacology the world that we are
[00:54:26 - 00:54:35]	 leaving behind the world that failed us was a world of ideologies and mechanical
[00:54:35 - 00:54:44]	 technologies and the ideologies one by one are going down the tubes Marxism
[00:54:44 - 00:54:53]	 Freudianism fascism they one by one will be discredited they cannot sustain and
[00:54:53 - 00:55:01]	 the mechanical technologies cannot be sustained they pollute they dehumanize
[00:55:01 - 00:55:08]	 they wreck the planet what is coming into place is a world where drugs replace
[00:55:08 - 00:55:13]	 ideology that's why drugs are so terrifying to those who oppose them
[00:55:13 - 00:55:18]	 that's why they say you want to escape you want to take drugs to escape that's
[00:55:18 - 00:55:26]	 right you want to escape you want to escape fascism communism socialism
[00:55:26 - 00:55:32]	 existentialism phenomenology positivism all of this stuff want to escape
[00:55:32 - 00:55:39]	 ideology into the felt presence of the body which means drugs and sex and
[00:55:39 - 00:55:52]	 syncopated music and and parallel to this development and happening in different
[00:55:52 - 00:55:58]	 sectors of society is the hard wiring of our imagination the building of
[00:55:58 - 00:56:03]	 databases that we can access instantaneously that make the human
[00:56:03 - 00:56:10]	 past co-present with the now the boundary dissolution that I'm talking
[00:56:10 - 00:56:17]	 about includes the division between past present and future this is what it means
[00:56:17 - 00:56:26]	 to end Newtonian time it means that the past the present and the future become a
[00:56:26 - 00:56:34]	 co-extensive domain where everyone then awakens to the fact which was always
[00:56:34 - 00:56:41]	 there to be observed that there is not simply one path there is nothing called
[00:56:41 - 00:56:49]	 the past I have a past you have a past it's not the same past consequently the
[00:56:49 - 00:56:57]	 futures we are going to are different we create our own reality as a species and
[00:56:57 - 00:57:03]	 as an individual and so what we are passing through here in the now in this
[00:57:03 - 00:57:13]	 lecture in the 20th century is a moment of community a gam as Melville would say
[00:57:13 - 00:57:18]	 a gam is where two sailing ships to whaling ships meet at sea that's what we
[00:57:18 - 00:57:25]	 have here a gam a moment of dialogue and then we will each go back to our own
[00:57:25 - 00:57:33]	 private idaho's but the thing to take back to those private idaho's is the
[00:57:33 - 00:57:41]	 awareness that human history secures the central importance of human beings we
[00:57:41 - 00:57:50]	 are part of a universal adventure what happens to us decrees the fate of a vast
[00:57:50 - 00:57:56]	 set of universal processes and circumstances we are not ephemeral
[00:57:56 - 00:58:02]	 irrelevant to each other or to the greater whole this is the truth of
[00:58:02 - 00:58:07]	 psychedelics that aboriginal societies have always known and it's the truth
[00:58:07 - 00:58:12]	 that we had to sacrifice in order to make the prodigal journey into matter
[00:58:12 - 00:58:19]	 but the prodigal journey into matter has now been concluded we found the top
[00:58:19 - 00:58:25]	 quark we've shut down the super collider now we need to go back to the problems
[00:58:25 - 00:58:32]	 of the human soul and there isn't much time but the tools that have been put
[00:58:32 - 00:58:38]	 into our hands are the most powerful tools there has ever been the guy in
[00:58:38 - 00:58:44]	 connection into the vegetable mind of the planet that we are trying to mirror
[00:58:44 - 00:58:54]	 and hardwire on a human scale nature is full of interest and affection for
[00:58:54 - 00:59:02]	 humanity it's up to us to discover that humanity in ourselves because we have
[00:59:02 - 00:59:08]	 gone so sour along the rational path and connect it up with the bunch with the
[00:59:08 - 00:59:15]	 rest of nature this is a process which is happening but it's a birth it can go
[00:59:15 - 00:59:22]	 with ease because we help it from this side or it can be traumatic because we
[00:59:22 - 00:59:27]	 resist and as McLuhan said insist on driving the automobile of history using
[00:59:27 - 00:59:33]	 only the rearview mirror that's no way to proceed we need to wake up smell the
[00:59:33 - 00:59:41]	 coffee turn on the lights get loaded and direct the human future toward a
[00:59:41 - 00:59:47]	 mirroring of aspirations such that we are pleased then to turn the enterprise
[00:59:47 - 00:59:57]	 over to those who follow us well that's that I think we'll take a brief break
[00:59:57 - 01:00:02]	 brief like 15 minutes I'll sign books I'll only do signatures because of the
[01:00:02 - 01:00:07]	 shortness of the break circulate around we'll come back and do a half an hour or
[01:00:07 - 01:00:13]	 so of Q&A thank you very very much for coming out
[01:00:13 - 01:00:26]	 [Applause]
[01:00:26 - 01:00:35]	 nice to see you please ideas like that state spontaneously perturb themselves
[01:00:35 - 01:00:41]	 to higher states of order that order within a system is conserved so forth
[01:00:41 - 01:00:47]	 and so on yes fractal mathematics is an intellectual revolution the magnitude of
[01:00:47 - 01:00:53]	 which has not yet been fully appreciated I think it's a very very big deal it's
[01:00:53 - 01:00:58]	 just that so much is happening in our world that it's very hard for us to know
[01:00:58 - 01:01:04]	 what are the real epical turning points and what is just flim-flam and high
[01:01:04 - 01:01:10]	 polar but the power of fractal mathematics has carried the human mind
[01:01:10 - 01:01:15]	 to a whole new level of you know mathematics was not thought to be a
[01:01:15 - 01:01:20]	 natural science by its practitioners until very recently it was thought to be
[01:01:20 - 01:01:27]	 an abstract undertaking but it turns out its most abstract constructions have a
[01:01:27 - 01:01:34]	 curious congruency over population growth the organization of species in a
[01:01:34 - 01:01:40]	 rainforest to so forth and so on yes there is the the cultural change that is
[01:01:40 - 01:01:49]	 coming is not superficial it's not simply about club dance styles fashion
[01:01:49 - 01:01:54]	 sexual mores it's about all that but when it's all over the mathematics will
[01:01:54 - 01:01:58]	 be different the physics will be different everything will be different
[01:01:58 - 01:02:06]	 this is a major shift in cultural values you had a question do you still want to
[01:02:06 - 01:02:15]	 do oh number five I don't think I really gave it it's it's worth basically
[01:02:15 - 01:02:20]	 number five is do not multiply
[01:02:21 - 01:02:29]	 replace yourself but do not multiply you know go forth and multiply no go forth
[01:02:29 - 01:02:36]	 and lightly subtract a better way to do it I mean I have taught I don't want to
[01:02:36 - 01:02:42]	 get into it tonight but I've talked at other times about how if every woman
[01:02:42 - 01:02:48]	 would have just one child the population of the earth would fall by half in 40
[01:02:48 - 01:02:53]	 years and how the women in the high-tech industrial democracies are the most
[01:02:53 - 01:02:58]	 likely to get this message because they're educated global concerned
[01:02:58 - 01:03:03]	 citizens and it is their children who are destroying the resource base of the
[01:03:03 - 01:03:09]	 world because a child born to a woman on the Upper East Side or Berkeley consumes
[01:03:09 - 01:03:14]	 between 800 and a thousand times more resources than a child born to a woman
[01:03:14 - 01:03:20]	 in Bangladesh and you know when I talked earlier I referred to managing and
[01:03:20 - 01:03:25]	 designing societies one of the things I think we need to talk about that has not
[01:03:25 - 01:03:33]	 yet come out of the sexual redefinition debate is I think that this whole thing
[01:03:33 - 01:03:38]	 about how do we feminize society and women are not getting their fair shake
[01:03:38 - 01:03:42]	 and what do we do about white male dominators and all that and how do we
[01:03:42 - 01:03:49]	 make men more like women so forth and so on this is all somewhat cockamamie in
[01:03:49 - 01:03:53]	 terms of the idea that we need to feminize men we don't need to feminize
[01:03:53 - 01:03:59]	 men we need to feminize society and the obvious way to do that is return to
[01:03:59 - 01:04:05]	 paleolithic sexual ratios which were probably about 70/30 women to men rather
[01:04:05 - 01:04:13]	 than 50/50 the the strict mate the effort to maintain a sexual balance of 50/50 is
[01:04:13 - 01:04:20]	 some kind of monogamite plot and it maintains male dominance and a generally
[01:04:20 - 01:04:28]	 masculine character to the enterprise of civilization but if women were 70% of
[01:04:28 - 01:04:43]	 the population that would quite naturally correct itself over here well
[01:04:43 - 01:04:49]	 if if your strategy I've thought of this strategy to of course I think any
[01:04:49 - 01:04:59]	 artist does what do I think of Kurt Cobain suicide what is the question what
[01:04:59 - 01:05:06]	 do I think of Kurt Cobain suicide and the answer is as a strategy for
[01:05:06 - 01:05:09]	 advancing your career I think you should wait till you're a little bit deeper
[01:05:09 - 01:05:17]	 into your career anyway it was my humble opinion that Primus did it better and
[01:05:17 - 01:05:24]	 anyway I like coil so let me off the hook here I'm a I'm a house guy and I
[01:05:24 - 01:05:29]	 wish those people luck but you're more likely to find me listening to world
[01:05:29 - 01:05:32]	 without walls
[01:05:33 - 01:05:36]	 yeah
[01:05:36 - 01:05:56]	 well intuition refers back to this I made mention of nothing comes unannounced
[01:05:56 - 01:06:05]	 that's intuition but the rational mind has it has a real ability to slough off
[01:06:05 - 01:06:11]	 the intuition the intuition never shouts it never grabs you by the lapels it just
[01:06:11 - 01:06:20]	 says hmm maybe maybe that airplane is looks a little funny and then you get
[01:06:20 - 01:06:26]	 you don't get on it and it blows up so intuition is basically a function of
[01:06:26 - 01:06:33]	 listening and since it's very hard for people to listen especially be dominator
[01:06:33 - 01:06:40]	 types or opinionated types I think the key to intuition is to listen it's just
[01:06:40 - 01:06:48]	 like you know the key to to nature is to look I think I read a wonderful quote
[01:06:48 - 01:06:56]	 last week I think it was girth it said thinking is better than knowing but
[01:06:56 - 01:07:02]	 looking is best of all and I think that's a very psychedelic perception
[01:07:02 - 01:07:08]	 knowing is the worst of all knowing is a huge drag and and it's a Camara anyway
[01:07:08 - 01:07:13]	 nobody knows anything don't let them kid you I mean we're monkeys here let's not
[01:07:13 - 01:07:17]	 lose sight of there yeah
[01:07:17 - 01:07:20]	 say
[01:07:20 - 01:07:38]	 the nature of life all life
[01:07:38 - 01:07:41]	 hopefully
[01:07:41 - 01:07:46]	 in our society
[01:07:46 - 01:07:57]	 with each level
[01:07:57 - 01:08:00]	 there is
[01:08:00 - 01:08:17]	 where
[01:08:17 - 01:08:20]	 all
[01:08:20 - 01:08:34]	 point where
[01:08:35 - 01:08:38]	 something will arise
[01:08:38 - 01:08:56]	 well
[01:09:01 - 01:09:07]	 when I say we should stop consuming I don't for a moment suppose that we're
[01:09:07 - 01:09:13]	 going to live in a world where no consumption takes place I mean or we're
[01:09:13 - 01:09:18]	 going to live in a world where population growth is instantly halted
[01:09:18 - 01:09:23]	 there are more than one there's more than one way to force novelty out of a
[01:09:23 - 01:09:31]	 system and simply repetitiously breeding that's a habitual activity and it does
[01:09:31 - 01:09:38]	 force a certain kind of novelty but it's a novelty born of desperation my notion
[01:09:38 - 01:09:44]	 is that you get much more novelty out of a system if every person is valued if
[01:09:44 - 01:09:50]	 every person has leisure time and opportunity for education and this sort
[01:09:50 - 01:09:56]	 of thing the ingression into novelty doesn't necessarily mean an endless
[01:09:56 - 01:10:03]	 expansion of an inventory of available tchotchkes it means a vertical
[01:10:03 - 01:10:10]	 integration of all of these possibilities so I think we are going to elaborate
[01:10:10 - 01:10:18]	 more technologies more connections there are going to be all kinds of unusual
[01:10:18 - 01:10:23]	 configurations generated but to simply suppose that we have to continue in the
[01:10:23 - 01:10:29]	 direction we've been going I think is a mistake capitalism is not a human
[01:10:29 - 01:10:37]	 friendly meme I mean capitalism will sell the ground right out from under
[01:10:37 - 01:10:43]	 where you're standing it is been it has developed a rapacious appetite for its
[01:10:43 - 01:10:49]	 own survival at the expense of human beings some memes do this I mean
[01:10:49 - 01:10:56]	 fascism was a meme so virulent to the human agenda that major outbreaks of it
[01:10:56 - 01:11:01]	 the whole planet halted what it was doing and stomped it out and now we have
[01:11:01 - 01:11:10]	 residual outbreaks here and there but in terms of the aggression into novelty it
[01:11:10 - 01:11:15]	 isn't a matter of human decision it's happening around the clock it's
[01:11:15 - 01:11:21]	 unstoppable the the cultural experience is becoming more and more psychedelic as
[01:11:21 - 01:11:29]	 it becomes more and more translinear and post Newtonian literally society is
[01:11:29 - 01:11:35]	 entering into a kind of hyperspace or cyberspace some people call it I think of
[01:11:35 - 01:11:41]	 cyberspace is the literalization of hyperspace one is the Platonic goal the
[01:11:41 - 01:11:48]	 other is the human artifact that seeks to realize that goal but definitely the
[01:11:48 - 01:11:53]	 cascade of novelty has now reached such an intensity that you have to be very
[01:11:53 - 01:11:58]	 lumpen indeed I think not to see it happening especially if you live in a
[01:11:58 - 01:12:02]	 town like this one for crying out loud this is the concrescence of the
[01:12:02 - 01:12:12]	 concrescence here one more and then we'll call it quits here on the aisle
[01:12:12 - 01:12:23]	 his last book well yeah he died a few years ago I'm not familiar with that
[01:12:23 - 01:12:28]	 book I'm familiar with the major works understanding media Gutenberg galaxy what
[01:12:28 - 01:12:39]	 is your question no I haven't read it so I can't comment such a dud for me to
[01:12:39 - 01:12:45]	 wuss out I'll take one more question yeah here
[01:12:45 - 01:12:50]	 and how we're all sort of evolving towards that eventuality hyperspace and
[01:12:50 - 01:12:54]	 they see there's two paths kind of going one with technology and one you can
[01:12:54 - 01:13:00]	 see through psychedelics and there's two views of the technology one is a
[01:13:00 - 01:13:04]	 parallel going along with it mimicking it maybe
[01:13:04 - 01:13:17]	 the simulation of it and it could be the wrong path the correct pathway where if
[01:13:17 - 01:13:22]	 it mimics it it might bring a popularization or socialization of the
[01:13:22 - 01:13:29]	 psychedelic experience to bring organic hyperspace and just curiously your view
[01:13:29 - 01:13:37]	 of how you see technology functioning down one half of the other or a co-existence of the organic
[01:13:37 - 01:13:44]	 well what I actually imagine is a confluence of the two the the question
[01:13:44 - 01:13:53]	 basically was compare and contrast evolving cyber technology with shamanic
[01:13:53 - 01:13:59]	 technology compare and contrast drugs and computers are these things in
[01:13:59 - 01:14:04]	 parallel are they complementary or are they opposed what are they I think that
[01:14:04 - 01:14:15]	 computers are drugs too large to swallow essentially and that
[01:14:17 - 01:14:24]	 and that what we will see in the future is computers much more like drugs and
[01:14:24 - 01:14:31]	 drugs much more like computers we are going to see drugs that are information
[01:14:31 - 01:14:41]	 based drugs so if you want to study Hegel you will take Hegelene we're going
[01:14:41 - 01:14:47]	 to see drugs which are self-limiting in their effects I mean imagine for
[01:14:47 - 01:14:52]	 instance a form of heroin that it works ten times and then it never works again
[01:14:52 - 01:14:59]	 for you in your life this is possible there are drugs which will I mean I
[01:14:59 - 01:15:04]	 think this is an interesting frontier drugs which only work for a while so
[01:15:04 - 01:15:09]	 there's no possibility of distorted or addictive lifestyles because it works
[01:15:09 - 01:15:13]	 for three months and then it stops working and nobody spends money on
[01:15:13 - 01:15:18]	 something that doesn't work we're going to see the whole serotonin pathway
[01:15:18 - 01:15:27]	 redesigned through the transprozac drugs we're going to see psychedelic states
[01:15:27 - 01:15:32]	 simulated in virtual reality we're going to see the breakdown of
[01:15:32 - 01:15:38]	 three-dimensional space virtue versus the machine space and all of these things
[01:15:38 - 01:15:47]	 are essentially psychedelic effects it's only this Newtonian emphasis on product
[01:15:47 - 01:15:53]	 and ego and body locus that makes us see the drugs as somehow locked in the
[01:15:53 - 01:16:00]	 molecules the entire experience of human history is a psychedelic experience and
[01:16:00 - 01:16:06]	 we're now in that place deep in the second hour where it all comes together
[01:16:06 - 01:16:12]	 that the integration of some kind of unity out of the multiplicity of
[01:16:12 - 01:16:18]	 phenomena is now in reach we are literally hardwiring the human
[01:16:18 - 01:16:23]	 unconscious the human unconscious is ceasing to exist it's becoming a smaller
[01:16:23 - 01:16:30]	 and smaller domain as it is transferred over into the hardwiring of the cultural
[01:16:30 - 01:16:36]	 database we cannot become the species we want to be with an unconscious mind
[01:16:36 - 01:16:43]	 that's an artifact of the monkey phase that has no place in a global
[01:16:43 - 01:16:49]	 civilization and the making conscious of the unconscious is the combined task of
[01:16:49 - 01:16:56]	 cybernetics and pharmacology and I trust that everything is on track and moving
[01:16:56 - 01:17:03]	 forward it seems to me the adventure is underway I don't see myself as
[01:17:03 - 01:17:09]	 predicting something that will happen I've become a narrator of a phenomenon
[01:17:09 - 01:17:16]	 in progress if you understand what to look for granted it will become more
[01:17:16 - 01:17:24]	 intense in subsequent episodes but all the pieces are now in play the challenge
[01:17:24 - 01:17:29]	 of postmodernity the challenge of the psychedelic millenarian eschatonic world
[01:17:29 - 01:17:40]	 is the challenge of our own daily lives and relationships it is here it is here
[01:17:40 - 01:17:44]	 all right and I'm out of here