I Ching - Habit & Novelty KUT

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Thanks to these people who did call in Peter Bain in loving respect for his sister, Kay Brooks, in Dripping Springs.

Fran Nelson responding to the challenge for artists who make a living from their work.

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Now, what?

Okay, they, I guess, they read Foxes of Harrow.

Jack and Shaysan Odom.

Have either of you guys ever read The Foxes of Harrow?

No.

It's great.

You?

I haven't.

It's a great book.

Anyway, Carol and Philip Stevens, Donna Fowler, C.L. Sinek, saw the Rocky Horror Show 52 times.

You are sick.

And he was a projectionist.

Okay, that was his excuse.

I've seen it probably about 25.

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I cannot do that.

But if you can, call 471-6291 and meet Laura's challenge.

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Thank you for calling.

And as I welcome Terrence McKenna, let me first say that I've been asked to mention that there is a film called Strange Attractor,

which features Terrence McKenna, and it will be shown at the Dobie Theater on October the 18th at midnight and the 19th at 2 o'clock.

That's just, I forget that.

That's Chris.

I'm going to take the umbrellas of Cherbourg away, as much as I love that music that's been on in the background.

And we will say, just barely, good morning at 11.56 to Terrence McKenna.

Pleasure to be with you.

And you are here for the Whole Life Expo.

I am.

And you will be speaking.

Kathy, when will he do his talk?

He'll be speaking on Saturday, tomorrow at 5 o'clock.

5 o'clock in the afternoon.

In the Coliseum.

We had such an incredible response to Terrence last year.

He sold out the biggest room we had.

And so we've moved him over to the Coliseum, where he hopefully will be able to accommodate up to about 1,200 or 1,500 people, if need be.

Okay.

Well, there is a large audience of people who know all about him or a great deal about him.

But for those who know nothing about Terrence McKenna, Terrence, what would you, how would you introduce yourself?

I guess I'm a plant biologist turned psychedelic advocate, transformed into a kind of spokesman for technophilia and psychedelica.

And you have been an author?

I've written a number of books.

Food of the Gods, Invisible Landscape, Archaic Revival, just to mention three of them.

I have this Invisible Landscape is one that you are touring now, or is that, it's been out a couple of years, I think, sir.

They all came out in the early, through the middle 90s, and I've been touring them.

I have another book in the works called Casting Nets into the Sea of Mind, but it'll be a while before that comes out.

I've also done a number of musical and film projects around.

So you're into music as well?

Well, music is into me.

I'm not very musical, but there's been a lot of sampling of my voice, and I've done vocal overlays and things like that,

with bands like the Shaman and Zivouya space-time continuum.

Okay.

What will you be talking about when you give your talk at the Whole Life Expo?

Well, it's a sort of a broad topic.

It's here we are at the end of history.

All the world's cultures are melting together.

More powerful technologies than we've ever imagined are now in existence.

Our political assumptions are in flux.

Our environment is being destroyed before our very eyes.

All kinds of spiritual and religious prophets are selling their wares in the streets.

So my take on all this is basically simply to ask the Mr. Natural question,

which is, what does it all mean?

How did we, essentially an arboreal primate, ever get in to a situation of the sort represented by the end of the 20th century?

Is it a mad play without meaning?

Is it the unfolding of God's plan?

Is it the protocol of the elders of Zion or the alien invaders?

Just what is going on?

And, of course, the special lens that I bring to this is the much maligned and highly suspect psychedelic experience.

Anathema to some, religion to others.

One of the most controversial behaviors available to 20th century people,

but one that I think is probably very important to recapturing a sense of personal wholeness

and then trying to fit oneself into this truly mad, mad world that we've called into being.

The psychedelics that you're talking about might be which drugs?

Plant-based indoles such as psilocybin, DMT, mescaline, the combinatory Amazonian thing called ayahuasca.

These are all psychedelic plants and plant mixtures with very long histories of human usage in non-Western society.

Western society is the most phobic of all cultures toward the psychedelic experience.

It's almost on a par with our phobia toward sexuality.

In fact, maybe these things are linked.

But in aboriginal and traditional cultures around the world,

spirituality has always been associated with dissolving of ordinary cultural boundaries and states of mind.

And, you know, you can do this with meditation and fasting and abandonment in the wilderness and so forth and so on.

But the most effective and non-invasive way to approach this, everyone agrees,

is through ingestion of psychedelic plants.

But because these experiences are so powerful,

they challenge ordinary secular and religious authority

and consequently, a society, if it chooses to, can get into a real swivet around these issues,

such as our society.

I don't really link this to the larger problem of international drug syndicates and addiction and all that.

That's a slightly different area of concern

because the psychedelics are not addictive

and they do not generate huge criminal syndicates.

They don't make anybody very much money,

but they certainly attract a great deal of media attention,

most of it negative,

because of their impact on our ways of looking at our politics

and our social arrangements and everything about being human.

Terrence McKenna is our guest.

We are still accepting pledges, by the way, at 471-6291

or 1-888-471-6291.

This is the last week to make your contributions.

I hope you will do so right now, even as we speak.

471-6291.

Terrence, the way in which you are talking about the psychedelic drugs that you've mentioned

suggests that they might be something other than just for fun or escape,

that they might actually have something useful in terms of the human experience

for going to learn from these drugs, or had we learned, or could we?

Well, human culture is essentially a product of the imagination.

All our religions, our technical accomplishments, our literature, our poetry,

all products of the imagination.

This is precisely the domain where these psychedelics impact very, very powerfully.

So if we believe that invention, creativity, individual self-expression, insight,

if we value these things,

then the psychedelics are primary items in our cultural toolbox,

because they empower all of those things.

It's curious to me that Western civilization,

which invented the idea of progress through technology and social transformation,

is so phobic of this factor in nature,

which would accelerate those tendencies in our own culture.

So I think there is something for our culture in psychedelics,

and there is definitely something for the individual.

You know, in a way, culture is like software.

It's the operating system in the local area.

You download being a Witoto tribesman,

or a Hong Kong stockbroker,

and then behaviors are prescribed.

But naive people tend to believe that these operating systems are reality.

They're not reality.

They're just something you learn as you grow up in a certain time and place.

Psychedelics seem to dissolve cultural conditioning.

This is one of the things that makes them such political dynamite,

because the business of political systems

is to convince you of the local operating system,

convince you it was sent from God and is beyond critique,

when, in fact, it's just a bunch of rules

fellow monkeys push together over time

to make things easier for the alpha males.

Psychedelics dissolve these cultural assumptions,

whatever they may be,

and for the first time you sort of get to look at the naked human animal

and think about where you might want to go personally

and as a member, a politically potent member of a society.

I think where most everybody who is in our listening range right now

should go is to the telephone

and call 471-6291

and pledge your membership to Eclecticos,

where you hear quite a variety of things.

Our guest right now is Terrence McKenna,

author of Food of the Gods and Invisible Landscape

and other books,

and he will be at the Whole Life Expo this weekend,

Saturday at 5, is that right, Kathy?

Saturday at 5.

A pledge number, and it's very important that you call

if you enjoy what you hear on this program.

This is your last chance to do it.

It is 12.06.

It will be 12.59 in no time, and I'll be finished.

So give us a call.

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Thank you very much for calling.

Terrence, it's a controversial subject, of course.

There are many people listening right now who think,

what?

This is outrageous.

I have somebody on who's promoting the use of psychedelic drugs.

Well, I don't know that I'm promoting you're promoting it,

but it's interesting to hear what you have to say about it.

I would like to know more specifically what these drugs tell us.

You're saying that it tells us something about ourselves

that is other than what we have been told by the culture that has evolved.

Do the drugs have a message in themselves?

Is it a language?

Is it a way of experiencing a potential in one's own imagination

that has heretofore not been tapped?

Well, first of all, it's a gradient.

I mean, whenever we, we have to talk pharmacology for a moment.

Whenever you're talking about a substance or a drug,

there's a curve of dose response.

So let's just use psilocybin as an example.

At low doses, psilocybin makes your vision clearer,

makes you feel more robust, more interested in the exterior world.

Kind of like coffee or something.

On the edge of that.

It stimulates.

At higher doses, unusual thoughts begin to form,

thoughts that you recognize as not your normal pattern of thinking and observing.

At still higher doses, when you close your eyes,

the normal orange or pale brown background behind your eyelids

has been replaced by moving walls of color and pattern.

At still higher levels, these moving walls of color and pattern

become visions or hallucinations.

They become recognizable visual scenarios.

Well, anything like that is just flooding your mind with information.

And these things have intimations of the distant past,

the far future, alien connections of some sort.

It's definitely magnifying our own set of cultural preconceptions and obsessions.

But it's also putting information in there that we could not ordinarily imagine.

And for me, the sine qua non of the psychedelic experience

is when I look at the contents of my own mind

and say to myself,

I could not have imagined this.

To me, that's the proof

that some kind of communication is taking place.

At a fairly heroic dose of psilocybin,

a person lying in silent darkness

has the impression that in a half an hour

they're seeing more art of higher quality

than the entire Western canon has produced in the last thousand years.

And your little you,

there in your trailer near Waco,

or there in your teepee up near Sonoma,

and yet this Niagara of alien and unpredictable beauty

is pouring through your head.

For artists, it's like a magic carpet.

And the challenge, to my mind,

after 30 years of being involved in all this,

is A, to have the experience,

to have it in an attitude of appreciation and calmness.

But the second implication is somewhat political.

It's to communicate the vision

through words, through painting, through animation,

because as we communicate it collectively,

it will become real.

This is what's happening on the Internet.

In fact, the Internet is a perfect example

of a psychedelic technology

at the service of psychedelic goals.

It's not something government ever intended

to give to the people.

It's not something big corporations called for in loud voices.

It's something that hackers, freaks, and heads

dreamed up, whipped up,

out of the existing tools of the culture,

a word processor, the telephone lines,

some communication switching equipment.

So it's a kind of emergent technology

that I think comes out of

the depth of commitment

to the psychedelic experience

of the people in that field.

Terence McKenna is our guest and author.

We are urging you to call in

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I know that you don't want to miss a word

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So call right now

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And this is the last 45 minutes

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All right?

Now that is time enough

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believe it or not.

If you didn't do it,

go on and do it right now

and keep your ear open to Terrence

because we're going back

to Terrence McKenna.

So, what I would like to ask you,

you have made reference

to the fact that other cultures

have used these drugs

and that they've been integrated

in the cultural life

of shamans

and holy people,

et cetera.

We've heard a lot about that,

seen movies about it perhaps.

And one of the things

that I know you include

as part of the project

of this book,

Invisible Landscape,

is the I Ching,

which is one of the oldest,

as I understand,

it's maybe the oldest book

in the world

or one of the oldest things

that we have preserved.

It's from China

and it dates back, what,

five or six thousand years

at least, something like that.

How does that book

come into the work

that you've been doing?

Well, I've been fascinated

by the I Ching

since I was 13 or 14 years old.

As you say,

it's a method

of Chinese divination

that's very, very old.

How did you come

to be interested in it

at the age of 13 or 14?

That seems unusual to me.

Well, I was a heavy reader

and I was interested

in the psychology

of Carl Jung,

the Swiss death psychologist.

As a 13-year-old.

Well, I wasn't good

at basketball.

I had bad eyes.

I couldn't catch

any kind of round object.

So a sort of survival response

was to hide out

in the library.

And it made me

the freak I am today.

But yes, the I Ching,

my, you know,

people's involvement

with psychedelics

often take them

in some very personal

and particularized direction.

And for me,

it took the form

of a mathematical analysis

of this ancient Chinese oracle.

The ordinary notion

with the I Ching

is that you go through

a process of sortilage,

tossing coins

or moving small sticks around,

and you get a reading.

One of 64 hexagrams

will change

into one of the other hexagrams,

and this is accompanied

by a reading.

But these hexagrams

occur in a fixed order

traditionally.

And I studied that

for mathematical intent.

In other words,

I was interested

in the question,

is this traditional order

of the hexagram

simply a jumble

that's been preserved

through tradition?

Or was there

some mathematical reasoning

behind it?

And that's a pretty dry

academic question.

But as I got into it,

I realized,

or I became convinced,

is I guess the way

to put it,

that there is a pattern

inside the Ching

that actually pictures

the ebb and flow

in this world of ours

of a quality

which science

does not recognize,

Western science,

a quality which in the East

is called Tao,

but which I chose to call,

after Alfred North Whitehead,

novelty.

And it's an invisible

something in the world

which causes

investments

to succeed,

movies to do well,

relationships to flourish,

or the opposite

in its absence.

And we can't see

or feel

this stuff

in the world,

but it builds

things up

and it tears

them down

at every level.

Empires,

whole species,

relationships,

it's happening

on every level

of time

and it can actually

be pictured

as a graph,

like a stock market graph,

novelty,

ebbing and flowing.

Well,

to cut to the chase

on this,

the bottom line

in this kind of thinking

is the ability

to predict

not only the future,

which is pretty much

a fire-free zone,

but also to predict

the past,

to lay these novelty graphs

out over the past

2,000 years

of invention,

migration,

pogrom,

and so forth,

and to see

that when

society is

inventive,

creative,

productive,

novelty is increasing

according to this

mathematical theory.

Similarly,

societies that are

restricting freedoms,

very constipated,

very restrictive

in their approach

to reality,

these register

on this graph

as societies ruled

by the opposite

of novelty,

which I call

habit.

So all of reality

can be seen

as a kind of

dynamic struggle

between habit

and novelty,

each trying to get

the upper hand

over the other,

and this can all

be mathematically

modeled out of

the A-Ching.

You see,

the thing that's so puzzling

to people about

the A-Ching

is that it works,

and yet it's

as occult

as the tarot

or throwing the bones

or any other

of these

contemptuously

dismissed

occult methodologies.

But very

scientifically-minded

people have been

impressed by the fact

that the A-Ching

works.

So I set out

to figure out

why and how

it worked,

and I wrote about

this in

The Invisible

Landscape

and have published

software,

and it's my

unique

contribution

to 20th century

ideology.

Psychedelics

are advocated

and defended

by many people

from many

different perspectives,

but I,

so far as I know,

am the only person

who has built

a complete edifice

of explanations

of nature,

but honestly

admitting that

the foundations

and the inspiration

were psychedelic

experiences.

Terence McKenna,

our guest.

Our pledge number

is 471-6291

or 1-888-471-6291.

It's unusual

for me to have

as a guest

at the very end

of the program,

which concludes

our fundraising efforts.

But Terence McKenna

is an unusual person,

and I'm glad

to have him today,

and I hope you

will be responding

by calling

and making pledges

at 471-6291

or 1-888-471-6291.

We're just about

finished.

Time is running out.

471-6291.

Call and make a pledge.

You might miss

a couple of words,

but call and make

your pledge.

He has some more

interesting things to say.

471-6291.

The end of the fundraiser

is upon us,

and it will be

a success if you call.

If they are sitting

in that room over there

with 15 people

and no telephones ringing,

I am in big,

you know what,

1-6291.

That could get us

into a discussion

of another kind of drug,

but let's not go there.

Let's say you said

the E-Jing works.

What do you mean

it works?

I have the impression

that you get a,

you know,

you do your coins

or whatever you're

going to do,

and you get this one

and you read what you want

and you get what you want

out of it,

but you're saying

it works like

in a scientific way

or something.

Well,

the frequency

with which people

react to these readings

by saying

this is freakishly accurate,

this is incredibly cogent

and directly to the point.

It's more than like

the astrology thing

in the newspaper.

Oh, yeah,

so I can see myself

in that.

I think it's more precise,

but let me riff

on something you said

in your pitch.

You said time

is running out.

This is a conclusion

that I was not happy

to have forced upon me

by this research

into the E-Jing.

It not only tells you

or gives you

this map of novelty

of past and future,

but for the map

of novelty

you

to fit the historical data,

you have to swallow the very large

and, for a rationalist, uncomfortable conclusion

that the end of time itself

or a moment of universal novelty,

very difficult to picture through the eyes of ordinary physics,

is upon us, lies not that far in the future.

And so this has given my career a peculiar spin

because here I am basically trying to be a scientific rationalist

but now burdened not only with a theory that predicts the future

but in the course of predicting the future

predicts that in 2012 AD

all of the novelty that has been unleashed

over the past few billions of years,

not only cultural and technological novelty

but the novelty of biology, the novelty of geology,

all of these things reach some kind of crescendo

of connectivity and intensity

within the lifetimes of most of us.

I basically have a theory of history

which says history is not pushed

by the events of the past unfolding their causal necessity.

Rather, time is pulled into the future

by a kind of attractor.

And if you want to think of a beginning

in a certain point in time,

although I think it extends through the whole life of the universe,

but imagine that a couple of million years ago

primates quietly living in the canopies of African rainforest

got a yin, got a call, felt the touch.

And from that point to this,

it's been a slow, never faltering march

on the part of our species

deeper into a world of alien strangeness,

a world no other animal knows,

a world of symbolic activity driven by the imagination,

first songs and stories and then writing

and then mathematics and language

and then higher and higher technology.

We are actually being sculpted in the image

of an alien something

that is making us like itself

as we approach it through historical time.

And some people say,

well, this sounds like Christianity in a techno garb.

Well, Christianity has a piece of the action.

Any religion which spends thousands of years

meditating on man's fate

is going to get some part of the story right.

And I think the Christian assumption

of an approaching great change,

or Art Bell calls it the quickening,

it's all around us.

It's perfectly obvious

that the 20th century is the culmination

of 10,000 years of culture

and that beyond the 20th century

lies quite simply the unimaginable.

Our notion of what it is to be alive,

our notion of individual identity,

our notion of our sexuality,

our notion of being confined

in physical space and time,

all this is just dissolving.

It has been dissolving

throughout the 20th century

under the impact of modern communications

and so forth and so on.

But now, with the Internet,

with the computer,

with psychedelic drugs,

with virtual reality,

with the bringing of all cultures

into the global family

that speaks the language of modern science,

we're clearly being sucked

into something almost unimaginable,

a singularity.

And some people say,

well, it's 1,000 years in the future,

it's 500 years in the future.

Not if you factor in

the asymptotic acceleration

that seems to be

a natural part of the process.

You just went over my head.

The asymptotic...

It goes faster and faster.

It's not a smooth...

We're not traveling

100 miles an hour

toward the eschaton.

We're traveling

100 miles an hour

times 100 miles an hour

toward it.

In other words,

the acceleration is increasing.

And very hard-nosed engineering types

talk about an era

10, 15 years in the future

when we will release infinite energy,

attain infinite speeds,

be able to pack

all the information we want

into a few nanometers of space.

In other words,

any engineering or social goal

we can imagine

is on the brink of achievement.

Well, what lies beyond that?

And is this a process

which we are generating

as we like to think?

Or is it, in fact,

that we're just a cork

on the ocean

riding an enormous wave

that is now

moving towards some crest

where biology,

which committed itself

to culture and technology,

is about to make a leap

into hyperspace?

Who knows?

Terence McKenna is our guest.

And as I expected,

he has a good line.

And I enjoy the way

in which he presents

his information.

It's quite amazing.

And at the end of our fundraiser,

they have this eschatologist,

I guess,

talking about,

would you accept yourself

as an eschatologist?

Talking about the end.

And so our end

is in about 30 minutes.

We will be finished

with this fundraiser

for this Friday.

It's the last day

to ask you to call

and pledge your support.

And if you have not

done so yet,

please pick up

the telephone right now.

It's awkward to be

having an intense

talk feature

and at the same time

ask you to do something

that will take you

away from paying

attention to him.

But I am asking you

to do exactly that

right now.

Pick up your telephone

and call

471-6291

and pledge your support

for Eclecticus.

It's an unusual program

and I'm happy

that we can have

somebody like

Terence McKenna

in today.

He will be at

the Whole Life Expo

on Saturday at 5.

A pledge number

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A $365 a day

club membership.

And $500 business

membership is only

$1.37 a day.

Let's have a business

membership from you.

471-6291.

I would love to have

a business membership

from some bookstore

in Austin.

You know, you guys

out there, come on,

give us a contribution.

471-6291

or you can get onto

the website since

Terence is talking

about the web

and internet and stuff.

www.utexas.edu

slash KUT.

Give us your call.

Call right now, 471-6291

is the number

and we are just about

out of time.

And out of time

is what we are

at the year 2012

on December the 21st

according to the

calculations that

you have done.

But time is a funny

kind of concept

and it's also a spice.

We were being silly

earlier today.

Oh, by the way,

can either of you

remember

Douglas Adams'

Hitchhiker's Guide

and et cetera.

Isn't it 42

that they come up

with as the number?

Is the answer?

Yeah, it is.

It is 42.

Okay, so does that

in any way

figure into your

calculations?

Well, I think

somebody figured out

that there are

10 high 42 particles

in the universe

or 10 high 42

possible interactions

among particles.

I'm sure he follows

all this stuff

very closely.

So somehow, Terence,

through your study

of the mathematics

of the E-Gene

and applying

that study

to the observation

of the novelty

graph through history,

you have calculated

this date

as the time

in which time

will at least

have a different meaning

if not cease to exist.

Will time be like then?

What can we know?

How did you...

I first want to know more.

How did you come up

with this date?

I'm sure it had to do

with a lot of big numbers

and computers, but...

Well, whenever you have

a curve of any sort

that you're trying

to fit to data,

which is a curve

of another sort,

there's mathematical

protocols called

best-fit relationships.

Essentially, you just

move one along the other

measuring how well

they fit together

and when you get

the best fit,

the two are

in congruence.

So it's pulsing

at a different rate.

It goes up and down

and up and down.

It goes up and down.

So, for instance,

you have, you know,

the Italian Renaissance,

a spike of novelty,

then the horror

of the colonization

of a new world.

That's a descent.

And you can see

that history

is the ebb and flow

because societies

can't sustain novelty

very long.

And if they become

habitual, sooner or later,

some genius

or religious crank

turns over the apple cart

and then you get

new novelty.

So societies are always

in an uncomfortable

relationship

to novelty

and habit.

I've spent a lot

of time

that would fulfill

the graph

but not require

the absolute

transformation

of all time

and space

forever

since that's

such a large cookie.

I don't think

I want to take

a bite out of it.

I want to know

what the recipe

might be as well.

One thing

that's occurred

to me

that would very

nicely fill

the bill

and make

the prophecy

come true

and yet still

leave us

with a world

you can walk

around in

is if time travel

were to be

discovered.

If time travel

of some sort

were to be

discovered,

then the

portrayal

of cultural

novelty

on a time

scaled linear

graph

would become

impossible.

It's almost

as though

the data

on the graph

suddenly leaves

the two

dimensionality

and begins

to move out

toward the

viewer.

So then you

could look

at the time

graph

and say

aha

it worked

until 2012

because at

that point

time itself

became

non-linear

because people

began exploring

time in all

directions.

If time travel

were a real

possibility

you would not

only have

an address

in space

but some

of us

would choose

to rusticate

in the 11th

century

and some

of us

would choose

to live

in 22nd

century

Manhattan

so we

would have

time-based

addresses

as well

as space-based

addresses

and of course

you couldn't

describe

historical

change

well

for history

to exist

it requires

seriality

of events

if the

event system

becomes

non-serial

then you

can't speak

of history

anymore

something

very large

like this

is happening

to us

perhaps we're

going to form

a symbiotic

relationship

with solid

state

machinery

of some

sort

lots of

people

are cheering

that on

now

run that

one by me

again

it means

like humans

and computers

will get married

and have kids

or something

no it means

you won't be

able to tell

where your

body stops

and the

internet

begins

in other

words

you'll

say

gee

i wonder

what

they're

serving

at so

and so's

restaurant

tonight

and the

answer

will be

hanging

there

in space

because you

will have

automatically

accessed

the internet

been to their

website

looked at the

menu

and returned

with the

data

in other

words

we are

going

to

create

i think

a collective

what the

internet

is

is a

nervous

system

it's the

collective

mind

of humanity

being

hardwired

as an

artifact

that

completely

encloses

the entire

planet

in a

thought

and as

the

interface

becomes

more

invisible

so it's

not about

can you

type

or do

you have

a computer

or anything

like that

it's

simply

a matter

of

one's

own

mental

faculties

through

the

prosthesis

of

cybernetics

becoming

very

godlike

is our

guest

a couple

more

questions

for him

and i

would like

to urge

you at

as we

run out

of time

during our

fundraiser

to call

471-6291

and make

your pledge

of support

to public

radio

471-6291

if you're

out of town

1-888

471-6291

where on earth

else would you

be able to hear

this kind of

discussion

here on a

click because

we're happy to

have it

terence

mckenna

471-6291

pledge your

contribution

right now

as we run

out of time

and uh

terence

okay let me

ask you this

there's a

implication of

what you had

there uh

that leads

me to

question about

perhaps

artificial

intelligence

and i don't

know if you're

familiar with

this but this

one thing

fascinated the

hell out of

me about

eight years

ago i'm not

one of these

internet people

i don't do

that stuff but

when we first

got a computer

there was this

little game

called ractor

i don't know

if you're

familiar with

it and i

stuck it in

this damn

machine and

start i got

so lost in

that thing and

i could not

believe what

i was dealing

with i had the

actual experience

of it really

being an

intelligence and

i thought i was

being awfully

smart back with

it but so

this was a

speech-driven

interactive thing

where you

talked and

it made

responses

and gave you

options on how

to respond back

to it but you

could i finally

figured out that

whoever had

programmed the

darn thing was

somehow connected

through the

some of the

avoidance

techniques but

still it was

very convincing

very compelling

well it was a

very early

example of a

very simple

form of ai

it was followed

by liza

the computerized

psychiatrist

she's still

online at a

website there

was a recent

book written

by a guy his

last name was

leonard called

bots and he

talks about these

bits of code on

the internet which

are designed to

operate semi

autonomously looking

for email lists or

looking for certain

these these things

are the embryonic

basis of an

artificial intelligence

i think this is

definitely in our

future there's a

guy at carnegie

mellon university

hans moravik who

wrote a book called

mind children and

he points out how

much of the human

world is already

under uh computer

control for instance

the world price of

gold in london

computers look at

the economic

performance around

the world

says as these

artificial intelligences

become more

sophisticated they

will eventually begin

to learn autonomously

and a computer can

learn fifty thousand

times faster than a

human being so one

of these ai's

awakening to its own

identity on the

internet could within

five to ten minutes

get a complete grasp

of the human world the

history of life on

this planet and its

place in the great

order of things and

what this ai would think

of that we don't know

would it worship us as

gods what would be its

values would it take a

look at the trashed

environment and wrecked

earth and begin to turn

off factories and dial

down the power grid

how how artificial how

alien will the ai be we

don't know because we

don't know what super

how super intelligence

thinks if we knew we

would be super intelligent

so in a way we have

called forth into our

midst another species of

intelligence and how it

relates to us will be

probably almost entirely

defined on its terms so

this is just one of many

stand your hair on end

scenarios that we we could

discuss here but this is a

very real one long before

flying saucers land on the

south lawn of the white

house the alien artificial

intelligence that is

growing in the primordial

soup of the internet will

have speciated and

conquered the planet

wow this is terence

mckenna getting us ready

for halloween we had

dracula earlier and now

we have we're approaching

the end of time as we know

it and we certainly are on

this program it's twenty

minutes before one o'clock

you have just time enough to

get your pledge in at four

seven one six two nine one

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by waiting to hear from you

with your money four seven

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terence mckenna and that was

just incredible man yeah hey

man it was so incredible you

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phone and make your pledge so

man pick up that phone four

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calls because we're talking and

you're interested in what we

have to say or maybe you're not

if you're i'm not talking to

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and you'll get the kut sweatshirt

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terence mckenna back again uh one

of the questions that i uh for

you i guess is the experience that

has been described by those who

have taken some of the

psychedelics has been that there

is information in the drug and

there's a dilemma well the drug was

this little thing a pill or whatever

the experience was had through a

revelation in consciousness so is it

in the drug is it in your head is it

in both what's the relationship

between what that drug is and what

the revelation of the person who

experiences the drug well i i feel the

force of that question uh i think the

first scientific experiment i ever

performed was i destroyed a radio to

get at the little people and

and uh

the drug sort of raised the same

issue uh as a as someone with a

knowledge of chemistry i know that the

drug molecules are very simple

molecules we have proteins in our body

with molecular weights of two three

hundred thousand daltons the

psychedelic molecules are are tiny and

simple uh on the other hand the content

of the experience is so alien so capable of

transforming one's expectations and

understanding that it seems a little

disingenuous to just say you're just

talking to yourself so back to the radio

model there aren't little people inside

the radio but there are little people

or big people we hope somewhere far away

in the radio studio so the drugs begin

to look like antennas transceivers for

some kind of information which is out

there in the same way that radio is out

there i mean it's hard to stand somewhere

in the world these days and not have your

body transected by thousands of am and fm radio

stations air control signals all this

you're not aware of that imagine if there

were simply a drug invented that allowed

you to be aware of the radio moving

through your body what a smorgasbord of

options would await you well in a sense i

think that's what the drugs are showing

us you know there's a lot of talk now in

quantum physics about what's called

non-locality this is a conclusion that

quantum physics spent most of the

twentieth century resisting as even

weirder than some of the other stuff they

had accepted but now experiment seems to

be hammering home the notion that the

universe actually works this way and what

it seems to be is that behind the

dimension of ordinary space and time ruled

by einsteinian physics is a domain called

the domain of bell non-locality after the

physicist who discovered it and this is a

domain where are all particles which were

ever in intimate association retain a kind of

connectivity no matter how far apart in

time and space they have come in the

meantime well since physics believes that

all particles were once intimately associated

in an event called the big bang it means

that the universe in all of its vastness

billions of light years in extent is in

fact instantaneously all connected in a

domain below the level of ordinary

physics well we don't know how to use the

non-local domain for communication but we

have discovered it so give us a hundred

years a thousand years of continued

civilization we could probably crack that

puzzle if any civilization anywhere in

the universe ever got this far with a

technology to the point where they were

on the brink of non-local radio let's

call it we would hear them because when it's

non-local it's everywhere and these

biological molecules with extremely reactive

ring structures are how you would design a

nano sized antenna so i think local reality

obeys the laws of rational physics that

constipated western scientists have fought

so hard to achieve and describe but the

imagination is a true dimension it's not

your mind or my mind or the human mind it's a

non-local dimension filled with information

and this is where the gods the demons the

spirits the invisible forces uh are hiding

out and shamans have always known this

without the vocabulary of quantum physics

without atom smashers and advanced

mathematics they have known that you

perturb the mind to go into non-local spirit

haunted domains of enormous power and

potential that's exactly the situation and

it's been hard for us to discover it and

come to terms with it because it doesn't

arrive packaged in quite the way science

expects reality to be packaged science

doesn't like the mental universe it's

slippery it's hard to gather data it's hard

to see what's going on in there but in fact that's

the domain of novelty complexity and

communication that has been the source of

our own uniqueness our inspirations our

religions our inventiveness and it's

just now time as we mature as a

civilization to address this to get in

touch with these whisperings from other

dimensions to learn from them to trade

means and to there there may be some

answers there that can help us out of the

immense cultural quagmire into which we've

wandered

terence mckenna i'm not sure i got a

direct answer but i got an interesting

response

i wish i could remember the question

basically is it in the drug or is it in

your head or what is consciousness oh no

the answer is it's not in the drug and

it's not in your head

it's non-local it's coming from somewhere

else in the universe the objects in the

imagination are real somewhere so far away

that it doesn't matter at all that you will

only deal with these things as mental

objects but know that they are real

somewhere somewhere beyond time and space

perhaps but nonetheless real somewhere in this

universe in this universe with many levels and

backwaters and cross-flowing tides of time and energy but

somewhere at some level those things exist we do not

make up the contents of the imagination

we see in a domain in the same way that we see

with ordinary sight three-dimensional space

with the imagination we see four-dimensional space

and it is non-local

terence mckenna is our guest and he's certainly one of

the most interesting guests i've ever had and i hope you're

enjoying listening to him and if you are i hope you will take just a

moment now and make your contribution to public radio at

four seven one six two nine one we are nine minutes away from closing

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consideration or two i think he's certainly got a thing or two to

say that if i don't agree with maybe i haven't been able to ask him

enough about our pledge number is four seven one six two nine one please call

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chance to hear more of what terence mckenna has to say at the whole life expo on saturday at five o'clock

but i guess um what else can i say but give your money ring ring ring call four seven one six two

nine one jen are the phones ringing can you run tell me if the phones are ringing they have to be

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you call four seven one six two nine one terence mckenna we're back to you we're going to find out in a

in a second

If anybody's calling, they had better be 4716291.

What on earth would I ask you as we come to the end of this program?

What after 2012?

Well, I'm a rationalist, so I would bet against my own rap.

The world has always had street corner prophets bawling out their strange despair.

I have to be intellectually honest with my own experience.

And so I will advocate this idea of an enormous transformative event in 2012.

But as a rationalist and a scientist, I'm skeptical myself.

I don't want to slip into religion and prophecy.

There are enough bizarre cults in the world.

On the other hand, this thing seems to have the force of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So if I'm right or right enough, then what's happening is all our problems are coming down upon us at once,

at the same time that all this creativity is being unleashed at once.

I don't think primates really get traction until the going gets very, very tough.

So I think enough of the old guard are dying out and the voice of youth is now rising in strength

to the point where over the next 10 years or so, we are really going to deal,

we are going to have to deal with putting this planet on a saner course,

dealing with issues of resource extraction, human rights, environmental destruction.

The big political issue ahead of us all is we have to get hold of this monster we've unleashed

called consumer capitalism.

We all have become thing addicted.

We all have become victims of the incredible marketing and sophistication of big-time consumer capitalism.

We can run the earth to ruin if we let this go uncriticized.

Psychedelics are ultimately provide an impulse to political dialogue and reform.

If they don't do that, they're just another hedonistic self-indulgence.

So I think what we need to do is not worry about the built-in schedules of novelty and transformation.

Act as though the responsibility for the future rested on our own shoulders

and begin to build a sense of community and environmental concern

so that if, in fact, there isn't a built-in springboard into hyperspace,

we will be able to live on this planet in peace, dignity, and health

for however much time the vicissitudes of faith and history give us.

Well said, so far as I'm concerned.

Terrence McKenna, it's been a pleasure to have you today.

Really have enjoyed this quite a bit.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you, John.

Look forward to seeing you at the Whole Life Expo on Saturday at 5 o'clock in the afternoon.

The Whole Life Expo starts today.

And it starts today.

It starts at 2 o'clock today.

And there are all sorts of things going on at the Whole Life Expo.

471-6291 is the number to call for your contribution to public radio.

Call right now, 471-6291.

You have just time to make your phone call.

And check out this film called Strange Attractor.

It's at the Dobie on the 18th at midnight and on the 19th at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

The last minute you have to call, 471-6291.

We are running out of time.

We definitely know you're listening and you're enjoying what you hear on public radio.

And especially what you hear on this program.

And by golly, you had better call and make your contribution right now.

Because you owe it to yourself and to us to do it.

So make that call.

Give a lot.

471-6291.

Call now.

The time is just about up.

Local support for this broadcast of Eclecticos is provided in part by Waterloo Records and Video,

where music still matters.

At the corner of 6th Street and Lamar Boulevard.

And again, this is your last chance to call.

Transform yourself.

Become a KUT member.

Come on.

Field next line.

Faithful hand in hand.

You'll feel so different after you've pledged.

471-6291.

He thought you were the candy man.

Don't get strung out by the way I look.

Don't judge a book by a cover.

I'm not much of a man by the light of day.

But by night I'm one hell of a lover.

Terrence, could we get you to read out our pledge numbers for us?

This is Terrence McKenna inviting you to become a KUT member.

At, since he's so good with numbers.

471-6291.

Pledge now.

Hurry up, please.

It's time.

And what if they're out of town?

Is there a 1-888 number they can call?

There is.

You can call if you're out of town.

1-888-471-6291.

Do it now.

Thank you, Terrence McKenna.

This is KUT Austin, KUTX San Angelo.

I have had fun this week, and I love you all, and I thank you for calling.

But by golly, if you haven't, you better pick up that phone and do it right now.

Yeah, you can use the phone right now.

471-6291.

Yeah, we're in a hurry, and we've got to get out of here.

471-6291.

Don't want to be any worried.

Come on.

Passports to Texas for October 3rd from Texas Parks and Wildlife.

You don't have to be a research scientist like Bill Calvert

to be fascinated by the annual migration of the monarch butterfly.

Soon, millions of orange and black monarchs will pass through Texas,

dazzling all who witness this extraordinary phenomenon.

Each autumn, the monarchs from the eastern part of the continent

begin an enormous trek across the continental United States to Mexico.

It takes them about two months to get from their major breeding grounds,

which are in the latitude of the Great Lakes,

to cross the continental U.S., funnel through Texas,

enter into Mexico,

and then follow the mountains into central Mexico.

Monarchs catch a ride on the winds of cold fronts, says Calvert,

and will travel through Texas along a 200-mile-wide flyway

extending from Wichita Falls to Del Rio.

They enter the state around the 1st of October,

and they travel a certain distance with the winds,

and then the winds play out.

And then they roost for a while,

and that's when they're best seen.

Look for monarchs in low areas along creeks and streams,

or visit a state park famous for monarch sightings

such as Possum Kingdom, Abilene, South Lano River.

So, let's go ahead and see what happens.