Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.
This is Lorenzo, and I'm your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
And I don't know about you, but this last hit of Mercury Retrograde has really caused
havoc around here.
It started for us with a front tire blowout in the fast lane at the freeway and then progressed
to a loss of internet connectivity for a week or so.
I'll say a little more about all this at the end of today's program, but first I want to
play a talk that I hadn't planned on podcasting until later this year.
I know that I told you that the next trialogue between Terrence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and
Rupert Sheldrake would be the one that I believe to be their final trialogue, which was held
in June of 1998.
But due to circumstances, I've decided to play a program that is only labeled Trialogue Mini.
This is from one of the tapes in the box of cassette tapes that Ralph Abraham loaned to
me for podcasting, and it appears to be a standalone session that was directed by questions from
the audience.
I don't know when it was recorded, but Rupert mentions that they were in Santa Cruz, and in
the background it sounds like they're at a lunch of some kind on the day after a weekend
of trialogues, but that could just be my overactive imagination making that up.
I edited out long questions that couldn't be heard very well, but the speakers generally
repeated them, so you won't actually miss much of what was said.
Also, there were a couple of little gaps of silence that appeared in the tape for no apparent
reason.
Maybe they were using Nixon's secretary to make the recording.
And that's an obscure history reference for you to look up on your own if you don't get
it.
But all in all, I think this recording has a kind of homebrew quality that has a certain
charm of its own.
The beginning of the tape was garbled a bit, but probably because the recorder was old and
the tape was slipping.
That's just my guess.
So I cut that part out too, but basically it was Ralph telling the audience that the three
of them would do a trialogue based on questions from the audience that he hoped would be general
in nature.
And the first question had to do with the knot of eternity.
And if you're wondering what the knot of eternity is, well, you're not alone, because Ralph
then added a proviso that it might be helpful if the questions were also something that could
be used to launch a trialogue.
We'll begin with Terrence stepping in and explaining the genesis of that question.
So let's join them.
I think the question is about the t-shirt I'm wearing, which I'm not sure Ralph realized that's
what the question is about.
What t-shirt?
This t-shirt.
Well, I'm not a Buddhist, but I'm interested in the knot of eternity because another way of
thinking of it is it's the nexus of connectivity.
It's a place where everything is cotangent, as the mathematicians say.
Everything is connected.
And I think that's the place that we're growing toward.
That's what all the complexification in biology and culture is about, is this mysterious, super-connected
dimension that lies ahead of us in the future.
So, uh, that's, that's what that's all about.
Along those lines, can you address the, uh, fascination we have with years ending in zeros
and, uh, millennialism and, uh, certain Christian fascination with the end of the world?
Uh, the question is, can we address the certain fascination that people have with years ending
in three zeros and stuff like that?
I, I think personally that the, the word millennium has been misunderstood not only by ordinary
people walking around reading in the newspaper, but also famous authors of big books about the
millennium, and it doesn't really have anything to do with, uh, the number.
But certainly numbers have a fascination, but I, I think that the, uh, the fascination
with the year 2000 is, is just, uh, a bunch of hype.
And I don't, but you know better than I do, uh, I don't believe that people are fascinated
by the year 2000 under the heading millennium.
But, uh, let me just ask you, how many people are fascinated by the year 2000?
See, Terrence and a few followers.
Now, on the other hand, if you were interested in 2048, now there's a power of two.
That's an interesting number.
The question is, uh, about, uh, an idea we discussed yesterday concerning, uh, bifurcations
in general, a mathematical notion, and the possible emergence of a new species.
That is something we, we talked about a lot yesterday, so I'll let, uh, reverse it.
Um, I, I, I, I'm afraid I've forgotten this discussion.
Um, what do you mean by that, Ralph?
We didn't talk about the emergence of a new species.
I think, I'm, I'm going to, uh, interpret the question freely, if I may.
But, uh, we, we talked about, um, so first of all, we discussed evolution from different
aspects, particularly, um, the difference between biological evolution, like the, the descent
of man from apes, or whatever, and the, uh, the evolution of species, um, like those trilobites
and stuff on one hand, and the evolution of individual consciousness and world cultural
history, or in other words, culture, civilization, uh, social transformations, in other words, which
are completely different things.
Um, but there is, uh, a, a foot around the land, a kind of a optimistic belief that all
different kind of evolution follows similar rules, and that's called general evolution theory.
Therefore, we try to extrapolate more or less from the sequence of events which results in
a biological evolutionary quantum leap with a possibly similar sequence of events that results
in a quantum leap in, uh, social evolution, and, and then we went on to say that we're interested
in this because we believe that probably we are in such a quantum leap right now, and, uh, therefore,
and, uh, Eric touched on this in his brilliant introduction about our present moment between the past and the future,
that if the present moment is between a past, uh, that's familiar, and a future which is completely different,
and that's a very special moment, and because we are in such a moment, and we don't want to be afraid of it,
we have to understand if there is a universal process of the evolutionary jump, and we knew about it,
then we have a better understanding of where we are right now in the present moment, and, therefore, a better chance of creating a future for this next...
but I made that up, I don't know if it had anything to do with yesterday or not.
I think we have to go on to another question, uh, I'm sorry if I didn't do an adequate job with that one.
Let's talk about globalization in some kind of context, uh, maybe that context, maybe another one,
but, what, how you, uh, either you or all of you feel globalization is either destroying or evolving or, um, stimulating something else.
So, the question is, can we talk about globalization?
Just look if I can shorten it to that, giving, uh, the partners the greatest latitude to do this.
Thanks, ever so.
Ah, well, I mean, globalization means change.
It's bound, it means boundary dissolution.
On one level, it means the creation of a global monoculture of values, which is certainly less rich than a culture of aboriginal, uh, and unique, uh, human societies.
The problem is, no one wants to live in a museum diorama, uh, in order to support somebody else's idea of political correctness.
So, all over the world, what people want to do is join up with, uh, consumer culture and values, generally speaking.
On the other end of the spectrum, those values are mutating faster than they ever have before, producing all kinds of new technologies, uh, socially empowered groups that previously had no voice.
So, is the situation?
Yes.
Is there gain?
Yes.
Uh, the outcome of all this is going to be, uh, a dimin- a diminishing of the power of culture to mold people's lives, and, uh, an empowering of eccentricity, marginality, and individuality.
So, whether you call this win or lose, uh, there's something there for everybody, I think.
Now, here's a leading question, uh, which is, uh, addressed to Rupert, would you tell us about your current research with morphogenetic fields?
Yes, morphogenetic fields.
Well, alright, probably not everyone knows what this is all about, so I have to give a very brief thumbnail sketch.
Um, I put forward a theory that all living systems and all organized systems, like galaxies, stars, planets, molecules, crystals, clouds, animals, ecosystems, societies, etc.
These self-organizing systems are organized by invisible fields, morphic fields, within and around the system, and that these fields have a kind of inherent memory, given by the process I call morphic resonance.
A giraffe today tunes in to all giraffes in the past, and draws on a collective giraffe memory.
Um, a crystal today tunes in to the memories of similar crystals in the past, and that's why crystals keep crystallizing the same way.
When new crystals are made, this isn't what happens, it, as a habit builds up in nature.
So the idea is that the laws of nature are more like habits, the universe has a memory.
And this idea, of course, is controversial.
There are two ways of testing it.
One is to test the epic resonance aspect, which is to look for memory effects in nature.
Um, the other way is to look at the morphic fields, which connect things together in space.
And I've been working on both kinds of tests.
In my earlier books, like The Presence of the Past, I summarize tests, mostly in psychology, for morphic resonance, trying to see whether there's a collective human memory.
People learn something in one place.
Can they learn the same thing quicker in another?
I can't here summarize the many experiments that have been done, but most of them have given positive results supporting the morphic resonance hypothesis.
Some have given non-significant results.
Usually, tests where one's looking at the memory effects from millions of people in the past, for example, to do with written scripts like Hebrew,
those give positive results, whereas those that involve a few people, fifty to a hundred people learning something new now,
sometimes give positive results, sometimes give not significant.
It's a weak, it's too weak to detect with small samples reliably.
However, recently it's come to light that where bodies of data, like IQ test data, exist over many years, since 1910,
standard IQ tests have been administered.
Mysteriously, the average score has been going up and up and up all over the world.
It's only recently become clear that this is the case.
It's called the Flynn effect after its discovery of Flynn.
And nobody can explain it, because people aren't getting smarter.
No other measure shows that people are getting smarter all over the world.
They're just getting better at doing IQ tests.
And this, I think, is because they're tuning in biomorphic resonance to all the millions of people who've done these tests before.
Attempts by psychologists to explain this phenomenon have failed, and Flynn confesses himself baffled.
I predicted this effect on the basis of morphic resonance years ago.
I discuss it in my 1988 book, The Presence of the Past.
And I think that this is the most impressive piece of psychological evidence,
because it involves the largest scale set of data.
And it wasn't collected by me, so it's not in dispute that there's a special pleading on my past.
In relation to morphic fields, I must keep this brief.
I'm looking at the bonds between people and people, people and pets.
These social bonds, the way that members of the social group are connected together by fields.
And one of those research projects is going on right here in Santa Cruz.
There are two main centers for this research in the world.
One, London, where I live. The other, Santa Cruz.
Indeed, this gives me a wonderful opportunity to put in an appeal,
which I was hoping to have a chance to make this evening,
to those of you who live around here.
We're studying, among other things, psychic pets.
Dogs that know when their owners are coming home and go to the door and wait before someone comes in.
Cats that anticipate the arrivals of their owners.
Pets that pick up their owners' intentions telepathically,
like cats that know when they're going to be taken to the vet and disappear.
And dogs that know when they're going to be taken for a walk and get excited
even before anyone's moved or picked up their lead or anything like that.
The person who's doing that research here in Santa Cruz is very keen to get in touch
with people who have dogs or cats or cockatiels or other pets that do this kind of thing.
And so if any of you do and would like to take part in these experiments,
please talk to David Brown afterwards, who's working with me on this project here in Santa Cruz.
And David is here.
So if you stay around here, David, so those who can't see you will know where to find you at least.
And afterwards, that would be a big help.
Can you speak on the idea of conspiracy is the question.
And the answer is yes.
This might be an opportunity for sort of a mini-log question.
Yes.
You think?
Tempest.
Refuge it.
Is that a yes or a no?
It's a cautionary note.
Well, I think this is the kind of subject on which Terence has most to say.
Well, I may have the most to say.
I'm not sure it's what you want to hear.
Conspiracy theory generally seems to me to be, it flattens reality.
It betrays its true complexity.
The great successful conspiracies, the Catholic Church, capitalism, the Communist Party of China, Zionism.
These things don't call themselves conspiracies.
They call themselves historical social movements.
If you bill yourself as a conspiracy, it's almost dead-certain that whatever you're about, it's of no consequence.
I think there's a tendency to not think as clearly as we might because the current reigning paradigm of political correctness, which is relativism, dictates that we never criticize each other no matter how preposterous and ontologically unanchored our vision of the world might be.
So, you know, the task of discerning ship from Shinola looms very large at the end of history.
And I, just one piece of advice and then I'll let this subject go.
If you're confronted with extraordinary claims of pro bono proctologists from other star systems making stuff of that ilk with the face on Mars, so forth and so on, palladium channeling, the way to handle this stuff is thoroughly check out the messenger.
Thoroughly check out the messenger with questions such as how many convictions for grand theft auto that you have in your life and so forth and so on.
And I think if we examine the messenger, much of the mysterious facts that haunt our speculation will be seen to be something less than rock solid stuff.
No, the same thing can't be said for DMT. DMT is not an idea. It's not a position. It's an experience. If you want to know what DMT is about, get some and smoke it. It is unambiguously what it is.
Ideas are the truth. You can kick the tires. You can look at the odometer. The truth doesn't need spin doctoring, advance men, hybola, promo or advance publicity.
And things which do require that are usually bogus.
I have to confess that we've duked it out on this one before and last time Terence won.
But there is possibly a conspiracy theory is an attempt to explain something that looks like a conspiracy and one possible explanation is a conspiracy.
But although there is no conspiracy, nevertheless you have, we all have the experience of seeing a kind of coordination among events in different spheres and different times that Jung calls synchronicity.
We could say that there are kind of space-time patterns in experience that defy ordinary explanation.
And when such a space-time pattern occurs, then we seek an explanation such as some paranormal telepathy, precognitive dream or some other kind of magic or even an illusion.
Now, the conspiracy is an explanation for a synchronistic event that is perceived as a synchronistic event by people who perceive it.
We don't know what is actually going on, but we think that there is a pattern like he pulled the trigger, he fell over, something like that.
So, to turn some credit here, not only there is no conspiracy, but there is nothing that even appears like a conspiracy.
But the idea, the impression that there is a synchronicity is, as a matter of fact, a kind of a mass insanity, an illusion which is taken up as the Shroud of Turin or something.
It is the illusion, and then there is the explanation.
So, the last time we duped it out on this was, I believe, in the context of the famous crop circles.
Now, crop circles are much better known in England than they are in California, because they mostly occurred in England.
But in California, we like to pride ourselves that we know what is going on in England.
And so, one time I flew over to England to experience a crop circle, and Rupert and I flew down, having heard the news that one had recently appeared,
we flew down the motorway in his car, and we experienced a fresh crop circle, and we had a kind of epiphany there, I would say, on several different levels.
And we came back rather softened in our skepticism about the crop circles.
Now, what crop circles are is, I mean, on some abstract level that we're talking about, is this synchronistic kind of thing,
where there's a crop circle here, there's a crop circle there, there's a sort of space-time pattern and the occurrence of things,
for which there is no rational explanation, it seems.
And we soften to the idea that this was not the illusion, but was an actual synchronicity,
of somehow the earth was speaking to us by bending its hair to the sun, and had a bad hair day, and woke up with it.
And they said,
I pity this.
Well, we've got you now, Terence.
Because at that time, Terence said, his explanation of this was, a conspiracy theory.
He said that the British Army did maneuvers at night, and he had a conspiracy theory, so he tore a problem.
Would you like me to, since I'm sitting here, what I actually said was, since the British Air Defense authorities did not seem alarmed by the crop circles,
that they must know more than we do, because that part of England is scattered over with NATO bases, thermonuclear weapons depots,
and I don't think MI5 would be tolerating, you know, a penetration of British airspace without at least investigating it.
As far as the crop circles are concerned, I cornered an expert on these matters, John Michel,
who's no hard-edged reductionist, and I asked him, I said, John, what's going on in southern England?
And after hemming and hawing, he said, rural British fun.
I think that is what's going on.
Again, if you want to understand the crop circles, go to Devon, and drink in the bars, and read the bulletin boards, and listen to what the locals are saying,
and if you can survive that experience with your belief in the extra-normal origin of crop circles, then my family has a bridge over the Hudson River that we will sell you cheap.
Well, I should add one detail Ralph left out about this epiphany in the crop circle.
We went to, my wife, your purse, Ralph, and I went to see it.
We got a bit tired walking around, there were lots of crop circles, and when we were in the middle of the newest one,
we felt like a rest. We'd been walking, it was a hot day.
We lay down in a sort of three-fold spoke pattern around the centre of the circle just for a short rest.
And no sooner had someone commented, what a quiet day it is, how we could actually be making this and no one would know,
when there was a distant buzz in the air.
A helicopter came nearer and nearer, then descended over the crop circle and circled round above.
On the side of it, we read the single word, police.
And shortly afterwards, the helicopter landed.
Police cars approached with sirens blaring from all sides, and we were arrested.
They thought at last they'd found the crop circle perpetrator.
Our attempt to convince them that we were merely inspecting them for scientific reasons cut little ice,
until a jeep arrived, out of which jumped a German baron with about ten German photographers,
who immediately said, Rupert came up to me and turned to the police and said,
if there's one scientist in England who can explain these, it's Dr. Sheldrake.
The police melted away.
However, we had a discussion about crop circles, Terence's conspiracy theory and so on,
in our first volume of trial logs, you can read it there, you can see a picture of one.
After that, John Michel and I together organised what we thought would be the definitive experiment
to get to the bottom of this, an essay in literal grassroots research.
We got a German magazine to put up prize money, a £3,000 prize.
We got the Guardian newspaper to sponsor the contest, and we formed an organising committee,
of which I was chairman, to sponsor the first international crop circle making contest,
which was held in southern England.
We had a fixed design containing all the features, supposedly most difficult to hoax.
We invited the sceptics to submit an entry, and invited them to nominate a judge.
They refused.
On the grounds this was a set-up, no one could possibly make a cycle of such complexity,
that we'd loaded the contest.
They're still going on.
There's still a mystery, but I think the mystery is somewhat less than before,
and we don't need the conspiracy theory to explain it.
Is it just my imagination, or isn't there some sort of an increase in anomalous circumstances
and weirdness in the world?
The question is, is it my imagination, or is there an increase in weirdness in the world?
Well, several things are going on.
First of all, yes, there is greater weirdness in the world.
Also, the media is a system for amplifying anomalies.
All it reports are data points which depart from predictable curves.
And the faster it can report these things, and the greater such things there are that can be reported,
the more fascinating the world is.
Thus, the more media is sold, the more toothpaste moved.
And it is true that complexity is densifying, but one of the things that I think we're going to have to come to terms with,
as the world moves toward this concrescence of novelty, is that it gives off spurious reflections of itself.
The number of cults will multiply, the number of channelings multiply,
the number of messiahs and healers moving among the people will multiply and multiply.
They are caused by the proximity of the anomaly, but they are in fact false images, distorted images of it.
This is why yesterday I was pleading for Occam's razor, clear thinking, rules of evidence,
because, you know, if hearsay and excited rumor is all it takes to sway you toward believing in a 12th planet,
or aliens trading coaxial cables for fetal tissue, or all the other things,
then you're just going to be a victim, you're going to be a mark, somebody's picking your pocket.
You know, we can do better than that in the great centers of academic thinking and technical innovation,
than to spawn, you know, people who support unanchored and unhinged and tasteless and over-designed speculation.
The truth will be beautiful, and it will be simple, and it will be persuasive to those who doubt it.
So don't get into some closed loop of ideology.
Make the truth seduce you.
Don't be thereby seduced by error.
Wow, thank you.
Would you address the quickness part?
Yeah, I'd like to speak on.
There's, I think, the Morco genetic grid, lay lines in England,
the Akashic records, which is the universal mind of memory in the universe.
And the paradigm shift, or the harmonic convergence,
and interdimensional walls growing thinner and thinner,
Gerald White and Nicola Tesco.
Everybody could hear that, yes? Is it okay?
Well, there's a lot of questions here.
Let me start with the harmonic convergence here.
Let me take look at the母鳳.
Let me begin.
and let me begin.
Let me begin.
August 1987 I believe it was. I remember it well because I was invited to a gathering in
Glastonbury, England to celebrate this turning point in human consciousness. And although
I'd met Jose Arguelles with Terence probably, the significance of it wasn't at all clear
to me. And so when I arrived there, I asked the organisers at this event, what's the programme?
They said, well first we're having the talk on the significance and meaning of the harmonic
convergence. And so I'm delighted. I said, I'm really longing to hear what that is. And I
said, who's giving the talk? And I said, you. So it was really a case of the blind leading
the blind. So I can't say very much about that. Now, of the list of other phenomena, let's
just take one. Choose which one.
Okay. The morphogenetic grid and its relation to ley lines in England and the world and the
interdimensional barriers growing thin. I think you can get that.
Okay. Well, let's just stick to ley lines. There are these, in England there are places,
if you join together ancient sacred sites, they often line up. And so sometimes you can
see a series of chouch steeples or monuments on the horizon and they form a line. And these
are called ley lines. Some people think they're power lines that join ancient sacred places. I
was asked to give a talk on morphic resonance and ley lines at the Ley Hunter's Lute, the
annual gathering of ley hunters. And I didn't really understand ley lines, so I thought I'd ask
the audience what they understood. And the big question, it seems to me, is are ley lines
made? Are they man-made? Or are they really there? In other words, do people line up sacred
sites? And then, because you've got sacred sites aligned, the sort of charges the land between
them, so you create a ley line. Or are the lines going across the landscape which people identified
by geomantic means and then brought sacred sites on. Well, it turned out there was a great
diversity of opinion and I asked for a vote on the subject among the audience. And it was
about 50-50 among the ley hunters who devote their lives to the subject. So there's no consensus
here. And of course, those who'd like to bring about a consensus will say, well, couldn't it
be both? Yes, it could. There could be features of the landscape, geomantic features of the landscape,
peculiar powers of places which people were able to recognize in methods not unlike those
of Feng Shui today. We know that in Europe people practiced the same kind of thing. They
could pick out special places and it's probably the case they also tried to align sacred places
to create these systems. One is the Saint Michael line going from the west of Ireland right through
to Delos and through to Carmel in Israel or Lebanon or wherever it is. It goes right through
Europe and it goes through some of the most significant and important sacred places.
John Michel has written books on this subject. They're probably in this store somewhere.
But the question as to whether they're made, how they're created and what the significance
of these geomantic power spots is, I don't know the significance of this and how it might
line up with other spots on the west coast or elsewhere. But I think if one's interested
in geomancy and so on, Santa Cruz is quite a good place to begin.
the request for an update on the timeline. Well, very briefly, the novelty theory still predicts
that this anomalous singularity of connection will occur in 2012 at the winter solstice congruent
to the end of the Mayan calendar. The mathematics were thoroughly attacked a couple of years ago
by a young British mathematician named Watkins and brilliantly defended by an American mathematician
named John Sheliak. In the course of that contretemps, I had to admit that I had made errors
in the original scoring method by which I derived the wave. And when those errors were corrected,
the values shifted on approximately 3%. So it wasn't a knockout punch. In fact, for all
but the aficionados, this is a mathematical detail that they need never brush up against.
Bottom line, novelty theory is mathematically more robust than ever and continues to predict
the increasing levels of connectivity and novelty leading to some kind of encounter with a singularity
approximately 14 years in the future. This is all in my books and writing
and is supported by Mac and PC-friendly software that you can see at my website. Thanks for asking.
How many? Adrenaline increasing activities. Adrenaline increasing activities is a result of the human race
not being evolutionary ready for the sedentary lifestyle that we have.
Well, I think what you're implying is we're designed to defend small tribal groups of people in a hunting-gathering situation
and we're crowded into cities by the millions, and does this increase violence?
And the answer is, it's a contributing factor. But I encountered an old friend recently
and I asked him, what have you been doing? And he said I founded something called
the Rocky Mountain Center for the Study of Media Violence. And he explained to me something
which I had never understood because you always hear that violence in media is used to sell things.
But none of us are violent people. We're all turned off by violence. So how is violence used to sell things?
He said, well, how it works is in the evening news, which is where all the ad revenue is made
because that's where most local stations are most watched. The most violent, disgusting, and value denying
and denigrating story is pushed right before the main commercial break. And so your desire to get away
from this horrible information is satisfied when the cut is to the product and there is an unconscious blood of relief.
associated with the product. We are being manipulated. We have created social institutions such as consumer capitalism
that are so unfriendly to our innate humanness that they are actually redesigning us, these social systems,
to be more brutal, less caring, more acquisitive, more fetishistic than we naturally would be
and again the antidote to this is awareness of your immediate environment and the trips that are being run on you and the ways in which we are being manipulated.
Man is not bad. Humanity is not flawed. What is flawed are ideologies and social systems that distort humanness for purposes usually of commerce or conquest.
And until you figure out that this is going on we are all going to be run like rats through a maze. Culture is an intelligence test and when you pass that test you don't give a shit about culture.
Can we indeed Terence moralist down to no? I think that Terence's McLuhan-esque theory is more or less correct but it doesn't answer the question.
The question is do we need more or less, if I can paraphrase again, in order to have a peaceful cooperative planetary society in the future,
do we need some kind of evolutionary leap or not?
Actually the question was do you think that everyone craves crisis and craves violence because we don't walk down the street having to worry about a lion jumping out and eating it and we are just not ready for like...
Do you know what I mean? People go to work every day, they come home, they watch TV, they go to bed, it's so predictable, do you think that we are not evolutionarily ready for such a predictable lifestyle?
That's what I'm not. Are we not evolutionary ready? So that means we could hope for an evolutionary leap following which we would be evolutionary ready.
That means that we, contrary to what Terence has said, that everything is okay with us, I disagree with that.
I think that we don't have the intelligence or the biochemistry of anything which has evolved to the point that the human species is able to have a stable, sustainable, peaceful, loving planetary society in the future.
There's no way we need to change and we're hoping that that change, you could call an evolutionary leap or maybe a miracle will take place.
That's what I think and that's why I go around doing what I do is that I'm trying to participate in the precipitation of some kind of change following which future would be possible because I don't think the species we have now is going to make it.
Well I think if I were doing a research program on violence I'd compare different societies.
I lived in India for a long time and most Indian society, although people live very crowded in traditional cities like the old city of Hyderabad where I lived, there's not a very high level of violence.
And in Indian villages there's remarkably peaceful atmosphere, people don't block their houses, don't get attacked on the streets.
Many traditional societies have very little violence. On the other hand there are some traditional societies like Malaya where I've also lived where you can have extremely peaceful, happy looking people in villages and suddenly someone will run amok.
Amok is a Malay word. And when they run amok they go into an orgy of violence. They usually do it with machetes because they don't have handguns everywhere there as they do in some other places.
But they run amok and they'll chop up anyone in sight, kill members of their family. It's very like these shooting frenzies that break out here in the United States.
And I think that if one's looking at the comparative psychology of violence there's a lot to be learned by looking at the way it occurs in other societies.
Right now we tend to look at it as isolated by the media. But different cultures have different ways of dealing with this and the way in which violence breaks out.
I was in Portugal recently and I was staying in a hotel overlooking a large structure, round structure, and I thought I'd go and have a look what it was.
It turned out to be the local bullring. And there was a big poster saying, University Bullfight Week at the Catholic University of Lisbon versus something else.
These universities field their own bullfighting teams. And this was an alien concept to me. We never had a university bullfighting team in Cambridge.
There's a sense in those cultures, the Hispanic in Portugal and Spain, they have institutionalized spectacle kind of thing fully displayed on a limited scale.
In terms of the bloodshed killing of bulls, I think, although I think it's cruel and unnecessary, a far larger number of bulls are killed for hamburgers every day, behind closed doors, under conditions that I'd rather not know about.
I don't eat hamburgers or meat, I must say, partly because I don't like that idea, but it may be better to have it up front and out in the open and have real adrenaline release through ritualized violence and ritualized sacrifice,
which all traditional cultures are based on ritualized blood sacrifice of one kind or another. And the Christian Holy Communion is a mutated form of a blood sacrifice, central to our own culture.
So I think that the suppression of ritual forms of violence can lead to an outbreak of sacrificial killings by crazed maniacs, because it somehow sanctioned forms within an ordered system are no longer possible.
Should technology be feared by human society or embraced or both?
Well, it's not a good idea to fear anything. Technology is prosthesis. Technology is tools. We've always been defined by our tools. There is nothing about us that would be human if it weren't for our tools.
Language is a tool. Language is a tool. The cutting edge is a tool. Social organization is a tool.
Marsiliad wrote a book called Shamanism, The Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Shamanism is essentially a technology.
I think we should simply take it as given that we are the kind of creature that downloads its ideas into matter and thereby creates a history for itself out of the consequences of that act. And fear is not appropriate. Consciousness and attention to the effects is appropriate.
We have over a million years of dependence on technology, so there is not much we can do about it now.
Given the new research in genetic biology, is it possible to create a human ideal for the future and bypass evolution?
Can we clone people?
Can we genetically engineer people, bypassing evolution to create the future?
The aim of breeding a super race of people using standard techniques was called eugenics, and it was very fashionable among geneticists in the earlier part of the century.
It got a very bad name when it was applied on the large scale by Hitler in order to produce a master race by having stud farms of blond women, SS officers and so on, to produce a new master race of perfect Aryan specimens.
Eugenics went out of fashion after the Second World War precisely because of its abuse by the Nazis and by others.
It's reared its head again in a modern form in the context of genetic engineering, as you rightly point out.
There are some people in the genetic engineering world who are fanatical eugenicists who think they can purify and uplift the human race.
This is not a new idea. It used to say that we needed smarter people for the improvement of the human race, and this should be achieved by artificial insemination or natural insemination.
The sperm donors should be people who were Nobel Prize winners, and so on.
Sir Julian Huxley was an example of that kind of eugenicist.
When he described the ideal sperm donor, it was remarkably like Sir Julian Huxley.
So, in the modern context though, you can't engineer in genes very easily.
In fact, it's extremely difficult to do.
What genetic engineering really means in practice in the human realm is a series of tests for defective genes or genes you don't like.
And then, within vitro fertilization, you have dozens of embryos, you test the embryos, you kill all the ones that you don't like.
It's basically selective abortion in practice.
And with amniocentesis and selective abortion for Down syndrome and spina bifida, we already have this on a mass scale.
They're trying to produce yet more effective methods of selective abortion using these modern techniques of genetic diagnosis.
Now, whether you think that's a good thing or not depends on where you're coming from.
Personally, I'm not very keen on it.
And because any question of improvement of the human race depends on what you think is a better kind of humanity.
And chances are you'll think it's something rather like an improved, idealized version of yourself.
And so, I think that the eugenic dream is not something that can be realized today in the human realm.
In the animal realm, through genetic engineering and cloning of animals like high-yielding, high-milk-yielding cows and stuff,
it will be practiced quite soon.
It will be another step towards the mechanization and industrialization of agriculture through factory farming.
And I'm glad I became a vegetarian a long time ago. I don't want to support that kind of industry.
But there's nothing inherently wrong with cloning because it's already used in the plant kingdom.
Every potato you eat is a clone. Every apple you eat is a clone.
Because these are propagated by cuttings or vegetatively.
So cloning has always been used in the plant kingdom.
So when people get very excited about cloning, there's nothing inherently bad about that,
or else most of traditional agriculture and horticulture would be dismissed.
But in the animal realm, I'm very suspicious of it.
Professor, let's go to another question.
Well, I'm just saying a little, uh, stop making sense.
Okay, Terrence, you're nodding. Could you, uh, potentially this one?
Well, I don't know. I did glossolalia last night at the rave.
So I, uh, my credentials for not making sense are in good order.
Um, nevertheless, it struck me recently with considerable force that it's very interesting that when we think clearly,
our thoughts can be mathematically defined through symbolic logic.
Uh, that's how machines think as well.
Machines use symbolic logic.
So, no, it isn't just that we are making up sense.
When you are making sense, you are running, uh, clean code, uh, that expresses symbolic logical theorems and propositions.
That's why we can communicate with machines and why the output of machines makes sense to us.
Because symbolic logic is a universal language understood by people and machines.
When we don't make sense, the machines can't understand us and we cannot mathematically formalize our thinking
because it has been what is called, uh, nonsense.
But isn't that just a circle?
Well, except that the fact that mathematical logic is in there, uh, indicates that this is not a circle going on
in some unanchored psychological dimension.
There is real truth there.
Our minds apprehend it.
And we know this because that truth can be freely transferred and transformed between us and our machines
using the formal languages of mathematics.
It's just internal consistency.
Yes, you're right about that.
Well, I think this, uh, mathematical logical computer assimilable form of making sense is very limited.
In most cultures, what gives, uh, a basic sense are the myths, the patterns of the society.
And that's true in our culture, too.
It is a kind of sense that's made in each country by the natural myths.
It makes sense of history.
We make sense of our role through the stories we tell about ourselves and our personal myths.
And I don't think there's anything wrong with this.
I think we have to be like that.
It's the only way it can be so.
In science, paradigms, models of reality are what makes sense of phenomena.
If they fit into the paradigm, they make sense.
To a lot of people in modern biology, DNA, genetic engineering, the bottom line from new products make a great deal of sense.
It fits with all these paradigms.
Whereas, things like psychic pets don't make sense because there's no, first of all, there's no money in it.
There's no research on it.
It doesn't fit in to this mechanistic model of reality.
And there are many scientists who totally dismiss the very possibility in spite of the fact that many pet owners experience these abilities on a daily basis.
So, we can see many examples of what makes sense and doesn't make sense and it depends on your map.
Terence will hasten to add that not all maps or models are equally good.
And I do agree with that.
We have to look at them.
We have to test them.
And in science, one of the points of science is testing different models or theories of reality to see which makes the best sense in accordance with what actually happens.
But you can't usually know until you've done the experiment, at least if they're plausible hypotheses.
The best sense that I have is that it's time to stop.
So, do psychic pets make sense in your model of reality?
For what it's worth, they do in mine.
Mainly because I've witnessed quite a few instances of that kind of behavior.
And just because that phenomena doesn't fit in today's mainstream scientific view of the world doesn't mean it isn't real.
After all, mainstream science has now declared that over 90% of the universe is composed of dark matter and dark energy,
neither of which are actually understood very well, if at all.
And if our greatest scientists still don't have any clues about the vast majority of stuff in this universe,
it seems possible that they may have also missed one or two other little areas, like psychic pets.
But that's a discussion for another day.
Today, I'll be happy if I can just get this podcast online.
As I mentioned in the beginning of this program, I've been experiencing Mercury retrograde in all its glory.
But in an hour from now, the cable installation guy will be back for his third try at getting my new internet connection operating.
It's been over a week now since our roommate moved out and his DSL connection left with him.
And even though we had the cable connected a few days before disconnecting the DSL line, it still isn't working.
Which means that I've had only spotty email service for over a week now.
In fact, I've only been able to get five or six emails sent out during all that time.
And my inbox is just brimming with hundreds of messages to be downloaded and read.
So hopefully there isn't anything too pressing waiting for me.
But if you haven't heard back from me and expect to, well, don't give up hope,
as I should be able to dig out from under this backlog in the next few weeks or so.
Like many people, I get a little weird when I don't have access to my email,
and so I was quite relieved when a little cosmic giggle pointed out the foolishness of my stress.
What happened was that last Saturday night, I went out to dinner with Matt Palomari,
who you'll remember from a couple of podcasts ago.
And we were joined by Werner Vingy and a couple of other science fiction writers.
As I was leaving the house, I noticed a piece of paper in the pocket of the trousers I was wearing.
And I hadn't worn them in quite a while, mainly because I seldom go out much anymore.
And while I must have put that paper in there the last time I wore that pair of pants,
I don't have any memory of seeing it before.
And here's what I'd written on it.
Gradually, computers are forming an exoskeleton for humans.
It began with the pocket watch binding our consciousness to time.
Then these little machines migrated to our wrists.
Before long, our wrist watches, our mechanical timekeeping devices,
morphed into machines operated by digital computers.
Then other computers began to cover our bodies as well.
First came pagers, then cell phones and wireless PDAs.
A few pioneers are now using wearable computers.
Some people are implanting chips that are directly wired to their body's nervous system.
The most common one is known as the pacemaker.
And these computer-enhanced humans now get into automobiles that are also regulated by computers.
Some are even connected to orbiting satellites that are controlled by yet more network computers.
PDAs are beginning to schedule meetings for us without the insertion of human action.
The day is rapidly approaching when we will have to make a conscious decision
to break free from the shackles our machines are already trying to impose upon us.
And for most of us, the fatal part of our addiction to machines begins with a compulsion to constantly check our e-mail.
Now isn't that an interesting little synchronicity to find that thought about e-mail just when I was having e-mail withdrawal anxiety?
Since the paragraph is from a book I wrote in 1999,
I thought it somewhat remarkable to have it float to the surface just then.
But now that I'm telling this story, it doesn't seem quite so remarkable to me anymore.
So I guess we better move on.
I'll have to catch up on mentioning some of the e-mail you've sent when I do next week's podcast,
assuming that I've regained access to my e-mail by then, that is.
But before I go, I do want to mention one more thing,
and that is that there's a new podcast that's now coming out from the Cannabis Podcast Network.
And in case you missed it two weeks ago, every other Friday is now Freak Out Friday,
which means that a new installment of Psychonautica comes out.
And this is a podcast hosted by Max Freak Out and KMO of the Sea Realm.
And tomorrow we'll get to hear their second program in this series,
which includes an interview with yours truly.
Actually, KMO did the interview with me a couple weeks ago,
and so I have to admit that I don't really remember what we talked about.
I guess you know how it is with these occasional short-term memory losses, huh?
But if their first program is any indication, I think you're going to enjoy this new series,
which can be found, by the way, at www.dopefiend.co.uk.
Or better yet, you can subscribe to all of the Cannabis Podcast Network programs
under a single free subscription through iTunes.
And if you happen to be listening to this podcast from the Psychedelic Salon
through a click-to-listen button, you can also subscribe to this series through iTunes.
Just go to the podcast directory in iTunes and search for Psychedelic Salon
and then click the free subscription button.
Well, I guess I'd better get out of here and prepare this podcast for uploading
in the event that my internet connection actually begins to work today.
You know, Mercury is now direct.
But before I go, I should mention that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon
are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 2.5 License.
And if you have any questions about that, just click on the link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon web page,
which you can find at matrixmasters.com slash podcasts.
If you still have questions, just send them to Lorenzo at matrixmasters.com.
I want to also thank my friends at Chateul Hayuk for the use of their music here in the Salon.
And thank you for joining me here today. It's really good to be with you again.
And until next week, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
Be well, my friends.