Intelligence

"It's hard for me to imagine that the sun is an intelligent organism, unless it exists on a scale that's fairly hard to relate to. In other words, I can imagine the Pacific Ocean to be intelligent, but its intelligence would be of such a nature that it and I probably wouldn't have much to do with each other. Meanwhile, out in the universe, somewhere, entities exist which we do contact in the psychedelic experience. I'm never sure if they're creatures of other levels or simply of other places. If other places, they seem to be so far away that the laws of physics are so different that it's not like the difference between Chicago and Memphis, but like the difference between Chicago and Oz."

Terence McKenna

La serpiente

We’re going to kiss the snake on the tongue. Kiss the serpent. But if it senses fear, it’ll eat us instantly. But if we kiss it without fear, it’ll take us through the garden, through the gate, to the other side. Ride the snake… until the end of time.”

Jim Morrison.

Un hermano de infinita mente.

PAUL LAFFOLEY

Life Vs Status Quo

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge Interviewed by Technoccult Part 2: Pandrogeny

(Last question of the interview. To see the whole interview click here.)

Looking back on your life, can you think of an example of a time that you changed your mind about something? That there was something that was significant to you that, you know, that you completely changed your opinion about?
Yes. When we began Throbbing Gristle we were, we being me, really angry about the inequities of society. Especially being from Britain, with the royal family and aristocracy and the really ingrained class system. Enraged by the inequity and the bigotry and the inherited privilege whether people have the skills or the qualities to exercise it.
So my approach to expressing the anger was very aggressive and enraged, furious. But over the years we’ve come to believe that there’s never a need for anger in order to demonstrate or propose change. That a friendly, seductive presentation is just as effective, if not more so. And also in a way it’s more insidious and subversive to smile and talk gently and still say something that contradicts everything somebody else has imagined to be the truth. It can be far more disturbing than screaming at them because we ought to learn how to deal with anger and screaming and defend ourselves from that. It’s really hard to accept confidence and know how to respond to it. It’s usually embarrassing. And so subtlety, instead of head-on collision, with the status quo.
But make no mistake, the status quo is always our enemy.

Memories and expectations

"This is the typical human problem. The object of dread may not be an operation in the immediate future. It may be the problem of next month’s rent, of a threatened war or social disaster, of being able to save enough for old age, or of death at the last. This 'spoiler of the present' may not even be a future dread. It may be something out of the past, some memory of an injury, some crime or indiscretion, which haunts the present with a sense of resentment or guilt. The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings the past and the future are not as real, but more real than the present. The present cannot be lived happily unless the past has been 'cleared up' and the future is bright with promise.

There can be no doubt that the power to remember and predict, to make an ordered sequence out of a helter-skelter chaos of disconnected moments, is a wonderful development of sensitivity. In a way it is the achievement of the human brain, giving man the most extraordinary powers of survival and adaptation to life. But the way in which we generally use this power is apt to destroy all its advantages. For it is of little use to us to be able to remember and predict if it makes us unable to live fully in the present.

What is the use of planning to be able to eat next week unless I can really enjoy the meals when they come? If I am so busy planning how to eat next week that I cannot fully enjoy what I am eating now, I will be in the same predicament when next week’s meals become 'now.'

If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world."

~Alan Watts

Fast enough?

"I mean, it's okay to live like there's no tomorrow if you're at some primitive stage of culture with endless frontiers of exploitable resources in all directions. That's not where we're at. We have burned through all that, and yet still we party on. And the signs are on the wall. We have invented a sin that no other culture ever even conceived of: it's the sin of 'looting the future'. No other culture was ever so narcissistic and self-indulgent that it cared nothing for the future of its children. Children have always been the value focus for a civilization. But when you pile up four trillion dollars in debt, when you cut down the rainforests and blow off the atmosphere, it means you are in the grip of such an orgy of narcissistic excess that the best thing for it would be for somebody to just walk over and put a bullet through your head as a favor to everybody else. We don't need that kind of a fate. We need to be as noble as the people who preceded us, and a hell of a lot smarter, because nobility by itself is not sufficient. We're going to have to play a very cagey game now. And it's okay with me; I anticipate it. I mean, I think primates love a hell of a good fight, and we've got one on our hands. We have unleashed processes that, if not skillfully controlled, are extraordinarily terminal -- even in the short term. And again, I see psychedelics as the only way to react fast enough to have an impact on the runaway momentum of historical error." ~Terence McKenna