culture is not your friend
El_Kabong
Posts: 4,141
thoughts on culture, individuality, consumerism, conditioning...from Terence McKenna
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOy3H4yyocQ&eurl=http%3A
if you have a myspace and maybe even if ya don't, here's some audio that's only 2 min
http://www.myspace.com/terencemckenna
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOy3H4yyocQ&eurl=http%3A
if you have a myspace and maybe even if ya don't, here's some audio that's only 2 min
http://www.myspace.com/terencemckenna
standin above the crowd
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825
I think it is ironic that you post links to "MySpace" and "YouTube" when talking about individuality, cultural conditioning and consumerism.
Why? Both are means for information and you don't have to buy anything.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
They seem a little trendy to me, but I see your point. I did not mean to discredit the message, I just view MySpace and YouTube as pop items.
they're like mtv spring break and aol chatrooms were in the 90s.
The only way things will get better is if and when the revolution comes and we all are living in communes with no electricity, no cars, no oil, no tvs or computers, no roads, no wars.
Its not enough to be against the war or against the current occupant of the white house. Its not just the idea of Iraq that is wrong, its not just the idea of this culture that is wrong. Its the entire idea of civilization that is wrong.
I will be on the front lines with my rake and shovels, and picks, and axes and will be tearing up concrete when the revolution goes down...
Progress is a joke. It is impossible to continue at our current rate. Something has to give and will. Most scientists suggest that we have 10 years, yes kids 10 years, until the full effects of global warming take shape. We all must join communes and start growing food in our gardens. Its silly to go to the goddamn store and buy corn that some latino laborer picked, and got 10 cents for, while breaking his or her back in the sun all day. We have to grow our own food.
It makes complete sense, once you realize oil is running out, salmon are running out, and the world is in danger of killing itself, the appropriate actions can be taken.
I say, sell the tv and appliances, turn off the tv, and tune in. Tune into the things that dont broadcast in radio or tv waves. The joy of god is the form of his discovery!
finally got to see this... what scares me is im pretty sure you take this crackhead seriously. well, it doesnt scare me. it would if i thought him or anyone in his audience could stop tripping long enough to actually do something. "yeah man, let's all just... like... sit around... and uh... yeah man... do art... cool. we can all just paint or something." nevermind figuring out who will make the paint or feed them while they do so...
yeah, culture is stupid. tell that to our ancestors that were saved from being eaten in the jungle by the development of culture.
Your constant negative attitude towards the people on this board gets so tiresome. Sometimes, it just seems pointless to read, although you make good points from time to time...strong points even, you're neverending need to judge everyone and put down views that don't match your own wreaks of insecurity.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
yea, sometimes im a cynical bastard. but sometimes it's spot on, like now. this guy's a fucking burned out deadhead. anyone who takes his "insight" seriously is nuts.
I liked a lot of what he had to say. He was very articulate and quite knowledgable. You make it seem like this guy was spouting off like Cheech or some shit.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
he was. the solution to the world's problems is we all need to sit down and fingerpaint?
Take Shakespeare. In 1601 there was a rebellion against Queen Elizabeth I, led by the Earl of Essex. On the eve of the planned uprising, the Earl's supporters/co-conspirators asked Shakespeare's theatre company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men (based at the Globe Theatre), to restage their old play about the deposition of a monarch, The Tragedy of King Richard the Second (c. 1595). Queen Elizabeth got the point: she said, "I am Richard II, know ye not that?" High profile, establishment artists put on a play about the deposition of a monarch on the eve of a planned deposition: culture is someone's friend, there, and it's not the patron's. (Don't forget that when Elizabeth died, the company became The King's Men, and Macbeth is often argued to have subtle digs at the witch-hunter James I's expense.)
Think about this: art is a tool of revolution but it is very often ironically licensed by the highest echelons of State. It can simultaneously be an ideological-domination effect of State-controlled "culture", but it can still contain elements of subversion. How does it subvert? By being out there in the public eye, and clever about its ability to subvert the dominant from within.
I don't think McKenna was thinking clearly here, and I've taken more acid than he ever did.
It seemed to me he was saying to focus on your craft, your passion, what you're good at instead of becoming mindless workers in boxed in cubicles who feel they have no other options. Do what you love. People seem miserable because they hate their jobs. There is never a shortage of people complaining about their jobs. If people would truly make an effort to make themselves happy in life, I think a lot would change in this world.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Its sometimes like were all crouched down between some rails with a train constantly steaming by overhead. DON'T let anything stick out, stay down.
The main point of the video is "this culture" is not your friend. Thats why people try to make their own, mini-cultures are supportive feedback. Thats what this whole pearl jam world is.
When he says "Put the art pedal to the metal" that is a solution, make yourself unrecognizable to the machines. Build it up until the gears of the old culture no longer are able to suppress true humanness when they are seen in the light of new reality.
Its more than just painting, its language, new words, new reality. . . .
He says (in other lectures), "The world is made up of words, and if you know the words the world is made of you can make of it what you wish."
The "Archaic Revival" that has been going on is about looking to the past to see what worked, and weave it into your new thread.
One of my step-dads went with a girlfriend and she told me about it.
Carry on with more serious matters...;)
Maybe they needed materials for the finger painting.
LOL!!!!
And he was quite a collector of very rare books, must have been an interesting variety. His brother has a list of what was in it. Sad.
~~~
For those who know about TimeWaveZero there was some talk that this event may have had a temporal resonance with the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.
God, I miss California.
I like what the man had to say (and I don't care if he was "quote" nasal). I love people who make you think outside of the box. I love people who remind us that our commercial culture is just that...commercial.
But it was ever thus. You should see photographs of nineteenth century London. Whole walls were covered in advertisements. You'll see hundreds of billposters, obviously slapped over each other in mindbogglingly rapid succession. And if you ever see facsimiles of Dickens's publication All The Year Round - which serialised novels dealing with social issues such as poverty, infant mortality, the effect of colonial, corporate expansionism on family morality and relationships, and the complex, displacing effects on railway mania and the growth of London - you'll still pick up a periodical almost overwhelmed by ads. Great art can come from the marketplace, and often sound its world-changing voice only because of the marketplace and consumer demand for product.
Last week the news had some criticism or other for a designer who's ads portray sleek, sexy models tanning on a beach with the skyline of Manhattan sticking out of the sand.....reminiscent of the original "Planet of the Apes" scene where the Statue of Liberty is barely poking herself out of the sand. I wish I could remember the name of the designer, but he/she was obviously making a statement about global warming. I'm not against that kind of commercial awareness at all. I'm against the sheep who just blindly take whatever soundbites the commercial news programs feed them, and don't do their research.
Is it too late to add a smiley to my comment to make it sweeter?
Well, that's opening up a debate about news rather than arts and culture, which I still like to see as separate (though many commercial news programmers deliberately blur the distinction about what constitutes news).
I was listening to a debate the other day, about the argument that BBC Radio 4's Today programme - which used to be strongly political and critical of Blair's government - is now featuring more pap, fluff filler, which the station's arts programmes could easily cover very adequately. It seemed, by audience feedback, that the programme's bosses are supplying this crap contrarily to, and almost in spite of, demand. I think that sheep who take whatever shite are thrown at them are in a minority. It's easy to blanket-term people unthinking, but that makes one guilty of a kind of cultural elitism which I find suspect. I think the majority will vote with their off buttons.
You act like there was a time where things were perfect. There were wars in every era of civilization (even before electricity, roads, computers, planes, cars, trains, guns, missiles, constitutions). There is nothing new under the sun. I understand you have these ideals, but if we get rid of laws and civilations, it will end up every man for himself, and be even more barbaric than you think it is now. The strong will survive, the weak will disappear. Not to mention medically we will revert back about 300 years.
There is a reason that laws and constitutions were written. Why kingdoms were formed. Because the every man for himself philosophy did not work.
In order for your dream to work, humans have to be inherently good. That's never going to happen. There will always be leaders, and always be followers. There will always be jealousy of your neighbors.
and i'm sure relavent, useful, trutful, valid info got passed around on aol chatrooms...what avenue of communication would be acceptable for you? a pearl jam message board?
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
So you're something of a moderate then?
oh i dont care where you got the info from, i just like pop culture. reminded me of the good old days of being in junior high and trying to find girls to talk dirty to
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. "
~George Carlin
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein