"We have to stop CONSUMING our culture. We have to CREATE culture. DON'T watch TV, DON'T read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your OWN roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are — NOW — is the most immediate sector of your universe. And if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered. You're giving it all away to ICONS. Icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that, you want to dress like X or have lips like Y... This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion. What is real is you, and your friends, your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And, we are told No, you're unimportant, you're peripheral — get a degree, get a job, get a this, get that, and then you're a player. You don't even want to play that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world."
React to this quote
More by Terence McKenna
See allResonant Thoughts
"In this sense genuine artists are so bound up with their age that they cannot communicate separated from it. In this sense, too, the historical situation conditions the creativity. For the consciousne…"
Explore Further
Related Quotes
"The Quakers have an excellent approach to thinking through difficult problems, where a number of intelligen…"
— Hyman G. Rickover"The moment I think of my father Jayachamaraja Wadiyar , the last king of Mysore, the image that comes to mi…"
— Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar"It was a fun show. At one point the barricade in front of the stage gave way, which scared the concert prom…"
— Mike Shinoda"Your American admiral said that he held me in the highest esteem, and thought that I conducted my defense p…"
— Karl Dönitz"Drag is really about mocking identity. Drag is really about reminding people that you are more than you thi…"
— RuPaul"The way I dress, for the most part, is how most people would dress for a costume party. It would scare most…"
— Dolly Parton