CULTURE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND

What civilization is, is 6 billion people trying to make themselves happy by sta
nding on each other's shoulders and kicking each other's teeth in. It's not a pl
easant situation.
And yet, you can stand back and look at this planet and see that we have the mon
ey, the power, the medical understanding, the scientific know-how, the love and
the community to produce a kind of human paradise. But we are led by the least a
mong us - the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary. We are le
d by the least among us and we do not fight back against the dehumanizing values
that are handed down as control icons.
This is something, culture is not your friend. Culture is for other people's con
venience and the convenience of various institutions, churches, companies, tax c
ollection schemes, what have you. It is not your friend. It insults you. It dise
mpowers you. It uses and abuses you. None of us are well treated by culture.
Yet we glorify the creative potential of the individual, the rights of the indiv
idual. We understand the felt-presence of experience is what is most important.
But the culture is a perversion. It fetishizes objects, creates consumer mania,
it preaches endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understandi
ng in the form of squirrelly religions and silly cults. It invites people to dim
inish themselves and dehumanize themselves by behaving like machines - meme proc
essors of memes passed down from Madison Avenue and Hollywood.
We are caged by our cultural programming. Culture is a mass hallucination, and w
hen you step outside the mass hallucination you see it for what its worth.
~Terence McKenna.