The Noble Lie

Terence McKenna uses a brilliant metaphor to describe our cultural reality, its structure and its flaws. In the era of brain chips, this threatens to become more than just metaphor.

He advocates erasing your "operating system" with the aid of Psilocybin mushrooms. If that thought is unnerving or you just don't have access to them (which is my problem), there are other ways to wipe your OS that take more work, which involve shutting out the manufactured world around us and plumbing the depths of your own psyche.

Many tribal cultures have had sacred relationships with mind-altering plants, and "drug addiction" was typically not a problem in their lifestyle. These plants were held and used with what we might call religious reverence. I think the number of drug addicts in our culture today says a lot more about the culture than it does about the drugs.

Another thing that fascinates me about drugs is how many of them do little more than tell your brain to release one of its own drugs. There is a tiny drug dealer within each of us.

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."
- Aldous Huxley