Terence McKenna - Shamans Among the Machines

Duration: 01:24:55
Bit Rate: 128kbps
Dimensions: 640x480
Size: 700mb

[img=http://i971.photobucket.com/albums/ae194/geogaddi00/TerenceMcKenna.png]

Date: Recorded Live in Seattle, April 22nd 1999
Produced by: HPX Media, 2004
Cameras: Jason Dix, Rod Hatfield
Digital Salvage: Kurt Elzner   
Starring: Terence McKenna
External link: http://www.hpx.net/

Description:

Originally this video was live feedback for rear screen projection behind Terence McKenna in the Seattle nightclub where McKenna gave this, his final talk. At the time no one knew that McKenna was soon to become seriously ill, and that this would be his last public appearence. There was no intention at the time to make this recording available to the public. This edit is made from several cameras and the live video mixing board for the rear screen. This is a new, cleaned-up copy that is clear video footage of Terence McKenna without the additional computer graphics from the 1999 DVD, Psychedelics in the Age of Intelligent Machines. This is availabe on DVD by contacting Dr. Jon via HPX.net.

[img=http://i971.photobucket.com/albums/ae194/geogaddi00/TerenceMcKenna-ShamansAmongtheMachi.jpg]  

"Though the glory of our humaness is our spontaneous creativity, we too- as creatures of physics and chemistry and memory and hope, tend to fall into repetitious patterns.  And these repetitious patterns are the death of creativity.  They diminish our humaness- they diminish our indiviuality, make each of us somehow like cogs in some larger system.  And we associate this cog-like membership in larger solus systems with the machines that we inherit from the age of the internal combustion engine and the age of the jet engine... you know, Marshall McLuhan said that we navigate our way into the future like someone driving who uses the rear-view mirror to tell them where they're going.  It's not a very successful strategy for navigating into the future."

"Computers are minds that work in the realm of computation; and human minds are minds that work in the realm of generalization, spatial co-ordination, understanding of natural language, so forth and so on.  Are these kinds of minds so different from eachother, pilgrims, that there is no bridge to be crossed?  I would submit not- that infact the bridge between the human mind and the machine mind is symbolic logic, mathematics."

"I'm a full going, full hard-charging McLuhanist.  And I really believe that the strengths and weaknesses of the world we've inherited, are strengths and weaknesses put there by print- and by the spectrum of effects which McLuhan called the "Gutenberg galaxy".  The spectrum of effects spun off from print- and if you're not used to thinking in McLuhanist terms, it may not seem immediately obvious to you that phenomenon as different as the modern notion of the democratic citizen, the modern notion of interchangeable parts on an assembly line, the modern notion of comformity to canons of advertising- these are all spectrums of effect created by the linearity and the uniformity of print.  It actually, in the late 15th century, reconstructed the medieval psyche into its proto-modern form.  And we have lived within that print-constellated cultural hallucination for about 500 years- until the advent of various forms of electronic media in the 20th century." 

"... print just a convulsive 500 year episode in the Western mind, that opened that narrow window that permitted the rise of moderm science, modern mathematical approaches to the analysis of nature- and then obliterated its own platform, its own raison d'etre, by allowing the growth, the appearance of the electronic technologies.  And my... sort of supposition about all this... I'm not an apocalypterian or a pessimist- I may be an apocalypterian, I'm not a pessimist.  I think that this is all very good.  Obviously, continuing to run Western civilization on the operating system inherited from print, produces various forms of political and cultural schizophrenia, which allowed to run unchecked would become fatal; would create cascades of chaos and political destabilization that would become uncontrollable.  Governments resist change, governments cling to technologies and social formulae that are already tried and true.  In that sense then, all governments are incredibly anti-progressive forces."

"The shaman is like a designated traveller into higher-dimensional space.  The shaman has permission to unlock the cultural cul-de-sac of his or her people, and go behind the stage machinery of cultural appearances, and has collective permission to manipulate that stage machinery for purposes of healing..."