Revolutionary Fragments

We have to stop consuming our culture. We have to create culture. If you’re worrying about Michael Jackson or Madonna or some other idol 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.

—Terrence McKenna on cultural diversion and authenticity