Terence McKenna Live in Maryland

24 February 1990
MD
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I wish I had some of that stuff! [audience chuckles]. Well, I was surprised to hear McLuhan invoked so many times today. And I will do it again. McLuhan had an idea of what he called the global village and the global village is coming to be. This is what the crisis that is being presented to us as a crisis in communism is. It isn't a crisis for communism- communism is going first. But what it is is the death knell for centralized structure, [audience claps] for centralized control. If you think what we've been through in the past year is something, wait 'til you see what's on the agenda, and I don't mean great CNN feed from Moscow as the Soviet Union turns into fifteen independent republics, I mean what's gonna happen here because what is so terrifying about Gorbachev from the point of view of the powers that be is that he models a leader who can't say "we did it wrong". [audience claps] Baker was on one of the talk shows, uh, after one of these "we did it wrong" statements by Gorbachev. And they said to him, "Well uh, under what circumstances would uh, an official of the United States government admit a mistake. And he said "well, you don't understand, you see, we, we have a collective decision-making apparatus and hence we don't make mistakes." [audience laughter] You see? So I, I think uh, to return to McLuhan for a moment. What's happening is as Yates said in his poem "the center does not hold." Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, but as fans of chaos we should know that this mere anarchy is the incarnation of our goddess, Discordia, who is going to pull down [audience cheering] the [??] structure that is oppressing everybody. Uh, what I see happening and this is touched upon by others here is this intensification of local identification: bioregionalism, awareness of your immediate place and then no hierarchical structure or identification until you reach the planetary level. I live in Sonoma county, and I am a citizen of earth. I recognize no intermediate structures except my home. [audience clapping] So I agree with Tim. I cheer on the people who present the protocols and plead their cases before these grey-faced medical boards, but in my opinion you just circumvent all that, you go around it. It's irrelevant. History has these dominator types by the balls [laughter] You know, history, history is a psychedelic experience. It, it's the collective unfolding of the dream of our species in space and time. We are at the apex. This is the peak, this is the 2nd hour of the trip. We're going over the top! [audience cheering, clapping] Announcer: Sorry we've gone too late for questions 'til the sun comes up!