People are clueless, and they’re being used and abused. Seemingly intelligent people behave in incredibly stupid ways, the phenomenon of the respectability of aimless shopping. Shopping in unconscionable, it’s stupid. It’s tasteless. It’s murderous toward the earth. And yet people who teach at Esalen will suddenly drop their guru persona and whip out the charge plate and head for Robinsons. What kind of thinking is going on here? They are clearly not alienated enough, alienation may be for them just a stance, but where they’re really comfortable is down at Barneys racking up the charge card. Somehow the message has to be put across that there are no exceptions to the obligation to decommodify experience. Anybody who feels alienated from this orgy of consumerism is going to have to look elsewhere for their values. I feel blessed because I guess I’m just so alienated that it doesn’t touch me. Recently for some reason I had to lay-out my income for an attorney and say how much I spent every month on things like entertainment so forth and so on. So he called me on the phone, you declared 15 dollars a month for entertainment. Based on your income, do you know how much would be a standard deduction for entertainment? And I said how much? He said 700 dollars a month, that’s inconceivable to me. How much of an idiot would I be? I said I put down the 15 dollars because I knew you wanted something but in fact I don’t think I spend 15 dollars a month on entertainment, I mean what is entertainment anyways? So, you know, I suppose it just sounds like preaching a kind of monkishness, but what is the charm of all this crap? Can anybody explain to me? ~ Terence McKenna, Appreciating Imagination 1997
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 22:29:55 +0000
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