I found McKenna's talk "comforting". Like Nikita, over the years I have listened almost randomly to Terrence's critique of the political establishment, of the church and of the role vested interests play in setting the public agenda. And again, I find myself enlightened and delighted to reconnect with what I consider to be the main agenda for our baby-boom generation, the role of consciousness in defining our horizons. Thank-you, Glenn for keeping our "eye on the ball".
Lower education, too. Talk to home schooling parents about (the free) Khan Academy on YouTube. Teachers unions with their shibboleth of "social justice" can't cut the mustard, so they call for the abolition of testing.
Oh, well, like it or not, creative destruction is inevitable. Things have gone too far, and modern technology is too perfect a fit.
Glenn called it 100% when he said this is "apocalyptic talk." McKenna's whole shtick was that we're approaching what he called "the strange attractor" or "hyper-dimensional object at the end of time." The idea was to put the mainstream view of the history of the universe on its head, and to say that we're being pulled into something incomprehensible that awaits in the future, rather than living out the consequences of something incomprehensible (the Big Bang) that happened in the past. He saw the apocalyptic myths present in most cultures as intuitions about this state of affairs. He even went so far as to predict that we would encounter this strange attractor in 2012 (which was such an outlandish claim that I often feel that part of its function was to make sure that people didn't take him too seriously—he had great humor about it).
But when it comes to conspiracy theories and the "personification of forces that are perhaps very impersonal," I think, in this case, it was just a provocative, playful way to state his point. (The point being that the protest movements of the 60s benefited from the kind of higher education he had received, and that the consequent commercialization of higher ed was a part of a backlash against that counterculture.)
"...And this to me is the clue to understanding something that is personally fascinating to me. It revolves around why people believe such weird things.
(Laughter.)
And why, either as a consequence of the approach of the millennium, or the breakdown of traditional values, or the density of electromagnetic radiation, or for some reason, a balkanization of epistemology is taking place.
And what I mean by that is there is no longer a commonality of understanding.
I mean, for some people, quantum physics provides the answers. Their next-door neighbor may look to the channeling of arch-angels with equal fervor. I mean, if this is not a balkanization of epistemology, I don't know what it is.
It is accompanied by a related phenomenon, which is: technology, or the historical momentum of things, is creating such a bewildering social milieu that the monkey mind cannot find a simple story, a simple creation myth (or redemption myth), to lay over the crazy contradictory patchwork of profane techno-consumerist, post-McLuhanist, electronic pre-apocalyptic existence.
And so into that dimension of anxiety, created by this inability to parse reality, rushes a bewildering variety of squirrely notions…
(Laughter.)
Epistemological cartoons, if you will.
And conspiracy theory, in my humble opinion — I'm somewhat immune to paranoia, so those of you who aren't, you know, gaze in wonder…
(Laughter.)
Conspiracy theory is a kind of epistemological cartoon about reality.
I mean, isn't it so simple to believe that things are run by the Grays, and that all we have to do is trade sufficient fetal tissue to them, and we can solve our technological problems? Or isn't it comforting to believe that the Jews are behind everything, or the Communist Party, or the Catholic Church, or the Masons?
Well, these are epistemological cartoons. It's kindergarten stuff in the art of amateur historiography.
I believe that the truth of the matter is far more terrifying. That the real truth that dares not speak itself is that no-one is in control.
(Laughter.)
Absolutely no one. You know, you don't understand Monica, you don't understand Netanyahu? It's because nobody is in control.
This stuff is ruled by the equations of dynamics and chaos.
Now, there may be entities seeking control — the World Bank, the Communist Party, the rich, somebody other — but to seek control is to take enormous aggravation upon yourself. Because this process that is underway will take the control freak by the short and curly and throw them against the wall.
I have listened to McKenna audio a handful of times over the years on YouTube. Never listened too closely; always classified him as a "new age-y" type of crank. And in full disclosure, it may be because the half dozen times I ate mushrooms or took ecstasy when I was in my early 20s, I never had an enjoyable experience. Maybe that was because I used it as a party drug, and all the people hanging around started to get on my nerves.
With that said, Nikita, I think you did a great job of framing the critiques of both the right and the left as it relates to higher education. And I will tell you that both critiques are fairly accurate. When I was at a second tier university in California in the '90s, I encountered the types of people that both the right and the left would lampoon. I knew rich kids who had a completely consumerist attitude toward their education. They were at university to have a good time, play intramural sports, hang out at the frat party, meet a girl, etc., knowing that a job at daddies' company awaited for them upon graduation. Learning anything was secondary to getting a credential that would help them in the marketplace, and they expected to have a great time while doing it. There were also the social justice types back then, who were heavily encouraged by the faculty, who wanted to drive social change even as they drove the late model BMWs that their parents bought them. At the end of the day, this type, rather than going into their daddies' business, ended up solidly middle class by working for a non-profit, in the education sector, etc.
Fast forward now, and I'm in my mid to late forties. My friendship group consists of mostly heterosexual couples with kids ranging in age from let's say 8 to 16. So everyone is starting to think about college for their kids. And the ones who are on the farther left seem to want their kids exposed to the antiracism you find as college campuses, but to the extent to which their son/daughter still acquires a credential to the middle class. The more centrist (no one would identify themselves as "right") folks see the "woke" elements of the college experience as a mildly irritating inconvenience that one must put up with while pursuing that same credential. What both groups have in common is the consumerist approach to higher education. I am paying so that my kid can have their credential that leads to the middle class. As Glenn alluded to, having state of the art dorms, swimming facilities, dining halls, etc., are, for these people, among the most important elements when committing to a college.
So if were to have to take a side on this, I would argue that the left's critique is probably more accurate. The consumerist, get a credential as a ticket to the middle class approach to education is probably most prevalent. A few parents may believe all of the woke nonsense their kids will invariably encounter. Other middle class parents see it as an irritating part of the system that must be coped with to get to the other side of the college degree. Either way, both sets of parents primarily view university as an instrumental end to the middle or upper middle class.
The thing neither McKenna nor Prof. Loury mentioned is the massive *expansion* of the university-going portion of each generation from the pre-WWII generations through the boomers and descending down to today. As late as 1940, only about 6% of the population had four or more years of college education. By 1970 that had doubled to about 11%, and has increased in a fairly linear manner until today we're bumping up against 37-38% of the population. Under those conditions - going from being able to cherry-pick the far right tail of talent, interest, aptitude, dedication in academic matters, to having to take the whole top third of the distribution - it would be almost inconceivable for curricula and the social role of a college education to *not* radically change. In fact, having people pouring into the streets with all sorts of weird ideas just after a massive increase in the spread of high-intellectual concepts already has a precedent - the exact same thing happened when the bible got translated into the vulgar and promulgated via the printing press during the beginning of the Reformation! Look into the early protestant sects - all sorts of WILDLY crazy beliefs started running around, because suddenly people had the chance to interpret important texts themselves, without any social framework to guide that interpretation other than already-mature interpretive traditions demanding adherence rather than providing support.
I could be wrong, but I think they did mention students becoming customers, which is a direct result of the expansion and the push to lead people to believe that they need at least a Bachelors to be successful in grown up America.
I'd argue that's a related, but distinct phenomenon related to the proliferation of collegiate entities, and particularly the increase of wide-spread guaranteed tuition loans as a major revenue source for those entities. But fair enough.
For the record there was a mushroom trip involved in some recent writing of mine on Orwell. McWhorter should write a book about how this is the practice of a new religion. The 60s will be remembered for the music and the drugs. Don’t take it so seriously.
I'd like to read what you've written under the influence of psilocybin. I've been experimenting a bit with writing while under some influence of something or other and I honestly can't tell if it's brilliant or gibberish, even when I'm sober. I think at this point, with people saying things that are patently false and a massive swath of society completely rejecting data, scientific method and statistical evidence and instead purporting emotional appeal as fact, we probably should take seriously the academic roots of it all; i.e. the sixties.
McKenna is not only wrong, he's wrong in a self-serving kind of way. The 60s counterculture was not "suppressed," it split in two, with one faction selling out and becoming the "me" generation of the 70s and 80s, and the other colonizing academia. The fruits of both factions are now before us. And the "professionalization" of higher education is the inevitable result of the rent seeking of the academic class, both financial and ideological, that was ushered in by McKenna and his ilk. The only way academia can get normie parents and their kids to shell out the insane amounts of money it now requires to get a bachelor's degree -- amounts that McKenna could not even fathom when he received the benefits of a highly subsidized, high quality public education in the UC system in the 60s -- *and* to require those kids to sit through hours of highly ideological "education" in the humanities and social sciences to boot, is to promise them a return on investment in the form of both employability and social status. To clutch his pearls and exclaim that this was done at the expense of the lower middle class is the height of irony -- the entire point of an elite American education is to be able to look down on the lower middle class! And the obscurantist nature of that education -- the jargon and the doctrines and the isms -- is a very visible means of displaying that lofty status, even if your BA in postcolonial studies or gender studies or what have you only qualifies you to work low-level service jobs that don't even pay as well as a plumber or electrician or carpenter. The "police state" McKenna decries is really cancel culture, the policing by the educational/journalistic/artistic elite of the rest of us.
And his claim that studying Locke, Hume, Plato, etc. makes people "ungovernable" is laughable. As if the college students of the 1960s were the first people to ever read these authors. It is so, so, SO narcissistic.
Sorry for the rant, but whinging counterculture boomers are a trigger for me. We are living in the increasingly dysfunctional world they have created, after they inherited the most prosperous and liberal society the world has ever seen.
Technological advancement, the creep of Postmodern theory/philosophy out of its academic restraints and into the wider culture, and the built-in propensity for humans to find enemies where there are none based mostly on evolutionary biology are what created what we now see before us. Capitalism was always going to win, despite the decadent, self-centered tendencies that seem to have been born from the early 70s, so I don't think that can accurately be attributed to what you say it can. It was always inevitable that our society would find itself here eventually regardless of who the purveyors of what faction can be pointed to as ground zero. I do agree with you that the academics that popularized Foucault's and Derrida's teachings (among others) in elite US institutions can be blamed, but the rest is a byproduct of the other components seeing fruition and feeding one another surreptitiously. The rest of your analysis I think is spot on, and I confess to thinking almost the same things when I heard the clip.
Pretty excited for this! I’ve been a Terrence McKenna fan since the early 90’s. It’s great to see you digging into something a bit different and TMK was a wildly creative thinker.
I found McKenna's talk "comforting". Like Nikita, over the years I have listened almost randomly to Terrence's critique of the political establishment, of the church and of the role vested interests play in setting the public agenda. And again, I find myself enlightened and delighted to reconnect with what I consider to be the main agenda for our baby-boom generation, the role of consciousness in defining our horizons. Thank-you, Glenn for keeping our "eye on the ball".
The universities have set the table for a good old-fashioned dose of creative destruction.
Hilariously bloated. Overpriced. Inefficient. Crassly political. Dissatisfied customers.
Lower education, too. Talk to home schooling parents about (the free) Khan Academy on YouTube. Teachers unions with their shibboleth of "social justice" can't cut the mustard, so they call for the abolition of testing.
Oh, well, like it or not, creative destruction is inevitable. Things have gone too far, and modern technology is too perfect a fit.
A couple of side notes:
Glenn called it 100% when he said this is "apocalyptic talk." McKenna's whole shtick was that we're approaching what he called "the strange attractor" or "hyper-dimensional object at the end of time." The idea was to put the mainstream view of the history of the universe on its head, and to say that we're being pulled into something incomprehensible that awaits in the future, rather than living out the consequences of something incomprehensible (the Big Bang) that happened in the past. He saw the apocalyptic myths present in most cultures as intuitions about this state of affairs. He even went so far as to predict that we would encounter this strange attractor in 2012 (which was such an outlandish claim that I often feel that part of its function was to make sure that people didn't take him too seriously—he had great humor about it).
But when it comes to conspiracy theories and the "personification of forces that are perhaps very impersonal," I think, in this case, it was just a provocative, playful way to state his point. (The point being that the protest movements of the 60s benefited from the kind of higher education he had received, and that the consequent commercialization of higher ed was a part of a backlash against that counterculture.)
The reason I say this is McKenna often made fun of conspiracy theories and maintained that "no-one is in control." I recently posted a transcript on that from one of his talks over at Psychopolitica: https://psychopolitica.substack.com/p/a-bewildering-variety-of-squirrely
The relevant bit:
"...And this to me is the clue to understanding something that is personally fascinating to me. It revolves around why people believe such weird things.
(Laughter.)
And why, either as a consequence of the approach of the millennium, or the breakdown of traditional values, or the density of electromagnetic radiation, or for some reason, a balkanization of epistemology is taking place.
And what I mean by that is there is no longer a commonality of understanding.
I mean, for some people, quantum physics provides the answers. Their next-door neighbor may look to the channeling of arch-angels with equal fervor. I mean, if this is not a balkanization of epistemology, I don't know what it is.
It is accompanied by a related phenomenon, which is: technology, or the historical momentum of things, is creating such a bewildering social milieu that the monkey mind cannot find a simple story, a simple creation myth (or redemption myth), to lay over the crazy contradictory patchwork of profane techno-consumerist, post-McLuhanist, electronic pre-apocalyptic existence.
And so into that dimension of anxiety, created by this inability to parse reality, rushes a bewildering variety of squirrely notions…
(Laughter.)
Epistemological cartoons, if you will.
And conspiracy theory, in my humble opinion — I'm somewhat immune to paranoia, so those of you who aren't, you know, gaze in wonder…
(Laughter.)
Conspiracy theory is a kind of epistemological cartoon about reality.
I mean, isn't it so simple to believe that things are run by the Grays, and that all we have to do is trade sufficient fetal tissue to them, and we can solve our technological problems? Or isn't it comforting to believe that the Jews are behind everything, or the Communist Party, or the Catholic Church, or the Masons?
Well, these are epistemological cartoons. It's kindergarten stuff in the art of amateur historiography.
I believe that the truth of the matter is far more terrifying. That the real truth that dares not speak itself is that no-one is in control.
(Laughter.)
Absolutely no one. You know, you don't understand Monica, you don't understand Netanyahu? It's because nobody is in control.
This stuff is ruled by the equations of dynamics and chaos.
Now, there may be entities seeking control — the World Bank, the Communist Party, the rich, somebody other — but to seek control is to take enormous aggravation upon yourself. Because this process that is underway will take the control freak by the short and curly and throw them against the wall.
(Laughter.)
It's like trying to control a dream, you see."
I have listened to McKenna audio a handful of times over the years on YouTube. Never listened too closely; always classified him as a "new age-y" type of crank. And in full disclosure, it may be because the half dozen times I ate mushrooms or took ecstasy when I was in my early 20s, I never had an enjoyable experience. Maybe that was because I used it as a party drug, and all the people hanging around started to get on my nerves.
With that said, Nikita, I think you did a great job of framing the critiques of both the right and the left as it relates to higher education. And I will tell you that both critiques are fairly accurate. When I was at a second tier university in California in the '90s, I encountered the types of people that both the right and the left would lampoon. I knew rich kids who had a completely consumerist attitude toward their education. They were at university to have a good time, play intramural sports, hang out at the frat party, meet a girl, etc., knowing that a job at daddies' company awaited for them upon graduation. Learning anything was secondary to getting a credential that would help them in the marketplace, and they expected to have a great time while doing it. There were also the social justice types back then, who were heavily encouraged by the faculty, who wanted to drive social change even as they drove the late model BMWs that their parents bought them. At the end of the day, this type, rather than going into their daddies' business, ended up solidly middle class by working for a non-profit, in the education sector, etc.
Fast forward now, and I'm in my mid to late forties. My friendship group consists of mostly heterosexual couples with kids ranging in age from let's say 8 to 16. So everyone is starting to think about college for their kids. And the ones who are on the farther left seem to want their kids exposed to the antiracism you find as college campuses, but to the extent to which their son/daughter still acquires a credential to the middle class. The more centrist (no one would identify themselves as "right") folks see the "woke" elements of the college experience as a mildly irritating inconvenience that one must put up with while pursuing that same credential. What both groups have in common is the consumerist approach to higher education. I am paying so that my kid can have their credential that leads to the middle class. As Glenn alluded to, having state of the art dorms, swimming facilities, dining halls, etc., are, for these people, among the most important elements when committing to a college.
So if were to have to take a side on this, I would argue that the left's critique is probably more accurate. The consumerist, get a credential as a ticket to the middle class approach to education is probably most prevalent. A few parents may believe all of the woke nonsense their kids will invariably encounter. Other middle class parents see it as an irritating part of the system that must be coped with to get to the other side of the college degree. Either way, both sets of parents primarily view university as an instrumental end to the middle or upper middle class.
The thing neither McKenna nor Prof. Loury mentioned is the massive *expansion* of the university-going portion of each generation from the pre-WWII generations through the boomers and descending down to today. As late as 1940, only about 6% of the population had four or more years of college education. By 1970 that had doubled to about 11%, and has increased in a fairly linear manner until today we're bumping up against 37-38% of the population. Under those conditions - going from being able to cherry-pick the far right tail of talent, interest, aptitude, dedication in academic matters, to having to take the whole top third of the distribution - it would be almost inconceivable for curricula and the social role of a college education to *not* radically change. In fact, having people pouring into the streets with all sorts of weird ideas just after a massive increase in the spread of high-intellectual concepts already has a precedent - the exact same thing happened when the bible got translated into the vulgar and promulgated via the printing press during the beginning of the Reformation! Look into the early protestant sects - all sorts of WILDLY crazy beliefs started running around, because suddenly people had the chance to interpret important texts themselves, without any social framework to guide that interpretation other than already-mature interpretive traditions demanding adherence rather than providing support.
I could be wrong, but I think they did mention students becoming customers, which is a direct result of the expansion and the push to lead people to believe that they need at least a Bachelors to be successful in grown up America.
I'd argue that's a related, but distinct phenomenon related to the proliferation of collegiate entities, and particularly the increase of wide-spread guaranteed tuition loans as a major revenue source for those entities. But fair enough.
For the record there was a mushroom trip involved in some recent writing of mine on Orwell. McWhorter should write a book about how this is the practice of a new religion. The 60s will be remembered for the music and the drugs. Don’t take it so seriously.
I'd like to read what you've written under the influence of psilocybin. I've been experimenting a bit with writing while under some influence of something or other and I honestly can't tell if it's brilliant or gibberish, even when I'm sober. I think at this point, with people saying things that are patently false and a massive swath of society completely rejecting data, scientific method and statistical evidence and instead purporting emotional appeal as fact, we probably should take seriously the academic roots of it all; i.e. the sixties.
I just published something on my Substack that is available for everyone. You can click the link next to my name.
McKenna is not only wrong, he's wrong in a self-serving kind of way. The 60s counterculture was not "suppressed," it split in two, with one faction selling out and becoming the "me" generation of the 70s and 80s, and the other colonizing academia. The fruits of both factions are now before us. And the "professionalization" of higher education is the inevitable result of the rent seeking of the academic class, both financial and ideological, that was ushered in by McKenna and his ilk. The only way academia can get normie parents and their kids to shell out the insane amounts of money it now requires to get a bachelor's degree -- amounts that McKenna could not even fathom when he received the benefits of a highly subsidized, high quality public education in the UC system in the 60s -- *and* to require those kids to sit through hours of highly ideological "education" in the humanities and social sciences to boot, is to promise them a return on investment in the form of both employability and social status. To clutch his pearls and exclaim that this was done at the expense of the lower middle class is the height of irony -- the entire point of an elite American education is to be able to look down on the lower middle class! And the obscurantist nature of that education -- the jargon and the doctrines and the isms -- is a very visible means of displaying that lofty status, even if your BA in postcolonial studies or gender studies or what have you only qualifies you to work low-level service jobs that don't even pay as well as a plumber or electrician or carpenter. The "police state" McKenna decries is really cancel culture, the policing by the educational/journalistic/artistic elite of the rest of us.
And his claim that studying Locke, Hume, Plato, etc. makes people "ungovernable" is laughable. As if the college students of the 1960s were the first people to ever read these authors. It is so, so, SO narcissistic.
Sorry for the rant, but whinging counterculture boomers are a trigger for me. We are living in the increasingly dysfunctional world they have created, after they inherited the most prosperous and liberal society the world has ever seen.
Technological advancement, the creep of Postmodern theory/philosophy out of its academic restraints and into the wider culture, and the built-in propensity for humans to find enemies where there are none based mostly on evolutionary biology are what created what we now see before us. Capitalism was always going to win, despite the decadent, self-centered tendencies that seem to have been born from the early 70s, so I don't think that can accurately be attributed to what you say it can. It was always inevitable that our society would find itself here eventually regardless of who the purveyors of what faction can be pointed to as ground zero. I do agree with you that the academics that popularized Foucault's and Derrida's teachings (among others) in elite US institutions can be blamed, but the rest is a byproduct of the other components seeing fruition and feeding one another surreptitiously. The rest of your analysis I think is spot on, and I confess to thinking almost the same things when I heard the clip.
Pretty excited for this! I’ve been a Terrence McKenna fan since the early 90’s. It’s great to see you digging into something a bit different and TMK was a wildly creative thinker.