and see that we have the money, the power, the medical understanding, the scientific know-how,

the Love and the community to produce a kind of human paradise.

But we are led by the least amongst us,

the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary,

we're led by the least amongst us, and we do not fight back

against the dehumanizing values that are handed down as control icons.

This is something, and I really don't want to get off on this terror because it is a lecture in itself but...

Culture is not your friend!

Culture is for other people's convenience and the convenience of various institutions, churches, companies, tax collection schemes, what have you.

It is not your friend,

it insults you, it desempowers you, it uses and abuses you.

Non of us are well treated by culture.

And yet we glorify the creative potential of the individual, the rights of the individual,

we understand the felt presence of experience as what is most important.

But the culture is a perversion. It fetichises objects, creates consumer mania,

it preaches endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding

in the form of squirly religions and silly cults,

it invites people to diminish themselves and dehumanization themselves by behaving like machines.

~ Terence McKenna (1946 - 2000)

by standing on each other's shoulders

and kicking each other's teeth in.

It's not a pleasant situation.

And yet you can stand back and look at this planet