Was he full of shit?

>>9494406
He has done way too much shrooms, LSD and DMT to lie like that.
I'm 99% sure he fully believed in everything he said.

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>>9494406
>Substance based esotericism

No thanks

DUDE WEED LMAO

>>9494406
The biggest problem I find with this bullshit is that any insight derived from psychedelic experiences is still merely the interpretation of phenomena.

There is nothing a priori available in any drug based experience that is not available in any regular everyday experience. The best it can do is intuitively reveal certain phenomenological potentialities of the brain but these potentialities are either widely understand on a neurological level or simply imagination manipulations which while may be amusing on a personal psychological basis ultimately reveal nothing of substance. Certainly not of substance to the issues he's referring to.

In other words, junkies are full of shit.
All they manage to do is exclude the possibility of reasonable empathic judgement by rendering their personal experiences allegedly inaccessible to us muggles which gives them the unwarrented courage to propose any nonsense they wish based on vague anecdotal evidence without fear of scrutiny.

>>9494453
maybe you need to see his shit as more metaphoric - like the way people have come to see freud's map of mind

i was into this guy a few years ago when i was doing a bunch of psychedelics - more because i thought he was funny than because he had good ideas.

but is there something going on that's making him trendy right now? someone told me jim carrey is starring as him in a movie. nothing bad about exposing psychedelics to the masses. i think it's one of the few things that materialism will not be able to eat alive, like a snake trying to eat an alligator whole - it's too big, but capitalism will still try. one can hope

>>9494453
I've been doing drugs for quite a while and never fell into this sort of thing. Of course it's not any sort of a priori metaphysical experience, it's all inside your mind. This won't change the fact that you will FEEL like you had one of these experiences, and that the only way to reach such a state - even if as a simulation - is through these substances, but no one (I know) thinks that drugs make you feel more empathetic or open to the possibility of being empathetic through them, if anything, most people I know are socially anxious people who only hang around their little clique and become more and more misanthropic through their drug use.

>>9494489
ayahuasca definitely made me more empathetic and open to being empathetic for about 6 months after the 4-5 ceremonies. ive heard many such stories - normally something like, "then he went right back to normal!"

>>9494453
Man you're dismissive.

If psychedelic experiences quite reliably makes people in to better human beings, then it shouldn't be discounted so easily.

Unlike what you think psychedelics aren't like alcohol or weed.

>>9494472
Freud's work was a mission in inductive reasoning which is by definition both prone to error and success. His work has stood based on its own merits which was intrinsically through intuitive reasoning and the construction of frameworks of understanding. Not once did he predicate his theories on experiencing anything that no one else could in daily life and fiction.

Comparing it to a smelly hippy who is second guessing everyone the majority of the planets ability to reason individually based only on his arbitrary interpretation of his *memories* of using comprehension compremising substances is a joke.

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>>9494489
>>9494511
Loser hippies off to >>>/x/ and >>>/co/ please

>>9494501
Yeah, I've heard cases of people who were mental wrecks who cured depression, controlled schizophrenia and that sort of shit through ayahuasca, and I don't even doubt it, it's pretty obvious shit like MDMA and LSD has medical uses, I just don't think they are some sort of access to the godhead or anything like that, if there's a way to reach such a state, dropping acid is most likely not the way to illumination, but I don't even take any of that seriously, I just like tripping and having these absurd chains of thoughts on my coach.

>>9494521
>Yeah, I've heard cases of people who were mental wrecks who cured depression, controlled schizophrenia and that sort of shit through ayahuasca, and I don't even doubt it,

Yeah and for each of them there's a story of someone having schizophrenia outright triggered (if not caused) by using them, if not ending up as a total potato like Syd Barret

>>9494483
im also curious. been seeing this meme increase

>>9494527
Blame reddit

>>9494525
I'm not arguing against that either, but to claim these substances as absolute evil is pretty stupid. You can get sick if you take the wrong medicine, but people who take drugs or medicines or anything recreativelly are at least vaguely aware of that and do it of their own will, or at least should.

>>9494531
so reddit has been memeing him? why? in what context?

>>9494537
No I view them as more like video games

>>9494525
lol you're a faggot and you've been memed hard. laughing out loud at how big of a faggot you must be

>>9494541
Again, the fact that some people get thrombosis and lose their legs because they've spent 72 hours sitting playing Waifuwatch shouldn't stop anyone from playing their games for a sensible amount of time and carrying on with their lifes.

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>>9494545
>Psychedelics are too unpredictable to be spoken about as a curative drug
>lol you been memed brah

>>9494548
I absolutely agree. Just in the same way I'm not going to listen to some faggot tell me he has the solution for impeaching Trump because he played Bioshock.
Potentially educational toys, nothing more

>>9494562
The same conclusion can be applied to literature.

>>9494575
Not at all, because literature is actually intrinsically composed of propositional content. It may not be in a clear analytic format but it is still totally the interpretations and perspectives of another mind as opposed to the lonely musings of your own mind exposed to simple phenomena

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He was definitely on to something.
Reminder that this fucker has read more books than /lit/ combined.

>>9494598
do you have some favorite lectures of his? he's great to fall asleep to - dont mean that as insult. used to listen to a psychedelic podcast that was mostly his old lectures and people talking about "entheogens" at burning man. he was the only interesting part ever

>>9494593
Not really, there is a thread on /lit/ right now about a guy sperging because he couldn't understand the first sentence of Gravity's Rainbow, there's all the criticism to literally any book in the world which amounts to "it's good", every completely subjective and separated interpretation ever and so on.
Reading is still a passive act, the fact that a book is "propositional content" (arguable, books, as anything, exist within our world and not separated in some a priori state waiting to be discovered) does not exclude it from having no positive value. Consider YA, if anything, it might actually stump learning by appealing to the pre-conceived notions of the reader instead of challenging them with different points of view. Also, don't even bother trying to separate YA (and every other form of shit book there is out there) from literature, this is a useless effort which will only come to show how a lot of what you consider literature only has so because it got a historical paint.

>>9494625
For an entry-level suggestion I would go with this one he called Evolving Times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PucjQXO2k0
Pretty much explains the infamous stoned ape theory and then he branches out into different subjects.
His lectures on Hermeticism and Alchemy are GOAT-tier, also.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH8NSQnn3AE

I was a chronic hardcore pothead for over 10 years. I loved shrooms and acid. I grew and sold weed and shrooms on the 90s. I dabled with speed and opiates but they weren't my thing. I got a hold of a sheet of really clean, strong LSD. It was the best Acid I ever had. One hit and your face melted. I planned to take 5 hits of acid with 8 grams of freshly dried shrooms like 2 weeks in advance. Did all my rituals, took extra care in planning. I fasted 24 hours before the planned trip. I powdered the shrooms and mixed them with a small amount of apple sauce with vitamin C crystals. I took the shrooms, smoked a big bowl of good herb and then took the 5 hits of acid and smoked more weed till the drugs kicked in. It was amazing and when I peaked I hit nirvana. It was like a whole body orgasm times a thousand that lasted for what felt like hours. Then I completely lost myself. I didn't exist anymore. Just the trip. A moment or maybe an hour of pure unfiltered clarity. When I came back I was laying naked on the floor in a corner curled up in fetal position sucking my thumb. After that I didn't get much enjoyment out of any dope. After a few weeks I wasn't interested anymore. Psychedelics lost their power for me and I could get high but I didn't trip like before and it was unsatisfying. I even quit dipping cold turkey without any noticeable withdrawal. It was like that trip burned out my inner fiend. I just stopped everything....drugs, booze and nicotine. I drink once in awhile but just for the flavor...not for a buzz. I have like maybe just under a case of beer over the course of a year. I smoke a cigar like every 2 months. Nothing hooks me now. I just read to escape.

>>9494641
I don't see what possible point you think you're making here. Poor minds reading bad science will yield the same result. I'm speaking of potentialities not mediocre probabilities

>>9494598

>Reminder that this fucker has read more books than /lit/ combined.

Proof?

>>9494669
My point is that anything is little more than ways to tickle your brain, the only human activities I can put outside of that are religious devotion and guilt-free sex. Just because you like books but dislikes video games and drugs doesn't make than anything more than useless brain exercise.

>>9494678
I'm speaking in regards to the intellectual developement of a more sophisticated understanding of reality. If you want to talk about how that or anything else has any intrinsic worth you're free to make the new hourly thread for that topic for me to ignore

>>9494696
Except literature is absolutely not a guarantee of a more sophisticated understanding of a reality, and any possibility that it has to be can be found in other forms elsewhere just as much. The fact that videogames, drugs or anything else haven't really helped you with that has nothing to do with games or drugs, and if it helped anyone else you have no bearing in deciding it.

>>9494671
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpeq91hK1Gk

>>9494721
I just said I am speaking about potentialities, why on Earth are you still harping about "guarantees"? I couldn't care less

>>9494731
Anything has potentiality, that's what you don't seem to get.

>>9494668
Well, you're still a faggot, so psychedelics couldn't have done that much.

>>9494735
or rather, potentiality lies in the subject, not the object of consumption.

>>9494735
>>9494738
There's the soft potentiality of "this propositional content is waiting here for you to experience"
Versus the hard potentiality of "quantum physics means I could suddenly have the secrets of the universe chaotically materialize in my brain" variety.

I'm clearly speaking of the former.

>>9494750
What makes videogames or drugs not propositional content?

>>9494737

Your Mom likes my dick just fine. I let your dad listen at the door but that is as close to faggotry as I get

>>9494762
Video games are infact which is why they are actually superior to drugs potentially. Although actual existing video games don't come anywhere near the quality which exists in the canon of literture and are unlikely to ever do so based on the economics and audience of their production

>>9494782
Quality is absolutely subjective, you can't deny someone elses expansion of perception through drugs, videogames, music, capeshit or anything else based on your limited perception of the subject.

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>>9494793
>Quality is absolutely subjective
Oh dear.

At its most reductionistic basis which can be described as material which increases our understanding of reality it clearly is not. I am capable of being able to understand more about the patterns and structures of my angst by a careful reading of Hamlet or Kierkegaard than I am from playing Mass Effect Andromeda or smoking weed and watching Adventure Time.
You're free of course to attempt deny this as I'm not interested in having to go through the rigmarole of developing a proof of this concretely

>>9494830
And smoking weed and dropping acid has helped with my own existentil angst and anxiety far more than having read Fear and Trembling, but I'm not trying to ellevate weed above Kierkegaard or Kierkegaard over weed. You can't possibly claim that the possibility of opening lies anywhere outside being, and you can't possibly create a imperative path to achieving openness.

>>9494851
>And smoking weed and dropping acid has helped with my own existentil angst and anxiety far more than having read Fear and Trembling

Yeah but how can you know this is true outside anything but arbitrary chance or a misrecognition of memory? How do you even know your existencial angst has been helped at all?
If I read a book I can point to its propositional content, I can describe how I synthesized or adjusted my previous conception of reality with that content. What can you do from your experience with drugs other than describe an odd and arbitrary emotional change, a change why may be either purely the lottery of neurochemical adjustment or subconsciously incorporating utter phantasmatic delusion?

>>9494880
Mind while I said lottery of neurochemical adjustment, russian roulette may be the more appropriate metaphor

>>9494883
Why do you have such a negative view of psychedelics?

I'm legitimately curious, are you just a puritan or are psychedelics more dangerous than i've been led to believe?

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>>9494909

Not the game goy you are replying to but look at the 60s hippie generation. They all took a bunch of LSD created by the government and 20 years later they turned into a bunch of sheepish yuppies with supple minds for the capitalist agenda. This is not a coincidence.

>>9494511
>If psychedelic experiences quite reliably makes people in to better human beings,
[citation needed]

>>9495043
>petty-bourgeois became petty-bourgeois
woah, that can't be a coincidence

>>9495043
They are a weird mix of capitalist and socialist. This has happened in all of western world to varying degree. Career politicians, sanctuary jobs, culture manufacturing, half-baked ideologies, idiocracy, mediocracy, consensus politics. Everything operates on a double standard these days.

That is the fruit of the generation of pacifists. No conflict allowed, everyone should agree on these principles and we will compromise.
Of course, women are also to blame. Alas, they did not invent feminism, why would they have?

McKenna was wrong about:

- the Timewave
- society being edenic and female-run prior to the incursion into history. (He couldn't resist making his own reinterpretation of Genesis, when he should have just avoided the idea altogether)

McKenna was right about:

- everything else

I always thought he was a joke. And I even have a psychedelic outlook that can get pretty counter-modern and paradoxical.

But I really dislike 'psychedelic' people who pile on needless nonsense and schizobullshit, like in like Goa Trance (electronic music is trippy enough without pseudo-Eastern pretensions grafted onto it) or shit "Visionary" artists like Alex Gray (like you don't need to literally paint chakras and visionary eyes everywhere etc. Way too on-the-nose. Fucking middle-school-tier).

>>9495099

There's literally nothing wrong with being middle class, there's nothing wrong with having an experimental culture based on anti-war sentiment either.

The sad part was the drugs and how it corrupted the whole message and culture into anti-intellectual drivel. The drugs fried all their fucking brains so no real progress of thought or philosophy could be made, it just turned into another fad easily controlled by media and capitalism, and in turn they all grew up to be yuppie conservative born-again christian cocksuckers.

>>9494511
>i dont understand what im responding to

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>>9494406
i've been listening to a lot of podcasts made from his talks after hearing about the bard from our buddy tao lin.

mckenna does seem a little cracked, especially when he starts to ramble on about time waves and novelty theory and the i ching, but i think he's worth listening to. he uses words interestingly and his accounts of psychadelics makes me want to try shrooms.

>>9494453

>...which while may be amusing on a personal psychological basis ultimately reveal nothing of substance. Certainly not of substance to the issues he's referring to.

Pretty much this. Compare with Hunter Thompson:

"That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel."

or PJ O'Rourke who said something along the lines of "Did I reach enlightenment using psychedelic drugs? Absolutely. Did I remember what enlightenment was the next day? Nope."

This is basically what every serious person ends up realizing after drug experimentation. It's a chaos of sensory experience that means nothing whatsoever for you or mankind. You just learn a lot more reading books, it turns out. And psychedelics also exacerbate mental illness severely for certain people. And they tend to make smart people distracted idiots for a few years.

>>9495837

You need to find better Gurus. There are plenty of them.

I don't like everything he says, but he says some stuff that's very insightful and true. Watch this video for example. He had a way with words, and a good understanding as to why so many people are unhappy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iFpw0uIkbo

Hating him because "le drug man!" is dumb, you're no different than an old man stuck in the past who thinks weed is just as bad of a drug as heroin.

>>9495861
McKenna is explicitly anti-guru. You clearly have no familiarity with his actual work.

>>9494453
How is it inaccessable? McKenna and his ilk are not elitist, they WANT you to try it as well. They are literally trying to sell the trip to as many as possible because they thought it would change the world for the better of more people had transpersonal experiences.

>>9495717
>not realising that the most profound breakthroughs in physics came at the 60s movement, the appreciation of Eastern mysticism, and the artworks created out of psychedelic headspace.
>not realising that to this day the leading thinkers in computer science use psychedelics to enhance their ideas
You literally don't know what you're talking about.

>>9495904
he says that, but then he starts talking about novelty theory and 2012. it sounds suspiciously like a guru to me.

you can label yourself (or not label yourself) all you want, what matters is what you actually are

>>9495953
What about novelty theory makes him a guru? It doesn't make any sense, anon. So there are topics you are not allowed to discuss otherwise it means you automatically take an inner circle and start telling them in detail about how to live their life?

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>>9495930
>use psychedelics to enhance their "ideas"

WEW we've got a scholar here m'boys

>>9495961
I'm not talking about myself. Look up LSD microdosing in Silicon Valley, for example.

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TIPS TO BECOME A SUPER INTELLECTUAL:

>brag about "difficult" muschroom/acid trips
>tell "wacky" acid stories
>JOE ROGAN PODCAST ALL DAY
>"muh McKenna"
>own 3 books: Cosmos, Food of the Gods, and Way of Zen
>smoke cigarettes constantly
>habitual marijuana smoking
>preach to your peers as a guru

>>9495980
Sounds like a fun life, desu.

>>9495980
Don't forget about that 40 hour week day at the factory and overtime on saturday

>>9495858
I really have to disagree with the last paragraph you wrote. I think that psychedelics can be a great thing for people with disciplined lives. One or two trips can have a really lasting effect on your self-esteem, work ethic, or pleasure-seeking behavior. Minor doses are also very effective for some programmers, and other people in fields that require bashing your head into a wall intellectually. People who smoke a lot of pot generally lose the urge after they take a substantial dose of shrooms.

Hippies are the worst, though. On the milder end you have college kids who devote themselves to selling brownies as a business. Which isn't necessarily bad as long as you don't see it as something spiritual that you must devote almost all your spare time and thinking to.

>>9494483

>but is there something going on that's making him trendy right now? someone told me jim carrey is starring as him in a movie.

wow i hope this isn't actually happening because it sounds horrible.

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>>9495958
he took people to inner circle environments all the time (the various raps he gave around the world). listen to any of the q/a sessions he held. people were looking for answers and he readily gave them out. he told his followers how to live their lives by rejecting capitalism and western religion and to start taking psychadelic drugs.

novelty theory is particularly relevant because he essentially used it to predict the end of the world (a mighty cult-ish thing to do). and, no, him saying he might be wrong to cover his ass doesn't matter.

look, i like the guy. he has some neat ideas and is fun to listen to. but there was something of a would-be messiah in his persona, despite how hard he tried to make sure nobody got that impression.

>>9496005
Yeah, ok. Point taken.

>>9496005
>him saying he might be wrong doesn't matter
It matters enormously, anon. Probably THE critical difference between a guru and a guide.

The psychedelic experience is a doorway which leads to a hallway which leads to only what you want to find within yourself.

In other terms, a drug is nothing but a high-yield (fast but not perfect) technique to reach partly what your reason and heart cannot achieve fully in your opinion. If anything, it is a total lack of confidence in your reason and in your abilities to philosophy to be at ease with life; ease which remains unlikely, given that the choice of doing these drugs with the goal of opening your awareness and opening your mind is already a sign of close-mindedness and poor ability to reflect.

>>9494406
if you have to ask, the answer is yes

>>9496058

You've always written off any thinker that conflicted with your current paradigm? Then how did you ever grow intellectually or spiritually?

Anyone who claims that Spirit depends on Matter is lying.

>>9494671
Just listen to any of his lectures and he will tell you about some obscure 3rd century persian book he read 5 years ago that related to this specific 17th century bible translation or something all the time, dude was a savant.

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>>9494483
The advent of .onion (tor) dark net markets such as the silk road has lead to more people having the confidence to try these drugs. Before that, you could never be confident about what you were getting. Previously the types of people who had access to psychedelics were people with drug connections already, now there are many people who don't even smoke weed who get into these drugs. We are in the middle of a psychedelic resurgence.

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>>9494598

0:29
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqYZS8Z5cZQ&t

>>9494778
Wow, druggies compassionate as always. You're really one with the universe aren't you.

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>>9496923
>Strawmanning this hard.

>>9496005
simply having a millenarian idea does not make someone a guru. I can't believe you're this dumb.

McKenna repeatedly and forcefully rejected his own guru-hood. He explicitly downplayed the similarities between the psychedelic experience and eastern spiritual traditions. His entire schtick was about how no one has the universe completely figured out, and that the only thing you can trust is your own individual experience. This is literally the opposite of guruism.

>>9494555
>some medicine can kill people who shouldnt have it
>HURRRR BAN MEDICINE DUM DUM

>>9494598
But that's exactly what he did anon

>>9494453
You're completely right, but the danger of a posteriori empiricism like modernism for example is the destruction of the balance between the manmade and natural world, which this druggie is trying to avoid.

>>9497064
>McKenna repeatedly and forcefully rejected his own guru-hood.

This does not mean that he wasn't a guru.

>He explicitly downplayed the similarities between the psychedelic experience and eastern spiritual traditions. His entire schtick was about how no one has the universe completely figured out, and that the only thing you can trust is your own individual experience.

Although he pushed this argument a bit, most of his content is his own, unexamined individual experience expanded as universal, while not subjecting it to any sort of skepticism and criticism.
Considering that his whole career was based on pushing his worldview on naive students, it make sense to find an analogue of his persona to the figure of a guru (although, in this case, it's stripped of its traditional connotation).

That said, I don't have any major objection to his advices and worldview, although I do not follow them (and when I do it's purely incidental, rather than justifying them with what McKenna said about it). They're perfectly compatible with a productive, ethical and social life. This still does not mean that McKenna wasn't a pseudo-guru, it just means that being a pseudo-guru is not a flaw or a moral failing per se: I'm sure that many people have benefited from his teachings.

>>9494830
>At its most reductionistic basis which can be described as material which increases our understanding of reality it clearly is not.
Again that's an interpretation you've drawn from your culture and in no way a timeless truth.

>>9497575
You don't know what a guru is, you're just twisting the definition to fit your incorrect conclusion. All of your words are useless.

Next you'll call Robert Anton Wilson a guru.

>>9497601
He is a guy who elevates his worldview as universal, and treat it as a prescriptive tool to be imparted to his subjects (in this case, his listeners, who are pushed into following his advices and methods).

It's not a cult, but he is certainly a self-help guru (pseudo-guru was maybe a bit too general as a definition).

>>9497612
>He is a guy who elevates his worldview as universal
Incorrect. McKenna never elevated any of his ideas to dogma.

>treat it as a prescriptive tool to be imparted to his subjects
Incorrect. When I listen to McKenna, I hear him speaking to me as an equal, not a subject. Maybe you just have a weakly developed self image and are threatened by anyone attempting to speak decisively?

>in this case, his listeners, who are pushed into following his advices and methods
Offering up ideas that the listener can choose to either engage with or disregard is not 'pushing' anyone to do anything. It's just how communication works.

>he is certainly a self-help guru
Incorrect. Gurus present themselves and their behavior as the prime example a follower must mimic. McKenna did not present himself as a paragon of anything, and was vocal about his flaws and failings as an individual. He remarked numerous times that for all his psychedelic experimentation, he still had a troubled personal life (failed marriage, etc.)

He was an entertainer who was wrong about some stuff and right about some other stuff. Your working definition of guru is worthless.

>>9497695
>McKenna never elevated any of his ideas to dogma.
He costantly does by giving very precise prescriptions on morality, virtue and psychedelic usage, while never showing any sign of doubt or self-awareness in what he is saying.

>When I listen to McKenna, I hear him speaking to me as an equal, not a subject.
This has nothing to do with my point.

>Maybe you just have a weakly developed self image and are threatened by anyone attempting to speak decisively?
Maybe you're just trying to pathologize your opponent instead of actually responding to his points? Would it be fair if I discarded your appreciation for McKenna as a search for a daddy figure on the internet?

>Offering up ideas that the listener can choose to either engage with or disregard is not 'pushing' anyone to do anything. It's just how communication works.
Yet you're refusing to analyze the way in which he communicates with his ''disciples''.

>Gurus present themselves and their behavior as the prime example a follower must mimic. McKenna did not present himself as a paragon of anything, and was vocal about his flaws and failings as an individual. He remarked numerous times that for all his psychedelic experimentation, he still had a troubled personal life (failed marriage, etc.)
That's why I've used the term ''self-help guru'', which does not imply any of the things you've implied about my definition.
It does not matter wether he is actually following strictly his teachings, what matter is the existence itself of these teachings, and the way in which they are proposed to the youngs.

>He was an entertainer who was wrong about some stuff and right about some other stuff. Your working definition of guru is worthless.
Seems like I've hit a nerve here. You should analyze this emotional response of yours, and individuate the roots for such a irrational, arbitrary and dismissive response.

>>9494406
If you respond yes to this question you have not done psychedelics

>>9494453
Mushrooms had a positive effect on my ability to feel empathy towards others and to view my actions as others would.
It's not like a magic goat told me the secrets of the universe.
You're a close-minded bore and probably no fun at parties

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>>9495965

Fuck Silicon Valley, fuck your stupid computer science druggie macbook steve jobs shit. If you weren't such a pseudo-spiritual drug head retard you would realize silicon valley and technology in general has done more harm to the human spirit than helped it.

Half you faggots on 4chan and all the hipsters on Reddit are going to grow up into asshole parents. The "Yuppie 2.0" generation is going to dawn on future generations who will hopefully have better ideas than us and won't ruin our brains with drugs and alcohol.

terrence mckenna is a crackpot and a shill for the interpol cia

>>9497695
>>9497601
>>9497612
>>9497575
>>9497064

I hate being the guy to look up a word in the dictionary during an argument, but here we go:

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/guru

1. Hinduism. a preceptor giving personal religious instruction.

2. an intellectual or spiritual guide or leader.

3. any person who counsels or advises; mentor

How exactly do definitions 2 and 3 not apply to McKenna?

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What's so bad about being a guru anyway?

Doubtful that this is the only with which humans are to "reconnect with nature". What does that even mean? Surely 'death' is the best way to do this? It's probably not via the consumption of compounds of which 570 million years of evolution via natural selection has deemed unworthy of spending resources on natural synthesis from in vitro. Unlike the countless number of critical-to-life enzymes, hormones, vitamins, trace signillars, etc which the human body is able to produce from (mainly 11) base elements. The few necessary compounds which we lack the ability to synthesise such as Vitamin C or Water can be obtained easily and universally via diet.

Ergot fungus can produce LSD, cannabis can produce THC, etc because (unlike humans) it's biologically useful for those organisms to do so.

Not saying you shouldn't do drugs but don't waste air claiming that mother nature is mandating you to take MDMA / whatever.

>>9498468
But by that loose definition, what is wrong with it? Geeez, by that definition I can give you a book recommendation and suddenly I'm your guru. Pretty fucking harmless.

Anyway, to accept such a light defenition goes against the previous connotations about the negativity of guru behaviour.

>>9498586
>It's probably not via the consumption of compounds of which 570 million years of evolution via natural selection has deemed unworthy of spending resources on natural synthesis from in vitro
yeah I mean why bother eating food if the body doesn't produce it in vitro? obviously unimportant

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>>9498028
Wew.

>>9498028
I bet when your kid inevitably picks up your depression you'll blame that on """society""" and """technology""" too.

>>9498028
calm down ted

>>9499039
The second anon you've discussed with said that there is nothing inherently wrong with the term ''self-guru''. You're the one that got defensive, even after clarifications from his side.

>>9499307
I am not that other anon, there are more than a couple of us in here. Though I looked back and DO agree that this working definition of guru is worthless. And I disagree with your statement here that it did not start out as a pejorative title. This side of the debate seems to be now throwing accusations about the other side being emotional, while simultaneously backtracking enormously.

>>9499315
>That said, I don't have any major objection to his advices and worldview, although I do not follow them (and when I do it's purely incidental, rather than justifying them with what McKenna said about it). They're perfectly compatible with a productive, ethical and social life. This still does not mean that McKenna wasn't a pseudo-guru, it just means that being a pseudo-guru is not a flaw or a moral failing per se: I'm sure that many people have benefited from his teachings.

From the second response, chronologically.

>Though I looked back and DO agree that this working definition of guru is worthless
Well, it's the definition of the word, you can't do much about it.

>>9499321
Well you can do something about it, like initially confirming whether we're talking about definition 2 or 3 from >>9498468 at the outset, because those are very different definitions. Then we could also not throw in prefixes like "pseudo" just to further shift the goalposts halfway through discussion.

>>9499357
He corrected it with the term ''self-help guru''.
Have you even read the debate?

>>9498028
I agree tbqh anon

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>>9499367
I've been in it from the start m8. Seen it shift from one ambiguous term to another, while initially stating it with negative connotations then shifting to "I don't have a problem with it etc. etc." It's just a load of vapid categories that are used to either flat out feel righteous or else somehow turn the reality of McKenna's actions into some kind of easily describable and dismissable "bleh".

>oh it's interesting BUT bleh
>he offers some good advice BUT bleh
>look I don't have a problem with gurus BUT he is one and therefore bleh

>>9498028
>tfw strawmanning like a motherfucker

>>9494671
>read Jung when he was 10

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>>9494453

You may not learn something about the world that we don't already have physical evidence for, but you may well learn a lot about yourself by giving yourself a chance to be completely locked in your own mind for 12 hours while seeing everything from a completely new perspective.

>>9494453
Why don't you try it and find out for yourself

>>9494453
Yes... So you expand your mental capacities by giving your mind NEW kinds of phenomena to experience. This is why people say that travel broadens the mind. Same with psychedelics... That's why they call it a trip...

>>9496537

Genius is a lot easier to mimic than it is to have been born with.

It takes a smarter person than the charlatan to see him as such.

>>9496001
http://www.trueactivist.com/jim-carrey-is-preparing-to-play-terence-mckenna-by-taking-shrooms-staying-in-nature/

seems to be just rumours at this point

>>9495980
could be worse

>>9495837
Don't listen to him you dont need a guru