Our normal human tendencies are distraction and dissipation. We begin one task, then get seduced by some other option, and lose our focus. We drift away from what is difficult and we know to be true, to what is comfortable and socially condoned.

Electronic culture created soulless replacements for connective rituals- television supplanted tribal legends told by the fire; 'fast food' consumed in distraction took the place of a shared meal. We substituted matter for Mater (feminine principle), money for mother's milk, objects for emotional bonds.

As a German philosopher writing in the aftermath of the Nazi regime, Marcuse understood the sleep inducing force of indoctrination, its power to make people forget and forfeit their own real interests. "The fact that the vast majority of the population accepts, and is made to accept, this society does not render it less irrational and less reprehensible," he wrote. "The distinction between true and false consciousness, real and immediate interest still is meaningful."

Through the last centuries, the effort of capitalism has been to take all the things that were human relations and turn them into monetary exchanges.

It is the difficult, but unavoidable, task of the modern individual to assimilate consciously all of the contents - from darkest degradation to profoundest purpose - contained in the psyche.

Marcuse wrote: "Perhaps an accident may alter the situation, but unless the recognition of what is being done and what is being prevented subverts the consciousness and the behavior of man, not even a catastrophe will bring about the change.".

I don't really advocate for psychedelics. I don't really think anybody needs to do them, or has to do them. For me, they were the only way I could have cracked open my own spirit in a way.