And what is shamanism but philosophy with a hands-on attitude. Philosophy not made around the camp fire, but philosophy based on the acquisition of extreme experience. That's how you figure out what the world is, not by bicycling around in the burbs, but by forcing extreme experience.

The imagination is the goal of history. I see culture as an effort to literally realize our collective dreams.

In a sense, sexuality is the built-in psychedelic experience that only a very few people manage to evade.

In a sense, what's happening is that the unconscious mind is a luxury the human species cannot afford at this point in our dilemma, and so the unconscious mind is simply rising into consciousness by being hardwired into this global infrastructure.

The race isn't to the swift, it's to the thoughtful.

So the conclusion that I reach, visa vie the individual and civilization, is this: Culture is not our friend. Culture is not your friend. It's not my friend. It's a very uncomfortable set of accommodations that have been hammered out over time for the convenience of institutions.

Fine tuning the institutions built by powdered wig guys two hundred years ago is a long shot at holding the whole thing together.