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Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.
Terence Mckenna
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Chaos is misunderstood and feared due to the controlling nature of the ego.

In this quote, Terence McKenna highlights the conflict between chaos and the ego, suggesting that society's fear of chaos stems from an ego-driven need for control. He argues that we have distanced ourselves from the natural state of chaos, leading to misconceptions and negative perceptions about it, which ultimately limits our understanding and potential growth.

Themes

ChaosEgoControlPerceptionNature

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about personal growth and letting go of control, one might say, 'Remember, chaos is what we've lost touch with.'

More from Terence Mckenna

We want freedom. We want freedom from the constraints of the cycles of the sun and the moon. We want freedom from drought and weather, freedom from the movement of game, the growth of plants, freedom from control from mendacious popes and kings, freedom from ideology, freedom from want. This idea of freeing ourselves has become the compass of the human journey.
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LSD burst over the dreary domain of the constipated bourgeoisie like the angelic herald of a new psychedelic millennium. We have never been the same since, nor will we ever be, for LSD demonstrated, even to skeptics, that the mansions of heaven and gardens of paradise lie within each and all of us.
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A hallucination is a species of reality, as capable of teaching you as a videotape about Kilimanjaro or anything else that falls through your life.
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Animals are something invented by plants to move seeds around. An extremely yang solution to a peculiar problem which they faced.
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If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on.
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It is no coincidence that a rebirth of psychedelic use is occuring as we acquire the technological capability to leave the planet. The mushroom visions and the transformation of the human image precipitated by space exploration are spun together. Nothing less is happening than the emergence of a new human order. A telepathic, humane, universalist kind of human culture is emerging that will make everything that preceded it appear like the stone age.
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