Earth is a place where language has literally become alive. Language has infested matter; it is replicating and defining and building itself. And it is in us.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that language is a living entity that shapes our understanding of reality and ourselves.
Terence McKenna's quote reflects on the profound nature of language, implying that it transcends mere communication to become a dynamic force that infuses our existence. He suggests that language is not only a tool for expression but also a living entity that replicates and evolves, shaping our thoughts, culture, and identity in the process. This perspective invites us to consider how deeply intertwined language is with our reality and our sense of self, highlighting its role in defining who we are and how we relate to the world around us.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of language in cultural identity.
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.
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.
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.
Animals are something invented by plants to move seeds around. An extremely yang solution to a peculiar problem which they faced.
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.
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.
The world of the 20th century, if it is to come to life in any viability of health and vigor, must be to a significant degree an American century.
Animals don't know as much about jealousy as people, but they're not ignorant of it, either.
In order to increase his pleasures, man has intentionally added to the number and pressure of his needs, which in their original state were not much more difficult to satisfy than those of the brute. Hence luxury in all its forms; delicate food, the use of tobacco and opium, spirituous liquors, fine clothes, and the thousand and one things that he considers necessary to his existence.
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few - the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay.
No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.
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