Page 20 - 201311 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - November 2012

Terence McKenna’s Magical 2012 An Insufficiently Advanced Technology For McKenna’s Magical 2012 By R.U. Sirius By now, everybody knows that there’s a big crowd of folks who think something really big is going to happen this year because the Mayan Calendar allegedly ended in 2012 — specifically December 21, 2012 Less well known amongst the masses that are vaguely familiar with the meme is the fact that psychedelic/cyberdelic philosopher Terence McKenna was the original primary source for this notion and for this particular date. (If my memory serves, Jose Arguelles — the recently deceased new age guru perhaps best known for 1987′s “Harmonic Convergence” — originally set a different date for this Mayan- influenced ending of all endings, but if you try to google for data… at least to the limits of my patience… you’ll find that any notice of this is buried beneath the now unified meme that December 21 is the hot date with destiny.) Both men envisioned not an apocalypse (as per the current dominant meme) but some sort of transmutation of the human condition (a prediction of molecular control of the structure positive apocalypse). While Arguelles’s of matter; and he would be thrilling to TERENCE MCKENNA’S IDEAS perceptions were largely influenced by mystical predictions of desktop manufacturing (If you Terence McKenna advocated the exploration of esoterica, McKenna’s vision was much more a put those three things together, you get altered states of mind via the ingestion of hybrid of the mystical and the technological. something like a world where what you imagine naturally occurring psychedelic substances. For Like Ray Kurzweil, McKenna foresaw a example, and in particular, as facilitated by the world in which technical evolution (he liked to “simply comes to be.). He also jumped on the ingestion of high doses of psychedelic Virtual Reality train in the early ’90s, as that use the word novelty) would keep doubling at would be a kind of ecology of mind where this mushrooms, and DMT, which he believed was an exponential rate until we would hit a vision would be even easier to realize. the apotheosis of the psychedelic experience. singularity. Only McKenna originally McKenna’s technophilia — to the He spoke of the "jeweled, self-dribbling envisioned this constant and ever-quicker extend he was a technophile — was not without basketballs" or "self-transforming machine exponential doubling not by charting technical its ambiguities. He believed technological elves" that one encounters in that state. evolution but by “channeling” the “logos” advance without the intervention of spiritual, Although he avoided giving his behind huge quantities of tryptamine psychedelic consciousness and values would be allegiance to any one interpretation (part of his hallucinogens in the Amazon. both ugly and lethal. rejection of monotheism), he was open to the In McKenna’s singularity, we would Still, it would probably be a mistake — idea of psychedelics as being "trans- unite with “the logos,” after which all of human one that seems to be made by many current dimensional travel"; literally, enabling an history and materiality itself would be seen McKenna-philes — to think that Terence would individual to encounter what could be platonically as an idea space and everything — feel confident that this grand transmutation ancestors, or spirits of earth. He remained including all proceeding time and human based, only in part, on the Mayan Calendar was opposed to most forms of organized religion or guru-based forms of spiritual awakening. experience — would become, in some sense, going to occur on time despite the fact that the Either philosophically or religiously, he our plaything. And this would happen on technological training wheels needed to boost expressed admiration for Marshall McLuhan, December 21, 2012. us into this platonic state have not yet Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Gnostic While McKenna divined much of his Christianity, Alfred North Whitehead and theory from such mystical sources as the i sufficiently developed (if ever). Alchemy. McKenna always regarded the Greek McKenna never took his role as a Ching and ideas taken from psychedelic prophet as seriously as some of his disciples philosopher Heraclitus as his favorite shamanism as practiced in the Amazon, he was now appear to. As a self-admitted “carnival philosopher. also an astute student of developments in hard barker” (and how self righteous and humorless He also expressed admiration for the science, technology and culture and his sense of have we become that many reading this will works of James Joyce (calling Finnegans Wake this drive towards the singularity was at least find this reason to dismiss him entirely?), "the quintessential work of art, or at least work somewhat “grounded” in how he saw real there’s a pretty good chance that he would have of literature of the 20th century") and Vladimir material and cultural developments. hopped aboard the 2012 circus for purposes of Nabokov: McKenna once said that he would Thus, when McKenna described his livelihood and as a context for spreading other have become a Nabokov lecturer if he had never upcoming singularity as a place where the aspects of his philosophy, and he probably encountered psychedelics. boundary between the exterior and interior would have been available to be propped up on During the final years of his life and collapses and what you imagine “simply comes a hemp-woven throne at the stroke of midnight career, McKenna became very engaged in the to be,” it was not just mystical intuition. He at the 12.21.12 global rave, but I feel certain that theoretical realm of technology. He has advocated would also be following movements towards he would have been much more surprised if the idea of a technological singularity. In his last technologies that allow us to control other December 21, 2012 turns out to be a day of recorded public talk, Psychadelics in The Age of Intelligent Machines, he outlined strong ties technologies with our minds, he would be magical transmutation than he would have been between psychedelics, computation technology, getting excited about K. Eric Drexler’s disappointed if it does not.[] and humans.