I think the saddest part of listening to Terence McKenna today isn't just that the whole premise that "if everyone did enough drugs we'd evolve human consciousness" isn't true, but it's the specific point that when the "three enemies of the people" (hegemony, monogamy and monotony) are directly confronted and challenged through the use of psychedelics, it is enough to crumble the foundations of the dominator culture. The "dominator culture" isn't just threatened by the violation of those norms-- they engage in the practice of violating those norms at far greater regularity than one might think-- it's that they monetize those things and sell them! No, what the dominator culture can't stand isn't the fact that people do drugs and have orgies in the woods, but the fact that people do it without any financial transaction taking place. THAT is the mortal threat to the dominator culture that McKenna aaaaaallllllmmmmmoooooossssstttttt grasped.
I don't know what McKenna would think of hypercapitalist techbros taking all-inclusive vacations to the Amazon Rainforest in their private luxury jets and yachts specifically to purchase the psychedelic experience, and then market the consumption of microdoses of assorted psychedelics as a way to increase productivity for the general populace at their jobs generating capital for those same tech bros, but I'd like to think that he'd have the wherewithal to engage in some self reflection.
Turns out drugs don't magically grant you a spiritual empathetic awakening, an anticapitalist revelation, a personality, a religion, or ethical standards unless those things already exist within you already.
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