Podcast 294 – “The Genesis of Occupy Wall Street”

27 Comments

1. from the ByTheWay Department:)
   litkicks has a great page on the Peoples Mic,
   http://www.litkicks.com/PeoplesMic

2. Phil,
   i did indeed dig very much learning about Elizabeth Thomas and the Ju/wasi. thank you.

   on another continent at that same time period of the 1950’s, Sam Fuller was in Brazil, scouting locations for a John Wayne film. he found the Karaja people’s village and shot some short footage of them. due to insurance reasons though, the film project was cancelled. many decades later Sam Fuller returned to the Karaja village with Jim Jarmusch. the reviews of their resulting documentary do not really convey what for me was the high point of the documentary; when Sam rolls the 50+ year old footage for the gathered Karaja. it’s incredible to watch, not just for the sake of the original 50’s footage itself, but their deep heartfelt reaction to viewing it as well. the bridging of time and culture is immediate and profound.

   that 50’s footage showed a pacific culture engaging in rituals and practices similar to many others, those of fertility, coming of age, etc., but also showed the particular character of these people. open to viewer interpretation, i’m sure, but it seemed to me they were unaggressive -placid almost -and quite psychedelicized in my view of their costumes and routines. it made a big impact on me. i knew there were many anthropological discoveries made in the 20th century, particularly in it’s middle, and i’d wished i was more learned about all that to put it into the context of the time. being turned onto Elizabeth Thomas’s work helps, thank you. i was pretty primed for it.

   Tigrero – Kaurismaki – Fuller-Jarmusch – Intro
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BPbHFJEpPM

   http://www.rottentomatoes.com/mobile/m/tigrero_a_film_that_was_never_made/
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasha_Siemel
   http://www.primordiales.com.ar/images/tigrero.jpg

3. Revlin- very true! And this anthropological nitpicking doesn’t really change his tune one way or the other- I just wonder if the garden of eden was a psychedelic palace of orgiastic anarchy or a calm oasis of existential ease and acceptance. I don’t think the answer will erase the value of psychedelics (that value is pretty self-evident!), but I think the other aspect, what I call “nonresentment”, is something very valuable and under-noticed.

   Zuma- you might dig The Old Way by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. She talks about sex in that culture as well as spirituality and amazingly, there is a lack of preoccupation with that as well. I was pretty shocked myself. Berman is excellent and detailed but comes out swinging a little too hard for some people.

4. cause for thought there, Revlin… i’ll have to give that talk another listen. BUT i must say i was tickled you brought up The Ascent Of Man (thinking you meant Charles Eisenstein’s book The Ascent Of Humanity until i saw the difference in the titles). so now i’m a hair confuzed. 🙂

   http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/Ascent_of_Humanity

5. I think Terence was a shapeshifter. I also think he understood how mutable the historical record is; that it has been changing dramatically from decade to decade through out the 20th century. Has anyone ever watched the first episode of that series, “the Ascent of Man”? As recently as the 70’s we accepted as reality that all of human kind was descended from neanderthals. Now they are seen as a parallel species, along with others, which we hunted to extinction. Many people haven’t given that one serious thought: paleontologist currently believe that other intelligent primate species existed at the same time as our distant ancestors. It’s also theorized that some hybridization happened between species, which is why there are some instances of neanderthal-specific genes in certain human blood lines.
   And all of that could be completely wrong. I’m convinced that Terence was completely aware of this fuzzy quality to the illustrations of history and of post-modern reality. Check out his talk “Taxonomy of Illusion” for more of his thoughts on this

6. Phil,
   your comment had me considering these aspects of ancient man’s life; what he drew on the walls and how such reflected the differences between his (or her? -was such recording reserved for males?) interior experiences and exterior experiences, nighttime experiences and daytime experiences -and what nighttime (vs day) may have meant to them. natch, sex is the biggest experience for all that it crosses both the internal and external simultaneously and gives most to the crossing of minds and hearts -never mind all it’s procreative import -just as mindblowing experience alone, it’s a wellspring of epiphany. and yes, procreativity is of central import. fecundity of any sort is central. the popping open of Mind, self-aware cognitive experience, preoccupies itself supra-dominantly… anything that facilitates it self-fuels curiosity, is of pointed interest, is passionately investigated -and if advantage-giving then supremely important. especially in an age where working with any sense (much less tools or the concrete concept) of accurate measurement and proportion wasn’t the high hallmark of humans such would become. indeed, groping in the dark more represented the human condition that perhaps for any other creature for all man’s curious inner potential of possibility. there weren’t the words, there just weren’t. maybe still aren’t for all that we don’t know that we don’t know, yeah.
   …material advances left material evidences. to look at such alone, for all their ’empirical reality’, assigns relative valuations and determines basis for corroboration. how does ancient man paint the experience of the great white light? or explain any sense of it’s import? such were left hoping the following generations would lead to better grasp of things as well as material progress. we’re still stuck in all that material struggle, far more than we should be, for all the struggle with dominators and domination… to get beyond the empire of ’empirical reality’ challenges us all, and the kneejerk reflexive impulse to dominate it -to overpower it -has us still groping in the dark, grappling with ourselves more than anything else even. epiphanies cannot be quantified -our rational minds only help us so much just like our passions. anything that helped us blow our minds, even as simple as eidetic imagery, helped. somehow.

   i also thought of this song,
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Several_Species_of_Small_Furry_Animals_Gathered_Together_in_a_Cave_and_Grooving_with_a_Pict

   i still haven’t scoped out Berman. or James C Scott. daisy-picking in left field once i hit google (or more and more often now duckduckgo) is a pernicious weakness of mine… but James C Scott hasn’t meandered off my mind’s desktop for sure. the idea of ‘groups living without or fleeing from states’ stuck with me hard, real hard. thanks. the fundamental decision to pursue oblivion or awareness comes to mind… as does how one defines those terms…

7. Zuma- good point! I’m gonna cuddle up with FOTG tonight to review. There’s such a lack of evidence one way or the other- what was going on in the spiritual lives of the earliest peoples is a totally fascinating topic- and we may have to live with the fact that we’ll never really know. People smarter than I have made good arguments on both sides and I think it would be a lot of fun if salon folks got into in the nitty gritty of it all. I’m not attached to any particular conclusion and would love to be proven wrong!

   I don’t disagree that shamanism had serious psychedelic roots (what FOTG says) or that early sedentary cultures have lots of evidence of ritualized ecstasy. But there are two points worth considering:

   1. Shamanism, as we’ve found it, usually exists in pastoral or sedentary cultures (or previously sedentary agricultural cultures such as TM’s South American informants.) So what? It’s possible that it exists in these places as a relief from the social stresses of agricultural work and the beginnings of a caste society. Sort of an original counterculture. Pastoral societies are especially interesting in this regard since they really are right on the line btwn H/G cultures and emerging agricultural societies and have always been a pain-in-the-ass to sedentary babylons everywhere.

   2. The earliest artworks we have from humans are amazing not in their otherworldlyness, but in their down-to-earth literalness- pictures of animals and dots. And the occasional fertile woman. This doesn’t mean that is all they produced- it is only what survived. But our closest connection to these cultures (see the old way by Thomas and the references in Berman) seem to force us to reconsider the idea that these cultures were especially preoccupied with spiritual matters. Its a fascinating idea- perhaps they just didn’t need it until their worlds became “stressed out.” The image of the primitive being obsessed with the gods is a constant theme in popular culture (see avatar) but it might be totally opposite- perhaps we are the obsessed ones!

   I don’t know TM well enough (read all his books and listened to countless hours but there’ a lot there!). At times he seems to say the mushroom didn’t really come in until pastoralism, brought on perhaps by a ecological shift and times he seems to say it was amongst the earliest foods in HG societies. There is a big difference there with lots of ramifications for how we understand psychedelic cultures and its worth exploring.

   Fun to talk about this stuff with an “other”.

8. i do appreciate Phil from NC’s comment and go now to check out his pointers, but can’t help but wonder when last he cracked open Food Of The Gods and perused the ancient visual records within. should Berman inform my view differently…

   the Scott pointer seems more fecund, and/or pertinently intriguing.

   Thank you, Phil.

9. Thanks for posting this Lorenzo, really great and important stuff, and I love your editing and production of it.

   Graeber’s anthropological perspective brings up a whole new dimension to the salon. Much of Mckenna’s historical story relies on the ecstatic nature of our earliest hunter and gatherer societies. I’m entranced by these ideas but from the little historical info we have- most hunter/gatherer folks are decidedly un-ecstatic and not very concerned with religious notions. Ecstatic cultural practices seem to co-emerge with sedentary cultures and the beginnings of social stress (see Berman’s Wandering God for a good summary of this).

   This isn’t to discount the psychedelic or ecstatic experience! It just partially obscures what may have been a more important part of our cultural DNA from the hunter/gatherers- a mind-frame that was powerfully free from resentment and could accept a wide degree of paradox and experience without irritation. We might want to put that into our back pockets when we take off to the Great Whatever’s Next.

   I’d love to see more info in the salon from anthropologists concerned with groups living without or fleeing from states. (James C Scott might be fun).

   Thanks again- and don’t feed the trolls!
   [ 🙂 from Lorenzo]

10. Cannabis (Medical Marijuana, Forgetting and the Botany of Desire)
    http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/525
    “Last week’s episode looked at how man made toxic chemicals have proved more destructive for humans than initially anticipated. This week, by contrast, we look at the effects of chemicals that occur naturally in plants, and may be more therapeutic than generally recognised. In our first hour, Claudia Little, a medical marijuana activist looks at some of the innumerable therapeutic uses of this plant, with a history of medical use going back several thousands of years. Our second hour features Michael Pollan speaking on the contents of his book Cannabis, Forgetting, and the Botany of Desire, which widens our focus to look at how plants have co-evolved to fulfil useful functions to other life forms.”

    …this is to introduce unwelcomeguests.net, a site that is indispensable to me, on a note closer to home here at Lorenzo’s Salon than it’s many political, historical and educational pages. it’s a relatively long in the tooth site and massive with content, mostly in pairs of 25meg MP3s.
    http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/Episode_Gallery
    “For a text searchable page, try the ⚡ Episode Index:”
    http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/Episode_Index

    try finding *this* JFK recording from http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/517 elsewhere:
    http://unwelcomeguests.net/archive/517/JFK%27s%20American%20University%20Speech,%201963-06-10.mp3
    (& if you do listen to that, i strongly recommend as a followup this short Bill Hicks recording from 528: http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/archive/528/The%20Elite%20(Bill%20Hicks).mp3)

11. Guys, what is with the bashing? These talks are free, much the same is the OWS movement. The pursuits of those involved in the Salon and OWS begin with passion, not monetary gain. And with Securities Fraud being the new Capitalist agenda, need we support that type of activity? Who do you think the s.1867 legislation is aimed at taming anyhow? Surely not the Congress which signed it into law, and surely not those who have ditched the Glass-Steagall act and stomped our security to the ground. Doesn’t it sound a bit unusual that the corporations who profited from the 13 Billion dollar bailouts have CEOs with salaries greater than 350 times the average employee of those corporations? Wake up. Making money for oneself relies on other people, and when the elected officials do more to bury the people who voted for them than rescue them (the Federal reserve system is a monetary fairy tale because our Constitution never intended for a PRIVATE bank to print money ON INTEREST to the American people) it is those Congress people who backed down on their oath to uphold the Constitution which is collusive corruption, also known as treason. Do the research, and you will come to the same conclusions.

12. the siege of reality begins more from behind our eyelids and between our ears than from without.

    sovereignty of the individual is core…

    cognitive liberty weighs in the balance at all times and places but is so very much highlighted here and now.

    to be ignorant is one thing but to be so on purpose is another, yes, and this salon if i may say so is no friend to willful ignorance.

    history isn’t so much written by the ‘victors’ as it is by what becomes; the ‘butterfly effect’ writ large and wholecloth.

    i cannot do else but strongly advocate you speak of OWS and whatever else your will and conscience moves you to. to do less would be to be less. false even, i daresay. be the strongest butterfly you can, Lorenzo.

    plainly, the events, matters and causes and consequences are transnational. i pray this context is never denied. the dominator culture that may well have sprung from the alcohol of fermented honey (honey that preserved the earliest used mushrooms) is nigh as old as the entheogenic culture itself. this framing may well be too ‘meta’ for detailed discourse but i mention it to remind others of some of what terence hisself had to say…

    http://zuma.vip.warped.com/EmptySinks.htm#FOTG

13. I see the editing of my last comment isn’t all that good. In the rush i left somethings repating themselves, and some sentences uncompleted. Aware of it. Cosymetry, please give it a chance anyhoo:)

14. Cosymetry, there is no arguing with you, let the future show who has the truer version of how things really are, anything i or anyone can say that doesn’t already confirm your version seems to be able to enlighten you, so it’s all up to you and the future. But i’m happy you are a saloner, and surprised, and i hope you stay in touch!

    At any time you are welcome to be part of a new kind of community, only compromise being we don’t hurt each other, apart from that you enter with your freedom intact, when you realize there isn’t going to be any big marxist government to coerce you into doing evil anti-capitalist actions like sharing and caring, nor into the more classical orwellian stuff like having no freedom of speech or thought and being a disposable working ant under constant big brother surveillance (which is pretty much the situation these days, anyways), when you realize that the movement that is going to take the power out of big money is not about to take away your freedom, is not in favor of Obama, is not marxist, is not pro-huge-government (do you even know what Bakunin was all about? Do you know that libertarian socialism is a form of constructively organized anarchy, where coercing people is out of the question, so that taking away your freedom is part of what that ideology says we can not and will not do at any price? That is not your sovjet socialism which you, by right, are so afraid of.

    Socialism and government is a combination that leaves the socialism part corrupted, which is why there has never been a true socialism in any government in history, although all its own leaders have agreed to call it socialism.

    Libertarian socialism on the other hand, which is the closest thing to marxism or socialism that i could understand how you would associate with the occupy movement, is a form of anarchist idea that allows for endless models of direct democracy, and is wed to Gandhi’s non-violence, with the meaningfulness found in art and creativity (where psychedelics are important), in love and community, in education and information and innovation in the name of all that is good being taken seriously and valued before profit and greed or any other musing of the male dominance ego. The fact that it allows for a variety of solutions as to how one achieves direct democracy may be the reason why you are confused about what their message is.

    It carries a non-government principle, but not anti-government to the degree that we are talking about a wish to attack people who work in the government, that sort of aggression is reserved for the tea party and neo-liberalists who doesn’t yet control government (there are none of those left, though) whose anti-government ideal is almost of the opposite motivation than the anarchist one (this might be why you confuse it for being supportive of Obama. IT IS NOT SUPPORTIVE OF OBAMA, but it’s peaceful and non-violent, and therefore it’s not about to take him down either. It’s more like: Let’s ignore the government, so that we can start a new way of life together, where we don’t ever use violence or force each other, but voluntarily make life sustainable for each other. and is wedded with Gandhi’s non-violence, with the meaningfulness found in art and creativity (where psychedelics are important), in love and community, in education and information and innovation in the name of all that is good being valued before profit and greed or any other musing of the male dominance ego

    Finally, anyone who comes out of this movement and begins to use violence as a deliberate means to achieve political goals or goals of power or personal benefit, by doing so, breaks with the movement and all it represents, even if they say they’re part of it. I also don’t expect all its young participants to be fully enlightened in a way that enables them to act friendly towards police officers who are thrashing them, and to speak in friendly terms about the things that they wish to be free of, like debt and wage slavery, consumerism, violence and media manipulation of the truth. That is why the salon and the psychedelic experience is so important amidst these events, as it provides a deeper understanding of ourselves and our future, and is of indispensable guidance and relevance to precisely the kind of movement that hopes for the enlightenment and active participation of each and every mind that constitutes it.

    Be well Cosymetry! No one of us wishes you any harm, even if we shake our heads in disbelief at the quantity of misinformation you take to be true. Merry Christmas!

15. [COMMENT BY LORENZO: I’m approving this comment because it proves the research that shows that people who get their propaganda from FOX “News” are not just uninformed, they are actually mis-informed. The following simple-minded rant is amusing, actually. But what really cracks me up about this guy is that we both have a deep and serious dislike of the Obama administration. IMO Obama is by far the worst president in our history … and after the mad circus of the Bush Crime Family that’s saying a lot. However, as you will see, this person doesn’t have even the slightest clue about what the Occupy Movement is about. … You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him think.]

    BEGINNING OF COSYMETRY’S RANT:
    The tea party is a lot different than this occupy movement the tea party is Taxed EnoughvAlready Party. The tea party is against new taxes or raising taxes and about small government.

    The occupy movement is about big government, a socialist government, a government that hands out money and benefits instead of having individuals work for their money and donating it directly. Instead, the goernment will tell you how much money you have to “donate”. This occupy movement is a movement towards socialism and being an American who believed in our Founding Fathers and the constitution that built this country as a Republic and Ethical Capitalism. It may be a red herring to you but to the many people out there both in and outside of the obama administration they love the idea of complete control over its citizens and they will stop at nothing to achieve that goal. Your ignorance to believe that no one would put a marxist government up is your own denial of the true situation being guided here by people like George Soros and Tim Guitner.

    No, corporations create jobs, look at microsoft or ford. Without two people having great ideas none of those millions of car or computer jobs would exist. NO, the problem isn’t corporations, its the government thats trying to set regulations in corporations in the name of saving the world which actually makes it harder to pay the bills or sustain a business. Take these light bulbs for a second, these new energy efficient light bulbs, its now illegal to have the old kinds but these new kinds take up more energy? Ok, what does that do? It makes it harder for the light bulb business to make any money that that a regulation states that it has to change its product. Thats too much government interference.

    Least Fox News doesn’t distort the truth or has ties to the Obama Administration like MSNBC or ABC. Really, you’re a serious fool if you still believe that Fox is the one thats perverting the truth. At least they talk about Ron Paul, the only person who has any sort of chance of saving this country through an election. These other media organizations gloat about how Obama has done so much already and he needs ur help getting re-elected. Never said we had true capitalism, why you assume so much John? I’m just stating that these occupiers are claiming down with capitalism. If you don’t believe that thats just sad because the proof is all around you.

    “The occupiers are not about to occupy your freedom, they are about YOU occupying your freedom, and they will help you to do so, and hope that you will do the same to other people.” Where did you get that message from!? See, this occupy movement is soooo varied in description on a true goal that it has failed right when it started. No, sitting on the streets for weeks on end will not bring about new psychedelic change.

    Nope, only going to Church, donating time and compassion in your community, getting a job, helping others and propagating a message of love is the only way. I am in agreement that Obama should’ve been impeached and there is far too much coruption in government but this occupy movement is being used by the obama administration for a very negative purpose. Regardless if you think its a positive movement it is being used for a very negative goal. So anyone who supports this is a mere puppet.

    Dear Lorenzo,
    Just because your ego is feverishly rampant, don’t let that get in the way of your judgement of the truth. The truth does not require you to believe in it.

16. In response to all the so-called “capitalists” who are giving Lorenzo grief about supporting OWS: I also go to work every day and live an honest life. I work my butt off, just like you. But I am not against OWS, even if they are misguided in some ways. They are like the Tea Party (yep, I said it) because they also sense something wrong, even if they come at it from a different angle. The fact of the matter is that they are both indications that there is something very foul and insidious going on in America today, something that has been growing like a cancer for the past 30 years.

    If you think we have a true capitalism or a true democracy then you are deluded and brainwashed. What we have is a unique brand of “bottom-up” fascism with lip service to democracy – and ANY movement which challenges that status quo, be it from the left or the right, deserves some attention. The alternative is to continue to live in a society where people like Jon Corzine can steal $1.3 BILLION and get away with it because he is friends with the Obama administration.

    All this rhetoric about “Marxism” is a red herring. Anyone with half a brain knows that Marxism is a joke and that the Soviet Union was little more than a straw man for the west while our governments poured money into the arms industry and revoked our constitutional rights. So stop watching Fox News and take the time to educate yourselves. The real threat isn’t a big socialist government; the real threat is a big government controlled by one or two big corporations.

17. Also, like to get this message out to all the people who listen to the salon, you can find all of terence mckenna’s talks along with a lot of tim leary’s stuff from http://www.archive.org or there are many torrents being passed along with huge archives of terence mckennas talks. over 8 gb total I believe of solid audio goodness. Just do a google search you’ll find it.

    [COMMENT BY LORENZO:] Here is the complete URL to this material: http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=psychedelia
    And this is what it says about this collection:
    “Three organizations are joining forces on this new collection called Psychedelia: The Psychedelic Salon Podcast, the Timothy Leary Archives and the Terence McKenna Project. These three working groups have teamed up to create a superb public and permanent archive of audio (and some video) resources surrounding the Psychedelic experience and thinking that has and continues to shape the mind state of Humanity…
    Keywords: psychedelia”

    Unfortunately for Cosymetry, he still can’t completely avoid the salon there.

18. Yea i went to one in NYC and saw nothing but anti semetic anti-capitalists who want hand outs who swear, yell and insult anyone who has a differing opinion. Yea, thats exactly what Terence McKenna wanted. I don’t understand how occupy wall street falls into a psychedelic salon podcast either. These people are bringing disorder so a New World Order can be put in its place that rivals China. You know how much money we owe china? They’re gonna want their money some how and they’re going to come right over here and take it, with help of the government who has already passed laws that state they can arrest people under suspicion of terrorism and without ever getting any kind of trial. Also stating that american citizens are enemies in this new battleground be waged.

    REGARDLESS of the very few people you have put on the salon or that you have met that think this is a movement towards real positive revolutionary change the many of them who are vulgar individuals are showing the true colors of this movement.

    Listen to the song Revolution by the beatles.
    “We all want to change the world
    But when you talk about destruction
    Don’t you know that you can count me out
    Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right
    All right, all right”

    These occupiers want destruction and without a plan in its place, and I tell ya brother, you can count me out, and the many other people out there not wasting away on the streets propagating a message of hate and disorder are truely the 99%, these occupiers, THEY are the minority.

    [COMMENT BY LORENZO: I’m approving these spam comments because we need some more humor here. :-)]

19. Truth and Cosymetry, is money an end in itself? Can we not define our own work, and let the fruits of it be a contribution to a symbiosis with a greater community of persons that together make direct democratic decisions on every important issue that touches on the community as a whole, where no violent force can coerce anyone to get in line and be like any defined accepted norm, that rather is regulated by the constructive intention of human beings who give each other free time through voluntarily sustaining each other, teaching their children how to do the same in such a way that they feel free and spend their own time constructively doing whatever work they feel them selves to be meant to do? Must we make money, if we can make a sustainable living without it?

    I think those in the occupy movement who go on about taxing the rich, and getting corporations out of the government are right in their argument to the extent that we should continue to use the mainstream societal models we have today. But since the point rather is to change all that, by gathering together as a community and give each other the freedom to develop into creative participating people with a sustainable (WHICH MUST MEAN NON-CONSUMERIST*!) way of life, I don’t see how that money would have any value anymore. Rather the only good currency would be to be good, preferably indispensable symbionts, which to a capitalist mind might seem scary at first, “What?! They’ll just hate me from the start!”. But we are way more symbiotic to things and beings around us than we dare to think. Just loving someone who loves you is an extremely strong symbiosis that doesn’t require any other effort than to love, and that leads to a lot of free will constructive effort, as people who have love between them will happily wish to help sustain each other.

    *A non-consumerist way of life is, according to McKenna, as far as i can remember having heard him mention it (and I will post a reference as soon as i have one), necessary if we want to go through the singularity with our noses more or less above water… He speaks about the deforestation of the Amazon Basin, and the loss of plant knowledge it implicates which is what we need to preserve and learn from unless we are to “fumble the ball”, and this problematic clearly is related to that kind of capitalism where profit is an end in itself. He talks about the western way of life (of which consumerism, profit capitalism’s wildest child, is a fundamental part) as a fouling of our own nest, in terms of what we are doing to Gaia. This happens to be the kind of capitalism that has sought to rule peoples throughout history (because it needs to control the masses to secure its profit), and has had an enormous success rate since World War 2. It’s a capitalism that invented consumerism to sustain its ever growing profit rate (profit being the accumulation into few hands of a symbol value that originally was meant to be the voucher that confirmed you had worked a share and could receive from the community an equal share in return, if somebody fools you and gets your voucher for less effort and then cash it in to their own benefit, then you are working for them, and they can start buying people to control other people (policing) and you are now in no position to bargain, as you need food, and are prohibited to grow it for free, or at least efforts are made to make you dependent on where the money and the law come from, and not only on your own effort).

    The occupiers are not about to occupy your freedom, they are about YOU occupying your freedom, and they will help you to do so, and hope that you will do the same to other people.

    Have you spoken to occupiers who wish to bring on sharia law???? Occupy represents everything opposite of sharia law according to any broadcast of their multifaceted message that I am able to find. Do you really think these people have a hidden and evil agenda to subdue all rich people and consequently each other to a law that tells you just how you may dress, that you can’t shave, you can’t use modern technology, if your a girl and you’re raped then you’re a whore and should be stoned, and so on… Is this really the message you are picking up from this movement???? What version of FOX on steroids have you been watching???

    Truth and Cosymetry, have you no faith in empathy and symbiosis? Is a gifting economy such a ridiculous idea? And where do you get your fear of violence and coercion from, when the movement celebrates precisely nonviolence, personal freedom, and direct democracy?

20. I walk past occupy people on my way to work each day. It is true many of the winter hold-outs are young and naive. Many appear to be homeless or nearly there. There is a sense that they are the walking wounded. Whether their wounding resulted from the conditions they protest or their difficulties in making ends meet is correlated with an antecedent wounding, I don’t know–perhaps a bit of both. But the future is unwritten, and I would have these wounded souls participate in crafting the story of where we go from here. None of them I’ve spoken to are asking the government to give them money. They are certainly not being “funded” in any significant way. They are asking to be heard.

    I don’t know how someone can acknowledge the need for a so-called revolution and then find their primary annoyance in the fact the revolutionaries are inconveniencing the status quo. And if you’re conflating Marxism with fascism, you simply have no understanding of the history which those terms signify. Any marshal law scenario that may emerge will not be caused by Occupy; if anything, the occupy movement is a proverbial canary in the coal mine warning of such a possibility.

    I think of the Occupy movement as not political or necessarily even a movement, per se. I see it as a social phenomenon, one that bears deep witnessing. Whether it will fizzle out or get co-opted remains to be seen. But as long as a prevailing uncertainty remains central to this phenomenon, it still has a chance of remaining organic and authentic, in spite of any potential unsavory chaos it contains. Once it is defined politically, it will become effectively managed, like all dissent.

    I’m glad you’re sharing your perspective Lorenzo. I like the emerging coherence you are sketching between the occupy phenomenon and the psychedelic perspective. But I wouldn’t mind a little McKenna now and again to lift the spirits.

    [COMMENT BY LORENZO: As a matter of fact, I just previewed a McKenna talk that I’ll be podcasting in the next few days :-).]

21. you can delete my message Lorenzo but you can’t stop the truth, quit poisoning this community we have here with these lies.

22. Yea, considering i also below to the jewish faith seeing Nazi signs and this kinda stuff:

    no, this is not the 99% the 99% are out there in the world working, feeding their kids, going to church, volunteering, donating clothes, food, and kindness.

    Nothing Good Will Come Out Of Occupy Wall Street.
    If you’re looking for eternal bliss that was one of Terence McKenna’s dream, being enslaved to a marxist, faschist government is NOT what the people of America want.

23. No, this occupy wall street movement is falwed and it sickens me to know that the great bard mckenna’s talks lie in the hands of someone who is for this Occupy movement which is an anti-capitalist movement. Sure we need revolution and change but hordes of 20 year olds shouting the most disgusting things to cops and people trying to get to their jobs. Then these people at these occupy rallies are telling the government to give them money? Rich people’s money? I earned every cent of my money and i’ll be damned if i’mma sit back and give any of you greedy do for nothings. No Terence McKenna would’ve never said going to the streets, pitching tents, yelling at other people in the name of sacralizing the planet.

    Really.

    No, what you occupiers should do is first go home, get a job, make some money, do something with your life. Sure these bankers or politicians need to be arrested if they commit crimes but come on! They are accomplishing nothing and especially when a good half of them are sent by their unions and even They dont know whats going on or why they are there. This movement will not get anymore, if anything it will cause disorder and that will make some kinda massacre then giving the government a chance to call for martial law.

    Also did you know the people that are funding these occupy movements have ties to the Obama Administration? You are puppets, mere puppets and its time for you to wake up, and you Lorenzo to get your facts together on truely what this movement is being used for, and that is to bring on a new world order, one with sharia law. Please, this angers me every second that even you Lorenzo have fallen prey to their scemes, but what bothers me even more is that you are giving these ideas to the psychedelic community before realizing the true ramifications of this here event.

    Again, occupy wall street = anti-capitalism
    So either u dont know how to make money so you want to do nothing have your money given to you by the government then why not go move to China? Really, wake up, for the planet’s sake if not at least for your species.

24. That’s a perfect combo, two great tastes that taste great together! So much of The Bard’s great anti-status quo rants resonate as the great progenitor war cries of what ows is manifesting.

    We just heard the Hakim Bey podcast, fantastic! Really inspirational and expansive.

    Thanks again!

    Olga

25. Hey Lorenzo!

    Awesome work with all that fantastic ows content . KMO and I are driving to TN and we just listened to #294 and wow had to let you know how well-timed the message and all the messengers are. KMO has been reading Graeber’s book, Debt The First 5000 Years, to me and your content captured a wonderful moment in NY NPR radio (Brian Lehrer is the daily local politics and everything else 10am-noon radio) that I actually missed due to being out on the road, a-conferencing with KMO. So thank you (many times over;) for bringing us such thoughtful timely content.

    Keep on podcasting in the free world. We send you our love and admiration,

    Olga

    [COMMENT BY LORENZO: Thank you for that Olga. Your comment comes at a good time for me, because I’ve been receiving quite a few messages letting me know that many of our fellow saloners don’t want to hear about OWS. I guess they still don’t get it. But knowing that you and my dear friend KMO are on board with me is all I need to keep on keeping on … But just because I’ve been missing him myself, my next podcast is going to be another Terence McKenna talk, with a little OWS thrown in at the end, of course :-).]

26. The sounds you bring us of the Occupy Movement are thrilling. They have the ring of authenticity. At first I scoffed at you Lorenzo when you said you “just felt” that something deeper was going on here. Now? Now I gotta admit that I’m feeling it too.

    It is something ancient and powerful. It is popular uprising and it is good for our weary planet.

    I admire and support OWS>

27. Thanks Be to you Lorenzo! RIP Eric Hart.

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