Terence Mckenna - Culture is your operating system
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited as the origin of the 'culture/philosophy as operating system' metaphor and as a quick introduction to McKenna's ideas.
What it is
A short edited excerpt of Terence McKenna arguing that culture acts as an operating system for the mind, set to imagery and music. It touches on psychedelics and how they change thinking.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2009 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec Alex3917 · 2009-09 · on “Apple brainwashing: How we do it”
If you are interested in learning more about them, this is pretty much the best podcast on the Internet: [LINK] And many of the talks on Pyschedelic Salon are also very good, especially the one by the Erowid founders which I submitted this morning, called The Role of Drug Geeks in Society, and also the talk by Dr. Andrew Weil. Also check out some of the talks by Terence McKenna, the man was pretty much a living god: [this video]
Recommends Alex3917 · 2011-06 · on “Research into hallucinogenic drugs begins to shake off decades of taboo”
"How does making you see things that aren't real challenge any hierarchies?" While LSD and psilocybin do sometimes cause people to hallucinate, this is only one small part of the psychedelic experience. The real value is in how the drugs change your thinking. It would take an entire book to explain this, but here are a few YouTube videos to give you the basic idea: [this video] [LINK] [LINK] It's difficult to explain how exactly they challenge hierarchies, but the 35,000 foot overview would be that psychedelics tend to make one more prosocial, whereas hierarchies tend to be fueled by antisocial behaviors. They also tend to give one self-confidence and internalize one's locus of control, whereas a
Recommends Alex3917 · 2012-10 · on “How to Use Philosophy as a Personal Operating System: From Seneca to Musashi”
If you want to know where the metaphor of philosophy as an operating system comes from: [this video] (The video is called Culture Is Your Operating System, but what he's talking about is the philosophical assumptions that are completely invisible unless you find a way to step outside your culture.)
Cites Alex3917 · 2010-04 · on “Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again”
1. Your operating system gets upgraded: [this video] 2. You lose your ability for self-deception, so when you come face to face with your problems you are forced to be completely honest about them. And once you're honest with yourself, it's very hard not to go through with changing your life for the better. 3. You get to diff your ordinary state of consciousness against your altered state of consciousness. This allows you to learn a ton about how your mind works, changes your theories about how lots of phenomena work, changes your assumptions about reality, etc. 4. If you take what Terence McKenna would call a 'heroic dosage', you might come up against 'the cosmic giggle'. That is, you come face
Cites wil2k · 2010-07 · on “How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer”
And as the late Terence McKenna put it: Culture is your Operating System [this video] Stuff to ponder about! :O
Cites labrador · 2023-01 · on “Geek Mythology: The Religious, and Spiritual Folklore Surrounding Programming”
Terry Davis and Temple OS. God communicated to him through the random number generator. This article is meant to be humorous, but I think it unintentionally hit on some important truths. Terry Davis Was Right Religion Is Computing, Computing Is Religion Terry’s big idea was that it is not possible to separate religion from computing. Since the beginning, every complex society has been based on a shared socio-cognitive operating system, a religion. Your religion says you must live a certain way. It tells you what is valuable and what is disgusting. It gives you your fundamental paradigm and ontology of belief through which you interpret the world. It tells you to read certain texts, listen to