RE: The Economist 1988's Front Cover Foretelling a World Currency in 2018 - Is This True?

[heroic15397]

Very interesting quote.

What do you think about the following one? Do you think it's possible Terence McKenna may have been recruited by the authorities in exchange for them turning a blind eye regarding his hash smuggling operation?

Questioner: I’m real curious about one thing. Why is it important for you to do this?

Terence McKenna: I wonder myself. You mean am I the alien ambassador whether I like it or not? [laughs]. Well, often when asked this question, I've said it beats honest work. I mean, my brother is a PhD in three subjects and works in hard science and yet I don't think it's brought him immense happiness. Not that he's despondent. But I was always kind of a slider. You know?
And certainly when I reached La Chorerra in 1971 I had a price on my head by the FBI, I was running out of money, I was at the end of my rope. And then they recruited me and said, "you know, with a mouth like yours there's a place for you in our organization". And I've worked in deep background positions about which the less said the better. And then about 15 years ago they shifted me into public relations and I've been there to the present.
I think ideas get me high. And I like the feeling of understanding and I love diversity to the point of...

Comments

[anonimnotoriu]

He's talking about they as in the "aliens". ☺ Too many buzzwords in the video before the actual audio: "obviously", "clearly", "100%", " etc. He always joked about this. He said that in the '70 was broke and running from the police and then he discovered magic mushrooms and it gave him purpose and meaning. He started giving presentations, writting books and spreading the ideas he developed/received by using mushrooms. ☺

Think about this for a moment. Let's say Terence was recruted by whatevet agency. What was the point? To popularize the use of psychedelics to the general public? Because that's what he did. To promote illegal activities? Because that's what he did. To speak against war mongering assholes and control freak politicians and authorities? Because that's what he did. Terence had a very anarchic message. Also, the people that tried psychedelics know how the pyschedelic experience is freeing the mind from all the bullshit that these agencies and authorities fill us with.

Conspiracy minded people are so silly when it comes to certain topics. They fail to understand the use of methaphors and humour in this case. And sometimes they're just dumb.

The CIA and the army studied how they can use psychedelics for their own purposes but they stopped when they saw the results varied wildly from person to person. They couldn't control the outcome. Control freaks don't care about things they can't control the outcome of.

People who keep talking about MK-ULTRA and mind control through the use of psychedelics either they're bullshiting or they haven't tried psychedelics. It's impossible to control the psychedelic experience. Or so I've heard. ☺

If someone wants to talk about mind control through spreading lies/misinformation/propaganda using electronic mediums then yeah, I'm all for that. You know, misinformation like for example, conspiracy theories. ☺

[heroic15397]

To popularize the use of psychedelics to the general public? Because that's what he did. To promote illegal activities? Because that's what he did.

Yes, that's about the argument of Jan Irvin. That the counterculture was encouraged and propagated to a certain point by such an entity as the CIA for the purpose of debasing the values of society. He would call ideas such as the one being put forth in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross by John Allegro as weaponized anthropology. It's well known that the CIA has been involved in drug smuggling, in mind control experiments, and in the entertainment industry. So I don't see why thinking Mckenna getting off scot-free after being caught doing something illegal, while supposedly being a threat to the authorities, and then making ambiguous jokes about him being recruited by ''they'' (note that FBI is something like seven sentences closer to ''they'' than the word alien) could only mean that ''conspiracy-minded people'' are silly/dumb, for that the misinterpretation would solely fall on them. In this case, I think the responsibility​ of discombobulation rather falls on McKenna.

B.t.w., I forgot to mention that I don't​ think McKenna's ideas about the concept of a ''mother of all conspiracies'' (that's what it is because whether​ people like it or not conspiracies do exist) and the possibility of him having been entangled in some intelligence​ apparatus aren't mutually exclusive. Both make sense to me. :-)

[heroic15397]

I hadn't seen your three last paragraphs when I started answering you.

A predictable hyper-suggestibility outcome out of the use of a particular psychotomimetic substance supposedly does exist with the consumption of scopolamine:

The effects of scopolamine were studied for use as a truth serum in interrogations in the early 20th century, but because of the side effects, investigations were dropped. In 2009, it was proven that Czechoslovak communist state security secret police used scopolamine at least three times to obtain confessions from alleged antistate conspirators.

This is how I first heard about it:

World's Scariest Drug (Documentary Exclusive)

VICE's Ryan Duffy went to Colombia to check out a strange and powerful drug called Scopolamine, also known as "The Devil's Breath." It's a substance so intense that it renders a person incapable of exercising free will. The first few days in the country were a harrowing montage of freaked-out dealers and unimaginable horror stories about Scopolamine. After meeting only a few people with firsthand experience, the story took a far darker turn than we ever could have imagined.

I think psychedelics are like ''conspiracy theories'', you can't put them into a single block as all being the same without the risk of creating a straw man argument. So yes, I agree with some conspiracy theories probably being used as a disinformation tool to spread cognitive dissonance, and with some others fitting in the urban legend category, while the rest must be falling in line with the where there's smoke, there's fire idiom.

[anonimnotoriu]

Scopolamine is not a psychedelic. It's a deliriant if used in high amount doses. Not the same thing.

[heroic15397]

Fair enough. According to Wikipedia:

Hyoscine is in the antimuscarinic family of medications...

Found on the CIA's website:

Because of a number of undesirable side effects, scopolamine was shortly disqualified as a "truth" drug. Among the most disabling of the side effects are hallucinations, disturbed perception, somnolence, and physiological phenomena such as headache, rapid heart, and blurred vision, which distract the subject from the central purpose of the interview. Furthermore, the physical action is long, far outlasting the psychological effects.

It can give hallucinations. As a psychoactive agent, it's in the same larger nomenclature of hallucinogen.

You're right, it is usually not classified as a psychedelic, nor as a dissociative, but rather as a deliriant:

Naturally occurring deliriants are found in plant species such as Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), various Brugmansia species (Angel's Trumpets), Datura stramonium (Jimson weed), Hyoscyamus niger (henbane), and Mandragora officinarum (mandrake) in the form of tropane alkaloids (notably atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine).

Maybe I should have used the word drugs instead of psychedelics in my last paragraph.

Again on Wikipedia, the full scope of the drugs used in Project MKUltra seems rather vague:

MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate people's mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, hypnosis,[citation needed] sensory deprivation, isolation and verbal abuse, as well as other forms of psychological torture.