Get to the Cave

There are 37 ideas you want to chase down. But you only have time for 1, maybe 2.

The 1st idea doesn’t take off as quickly as you expect. So you move on to the next. Then the next. It’s been the same pattern for a few years now. Your friends and family worry.

So. You stop telling them your ideas. They won’t believe you’ll follow through anyways. They just smile. You don’t even believe you’ll follow through on this new idea.

You’re a god today. Tomorrow you question all existence.

But then. You’re fed up. You cut out the podcasts, blog posts, newsletters, videos, books, and courses. You hide away in the cave that is your office and you work, hustle, make calls, do favors, connect, build, create, experiment, fail quickly, release early, gain insight. Repeat.

You stop consuming and start producing. Get to the cave.

We have to create culture, don’t watch TV, don’t read magazines, don’t even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you’re worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you’re giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told ‘no’, we’re unimportant, we’re peripheral. ‘Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.’ And then you’re a player, you don’t want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world. — Terence McKenna