I just found a transcript of a conversation between radio personality Art Bell and psychedelic afficianado Terence McKenna. Haven’t read the whole thing yet, but here’s a great passage:

AB: Would you care to comment on why the government has not yet assassinated you?

TM: Me? Well, maybe they’re hoping somebody will do the job for them. I don’t know, I think maybe the government tolerates a certain level of dissent almost as a fall-back position … in other words, you never quite throw away the small pox virus, just in case you might need it … I can imagine the culture crisis getting so crazy that the people at the top will have to turn to their cohorts and say, “Call in McKenna and his friends” …

You know, Robert Anton Wilson said a funny thing a few years ago … he said, “You should view the world as a conspiracy run by a very closely-knit group of nearly omnipotent people, and you should think of those people as yourself and your friends …” Otherwise, you have a loser’s scenario, and who wants to have a loser’s scenario?

AB: An enslaved scenario …

TM: Yes. So I believe in pronoia, which is the opposite of paranoia … I believe reality is a marvelous joke staged for my edification and amusement, and everybody is working very hard to make me happy

That Wilson quote is great too. Sometimes that guy really drops some gems. I also really like McKenna’s suggestion about why the government keeps him around. Hopefully all of us fall into this same category. I was thinking about this same thing the other day. Imagine somebody from some government agency did stumble across our little ring of websites. I mean, what the hell would one of these people actually think of it all? Have you ever met career government people? They’re strange. It seems like they’d need to bring in a consultant to even begin to understand some of the shit that we’re kicking back and forth.