"John Hazard: We have 14 years until this event, measured on the calendar—and a really common, ordinary way to describe the times that we're living in is that they're very, very chaotic, filled with acts of unspeakable evil, um, and at the same time there's this sort buzz and thrust of optimism: everything from a guy like Peter Swartz talking about the long wave, the big booming economy, breakthroughs in educational levels and qualities of life but it's definitely a dynamic where you've got extremes of good and evil in that way. Would you talk a little bit about the relationship between that dynamic as we go forward and the novelty continues to climax?
Terence McKenna: Well, novelty is not necessarily good or nice. Novelty is complex, that's what it is. So I see, really, a concatenation of tendencies and forces here at the end. It's only going to get weirder. The level of contradiction is going to rise excruciatingly, even beyond the excruciating present levels of contradiction. (laughs) So, I think it's just going to get weirder and weirder, and weirder, and finally it's going to be so weird that people are going to have to talk about how weird it is. And at that point novelty theory can come out of the woods, ah, because eventually people are going to say, “What the hell is going on?” It's just too nuts, it's not enough to say it's nuts, you have to explain why it's so nuts. So, between now and 2012, the next 14 years, I look for: the invention of artificial life, the cloning of human beings, possible contact with extraterrestrials, possible human immortality, and at the same time, appalling acts of brutality, genocide, race baiting, homophobia, famine, starvation; because the systems which are in place to keep the world sane are utterly inadequate to the forces that have been unleashed. The collapse of the socialist world, the rise of the internet. These are changes so immense nobody could imagine them ever happening, and now that they have happened nobody even bothers to mention what a big deal it is. Ah, the fact that there is no such thing as the Soviet Union, people never talk about it anymore—but when I was a kid the notion that that would ever change was beyond conceiving. Ah, so the good news is, that as primates we are incredibly adaptable to change. Put us in the desert, we survive, put us the jungle, we survive, under Hitler we survive, under Nixon we survive. We can put up with about anything and it's a good thing because we are going to be tested to the limits. The breakdown of anything—and this is why the rightwing is so alarmed—because what they see going on is the breakdown of all tradition, all order, all sanctioned norms of behaviour. And they're quite right that it's happening, but they're quite wrong to conclude that it should be resisted or is somehow evil. The mushroom said to me once, it said: “This is what it's like when a species prepares to depart for the stars.” You don't depart for the stars under calm and orderly conditions; it's a fire in a madhouse, and that's what we have, the fire in the madhouse at the end of time. This is what it's like when a species prepares to move on to the next dimension. The entire destiny of all life on the planet is tied up in this; we are not acting for ourselves, or from ourselves; we happen to be the point species on a transformation that will affect every living organism on this planet at its conclusion." Source: Terence McKenna's Final Earthbound Interview.
