{"id":50034,"date":"2019-12-09T09:36:30","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T14:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=50034"},"modified":"2019-12-09T09:36:34","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T14:36:34","slug":"the-cost-of-sanity-in-this-society-is-a-certain-level-of-alienation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=50034","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Cost Of Sanity, In This Society, Is A Certain Level Of Alienation\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/2019\/12\/09\/the-cost-of-sanity-in-this-society-is-a-certain-level-of-alienation\/\">\u201cThe Cost Of Sanity, In This Society, Is A Certain Level Of Alienation\u201d<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/medium-3.jpg?fit=1080%2C608&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The late psychonaut\/philosopher Terence McKenna once said \u201cThe cost of sanity, in this society, is a certain level of alienation,\u201d and I think my regular readers will immediately and experientially understand exactly what he was talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s not always easy to be on the outside of consensus reality. Our entire society, after all, has been built upon consensus\u2013upon a shared agreement about what specific mouth sounds mean, on what money is and how it works, on how we should all behave toward each other in public spaces, and on what normal human behavior in general looks like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We all share a learned agreement that we picked up from our culture in early childhood that it\u2019s normal and acceptable to stand around with your hands in your pockets and babble about the weather to anyone who gets too close to you, for example, whereas it would be considered weird and disruptive to stand around slathered in Cheese Whiz shrieking the word \u201cPoop!\u201d But we could just as easily reverse that consensus on behavioral norms tomorrow, and as long as we all agreed to it we could do it without missing a beat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In exactly the same way, there exists a general consensus about what\u2019s going on in our world at the moment. There\u2019s a general consensus that we live in the kind of society we were taught about in school: a free and democratic nation which maybe did some not so great things in the past, but is now a supremely virtuous beacon of light on this earth that kicked Hitler\u2019s ass and then surfed into the present day on a wave of truth and sensible fiscal policy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe Cost Of Sanity, In This Society, Is A Certain Level Of Alienation\u201d The late psychonaut\/philosopher Terence McKenna once said \u201cThe cost of sanity, in this society, is a certain level of alienation,\u201d and I think my regular readers will immediately and experientially understand exactly what he was talking about. It\u2019s not always easy to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[14481,17039,12316,28635,28636],"class_list":["post-50034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-alienation","tag-caitlin-johnstone","tag-consensus-reality","tag-sanity","tag-terence-mckenna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50034"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50035,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50034\/revisions\/50035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}