Create Your Own Culture
The deepest defiance is becoming unrecognizable to the world that made you.
The late philosopher and ethnobotanist Terence McKenna believed the greatest rebellion wasn’t protest — it was refusing to be predictable, profitable, or programmable.
He urged people to actively participate in creating culture rather than passively consuming it:
"We have to create culture. Don't watch TV, don't read magazines. Create your own roadshow."
McKenna's perspective encourages a grassroots approach to cultural evolution — a radical contrast to the top-down, technocratic visions associated with accelerationism and Dark Enlightenment philosophies.
These ideologies seek to engineer desire itself — to optimize, control, and dictate what we value, want, and believe.
Creating your own culture is to express your weird inner world through art, language, ritual, and other values that are genuinely your own.
It's a form of resistance and an exercise in letting go of false desire.
Authenticity isn’t something you achieve — it’s what remains when you let go of everything you’re not.
I think he was talking about sovereignty of mind.
Creating your own culture isn’t just aesthetic rebellion, it’s psychological deprogramming.
In a world optimizing us into algorithms, weirdness is a form of liberation.
Thanks for this reminder.
Yes. You had me at McKenna. I am actively exploring on my Substack the necessity of ritual in creative endeavors. It's a lot to contend with but worth the mental and emotional freedom it allows to create and experience things beyond my grasp to put down in words sometimes!