At still higher doses psilocybin triggers this activity in the language-forming capacity of the brain that manifests as song and vision. Psilocybin may have synergized the emergence of higher forms of psychic organization out of primitive protohuman animals. It can be seen as a kind of evolutionary enzyme, or evolutionary catalyst.

In our own time, through integrative sciences like ecology and animal behavior and psychology we have re-understood what was forgotten during the reduction centuries of modern science. We've re-understood that the world is one thing, and it's a living thing. It's a thing with an intent and a spirit within it, and this is the key concept.

Safety is really a concern of mine, and what I've been telling people recently is that until there's animal and human data on a drug it should probably be looked at very carefully.

No culture on earth is as heavily narcotized as the industrial West in terms of being inured to the consequences of maladaptive behavior. We pursue a business-as-usual attitude in a surreal atmosphere of mounting crises and irreconcilable contradictions.

We do not birth our children into the world of nature. We birth our children into the world of culture.

Culture is more and more consciously becoming a project carried out in the domain of language by, for instance, propaganda both governmental and commercial.

The culture cannot evolve faster than the language. The language is the flashlight that shows the path.

Ideologies are cultural memes. They are the most confining of the cultural memes. That's where culture gets real ugly. It is when you rub up against its ideologies.

Because the planetary culture is becoming ever more closely knitted together all its parts are becoming co-dependent.

Culture is the greatest barrier to your enlightenment, your education, and your decency.

So the conclusion that I reach, visa vie the individual and civilization, is this: Culture is not our friend. Culture is not your friend. It's not my friend. It's a very uncomfortable set of accommodations that have been hammered out over time for the convenience of institutions.

Culture as we're practicing it is causing a lot of pain.

Our culture takes us out of the body and sells our loyalty into political systems, into religions, into inanimate objects and machines, collections, so forth and so on. The felt experience of the body is what the psychedelics are handing back to us.

Psychedelic experiences are beyond the reach of cultural manipulation, and discovering this and exploring it is somehow the frontier of maturity. Culture is a form of enforced infantilism. It's the last nursery, and most people never leave it.

Culture is another dimension.

Culture is your operating system.

Culture is a plot against the expansion of consciousness.

Ego is a structure that is erected by a neurotic individual who is a member of a neurotic culture against the facts of the matter. And culture, which we put on like an overcoat, is the collectivized consensus about what sort of neurotic behaviors are acceptable.

If we really wish to put an end to our ongoing international and social problems we must eventually declare Earth and all of its resources as the common heritage of all the world's people.

The system you're brought up under tries to make you like the people that succeeded in that system.

Very few people can communicate with one another. The only language that's not subject to interpretation is mathematics, chemistry, basic science, engineering principles, and applied agriculture. But other than that, many systems today are subject to interpretation.

Democracy is a con game. It’s a word invented to placate people to make them accept a given institution. All institutions sing, ‘We are free.’ The minute you hear ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, watch out… because in a truly free nation, no one has to tell you you’re free.

Crime is based upon need, making money. People sell drugs to make money. But if everybody is cared for, they don't sell drugs and if there's no money you can't sell drugs even if you wanted to. There'd be no such thing as gambling, prostitution, or selling out, or paying off a senator or a governor. There are no senators, there are no governors so you can't pay them off. If you take away the basis or the condition that generate abhorrent behavior, you don't have abhorrent behavior.

If you make people uniform, you can control them. If you teach people to read, and think, and question things, you lose control. So, the best idea is to separate people if you wish to maintain a monetary system. It's called divide and conquer. By dividing people, they're not a threat, you can control them.

People will continue to search for answers to universal and perplexing problems. But to find meaningful answers, one must first know what questions to ask.

Don't forget - you're dealing with aberrated people. They're not responsible for their answers. They're victims of culture. That means they have been influenced by their culture.

Our times demand the declaration of the world's resources as the common heritage of all people.

All the world's people should share all the world's resources.

You can either have one guy lifting a billion pounds by himself, and it takes many years of planning and preparation - or you can have a billion people, each lifting one pound, and it takes a mere moment. This is the power of unity.

There are no good or bad people, humans are shaped by culture.

There are no bad people, there are people with insufficient information to make appropriate decisions.

We don't want to hurt anybody, kill anybody, build any prisons, or build police. We want to make it unnecessary for people to steal - so they'll have access to medical care, health care, decent housing, all people, all over the world. As long as you don't share your resources, you are going to have trouble

Once you accept the fact that people have 'individual choices' and they're 'free' to make those choices. Free to make choices means without being influenced and I can't understand that at all. All of us are influenced in all our choices by the culture we live in, by our parents, and by the values that dominate. So, we're influenced. So there can't be free choices.

You can teach people specific reasoning, such as how to fly a kite or build a wheel. General reasoning cannot be imparted upon people, particularly if they like things the way they are - meaning, if their reactions are very simple. The reason most people behave badly or poorly is because they only understand simple things.

Living through the 1929 Great Depression helped shape my social conscience. During this time, I realized the earth was still the same place, manufacturing plants were still intact, and resources were still there, but people didn’t have money to buy the products. I felt the rules of the game we play by were outmoded and damaging. This began a life-long quest resulting in the conclusions and designs presented in The Venus Project.

You cannot advocate decency and ethics, you must design the conditions that eliminate the problems. In scarcity, people will tend to steal. If you make things available, people tend not to steal.

It's hard to be decent in a money world. We want to shut down all repetitious jobs, automate it, free people.

If there's a group like Amish people, that want to live their own lifestyle – they don't want to live in our city – they want to live out in the country, with their own projects. We’ll put up the buildings for them, design the buildings for them, design the food production systems for them – if they want us to. But we don’t control them.

Armies are created to protect an established system, not people. In the future, an educated humanity will not stand for war.

A Resource-Based Economy is in the application of the methods of science with human concern and environmental concern. If we used the scientific method throughout the world, the probability of war drops to zero. The probability of human suffering disappears. Deprivation, poverty, crime - all those things tend to disappear because there's no basis. I'm strictly concerned with the environment that people are raised in and if that environment is altered, so will behaviors be altered.

Architects are mostly self-centered and their buildings express their ego. [They are] not social buildings to make it more comfortable for people - to make life better for people. The cities have to be designed so people can get together and talk with one another.

In a monetary system, most of us live near our work with a house, car, and lifestyle we can afford (or, all too often, cannot afford), rather than the one we prefer. We are only as free as our purchasing power permits. Even many wealthy people today select a residence mainly to impress others with their status. Lacking a true sense of self worth, many live to impress others.

You can't exceed the system with language. You can only exceed the system with events; recommended procedures that are better. You can't exceed the system by telling people to be good, be kind, be considerate... You have to take away the conditions that makes it necessary for you to be kind. And to be kind, you design highways that aren't slippery; where no accidents, or less accidents, occur. In the future, everybody becomes an innovator - a creator.

It's hard in a monetary system to trust people.

Only when science and technology are used with human concern in a world in which all of the earth's resources are held as the common heritage of all of the earth's people can we truly say that there is intelligent life on Earth.

Money is only important in a society when certain resources for survival must be rationed and the people accept money as an exchange medium for the scarce resources. Money is a social convention, an agreement if you will. It is neither a natural resource nor does it represent one. It is not necessary for survival unless we have been conditioned to accept it as such.

Truly free people do not need to be told they are free.

You know that you can't go out there and change the world tomorrow morning. It just takes time, and the realization of that does not produce frustration. What produces frustration, is when you expect the world to join with your cause it's so reasonable. It is not reasonable to unreasonable people.

War is not the only form of violence imposed on people through inadequate social arrangements. There is also hunger, poverty and scarcity. The use of money and the creation of debt fosters economic insecurity, which perpetuates crime, lawlessness and resentment. Paper proclamations and treaties do not alter the facts of scarcity and insecurity, and nationalism tends only to propagate the separation of nations and the world's people.

If nations join together now, before the big collapse and share their resources, they can maintain a level of sustainability. Sustain the people that is, and not banks and businesses.