They tell me, you have to lighten up.
You have to admit that as long as you live,
most things will go pretty much like they are now.
All you can realistically hope for is to gradually change a few things a little bit.
You can be proud of some small changes and then die.
If you try to change a lot quickly, well,
society will define you as an enemy,
and that's how you will be treated.
That's no fun. You get hated and crushed and die quick.
If you want a long and happy life, come up with some compromises
that leave most things alone.
 

That's when I tell my friends, I appreciate your concern for my well-being.
I understand your analysis about society and its radicals.
But I have some scientific training. I am schooled for objectivity.
What is happening now is unique, unprecedented, incomparable.
This society is the renegade.
Our civilization left to itself threatens life on this planet.
That's not a guess, buddy, that is the math.
There's no political bias there.
Washington is pulling the world straight to doom.
 

For the first time in the history of ethics, we can have a totally objective criterion of evil.
It's distressing that just about everything that's going on around us qualifies.
I don't try to fool myself. I know something about probability.
The chances of drastically changing the entire basis of society,
well the calculations don't look too good right now.
But when I do the math, it's damn well worth a shot.
 

See, small changes, reforms in this and that,
it's not worth a spit in a hurricane
if everybody dies anyway.
I keep saying that's today's prophesy:
the most important thing about the future is that it doesn't exist.
 

To live we will have to trash history, pretty much destroy all institutions.
I don't say that's a political conclusion, I say that's just a raw fact.
My political opinions are precisely the same as they were thirty years ago
precisely the same as the mainstream of the hippies.
A million people will swear that I voice our consensus.
Our spiritual strength hasn't changed.
The only thing that has changed is the logical force of our assertions.
Now we can prove every word we said.
The only way humanity can continue to exist is to dismantle the current society.
That's the message.
 

The odds are not very good, friends and lovers.
For a population to throw away their entire social structure
to build a new one from scratch
is an extremely risky course of action.
It is a very unlikely course of action.
It's just the only bet we have.
The probability that this familiar civilization will exist another century is zero.
If we can't trade it in soon we're done for.
 

We have no right to take all the animals
and all the plants
and all the microbes with us in our suicide.
They never joined in the evil of our society.
This is why I am a revolutionary.
 

Nihilism is a rejection of everything.
Our society is a unitary structure.
I cannot select parts of it I want to live with,
and other parts to dispose of.
I can pick any part to analyse and critique,
to say exactly what is wrong with applying that part to human lives.
Then I can show how that part is hooked in to all the rest,
how it cannot be taken away from the totality.
The key to understanding is
that no bit of it is worth universal extinction,
and the totality of it is not worth life.
 

Know that there are too many people,
and they are all doing the wrong things.
Then the realization is forced that this society is evil,
and another hippie has been born.
Sheer logic requires nihilism at this time.
What is to be done? That is the famous question of the nihilists.
 

We must venture on our low-probability path, the only possibility to avoid extinction.
We must assume that one day soon we will gain access
to the mainstream channels of communication,
from which we have been barred for decades.
We know the words which work magic in the mind,
and in a few words we can raise consciousness
to make people realize this revolution makes history obsolete.
In moments we can free people from their spell of artificial hysteria,
soothing terror, assuaging fear of violence.
In a day we could make forty million hippies with words alone.
Then the institutions would crack and crumble
when they could no longer force subservience.
The revolution is a communications function,
and consists of the presentation of facts and ideas.
That's where it's at.
 

I'm a realist on military matters; I know people will get hurt.
Groups will lash themselves into a frenzy of fury with their preconceptions and prejudices.
But the revolution isn't made of force, the revolution is made of thought.
Our technique is the use of amazing efficiency in getting our ideas across,
enabled by our psychedelic training.
People who want to form redneck reactionary elements
won't be able to fight us after they understand us.
The better we do our job, the less blood will be splashed around.