I'm looking for a talk where Terence talks about ideas as a metaphor for fishing, where the goal is to catch middle sized ideas not small little fish | Terence McKenna | Uutter
I'm looking for a talk where Terence talks about ideas as a metaphor for fishing, where the goal is to catch middle sized ideas not small little fish
The metaphor of fishing for ideas, particularly middle-sized ideas, is a recurring theme in Terence McKenna's talks. He describes the psychedelic experience as an opportunity to "row out over dark water beyond the reef and let the nets down and hoping for an idea" 5. He emphasizes the importance of catching "middle sized ideas that are not so small that they're trivial and not so large that they're incomprehensible" because these are the ideas we can "wrestle into our boat and take back to the folks on shore" 13.
McKenna also warns against catching ideas that are too small, which he refers to as "minnows," or ideas that are trivial and pass through the net without substance 713. Conversely, he cautions that ideas that are too large can "rend your nets and you won't be able to wrestle it into the boat" 3. The goal, therefore, is to find ideas of an intermediate size that can be fully explored and understood, serving as "food" for the human community 914.