I tend to agree more with forkbenders reasoning on Terence.
I have heard some things from Terence that were very rational and reasonable, and I am aware of some outrageous things from him too....but some of the things he was saying, I can't recall anyone else saying at the time.....give him credit for inspiring a lot of people to explore areas that were esoteric and mysterious. What's wrong with that?
Every area has its wackos and fanatics, those who take things a little too far.....so it's no different than anything else, in my eyes.......but be certain, no one ever discovered anything sitting at home.
Fork, you said:
" We need people like da Vinci, Ficino, Bach, Dante, Shakespeare. And after that we need people like Voltaire, Leibniz, Spinoza, Kant and another Hegel. Give us our goddamn Psychedelic Nietzsche, our Baudelaire."
These people are already here......they are everywhere.....but the sheer multitude of voices produces a crappy signal-to-noise level.....placing the burden of recognizing what 'is' and 'isn't' valuable on the average person, and this is where the problem is.
Who to follow?
Who to listen to?
Who to believe?
Those figures you named, all were instrumental in us understanding certain aspects of the human condition and psyche, they were like candles in a darkened room, helping us understand ourselves and our potentials....
But what is needed now, is better light than candles. We need to know WHERE TO GO with what we know about ourselves, how to perpetuate a really 'good' lifestyle....
How do we break our appetite for manipulating each other endlessly?
How do you have a society based on mutual respect and peace?
How do you eliminate government?
Now, I'm sure if anyone is still reading this they are wondering what the fuck it has to do with Uncle Terence.....well, he talked about all of these things, and more, if one paid enough attention, and he had a dislike for the government, which for sure means he had some sense.
Sure he said some crazy shit, we all do......
I'd still rather read what he wrote than 99% of the shit I see on the internet.