Walkaway
09-23-2003, 12:14 AM
Psychedelic populism as practiced by Leary, Kesey, and Ginsberg illuminated more souls than any other spiritual revolution in human history, whatever its faults may have been. I do not agree with those who would condemn them for throwing open the gates of the "mysteries" to all comers. What I find especially irksome about this posture (a feigned wisdom, vouchsafed by the benefit of four decades of hindsight and romantic 'what ifs?') is that most of those articulating it would never have had the opportunity to try psychedelic drugs were it not for the actions of such men. Given the presuppositions of Western culture, psychedelics were bound to be made illegal, regardless of the persons agitating for their use. The strain of thought represented by Leary, Kesey, and Ginsberg, among others, wanted to initiate as many people as possible into the psychedelic 'mysteries' prior to nuclear armageddon. (BTW, Ken Kesey told me that the supposed rift between himself and Tim Leary had been seriously exaggerated by Tom Wolfe). They did not know whether or not they had another 40 years. Beyond that, the fabled 'Huxley approach' was really a red herring, as, first, it wasn't Huxley's approach, and, second, it wouldn't have worked anyway. In a speech prior to his death, given in Copenhagen, Huxley advocated the idea that given the social conditions of the time, perhaps a wider social experiment with LSD was in order. Further, the 'Huxley approach' as usually constructed would have, if anything, resulted in greater hysteria in regard to psychedelic drugs. In the context of America, at the height of the Cold War, an announcement by an intrepid reporter that there was a conspiracy of intellectuals to turn on political and cultural leaders to mind-altering drugs in the hopes of converting them (via brainwashing) to a pacifistic worldview would have resulted in mass hysteria. Tim Leary made mistakes, but he was a human being who tried the best he knew how to articulate the illumination provided by psychedelics, and to seek social contexts where they could best be expressed. Contrary to the opinion expressed in your book, Tim Leary did provide several sets of insightful suggestions as to where to go once one had turned on, in the form of the seminal texts Exo-Psychology and The Game of Life. If you haven't read them, I recommend that you do. The Leary/Wilson 8-circuit model seems useful as a conceptual tool, and Leary made many other worthwhile contributions to psychological theory. He may not have been a psychedelic superhero, but he most certainly was not a villain.
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Namaste,
Cliff
[ September 23, 2003, 09:05 PM: Message edited by: Walkaway ]
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Namaste,
Cliff
[ September 23, 2003, 09:05 PM: Message edited by: Walkaway ]