Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Outside the box



According to today's New York Times, Stuart Brand "got his first look at the big picture" behind "100 mikes" of LSD in '66. (An Early Environmentalist, Embracing New ‘Heresies’)

Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced the double-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago.

Many of Carl Sagan's insights were gained while smoking marijuana.

Bill Hicks pointed out that the people who made the music that enhanced our lives for so many years were "reeeallll high on drugs."

So why does society demonize psychotropic substances when they obviously have been of such benefit? More importantly, what can be done to make people stop believing the government propaganda and realize that we can use drugs as tools for the good of mankind?

Terrence McKenna believed that those in the psychedelic community needed to be more active in promoting mind expansion as a way of evolving past the current dismal state of the world.

The Brand article is well worth a read. I never stopped to think before about his profound influence on modern American culture. My favorite line from the article is:

"In 1973 I thought the energy crisis was so intolerable that we’d have police on the streets by Christmas. The times I’ve been wrong is when I assume there’s a brittleness in a complex system that turns out to be way more resilient than I thought.”

It's heartening to realize that this system IS more resilient than we thought. We're not going to solve the myriad of problems without innovative thinking though. And that's what psychoactive drugs are good for.

2 Comments:

Blogger nolocontendere said...

In college long ago I had the most profound moments, the greatest insights and revelations and the most life altering experiences of my earthly existence - in my dorm room. All the rest was worthless in comparison.

2:06 AM  
Blogger Myst0nia said...

My challenge is how to transform those insights and revelations into actions that will bring about positive change.

11:46 PM  

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