Can a mod change his name to the correct one, oopps.
Thanking you kindly, Webman!
Albert Hoffman takes his last trip
102! fuck that would have been terrible, tolive that long under the shadow of hallucina... hall...
fuck do you spell that word?
anyway, fuck mushrooms, acid, peyote and so forth, and fuck hoffman - unless i'm much mistaken he sold the Weathermen out after they broke him out of jail.
The real father is the cool scientist guy who also invented about 90 drugs, and i think he's still alive. Someone else knows who i'm talking about. That one who was actually using funding from the FBI to create new drugs.
yep, shulgin is the man
fuck yeah, shulgin.
Tacks wrote:
102! fuck that would have been terrible, tolive that long under the shadow of hallucina... hall...fuck do you spell that word?
anyway, fuck mushrooms, acid, peyote and so forth, and fuck hoffman - unless i'm much mistaken he sold the Weathermen out after they broke him out of jail.
.
That was Tim Leary. At the time:
Quote:
His former colleagues in the movement form a group calling itself People Investigating Leary's Lies (PILL). Abbie Hoffmann declares that "Timothy Leary is a name worse than Benedict Arnold." Allen Ginsburg says that Leary is "like Zabbath Zvi, false Messiah, accepted by millions of Jews centuries ago."
Later:
Quote:
The Weather Underground, the radical left organization responsible for his escape, was not impacted by his testimony. Histories written about the Weather Underground usually mention the Leary chapter in terms of the escape for which they proudly took credit. Leary sent information to the Weather Underground through a sympathetic prisoner that he was considering making a deal with the FBI and waited for their approval. The return message was "we understand."
Hofmann always maintained that LSD was an important tool for investigating human consciousness, but as "acid" it became a popular street drug and was criminalised by the US Congress in 1966 because of its allegedly harmful effects. Other countries followed suit. To the end of his life, Hofmann worked for its rehabilitation, arguing that it had the ability to advance the human spiritual condition. "I produced the substance as a medicine," he once said. "It's not my fault if people abused it."
From the Guardian obit.
I think Hoffman was basically right about this. A material like LSD is potentially a tool for investigating human consciousness (and, by the same token, the human unconscious). But as with other 'mind expanding' substances, the issue is not at root the substance in itself but the social relations within which it is produced and consumed. Our society will make sure that it is abused, whether as a tool for military brainwashing (the CIA was extremely interested in LSD right from the start and began conducting various horrible experiments with it), as the snake oil of new false messiahs (the Leary business), as a mass social anaesthetic or simply as a very profitable commodity.
through what Trotsky calls 'rigorous psycho-physical training' (Literature and Revolution) in a framework of collective investigation....Maybe they won't need chemical enhancers after a certain point, but I have no doubt that the exploration of the unconscious psyche will be a key component of human activity in communism.
If you consider the way that mind-altering substances are used in primitive communist societies, you can get a glimpse of how they might be approached in an advanced communist society, not as mere 'recreation' but as part of a real communal celebration. Obviously the mythological projections associated with such experiences would be seen symbolically and not as forces that rule our lives. And the element of 'scientific' investigation of our inner space would be more to the fore, though not entirely divorced from the celebratory aspect.
Of course this is just my personal view.
I'm not convinced that halucinogens necessarily offer a route into the human consciousness. I'm not a bio-chemist, but I'd see it more as an investigation of the chemically induced malfunctioning of human consciousness. While that may be of interest to some investigators I'm far from convinced that it has much to offer in terms of "psycho-physical training". There are all sorts of techniques from various religions and schools of psychology that could be explored in such an endeavor which can be argued as a more natural approach as they rely on internal mechanisms (both physical and psychic) for their effect.
The other problem with this idea is where do you draw the line? If we're talking about exploring the frontiers of human consciousness, that's all very well but I just can't help thinking this is a justification for people wanting to get stoned. Am I exploring the frontiers of human consciousness when I have a few beers and dancing to Gallows on a Friday night? What about Amy Winehouse smoking crack? I realise that these all take place in the alienated environs of bourgeois society but I'm not entirely sure I see crack smoking as a positive acquisition for humanity in a historical sense. You could probably make the same argument about beer, Gallows and the Foo Fighters, of course 
For me, the real liberation of humanity will come when we are no longer dependent on substances to create pleasurable states of consciousness for us but will be fully satisfied in the "everyday" consciousness we have. This doesn't preclude a profound alteration of that "everyday" consciousness of course, but I doubt it will be the same experience as an acid trip. Children don't generally need chemical help before starting to enjoy something - they just enjoy it and the recovery of that elemental state of play for all humanity will be an important acquisition in communist society.
In many ways I agree - in the long run, there won't be a need to use 'external' chemicals because most of what's needed is already there in the first place; it's a question of accessing it.
I also agree that the child's capacity for pleasure is our 'model'. But recovering the child's capacity for pleasure 'at a higher level' implies a profound shift in consciousness, because it is increasingly removed from the adult human being through the mechanisms of repression. .
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I also agree that the child's capacity for pleasure is our 'model'. But recovering the child's capacity for pleasure 'at a higher level' implies a profound shift in consciousness, because it is increasingly removed from the adult human being through the mechanisms of repression. .
Of course. I'm just sceptical whether chemical use will have any value in helping us get there. I'm not even entirely sure about the ecstatic states induced by certain religious practices. Part of the reason why we value these experiences is precisely because they are a substitute for child-play. Certainly, some religious experiences may be the product of the repression of this aspect of the psyche, although there's also some evidence that they are the result of a dysfunction in the spatial awareness areas in the brain. (I'm not sure if either of these explanations are mutually exclusive).
If religious experiences are the product of repression rather than a simple biochemical hiccup, then we may see them decline in frequency as communist society advances. Of course, this will be because we no longer need them.
Father of LSD Albert Hofmann dies at age of 102
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3845509.ece