"The author though has little time for the pundits of popular psychedelic culture such as Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) and Timothy Leary." Without us scofflaws, rebels, resisters, underground dealers and manufacturers, who would even know about the psychedelic revolution? Wd there even be a "psychedelic renaissance"? And why wouldn't those with declared or undeclared more-than-introductory experience with psychedelics be the ones best suited to promote, describe and research their use? "The tangled history of psychedelics" need not have been so tangled if the post-WW2 history of the West were not yet more severely tangled.
A key to understanding the "drug effects" of these "drugs" is seeing that there are none, as such. All the effects are the quite natural effects of being a mysterious being in an even more mysterious kosmos, and experiencing a slight prod to see this reality.
I really wanted to like this book, which is at the intersection of various fields I'm passionate about, and it does contain a bunch of fascinating historical information, but I must agree with the Bateson Inst. and other commentators that the author draws some slightly tenuous connections in support of the book's core thesis, overstating some aspects of Bateson's and Mead's lives and carefully eliding others while also occasionally painting slippery slopes that lead from speculation to innuendo to assumed fact. The caricatures he paints of people like Leary - a complex and of course controversial figure, but far more than the lecherous sociopathic grifter he's cast as here - are especially disappointing.
"The author though has little time for the pundits of popular psychedelic culture such as Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) and Timothy Leary." Without us scofflaws, rebels, resisters, underground dealers and manufacturers, who would even know about the psychedelic revolution? Wd there even be a "psychedelic renaissance"? And why wouldn't those with declared or undeclared more-than-introductory experience with psychedelics be the ones best suited to promote, describe and research their use? "The tangled history of psychedelics" need not have been so tangled if the post-WW2 history of the West were not yet more severely tangled.
A key to understanding the "drug effects" of these "drugs" is seeing that there are none, as such. All the effects are the quite natural effects of being a mysterious being in an even more mysterious kosmos, and experiencing a slight prod to see this reality.
https://www.academia.edu/95408960/Psychedelic_Elephant_A_Critique_of_Psychedelic_Research
I really wanted to like this book, which is at the intersection of various fields I'm passionate about, and it does contain a bunch of fascinating historical information, but I must agree with the Bateson Inst. and other commentators that the author draws some slightly tenuous connections in support of the book's core thesis, overstating some aspects of Bateson's and Mead's lives and carefully eliding others while also occasionally painting slippery slopes that lead from speculation to innuendo to assumed fact. The caricatures he paints of people like Leary - a complex and of course controversial figure, but far more than the lecherous sociopathic grifter he's cast as here - are especially disappointing.