retired_chemist said:
Ahh, the torch of youth.
The 60s hippies thought the whole world would tune in, turn on, and drop out. It never happened. Instead they went on to become the most materialistic, self-serving, neo-conservative generation in the history of the world.
The psychedelic renaissance in the US in the early 80s was major compared to anything I can see going on today, and 25 years later, I see no real impact on society.
Check back with us in a couple of decades and let us know how the evolution/revolution is going.
I'm 20, so I guess I'm not old and I'm not young.
++ I'm not talking about dropping out, the whole problem with counter-culture is it's just another dialectic reinforcing binary power structures. The *good guys/bad guys* story over and over again. This isn't a story of defeating the enemy, but of making dreams happen and realizing our potentials, of finding new sensory experiences where few have been before.
### The year is 2007, it
is a new milieuX. Socially, environmentally, and psycho-spirito-cognitively, the decisions we make have real time consequences. Whether you're talking about exploring new psychoactives(which most certainly "change the way you think"), or talking about global warming.
A big difference I see between the '60s psychedelic experimentation and the recent resurgence of interest in RCs and the classical psychedelic deals explicitly with the time periods you're talking about. in the '60s everyone was talking about how the end of the was near: Fin de siècle attidue all over the place, wars, etc. Now, I think less people are getting high on psychedelics to escape and more to have fun. Very much in recognition that it's a new millennium. We're just starting to stand on our feet to look around and seek out experiences that are uniquely our own; while at the same time, we're confronted with the net force of the past and have to actually do shit about it. in order to survive we have to become more complex. I see psychedelics/RCs as a part of that process in a very real sense because they open you up to variations of sensory modalities and open up a line of questioning: how does the world seems and to what extent does what appears to be subject to being altered?
~I'm not trying to outline some ideological time line, but talk about my experiences with exploring RCs. Psychedelics catalyze personality development. Something about being Mind-manifesting and all. This is the reason why if you're un_mentally stable or prone to scizophrenia dropping acid probs isn't the best idea for you, while a relatively stable person can eat tons of LSD and not go crazy. Look at media today, have you seen those
ipod nano commercials? If you don't see the impact psychedelics are having, you aren't looking hard enough. Drugs are definitely influencing the arts/media/digital technology/the way we *perceive-interact with* the world. While it might not immediately obvious the effects psychedelics are having on cultures on large scales, it is happening.