Psychedemia: Integrating Psychedelics into Academia

The ironic thing about the widespread academic disdain for psychedelics is that some major advancements of knowledge have occurred through use of psychedelics. If psychedelics had not been used in formative years by many intelligent academically minded people, we might not have such wonderful things as personal computers, or a working knowledge of the helical structure of DNA.

Both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates admitted to taking LSD, and it being a seriously important piece of their lives and work. Jobs apparently stated that taking LSD was "one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life."

How many books considered philosophical or literary classics were written by authors high on amphetamines? Many.

How many music albums considered classics were written under the influence of psychedelics? Too many to count.

It's high time for academics to realize that certain psychedelics, such as LSD, can be used with great efficacy for analytical problem solving skills. Silicon valley has known this for decades.

Timothy Leary said that psychedelics were the best tools ever discovered for use in psychological therapy and research, and he was right.

I greatly look forward to the day when academics can be open about how psychedelics have influence their work, without being made a pariah in their field of study.

10 Scientific and Technological Visionaries Who Experimented With Drugs

http://io9.com/5876304/10-scientific-and-technological-visionaries-who-e...

Seems like some ‘theories’ and ‘ideas’ are built on factual errors of ‘special’ kind - they apparently enjoy ‘bullet-proof’ status’ – impervious to correction.

For ex: Sci Creationist ‘facts’ on fossils, evolution. Once entered into their record – those are errors what can’t be corrected. That’s not what they’re for. Any such attempt, correction gets mysteriously erased, and error re-copied/pasted back over.

These errors play and replay like a broken record, ready willing and able to skip and repeat -- as many times as it takes for the ‘point’ to sink in. No correction need apply; these errors aren’t the droids authentic inquiry and critical interest is looking for. Pay no attention to any facts behind some curtain, just mind the spectacle and be awed.

These ‘fun facts/theories’ demand ‘serious consideration,’ seek attention – yet I notice a curious duplicity in them. For even as they keep insisting, all they while they’re subtly resisting. Dogged determination; curious and mercurial. And I find, telling.

Seems a key critical distinction arises between ‘honest mistakes’ and another type, more ‘inspired’ - often driven by biblical origin, or Other. The very idea of correction is anathema to the latter, antithetical to a purpose. Under close question, their basic nature tests out as incorrigible, expressing oppositional defiance.  Under questioning, they either flee, or prove ‘hostile witness’ – Fight or Flight reaction takes place of reason and informed engagement.

Straange world. One who dares might think, any breathless conversionary mission would - from its own perspective if not anyone else’s – likely depend on some kind of validity, some modicum of truth value. It its basic foundation in fact is – not factual – what would that portend for its future, its fate? How secure can castles in the air or built on sand, set? Wouldn’t webs of deceit or disinfo inherently pose hazard? Wouldn’t ‘blowing bubbles,’ as a basic strategic approach - inherently jeopardize it on Risk of Bursting?

I reflect thus per a familiar and hokey piece of preposterous puffery I see invoked above.  A sample of promotional flimflam, like many to which psychedelia has become host (loyally, as Renfield to his Master); and the downward trend devolution in psychedelia: authenticity and integrity slaughtered on an altar of propaganda.

The canard: that LSD played a role (“possibly”?) in Crick’s historic determination of DNA’s structure.  That he took LSD, early 1950’s while working on that (no, really!). And thus (go the lyrics, verse-wise):

“If psychedelics had not been used .... we might not have ... knowledge of the helical structure of DNA.”  (Post above administers liturgy faithfully, that’s exactly the script - and its for sticking to, like fly paper).

And atop the ‘factual’ message about Crick DNA and LSD, big promotional moral, sermon from psychedelia is piled on (decoded easily enough) – about psychedelics, their effects, what they do (prepare for exuberant excitement): They make us smarter, enhance or boost our power of reason (“analytic ability”).

Its an onion-layered story, and ‘fact schmact.’ It displays clear pattern of purpose, one that transcends scruples of petty distinctions like true or false. Its modus requires the ‘fact’ it cites be ‘true’ (i.e. unquestioned) -- or promoted As If, regardless.  It has a job to do in a great casue, as ‘evidence,’ an example to tout – of tripper-proclaimed virtues of psychedelics.

The fervor of zealous conviction welling up is remarkable. We Must, We Must – get more people taking psychedelics. More often, higher doses etc, and – whatever else Terence McKenna said. Its the only hope for our species, “the only possibility of a way out ...”  By Any Means Necessary, whatever it takes.

Facts (real thing) can stand up on their own of course. As we know they don’t need to be ‘protected’ nor fear the reaper of inquiry.  But ‘facts’ of ‘Other’ type operate, as part of a two-way ‘pushme-pullyou’ device.

First, fatuously ‘support’ the moral or argument. Then, once loaded with its weight, the argument can return the favor. Its weight helps how down ‘funny fact’ - so its harder to get at, wind can’t blow it away.  Under weight of what's piled on, the 'supporting fact' becomes locked and loaded, disproof-proof.  With investment in it, a protected asset. With interest accruing now, neither its falsity nor greater propagandistic purpose – can or will be seated for discussion.

Every time I see this "Crick has LSD to thank (and so does the world)” bubble is re-blown, it just seems to get bigger. Article hyper-linked above inflates it to -- Crick told “numerous friends” of his LSD use “during time he spent working to determine the molecular structure ...: It was just one bloke back when this hymn was first caterwauled ©2004 (www.serendipity.li/dmt/crick_lsd.htm). To whit (in brief):

Party A (journalist) reports Party B (Kemp) told him: that close friend Party C (Harker) told him (Party B, not C), that Party D (Crick; just deceased) told him (Party C, not B ...) ..... etc.

A tangled web any brown recluse could only envy. Such a tissue of hearsay and gossip, wouldn’t even be admissible in court as testimony, a witness' 'version of events'; much less make the cut for evidence by any critical standard known to man (science, or you-name-it). ‘

But I digress – because evidential or info value ain't the horse its riding in on.  The story is for believing; its to be swallowed hook line and sinker. How else to get reeled in on it?

Any concept of wondering whether its true or not ... is forcibly expelled in a subculture that touts wide-eyed wonder, as if it were some virtue or wisdom, or knowledge or (?).  But one qualification -- wondering about anything one might reasonably, intelligently wonder about -- none of that.  That's not the ticket.

If the reporter said Kemp said Harker said Crick said ... how could that be questioned?  Obviously its certainly true!  (For 'discussion' purposes, being emphatic and obtuse helps foreclose possibility of question)

Think of the ramifications  Questioning it would mean - real inquiry about something specific, wanting to know, find out. That's taboo - violates hyperspace authority, Prime Directive: to ‘question everything’ – as told.

Meanwhile, checking Crick’s biographer (with appreciative creds to amazon dot com correspondent, Togaji):

From M. Ridley, FRANCIS CRICK: DISCOVERER OF THE GENETIC CODE:

“I am frequently asked for my opinion on the speculation that Francis Crick was on LSD when he discovered the double helix; or that he was involved with a man named Dick Kemp in the manufacture of LSD. These assertions were reported second hand in an article in the Mail on Sunday by Alun Rees following Crick’s death and they have since gained a certain amount of traction on the internet. Both stories are wrong.
The true story, which I was told directly by Crick’s widow and by the man who (as his widow confirms) first supplied the Cricks with LSD, is much less sensational. Crick was given (not sold) LSD on several occasions from 1967 onwards by Henry Todd, who met the Cricks through his girlfriend. Todd did know Kemp, with whom he was eventually prosecuted, but the Cricks did not. As for the implausible idea that the then impoverished and conventional Crick would have had access to LSD when it was newly invented in the early 1950s, there is simply no evidence for it at all.
Those who wish to argue that LSD helped Crick make discoveries should note that all his major breakthroughs in molecular biology were made before 1967.”