So, if YOU were around in the 60's...

Do you think you'd be one of Leary's cronies in the brotherhood of eternal love...OR would you be one of Kesey's "merry pranksters"? Which fits your personality type more?

I personally could see myself in some ways as both, but I would probably end up on the psychedelically colored bus travelling the country (merry pranksters)!

 

acid tests, freakin screamin orgies with hundreds of heads or being cooped up in a victorian style mansion with a bunch of quiet old-fashioned intellectuals meditating?

is that even a question? count me ON the bus

 

i would be with leary..

 

Kesey. Leary was a moron.

I argued with him at a tech seminar. Dude should have stuck to waffling on about drugs. He gave some rambling lecture about God knows what and tried to talk semiotics.

I discussed, at the interval, with him his errors in understanding McLuhan. He told me sharply "I used to drink with McLuhan." I said "yeah, but you never read his books" and quietly pointed to chapter and verse of where he was wrong. Pissy little tit. Got all hufty too cause the audience was full of old hippies wanting to talk about drugs whereas he was trying to sell his virtual reality company.

 

I WOULD BE WITH LEARY AS WELL.

Timothy Leary is one of the FEW I could call a personal "hero" of sorts.

Fuckin' waaaaayyyy ahead of his time.

However, Kesey is another one of my favorite people.

 

the whole brotherhood of love definitely suits me better.

 

I was there and involved with both. Ken was more my type me being a hippie/outlaw biker type at the time, but the common denominator we could all talk about was good smoke.

 

Sigh - Libertine, are we ALWAYS going to disagree?

 

It seems that way, doesn't it?

 

Leary...Im kind of more intellectual...and I can't take bigger doses without applicating his techniques ...

 

i think leary was on to something, even if he wasn't as great as people made him out to be. but then you have to expect that, i mean he did halfway abandon science, and tried to merge it with spirituality.

ken kesey, on the other hand, kind of repels me very strongly. theres something "cool" about the acid rock west coast thing....the acid test and tom wolfes book and all that...but while i think both camps caused a LOT of damage to american society, at least leary was noble in intent. ken kesey and his band of drug abusing hippies just wanted another drug to fuck them up, it seems. what did they gain from it?

i think perhaps the time may have had something to do with it. maybe america did need a tidal wave of psychedelics to hit the general public. but i STRONGLY disagree with the way in which kesey and his camp treated what i consider to be a very special sacrament.

 

Leary was a nut towards the end of his career.

 

Kesey had FUN. I don't think that's mistreating LSD.

 

I think I lean more towards agreeing with nesta.

Leary's method was much better in my opinion. Although, I don't get into his later "spiritual" bullshit, which I think was just a sensationalism created on his part to aid the furtherance of LSD. Had he stuck with a more scientific approach, he may have been taken more seriously.

However, he was challenging (not rebelling against) the establishment. And I respect and admire that completely.

 

leary was a nut. i agree. and the older he got, the wierder he got. but there was some method to his madness.

kesey wanted just another drug. he left FAR more "casualties" in his wake than did leary. their personal experiences are irrelevant. what matters is how the people around them (their "followers") turned out. learys experiences, while wierd and crazy and perhaps overzealous, at least had some structure in them to provide an opportunity for growth and insight. kesey just drove around taking too many drugs just to have a good time. read the electric kool-aid acid test (about kesey, not by, but pretty true to life afaik) and then read some books by leary and try to deny that leary, at his peak, was the more sane and enlightened of the two....

 

merry pranksters....

 

I got to go with Kesey. I personally dislike the structure and dogmatism of Leary's approach.

 

For a good time, take a ride on the Bus, for mind stimulating experience take the lightbeam from Mystic Arts.

I was also there for both.. I turned on with Leary in Mejeska Canyon in so Cali in 64. I tripped on the Bus with Ken Kesey and Emmit Grogan in The a Haight and Golden Gate Park and Buena Vista Park in 66.

I drew lessons from both, but Leary had more of an impact on me then did the Pranksters, Kesey, and Grogan put together. Leary had a certian Light in his work, a dedication to his beliefs.

 

Timothy Leary's not dead...he's on the outside looking in...

 

I lean towards Nesta's approach, but I had been known to dance all night when the trip went exctatic, you know, the good vibes and the energy just made you have to get up and boogie. Dionysian spirituality.