OFF but ON: Timothy Leary

[M Holmes]

Hardman DK writes:

> "Sadly"?  Does anyone really want to watch someone kill themselves? Why?
> Leary's idea to commit suicide on the net was, to my mind, pretty
> ghoulish, and I hope he was simply trying to stir up controversy rather
> than really intending to do it.  Actually doing it would have been really
> sick, though not as sick as anyone actually wanting to get some
> voyeuristic thrill by watching him do it.

There's something to that although I can understand Leary's wish to
explode the whole death-denial ethos so prevalent in modern culture.

> I'm kinda sad at Leary's passing, just because it somehow marks the end
> of an era (and makes me realise *I'm* getting older!), but I don't think
> he ever had anything serious to say after he quit academia. Basically he
> was the P.T.Barnum of the counter-culture

Yep, I'd agree with that assessment.

> Dave
>
> Ob book: "Storming Heaven", by Jay Stevens (on Leary, LSD, & the
> counter-culture)

Yep it was interesting. For other angles on this see "Acid Dreams - LSD
and the CIA" - a history of spies and their involvement with
psychedelics and how this actually created much of the counterculture.
Also "The Brotherhood of Eternal Love" is worth reading for a view on
the producers of LSD and how the whole show kept running until the
"Operation Julie" bust in Britain in 1978.

FoFP