Major Project Progress

I found a reference to a Timothy Leary essay in a footnote of Making of A Counter Culture: Reflections on The Technocratic Society and Their Youthful Opposition written by Theodore Roszak. The essay is called 'A Molecular Revolution" and is taken from the book The Politics of Ecstasy. Here Leary, an acclaimed advocate of hallucinogens, discusses the presence of psychedelic drugs in the sixties as being a medium for "transcendence" and likens it to a "religious experience". This is a very different perspective than the picture painted by many modern historian such as Monteith who reflect on the "exploitative drug scene". Is Timothy Leary validated in his claim that the youth of the Sixties were a generation seeking transcendence by making the personal political?



Leary presents his statistics in a way which emphasises the growing popularity of drug use in Sixties, whilst the website discussed earlier dismissed it as a trivial, concentrated aspect of the era.


There seems to be a clear rift in the way that history views drug use in the Sixties, namely:

• A belief that it was less prevalent in the era than popular culture suggests - The website earlier, Monteith etc.
  
• A belief that use was widespread, but used to reach "transcendence" and reach "enlightenment" - Leary, "the portable sixties reader" etc.
• A belief that drug use was widespread and corrupted the generation - Roszak
• A belief that recreational drug use was used for personal enjoyment and although many youth idealistically hoped to "make the personal political" it was largely a selfish activity. - DeGroot.

I've only really been going into detail on this over the past couple of days and might email sir soon to see if it's alright or if he thinks I should go back to looking at the Sixties as a general concept. Although that was equally enjoyable, I think looking at a specific issue is much more 'doable'. However, if he believes the focus questions I've been concentrating on aren't practical, I'll happily switch to another aspect of the Sixties as it is all quite intertwined. I've also been reading up on the impact of the media which is interesting.