Acid Flashback

In the middle of one of Eric Kirk’s political rants, which make no sense to me. Not that Eric doesn’t make sense to me, but politics don’t. Anyway, in the middle of his rant, he dropped this slap on my sixties face:
“Maybe some of you older sixties types can explain all that to me. Then maybe you can explain the lyrics to Desolation Row.[By Bob Dylan] I know, I know…. I had to be there to “feel it.”

In the sixties we looked for the logic and reason in everything. It was an age of mind expansion. We threw off the shackles off our ancestors, we burned our bras, we objected to war. We threw open the doors of the insane asylums. We objected to any form of prejudice. We worried about deep concepts like “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise?”

These seemingly unanswerable questions seemed like great mysteries to us, and we felt that there must be some deep knowledge in finding the answers to it all. We knew that whatever was happening that it was our parents fault, and it needed to be corrected.

Great music and art came out of the age of the sixties, and it all had a mind challenging element to it. It was not good, or “deep”, if it didn’t leave you somewhat confused and wondering what it was all about. Some great thinkers suggested that all of these questions could be answered if you just dropped a little acid. It was great to see someone on acid explain something like the lyrics to that song, and many others, “A Horse with no Name” comes to mind.

It seemed to make perfect sense to them while they were in their drug induced stupor. Some realized that their “clarity of insight” came from the drugs, and their great knowledge was just a deception. Others actually believed the lies that drugs induce. The phrase “Turn on, tune in, and drop out.” had great meaning to them, as in this quote from Dr. Timothy Leary:

“Turn on' meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. 'Tune in' meant interact harmoniously with the world around you - externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. Drop out suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. 'Drop Out' meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean 'Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity”.

Some people that had great potential, actually dropped out of school, stopped their education, and became vagabonds and hippies. Some of them still defend the great “mind expansion” that they gleaned from dropping acid. Who is to actually say whether they are better, or worse, off for dropping acid. I don’t know, I never have, and never will. I saw too many of my friends and classmates play with drugs of all sorts. Some totally fried their brains, and others actually seem to be better off because of it. But, I am the eternal coward when it comes to drug use. My mind may not be much, but that is all the more reason to not take chances with it by trying to alter it.

Maybe that answers Eric’s Question. Maybe if I dropprd a little acid, politics would make sense to me.