Another voice telling people to "wake up"

[Red Steele]

A voice from the past, and one that spent a good part of his middle age and later years as a fairly accomplished drug connoisseur, Aldous Huxley cried out for people to "wake up", possibly by using amphetamines and LSD.

I believe it was the New Yorker that did a pretty extensive article on the life and death of Huxley, the writer of the famous, or infamous work since it was banned widely and still makes a list of books to remove from libraries, book Brave New World. Somewhere I read about Huxley's foreign wife, and her insatiable sex drive, and how he would sleep with her and her friends, both female and male, to try to keep the marriage together. The thought was that Huxley, nearly blind, needed his wife to do the writing of his books.

Huxley's death would probably have been front page news except for the ironic twist of fate that JFK, who could easily have been the Jay Gatsby of Huxley's imaginary world where promiscuous sex, freely availiable drugs, and people that were more like sheep populated the world, had the misfortune to have his brains blown out by a bullet fired by someone, possibly but probably not Oswald, on the same day.

THe Star on how prophetic the book was:

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2012/08/24/brave_new_world_aldous_huxleys_predictions_seem_to_be...

[BA Deere]

Everyone has their own idea of what it means to "wake up", but it`s a pretty screwed up individual that promotes using mind altering drugs in order to "wake up".  I never read `Brave New World`, I know very little of it only the jist of the story.  But from what I`ve heard, liberals must like it, it must been a world like the myth of Las Vegas, where everything "stays in Vegas" that isn`t true, that little cutie that you got the STD from will follow you back to Peoria.  The guy with the pinstriped suit that you signed the home 80 over to won`t stay in Vegas.  But the liberal idea of going through life, dazed and confused, never having grownup responibilities is a very strong recruiting tool.

[Red Steele]

Well, BA, I think that liberals probably like the Huxley work "The Island" a whole lot better, since that is the Utopian place he wrote about years later, after he was drug addled. I believe that the Aldous Huxley that wrote Brave New World was still somewhat decent, and still had a moral compass since one of the main characters in BNW, John Savage, hangs himself after experiencing the depravity of  a world with promiscuous sex, abortion, drugs, and a totalitarian state that regulated virtually every nuance of the populations lives, if you could call what they had living. The book is more of an example of how low people can go than of what utopia would be.

[bruce MN]

That was a quick, less than in 24 hours, conversion in interpretation of a classic work of literature..   How admiarably open minded and flexible

[Red Steele]

Read the book sometime, Mr. B. I haven't read it in 30 years, but I still remember most of it. Huxley really could write.

[bruce MN]

Read it long ago also. Did a book report on it in the 7th or 8th Grade. Hopefully I reported that it was a book about the folly of utopianism, as that is how I remember it.  Do understand know after many discussions with others of it over the years that Mr. Huxley was parodying a utopia that had been set up by masters of industry and wealth, hence teh caste system,  and not by or at public will.

Rnd wrote about that.  She said it was all a good thing.

I have no idea what your access to old films might be or if it's even available on netflix or pandora or any of those new fangled setups, but here's an old silent number from the 1920s that is exceptional:

http://silentfilms.wikia.com/wiki/Metropolis_(film)

I actually saw it on TCM.  They usually recycle their movies, so it might be on a gain some time.

[bruce MN]

Here ya go:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xs9cdf_the-complete-metropolis-1927-the-complete-metropolis-1927_sh...

[johnaa]

http://www.ultraculture.org/psychedelics-improve-mental-health/?fb_action_ids=671033089592182&fb_act...              

   snip--Psychedelics like psilocybin mushrooms and LSD not only don’t cause mental health problems, they may actually improve mental health, say Norwegian researchers -

  snip--Those are the findings by neuroscience researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, who reported that LSD, psilocybin and mescaline not only don’t cause long-term mental health problems, but that in many cases the use of psychedelics is associated with a lower rate of mental health problems. -

    The study (here) pulled data from the US National Survey on Drug Use and Health, observing 130,152 randomly-selected respondents from the adult population of the US. 13.4% of that group (21,967 individuals) reported lifetime use of psychedelics. Comparing this data to standardized screening measures for mental health, the researchers found that neither lifetime psychedelic use nor use of LSD in the past year were independent risk factors for mental health problems—and that, in fact, psychedelic users had lower rates of mental health issues. -

      Teri S. Krebs and Pål-Ørjan Johansen, the Norwegian researchers, additionally noted that “psychedelic plants have been used for celebratory, religious or healing purposes for thousands of years” and that “psychedelics often elicit deeply personally and spiritually meaningful experiences and sustained beneficial effects… LSD and psilocybin are consistently ranked in expert assessments as causing less harm to both individual users and society than alcohol, tobacco, and most other common recreational drugs. Given that millions of doses of psychedelics have been consumed every year for over 40 years, well-documented case reports of long-term mental health problems following use of these substances are rare.”      ----------------------The study also found absolutely no evidence that “flashbacks” afflict users of psychedelics, slaying another commonly-held superstition around psychedelic use. -

snip--

Another recent study at the University of South Florida, for instance, found that psilocybin mushrooms erase conditioned fear response in mice, suggesting they could potentially be used to cure PTSD—and that psilocybin can even prompt growth of brain cells. -                                 

       Multiple studies are currently being conducted (at New York University’s medical school and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center) into using psychedelics to alleviate fear in patients with late-stage terminal illness—easing the experience of death and allowing people to end their lives in states of acceptance instead of terror.

  LSD and psilocybin even hold promise for treating cluster headaches, a condition so debilitating and painful that it often leads sufferers to consider suicide.                                                                                              --------While marijuana enjoys its time in the spotlight, it may be time for its more potent—and potentially even more beneficial—siblings to join the party. -

See more at: http://www.ultraculture.org/psychedelics-improve-mental-health/?fb_action_ids=671033089592182&fb_act...

[BA Deere]

I don`t think a person should recreationally use anything that would limit your ability to drive a car or operate heavy machinery while taking. Maybe mushrooms and LSD can treat people that already have problems, but if you have a healthy mind you should leave it alone...remember Art Linkletter`s daughter?

There`s a reason that we have fear and feel pain, the source has to be cured, not mask the symptoms.

[johnaa]

  What you think other people should do ?    It's none of your business, and a mistake to mis-use representative government to inflict prohibition by force of law.    Statists like to make believe they are responsible for controlling other people, but all they do is create crime and the "immorality" they stupidly think they are preventing. 

   Linkletter's daughter story has been shown to be a showman's hook, a gimmick.  You should learn the truth about it and ask yourself why you fell for it.