I think that is true, but I think you have misidentified the actual rational behind the bans.
In Dan Baum's Smoke and Mirrors, Dan Baum has John Ehrlichman, Nixon's domestic policy advisor, admitting that heroin and weed were targeted because their use was [perceived to be] popular among black people and hippies, both groups that the 'silent majority' feared. Targeting these drugs appeased the fearful ignorant 'silent majority', and it allowed the government to actually go after and disrupt these groups.
"we understood we couldn't make it illegal to be young or poor or black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common pleasure."
I mean, do you need LSD to know the government is wasting your money and making insane legislation?
What I will say is that some people seem to come back from it convinced that acid will change the face of humanity and society in some sort of miraculous way. But when pressed they can't say how. I don't think it's wrong to combine this with the fact that LSD can cause feelings of the profound over the most mundane or nonsensical things and come to the conclusion that they're probably off on one...
As I said - do you need acid to see the problems in our human society?
Are people wrong to feel profundity in the mundane? Is there another way to interpret the belief that LSD or access to altered states could change society?
Nobody is wrong to feel profundity in the mundane, but LSD can have you feeling a profound connection to a piece of cheese, or suddenly realising that all humanity's problems would go away if we just wore more purple.
As for the problems with society, it very relevant to people who talk about awakenings and how/why the legislators and policy makers (to quote the post I originally replied to) would be somehow afraid of these awakenings.
It seems like magical thinking. And as nobody has been able to actually explain what they mean, that's the conclusion I've come to.
But do keep promoting your conclusion - I'm sure there's some important insight there.
I may as well say the same to you, having started by misquoting me and then failed to answer any questions.
>> But do keep promoting your conclusion - I'm sure there's some important insight there.
My conclusion is there's no evidence that widespread use of LSD would change much or result in major changes to society. Do you have any evidence or are you just spouting shit too?
I can't speak to your experience on LSD, but for me LSD removes boundaries in my mind and provokes me to realize that we humans are way more similar than we are different. In fact, the same goes for other animals on this planet. LSD makes me realizes things that I technically already knew, but didn't feel.
How does LSD affect you?
In a vast variety of different ways depending on dose, set and setting etc.
I understand your realisation, I do. But I'm not seeing how it would be world-changing if more people were allowed to take it because I know people whose LSD experience was (repeatedly) "sit in the corner of a nightclub with wide eyes and a grin".
This is what usually happens to my friends who drop acid. I'll always remember my best friend's deep connection to some lamp post, and how he "figured out why that lamp post is there, mans. I know it now". I'm sure this isn't what happens to everyone. What I think happens is that true profundity happens to people who are sort of on a good path to find it already.
Each one of us is an unbroken chain of physical interactions since the beginning. There is no universe without conscious subjective experience; there is no conscious subjective experience without the universe. Life--conscious, experiential, intelligent life--is fundamentally intertwined with existence and you cannot have one without the other. The universe as a fundamental process is one that yields life; it is impossible to conceive of a universe where life does not exist, for without the experience, there is no universe.
We are, fundamentally, the universe experiencing itself subjectively from billions and billions of different facets and points of view.
More succinctly, we are all one.
Now, how does that change anything?
it doesn't change how things are; it changes how you look at it, and that makes a difference. it is a personal experience that changes how you let yourself be affected by minor hurts and problems, and lets you immerse yourself in the world and more deeply enjoy the things you take pleasure from.
You are on a red herring streak :)
You do not need acid to see the problems within human society. But acid helps when it comes to seeing the problems within yourself, and giving you motivation to fix them.
The transformative potential of acid on society can be expressed in statistical terms. If a sufficiently large number of people were to embark on a course of self improvement and personal evolution towards humanistic and compassionate values, this phenomenon would bring about societal change.
Why do you think LSD would necessarily bring about more humanistic or compassionate values?
Using LSD with intentions to not be bigoted, prejudice, etc.
Taking LSD with the intention to introspect, experience spirituality, etc
Taking lots of medium dose LSD over time (years, decades) till the character of the experience gradually evolves for them in such a way as to reduce bigotry and prejudice
When people say LSD can have profound effects on people what often gets left out is that one may need to take it more frequently and in higher doses than most recreational users tend to do. Intentions matter, too.
Nice red herring.
Indeed, you do not need to take LSD to know that the government is wasting money and making insane legislation. It's really pretty obvious and in the midst of a breakthrough LSD trip, you would probably find this to be a trifling, utterly irrelevant matter, and wouldn't waste too much time thinking about it.
The effects of LSD on freeing people's minds lie elsewhere, not in making people aware of the governmental abuses of power.
So please describe what these effects would be?
And please don't think when I talk about it inducing a false sense of the profound that I speak from ignorance or inexperience.
The very idea that you can discriminate true and "false" senses of the cosmic, for anybody, says a lot about where you're speaking from.
To be fair, the poster before did make a statement about what effects lsd would not have.
I agree with you that it will be difficult to verbalise any of this. However, I would say that an increased awareness of power structures is a possible outcome of a psychedelic experience.
I'm absolutely not criticising anyone's experience of LSD, but I'm not sure either why you refuse to contemplate that there could an inebriant and hallucinogenic component to acid that can result in just as much drivel as you get from a drunk.
If every experience you've ever had was a deep shamanic awakening that taught you about yourself and the universe then that's aweseom for you. 99% of the use of acid I've ever seen was more about giggling, talking bullshit and staring at the pretty colours.
Not that they should be responsible or that I'm blaming them for the backlash, but a bit more tact may have helped the movement in the long-term.