It's interesting that Ken Kesey took part at Stanford in one aspect of MKUltra--it's discussed on his Wikipedia page--and at least one lifelong Deadhead I talked with believed that the whole acid culture of the 60's had the CIA's fingerprints all over it. He also made the interesting claim (to me at least) that the Grateful Dead shows co…
It's interesting that Ken Kesey took part at Stanford in one aspect of MKUltra--it's discussed on his Wikipedia page--and at least one lifelong Deadhead I talked with believed that the whole acid culture of the 60's had the CIA's fingerprints all over it. He also made the interesting claim (to me at least) that the Grateful Dead shows constituted a many decades long act of performance art.
In my view, the hippies were right that a whole lot of the stories that are most interesting require deviating from the received version of the straight and narrow "consensus" (manufactured?) reality. Their particular problem is that, like the Communists, their habit of breaking social norms never made the omelet of a new and better coherent culture.
One sees them circling their wagons and shrinking in fear, now, from nearly everything. Where Woodstock happened during an arguably worse pandemic than COVID, now all those people and their children reliably clung to their masks, their experimental medicines, and their trust in a patently corrupt Establishment.
Opposites meet, as some clever person once noted. That is why the middle is a vastly healthier place to live. You don't get a dot or a sliver, but everything, if you take everything in moderation.
It's interesting that Ken Kesey took part at Stanford in one aspect of MKUltra--it's discussed on his Wikipedia page--and at least one lifelong Deadhead I talked with believed that the whole acid culture of the 60's had the CIA's fingerprints all over it. He also made the interesting claim (to me at least) that the Grateful Dead shows constituted a many decades long act of performance art.
In my view, the hippies were right that a whole lot of the stories that are most interesting require deviating from the received version of the straight and narrow "consensus" (manufactured?) reality. Their particular problem is that, like the Communists, their habit of breaking social norms never made the omelet of a new and better coherent culture.
One sees them circling their wagons and shrinking in fear, now, from nearly everything. Where Woodstock happened during an arguably worse pandemic than COVID, now all those people and their children reliably clung to their masks, their experimental medicines, and their trust in a patently corrupt Establishment.
Opposites meet, as some clever person once noted. That is why the middle is a vastly healthier place to live. You don't get a dot or a sliver, but everything, if you take everything in moderation.