So, Timothy Leary , and Aldous Huxley . Inarguably two of the best known psychonauts . Whether or not you like them is irrelevant.
Leary tried to spread psychedelics to the masses.Popularize it , and thought it's benefits were good for every person , adding up to one whole ;society
Huxley on the other hand (who i am biased towards , i just prefer him) thought that they were good for only the cultural, intellectual elite. those where the ones that could handle it positively and productively.

So the question is , with whom do you agree ?
Ignore the fact that , being a partaker in psychedelia, and agreeing with Huxley would be an admittance of you thinking yourself as the intellectual elite haha.
I think i agree with Huxley , but hate any form of elitism , so i am torn.
What do you say?

The world would without any doubt be a much better place if most people where aware of what the psychedelic experience is and would be able to decide for themselves whether they would like to undergo this experience.
I'm not for forcing psychedelic's on to people in any way, so advertising it like 'DMT is cool' or such slogans would not be cool for me.
If people are properly informed about psychedelic's, they can decide for themselves if they want to do it or not.

If it would turn out that masses of people would want to use psychedelic's after being properly informed about them, then it would probably only be a good thing.

Elitism is bad, if people cannot decide for themselves whether they would want to belong to the elite. If people are given the choice, whether they would want to become part of the elite or not, than i don't see what's so bad about it. With the proper attitude, every knowledge and every skill can be mastered by almost anybody. And in that perspective, elitism simply means that you have made the choice that you want to grow as a person and to work at it.
If that's your definition of elitism, then it's only a good thing.

Granted, the choice is good, im not meaning the one shouldbe forced our encouragedr, Im saying , if only one were the option ,theoretically without the variables of loss of choice etc,
:which do you think would have a better outcome?

I think this is a trick question. As in, the divide of the concept like this is somewhat flawed...

The plants that grow show no favoritism. They sit silently, waiting to be noticed. If Aya has taught me anything, it's that plants know best.

I would probably be dead if I hadn't found Ayahuasca. There is no way on earth these medicines should ever be withheld from anyone. I am no socioeconomic elite...

But Ayahuasca also came at a very specific time in my life. There was no way I was ready before it found me. It could have really freaked me out, I think, had someone just "given" it to me and I had no concept, interest, or curiosity of my own.

In conclusion, I think psychedelics work best when people want them and find them. Just leave them be... allow them to exist freely... be the change you want to see... It's just as useless forced as it is withheld...

I don't think this is entirely true. Leary didn't want it to spread out to the masses through the underground from blackmarket dealers like it did in the sixties. He warned in his 1966 testimony that making it a controlled substance would in affect cause this, and he was all for a controlled manufacturing, sale, distribution of lsd-since in the underground you don't know what your getting all the time. He saw it as a re-imprinting tool for the mind, and at one point said he envisioned a place or clinic where people could go to set up a series of sessions for themselves in a controlled setting with doctors and other people who knew how to use it. He thought its benefits could be good for everyone, but he didn't think everyone should take it.

To quote Leary- "LSD is one of the most important discoveries that the human being ever made. It's the key to changing your own brain. Now there's perhaps one out of a thousand maybe one out of ten thousand people who are mature enough and self-confident enough to be able to use this."

I think they both understood that only certain people wanted them and should use them, that they were not for everybody. As far as i understand it- Huxley thought they should be disseminated through the intellectual world, and slowly integrated into society. The problem arose when it was forced underground. The dam drug-war strikes again.

I don't like to pick favorites, and don't see the need to here.. i love both of them and am really interested in they're ideas and point of view. Both were great men that contributed in unique ways to psychedelics.

The more i think about it, the more i actually feel that it should be for the masses.

If there are communities where every adult member uses a psychedelic at least once in his/her life, then apparently you can have functioning society's that aren't being paralysed by schizofrenia-epidemic's, where the majority of the people is familiar with the psychedelic experience.

No, i think the human mind is not that fragile as some fear it is. I mean, in most places it's quite normal if almost half of the population sometimes caries another human being inside of them for nine months....without going totally insane.

Well universecannon, you just negated my whole question, thanx haha
Yeah at the moment , i think fence-sitting , sadly. I do think they are good for many people to take them and could have a good effect on society, and dont think elitism is good either. But im not sure all people could handle it , or would utilize it fully, i think some people are just too far gone for it to help . It might lose its value if it was to widespread, or trivialized.
And its good effects on man as a whole would not overpower all it has to compete with, so whats the point then ? its got more for personal gain i think.

Free psychedelics for all! Oh god no...after seeing what irresponsible teenagers have done on LSD and research chemicals, and in general just observing the settings in which the youth like to indulge, please for the love of god no. I'm not for restricting access to the intellectual elite either, but I do think it is something that should be distributed by professionals who know the best way to use them, a modern day shaman with a clinical twist. But I definitely don't think you should be able to buy up a few milligrams of LSD on a whim, just to drop whenever you choose. Unfortunately that's the current situation in a nutshell...

Well why not? What people do is their own business. As minx said this is a false dichotomy. If you didn't have so much propaganda being spread around and instead you used those funds to educate and illuminate the dark corridors of the mind that psychedelics pry open then you'd have an extremely different kind of society open up in my opinion.

No argument here...without any doubt indeed...


Regards.

Whats is this "elite" people are speaking of? Usually most of the people when they speak about an elite they speak about a closed group that thinks that is "better than others", but they mention it with heavy connotation that this group of people is not really better than others. What if some people can handle some things better than others? And what if some people, or those people, think that it can be dangerous for "whoever" to have "light hearted go" at what they do?

Does that make them "elitist"? If you name that thing elitism can you still view it under bad light?

I know many people that better of stay away from psychedelics: that does not imply that they are "weak" or that they are "stupid" or any other negative label that noone on the planet would like it to describe him/her. It might simply mean that if they do not stay away the potential disastrous consequences will far outweight the potential benefit.

"Mass dosing" , in my opinion, is not such a great idea. In its more extreme forms it borders on the wet dream of some of "LSD in the water supply" that would almost magically "solve all problems" and "people would finally see". Hmmm, consider for a bit that while many of us will sleep soundly in their beds every night hundrends if not thousands of people indulge in psychedelics from the classics to RC's. Those people are or will be the future bosses, politicians, guy/girls at your drive through , clerks,reporters, nakers, pharmaceutical researchers, advertiser,PR's,bankers,teachers,parents etc...Certainly its not a silver bullet that would transform everyone for the better as you can already see and as you will see. If simple contact with those agents was the silver bullet then we would already have seen it or it would suffice if someone did the stunt and FINALLY put the god damned thing in the water mains!

The more you cultivate yourself and the more you strive to be better (in your own scale of ideals), the more you "rub" with life and think about it in a constructive way then the bigger is the CHANCE psychedelics might act as facilitators/enablers for what you already been striving for.

Even if we recongise in those agents an innate quality of transformation or introspection, then it still needs the fertile ground to flourish : would it be appropriate for seed not sprouting on cement to be labeled an "non-viable"? Cement is not "bad" ,it serves another purpose, and soil is not "good" but a seed would have more chances sprouting on well tended soil rather than an enviroment inhospitable to it.

And thats just my opinion on the matter, feel free to disagree to the core of it

Ah yes, crystalito , you raise a very good point .An opinion of mine , that has often been on my mind in the past, but totally slipped my mind with this thread, is the following , and i think has lead me in one direction:
Only people who have any capacity for change , expanded consciousness, enlightenment , or any one pf a list of synonyms before they try psychedelics, will be the ones susceptible to the good they can do for one when taken . But if in totally sobriety one is a closed minded loss to psychedelic ideals, whatever those may be , he will be the same afterwards and during. This is the opinion

Yes, thas what i was trying to say. good.

I think what needs to change before psychedelics become legal is society. I was not ready at all for lsd when i first came across it..but i still got something out of it- and after doing my own thinking/research through books, internet, and life experience, I learned how to use it in a way that was very beneficial for me. De-conditioning from what i thought i "knew" (societies programs), and surrendering to the mystery, was necessary before i could reap the benefits of psychedelics.. I think this is why many people aren't ready: because at first most are the type of people this society aims to create (or better: aims to crate)-molded, narrow-minded, self-centered individuals who mimic societal standards as best as possible. A lot of "thinking for yourself" is usually in order before people from such a society can integrate the psychedelic experience into their lives in a beneficial way. This is why i think most who aren't ready to handle it could easily be ready at some point. The mind can change as quickly as a tv set.

To make psychedelics more easily integrable we could incorporate into our education programs the psychedelic history of our world and all the research that's been done on these substances, in order to counteract and dismantle the confusion and misinformation surrounding them- making more accurate information common knowledge..Not everyone is going to jump on the opportunity, but whoever is interested and wants to go through with it has that option available. I don't see how legalization and the mass broadcasting of the truth on these things worldwide could result in anything worse than the place where we are at now, but that's just me.

I agree. But i still believe that everyone can become 'ready' for the psychedelic experience. Every human with a sane mind can learn and grow. There are definately people who shouldn't take psychedelic's, but their mindset is the result of a choice they made. If they would choose otherwise, even they could become ready and susceptible for the positive things that the psychedelic experience can bring.

Everyone is potentially a budha.

I agree with Huxley in that not just anyone should get loaded with psychedelics. Of course, I don't think the government or any regulatory body should decide who takes what, but those with knowledge and experience should handle it responsibly. Defined loosely, I don't see elitism as a bad thing. Here at the Nexus efforts are made to attract reasonable people and not the type in those Salvia videos on youtube. It is elitism, but serves a higher aim in trying to prove to people that we take it seriously, that these are not frivolous toys, but tools. I long for the day that the norm is that of tolerance and respect, a day when we are not degenerate drug users and fringe wackos, but the common person. Under those conditions psychedelic society will flourish.

I like Huxley a hell of a lot better than Leary, in that I actually do like him, although as others have point out, elitism ain't always that great. Though I like the "few" stance the better than the "all" stance in this case.

Even thought the war on drugs totally sucks, I think it does a damn fine job of selecting psychedelics users. Salvia videos or no, a large number of people who take psychedelics have some rough education on the subject beforehand and seek it out positively. One must educate oneself and go to lengths to seek out the experience in most cases. A finer selection process than one could expect from a post-prohibition established order. Comparatively few peoples, it seems, do it "just for the hell of it" with little preparation than if psychedelics could be purchased at the corner drugstore once again.

Hmm, never thought about the war on drugs like that banana. Interesting, and i think that may be evidant more so in psychedelics than other drugs ,its a lot harder to buy some of these things we talk about from the friendly neighborhood drug dealer even.

And i think this may be visisble on the nexus , the causes for the following statement are debatable: but as it has been said before, the users on the nexus , as an average , seem a bit more intelligent or at least educated and less ignorant than most sites, or the average person i meet on a daily basis.

I wonder, though, if we lived in a culture that accepted and educated in an unbiased manner about the physiological and psychological effects of psychedelics, and/or handled them in a right of passage/coming of age context, would a lot more people be prepared to be dosed? Ignorance and fear are what hold a lot of people back... and look at the way the environment constantly reinforces that.

yeah , i'd love to know if back in the day , little punk amazonian teens would sneak out in the night and "get wasted" on some ayahuasca? I highly doubt it ,it just wasnt part of society in that way.

and btw the above, is joking, dont attack me please

Magicman

Fascinating and thought provoking thread, its a really tricky question... but i think the more people in our society that journey with entheogens the more awareness and compassion that has the potential to be created within our global community. Mass disconnection from each other and our earth is one of the most serious issues that our society faces, so if everyone had an entheogenic experience at least once in their lives, i think it could go a long way in healing and reconnecting our society and do far more good than harm.

Although there are people that are in our society that aren't in the correct mental state or frame of mind to journey with entheogns, so i think those select few should not journey with entheogns until there is a equilibrium within them enough so to make it potentially a safer more positive experience rather than a harmful negative experience. The most wounded (depending on circumstances of course) in my view are the ones that are in the greatest need of an entheogen journey.


Much Peace and Happiness