The Ethos of the '60s

It was a time of national darkness and cultural awakening. As the 60’s ended, North American society was in turmoil. Three iconic personalities, John F. Kennedy the President, his brother Robert Kennedy, a leading contender for President in l968, and Martin Luther King, the pre-eminent symbol of the civil rights movement, had been publicly assassinated. The U.S. war machine had conscripted hundreds of thousands of young men to fight the bloody war in Vietnam, and they, together with hundreds of thousands of civilians, were seen as particularly senseless casualties of an arrogant, pointless foreign policy. The American public had come face to face with the realization that their society had systematically dehumanized and marginalized an entire race for almost two centuries, virtually without apology. There had been a landing on the moon, but failure to live up to the self described national persona as “The land of the free and the home of the brave.”  In the face of this, millions of mainly young people had come to question whether this culture and its failed values deserved continuing support. The counter-culture was born.

The question was not solely political. Birth control pills had reduced monogamy to merely a traditional option. Experiments with psychoactive drugs, mainly marijuana, cocaine, acid, and speed had led to their regular recreational use despite the increasing disapproval of the mainstream culture. For many, their use was not criminal behaviour. Despite its contraband status, marijuana was openly and publicly used by millions. In l969, there was no ‘War against Drugs,’ no DEA. Scheduling of drugs in terms of their social value and harmfulness and ascribing criminal penalties awaited the l970 Controlled Substances Act which criminalized possession of LSD, PCP, MDMA and many other substances. Sexual and psychoactive drug themes were being widely incorporated into music, literature, and the arts in general. Although drug use was widely present in the culture, few had looked for philosophical significance in what was seen as a purely recreational pastime; dangerous to some, and liberating to others.

Some, however, looked for deeper meaning in the ‘drug trip’. One of the most dramatic voices was that of Dr. Timothy Leary. As a psychologist experimenting with the use of psychoactive drugs to alter personality, Leary evolved a philosophic vision of human experience in the world, after the reward/punishment veil was penetrated with the help of marijuana, mescaline and LSD. Fired from Harvard and filled with messianic zeal, Leary established himself in l965 in an intentional community in Millbrook, New York, where drug experimentation was foundational. He fanned out afterward, across the US and India, ending up in Berkeley, California in l969, all the while openly and rationally witnessing the significance of the psychedelic drug experience. The Berkeley lectures arose out of this time. He had recently lived within the San Jacinto Mountain community of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. These lectures expounded enthusiastically on the value of a tribal community in supporting relationships built on psychedelic consciousness.

Leary’s purpose in this campaign of public discourse about the psychedelic experience was both philosophical and practical. He believed that human beings should have the right to experiment with fine tuning their consciousness. He had appeared before a Congressional committee in support of this belief. He also needed to employ the college lecture circuit as a source of personal financial support. As of l969, Leary had been arrested at the Laredo, Texas border crossing in possession of a small amount of marijuana (l965). Soon after, the Millbrook Estate was the target of a drug raid, although no charges against him resulted. In December, 1968, Leary, his wife Rosemary and his son were arrested near Laguna Beach, California, in possession of marijuana. Lengthy and expensive legal proceedings accompanied these events.  In January of l969, the Laredo arrest and conviction was overturned in an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, clearly a legal victory. None of these events had yet resulted in prison incarceration.

But in January 1970, the end of freedom came with conviction and imprisonment on the Laguna Beach charges. For the next six years, his life was an unending nightmare of prison escape, flight to avoid recapture in Africa, Europe and Afghanistan. He was captured in Afghanistan and returned to the United States for more prison time. Though eventually released from prison, controversy and notoriety arguably infused his public life in a way which overwhelmed his early, more philosophical persona. Before, he was a scientist, promoting human discovery. Afterward, he was too easily characterized as a felon who had associations with the Weathermen, the Black Panthers, and the Brotherhood of the Eternal Light’s drug dealing network, and possibly a snitch for the FBI.

Once the War on Drugs, the DEA, and the entire coordinated efforts of national law enforcement focused on demonizing psychedelic drugs and the culture of consciousness exploration, Leary became marginalized as a caricature of the 60’s. The media portrayed him as a drug crazed Godfather of the Brotherhood, a weirdo whose brain had been ‘fried’ on acid.  Many who had believed that serious research on the nature of consciousness had once been possible now came to believe that Leary had disparaged this effort by cavalier and impetuous behavior.