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Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science
A bold and brilliant revisionist take on the history of psychedelics in the twentieth century, illuminating how a culture of experimental drugs shaped the Cold War and the birth of Silicon Valley.
"It was not the Baby Boomers who ushered in the first era of widespread drug experimentation. It was their parents." Far from the repressed traditionalists they are often painted as, the generation that survived the second World War emerged with a profoundly ambitious sense of social experimentation. In the '40s and '50s, transformative drugs rapidly entered mainstream culture, where they were not only legal, but openly celebrated. American physician John C. Lilly infamously dosed dolphins (and himself) with LSD in a NASA-funded effort to teach dolphins to talk. A tripping Cary Grant mumbled into a Dictaphone about Hegel as astronaut John Glenn returned to Earth. At the center of this revolution were the pioneering anthropologists—and star-crossed lovers—Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Convinced the world was headed toward certain disaster, Mead and Bateson made it their life’s mission to reshape humanity through a new science of consciousness expansion, but soon found themselves at odds with the government bodies who funded their work, whose intentions were less than pure. Mead and Bateson's partnership unlocks an untold chapter in the history of the twentieth century, linking drug researchers with CIA agents, outsider sexologists, and the founders of the Information Age.
As we follow Mead and Bateson’s fractured love affair from the malarial jungles of New Guinea to the temples of Bali, from the espionage of WWII to the scientific revolutions of the Cold War, a new origin story for psychedelic science emerges.
"It was not the Baby Boomers who ushered in the first era of widespread drug experimentation. It was their parents." Far from the repressed traditionalists they are often painted as, the generation that survived the second World War emerged with a profoundly ambitious sense of social experimentation. In the '40s and '50s, transformative drugs rapidly entered mainstream culture, where they were not only legal, but openly celebrated. American physician John C. Lilly infamously dosed dolphins (and himself) with LSD in a NASA-funded effort to teach dolphins to talk. A tripping Cary Grant mumbled into a Dictaphone about Hegel as astronaut John Glenn returned to Earth. At the center of this revolution were the pioneering anthropologists—and star-crossed lovers—Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Convinced the world was headed toward certain disaster, Mead and Bateson made it their life’s mission to reshape humanity through a new science of consciousness expansion, but soon found themselves at odds with the government bodies who funded their work, whose intentions were less than pure. Mead and Bateson's partnership unlocks an untold chapter in the history of the twentieth century, linking drug researchers with CIA agents, outsider sexologists, and the founders of the Information Age.
As we follow Mead and Bateson’s fractured love affair from the malarial jungles of New Guinea to the temples of Bali, from the espionage of WWII to the scientific revolutions of the Cold War, a new origin story for psychedelic science emerges.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published January 16, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews
December 14, 2023
This review is going to be a choose your own adventure! You pick up Tripping on Utopia by Benjamin Breen and then....
Path 1: You are a reader who loves science, medicine, philosophy, and you know who Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Allen Ginsberg, and Timothy Leary are. You know what MKUltra is and you want to know more about all these subjects. This book is perfectly suited for you. It is very well written and you will probably give it 5 stars.
Path 2: You are like me. You've heard the names listed above before but know next to nothing about them other than that they did....something. MKUltra is about LSD and the government made some people lose their minds right? And you'd go to jail if you pulled any of this nonsense nowadays. You will recognize this book is very well written but you can't connect with the characters. Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson's backgrounds feel too rushed for you to feel connected to them. Other characters seem to dip in and out of the narrative. The actual experiments need more detail to fully understand their impact. You give the book 3 stars because you can tell the author knows what he is talking about, but there is just enough missing from the narrative that you can't get into it.
Path 3: You are actually me and need to rate this book. You choose 4 stars. It's not Breen's fault you don't love science. He's certainly a talented writer and that alone deserves more than 3 stars doesn't it? Plus, some of the stories about tripping are pretty cool. You click 4 stars and you go to bed.
(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Grand Central Publishing.)
Path 1: You are a reader who loves science, medicine, philosophy, and you know who Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Allen Ginsberg, and Timothy Leary are. You know what MKUltra is and you want to know more about all these subjects. This book is perfectly suited for you. It is very well written and you will probably give it 5 stars.
Path 2: You are like me. You've heard the names listed above before but know next to nothing about them other than that they did....something. MKUltra is about LSD and the government made some people lose their minds right? And you'd go to jail if you pulled any of this nonsense nowadays. You will recognize this book is very well written but you can't connect with the characters. Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson's backgrounds feel too rushed for you to feel connected to them. Other characters seem to dip in and out of the narrative. The actual experiments need more detail to fully understand their impact. You give the book 3 stars because you can tell the author knows what he is talking about, but there is just enough missing from the narrative that you can't get into it.
Path 3: You are actually me and need to rate this book. You choose 4 stars. It's not Breen's fault you don't love science. He's certainly a talented writer and that alone deserves more than 3 stars doesn't it? Plus, some of the stories about tripping are pretty cool. You click 4 stars and you go to bed.
(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Grand Central Publishing.)
January 3, 2024
I am so thankful to Hachette Audio, Grand Central Publishing, and Benjamin Breen for granting me advanced physical and audio access to this informative mind-bender of a novel, touching upon the past centuries-worth of exposure and testing of psychedelics as weapons of the mind, brainwashing enemies and accessing otherwise hidden information. Tripping on Utopia hits shelves on January 16, 2024, and I'm so excited to hyperfixate on this one for weeks to come.
From MK Ultra to the Tuskegee Experiment and other studies, I've always been captivated by these subjects in history classes. Our country was so captivated by the usage of psychedelic drugs as a weapon that we tested on human subjects and even dolphins to get a solutions, which goes to show how incredibly demented some of our predecessors were in the name of science and world domination, ultimately.
Author, Benjamin Breen introduced and re-introduced some big names I'd never heard of and ones I'd known all too well, establishing a foundation for the leaders in such psychosomatic endeavors. Stranger Things wasn't entirely fiction after all, yall.
From MK Ultra to the Tuskegee Experiment and other studies, I've always been captivated by these subjects in history classes. Our country was so captivated by the usage of psychedelic drugs as a weapon that we tested on human subjects and even dolphins to get a solutions, which goes to show how incredibly demented some of our predecessors were in the name of science and world domination, ultimately.
Author, Benjamin Breen introduced and re-introduced some big names I'd never heard of and ones I'd known all too well, establishing a foundation for the leaders in such psychosomatic endeavors. Stranger Things wasn't entirely fiction after all, yall.
March 27, 2024
would have preferred less details and lingering/rambling on the whole dolphins x LSD experiments (which to me felt like it was edging towards trauma-porn), but still a 5*. RTC later
April 17, 2024
This is one of those books that feels like an alternate history of the mid-20th Century. Focusing on Margaret Mead and her circle of lovers, spouses, and associates and their aim to create a new multi-cultural consciousness in the middle years of the 20th Century, it's mostly a story of good intentions gone to ruin. Although I've read a fair bit about the anthropological, cultural, and military intelligence fascination with mind-altering substances, I've never seen the story told this way.
One comes away with a sense of just how optimistic some thinkers were in the face of Fascism, nuclear weapons, and horrendous governmental misdeeds, and how quickly dreams can become nightmares, no matter how well-meaning the dreamers. Full of astonishing anecdotes and unlikely connections (Mead's former husband Gregory Batesman was the first person to give Allen Ginsberg LSD), this is a series of terrific sometimes-terrifying anecdotes about an era that changed the world in many ways, though not the way the dreamers intended.
One comes away with a sense of just how optimistic some thinkers were in the face of Fascism, nuclear weapons, and horrendous governmental misdeeds, and how quickly dreams can become nightmares, no matter how well-meaning the dreamers. Full of astonishing anecdotes and unlikely connections (Mead's former husband Gregory Batesman was the first person to give Allen Ginsberg LSD), this is a series of terrific sometimes-terrifying anecdotes about an era that changed the world in many ways, though not the way the dreamers intended.
February 18, 2024
I picked this up because I had never heard of Margaret Mead and this book looked like it was an intersection of a lot of my interests. Most of the book was not about Mead herself, though. Instead it was like a crash course on the weird psychedelic “scientists” from the 20s to 70s (a LOT happened and it covered a LOT of people). I definitely was exposed to a lot of new ideas and people from this time period, but it was quite sad to see Mead’s development into obscurity as an act of self-preservation (my own take)
The author discusses how Mead was a serious scientist and critic of the proponents of psychedelics who did not follow the scientific method, so one thing I really wish they focused more on were her ideas. Only broad statements of her thoughts in different periods are offered, and I wished the author discussed her ideas and methods more specifically (Mead is only mentioned in general for like 10% of the book anyway!! I think her husband is mentioned a lot more)
The author discusses how Mead was a serious scientist and critic of the proponents of psychedelics who did not follow the scientific method, so one thing I really wish they focused more on were her ideas. Only broad statements of her thoughts in different periods are offered, and I wished the author discussed her ideas and methods more specifically (Mead is only mentioned in general for like 10% of the book anyway!! I think her husband is mentioned a lot more)
March 15, 2024
Oooof. I probably should have guessed by the title that this one would be all over the map and BOY WAS IT. This was a book club pick. I didn't know much about Margaret Mead before I read this book and I still don't really. The book meanders and drags. It was so long and yet so void of anything interesting or even informative, really. The title makes it seem like Margaret Mead had a big hand in psychedelic science. The actual book puts her barely tangential to psychedelics. She knows people who were part of MK Ultra. She has relationships with people who take and study LSD. AND??? If you really want to learn AND be entertained, read How to Change Your Mind instead. Also, I gotta say, the ACTUAL WORST audiobook reader I have EVER heard. I had to listen on 1.8 x speed to keep from tearing my hair out. She spoke soooooooo sloooooooowwwwwwllllly and with the most bizarre old-lady Trans-Atlantic, clipped accent. I would have DNFd if not for my sterling book club record. Not a fan.
January 15, 2024
As a non-historian unfamiliar with the history of psychedelic science, I found this book fascinating, extremely accessible, and difficult to put down. The rich history woven together with powerful storytelling makes the book very interesting and hard to stop reading. As someone who researches the societal impacts of new technologies like Artificial Intelligence, I found intriguing parallels between how scientists viewed the utopian promises of psychedelic discovery and the exaggerations about both utopian and dystopian impacts of AI we see today. I think anyone interested in the societal impacts of scientific and technological discoveries, policies and impacts of drugs, World War 2 and Cold War history, or just a remarkable story should read this book.
January 25, 2024
What a good book! I am familiar with a lot of the subject matter here. Didn't know a lot about Margaret Mead though, so it was good to be able to connect the dots together even more. Who knows what the world could have been if these studies and policies went a different direction. Maybe we would all be able to communicate with dolphins!! Highly Recommended book!
March 18, 2024
Going into this book I didn't know a thing about psychedelic history, and even less about Margaret Mead. Now I've ranted about both to most people I know. This book was incredibly well written and easy to read, while also exploring and explaining fascinating topics in thrilling detail. I plan on re-reading it in the future, as there was more information inside than I found myself capable of absorbing. The best book I've read recently.
January 26, 2024
I don't have the time or energy to really get deep into reviewing this book, but I really enjoyed it.
Filled in some gaps in my understanding about the evolution of American culture between World War II and the Carter administration. Also helped to illuminate the historical links between psychedelic drug research and the tech industry, which is something I've noted in my mind informally through the years, but this book helped to make it more explicit.
For a book by an academic, I found it quite well written and easy to read. A lot of good stories in it. Ran through it in a few sittings. With that said, I have a graduate degree in American history. So perhaps my perspective on the writing may not be the same as everybody else's.
Filled in some gaps in my understanding about the evolution of American culture between World War II and the Carter administration. Also helped to illuminate the historical links between psychedelic drug research and the tech industry, which is something I've noted in my mind informally through the years, but this book helped to make it more explicit.
For a book by an academic, I found it quite well written and easy to read. A lot of good stories in it. Ran through it in a few sittings. With that said, I have a graduate degree in American history. So perhaps my perspective on the writing may not be the same as everybody else's.
March 18, 2024
This was everything "Acid Dreams" should have been. Although this followed the same path, the thoughts are better organized, the details better clarified and understood. Implications are simple and followed through. There is some desire for further expansion of what happened to many of the people in the story and better tie in to the roles they played in the science, and what's craved most is a "where is the science standing today" analysis and summary, though these comments are hinted at some throughout the book.
Thank you for not glorifying Leary or Ram Dass. Thank you for pointing out the monster George Hunter White was, another historical figure taking advantage of the poor and helpless.
Thank you for not glorifying Leary or Ram Dass. Thank you for pointing out the monster George Hunter White was, another historical figure taking advantage of the poor and helpless.
July 5, 2024
When this book first came out -- I knew I'd have to read it. Kudos to the author for having written this text dealing with a neglected, yet important -- Aspect of American history. I took my time with this book and what kept my attention were the stories about the various casts of characters who worked within the field of psychedelic research -- Specifically, the drama / dynamics of how those characters related to one another. Before reading "Tripping on Utopia", the only other sources I'd seen related to this topic -- Were two documentaries: (1) "The Sunshine Makers" (2015) ; and (2) "The Substance: Albert Hofmann's LSD" (2011). In the latter video -- I learned that Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman had discovered LSD in 1943. Knowing that -- One would surmise that the year 1943 marked the beginning of the psychedelic movement. But in Breen's book -- I learned that anthropologist Margaret Mead had started researching psychedelics in 1930; both she and her one-time husband, scientist Gregory Bateson, were involved in researching mind-altering drugs during World War II. Certain personalities of the Beatnik era are also mentioned -- It was Bateson who set up Allen Ginsberg with his first LSD trip in 1959. Previous to reading this text -- I had no idea that psychedelics were already in use, in various capacities, during the so-called staid / square 1950s. Additional highlights included the mid-1960s phase -- When public perception of psychedelics was becoming problematic (LSD was legal in the United States from 1943 to 1966). Of note as well are the sections dealing with counterculture guru Timothy Leary (chapters 17 and 20), through which I gained more insight into Leary's polarizing and allegedly sociopathic character. In closing: Reading this book has inspired me to do further research on this topic.
March 8, 2024
Book was hard to read/very technical but if you’re interested in the material I’d say it’s worth it. People be crazy during the Cold War and I would be too.
March 13, 2024
I love it when the things I read for work turn out to be fascinating and exceedingly well written and researched! A very holistic longitudinal study on the first wave of psychedelic scientists (anthropologists, psychologists, chemists, spies, and more) that meaningfully engages with these characters' troubled personal and professional lives and paints a nuanced picture of Cold War-era psychedelic research and use.
June 2, 2024
Do I want to drugs more after reading this? Yes
Do I want to uproot my life and become and anthropologist? Yes
But really I just want to live in the 1950s when you could live in the Bay Area with poets for 215 bucks a month
Do I want to uproot my life and become and anthropologist? Yes
But really I just want to live in the 1950s when you could live in the Bay Area with poets for 215 bucks a month
February 9, 2024
this was so much more than i expected. it had a lot of information about the history of lsd and the psychology field at the time of world war 2 and the cold war.
January 31, 2024
It’s funny that other reviews have pointed out that Bateson and Mead’s work as scientists and anthropologists extended and encompassed far more than just psychedelics because, while reading this book, I found myself wishing the book was less about psychedelics and more biographical of Margaret Mead. There are so many famous names that tie back to her in some way—Allen Ginsberg, Carl Sagan, multiple Kennedies, Cary Grant, George W. Bush, just to name a few. I wanted to know more about *her* and cared less about the inane descriptions of the first televised LSD trip. Moreover I felt like the book didn’t really tell me anything about psychedelics didn’t already know, aside from minor details maybe. It’s a flashy subject so maybe I’m just boring
February 2, 2024
Great topic - Poor execution
Breen seems to have trouble deciding what the book is about. It may be a bio of two interesting people: Margaret Mead and her husband. It may be a history of the use and misuse of psychedelic drugs. It may be a story featuring many of the counter culture figures of the mid 20th century. It tries to be all three and is a disappointment on them all. The flow of the story is disjoint -- Events are described and then dropped before completing the topic. It is as if we are reading the Breen's notes rather than his analysis of them. There is lots of good material here but he definitely need a better editor.
Breen seems to have trouble deciding what the book is about. It may be a bio of two interesting people: Margaret Mead and her husband. It may be a history of the use and misuse of psychedelic drugs. It may be a story featuring many of the counter culture figures of the mid 20th century. It tries to be all three and is a disappointment on them all. The flow of the story is disjoint -- Events are described and then dropped before completing the topic. It is as if we are reading the Breen's notes rather than his analysis of them. There is lots of good material here but he definitely need a better editor.
January 23, 2024
This is a book which makes sense of a big piece of 20th century history.
By the 1950s there were four groups of people who were interested in experimenting with LSD.
1. Margeret Mead and other anthropologist, social scientist types. They were interested in the possibility of expanding consciousness. They hoped Americans, in particular, could learn to live in a different world view, or at least learn to consider that there were other world views.
2. Scientist and doctors who believed either that LSD mimicked schizophrenia and/or psychosis so it could help study those conditions or LSD could provide a cure to serious mental illnesses.
3. The military and the CIA. They thought LSD might be used for brainwashing, interrogation, or as a chemical weapon. They were also convinced that the Russians were doing the same kind of research and they needed to keep up.
4. The believers who were convinced that widespread LSD use would "speed up evolution" or "end the cold war". Timothy Leary started as a scientist and became the most well-known believer.
In this book Breen does an amazing job of tracing LSD research from the 1940s up to 1980 by tracing the connections, battles, overlapping and confusion among those four groups.
The most important theme is that LSD research, for the first twenty years, was run by the CIA and military intelligence. All four groups interested in LSD worked at various institutes and laboratories that were funded, often covertly, by the Government. And "much of the agency's work with psychedelics was a toxic mishmash of amateurism, unchecked megalomania, and simple incompetence."
Margeret Mead was the most well-known living scientist in America in the 1950s. She had a deep complicated relationship with the CIA and the secret LSD research. She had a senior CIA agent/friend living in her basement. As Breen says, "it is not much of an exaggeration to say that Mead, in 1951, was positively surrounded by spooks." She was uncomfortable with her connections with the CIA and its LSD research and tried hard to cover it up. By the 1960s she began to have doubts about the positive uses of LSD.
Gregory Bateson was Mead's second husband. He is known for the "double bind" theory of family dynamics. In the 1960s he became a new age guru. Breen does not give a flattering picture of Bateson. He was obsessed with becoming a famous scientist and dabbled in multiple fields to try to make an impression. He was heavily involved with military LSD research. Although obsessed with being a famous scientist, he almost never used the scientific method. He favored informed speculation. Bateson used and advocated LSD.
Timothy Leary seems to have been an irresponsible egomaniac. He was personally dishonest. He stole scientific credit from others. He abandoned science to become a celebrity preacher for LSD. He refused to acknowledge the risks of LSD.
Breen does a wonderful job telling this story. He has a large cast and a big story, and he manages to piece it all together. He has done a huge of amount of research in primary documents but has worked it into a coherent story.
The book is full of surprising nuggets.
In 1959 Claire Booth Luce, the Republican grand dame, was on her first acid trip when Richard Nixon called her for political advice. She decided to call back.
John C. Lilly, who was famous for claiming he could talk to dolphins, experimented with giving LSD to dolphins. It did not end well.
Leo Rosten, the author of the bestselling humor book, "The Joy of Yiddish", was Margeret Mead's brother-in-law. It did not end well. Her sister committed suicide.
In 1967 G. W. Bush took a class from Margeret Mead at Yale. He got a B-, the highest grade he ever earned.
William Wilson, the "Bill W" of Alcoholics Anonymous, tried LSD at a lab and considered whether taking the drug should a new "thirteenth step".
Allan Ginsberg comes off as a surprising voice of reason. He kept saying that he couldn't shake the sense that LSD "had something to do with the Cold War.
The book makes sense of a very complicated and important story. Breen is an excellent writer on a sentence-by-sentence basis, and he knows how to organize a very complicated story. It gives a new angle for looking a big chunk of history.
By the 1950s there were four groups of people who were interested in experimenting with LSD.
1. Margeret Mead and other anthropologist, social scientist types. They were interested in the possibility of expanding consciousness. They hoped Americans, in particular, could learn to live in a different world view, or at least learn to consider that there were other world views.
2. Scientist and doctors who believed either that LSD mimicked schizophrenia and/or psychosis so it could help study those conditions or LSD could provide a cure to serious mental illnesses.
3. The military and the CIA. They thought LSD might be used for brainwashing, interrogation, or as a chemical weapon. They were also convinced that the Russians were doing the same kind of research and they needed to keep up.
4. The believers who were convinced that widespread LSD use would "speed up evolution" or "end the cold war". Timothy Leary started as a scientist and became the most well-known believer.
In this book Breen does an amazing job of tracing LSD research from the 1940s up to 1980 by tracing the connections, battles, overlapping and confusion among those four groups.
The most important theme is that LSD research, for the first twenty years, was run by the CIA and military intelligence. All four groups interested in LSD worked at various institutes and laboratories that were funded, often covertly, by the Government. And "much of the agency's work with psychedelics was a toxic mishmash of amateurism, unchecked megalomania, and simple incompetence."
Margeret Mead was the most well-known living scientist in America in the 1950s. She had a deep complicated relationship with the CIA and the secret LSD research. She had a senior CIA agent/friend living in her basement. As Breen says, "it is not much of an exaggeration to say that Mead, in 1951, was positively surrounded by spooks." She was uncomfortable with her connections with the CIA and its LSD research and tried hard to cover it up. By the 1960s she began to have doubts about the positive uses of LSD.
Gregory Bateson was Mead's second husband. He is known for the "double bind" theory of family dynamics. In the 1960s he became a new age guru. Breen does not give a flattering picture of Bateson. He was obsessed with becoming a famous scientist and dabbled in multiple fields to try to make an impression. He was heavily involved with military LSD research. Although obsessed with being a famous scientist, he almost never used the scientific method. He favored informed speculation. Bateson used and advocated LSD.
Timothy Leary seems to have been an irresponsible egomaniac. He was personally dishonest. He stole scientific credit from others. He abandoned science to become a celebrity preacher for LSD. He refused to acknowledge the risks of LSD.
Breen does a wonderful job telling this story. He has a large cast and a big story, and he manages to piece it all together. He has done a huge of amount of research in primary documents but has worked it into a coherent story.
The book is full of surprising nuggets.
In 1959 Claire Booth Luce, the Republican grand dame, was on her first acid trip when Richard Nixon called her for political advice. She decided to call back.
John C. Lilly, who was famous for claiming he could talk to dolphins, experimented with giving LSD to dolphins. It did not end well.
Leo Rosten, the author of the bestselling humor book, "The Joy of Yiddish", was Margeret Mead's brother-in-law. It did not end well. Her sister committed suicide.
In 1967 G. W. Bush took a class from Margeret Mead at Yale. He got a B-, the highest grade he ever earned.
William Wilson, the "Bill W" of Alcoholics Anonymous, tried LSD at a lab and considered whether taking the drug should a new "thirteenth step".
Allan Ginsberg comes off as a surprising voice of reason. He kept saying that he couldn't shake the sense that LSD "had something to do with the Cold War.
The book makes sense of a very complicated and important story. Breen is an excellent writer on a sentence-by-sentence basis, and he knows how to organize a very complicated story. It gives a new angle for looking a big chunk of history.
November 5, 2023
My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Grand Central Publishing for an advance copy of this book that takes a new look at the history of psychedelic s in America, both in study and in use and where things started to go wrong, hindering research and acceptance for decades.
There have been quite a few books, Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind, Johann Hari's Lost Connections and Psychedelics by Professor David Nutt of England, that look at the treament of mental issues with drugs that have been banned since the 60's. Psychedelics have been demonized by both the press, for readership and or clicks, and government and religious groups for the expanded mind that might follow. There are risks of course, but both risks and benefits have been stymied be the fact that these drugs have been banned almost all over ther world, making research difficult if not impossible. Explaining to donors, hey I want to have people try LSD for depression, or for PTSD, well that is a way to lose funding in a few simple words. This wasn't always the case. Before the turn on, tune in drop out crowd pretty much ruined everything, psychedelics were used in treatment by lots of people, and by governments on lots of people without their permission. And some of this had been going on for years, before the summer of love was even a thought. Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science, by writer and historian Benjamin Breen is a look at the efforts or post-war intellectuals to try and bring a change of mind to the people of the world, some for good, and some in the interest of patriotism and of course, as William S. Burroughs always said, control.
The book begins with a look at psychedelic studies by focusing first on the efforts of two anthropologists, before the rise of the beats, hippies and Timothy Leary. Margaret Mead was a woman very sure of herself, who lived life the way she wanted it. Gregory Bateson was English, and had already lost two brothers, one to war, another to suicide, when he and Mead crossed paths doing research, and fell in love. World War II changed both of them. Mead wanting to try and find away to open people's mind to the world around them, and changing the eventual destruction she saw. Bateson was more pessimistic after his wartime work for the OSS. Bateson saw that the next war was going to not just physical, but mental, and that a new organization would be needed to deal with both propaganda, but the battle for the hearts and minds. This was fine with the government who was actively seeking ways to influence spies, soldiers, and citizens, even in their own country. This led to a rise of interest in LSD, mescaline and other drugs, for solutions to both the cold war, and for what the cold war was doing to the people.
A very different history on psychedelic history, going back much further than most books do. I knew that Margaret Mead had some influence in a lot of mind altering works, but I knew nothing about her husband Gregory Bateson, nor many of the other artists named in the book. Breen has written a fascinating history, about the post-war world, science, espionage, and the arts, with dips into the weirder world of dolphin's being doses with LSD, the MK-Ultra program, and even Cary Grant. Breen is very good at explaining things, from Mead's work in New Guinea, to post-war relations, to the various intellectual groups that arose around these people. A very solid history and a new way of looking at where things started to go wrong.
Recommended for people interested in the lesser known history of the United States, the drug war, and why psychedelics became so demonized. I can't imagine a time where one could watch a person on a drug trip on regular tv, which is documented in this book. A very interesting history of dark time in the American psyche, which has sadly only become worse.
There have been quite a few books, Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind, Johann Hari's Lost Connections and Psychedelics by Professor David Nutt of England, that look at the treament of mental issues with drugs that have been banned since the 60's. Psychedelics have been demonized by both the press, for readership and or clicks, and government and religious groups for the expanded mind that might follow. There are risks of course, but both risks and benefits have been stymied be the fact that these drugs have been banned almost all over ther world, making research difficult if not impossible. Explaining to donors, hey I want to have people try LSD for depression, or for PTSD, well that is a way to lose funding in a few simple words. This wasn't always the case. Before the turn on, tune in drop out crowd pretty much ruined everything, psychedelics were used in treatment by lots of people, and by governments on lots of people without their permission. And some of this had been going on for years, before the summer of love was even a thought. Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science, by writer and historian Benjamin Breen is a look at the efforts or post-war intellectuals to try and bring a change of mind to the people of the world, some for good, and some in the interest of patriotism and of course, as William S. Burroughs always said, control.
The book begins with a look at psychedelic studies by focusing first on the efforts of two anthropologists, before the rise of the beats, hippies and Timothy Leary. Margaret Mead was a woman very sure of herself, who lived life the way she wanted it. Gregory Bateson was English, and had already lost two brothers, one to war, another to suicide, when he and Mead crossed paths doing research, and fell in love. World War II changed both of them. Mead wanting to try and find away to open people's mind to the world around them, and changing the eventual destruction she saw. Bateson was more pessimistic after his wartime work for the OSS. Bateson saw that the next war was going to not just physical, but mental, and that a new organization would be needed to deal with both propaganda, but the battle for the hearts and minds. This was fine with the government who was actively seeking ways to influence spies, soldiers, and citizens, even in their own country. This led to a rise of interest in LSD, mescaline and other drugs, for solutions to both the cold war, and for what the cold war was doing to the people.
A very different history on psychedelic history, going back much further than most books do. I knew that Margaret Mead had some influence in a lot of mind altering works, but I knew nothing about her husband Gregory Bateson, nor many of the other artists named in the book. Breen has written a fascinating history, about the post-war world, science, espionage, and the arts, with dips into the weirder world of dolphin's being doses with LSD, the MK-Ultra program, and even Cary Grant. Breen is very good at explaining things, from Mead's work in New Guinea, to post-war relations, to the various intellectual groups that arose around these people. A very solid history and a new way of looking at where things started to go wrong.
Recommended for people interested in the lesser known history of the United States, the drug war, and why psychedelics became so demonized. I can't imagine a time where one could watch a person on a drug trip on regular tv, which is documented in this book. A very interesting history of dark time in the American psyche, which has sadly only become worse.
January 25, 2024
It is unreal, like if the author has taken a trip himself, an insidious trip toward where? I can't figure out where the author is going with this, apart from boosting his own position, but really? Did he think he would get away with it? The writer knows that what he has written is an enormous amount of misleading decontextualised manipulated twisted information, and a lot of insidious plotting… The theme of the book is really trendy, backed up with ‘scientific research’ in a very understandable language for the mainstream public… I think propaganda could be the subtitle of this book. and the book is getting reviewed with 5 stars… It might become a bestseller, who knows. The publisher must be rubbing his hands!
I could go on, but I think I would share here the answer to the article on the NYT, and by doing so to the actual book, from those who are the custodians of the works of Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead...
________________________
We will make a more inspired response, but for now, let's get this out.
This letter is from a group of Bateson Scholars & custodians of Gregory Bateson’s work, to address the errors in the New York Times story by Charlotte Shane on Jan 16th, 2024, "Could LSD Have Achieved World Peace? Ask Margaret Mead."
_____
Some Things Are Not Spectacular
In this era of conspiracy theory & fake news, it is imperative that scholars & journalists are held accountable when they generate manipulations of history. The falsehoods in Benjamin Breen’s book Tripping on Utopia are a distraction from the critical & relevant work of Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead.
Like the book, Shane’s review is caught in a web of errors & insinuations. Mr. Breen’s book is full of misrepresentation and misdirection — collating bits of documentary material w/ suggestive prose & insinuating larger patterns that simply did not exist. The book implies that Gregory Bateson & Margaret Mead, who each made immense contributions to our understanding of society, biology, evolution, & ecology, were intensely focused on LSD and mind-altering procedures & were the central characters in the early use of psychedelics toward psychological control for “unconventional” warfare. This is fantastically misleading. To suggest that the core work of Gregory or Margaret was focused on psychedelics is to neglect the hundreds of projects they spent their lives working on.
Bateson was clear to his students & colleagues that LSD was not intellectually interesting to him. He had three experiences with LSD, but his reaction to those experiences was — “that was a really interesting afternoon, but it’s an experience that you can have again for a dollar.”
A few specifics: Breen omits how Bateson left his subordinate position at Lilly’s lab after only 15 months due to Lilly’s conduct there. The document purporting to describe interrogation techniques seems to have been an exercise in anthropological role-playing, not mind control; no soldiers were present. The Macy conferences (1946-1961) founded cybernetics & helped develop modern information theory; their prime emphasis was not psychedelics, as Breen leads us to believe.
There is irony in the publication of this book, which manipulates information about two of the early contributors to information & communication theory, who warned the world many decades ago of the dangers of decontextualized manipulated information, social engineering, & propaganda.
Research that is selectively delivered & placed next to other information to insinuate a particular angle of a story is exactly the sort of thing Margaret Mead & Gregory Bateson were trying to stop in the face of fascism & eugenics. Their placement by Breen in the vicinity of CIA & psychedelic research scandals risks making them scapegoats for misdeeds of acquaintances and social forces much bigger than themselves.
— Nora Bateson, Stephen Nachmanovitch, Phillip Guddemi, Sevanne Kassarjian,(Custodian: Mead's work)
I could go on, but I think I would share here the answer to the article on the NYT, and by doing so to the actual book, from those who are the custodians of the works of Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead...
________________________
We will make a more inspired response, but for now, let's get this out.
This letter is from a group of Bateson Scholars & custodians of Gregory Bateson’s work, to address the errors in the New York Times story by Charlotte Shane on Jan 16th, 2024, "Could LSD Have Achieved World Peace? Ask Margaret Mead."
_____
Some Things Are Not Spectacular
In this era of conspiracy theory & fake news, it is imperative that scholars & journalists are held accountable when they generate manipulations of history. The falsehoods in Benjamin Breen’s book Tripping on Utopia are a distraction from the critical & relevant work of Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead.
Like the book, Shane’s review is caught in a web of errors & insinuations. Mr. Breen’s book is full of misrepresentation and misdirection — collating bits of documentary material w/ suggestive prose & insinuating larger patterns that simply did not exist. The book implies that Gregory Bateson & Margaret Mead, who each made immense contributions to our understanding of society, biology, evolution, & ecology, were intensely focused on LSD and mind-altering procedures & were the central characters in the early use of psychedelics toward psychological control for “unconventional” warfare. This is fantastically misleading. To suggest that the core work of Gregory or Margaret was focused on psychedelics is to neglect the hundreds of projects they spent their lives working on.
Bateson was clear to his students & colleagues that LSD was not intellectually interesting to him. He had three experiences with LSD, but his reaction to those experiences was — “that was a really interesting afternoon, but it’s an experience that you can have again for a dollar.”
A few specifics: Breen omits how Bateson left his subordinate position at Lilly’s lab after only 15 months due to Lilly’s conduct there. The document purporting to describe interrogation techniques seems to have been an exercise in anthropological role-playing, not mind control; no soldiers were present. The Macy conferences (1946-1961) founded cybernetics & helped develop modern information theory; their prime emphasis was not psychedelics, as Breen leads us to believe.
There is irony in the publication of this book, which manipulates information about two of the early contributors to information & communication theory, who warned the world many decades ago of the dangers of decontextualized manipulated information, social engineering, & propaganda.
Research that is selectively delivered & placed next to other information to insinuate a particular angle of a story is exactly the sort of thing Margaret Mead & Gregory Bateson were trying to stop in the face of fascism & eugenics. Their placement by Breen in the vicinity of CIA & psychedelic research scandals risks making them scapegoats for misdeeds of acquaintances and social forces much bigger than themselves.
— Nora Bateson, Stephen Nachmanovitch, Phillip Guddemi, Sevanne Kassarjian,(Custodian: Mead's work)
May 31, 2024
I found this book curious and not in a good way. First of all, I think it was too short. I understand wanting to make your book marketable and not have it be 600 pages long. But it jumped from topic to topic and through historical time with such rapidity, that I didn't feel it gave full explanation to many things that needed more backstory. For example, he referenced the MK ULTRA program many times without giving it the thorough grounding and backstory about what occurred in that program that it needed. I know a little bit about the program from other sources, but had I not had that small amount of outside knowledge, I probably would have been left very unclear about what was involved in that program. The sheer number of names that popped in and out of the story and weren't fully explored was frustrating, it was like he wanted to name drop all these famous people that knew each other without fleshing out their stories more. But most curious of all, I found the alleged central character of the book, Margaret Mead, as utterly baffling and mystifying after supposedly reading 300 pages about her than I did before. I only had a vague outline in my head of "Margaret Mead: famous anthropologist" before I read this book. And honestly, after I've read this book, that's about the same place I'm at with her. First of all, I think Gregory Bateson seems more like the true main character of this book than Margaret Mead, but since no one knows who that is, likely the publishers wanted Mead's name in the title. But even if we assume Mead is the central character, I found her to be not fleshed out by this book at all. Aside from the beginning sections of the book, thereafter, she only popped up every 15-20 pages or so, and then doing some completely random new thing that wasn't explained in the overall structure of her academic inquiry and interests. "Here's Margaret Mead living in the jungle in Bali. On, now here's Margaret Mead, she's back, and she's writing a book about sex and gender. Here's Mead, she's back, and she has a vague interest that she wrote about one time in LSD. Oh, Mead's back again and now she's writing a book about Russia, or lecturing on space." I mean - what? I think the book either should have been an in-depth look into the intelligence community's use and research into LSD (I found the connections on this topic throughout the book to be extremely superficially explained), OR an in-depth bio of Mead or Mead and Bateson. But it was neither. And ultimately, it came up short in all respects. I was bored because the book was moving SO fast (chronologically) that I didn't have time to get interested or invested in any one topic enough before he moved on to something new, "Let me tell you now about the psychiatrist doling out pills to Marilyn Monroe who you'll never hear about ever again in this book!" He tried to cover too much ground in too few pages, and it wasn't in-depth enough for me to feel like I could fully understand the connections between any of it well and deeply.
January 23, 2024
It was astounding to see how poorly researched and misleading this book is. Fragments of evidence taken out of context, to picture a grand narrative of Mead and Bateson's work as if it was centered on psychedelics, when it was absolutely not.
if you are interested in a completely different perspective that corrects the factual falsehoods in this book, be on the lookout for blog posts and press releases from Nora Bateson and the Bateson Institute.
I take the liberty of posting the reply by Nora Bateson here below, which is a response to both the book and the review published in the New York Times. Below starts a long quote
----
Quoted Response by Bateson et al.
Mr. Breen’s book is full of misrepresentation and misdirection — collating bits of documentary material w/ suggestive prose & insinuating larger patterns that simply did not exist. The book implies that Gregory Bateson & Margaret Mead, who each made immense contributions to our understanding of society, biology, evolution, & ecology, were intensely focused on LSD and mind-altering procedures & were the central characters in the early use of psychedelics toward psychological control for “unconventional” warfare. This is fantastically misleading. To suggest that the core work of Gregory or Margaret was focused on psychedelics is to neglect the hundreds of projects they spent their lives working on.
Bateson was clear to his students & colleagues that LSD was not intellectually interesting to him. He had three experiences with LSD, but his reaction to those experiences was — “that was a really interesting afternoon, but it’s an experience that you can have again for a dollar.”
A few specifics: Breen omits how Bateson left his subordinate position at Lilly’s lab after only 15 months due to Lilly’s conduct there. The document purporting to describe interrogation techniques seems to have been an exercise in anthropological role-playing, not mind control; no soldiers were present. The Macy conferences (1946-1961) founded cybernetics & helped develop modern information theory; their prime emphasis was not psychedelics, as Breen leads us to believe.
There is irony in the publication of this book, which manipulates information about two of the early contributors to information & communication theory, who warned the world many decades ago of the dangers of decontextualized manipulated information, social engineering, & propaganda.
Research that is selectively delivered & placed next to other information to insinuate a particular angle of a story is exactly the sort of thing Margaret Mead & Gregory Bateson were trying to stop in the face of fascism & eugenics. Their placement by Breen in the vicinity of CIA & psychedelic research scandals risks making them scapegoats for misdeeds of acquaintances and social forces much bigger than themselves.
— Nora Bateson, Stephen Nachmanovitch, Phillip Guddemi,
Sevanne Kassarjian,(Custodian: Mead's work)
if you are interested in a completely different perspective that corrects the factual falsehoods in this book, be on the lookout for blog posts and press releases from Nora Bateson and the Bateson Institute.
I take the liberty of posting the reply by Nora Bateson here below, which is a response to both the book and the review published in the New York Times. Below starts a long quote
----
Quoted Response by Bateson et al.
Mr. Breen’s book is full of misrepresentation and misdirection — collating bits of documentary material w/ suggestive prose & insinuating larger patterns that simply did not exist. The book implies that Gregory Bateson & Margaret Mead, who each made immense contributions to our understanding of society, biology, evolution, & ecology, were intensely focused on LSD and mind-altering procedures & were the central characters in the early use of psychedelics toward psychological control for “unconventional” warfare. This is fantastically misleading. To suggest that the core work of Gregory or Margaret was focused on psychedelics is to neglect the hundreds of projects they spent their lives working on.
Bateson was clear to his students & colleagues that LSD was not intellectually interesting to him. He had three experiences with LSD, but his reaction to those experiences was — “that was a really interesting afternoon, but it’s an experience that you can have again for a dollar.”
A few specifics: Breen omits how Bateson left his subordinate position at Lilly’s lab after only 15 months due to Lilly’s conduct there. The document purporting to describe interrogation techniques seems to have been an exercise in anthropological role-playing, not mind control; no soldiers were present. The Macy conferences (1946-1961) founded cybernetics & helped develop modern information theory; their prime emphasis was not psychedelics, as Breen leads us to believe.
There is irony in the publication of this book, which manipulates information about two of the early contributors to information & communication theory, who warned the world many decades ago of the dangers of decontextualized manipulated information, social engineering, & propaganda.
Research that is selectively delivered & placed next to other information to insinuate a particular angle of a story is exactly the sort of thing Margaret Mead & Gregory Bateson were trying to stop in the face of fascism & eugenics. Their placement by Breen in the vicinity of CIA & psychedelic research scandals risks making them scapegoats for misdeeds of acquaintances and social forces much bigger than themselves.
— Nora Bateson, Stephen Nachmanovitch, Phillip Guddemi,
Sevanne Kassarjian,(Custodian: Mead's work)
February 14, 2024
Real Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: A bold and brilliant revisionist take on the history of psychedelics in the twentieth century, illuminating how a culture of experimental drugs shaped the Cold War and the birth of Silicon Valley.
"It was not the Baby Boomers who ushered in the first era of widespread drug experimentation. It was their parents." Far from the repressed traditionalists they are often painted as, the generation that survived the second World War emerged with a profoundly ambitious sense of social experimentation. In the '40s and '50s, transformative drugs rapidly entered mainstream culture, where they were not only legal, but openly celebrated.
American physician John C. Lilly infamously dosed dolphins (and himself) with LSD in a NASA-funded effort to teach dolphins to talk. A tripping Cary Grant mumbled into a Dictaphone about Hegel as astronaut John Glenn returned to Earth. At the center of this revolution were the pioneering anthropologists—and star-crossed lovers—Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Convinced the world was headed toward certain disaster, Mead and Bateson made it their life’s mission to reshape humanity through a new science of consciousness expansion, but soon found themselves at odds with the government bodies who funded their work, whose intentions were less than pure. Mead and Bateson's partnership unlocks an untold chapter in the history of the twentieth century, linking drug researchers with CIA agents, outsider sexologists, and the founders of the Information Age.
As we follow Mead and Bateson’s fractured love affair from the malarial jungles of New Guinea to the temples of Bali, from the espionage of WWII to the scientific revolutions of the Cold War, a new origin story for psychedelic science emerges.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: What a complete clusterfuck the right wingnuts made of the 20th century. There were glimmers of a better, more open world that could have been...then the generals and religious nuts got hold of it, and choked it into the pale, selfish idiocy of the New Age.
What did not work for me was the sense that Mead and Bateson were ciphers...what about them made them worth setting at the center of a book, I do not know, because it felt like they were not there. The research, and its aims, are very interesting. The opponents to the use of this research are more carefully, and luckily damningly, limned than the people whose names are on the jacket.
Interesting story with a weird hollow at its core, yet still worth reading for the facts you are very likely not to have known before regarding the US attitudes towards psychedelic drugs and their theraputic uses. A story steeped in tragedy for cures and benefits lost.
The Publisher Says: A bold and brilliant revisionist take on the history of psychedelics in the twentieth century, illuminating how a culture of experimental drugs shaped the Cold War and the birth of Silicon Valley.
"It was not the Baby Boomers who ushered in the first era of widespread drug experimentation. It was their parents." Far from the repressed traditionalists they are often painted as, the generation that survived the second World War emerged with a profoundly ambitious sense of social experimentation. In the '40s and '50s, transformative drugs rapidly entered mainstream culture, where they were not only legal, but openly celebrated.
American physician John C. Lilly infamously dosed dolphins (and himself) with LSD in a NASA-funded effort to teach dolphins to talk. A tripping Cary Grant mumbled into a Dictaphone about Hegel as astronaut John Glenn returned to Earth. At the center of this revolution were the pioneering anthropologists—and star-crossed lovers—Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Convinced the world was headed toward certain disaster, Mead and Bateson made it their life’s mission to reshape humanity through a new science of consciousness expansion, but soon found themselves at odds with the government bodies who funded their work, whose intentions were less than pure. Mead and Bateson's partnership unlocks an untold chapter in the history of the twentieth century, linking drug researchers with CIA agents, outsider sexologists, and the founders of the Information Age.
As we follow Mead and Bateson’s fractured love affair from the malarial jungles of New Guinea to the temples of Bali, from the espionage of WWII to the scientific revolutions of the Cold War, a new origin story for psychedelic science emerges.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: What a complete clusterfuck the right wingnuts made of the 20th century. There were glimmers of a better, more open world that could have been...then the generals and religious nuts got hold of it, and choked it into the pale, selfish idiocy of the New Age.
What did not work for me was the sense that Mead and Bateson were ciphers...what about them made them worth setting at the center of a book, I do not know, because it felt like they were not there. The research, and its aims, are very interesting. The opponents to the use of this research are more carefully, and luckily damningly, limned than the people whose names are on the jacket.
Interesting story with a weird hollow at its core, yet still worth reading for the facts you are very likely not to have known before regarding the US attitudes towards psychedelic drugs and their theraputic uses. A story steeped in tragedy for cures and benefits lost.
March 19, 2024
Fascinating story, well told, of the state of psychiatric research and practice in psychedelic drugs (primarily LSD and psilocybin mushrooms) from the 1940s and ’50s (when the drugs were legal though restricted, were the subject of live television shows of actual dosings of subjects, and received positive news coverage in news magazines like Look, Time, and Life) until the 1960s, when a Pied-Piperish Timothy Leary turned the field in new directions away from serious psychiatry and social thought toward what we associate now with a pleasure-seeking counterculture. In the earlier decades the field was dominated by sober-minded physicians, psychiatrists, laboratory personnel at drug companies, intellectuals and thoughtful social analysts, and government agency personnel (primarily national security related, such as intelligence and the military—hence the mention of the Cold War in the title), though this population also had its share of colorful characters, conflicted personalities, and charlatans. Margaret Mead is in the title for her intellectual contributions to the idea of new orders of thinking to reorganize humanity to save itself from nuclear extinction (many thought psychedelics could make a positive contribution toward such reorganization) and also her association with Gregory Bateson, her partner in her early anthropological research in the South Pacific and later husband, who remained in the forefront of the movement to accept and advance psychedelic science for many years. (She might also be in the title for the widespread name recognition she still has today, which none of the other involved personalities have, with Leary a possible exception. Mead apparently never tripped, not wanting, in the McCarthy era, to receive attention to possibly controversial behaviors, including bisexual relationships.) The place of this relatively narrow focus within the larger historical context of national and world events and political, social, and cultural movements of the times is very well detailed—the atmospheres and spirts of the events and movements come through clearly.
February 11, 2024
While there is a lot of strange, fascinating information herein (dolphins tragically dosed with LSD, the CIA experimenting with psychedelics as potential Cold War truth serums, Timothy Leary's shenanigans, and more), I came away from reading this book feeling that I really learned very little about Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson AS PEOPLE. This is unfortunate because they obviously had an enormous effect upon their fields, their colleagues, and their friends.
For example, we learn that Mead is in the midst of important collaborations with the Macy Group, the Government , and Academia at the same time as having a new baby. Her husband has gone to England. There is absolutely no explanation of her childcare arrangements or her feelings during this time. I would really have liked to know how she seemed to blithely proceed with her various professional pursuits with a new baby.
There are hints or suggestions throughout the book about Bateson's family baggage after losing his two brothers. There is also reference to his philosophies and goals for humanity which he hoped to affect through exposure of society to psychedelics. But no real details.
I got no facts to explain why he was apparently so revered by so many.
This book raised more questions than it answered.
Still, an intriguing subject matter.
For example, we learn that Mead is in the midst of important collaborations with the Macy Group, the Government , and Academia at the same time as having a new baby. Her husband has gone to England. There is absolutely no explanation of her childcare arrangements or her feelings during this time. I would really have liked to know how she seemed to blithely proceed with her various professional pursuits with a new baby.
There are hints or suggestions throughout the book about Bateson's family baggage after losing his two brothers. There is also reference to his philosophies and goals for humanity which he hoped to affect through exposure of society to psychedelics. But no real details.
I got no facts to explain why he was apparently so revered by so many.
This book raised more questions than it answered.
Still, an intriguing subject matter.
Read
May 21, 2024addressing the hand that the oss/cia had to play in the beginnings of psychedelic science post-ww2, and how a good thing can be turned so horribly bad. much of this is depressing. 2 utopians gain awareness of culture and taboo, seeking to create a more perfect future through the collaboration of brilliant minds, instead they all become complicit in the workings of a monster, and are forced to take their secrets to the grave. reminds me of themes from Lem, the dark spirit of exhaustive manic exploration. still, god bless margaret mead.
“[Bateson]…the old man at his birthday party at Esalen, surrounded by well-meaning sycophants, crying quietly and saying to himself, ‘It is so sad; it is so, so sad,’ amid the claims of achievement and meaning that he himself could never accept as true.”
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea”
(t.s. eliot)
“[Bateson]…the old man at his birthday party at Esalen, surrounded by well-meaning sycophants, crying quietly and saying to himself, ‘It is so sad; it is so, so sad,’ amid the claims of achievement and meaning that he himself could never accept as true.”
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea”
(t.s. eliot)
April 19, 2024
The best part of this book is when you learn that the TV producers and the entire diving team for both Sea Hunt and Flipper were completely off their nards on LSD for the duration of production.
Every other story in this book involving dolphins is horrific.
It is worth remembering that Silicon Valley and its attendant techno-utopian ideology grew from the very same soil that these spooks and ghouls cultivated and watered from their poisoned well. Largely barefoot bros (with the noteworthy exception of Mead, who is a magnificent case study in the contradictions inherent in well-intended elites), preaching revolutions in consciousness and utopia while secretly and systematically perpetrating unconscionable horrors against society’s most vulnerable populations. All in the name of using magic and drugs to win the Cold War.
Overall an object lesson in why the ruling class can’t be trusted to build the utopias that their privilege affords them the time and resources to cook up.
Every other story in this book involving dolphins is horrific.
It is worth remembering that Silicon Valley and its attendant techno-utopian ideology grew from the very same soil that these spooks and ghouls cultivated and watered from their poisoned well. Largely barefoot bros (with the noteworthy exception of Mead, who is a magnificent case study in the contradictions inherent in well-intended elites), preaching revolutions in consciousness and utopia while secretly and systematically perpetrating unconscionable horrors against society’s most vulnerable populations. All in the name of using magic and drugs to win the Cold War.
Overall an object lesson in why the ruling class can’t be trusted to build the utopias that their privilege affords them the time and resources to cook up.
February 5, 2024
Very much enjoyed this walk through 20th century western psychedelic drug use closely following Margaret Meade and Gregory Bateson. It’s a good introduction to both their biography and overview of their work and had a bit of overlap with ‘Gods of the Upper Air’ (Charles King) in terms of focus on Meade. The book does paint a more productive portrait of the earlier investigation and use of psychedelics as opposed to the more sordid episode once CIA involvement occurred and worse still when hacks and buffoons like Leary came into the picture and set back potential health benefits for more than a generation. There were lots of interesting tidbits (Meade granting G.W. Bush his highest grade in undergrad for one) and even the dolphin research was interesting although well trodden ground (and the author saved the reader from the dolphin sex). Overall very interesting.
February 13, 2024
Fascinating and in some cases terrible yet not too surprising (content warning: torture and coercion of humans plus animal abuse) history about 20th century anthropology and research into psychedelics.
Supposedly secondary figures in history plus a few major ones are brought into close focus regarding their work, hopes, flaws, shame, and secrets. Not a 'fast' read but doesn't drag and explains scientific and anthropological concepts well. Fascinating to see the dawn of the CIA through this lens as well as what anthropologists did in addition to studying "vanishing" cultures.
Highly recommended to adults and older teens interested in history of US anthropology, hidden corners of WWII, psychedelic science, government research and practice, and how surprising combinations of people were tied together.
Supposedly secondary figures in history plus a few major ones are brought into close focus regarding their work, hopes, flaws, shame, and secrets. Not a 'fast' read but doesn't drag and explains scientific and anthropological concepts well. Fascinating to see the dawn of the CIA through this lens as well as what anthropologists did in addition to studying "vanishing" cultures.
Highly recommended to adults and older teens interested in history of US anthropology, hidden corners of WWII, psychedelic science, government research and practice, and how surprising combinations of people were tied together.
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