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> as I can tell they didn't usher in a new age of love, peace, and tolerance. Things did improve, but of course how would you attribute it to that, and of cour

> as I can tell they didn't usher in a new age of love, peace, and tolerance. Things did improve, but of course how would you attribute it to that, and of course, how would you account for the effectiveness of the counter forces? Just because something didn't succeed completely doesn't mean we can conclude it has no effect, especially if it wasn't actually tried at the suggested scale. We have this problem in Vancouver with opioid addiction and there are some services in place but they are mostly shit and the government's overall plan is direly incomplete. Then people say "Wow, we spent money on harm reduction and still have addicts".

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slibhb 4y ago
> There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . . > And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . . > So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. That's Hunter S. Thompson on the 60s drug movement. I'm not saying it led to nothing but it certainly didn't lead where its members expected and its legacy is far from clear. I think we should continue to study these drugs. I just think there's a lot of unwarranted optimism.
- xyzzy123 4y ago
  I don't think that vibe was unique to drugs or the 60's, perhaps every generation gets that. For example, I feel the same way about the 90's Internet... It's hard to explain the optimism a lot of people felt at the time. It seemed like it could fix the world, what if everyone could just talk to each other? Couldn't we fix the misunderstandings? We were gonna route around the censorship and cryptography (not crypto...) was going to free us from The Man. State control of "the message" through TV and newspapers was over. I look at what we got and there it is, human nature staring right back at me. Anyway, what a sap.

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slibhb 4y ago

> There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . . > And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . . > So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. That's Hunter S. Thompson on the 60s drug movement. I'm not saying it led to nothing but it certainly didn't lead where its members expected and its legacy is far from clear. I think we should continue to study these drugs. I just think there's a lot of unwarranted optimism.

xyzzy123 4y ago
I don't think that vibe was unique to drugs or the 60's, perhaps every generation gets that. For example, I feel the same way about the 90's Internet... It's hard to explain the optimism a lot of people felt at the time. It seemed like it could fix the world, what if everyone could just talk to each other? Couldn't we fix the misunderstandings? We were gonna route around the censorship and cryptography (not crypto...) was going to free us from The Man. State control of "the message" through TV and newspapers was over. I look at what we got and there it is, human nature staring right back at me. Anyway, what a sap.