We have Run Out of Vision
- Excerpts from Dr.
Timothy Leary’s “Neurologic”
The theories presented in this essay are Science Fiction.
Philosophy of science… PSY PHI. They are scientific in that they are based on
empirical findings from physics, physiology, pharmacology, genetics, behavioral
psychology and… most important… neurology. They are fictional in the Wittgensteinian
sense that all theories and speculations beyond the propositions of natural
science are subjective.
The cosmology and metaphysics presented in this essay are
probably the first of many new philosophies to emerge as mankind enters a new
level of maturity. The obvious fact is that we have run out of philosophy.
Science has destroyed the credibility of earlier theologies.
But science has, during this interlude, provided no substitute philosophy. The
materializations of Marx and capitalist-calvinists have produced a crude
religion of security, comfort, duty, work, responsibility… which threatens to
destroy free life on the planet and which fails to satisfy the basic aching
questions: Why? What Next? Is comfort and full employment the reason for life?
Has the genetic code labored for three billion years to settle for freeways to
the suburbs? The alienation of our affluent youth, the irrational social
disaffection of our era, the exquisite synchronicity of our technological and
neurological discoveries suggest that we are ready for a new philosophic vision
of the future.
The Anthropocentric
Horror of Science
At the time of their beginnings, perhaps religion and
science were the same… humble men and women believing that life had a meaning
known to higher intelligence and dedicated to deciphering the mysteries of
origin, life, evolution and death. The subsequent history of religion and
science reveals a depressingly regular cycle of dogmatic chauvinism/priesthoods
centering salvation and solution of the mysteries upon obedience to their own rituals
and dogmas.
The religious orthodoxy of the Middle Ages offered
immortality in the next world, while ignoring the exigencies of survival on
this planet.
Since the Renaissance, science and the rational dogma of
protestant Christianity (of which Marxism is a reactive offspring) have
centered attention on protecting and extending the life span. The State sponsors
research in physics, biology, chemistry, meteorology, geriatrics, to enhance
the security and health of the citizenry. A fortunate by-product of this
larval-circuit research is the synchronous spin-off of philosophic
implications. An organic chemist in a Basel laboratory experimenting with ergot
for a headache cure discovers LSD. Military scientists developing electronic
and cybernetic systems of surveillance and weapon control produce the circuitry
which helps us understand what happens in our nervous systems when we take LSD.
The Senility of
Gerontology
Exactly at the same time when neurogenetics is speculated as
an answer to questions about the meaning and message of the DNA code, a
menopausal government, responding to the despair of a geriatric population
twenty-one million strong, sponsors and publicizes research on gerontology (the
study of the social, psychological and biological aspects of aging).
Government funds are appropriated by elderly legislators to
research such “hot” gerontolgical issues as: “The genetic information inside
the cell, that’s where the action is,” “cellular mechanisms involved in aging,”
“decline in ability of cells to decode instructions from DNA,” “specific genes
containing programs for aging which instruct cells to function with decreased
capacity, genetic programs which run out of information like a tape that runs
off its playing reel, accumulation of errors in transmitting DNA instructions,
and so forth.
The anthropomorphic horror is this: scientists attribute
almost omnipotent wisdom to an ancient living entity (DNA) without realizing
the humbling implications of the human mind treating its creator as a
factory-managing-computer. They compound the “blasphemy” by proposing to
interfere with this process to perpetuate human life without attempting to
decode the overall plan of the genetic super-brain.
The Poverty of
Philosophy
After seven thousand years of civilization, human philosophy
and human science have not yet produced an intelligent speculation as to the
meaning of life. Is our double-brain a genetic error? Is our knowledge to be
used only to drive us more comfortably to the consecrated grave? Or do we not
have a role and a goal?
The currently accepted scientific cosmology is the “big
bang” theory which holds that our planet will be engulfed in a solar explosion
within a few billion years. However accurate the astronomy, the big bang is a
“big bust” as far as human destiny is concerned. If we attribute any prescient
wisdom to DNA we must assume that the genetic intelligence has plans for
getting Herself and Her myriad handicrafts off the planet before the fireworks.
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The preseeding (pun intended!) was a series of excerpts from
“Neurologic” written in 1973 by Timothy Leary, as transcribed to his second wife
Joanna, while Tim was incarcerated at Folsom Prison. This document is of
historical value as it demonstrates an early version of Leary’s “Eight Circuit
Model of Consciousness.” Interestingly, this early version contained seven
circuits, as opposed to his later eight circuit model. This little book is worth
checking out, as it serves as a foundation for his later work as a
futurist/optimist for cybernetics, human evolution, intelligence increase &
space migration (SMI2LE).
[1] Ludwig
Josef Johann Wittgenstein (26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an
Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of
mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.
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