I have met three of the people on your psychedelic thunder dome list. John Lilly, Robert A. Wilson and Timothy Leary. This is your “6 Degrees Of Separation” Award for the week.
I worked on Lilly’s 1980’s JANUS Project in the last months before it was shutdown as the marine park where it was setup was moving. I have been involved in three different interspecies communication projects (one was JANUS) and am currently working on the fourth taking what I learned from the first three and constructing some custom design hardware for communication.
To my knowledge, LSD was given to a single dolphin a single time, this was also in the 1960’s at the St. Thomas facility, so really it’s ancient history compared to current ongoing research. You might want to read one or more of his several books on his cetacean research where he does touch on this and other subjects. He was as I recall from what I have read that he was working for the NIMH at the time and they were funding the LSD research. It was not just some haphazard research.
Communication work can be complicated, especially when working with a non-human intelligent species like cetaceans. Cetaceans have been interacting with humans for Centuries if not Millennia. To be properly done, it requires getting fully immersed in their culture and ways as anthropologists have often done before. This level of immersion has yet to be done with Cetaceans. Physical interaction/contact is a big part of Cetacean culture and there are some things that go on that the majority of humans are just not ready for, nor may not ever be ready for. There is also the problem of incorrectly interpreting responses due to cultural bias as in the case of NoC the ex-military Beluga at the National Aquarium.
Cultural differences can be a problem for a lot of people, especially when they begin to conflict with your own learned cultural beliefs/taboos and thereby press your learned cultural boundaries. Cognitive Dissonance raises its head causing further confusion/complications in the human researchers.
For example, you being from America visit Korea where during an evening meal you are presented with a meat dish consisting of Dog. Would you immerse yourself in the culture and eat the meal or would you get disgusted and refuse and therefore insult your hosts and their culture? Another though reverse example would be eating a hamburger in India.
Being intelligent, it is logical to think Cetaceans could be doing their own research on humans, pushing our boundaries and seeing what we will put up with, as they have NONE of the taboos/fears/restrictions on interaction that humans have layered upon ourselves over those same Centuries/Millennia. Nothing can compare to the thrilling experience of an Orca (Orcas are dolphins) grabbing your arm up to the elbow in its mouth and gently pulling, inviting you into the water to play, or the disappointment in not being able to accept the invitation because of restrictions due to the location. Yet despite their poor treatment in captivity it takes an incredible amount of this poor treatment to motivate them into a negative response against humans such as with Tillikum.
Humans need to accept that they are not the only intelligent species in the galaxy, or on this planet and start taking better care of it as it is our, as for all the other species here with us, ONLY home.
1) Pulling an answer out of my half-formed understanding of a decade I never lived through: I can imagine the 70's being a time where countercultural currents (psychedelics, utopianism, New Age beliefs, etc.) still connected with some last, lingering traces of faith in the competency and legitimacy of organizing or higher authorities. White, college educated (male?) writers maybe still had some lingering unconscious belief that there was someone (or something) 'up there' who knew what was going on and might actually be somewhat benevolent, or at least not actively malicious.
Of course, the subsequent decades would disabuse pretty much everyone of that idea, and indeed eviscerate the very idea that any sort of authority could be both legitimate and not actively malicious.
Would love to explore Lilly more. Not much to add, except I also recall hearing about John Lilly’s ketamine abuse relating to his death. There’s enough evidence of bladder and kidney damage from prolonged ketamine abuse, that I imagine it caused him issues. Whether those lead to his death or not, your guess is as good as mine.
I have met three of the people on your psychedelic thunder dome list. John Lilly, Robert A. Wilson and Timothy Leary. This is your “6 Degrees Of Separation” Award for the week.
I worked on Lilly’s 1980’s JANUS Project in the last months before it was shutdown as the marine park where it was setup was moving. I have been involved in three different interspecies communication projects (one was JANUS) and am currently working on the fourth taking what I learned from the first three and constructing some custom design hardware for communication.
To my knowledge, LSD was given to a single dolphin a single time, this was also in the 1960’s at the St. Thomas facility, so really it’s ancient history compared to current ongoing research. You might want to read one or more of his several books on his cetacean research where he does touch on this and other subjects. He was as I recall from what I have read that he was working for the NIMH at the time and they were funding the LSD research. It was not just some haphazard research.
Communication work can be complicated, especially when working with a non-human intelligent species like cetaceans. Cetaceans have been interacting with humans for Centuries if not Millennia. To be properly done, it requires getting fully immersed in their culture and ways as anthropologists have often done before. This level of immersion has yet to be done with Cetaceans. Physical interaction/contact is a big part of Cetacean culture and there are some things that go on that the majority of humans are just not ready for, nor may not ever be ready for. There is also the problem of incorrectly interpreting responses due to cultural bias as in the case of NoC the ex-military Beluga at the National Aquarium.
Cultural differences can be a problem for a lot of people, especially when they begin to conflict with your own learned cultural beliefs/taboos and thereby press your learned cultural boundaries. Cognitive Dissonance raises its head causing further confusion/complications in the human researchers.
For example, you being from America visit Korea where during an evening meal you are presented with a meat dish consisting of Dog. Would you immerse yourself in the culture and eat the meal or would you get disgusted and refuse and therefore insult your hosts and their culture? Another though reverse example would be eating a hamburger in India.
Being intelligent, it is logical to think Cetaceans could be doing their own research on humans, pushing our boundaries and seeing what we will put up with, as they have NONE of the taboos/fears/restrictions on interaction that humans have layered upon ourselves over those same Centuries/Millennia. Nothing can compare to the thrilling experience of an Orca (Orcas are dolphins) grabbing your arm up to the elbow in its mouth and gently pulling, inviting you into the water to play, or the disappointment in not being able to accept the invitation because of restrictions due to the location. Yet despite their poor treatment in captivity it takes an incredible amount of this poor treatment to motivate them into a negative response against humans such as with Tillikum.
Humans need to accept that they are not the only intelligent species in the galaxy, or on this planet and start taking better care of it as it is our, as for all the other species here with us, ONLY home.
I think diving into John Lilly would be a blast.
1) Pulling an answer out of my half-formed understanding of a decade I never lived through: I can imagine the 70's being a time where countercultural currents (psychedelics, utopianism, New Age beliefs, etc.) still connected with some last, lingering traces of faith in the competency and legitimacy of organizing or higher authorities. White, college educated (male?) writers maybe still had some lingering unconscious belief that there was someone (or something) 'up there' who knew what was going on and might actually be somewhat benevolent, or at least not actively malicious.
Of course, the subsequent decades would disabuse pretty much everyone of that idea, and indeed eviscerate the very idea that any sort of authority could be both legitimate and not actively malicious.
Would love to explore Lilly more. Not much to add, except I also recall hearing about John Lilly’s ketamine abuse relating to his death. There’s enough evidence of bladder and kidney damage from prolonged ketamine abuse, that I imagine it caused him issues. Whether those lead to his death or not, your guess is as good as mine.