Talk:Psychedelic Culture
New Paltz is an organism. The wiki is the brain.
[edit] Salvia
The section about Salvia is currently mostly information about Salvia in general - more fitting for a WikiPedia entry. What should be of note is how, where, and by whom it is used in New Paltz and how it has shaped the community. I just saw it for sale yesterday at Kontiki - I believe the extract is sold at Liquid. President Justin Holmes 11:23, 31 August 2006 (CDT)
I started this page, and added a lot of the initial material. So far I am the only one to have worked on it.
A crucial component of the New Paltz psychedelic culture is the varying perspectives of it. If you feel that anything I have written in this article is just plain wrong, please don't hesitate to change it.
I'd like to find a way for this article to become much more than what it is - I'd like for it to contain a wide, wide array of different perspectives on this central component of our community.
So again - hack away at my writing, I won't mind at all. Justin Holmes (Senate Chair) 16:41, 8 March 2006 (CST)
I don't know if this is the right place to post this or what (I may later move it to a WikiBlog of some kind that I might start), but I've been thinking a lot lately about Hunter S. Thompson's critiques of the counter-culture, Timothy Leary, the 1960's, and how these things apply to our culture in New Paltz.
I know that a LOT of people are really into Hunter S way more than me - I've only read parts of his writings, and of course I've seen Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas quite a few times.
One thing that strikes me as a commonality between New Paltz and Thompson is "grit." Although New Paltz is unquestionably a center for psychedelic thought, it's not really a peace-love-dope hippie kind of place. New Paltz has grit. It has an edge to it that I think it lost on Leary and the 60's movement.
In contrast, however, New Paltz has a very intense optimism about itself and what we're doing here. However, it's not the same as the Haight-Ashbury (spelling?) optimism. It's not that our energy itself is somehow going to change the world, or that our mere presence means something so grand that we don't have to worry about the details.
Rather, it's a realization and affirmation of our own ability and obligation to stand in the way of elements of the world that we can't tolerate. New Paltz sees itself as an unlikely iteration of everything that is beautiful and disturbing about this world - and we are blessed with many of the same oppurtunities and plagued by many of the same problems.
I don't know where I am going with this exactly, except to say (as I often have) that I love New Paltz. I can't imagine a more exciting time or place to be alive and to study and discover myself and you all.
I really want to make this page something special, as it really is one of the most important aspects of New Paltz life. Justin Holmes (Senate Chair) 11:59, 8 March 2006 (CST)
