4
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, December 5, 1968
Twenty-four hour spirit
The post-Thanksgiving season: lights going ablaze all over town, streetcorner Santa Clauses patiently jangling bells, children practicing Christmas carols in high voices for the grade school program.
People begin to think of going home and giving gifts and smiling at the paperboy. Despite the modern encumbrances of commerciality, unbelievable expenses, pushy salesmen, unlightable Christmas tree bulbs and Chatty Cathy dolls, the Christmas spirit starts seeping through.
And for six weeks "Love thy neighbor" and "Peace on earth" are the hallmarks.
The cartoon strip POGO, however, touched on its annual Christmas parody of the Christmas spirit last Friday with a comment by Porky, the gloomiest member of the POGO community.
Pogo was deciding to contact another mutual friend, Churchy, to start practicing Christmas carols. Then he began to muse: why did they practice the carols year after year but never seemed to learn them?
But Porky had a much more disturbing observation: "Nemmine carols! How 'bout Christmas?"
We keep practicin' that year after year . . . and we never learn."
Monday morning's news punctuated the thought.
"The South Vietnamese government announced today it will observe a 24-hour truce for Christmas."
"Peace on earth" the carols ring out and lights emblazon the message across the city skies.
The guns in Vietnam are silent for 24 hours and shoppers, loaded with packages, greet even their enemies with "Merry Christmas."
"Peace on earth" will be the fervent proclamation of countless statesmen, ministers and heads of families. Peace on earth.
It's a poignant thought to mull over before the merry yuletide spirit becomes overpowering, coating the reality that every day isn't Christmas.
Will Christmas always be a 24-hour holiday or can we learn someday how to really celebrate Christmas?
Alison Steimel Editorial Editor
Letter to the Editor
Satisfaction of involvement
To the Editor:
I am writing this in response to the letter in the Nov. 14 UDK concerning the SDS and Peoples Voice. The authors of this article stated that they supported their country right or wrong. I certainly hope this is not the view of the average student. People not only have the right but the duty to be opposed to their country's policies if they are not right. This statement is backed up by the philosophy and actions of the founders of this country. If one supports his country right or wrong than he is implicitly supporting the nationalism of the German people in World War II.
Concerning the funeral march and the demonstration at Walt's dinner—to be sure not many VFW people switched allegiance to the New Left, but for me that is not the important thing. It is a matter of personal satisfaction—the satisfaction of doing something (no matter how trivial or foolish in the eyes of others) in support of your beliefs; not just setting back, couched in indifference, until the One Great Scorer (Uncle Sam) comes to write against your name (Greetings, you are notified to report at...).
As to the harassment of the veterans, there was none—unless you consider trying to make people think an harassment. The only harassment I know of was done by a couple of people who saw fit (in all their maturity) to tear up some peace signs and yell such original and astute remarks such as “Take a bath” and “Get a haircut” to my comrades—oops, I mean my fellow peace marchers (a Freudian slip).
Most people today fail to think. For example, consider the policy of the United States in Vietnam and our supposed Christian heritage which has a commandment which says "Thou Shalt not Kill." I never
noticed an "unless," or a "however," or an "except" unless it was lost in translation or amended on by our own society (a brilliant allusion to Animal Farm!). At any rate this apparent discrepancy along with everything else without thinking.
P. S. Obviously this letter was written by one of those damn anarchists, SDS'ers, nihilists, communists, socialists, hippies, yippies, pseudo-intellectuals, etc., and henceforth can be disregarded so you can settle back down on the couch with Miss Indifference.
George A. Dugger Salina sophomore
Kannan Telephone Numbers
Newsroom—UN 4-3464 Business Office—UN 4-358
A student newspaper serving the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. Mail subscription rates: $6 a semester, $10 a year. Second class postage paid at Lawrence. Graduate school fees not offered to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of Kansas or the State Board of Regents.
Executive Staff
News Adviser George Richardson
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Managing Editor Monte Mace
Business Manager Jack Haney
Kansan book review
The acid test
Member Associated Collegiate Press
There is a current myth that the LSD prohibition is "protecting" the innocent lay public until the scientific community can amass its careful data on the current wave of psychedelics. But:
"In 1964 there were about seventy licensed investigators; in 1965, thirty-nine; in 1966, thirty-one; and currently, only sixteen."
Dr. Donald B. Louria may be as disappointed at his figures as you are, but he will not under any circumstances agree to public LSD "investigation" outside the scientific laboratory. That position, in general, indicates the dual theme of the new Wesleyan University Press publication, "LSD, Man and Society."
First, at every significant question, this collection of nine papers read at a 1967 symposium must admit that the data is still not available, that the answers are still unknown. Second, these contributing members of the psychiatric and biochemical sciences are agreed that psychedelics are too potentially dangerous for the public to seek its own answers.
Since neither half of this dual message is very enlightening, judging the value of "LSD, Man and Society" must depend either on the partial answers that are given or on the reasoning behind the general demand for prohibition.
"Additional effects were demonstrable when a fine recording electrode was introduced into the lateral geniculate body, the specific thalamic relay nucleus of the visual projection pathway to the cerebral cortex."
Most of the biochemical content of the papers of Drs. Giarman, Purpura, and Jarvik is too esoteric to benefit the lay reader. After listening to the subjective poetry with which LSD users describe their own hallucinations, it is not extremely satisfying to be told oblectively that:
On the other hand, much of the reasoning for prohibition does not seem to be objective enough. In his paper "The Abuse of LSD," Dr. Louria particularly attacks LSD proselytizers and chronic LSD users, those "acid-heads" who:
Obviously, this type of phenomenological accretion is necessary as groundwork. But to pass it off to the general public as "The facts about LSD" is ridiculous.
... engage perpetually in drug-induced orgies of introspection and are no longer constructive, active members of society. Were the numbers of such individuals to increase markedly, such a group could constitute a real threat to the functioning of our society."
Dr. Louria does not evidence much scientific detachment at such moments. The crusading zeal that has led him into public debates with LSD-proponents such as Dr. Timothy Leary would seem to render his frightened generalizations (based as he admits on almost no data) rather prejudiced.
Using his own conservative figures, we can estimate that at least 300,000 psychedelic trips have been taken by American youth. The few hundred who check in to psychiatric wards are of no practical help in guessing what "damage" this wide usage has caused.
In fact, Dr. Sidney Cohen, after examining reports on the more credible figure of 25,000 trips, concluded that:
. . . . in those instances were LSD is given to preselected individuals under proper controls with adequate screening and protection, the evidence of side effects is indeed a rarity."
Preselection, proper controls, adequate screenin$^{a}$
If we could begin, as a society, to explore the definitions of Dr. Cohen's terms—if we could examine the feasibility of incorporating them into our legal system—we might be taking the first intelligent steps to culturally absorbing psychedelics.
Of course, even with this objective data in hand, men like Dr. Louria can only suggest prohibition, and so we are entering another 1920's era of popularly-patronized Black Marketeering.
As the speakeasy influenced the manners and art of the Twenties, the "acid test" is obviously influencing current dress, painting, language, filmmaking, and perhaps even morality. (Are the love-in and the communal-living experience, for example, basically drug originated?) In neither case could total prohibition succeed.
"LSD, Man and Society" is finally a collection of little value in this critical discussion. Alternately boring and hysterical, it trades upon a mantle of scientific responsibility that it only betrays. The sad fact that there are few, if any, more rewarding studies of LSD currently in print cannot much salve our dissatisfaction with this ill-directed and uninformative book. By SCOTT NUNLEV
IN THE PAST I FAVORED DIALOGUE WITH THE ESTABLISHMENT, BELIEVING THAT IN TIME IT WOULD LEAD, THROUGH A PROCESS OF CONCESSIONS, TO A GRADUAL ACCEPTANCE OF RADICAL CHANGE THESE VIEWS NOTWITHSTANDING MY EARLY DIALOGUES WITH THE ESTABLISHMENT PROVED WHOLLY DISAPPOINTING, THE OTHER SIDE ARGUING THAT THE AIRING OF DIFFERENCES WAS PROGRESS ENOUGH, MY SIDE HOLDING OUT FOR MEANINGFUL CHANGE. FURTHER DIALOGUES LED ONLY TO FURTHER MISUNDERSTANDINGS WHICH BECAME THE
SUBJECT FOR NEW DIALOGUES DURING WHICH PREVIOUS POSITIONS WERE RESTATED AND PREVIOUS CONCESSIONS REAFFIRMED, AND ONCE MORE NOT CARRIED OUT. SINCE DIALOGUES ARE MEANT TO SERVE AS A SAFETY VALVE AGAINST VIOLENCE I WONDERED WHY THE MORE WE TALKED THE MORE I FELT BRUTALIZED, EVENTUALLY HAVING NO CHOICE BUT TO TURN IN ARTICULATE BECAUSE I WAS UNWILLING TO ADMIT THAT THE ONLY WORD I COULD THINK OF SAYING WAS : "KILL."
TO STOP TALKING IN ORDER NOT TO START KILLING. THE ESTABLISHMENT BLAMES THE COL- LAPSE OF OUR DIA- LOGUES ON A BREAKDOWN IN COM- MUNICATION.
FINALLY I WAS FORCED
FOR THEIR SAKE
I HOPE THEY DO
NOT SUCCEED IN
REESTABLISHING
CONTACT.
Dell. Probebury Hall Syndicate
LIKE MAN YKNOW.
12-1 0407 SUR ERRE