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Hunter S. Thompson

Somehow it seems like time for an extended quote from one of my favorite authors, Hunter S. Thompson.

(Tell us Mr. Thompson, what's so funny about peace love and understanding?)

This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously. After West Point and the Priesthood, LSD must have seemed entirely logical to him ... but there is not much satisfaction in knowing that he blew it badly for himself, because he took too many others down with him.

Not that they didn't deserve it: No doubt they all Got What Was Coming To Them. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours, too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create ... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that someone — or at least some force — is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel.

-- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971

Ah, but don't worry Dr. Thompson, quite a few people have made this same mistake.