Katt Williams Tells the Truth

Just for the Funk of It

From Red Ice Creations:

Scientists on Acid: The Story Behind “Changing Images of Man”
From: skilluminati.com

Sometimes it can take months for the meaning of a sentence to really sink in. It's been months since we got a PDF copy of the legendary "Changing Images of Man" document from Stanford Research Institute, and having read it through several times I feel safe saying the book exceeded my expectations. However, unpacking all the information -- especially in terms of its connections with contemporary events, then and now -- has proven to be a much larger, longer task. Consider the "alternative methodology" behind the project itself:

First, we attempted to identify and assess the plausibility of a truly vast number of future possibilities for society. We next followed a method of analysis that determined which sequences of possible futures (that is, which "alternate future histories") appeared to be the most plausible in light of human history and to most usefully serve the needs of policy research and development. Lastly, we derived a variety of policy implications, some of which dealt with how best to continue this type of inquiry.

Without the context, without knowing these people and how they work and what they talked about, it's difficult to really decipher a paragraph as apparently clear as that one. What was the "method of analysis" in the second step? They never say, but take note of the term they use in quotes: "alternate future histories."

Let me quote from Jim Keith's excellent book Mind Control, World Control, from Chapter 12, which discusses the spread of LSD and the role of OSS/CIA agent Al Hubbard:

One associate of Hubbard's was New World Order theorist Willis Harman at the Stanford Research Institute. SRI had earlier recieved grants from the US Army to research chemical incapacitants. When visited by a representative of the underground press at SRI, Harman told the man, "There's a war going on between your side and mine. And my side is not going to lose."

For the record, that "representative of the underground press" was Michael Rossman of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Anyways, according to Keith, Willis Harman hired Al Hubbard in 1968 as a "Special Investigative Agent." It's worth noting that according to Todd Brendan Fahey's classic article on Hubbard, The Original Captain Trips, Hubbard was (at least officially) hired as a security guard. It was Fahey's article that abruptly came back to me today, especially the following lines:

Hubbard was specifically assigned to the Alternative Futures Project, which performed future-oriented strategic planning for corporations and government agencies. Harman and Hubbard shared a goal "to provide the [LSD] experience to political and intellectual leaders around the world." Harman acknowledges that "Al's job was to run the special sessions for us."

Well, Boy Howdy. Of course, this is decades ago, and juxtaposed quotes are proof of nothing. But there's that weird term again, this time slightly different: "the Alternative Futures Project." When you look for a formal program by that name, you're led not to the Stanford Research Institute, but the University of Illinois, where Charles Osgood and Stuart Umpleby wrote a report entitled "A Computer-based Exploration of Alternative Futures for Mankind 2000." The report was included in the book Mankind 2000, which is full of rather disturbing quotes like this one:

"In the organization of a civilization of the future we anticipate that the individualistically-oriented man will become an anachronism. Indeed, he will be viewed as a threat to the group organization as well as to his fellow man. Hence, as stated, he in all likelihood will have few individual expectations. While such a picture may not be pleasant to comtemplate, when viewed with our present orientation and value judgement, we would be amiss to deal with unrealistic imagries that would blind us to future reality."

This kind of stuff could almost be comic relief. After all, a computer program about the future had a lot of time and money invested in it, and when they ran the program, it said the future would be a lot like a computer program. If you're not familiar with the phrase garbage in, garbage out, now is a good time to get familiar. What keeps this material from being funny is the line that comes right after the quote above, which sounds more or less exactly like the conclusion of Changing Images of Man:

The new world of the closed, automatic system will necessitate a radical change in the political, technologic, and social thinking. All too often, however, we remain bound by the conventional tenets and wisdom of past generations. The cyber-cultural revolution is changing all this.

The Alternative Futures project at the University of Illinois was funded by the same people who paid for SRI's work: the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. Kettering was big on "the vision thing" during the 60s and 70s -- they were looking everywhere to get an edge on futurism, putting a lot of money in very "out there" places

....and for what it's worth, the folks at SRI were very much out there. "Changing Images" co-author O.W. Markley left behind a very curious paper entitled "Visionary Futures" that outlines some other SRI "alternative methodologies" -- including "channeled material in the book Seth Speaks, by Jane Roberts (1972)." This is the same SRI who employed top Scientologists, Hal Puthoff and Ingo Swann, to develop their Remote Viewing program. That doesn't mean they're jackasses or something -- it means that SRI gets paid, very well, for being very much out there. It's what people depend on them for, then and now.

Channeled material, after all, is mainstream today. (Witness the bestseller success of the "Conversations with God" series.) Everyone gets weird -- hell, tomorrow we'll take a look at Zbigniew Brzezinski's hippie youth, just to prove it. Don't think for a second just because these people are gobbling LSD means they're down for the cause -- or even remotely sympathetic. Anyone exploring Changing Images of Man should bear Willis Harman's words in mind:

"There's a war going on between your side and mine. And my side is not going to lose."

So did Al Hubbard run LSD visionary sessions for the SRI staff involved with Changing Images of Man? I have no idea, only clues -- after all, Hubbard was hired the same year that the Changing Images project started: 1968. Until further documentation comes out -- or someone feels like speaking up -- there's no way of knowing.

For Further DiggingTake a look at the Erowid "Characters" page -- a valuable name base of psychedelic history. We also provide a PDF photoscan of "Changing Images of Man" for interested researchers: (30 mb PDF File) - (Visit the original article at skilluminati.com to download the pdf.)

Local Drinking Liberally Chapter Suffers at the Hands of Prohibitionists

"Total abstinence has killed thousands."


-Robert G. Ingersoll





"Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: They have completely disposed of all the favourite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished."


-H.L. Mencken

I find it difficult to believe that in the 21st century, in arguably one of the most "liberal" states in the union, prohibitionism is alive and well. As a native Chicagoan, I have never understood Minnesota's alcophobic tendencies. I would like to think that Andrew Volstead and his body-nazi ilk was just a fluke -- a mere blip on an otherwise progressive trajectory of increasing liberties and lifestyle choices embodying the true intent of this nation's founders, almost all of whom publicly and repeatedly professed their fondness for strong drink. Unfortunately, however, Volstead's ideological spawn are still running amok, extinguishing the burghers' cigarettes in their own cocktails in the name of moral rectitude.

It has taken me the better part of 14 years to come to terms with Minneapolis' irrational fear of booze. Arriving at the neighborhood liquor store on my way home from work only to find the doors locked and the lights off was a frequent occurrence. Repeatedly checking my watch and scratching my head in bewilderment that the store was closed while it was still light out must have been a source of comedy to my more acclimated cohorts. But it was no comedy to me when, yet again, my healthy beer-thirst went unslaked due to the prying concerns of the Moral Minority.

The unacceptable alternative, of course, is to piss away my hard-earned cash in some television-bedecked shithole surrounded by a sea of backward baseball caps and Coors Light ice buckets trying to make sense of Wendell Berry while slurping flat, overpriced Summit. The other, slightly less unacceptable alternative is to plan ahead and lay away a large stockpile for just these occasions. But time, money and logistics frequently foil this plan. Besides, doesn't such planning promote abusive drinking? As Harvard drug researcher, Dr. Andrew Weil observes, "the laws designed to solve the drug problem are the drug problem." The long Saturday night lines at every liquor store in town seem to illustrate this point.

As Mencken observes above, our moronic flirtation with prohibitionism has had some inadvertent benefits. Among these is the emergence of the cocktail. You see, during prohibition, many imbibers turned to less palatable forms of alcohol, which required the addition of fruit juice or soda pop just to get the stuff down one's gullet. This trend quickly spread to the "speakeasies," where drinkers attempted to conceal their consumption by disguising their drinks as cokes. So the next time some haughty European attempts to ridicule America over Prohibition, just point out that the Pimm's and Lemonade that s/he is sipping is the unlikely result of American puritanism.

Spiders on Dope