"Escaping Midnight"

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More Or Less Human

Education


In "Escaping Midnight", we sit down with Dr. Morgan Shipley- a Professor within the Department of Religious Studies at Michigan State University- to discuss the rise and popular use of psychoactive hallucinogens and their entheogenic applications in society. Focusing on the periods like the 1960s American counterculture, we explore the influence of entheogens on New Religious Movements that came out of this period, such as the Neo-American Church. We begin with a discussion on Z.C. Zahner and his later critiques of the 1960s American Counterculture and its use of such substances.    “Escaping Midnight” moderates those “Escapist” tendencies of the “Hippie” Generation as more than just a means to escape those social anxieties inherently linked to the heightened Political and Social unrest of the day. From Kennedy to Nixon, Korea to Vietnam, Woodstock to Washington, we set out to understand what Timothy Leary’s famous quote “Turn on, Tune in, and Drop Out“ really meant during this period of cultural, intellectual, and spiritual revolution. The influence of which instigated the creation of new communities, religious identities, and cultural expressions that were uniquely transgressive in the West’s relationship with entheogens and the appropriation of Eastern traditions.