Hopeful Idealism and Cynicism in Utopian Thinking

1min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Utopian thinkers face challenges in being heard today due to prevailing cynicism stemming from past misuse of ideas. A century ago, amidst the influence of Darwin's ideas, shaping humanity for the better seemed more plausible. The current generation, however, tends to harbor extreme pessimism towards the future, especially evident among university students. The historical perspective on this shift towards cynicism is crucial for understanding the evolving nature of utopian thinking.

The twentieth century was something, wasn't it? Margaret Mead, as well as her onetime-husband Gregory Bateson, managed to play roles in several of its key developments: social anthropology and its impact on sex & gender mores, psychedelic drugs and their potential use for therapeutic purposes, and the origin of cybernetics, to name a few. Benjamin Breen discusses this impactful trajectory in his new book, Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science. We talk about Mead and Bateson, the early development of psychedelic drugs, and how the possibility of a realistic utopia didn't always seem so far away.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/02/26/267-benjamin-breen-on-margaret-mead-psychedelics-and-utopia/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Benjamin Breen received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently an associate professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Among his awards are the National Endowment for the Humanities Award for Faculty and the William H. Welch Medal of the American Association for the History of Medicine. He writes on Substack at Res Obscura.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.