Customer Reviews

Neuropolitics: The Sociobiology of Human Metamorphosis

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I think it's important to remember that Leary wrote most of this book while in jail(s). He was clearly a political prisoner, in my view. His naivete and over-the-top optimism are annoying to be sure, but how would you keep your spirits up if you were in a cell just down the hall from Charles Manson? Leary later acknowledged that his obsession with space migration (a central theme of the book) was, in part, a reaction to his incarceration. He wanted to fly away, and who could blame him? The book is a decent introduction to his concept of 8 levels of cognitive processing, the "8 caliber brain," as he put it. And some of his political analysis is quite astute. The immortality pill he predicts here has certainly not been created, but a lot of progress in the study of the aging process has been made. On the whole, it's a bit of a mish-mash, and certainly not one of his better efforts. If nothing else, it's a pretty good conversation starter.

Timothy Leary, who died back in 1996, wrote in this book published in 1977 that we would have attained "immortality" or "eternal life" through scientific means by now. He even speculates that we could have pulled this off by the 1980's if we had wished hard enough. What a pile of nonsense on stilts.