Carl Sagan Was A Pothead
So why did he remain such a dick on the UFO question with passages such as this?
I do not consider myself a religious person in the usual sense, but there is a religious aspect to some highs. The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with my surroundings, both animate and inanimate. Sometimes a kind of existential perception of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of myself and my fellow men. And at other times, there is a different sense of the absurd, a playful and whimsical awareness….
Perhaps the lifelong effects of cannabis and his own sense of his impending demise gave him the solace to let his guard down in his last book (The Demon-Haunted World) and at least suggest that more research was needed into reincarnation, among other things.
From Stuart Miller’s invaluable UFO Review here’s a link to the whole article. The fact is also referenced on Wikipedia and in a the biography Carl Sagan, A Life by Keay Davidson.
This also reminds me of a story a professor told in one of my college astronomy classes. She said that she had attended one of Sagan’s lectures in the 1970s and he had accidentally left his wireless microphone on during a break. After he disappeared backstage, the people who remained in the auditorium were treated to his attempts to seduce his secretary as he chased her around the green room. I’m not trying to denigrate Sagan personally, just to show he was human and wonder about his rationalist-fundamentalist stance when he seems so, well, regular and nondogmatic in other ways. I suppose it’s unfair and narrow-minded to shoehorn anyone into personality types. As old Tim Leary said, “set and setting,” right?
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Dec 31 2006 
January 2nd, 2007 at 1:14 am
As an interesting alternative perspective, here’s a blog entry by Carl’s son, Nick Sagan.
Sagan was definitely a typically flawed human, but perhaps not much more so than the rest of us.
January 2nd, 2007 at 3:04 pm
One of my lifelong heroes (not that I have many)
For a very militant atheist his Contact novel sets out his religious beliefs very well.
January 3rd, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Wow. Sagan a full-tilt stoner and Crick wins the Nobel Prize as a result of taking LSD. Terence McKenna said many times that the whole of cyberspace is a result of the hyperspace encountered via the tryptamines.
I composed this on the passing of CS:
As regards our Carl Sagan,
A hero of my youth,
Seems better he move onward
Before much longer in the tooth.
Still, he pulled me to a place beyond
Where comets are now foaming!
Smart and Brave, and flinching not,
He started me to roaming!
He fought against Doc Condon;
He stood for what was right!
He was asking pointed questions;
He stood for Truth’s bright Light!
His startup was Promethean,
He did nothing I can hate;
Then, he avoided Stanton Friedman;
He walked away from that debate.
He scoffed, and sneered, and guffawed;
He smirked at Mack’s abductions.
He made our science shallower,
And he narrowed its production.
He added to our ridicule.
He took some wrongful tacks.
Late in an elitist’s life,
Was he blind to brave new fact?
It’s the honored way of closed-off minds,
That they harden up with age?
Their part is all but over,
And they crap upon the stage!
They cannot say that they’ve been wrong,
They won’t cop to newer info;
They don’t tell you of some newfound truth,
Just *Distort* with innuendo.
History is littered here,
It’s in your own experience!
The greatest can eclipse their greatness,
And betray their own ebullience.
Like Grant before his presidency,
Or Lugosi before “Plan 9.”
Did Sagan take a low road?
Did he cover up some sign?
Did he do in fact what was accused?
Did he set our study back?
Did he prevaricate some issue?
Did he stab us in the back?
I’d prefer it not, or so I’ll remember.
As he put me at the station –
Provided passage for _this_ old man
On his starship — “Imagination.”
January 3rd, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Raven,
I read Nick Sagan’s piece on his father. Sounds like he was a great dad and a we all know he was incredibly intelligent. The fact that he would take the time to talk to anyone on some interesting subject proves that he was not in the business of promoting science for his ego.
He wanted proof of ET visitation on scientific grounds–something that was testable and repeatable. UFOs do not provide this, at least not in any way where humans have control of the parameters. What I was lamenting was that he (and most other scientists) can’t seem to step outside this paradigm. See my post on “A Reason to Consider the ETH” for a probable turning point on this issue.
January 3rd, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Tengu,
I haven’t read the novel or seen the film, but I know that Sagan had a real belief that there is other intelligent life out there.
January 3rd, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Lehmberg (Alfred?)
Thanks for sharing that great piece of poetry! The man’s religion was science, and I believe he thought that it could answer all questions, even some of those we consider religious. Nothing wrong with that, I just don’t completely agree.