MovieChat Forums > Fail Safe (1964) Discussion > Watched it while tripping

Watched it while tripping

posted 12 years ago by brautigan-126-784250
4 replies | jump to latest

Back around 1990 someone gave me a tab of LSD one night. I took it home where "Fail-Safe" was already rented and waiting for a viewing. I decided I'd trip and watch it.

OMG.

Seriously profound experience that stays with me to this day. I realize this film isn't at all considered something in the realm of psychedelia, and of course it shouldn't be. But I can tell you the experience was brilliant and stunningly "human."

I think the main thing I came away with when all was said and done was an honest realization that these disembodied entities we call "Government Agencies," are really just made up of people who on a fundamental level are no different than anyone else. I have never looked at the office of President in the same way since, because I understand fully that there person who is sitting in that office is on an emotional level no more or less human than I am. I see the humanity in every single person I meet because of this film. I keep it to myself, but when I meet with people on even the strictest impersonal terms, I view them privately on very personal terms. When someone tells me something about their life, I listen, and I hear. I try to imagine what they tell me must be like for them. If you tell me you have a 12-year-old daughter, I will spend some time afterward thinking a bit about what are some commonalities that people with 12-year-old-daughters likely share -- what is that experience like, and how does it shape a person?

When I go to the grocery store and pay for my goods, I SEE the person standing there ringing me up. I wonder what it must be like for THEM to be on the other side of that counter. I take note of their expressions, and what they could be feeling.

I do all of these things inside myself, and no one knows that I do them. But I consider it a blessing, this cognitive empathy I feel day in and day out, and I can honestly say that it is all due to my psychedelic experience with the film "Fail Safe."

[–] cocaine-neurosis 12 years ago

Awesome post, thanks for sharing.

I agree psychedelics can have a profound effect on the mind when combined with stimulants such as movies or music. I have only used them about 7 times or so in the form of LSD when i was younger, and the cognitive wash of insight and understanding has never left me.

When you talk about the way you empathise with people and understand their motivations and emotions it makes me happy to know you are out there actively taking part in the world in this way. If only more people were like this we would progress faster to our next stage of metaphoric evolution, that is, a combined existence driven toward the benefit of all mankind.

I am humbled by your post and I regard it as a reminder to maintain my empathy with everyone I know and meet on a daily basis, and to consciously make more of an effort to involve myself with humanity in a more loving and respectful way.

Cheers! :)

[–] brendanchenowith 7 years ago

The same thing happens to me, at the supermarket and other places. These days I work with a right-winger who has no clue what I'm talking about when I bring it up. I'm glad I saw both of your posts.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.

[–] 7 years ago

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[–] jackronner (61) 4 years ago

I had a strangely similar experience while tripping. I blew into my college dorm's TV room where about 20 people were watching the scene in Rebel Without a Cause at the planetarium's end of the universe show in the planetarium. I made the best ad lib of my life when I shouted: "I hope to hell you're not watching the news!!!!"