Word: mansons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...account is particularly important for its detailing of the personality of Charles Manson, the alienated ex-con who held apparently total psychic control over the female commune members. She explains how Manson first won her over (by his rendition of the song, "The Shadow of Your Smile"), how Manson saw homicide as a means of instilling "fear in Man himself, Man, the Establishment," how Manson set himself up as a combination of God and Satan, how Manson sought to set off a black versus white blood-bath, how Manson established male chauvinism as one of the commune's fundamental principles...
...articles that have been written about the case, one can gradually discover some of the new issues this case raises about the use of LSD and mescaline. While, on the one hand, we know these drugs to be often conducive to psychologically peaceful and loving states of mind, the Manson commune brings home the fact that an opposite reaction is also possible...
According to Dr. David Smith, director and founder of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, Charles Manson, like many people who trip, was susceptible to prolonged periods of schizophrenia and feelings of omnipotence. But unlike middle-class college kids who trip towards "peace," Manson's background turned his trip into a journey towards "evil." Unlike students who are alienated from the Government and capitalism, Manson was alienated from everything. He had had a rough lower-middle-class upbringing (he was tossed from home to home), had spent many years in jail, had failed in an attempt to break into show business...
...Manson conceived of himself as both God and Devil-and was evidently able to convince only a certain type of drop out (mainly uneducated, homeless and delinquent girls) to accept him totally in these roles. But in the acts of ritualized murder his followers committed, Manson's role of Devil, not God, held sway...
Over the years, American writers such as Nathaniel West and Ross MacDonald have taken Southern California as a symbol for a national apocalypse to come. Now Charles Manson has given this symbol a new dimension. Unless we pursue the drug murders committed in our name with the same fervor we pursue the political murders being committed in the name of our parents, the Day of the Locust may turn out to be a plague on both our houses...