While on tour for his new book Exo-Psychology: A Manual on The Use of the Nervous System According to the Instructions of the Manufacturer, Timothy Leary gives a lecture at the University of Illinois Circle Campus (now University of Illinois Chicago). At the start, Leary draws parallels from various cultures from human history and asserts that those who migrated and moved beyond their known environments, the restless and the visionaries, are the ones who advanced human civilization. Speaking about the ongoing evolution of human thought and the development of intelligence and civilization, he claims society is currently moving through a mutation phase. Leary advocates that humans have a “genetic imperative to leave the planet”, and the next step of human evolution is space migration and how, because of this, life extension will become a necessity.
Timothy Leary (1920-1996) was a psychologist known for his influence on the countercultural movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He is known for his advocacy of psychedelics (LSD and psilocybin) as a therapeutic treatment as well as his philosophies on transhumanism and human space migration.