Remember Timothy Leary? “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” was Dr. Leary’s 60’s counterculture phrase which was usually simplified and therefore misunderstood to mean, “hey let’s all get high and just hang!”
Leary later explained: “Turn on’ meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. ‘Tune in’ meant interact harmoniously with the world around you – externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. Drop out suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. ‘Drop Out’ meant self-reliance, a discovery of one’s singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean ‘Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity’.”
In this decade, and in this technologically-connected world, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to abandon the structures of our lives that we’ve become so attached to – and so committed to – and simply drop out. What would happen if we detached ourselves from what we know? How would our own lives change if we suddenly moved to a completely different world than the one know and lived in a way that is foreign to us? What if we “communed with nature” for a while? How would our lives be impacted?
I love the technology that enables me to reach out and communicate with people from all walks of life and from every culture on our planet. But am I constraining myself with the very technology that gives me that freedom? Would my life be better if I were to abandon the tech world and instead drift through rain forests and deserts? Would that mobility, choice, and change lead to new internal perspectives? Are we fooling ourselves when we appreciate the reach that we have via our wired and wireless connections? Or can we tune in and turn on via those very connections?
Just wondering.
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I had the pleasure to see Dr. Leary speak shortly before his death, and it was clear (and a little sad) that, while his view had moved on, many of his followers’ ideas had not. He was experimenting quite a bit with technology, because he seemed to feel that we should tap into any and all tools at our disposals to better understand our minds and put them to use. While his political views and methods may have been controversial, I think his core message was important. We all subject our minds to so much noise, whether it be mass media or internet chatter, and ultimately I suspect that we’re far less than we could be because of it.