Last week Yoko Ono posted on YouTube a documentary she made with John Lennon in 1969 called Peace Bed. Digging deeper into the film’s personalities, I came across a phrase that defined the attitude of much of that generation: ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’. To me it is the antithesis of all corporate slogans. In his 1983 autobiography Flashbacks, Timothy Leary explains this powerful phrase, originally given to him by communication theorist Marshall McLuhan:
‘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.
