The radical Learyism, "Tune in, turn on, drop-out", which iconized the Sixties, was a slogan Timothy Leary lifted from one of his mentors, Marshal McLuhan (improvising to the tune of a Pepsi commercial; "Psychedelics hit the spot / five hundred micrograms, that's a lot. Tune in, turn on, drop out").
McLuhan, a brilliant media and communications theorist (he coined the term, "The Global Village") wrote The Medium is the Massage, a deconstructionist-take on Imperialist Empire's societal control tactics, as applied by corporate marketing and mainstream media. Leary, in his 1983 book Flashback, defends the meaning of the infamous mantra he nicked :
""Turn on" meant to go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and varied levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them.
Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. "Tune in" meant to interact harmoniously with the world around you - externalize, materialize, and express your new internal perspectives. "Drop-out" suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. "Drop-out" means 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.""
The punk movement took its cues from the atavism of the previous decade's (hippie) disillusionment. Social protest was in need of an improved line of defense - clothing functioning as armor, perhaps, and a tougher, verging-on-annihilation-of-everything-and-starting-over, version of peace and love. Chaos. The riots-in-the-streets, anarchy, and class-warfare, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was bitterly facing, from Brixton to Belfast, wasn't about to surrender gracefully. For youths-with-nothing-to-lose, the revenge-tactics of pandemonium, and promise of drug-enhanced freedom, held great allure. Besides, as Leary surmised,
it is necessary to experiment with varied states of consciousness, in order to fully know oneself. Surrendering to a creativity-killing, "9-to-5"1 slave-wage job, is tantamount to a death-sentence, "Resist much, obey little."2 The idealistic, dream-of-a-better-world / passionate energy we have for life, is 'Not For Sale', and will not (thanks for the warning, George Orwell, and for fighting the Fascists in Spain!) endure the imprint of "a boot stamping on its face forever."3
1 Parton, Dolly, "9 to 5"
2 Whitman, Walt
3 Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
""Turn on" meant to go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and varied levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them.
Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. "Tune in" meant to interact harmoniously with the world around you - externalize, materialize, and express your new internal perspectives. "Drop-out" suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. "Drop-out" means 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.""
The punk movement took its cues from the atavism of the previous decade's (hippie) disillusionment. Social protest was in need of an improved line of defense - clothing functioning as armor, perhaps, and a tougher, verging-on-annihilation-of-everything-and-starting-over, version of peace and love. Chaos. The riots-in-the-streets, anarchy, and class-warfare, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was bitterly facing, from Brixton to Belfast, wasn't about to surrender gracefully. For youths-with-nothing-to-lose, the revenge-tactics of pandemonium, and promise of drug-enhanced freedom, held great allure. Besides, as Leary surmised,
it is necessary to experiment with varied states of consciousness, in order to fully know oneself. Surrendering to a creativity-killing, "9-to-5"1 slave-wage job, is tantamount to a death-sentence, "Resist much, obey little."2 The idealistic, dream-of-a-better-world / passionate energy we have for life, is 'Not For Sale', and will not (thanks for the warning, George Orwell, and for fighting the Fascists in Spain!) endure the imprint of "a boot stamping on its face forever."3
1 Parton, Dolly, "9 to 5"
2 Whitman, Walt
3 Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
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