Tune in, turn on, and drop out

I am beginning to realize the validity of this ever-so-elegant mantra of Timothy Leary's in my own life. I didn't take mind-altering drugs until about a year and half ago and in that time I have experienced tremendous growth as a person. Yes, I have had a great time but I have also learned truck loads in the process.

Unfortunately, this new found clarity, I have found, does make you resent the status quo, the straight community who would prefer not to question themselves or the world around them so as not to muddy the waters. So then we the "enlightened" (for lack of a better term) become disillusioned with mainstream society and begin to reject all of its manifestations. I, in fact, did drop out of college.

Yet it is extremely difficult to function outside of the comfortable realms of society. I do intend to join a commune in the next several months but do not think that will be the path a choose for more than five years.

So the question is, what are ways to successfully operate within societal constructs without subscribing the dominant ideaology?

 

Hmm...maybe I should have simply asked how do you damn the man lol

 

...same with me. when i first took lsd i felt different, but i think its a good different. it helped me to open my eyes to alot of things going on in the world. i hope everything goes well with you. i think i am also joining a commune in a couple of years.

 

In the 70's I turned on, tuned in, and dropped out, and have been on the fringes of mainstream society ever since. I started investigating intentional communities, lived with many different small groups, and visited and resided with larger groups such as at The Farm in Tennessee, and the Love Family in Washington State (no longer together). MY partner and I burned our I.D., and functioned without it for 20 years, just getting odd jobs and working for rent and food.(No income tax.) We worked in orchards and organic gardens, and have been caretakers and housesitters, landscapers, and housecleaners..

We now live in a small rural community and I make hats and sell them in a nearby town. I have a check cashing card now(for business), but still have minimum connection to big time financial institutions. So....dropping out is not difficult, especially when you have a support group or community (commune) of individuals who are also trying to live apart from the mainstream society. You can choose how much you want to get involved.


I am not sure if LSD had too much to do with it, although I did experience it from time to time, yet I can say the whole culture of alternative lifestyle did appeal to me from my earliest exposure, and has definitely "stuck". My simple lifestyle has enabled me to have lots of leisure time to pursue creative endeavors, and not get caught up in the consumer rat race that keeps us all in bondage to the capitalistic view of life.

 

Thanks, box of rain. Its just so difficult to shun the current system and yet still succeed. Living in a commune is really the only way, I think.

 

I liked that paper how to "Start your own Religion"... But Philip K. Dick wrote this paper, How to Build a Universe that doesnt Fall apart Two Days Later that I thought was fucking remarkable. He talks about Jesus and the Devil and Time. It was great. Ive got the link on my myspace page. But I think you can just google it.

 

I know this might be unpopular, but I'm going to say it anyway -- while I understand the appeal of dropping out and living off the grid, I think it doesn't exactly fit with what one might consider to be a hippie ideology.

Live simply, yes, but does that mean getting off the grid and making minimal impact on the system you hate?

I have just as many problems with society's standards, the standards of human behavior, the way the country is run, etc, but that's exactly why I *can't* drop out. I have stay tuned into the way the world works and the ways in which I can make a positive impact. Isn't that the point? Why spend your time hating the way things are and then running from them instead of doing your best to change them?

Damn the man -- CHANGE the man.

I personally believe in interior subversion. Change it from the inside. As much time as I've spent protesting, I realize that the only real way to change things is from the inside, which is why I live my life the way I do. It's frustrating, but I wake up every day being proud of what I'm doing and feeling confident that I'm going to make a positive difference for future generations.

Gen-Y cares, or so people say. So I feel like we need to do something about it.

/my soapbox.

 

I haven't tried LSD but I've smoked in the last year or so and have found my own awareness of the world around me and of the inner workings of my subconscious has expanded exponentially. I've experienced more personal growth in the last year, smoking probably less than 30 times during that time, than at any point in my life.

I'm still undecided on personally using LSD when things have already taken such an incredible turn in the last few months.

Back to the subject, I agree with revulvar, that staying in society and changing it from within is the most efficient and productive use of my life in regards to the betterment of the universe. I would like to step outside for a few years, however, to further clear my lens of perception and see the universe with even clearer eyes than I currently possess.

 

Nicely said. I think you have a great point there and thats the kind of life I'd like to live.

I also would not drop out of high school or college because it is a great place to absorb information and different perspectives. I love learning and if I self-taught myself I know I wouldn't be exposed to many different ideas and subjects.
Plus when you get a degree, people tend to think you are brighter and more educated (not that a piece of paper equals intelligence) but it does make you more credible. I want to change the view people have on hippies...we are not just smelly, lazy, whiners...but educated activists.

 

I tend to follow Timothy Leary's brother more; Real E. Leary. You know: Tune on, turn out, and drop in.

 

Timothy Leary is the Trip Laureate of the 60s. Give him the respect he deserves. What he was unleashing... was an alternative to the way we live. LSD changes everything. Makes you think. REALLY makes you think. You visualize what youy think and there it is, seeing is believing. LSD is hardcore poetry. You got to have one strong-willed mind to handle all that it has to offer. I'm glad I'm an LSD advocate. I popularized it in my school, and I, indeed, dropped out of college as well. I deem that my life is not headed for the books, although I do love to read. My life is more on the creative side. What's the point in dropping countless grands on a degree where I won't even benefit from, because with or without a degree, my chosen major, would have still had me living in a box. I refuse to conform to soceity. I believe soceity will change. I'm freelance. That's how I get by. And I make sandwiches on the side.

 

While I very much understand and appreciate your position, I simply do not agree that living in a commune or "off the grid" is running away from the problem. If anything, it requires extreme dedication to live nearly every aspect of your life to alternative and, I would argue, higher ideals of what a community should be.

I would also argue that living in an intentional community results in a higher impact on the system than protesting. While I admire and support people who exercise their right to peacefully assemble, protesting can very easily be ignored, which we have seen repeatedly through history. When people join together to live in a commune, people begin providing for themselves in a lot of ways and stop feeding money into a corrupt, slave labor system. No matter how much protesting you do, you can't erase the fact that living in society means that you are constantly supporting big business and lining the pockets of CEOs while they crush cottage industries and small businesses.

People who live in communes are still citizens, still pay taxes, and most provide some sort of service to provide income so they are still very much a part of society and would thus still be considered this interior subversion you support.

If nothing else, people in communes are simply saying "it can be done better and we will do it with or without your support" to the government and straight society.

 

revulvar, living off the grid is helping in a way. be the change you want to see. you cant force people to change.

 

^^ I'm not talking about protesting. Protesting doesn't do anything. I've seen it from both sides -- it really doesn't do a thing.

I'm talking about change from the inside.

There's so much going on in the world that I simply couldn't live off the grid. It's fine for people who want that, but there are things that need to be done, people to be helped, aid to be provided.

 

I enjoy books about a better way of life instead the current one which shows exploitation, capitalism, representatives, and people who follow this way. The current way offers only those prosperity and accordance who follow this oneway and those who creates a poles apart of the current one. But there exists a gap in which people live. They are demanded and influenced by the mighty ones and the revolutionaries. People living in the gap have to follow one way even when the share opinions of the other one. But which way is the most comfortable one. Is it the current way which gives theam a proper living standard. Is it the other one which offers revolutionary idealism without any right for existence of it because power offers a present for the intelligentsia which wants to rule without the opinion of folks.

Its true that the intelligentsia is at the current moment ruling. This is the gift of democracy. But folks are aware of the situation. They are aware of the situation in SAmerica, Asia, and Africa. Do you really think, that they do not want to make a better earth. What will the price look like. Current ideas are shared with the ruling intelligentsia. Those offer roadmaps to show their own awareness but is that one coming out of their hearts.

It is not easy to change for a better world. I think that you do not believe in the intelligentsia but which way offers a better world? Sharing the own life with communes is certainly a way of droppin' out. How long does that fit in the idealism for a lifestyle which is the personal best one?

 

That quote by Timothy Leary is great! I say: Live the life the way YOU want to live it. Life is too short to dwell on those who are wasting theirs. Love yourself, your freedom, nature, earth everything. Sooner or later you will begin to influence others. Tell other people your thoughts and soon there will be a reveloution of how we live our lives. Things will change for the better I'm sure, especially if we all make our voices heard.
Peace and love to all.

 

Drop out in a way that fits your perspective. Let you mind drop out from the rigid morales and statutes of society, if not your body.

 

I am kind of conflicted because there is a very real part of me that would like to drop out of society so to speak. There is also a part of me that tell me to stay. I like to think of myself as a socital calemlon. As when I need to be a part of society in order to inact change Iam and when I need to free myself I do.

 

Oddly enough, this instantly rang true for me.

 

While all of you have good points, your still missing most of the bigger picture. First, the acid days when Leary made that statement are gone, along with the quality, strength and availability of the LSD. Not to mention that alot of people back then, including myself, had all reached the acid juncture that something else was needed to take us further into the joys of higher consciousness. This "something" is classical Yoga, namely Kriya/Kundalini yoga. At the success in this you then experience God in a way that is all day, not illegal, much more profound, and permanent. "Tune In", by the way, refers to experiencing God subjectively just as in the higher Yogas.One of you said that Hippie ideology involves changing the world you hate. This is historically and pragmatically incorrect. We freaks sought to create our own society, not change the old one. Look it up, this is an historical fact. One of you said something about changing the within, the subjective, instead of the outer social and objective world. That is right on the money! I as well as thousand others from the sixties era who were fortunate to live long enough found that the higher consciousness changing methods of Yoga Tantra best facilitated this. Change your consciousness, become one with the divine self, the cosmic self of the universe, and you automatically change external reality. Om Namah Sivaya. Y.B.