Turn on, Tune in, Drop Out

Anybody with experience or who has delved into the "alternative" trends of the late 20th century is certainly familiar with the work of Tim Leary.

Of course, Leary, like anyone of consequence, is a mixed bag and a complicated story for sure, but for some reason his name and his famous catch phrase came strongly to mind --"Turn on, tune in, drop out".

Like many of you, this last year+ has been devastating and depressing. The worst part of it has been it really is just a revelation of what I had always suspected or known in the back of my mind was there, i.e. that we live like livestock in a matrix of mindless entertainment and consumption, a spiritual vacuum, somewhere where the Fortean metaphor is strikingly appropriat e-- "we are someone's property".

The open advertisements we get bombarded with are, if anything, at least sometimes honest in their point--buy this mattress! etc.-- but they usually are, just like the shows and videos you watch purposefully, meant to sell you a lifestyle not just a product. I can't watch sports anymore, television neither, it's just too obvious what it is doing. In other words, this crisis has cause me to "turn on". Scales fall from eyes, things one suspected or knew subconsciously are now obvious and known. Once you've really had this hit you, it almost seems over the top how much they broadcast what they are doing openly (Christ Knowles is good on this as I'm sure listeners know)*.

And I'm not going to lie, it sucks. I think many of you are in the same situation. The temptation is strong to be like Cypher in the Matrix and cut a deal to go back in. And if you do, I honestly can't blame you, especially if your life before was as privileged and coddled as mine. I was on my way to a life with no greater hardships than stuff pouted about in a Jonathan Franzen novel or The National song. Now I sincerely don't have any idea what will become of me.

But what else can we do? Well, I guess the natural thought given the phrase is to "tune in", i.e. not take the "blue pill", which in this case has a very strong physically and ritually embodied symbol in the jab; to not go back in, but to actually accept reality for what it has revealed to be and embrace your awareness of it.

Realize that much of what drives people psychologically to embrace institutional "science" and the broader cultural wasteland so fiercely, and to react to alternative ideas with such (regardless of their validity) disproportionate venom, is that they have an uneasy and repressed knowledge or suspicion of just what you have discovered, and would rather burn people at the stake than find themselves in the same situation of despair you are in right now or have passed through recently. While I understand that notions like "repression" and false-consciousness have a bad reputation, because they are so capable of explaining everything that they can be used in a vacuous way, they are still very useful when you discipline yourself in how you apply them, and do provide great insight into behaviors that are otherwise completely bizarre and inexplicable.

So, say you've decided the steak isn't real after all, you aren't going back in, you've tuned in. Now what? Well, drop out. One can be tuned in, one foot in, one foot out, "in the world but not of it", and that is far superior to being livestock or someone who is "turned on" a few times with a drug trip our other experience, but then regresses right back. But ultimately we do need to drop out, to kill the system with attrition, because it is too strong to fight directly.

What does dropping out entail? Disinvest yourself from it as much as possible, I know its difficult, but whatever you can do, it is better to do it than not. Stop watching their propaganda, stop participating in their rituals, stop eating their garbage, and reach out and find others. It really must be an improvisation, there aren't any rails and no set plant, and that is frightening, I know.

One of the greatest temptations the system puts to you is that it has a "plan". I used to love the "dark rides" at theme parks when I was a kid. They went on rails and showed you scenes of puppets and elaborate animatronics: haunted houses and pirates caves and troll dens. Everything was safe and predictable, it was all about the spectacle. They system sells you on a the idea it's giving you a "dark ride" of sorts: graduate, get a job, get married, live in blissful suburbia. Of course, its all bullshit. It's a ramshackle power exercise masked in the illusion it can consistently provide such a ride to all comers. There is no security, no guarantee. And even if there was, the "dark ride" is ultimately like the ramps up into the slaughterhouse.

Without this virus, I don't think I would have been able to really accept just how illusionary that whole process is. I would have accepted it with glib detachment, made comments at bar trivia groups or work lunches or something just to perplex and shock people, but I'd never really feel it in my bones, never "turn on", certainly never "drop out".

But ultimately I'm grateful. Something behind the scenes is working itself out and this is my experience of it. I do believe that. Regardless of how I end up economically or socially, I would have been a worse creature morally and spiritually if I had ended up the vapid NPR liberal drone I was on course to be.

End of rant. I anybody read this I hope you found it of some value. Most of my communications come in the form of rants now sadly.

*I mean look at a Latin dictionary "vaccine (adj.) "pertaining to cows, from cows", yes I know the cow-pox/small -pox story, but lets be honest, everyone can see that this push for mass vaccination is driven more by how well it accords with the broader lives-stock-ification of the population than it does with preventing diseases--I started to suspect that when my school tried to get me to take one to prevent cancer in a cervix that, being a man, I don't have.