Turn on, tune in, drop out

This morning I listened to a 1967 roundtable discussion featuring Alan Watts, Gary Snyder, Timothy Leary, and Allen Ginsberg.

You can listen to it here:

👉 Alan Watts – Being in the Way: 1967 Roundtable Discussion

It was a moment in history charged with urgency. The United States was deep in the Vietnam War. Protests filled the streets. Trust in institutions was eroding. Across the world, people were questioning authority, purpose, and the moral direction of modern life.

In San Francisco, a loose community of poets, philosophers, and deep thinkers began imagining a different way of being. What they were proposing was not truly new. It was a call to return to something ancient. A way of living rooted in awareness, responsibility, and compassion. A trust in our own capacity to care for ourselves and one another.

The Buddha called this capacity our nobility¹. Christ spoke of it as the Kingdom of God within you². Both pointed toward an inner authority that does not depend on institutions to tell us how to live with integrity.

It was in this cultural soil that a now-famous phrase took hold:

“Turn on, tune in, drop out.”

For the young people of that era, this was not simply rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It was an attempt to respond to a deep dissatisfaction with how the world was unfolding.

Turn on meant activating awareness, often through meditation, contemplative practice, or psychedelics³. Tune in meant aligning with the rhythms of life, community, and the natural world⁴. Drop out meant disengaging from social systems that felt dehumanizing, rigid, or morally hollow⁵.

Some of these experiments were sincere and grounded. Others were naive or unsustainable. Looking back, research on 1960s countercultural movements shows mixed results. Many communal experiments dissolved within a few years due to economic pressure, interpersonal conflict, or lack of structure⁶.

And yet, not all of it disappeared.

Meditation and contemplative practices entered mainstream culture⁷. Environmental ethics gained lasting traction⁸. Holistic and preventative approaches to health became widely accepted⁹. The movement did not succeed as a sweeping cultural transformation, but it permanently altered how many people understand consciousness, care, and responsibility.

What persisted was not the spectacle, but the longing.

There have always been those among us who feel uneasy relying on systems that do our thinking for us. People who sense that outsourcing responsibility, judgment, and care comes at a cost. People who want to remain awake participants in their own lives.

As we enter 2026, that longing feels present once again.

Trust in religious, political, and media institutions continues to decline¹⁰. Researchers warn that increasing reliance on digital tools and artificial intelligence can weaken critical thinking, sustained attention, and independent judgment¹¹. Tasks that once required reflection, memory, and creativity are now routinely outsourced to algorithms¹².

At the same time, rates of loneliness, anxiety, and moral confusion continue to rise globally. Ethicists note a widening gap between technological power and moral development. Convenience has never been higher. Clarity feels harder to come by.

In this context, the old phrase sounds less radical and more practical.

Peace, Love and Hope,

Jan

Perhaps dropping out today does not mean leaving society, but stepping back from systems that numb awareness.

Perhaps tuning in means relearning how to listen, to one another, to our bodies, and to the world as it actually is.

Perhaps turning on is not about escaping reality, but about meeting it with clarity and courage.

And perhaps what we are being invited into now is not withdrawal, but return.

Not dropping out of life, but dropping in.

Footnotes & References

Bodhi, Bhikkhu. The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering. Luke 17:21, “The kingdom of God is within you.” Leary, Timothy. The Psychedelic Experience, 1964. Snyder, Gary. The Practice of the Wild, 1990. Leary, Timothy. Interviews and lectures, 1967. Miller, Timothy. The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond, 1999. Wilson, Jeff. Mindful America, 2014. Rome, Adam. The Genius of Earth Day, 2013. Faubion, James D. “History of Alternative Medicine in the U.S.” Edelman Trust Barometer, 2024. Small, Gary & Vorgan, Gigi. iBrain; subsequent cognitive studies on digital reliance. Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows, 2010; Jabr, Ferris, Scientific American.