Set & Setting for Climate Activism: Douglas Rushkoff’s Psychedelic Theory of Change Talk for the PSYCA Community

The Internet's Psychedelic Roots

“I was with Timothy Leary the first time he went on the web, and he said, ‘This is going to be bigger than acid,’” Rushkoff began. “He was happy about it because you could get all the stuff you could get from psychedelics, except you didn’t have to eat anything.” The early internet, Rushkoff explained, was infused with a psychedelic sensibility, built by psychedelically inspired people who believed in its potential for connection and collective imagination. However, the absence of intentional "set and setting" allowed the internet to evolve under the influence of industrial-age forces like extraction, control, surveillance, domination, automation, and dehumanization.

This shift, he noted, parallels the challenges faced by the climate movement today. Activism, even in the digital age, often clings to top-down, industrial-era approaches. “What I hear so much from all of us, myself included, is the sentence, ‘How are we going to get people to___?’ Care more? Behave differently?" Rushkoff continued, arguing that this mindset—focused on manipulating behavior—reflects the same top-down frameworks that are not aligned with psychedelic culture.

A Psychedelic Theory of Change

“What we need instead is a theory of change that doesn't involve ‘getting people’ to behave a certain way. It doesn't exploit people's utility value as part of the digital machine, but is instead asking, “how do we engender the kinds of behaviors that we would like to see?” posed Rushkoff. “How do we engender a spirit of climate activism or climate awareness? And that's very different. It's much more like saying, ‘How do we create a set and setting for climate activism?’” 

Rushkoff proposed a more psychedelic approach, adapted from his new book Program or Be Programmed (RSVP for the launch Nov. 3 in-person in NYC or online): creating a set and setting conducive to the behaviors we want to see in ourselves and others. As he put it, “Psychedelic climate activism is not, ‘Oh, we took a bunch of mushrooms and now we’re going to change the world.’ It’s about using what we’ve learned from psychedelics to design the conditions for transformation.”

Rushkoff outlined four key interventions for this new theory of change:

1) Denaturalize Power

From “conditions of nature” and “constructions of people,” questioning assumptions we’ve come to accept as natural, like the need for jobs or the inevitability of economic systems based on extraction. As he noted, “Employment is not a natural human activity; it was an invention designed to disempower us.” By denaturalizing such concepts, we reclaim our agency and begin to see alternatives to the systems we take for granted.

2) Triggering Agency

Once we realize that the world isn’t a fixed "read-only" system, we can step into our creative power. “Why can’t I write my own money? Why can’t I make my own TV?” Rushkoff asked. “This is all fake. We can trigger our agency to make the world that we want rather than accepting the one that's been sold to us as fixed.”

3) Re-Socializing People

True agency is only possible when we come together as communities. Rushkoff illustrated this point with a humorous but insightful anecdote: borrowing a drill from a neighbor instead of buying one at Home Depot. “And that's ‘dangerous’ once we're all meeting each other and sharing things, because then what happens to the drill company?” This simple act of sharing, he pointed out, undermines the alienation that fuels consumerism and corporate growth—and, ultimately, helps us rediscover the power of human connection, and awe (#4).

4) Cultivating Awe

When people become resocialized, awe is cultivated. This perspective is also seen as “dangerous” as we may “stop caring about all the stuff that we're supposed to be worried about. You're more generous for days after a moment of awe, experiencing yourself as connected to something greater, and the way we engender all is through art and culture and sex and music, and yes, psychedelics.” Awe reconnects us with something greater than ourselves, fostering generosity and a deeper sense of purpose—a crucial ingredient for a climate movement rooted in joy, rather than fear.

Rushkoff concluded, “We have a psychedelic theory of change to create a set and setting for a culture that is dedicated to climate in ways that we invent together, in a spirit of fun.”

It was certainly fun having Rushkoff speak at this celebratory evening! We cannot wait to further share this inspiration with the PSYCA community as we explore the systems within which we live and reinvent at this momentous time in history and polycrisis, ripe for dramatic change as we grow our movement and increase our capacity for climate action and collective agency. Please reach out with any ideas this evokes and share programming ideas or next steps.