The Alembic second edition
The ALEMBIC
second edition / Summer 1989
a magazine dedicated to superseding pre-fabricated ideologies
WARNING! Contains controversial material.
Parental discretion should be exorcised.
CONTENTS
- Automobiles: Public Enemy Number One (Rick Harrison)
- The Libertarian as Conservative (Bob Black)
- Everyone Talks about the Weather... (from 'Bentwood')
- On Business (David Castleman)
- Solar Cooker May Help Third World (Laura Wilkinson)
- Nietzsche and the Dervishes (Hakim Bey)
- XORcrypt: Low Budget Data Security (Rick Harrison)
- Retorts (from the audience)
NOTICES AND EXPLANATIONS
Copyright 1989 by Tangerine Network. Permission is hereby granted for non-profit distribution or reproduction of this ascii file, provided it remains intact and unaltered. (Compression allowed, if necessary.)
_The_Alembic_ is simultaneously distributed on paper and as a computer textfile which you can download from the more enlightened electronic bulletin boards. The paper version can be had by sending two dollars to the editor at the address given below. The electronic version is presently available from these and other enlightened boards:
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_The_Alembic_ is made possible entirely by donations of articles, publicity, money and distributive technology. Written and financial contributions should be directed to Rick Harrison, Box 547014, Orlando FL 32854 USA.
AUTOMOBILES: PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE
by Rick Harrison
Automobiles are probably the worst thing that has happened to humanity in this century. Car crashes kill more Americans in one year than AIDS kills in five years; cars have killed many times more people than atomic bombs have killed. The hysteria, protests, fund-raising and research directed against AIDS and nuclear weapons might be better spent on trying to wipe out cars.
The 45,000 Americans killed by cars every year seem to quietly vanish into thin air. It is remarkable that there is so little outcry about so much bloodshed. Perhaps this is because cars are considered an unquestionable fact of life. Indeed, they are often referred to as a "right" and a "necessity."
Cars are only "necessary" to those who profit from them. People lived well enough without cars before World War 1, and in some parts of the world they still do. So why are Americans, almost without exception, unable to imagine life without cars?
Car dealers run several full-page ads in every edition of the daily newspaper. During local, non-prime-time hours of TV programming, about half of the commercials shown are advertisements for car dealers, insurance protection rackets, and lawyers who capitalize on car carnage. No broadcaster or print journalist can question our society's fetish for automobiles; the editors would never allow it for fear of losing their sponsors. In TV shows, cars are pictured as the best vehicles for love-making, high speed chases, pleasure cruising, basic transportation, and of course for running over anybody who irritates you.
A large part of the economy is based on assembling, maintaining and replacing automobiles. So cars _are_ necessary, but only necessary to sustain this style of capitalism, which, like a bureaucracy, seems to have no purpose other than perpetuating its own existence. From the profiteer's point of view, cars that have accidents are more worthwhile than totally safe vehicles would be. Car accidents mean big money for towing services, junkyards, repair shops, hospitals, doctors, lawyers, insurance companies, municipalities that collect money from fines and tickets, funeral homes, cemeteries and the ambulance-chasing news media.
In the face of all this brainwashing and profiteering, it's no surprise that automobiles have come to be seen as indispensable.
As for the claim that people have a "right" to drive cars, this is absurd. Since we all need to breathe, who has a right to spew any amount of toxins into our atmosphere? And who has a right to launch two-ton unguided missiles that careen crazily through the streets of our cities? Considering the fact that almost all Americans use drugs ranging from caffein to cocaine, virtually nobody has the mental alertness or unimpaired reflexes necessary to drive safely at speeds above 10 miles per hour. (I'm sure you think _you_ are the exception.)
Children, pets, and even adults aren't safe outside their homes because there are so many assholes driving four-wheeled death machines through the city. (If you live near an intersection or a sharp turn, you aren't even safe _inside_ your home!) And, let's face it, _everyone_ becomes an asshole the minute they put their hands on a steering wheel. I've ridden in cars driven by my apparently-rational friends and have seen the process of driving transmute them into aggressive, over-confident maniacs. But perhaps this is the only emotional adjustment that can enable people to face the extreme risks of driving. Imagine zooming down a highway at 60 miles an hour with about 18 inches between yourself and vehicles going equally fast in the opposite direction. A foot and half between you and sudden death. If you, or one of the oncoming drivers, should jerk the steering wheel to the left just a little bit, you'll be squashed like a bug in a head-on collision. I can live without that kind of vulnerability and "excitement."
If motorists didn't make life unsafe for the rest of us, I wouldn't complain so bitterly. Streets designed for and filled with motor vehicles are unsafe for bicycles, horse-drawn carriages, skateboards, and other forms of transportation. Cars squeeze out the competition through intimidation and sheer force. Their monopoly on personal transportation has thus been maintained through coercion, and it is an affront to all freedom-loving individuals.
I have heard people complain about cigarette smoke or air pollution, and then these complainers drive away in cars! What hypocrites! Motorists should be locked in garages with their engines running. I've met a few people who rarely venture out of their homes because car fumes make them sick. To these people, the deadly vapors pouring out of your exhaust pipe are not something to be shrugged off and forgotten!
Motorists use various rationalizations to excuse themselves for turning the earth into a gas chamber -excuses like "My car doesn't pollute as much as a military jet" or "my modern car doesn't pollute as much as older cars do." When I corner these motorist rats with the truth, by asking if they would like to put their mouths on their exhaust pipes and take a deep breath, they respond by pathetically whining "I _have_ to drive a car. I can't get along without it."
It seems motorists have come to believe they "need" their cars as fervently as I believe that I don't need one. For several years I've managed to buy groceries, hold down a job, and engage in travel for the sheer pleasure of it without ever impoverishing myself by owning a car. Folks act like it would kill them if they had to walk, ride a bicycle or take a bus. In reality, driving cars is more likely to kill them. Cardio-vascular disease caused by lack of exercise is a major cause of death. And no doubt driving-induced stress contributes to the death toll. Personally, I am willing to go out of my way to support life and resist the machinery of death.
Cars are supposed to be "convenient." Careful thought reveals that they are amazingly inconvenient. Look at a traffic jam, for example, or examine the facial expression of someone standing on the roadside next to their car which has unexpectedly died. As for economic convenience, let's say our hypothetical friend Joe Shmo is a short-order cook, earning $4.75 an hour and taking home about $4 an hour. Joe's car is already paid for. If he spends $10 a week on fuel and oil, $400 per year on insurance and licenses, and $500 a year on repairs, driving his car costs $1420 a year. He has to work almost 7 hours per week to support his car! What's so convenient about that?!?! If he'd sell the car, he could work one day less each week, and he'd be happier and healthier as a result, partly for the reasons given above, but mainly because work stinks. Generally, people who make more money spend more on their cars, so if you sit down and calculate all the expenses involved, you might also find that 1/5 of your paycheck goes toward supporting your automobile. Is it worth it?
To drive a car is to be taxed, registered, licensed and watched. The entertainment media and high school peer pressure systems, which are subsidiaries of the corporate establishment, force young people to lust after car ownership because it benefits the police state to have everyone's name, address and photograph on file. Leave your driver's license at home and try to cash a check; you'll see what I mean. The driver's license, like a necktie or work uniform, is a universally recognized symbol of submission to the system.
To drive a car is also to be at the mercy of mechanics, many of whom have questionable ethics. High technology is being used to make it more difficult for people to repair their own vehicles, so that car manufacturers and chains of repair shops can monopolize the profits made from fixing automobiles which are designed to self-destruct at frequent intervals. Micro-computers are now part of most ignition systems, and unless you're a computer repairman it's unlikely that you'll have the necessary tools to diagnose and fix any electronic problems that might arise. This means that having a car these days makes you dependent on others for transportation - and that is almost as dangerous as being dependent on others for food. (Got your five-year stockpile of food ready to last through the coming holocaust?)
All these arguments against car ownership would be obvious if people were capable of thinking about the matter objectively. Thanks to religion, TV, lust, drugs, advertising and work, most people have been reduced to distracted conformists, so - fortunately for the capitalists - there is no danger that an outbreak of rational thinking will occur anytime soon. As long as the majority of people are unconcerned about behaving ethically or creating a better world, cars will remain popular.
{Footnote: After drafting this essay about two years ago, I was mugged while bicycling home from work one night, and resorted to obtaining a motor scooter for slightly safer transportation. It sounds and smells like a lawn-mower, but suddenly, when I started riding the scooter, the motorists around me no longer honked, threw things at me, pretended they couldn't see me, or tried to run me off the road, as they had frequently done when I was a bicyclist.}
THE AUTOMOBILE: AN INSTRUMENT FOR SELF-PUNISHMENT
from _L'Encyclopedie_Des_Nuisances_
...It is well known that expressway construction and the motorization of the labor force was one of the components of the mobilization of the German proletariat under National Socialism. Both the Volkswagon and the Panzerwagon could circulate on the expressways, with the military excursion constituting the other original blemish that dominates the modern journey. Everything submits to the same demand for speed and efficiency, and to the same reality of slowness and waste. One can be certain to lose time, at best, and at worst, life itself. During the elaborate maneuvers of going on vacation, which for the great majority of motorists is the only opportunity for a real trip, everything is organized in military fashion. On "D" Day, the general staff organizes radio guidance for the legions of vacationers. From the weather report to light aircraft reconnaissance flights, from reminders about necessary discipline to extrication itineraries in case the offense gets bogged down, everything has been foreseen for traversing hostile lands, from rescue squads to the installation of special tribunals.
Then the balance sheet is drawn up. Naturally, the losses are in proportion to the undertaking: during one year in a reasonably bellicose country like France, fatalities amount to the equivalent of a large infantry division, and the number of injured to several army corps. Such a criminal slaughter is perfectly accepted by the population as a natural disaster about which, by definition, nothing can be done. This incredible fatalism well demonstrates, once again, the general loss of common sense in our era.
newspaper clipping, dated 1988/6/12:
The automobile was once an efficient way to get around but now causes such traffic woes and health hazards that people must learn to use other transportation methods, according to a study released Saturday. "Excessive reliance on cars can actually stifle rather than advance societies," said the study by Worldwatch, a private think-tank. The study estimated the number of passenger cars in use worldwide grew from 53 million in 1950 to 386 million in 1986. As a result, motorists in hundreds of cities creep forward at speeds slower than a bicycle's, the study said, adding that more than 200,000 people died in 1985 in traffic accidents worldwide. In the United States, 30,000 people die each year of diseases resulting from the use of gasoline and diesel fuel. "It is time to build a bridge from an auto-centered society into an alternative transportation future... in which cars, buses, rail systems, bicycles and walking all complement each other," the study said.
"A study shows that commuters who drive the Los Angeles freeways are exposed to four times the amount of cancer-causing chemicals normally found in the air outdoors."
- ABC Radio News 1989/05/06
THE LIBERTARIAN AS CONSERVATIVE
by Bob Black
(essay based on a speech delivered to the Eris Society in 1984)
I agreed to come here today to speak on some such subject as "The Libertarian as Conservative." To me this is so obvious that I am hard put to find something to say to people who still think libertarianism has something to do with liberty. A libertarian is just a Republican who takes drugs. I'd have preferred a more controversial topic like "The Myth of the Penile Orgasm." But since my attendance here is subsidized by the esteemed distributor of a veritable reference library on mayhem and dirty tricks, I can't just take the conch and go rogue. I will indeed mutilate the sacred cow which is libertarianism, as ordered, but I'll administer a few hard lefts to the right in my own way. And I don't mean the easy way. I could just point to the laissezfaire Trilateralism of the Libertarian Party, then leave and go look for a party. It doesn't take long to say that if you fight fire with fire, you'll get burned.
If that were all I came up with, somebody would up and say that the LP has lapsed from the libertarian faith, just as Christians have insisted that their behavior over the last 1900 years or so shouldn't be held against Christianity. There are Libertarians who try to retrieve libertarianism from the Libertarian Party just as there are Christians who try to reclaim Christianity from Christendom and communists (I've tried to myself) who try to save Communism from the Communist parties and states. They (and I) meant well but we lost. Libertarianism _is_ party-archist fringe-rightism just as socialism is what Eastern European dissidents call "real socialism," i.e., the real-life state-socialism of queues, quotas, corruption and coercion. But I choose not to knock down this libertarian strawman-qua-man who's blowing over anyway. A wing of the Reaganist Right has obviously appropriated, with suspect selectivity, such libertarian themes as deregulation and voluntarism. Ideologues indignate that Reagan has travestied their principles. Tough shit! I notice that it's _their_ principles, not mine, that he found suitable to travesty. This kind of quarrel doesn't interest me. My reasons for regarding libertarianism as conservative run deeper than that.
My target is what Libertarians have in common - with each other, and with their ostensible enemies. Libertarians serve the state all the better because they declaim against it. At bottom, they want what it wants. But you can't want what the state wants without wanting the state, for what the state wants is the conditions in which it flourishes. My (unfriendly) approach to modern society is to regard it as an integrated totality. Silly doctrinaire theories which regard the state as a parasitic excrescence on society cannot explain its centuries-long persistence, its ongoing encroachment upon what was previously market terrain, or its acceptance by the overwhelming majority of people including its demonstrable victims.
A far more plausible theory is that the state and (at least) _this_ form of society have a symbiotic (however sordid) interdependence, that the state and such institutions as the market and the nuclear family are, in several ways, modes of hierarchy and control. Their articulation is not always harmonious but they share a common interest in consigning their conflicts to elite or expert resolution. To demonize state authoritarianism while ignoring identical albeit contract-consecrated subservient arrangements in the large-scale corporations which control the world economy is fetishism at its worst. And yet (to quote the most vociferous of radical Libertarians, Professor Murray Rothbard) there is nothing un-libertarian about "organization, hierarchy, wage-work, granting of funds by libertarian millionaires, and a libertarian party." Indeed. That is why libertarianism is just conservatism with a rationalist/positivist veneer.
Libertarians render a service to the state which only they can provide. For all their complaints about its illicit extensions they concede, in their lucid moments, that the state rules far more by consent than by coercion - which is to say, on present-state "libertarian" terms the state doesn't rule at all, it merely carries out the tacit or explicit terms of its contracts. If it seems contradictory to say that coercion is consensual, the contradiction is in the world, not in the expression, and can't adequately be rendered except by dialectical discourse. One-dimensional syllogistics can't do justice to a world largely lacking in the virtue. If your language lacks poetry and paradox, it's unequal to the task of accounting for actuality. Otherwise anything radically new is literally unspeakable. The scholastic "A = A" logic created by the Catholic Church which the Libertarians inherited, unquestioned, from the Randites is just as constrictively conservative as the Newspeak of Orwell's _1984_.
The state commands, for the most part, only because it commands popular support. It is (and should be) an embarrassment to Libertarians that the state rules with mass support - including, for all practical purposes, theirs.
Libertarians reinforce acquiescent attitudes by diverting discontents who are generalized (or tending that way) and focusing them on particular features and functions of the state which they are the first to insist are expendable! Thus they turn potential revolutionaries into repairmen. Constructive criticism is really the subtlest sort of praise. If the Libertarians succeed in relieving the state of its exiguous activities, they just might be its salvation. No longer will reverence for authority be eroded by the prevalent official ineptitude. The more the state does, the more it does badly. Surely one reason for the common man's aversion to Communism is his reluctance to see the entire economy run like the Post Office. The state tries to turn its soldiers and policemen into objects of veneration and respect, but uniforms lose a lot of their mystique when you see them on park rangers and garbagemen.
The ideals and institutions of authority tend to cluster together, both subjectively and objectively. You may recall Edward Gibbon's remark about the eternal alliance of Throne and Altar. Disaffection from received dogmas has a tendency to spread. If there is any future for freedom, it depends on this. Unless and until alienation recognizes itself, all the guns the Libertarians cherish will be useless against the state.
You might object that what I've said may apply to the minarchist majority of Libertarians, but not to the self-styled anarchists among them. To my mind a right-wing anarchist is just a minarchist who'd abolish the state to his own satisfaction by calling it something else. But this incestuous family squabble is no affair of mine. Both camps call for partial or complete privitization of state functions but neither questions the functions themselves. They don't denounce what the state does, they just object to who's doing it. This is why the people most victimized by the state display the least interest in libertarianism. Those on the receiving end of coercion don't quibble over their coercers' credentials. If you can't pay or don't want to, you don't much care if your deprivation is called larceny or taxation or restitution or rent. If you like to control your own time, you distinguish employment from enslavement only in degree and duration. An ideology which outdoes all others (with the possible exception of Marxism) in its exaltation of the work ethic can only be a brake on anti-authoritarian orientations, even if it does make the trains run on time.
My second argument, related to the first, is that the libertarian phobia as to the state reflects and reproduces a profound misunderstanding of the operative forces which make for social control in the modern world. _If_ - and this is a big "if," especially where bourgeois Libertarians are concerned - what you want is to maximize individual autonomy, then it is quite clear that the state is the least of the phenomena which stand in your way.
Imagine that you are a Martian anthropologist specializing in Terran studies and equipped with the finest telescopes and video equipment. You have not yet deciphered any Terran language and so you can only record what earthlings do, not their shared misconceptions as to what they're doing and why. However, you can gauge roughly when they're doing what they want and when they're doing something else. Your first important discovery is that earthlings devote nearly all their time to unwelcome activities. The only important exception is a dwindling set of huntergatherer groups unperturbed by governments, churches and schools who devote some four hours a day to subsistence activities which so closely resemble the leisure activities of the privileged classes in industrial capitalist countries that you are uncertain whether to describe what they do as work or play. But the state and the market are eradicating these holdouts and you very properly concentrate on the almost allinclusive world-system which, for all its evident internal antagonisms as epitomized in war, is much the same everywhere. The Terran young, you further observe, are almost wholly subject to the impositions of the family and the school, sometimes seconded by the church and occasionally the state. The adults often assemble in families too, but the place where they pass the most time and submit to the closest control is at work. Thus, without even entering into the question of the world economy's ultimate dictation of everybody's productive activity, it's apparent that the source of the greatest direct duress experienced by the ordinary adult is _not_ the state but rather the business that employs him. Your foreman or supervisor gives you more "or-else" orders in a week than the police do in a decade.
If one looks at the world without prejudice but with an eye to maximizing freedom, the major coercive institution is not the state, it's _work_. Libertarians who with a straight face call for the abolition of the state nonetheless look on anti-work attitudes with horror. The idea of abolishing work is, of course, an affront to common sense. But then so is the idea of abolishing the state. If a referendum were held among Libertarians which posed as options the abolition of work with retention of the state, or abolition of the state with retention of work, does anyone doubt the outcome?
Libertarians are into linear reasoning and quantitative analysis. If they applied these methods to test their own reasoning they'd be in for a shock. That's the point of my Martian thought experiment. This is not to say that the state isn't just as unsavory as the Libertarians say it is. But it does suggest that the state is important, not so much for the direct duress it inflicts on convicts and conscripts, for instance, as for its indirect back-up of employers who regiment employees, shopkeepers who arrest shoplifters, and parents who paternalize children. In these classrooms, the lesson of submission is learned. Of course, there are always a few freaks like anarcho-capitalists or Catholic anarchists, but they're just exceptions to the rule of rule.
Unlike side issues such as unemployment, unions, and minimum-wage laws, the subject of work itself is almost entirely absent from libertarian literature. Most of what little there is consists of Randite rantings against parasites, barely distinguishable from the invective inflicted on dissidents by the Soviet press, and Sunday-school platitudinizing that there is no free lunch - this from fat cats who have usually ingested a lot of them. In 1980, a rare exception appeared in a book review published in the _Libertarian_Review_ by Professor John Hospers, the Libertarian Party elder state's-man who flunked out of the Electoral College in 1972. Here was a spirited defense of work by a college professor who didn't have to do any. To demonstrate that his arguments were thoroughly conservative, it is enough to show that they agreed in all essentials with Marxism-Leninism.
Hospers thought he could justify wage-labor, factory discipline and hierarchic management by noting that they're imposed in Leninist regimes as well as under capitalism. Would he accept the same argument for the necessity of repressive sex and drug laws? Like other Libertarians, Hospers is uneasy - hence his gratuitous red-baiting - because libertarianism and Leninism are as different as Coke and Pepsi when it comes to consecrating class society and the source of its power, work. Only upon the firm foundation of factory fascism and office oligarchy do Libertarians and Leninists dare to debate the trivial issues dividing them. Toss in the mainstream conservatives who feel just the same and we end up with a veritable trilateralism of pro-work ideology seasoned to taste.
Hospers, who never has to, sees nothing demeaning in taking orders from bosses, for "how else could a large scale factory be organized?" In other words, "wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself." Hospers again? No, Frederick Engels! Marx agreed: "Go and run one of the Barcelona factories without direction, that is to say, without authority!" (Which is just what the Catalan workers did in 1936, while their anarchosyndicalist leaders temporized and cut deals with the government.) "Someone," says Hospers, "has to make decisions and" - here's the kicker - "someone _else_ has to implement them." _Why?_ His precursor Lenin likewise endorsed "individual dictatorial powers" to assure "absolute and strict _unity_of_will_. But how can strict unity of will be ensured? By thousands subordinating their will to the will of one." What's needed to make industrialism work is "iron discipline while at work, with _unquestioning_obedience_ to the will of a single person, the soviet leader, while at work." _Arbeit_macht_frei_!
Some people giving orders and others obeying them: this is the essence of servitude. Of course, as Hospers smugly observes, "one can at least change jobs," but you can't avoid having a job - just as under statism one can at least change nationalities but you can't avoid subjection to one nation-state or another. But freedom means more than the right to change masters.
Hospers and other Libertarians are wrong to assume, with Manchester industrialist Engels, that technology imposes its division of labor "independent of social organization." Rather, the factory _is_ an instrument of social control, the most effective ever devised to enforce the class chasm between the few who "make decisions" and the many who "implement them." Industrial technology is much more the product than the source of workplace totalitarianism. Thus the revolt against work - reflected in absenteeism, sabotage, turnover, embezzlement, wildcat strikes, and goldbricking - has far more liberatory promise than the machinations of "libertarian" politicos and propagandists.
Most work serves the predatory purposes of commerce and coercion and can be abolished outright. The rest can be automated away and/or transformed - by the experts, the workers who do it - into creative, playlike pastimes whose variety and conviviality will make extrinsic inducements like the capitalist carrot and the Communist stick equally obsolete. In the hopefully impending meta-industrial revolution, libertarian communists revolting against work will settle accounts with "Libertarians" and "Communists" working against revolt. And then we can go for the gusto!
Even if you think everything I've said about work, such as the possibility of its abolition, is visionary nonsense, the anti-liberty implications of its prevalence would still hold good. The time of your life is the one commodity you can sell but never buy back. Murray Rothbard thinks egalitarianism is a revolt against nature, but his day is 24 hours long, just like everybody else's. If you spend most of your waking life taking orders or kissing ass, if you get habituated to hierarchy, you will become passive-aggressive, sado-masochistic, servile and stupefied, and you will carry that load into every aspect of the balance of your life. Incapable of living a life of liberty, you'll settle for one of its ideological representations, like libertarianism. You can't treat values like workers, hiring and firing them at will and assigning each a place in an imposed division of labor. The taste for freedom and pleasure can't be compartmentalized.
Libertarians complain that the state is parasitic, an excrescence on society. They think it's like a tumor you could cut out, leaving the patient just as he was, only healthier. They've been mystified by their own metaphors. Like the market, the state is an activity, not an entity. The only way to abolish the state is to change the way of life it forms a part of. That way of life, if you call that living, revolves around work and takes in bureaucracy, moralism, schooling, money, and more. Libertarians are conservatives because they avowedly want to maintain most of this mess and so unwittingly perpetuate the rest of the racket. But they're bad conservatives because they've forgotten the reality of institutional and ideological interconnection which was the original insight of the historical conservatives. Entirely out of touch with the real currents of contemporary resistance, they denounce _practical_ opposition to the system as "nihilism," "Luddism," and other big words they don't understand. A glance at the world confirms that their utopian capitalism just _can't_compete_ with the state. With enemies like Libertarians, the state doesn't need friends.
Everyone Talks About the Weather...
Reprinted from the Lammas 1988 edition of Bentwood,
4807 50th Avenue, Seattle WA 98118.
Unless you've been living in a cave somewhere on the astral plane, you should be aware of the "Drought of 1988." The images of it are everywhere: parched fields with only a stubble of growth; the cracked, dried earth of empty river and stream beds; the news reports of sweltering temperatures and no rainfall. And while many people just seem to take it all in stride, or view it as just another piece of bad news on TV (and after all, the news is always bad), as pagans weÕre keenly aware of what's happening, what it means for ourselves, the plant and animal life we share this planet with, and for the Earth Mother herself.
Those who live in the South and Midwest have a most profound experience of how our climate is changing. It is most evident in the corn, that plant so sacred to Native American cultures. The usually broad, lush leaves are instead mottled and curled. And where the corn usually stretches towards the sunlight, it is now stunted and shriveling, almost recoiling from the burning rays. Even those of us who live in areas not so hard hit this year by the drought can see the effects: in the Pacific Northwest, intermountain regions, and Alaska, forest fires rage this year, blackening thousands of acres.
We pagans are growing sensitive to the deeper meanings of this drought. We can sense something more profound, more significant in this disaster; it is almost palpable. To some, fear is one element; we are like a child who is constantly afraid that they will be abandoned by their mother. And there is fear of not knowing what is going to happen; we see this etched on the faces of farmers and others who live on the land. Even though we may feel that we're insulated right now, we have a sense that these climactic changes are going to affect us all.
And they will. Whether we live in an urban setting, out in the woods, or in a rural farming area, these climactic changes are going to affect us. The bounty of the supermarket may not be so bountiful in the future. Recently there have been news reports of growing concerns over intermittent shortages of certain food products as early as next year. In the West, water is becoming more and more scarce in some areas, and contingency plans for rationing are being drawn up in some urban areas. And there is growing evidence that the hot and dry summers of the past two years are not just random or freakish occurrences, but rather the beginning of a global warming trend. What weÕre seeing in 1988 could possibly be the harbinger of greater climactic extremes to come.
While the physical effects of these meteorological changes are quite evident, the psychological and psychic responses seem much more varied. Some born-again and fundamentalist Christians see the drought as part of the wrath of a patriarchal god who will put the Earth through great tribulations and suffering as a prelude to the establishment of the kingdom of heaven. Others with a "New Age" orientation see what is happening as "the Earth Changes," an inevitable period where the Earth cleanses or purges herself of the awful things humans have done.
While these two responses may seem different, they are in fact almost identical. Both presuppose that the tribulation/Earth changes are inevitable and unavoidable, (prophecy plays a major rle in many Christian and New Age philosophies), indicate that only a chosen few will survive the great destruction, and that after all the mayhem is over, those who remain will live a life of peace, love, and harmony, usually due to the influence of some external source (the return of God, universal consciousness, or contact with beings from other planets or planes of existence). The idyllic ending is as inevitable as the destruction to come.
Many pagans are taking a somewhat different tack towards what is happening to the world. The reason for drought, famine, and environmental deterioration is not because of some mysterious, supernatural force but has a rather simpler cause: human actions. Five thousand years of a power-over, domination-oriented philosophy have laid the foundation for what we see manifesting in the changing climate, the scarred Earth, the poisoned ocean. The results of the last 150 years of irresponsible industrial society is the cause of what we're seeing today. As pagans we understand the intent and the "mechanics" of the law of manifold return: what we put out into the world comes back to us magnified. This is true for what we do whether individually or collectively. It may take a long time to return, and perhaps it may manifest in a form that might not be immediately evident, but return it does. And we're seeing it now.
A hundred years of extensive burning of fossil fuels, massive deforestation, the establishment of a resourceand energy-intensive lifestyle for a small minority of the Earth's inhabitants, are the direct cause of the baked fields and dry streams. We don't need a vengeful god to send us tribulations. We do just fine on our own.
Yet we are discovering that isn't the end of the story. We are coming to learn that one of the differences between a pagan viewpoint towards this drought and its consequences, and the fundamentalist/New Age approach, is that the latter essentially takes us out of the equation. In the tribulation/Earth Changes scenarios, the environmental destruction we are witnessing is inevitable, {Editor's note: maybe this is why so many businessmen and politicians promote Christianity.} and has been foretold in prophecy. (After all, what is more useless than a prophecy that doesn't come true?) What we do or have done is irrelevant. And thus we don't really have to take responsibility for what we're doing to the Earth, and can continue our destructive ways without a second thought. Of course, the tribulation or Earth Changes will interrupt it all at some point, but (fortunately) that is sometime out in the nebulous future. Pagans, on the other hand, see the climactic changes as a direct result of human activity, both material and psychic. Therefore we can have a direct influence on what happens to the environment, and ultimately, to us.
With this knowledge we're making changes. Some are subtle, some are more evident. In our meditations we are visualizing a clean atmosphere, lush rain forests, and a land free of industrial scars for the Earth. We are visualizing lifegiving rain falling in abundance on the fields and filling the rivers and lakes. And we meditate on human change, seeing our attitudes change to those of love and harmony with those we share the Earth with, living in balance with nature and enjoying the rewards that such a life can give to all.
Understanding that the internal work alone is not enough, the meditative, psychic, and ritual work we do is serving as the energy for changes in our material lives. Some of us are beginning to evaluate the effect that we personally have on the Earth, our contribution to pollution. For some it may mean curtailing the use of our cars. For others it may mean making efforts to recycle what we would normally throw out. Another response for some is to become directly acquainted with the Earth, air, and weather by digging in the ground, planting something green, and caring for it. And for still others it may mean learning more about the political and sociological aspects of food, energy, and resource distribution and becoming involved to change them. There is a great variety of things pagans are doing to materially turn the tide of human irresponsibility. What is important is that we're doing it, and our understanding that we, in fact, can make a difference.
The Drought of '88 may be just the beginning of changes for all of us. Many will feel helpless about these changes, but pagans will see themselves as active partners in it.
On Business
by David Castleman
Our human psyche is like a horse with many masters, and ranked among them is Government, and Media, and Business. One master sees that the blinders never fail in their task of administering blindness. One master investigates the reins constantly, to guard against an encroachment by the individual will. One master tests the harness constantly, that the servile brute may not forget its allotted and proper burden. Other and subtler masters note the aspects of the terrain and the feed and the healthy future of the breed: they stand aloof.
The facility for business is a reasonably constructed and physical extension of the primal hunting instinct of the carnivore, and is itself as clearly a tool of physical contest as is a spear, a trained dog, a nuclear explosive, or a padded bosom. It is a tool whose use extends the power of the animal beyond the borders of naked animality. Its function is of acquisition and of destruction. It kills, that the animal may eat, and the animal is to eat, that it may kill.
All who share the privilege and the responsibility of life, live upon this wheel of natural whim. As the mind is the function of the brain, so this special tool hidden among folds in the fisted brain, has as its function that aspect of the mind which equips the physical body. The carnivore without it is doomed to be a brief and sorry meat for its fellows.
What traits of personality are required for business? One must be intelligent and single-minded, and troubled by no untamed conscience. Monomania is crucial. Imagination is dangerous and useless. An abundance of energy is vital. Scruples are decorative, not functional.
The activity of a real and vigorous imagination poisons the will, by suggesting too many alternatives, and kills single-mindedness. Single-mindedness depends on the channeled presence of the personal portion of communal will, and if the channel enlarges, the will can get no grip, and flounders.
What are the social skills required to participate effectively in this chattering session of business? A person must be able to mimic the reactions of one's peers, must be malleable as a chameleon, so that none will be aware if one chance to have qualms of conscience or stirrings of humanity, and so that none will be aware if one chance to have a moment of individual awareness. To wake surrounded by the inhabitants of a dream, would be dangerous as to swim with sharks.
One must lie easily, remembering always the essential falsehoods of one's profession, and believing the lies as they are invented on the tongue. If you do not believe your own lies as you speak them, nobody else will believe them, and you will have withdrawn sufficiently from the game that you may not believe the lies of your peers.
Truth will never be as popular as lies, because it seems harder, and bleaker. Almost invariably, we prefer the phonies among our contemporaries, rather than folks of truth or genius. In superficiality is happiness, when we fear the truth, and feel belittled by genius. Little people love displays of littleness, because littleness allows them to feel real, and nobody loves to feel substantial as a bubble.
One who perceives the surface clearly enough, will understand the depths beneath the surface comfortably, though inarticulably, and may be uninterested in those depths. To be a successful seller, one must ignore anything beyond the surface of reality. One must believe in the surface with unfeigned sincerity.
Sincerity is prized, while honesty is abhorred, and sincerity must have the appearance of sincerity or it counts as nothing. Every intelligent and civilized society values the appearance of sincerity more than it values sincerity itself. The appearance of reality is more important than is actual reality. Appearance is the only thing that superficials dare to trust, the only thing that may be discussed easily.
The appearance is real and exists on the superficial plane of reality, and is the nearest thing of substance that is available to normal folks. The appearance of things is the clearest indicator of truth and reality and substance, that normalcy is permitted, and this is healthy. To ignore the appearance and the superficial, is unhealthy.
This plane of the superficial is the domain of those three masters we spoke of. Business, and Government, and Media, each has a fine and imposing abode on this level, and each has many servants and formidable affairs.
To be excellent at business, one must enjoy it utterly, and one must consider it a fine game to be played well. To be a champion at business, beyond mere excellence, it must be religion. Somebody who is so good at being bad must pay an awful price for the privilege. Why do so many people pay such a devastating price, forsaking conscience, family, and self?
Every religion requires martyrs, and martyrs work for nothing. Their bosses reap the glory.
We strive to succeed in business because acquisition is the human pursuit, and we would match our fellows. What pleasure would be found in life apart, striving for baubles our various authority figures have preached against, striven to suppress, and mocked? The fruits of acquisition seem tangible. They can be held in hand like Faberge eggs. They can be walked upon, like beaches in an earthly paradise. Their acquisition permits us to forget the coming and the gnawing precipice, the yawning reward, the sleep without rest.
Our fear dissolves when we confront the acceptedly real and the acceptedly desirable, and if later it proves a mirage, that is irrelevant.
Pursuing what our fellows pursue, we forget our smallness, insignificance and loneliness. What comfort had Galileo though he was right? What comfort had Gauguin? What comfort had Christ? The human needs went unanswered, and each must have been a focal point of cosmic doubt, an arena of the psyche. The loneliness must have been fraught with horror, and fear.
In the night our terrific human loneliness crawls across the ceiling and stares down at us, and though we cannot see it, we feel that it is there. It mocks us as we watch it through our closed or open eyes, or through our fingers which splay like trembling fans upon our faces. We hear it scuttling and we hear it whimpering and whispering like the beating of a heart. We are reminded of the basis on which all illusion shimmers awhile, and it is unmindful of us, and unkind. We want the great basis to confide with us, and its tongue is unmoved.
Honorable suffering is humanity's only possible gift to Deity, and it is not enough.
It is our normal desire to escape the offering of that gift, and we attempt this when we choose to remain always on the surface of desire, the surface of reality and life. Therefore a reasonable society embraces the march of business and of war. War is only business with its sleeves rolled up.
All of the world's business has one goal, and efforts made in business have been attempts pulsing toward that goal. To define the goal precisely would require the use of many words, and two aspects would be implicit in any definition, and would be explicit in any honest definition. Despite any decorative digressions, the goal of business and of war includes the enslavement of the human race and the destruction of the planet.
The best people among the devotees to commerce, these myrmidons to Mammon, prefer to pretend that their personal goals are somehow short of this grand goal, but in their hearts and brains they know that nobody is fooled. Each can tell easily what the others do, and each permits a mantle of confusion to settle over all.
Lying doesn't bother them. They are good at it. The unluckiest among them pale with disgust every morning when they confront the bathroom mirror. The luckiest among them are scarcely ashamed at all. The proudest among them are frightened because they know they have betrayed themselves, and somewhere the almost inaudible voice of conscience still murmurs.
While it's true that those who are too susceptible to society's punctilio may be disgusted by business, it's also true that we are easily disgusted by things we are not in sympathy with. For many folks, and usually for the poorest of us, business is just the science of cheating people, a mindless obscenity; and yet to a business buff, the act of being in business justifies one's existence to oneself and to one's Deity. Sometimes businessfolks wonder that they are unable to appreciate the uncommon, and yet is that truly so odd, since they revel so in the common?
Does a robber-baron truly believe that a lifetime dedicated to the crippling and assassination of whole families by the thousands is balanced by building a concert-hall as he is about to die? Do such acts of dishonor go unrecorded into the dawn of prehistory and the dusk of post-history?
"As mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyze the manner of its composition, so sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it." Amen.
And yet their desperate hope and prayer is for a Ptolemaic and all-inclusive silence, silent as a perfectly managed conscience, even on Sunday.
Solar Cooker May Help Third World
by Laura Wilkinson
(Associated Press 1989/01/15)
A simple box of cardboard, foil and glass is being promoted as a means to free Third World women from the time-consuming search for firewood and get them out of the unhealthy smoke.
The solar cookers, designed by two Arizona women, are being introduced in the Third World by Pillsbury Co. "We feel the potential of solar cookers is so great that it could truly alleviate some of the global problems," said William Sperber, a senior research microbiologist at the food conglomerate.
The cooker is an insulated box within a box topped with a glass pane and a reflector that directs sunlight. It can be made out of cardboard or wood, and aluminum foil. Food is cooked in dark, covered metal, glass or ceramic pots.
The temperature peaks at 250 to 275 degrees F., meaning food takes longer to cook than in electric ovens. Users save time by no longer having to collect firewood and by not having to stir the food because of the low heat.
Simplicity may be an obstacle to widespread adoption, supporters say. "It doesn't look as high tech as other things that have been tried," said Chris Flavin, vice president of research at Worldwatch Institute, a private non-profit research group that focuses on global resource issues. "There's an actual bias in development agencies against anything that's small and decentralized," said Flavin. "They like to support big projects because they're easy to manage."
Barbara Kerr of Taylor, Arizona, a nurse, and Sherry Cole of Tempe, a former free-lance writer and neighbor of Kerr's, created the design in the mid-1970s. Since then, Cole said, they've sold about 3,000 kits and cookers ranging from $40 to $275.
Nietzshce and the Dervishes
by Hakim Bey
_Rendan_, "the clever ones." The sufis use a technical term _rend_ (adj. _rendi_, pl. _rendan_) to designate one "clever enough to drink wine in secret without getting caught": the dervish-version of "Permissible Dissimulation" (_taqiyya_, whereby Shiities are permitted to lie about their true affiliation to avoid persecution as well as advance the purposes of their propaganda).
On the plane of the "Path", the _rend_ conceals his spiritual state in order to contain it, work on it alchemically, enhance it. This "cleverness" explains much of the secrecy of the Orders, altho it remains true that many dervishes do literally break the rules of Islam, offend tradition and flout the customs of their society - all of which gives them reason for _real_ secrecy.
Ignoring the case of the "criminal" who uses sufism as a mask - or rather not sufism per se but _dervish_-ism, almost a synonym in Persia for laid-back manners and by extension a social laxness, a style of genial, poor but elegant amorality - the above definition can still be considered in a literal as well as metaphorical sense. That is: some sufis do break the Law while still allowing that the Law exists and will continue to exist; and they do so from spiritual motives, as an exercise of will (_himmah_).
Nietzsche says somewhere that the free spirit will not agitate for the rules to be dropped or even reformed, since it is only by breaking the rules that he realizes his will to power. One must prove (to oneself if no one else) an ability to overcome the rules of the herd, to make one's own law and yet not fall prey to the rancor and resentment of inferior souls which define law and custom in ANY society. One needs, in effect, an individual equivalent of war in order to achieve the becoming of the free spirit - one needs an inert stupidity against which to measure one's own movement and intelligence.
Anarchists sometimes posit an ideal society without law. The few anarchistic experiments which succeeded briefly (the Makhnovists, Catalan) failed to survive the conditions of war which permitted their existence in the first place - so we have no way of knowing empirically if such an experiment could outlive the onset of peace.
Some anarchists however, like our late friend the Italian Stirnerite "Brand," took part in all sorts of uprisings and revolutions, even communist and socialist ones, because they found in the moment of insurrection itself the kind of freedom they sought. Thus while utopianism has so far always failed, the individualist or existentialist anarchists have succeeded inasmuch as they have attained (however briefly) the realization of their will to power in war.
Nietzsche's animadversions against "anarchists" are always aimed at the egalitarian-communist narodnik martyr-types, whose idealism he saw as yet one more survival of post-Xtian moralismaltho he sometimes praises them for at least having the courage to revolt against majoritarian authority. He never mentions Stirner, but I believe he would have classified the Individualist rebel with the higher type of "criminals," who represented for him (as for Dostoyevsky) humans far superior to the herd, even if tragically flawed by their obsessiveness and perhaps hidden motivations of revenge.
The Nietzschean overman, if he existed, would have to share to some degree in this "criminality" even if he had overcome all obsessions and compulsions, if only because his law could never agree with the law of the masses, of state and society. His need for "war" (whether literal or metaphorical) might even persuade him to take part in revolt, whether it assumed the form of insurrection or only of a proud bohemianism.
For him a "society without law" might have value only so long as it could measure its own freedom against the subjection of others, against their jealousy and hatred. The lawless and short-lived "pirate utopias" of Madagascar and the Caribbean, D'Annunzio's Republic of Fiume, the Ukraine or Barcelona - these would attract him because they promised the turmoil of becoming and even "failure" rather than the bucolic somnolence of a "perfected" (and hence dead) anarchist society.
In the absence of such opportunities, this free spirit would disdain wasting time on agitation for reform, on protest, on visionary dreaming, on all kinds of "revolutionary martyrdom" - in short, on most contemporary anarchist activity. To be _rendi_, to drink wine in secret and not get caught, to accept the rules in order to break them and thus attain the spiritual lift or energy-rush of danger and adventure, the private epiphany of overcoming all interior police while tricking all outward authority - this might be a goal worthy of such a spirit, and this might be his definition of crime.
(Incidentally I think this reading helps explain Nietzsche's insistance on the MASK, on the secretive nature of the proto-overman, which disturbs even intelligent but somewhat liberal commentators like Kaufman. Artists, for all that Nietzsche loves them, are criticized for _telling_secrets_. Perhaps he failed to consider that - paraphrasing A. Ginsberg - this is _our_ way of becoming "great"; and also that - paraphrasing Yeats - even the truest society becomes yet another mask.)
As for the anarchist movement today: would we like just once to stand on ground where laws are abolished and the last priest is strung up with the guts of the last bureaucrat? Yeah sure. But we're not holding our breath. There are certain causes (to quote the Neech again) that one fails to quite abandon, if only because of the sheer insipidity of all their enemies. Oscar Wilde might have said that one cannot be a gentleman without being something of an anarchist - a necessary paradox, like Nietzsche's "radical aristocratism."
This is not just a matter of spiritual dandyism, but also of existential commitment to an underlying spontaneity, to a philosophical "tao." For all its waste of energy, in its very formlessness anarchism alone of all the ISMs approaches that one _type_ of form which alone can interest us today, that strange attractor, the shape of _chaos_ - which (one last quote) one must have within oneself, if one is to give birth to a dancing star.
XORcrypt: 'basically' a low-budget text encryption routine
by Rick Harrison
Many persons have information in their personal computers that they would like to keep to themselves. Radical magazines have their mailing lists, tax evaders have their financial records, and people engaged in adultery, drugs, pornography, or other activities have sensitive records and correspondence. The wisdom of keeping vital or incriminating data safe from the eyes of cops, spouses, parents, or business competitors cannot be over-estimated. Computers make it fairly easy to accomplish this goal. Just use an encryption program to encode those sensitive documents and they become relatively inaccessible to the unauthorized.
Personal computers also make it possible for ordinary people to have secure telecommunications. Just type up your correspondence, encrypt it, and send it on its way via telephone modem or packet radio. There are federal regulations restricting the transmission of coded messages, but sneaky people simply compress the encoded file, label it as a machine-language program meant to be run on an unspecified type of computer, and transmit with impunity.
Below is a listing for XORcrypt, a program designed to provide data security for users of personal computers. There are slicker, faster programs around that do this sort of thing, but if you haven't got access to any such programs, here's one you can type in and run.
The first step in using XORcrypt is to take the menu option that writes a 'key' file to disk. A key file is really just a textfile containing random integers separated by commas. Here's an example of a key file:
9, 36, 55, 119, 63, 21, 76, 89, 111
1, 81, 8, 126, 74, 37, 64, 101
29, 118, 35, 128, 53, 88, 13, 20, 54 ... et cetera.
Next take the 'encrypt' option. You can select any file of the text variety and encode it. (You'll have to experiment a bit and see what kinds of files you can open on your system. This version, running on a Macintosh, will open text files but not binary data files.) The program XORs each byte of text against one of the integers from the key file. (XOR, pronounced 'exclusive or', is a binary bitwise operation.) The resulting output is your encrypted file. After you've tested the program and you're positive that it's working to your satisfaction, you can erase the plaintext file, leaving only the incomprehensible coded file on disk. Decryption is accomplished by repeating the process; the coded bytes are XORed against the key, producing the original file again.
If the numbers in the key file are sufficiently random and the key file is longer than the text being encoded, XORcrypt is similar to a "one-time pad" cipher. In a best-case scenario, all possible bytes in the encrypted file occur with nearly-equal frequency and the cipher is theoretically unbreakable. (Of course the key file needs to be physically secured and/or encrypted by some other encryption scheme.)
Since the key is a textfile of numbers, it could be disguised as a list of statistics or something. Key files can also be entered by hand using a text editor program, in case you want a custom-made key file, say for example one that contains a perfectly even mix of all integers from 1 to 255.
BASIC, as a programming language, has the advantage of being available on almost all personal computers. It has the disadvantage of running with amazing slowness. The version shown here was written on a Macintosh using MicroSoft BASIC, and processes about 3000 characters per minute. (If anyone gets inspired to translate this into C or Pascal, send me the source code and I'll print it.) To port the program to other computers, start by deleting lines 10, 14, 110, 122, 142, and 161.
Then add the following lines:
110 INPUT "Filename";FIN$
122 INPUT "Filename";KEYN$
If your computer's version of BASIC doesn't have an XOR function, you'll have to define it using DEF FN or a subroutine. Functions like WHILE-WEND, DEFINT, LOCATE and INPUT$(1, #1) are not available in all versions of BASIC, so some improvising may be required. Since the key file is stored in a memory array, you may encounter a different size limit on your computer; adjust lines 16 and 320 accordingly.
5 REM XORcrypt - public domain 1989 - a Tangerine Network production
10 WINDOW 1,"",(8,28)-(505,332),2:TEXTFONT 0:TEXTSIZE 24
12 CLS:PRINT CHR$(13):PRINT TAB(11) " XOR Crypt"
14 MENU 2,0,0,"":MENU 3,0,0,"":TEXTSIZE 12
16 OPTION BASE 1:DEFINT A-D:DEFINT K:DIM K(30002), A(5000):WIDTH 65
18 PRINT:PRINT:GOSUB 3000
20 CLS:PRINT
21 PRINT TAB(10) "E=encrypt D=decrypt G=generate 'key' file Q=quit"
25 X$=INKEY$:IF LEN(X$)<1 THEN GOTO 25
30 IF X$="Q" OR X$="q" THEN CLS:BEEP:SYSTEM
31 IF X$="e" THEN X$="E"
32 IF X$="d" THEN X$="D"
35 IF X$="E" OR X$="D" THEN GOTO 100
36 IF X$="G" OR X$="g" THEN GOTO 300
40 GOTO 25
100 WAY$=X$:CLS:PRINT
105 IF WAY$="E" THEN CLS:PRINT TAB(12) "Select a file to encrypt...."
106 IF WAY$="D" THEN CLS:PRINT TAB(12) "Select a file to decrypt...."
110 IF WAY$="E" THEN FIN$=FILES$(1, "") ELSE FIN$=FILES$(1, "XORC")
113 IF LEN(FIN$)<2 THEN PRINT "*ABORT*":GOSUB 3000:GOTO 20
120 CLS:PRINT
121 PRINT TAB(12) "Select a 'key' file...."
122 KEYN$=FILES$(1,"TEXT")
129 C=0
130 OPEN KEYN$ FOR INPUT AS #1:PRINT "Reading 'key' file."
131 WHILE NOT EOF(1)
132 INPUT #1, KN:C=C+1:K(C)=KN
133 WEND
135 K(C+1)=-1:CLOSE #1:CLS
140 IF WAY$="E" THEN PRINT:INPUT "File name for encrypted data";OUTN$
141 IF WAY$="D" THEN PRINT:INPUT "File name for decrypted data";OUTN$
142 CALL OBSCURECURSOR
145 OPEN FIN$ FOR INPUT AS #1
146 OPEN OUTN$ FOR OUTPUT AS #2
147 CLS:PRINT "The files have been opened. Please wait."
148 M=1
149 LOCATE 10,1:PRINT "Bytes processed so far:"
150 WHILE NOT EOF(1)
151 A$=INPUT$(1, #1):REM get one byte of text
152 A=ASC(A$+CHR$(0))
153 B=A XOR K(M)
154 M=M+1:IF K(M)=-1 THEN M=1
155 PRINT #2, CHR$(B);
156 D=D+1:IF D/100=INT(D/100) THEN LOCATE 10, 25:PRINT D
159 WEND
160 CLOSE #1:CLOSE #2
161 IF WAY$="E" THEN NAME OUTN$ AS OUTN$, "XORC"
200 PRINT:PRINT "select: <R>un again or <Q>uit"
201 CH$=INKEY$:IF LEN(CH$)<1 THEN GOTO 201
202 IF CH$="R" OR CH$="r" THEN RUN
203 IF CH$="Q" OR CH$="q" THEN BEEP:CLS:SYSTEM
300 CLS
301 PRINT:PRINT "Generate 'key' file...":PRINT
302 INPUT "Filename for output";N$
303 OPEN N$ FOR OUTPUT AS #1
304 PRINT:PRINT "To increase the randomness of the output,"
305 PRINT "press keys on the keyboard at random intervals."
306 PRINT "Press the 'Q' key to conclude the operation."
307 RANDOMIZE TIMER
308 LOCATE 12,1:PRINT "Number of random integers:"
309 LOCATE 12, 30:PRINT "1"
310 X=INT(RND*255):IF X<1 OR X>254 THEN GOTO 310
320 C=C+1:IF C>30000 THEN PRINT "Finished.":GOTO 390
330 IF C/15=INT(C/15) THEN PRINT #1, X:GOTO 360
340 PRINT #1, X ",";
350 IF TIMER/7=INT(TIMER/7) THEN GOSUB 2000:GOTO 370
360 H$=INKEY$:IF LEN(H$)<1 THEN GOTO 310
370 RANDOMIZE TIMER:LOCATE 12,30:PRINT C
380 IF H$="Q" OR H$="q" THEN GOTO 390 ELSE GOTO 310
390 PRINT #1, CHR$(13):CLOSE #1
391 PRINT "Mission accomplished."
392 GOSUB 3000:GOTO 20
2000 FOR Z=1 TO X:NEXT:RETURN
3000 FOR Z=1 TO 2500:NEXT:RETURNRETORTS
audience contributions to the distillation process
Dear Rick,
I agreed with the particulars of virtually everything in _The_Alembic_ (except for the anti-intellectual, anti-educational crap on page 20), yet on a more abstract plane I am dissatisfied with the mentality dominant in the magazine. The message seems to be: "I am too smart to participate in any social institution. I can pretend that I live in a vacuum, self-determined, immune from the brainwashing that holds all the suckers in the world in bondage except my fellow elitist buddies and me." People who think like this think they are smart, yet this view is as socially determined as any other. It is not a rare view; in fact, it is characteristic of many subcultures consisting of alienated individualist middle class white males. This elitist philosophy is itself part of the status quo: such individuals never change anything, since they show no interest in educating anyone outside of their own race and social class, particularly those who have been deprived of the very educational opportunities they take for granted.
We can look forward to future "merciless attacks" on everything "that the average ignoramus takes for granted." You say you are "open to non-dogmatic material from anywhere on the political spectrum." You say that you hold no kind of "ism" and that you tend not to respect those who do.
I find this attitude both dishonest and morally irresponsible. Having no philosophy is impossible. You most certainly do have a philosophy, and a very typical, philistine one at that. You think that you are not a dupe, but you are, a dupe of nihilism.
...Since you are open to the entire political spectrum, are you open to publishing articles promoting racism and fascism? Do you think that such views are deprived of a public forum (eg. on the talk shows)? Is the establishment inimical to such views?
If you are really offended by liberal hypocrisy, if you are worried about totalitarianism and oppression as are some of your writers, if you really want to defend the human mind and the quality of life from degradation, then you will have to take sides. You can't promote fascism and anti-fascism at the same time. Nor intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. You ought to think about what philosophies and isms make possible an allegiance to critical and rational thinking and which philosophies will destroy it. And what social groups one should ally oneself with in pursuing such aims. Many smartasses who brag about their independent superior minds have hopped on board the fascist philosophy of Ayn Rand. Do you want to go that way? Maybe the ignorant masses you so despise have some objective interests in common with yours.
Now here are my detailed comments on the magazine.
"Feminism as Fascism." Bob Black's analysis is almost 100% correct. Yet his title is too imprecise, as feminism or women's liberation encompasses a whole spectrum of political ideologies and stances. He should have used 'radical feminism' (in quotes) in the title. The particular brand of radical feminism discussed is in fact the creation of an elite group of middle-class intellectual women (and men) and does not represent the material interests of the vast majority of women who really do suffer oppression. Black should have more clearly defined the distinctions in the women's movement and especially the middle class nature of feminist ideology.
The middle class in general lives in a vacuum and is incapable of acknowledging conflicting class interests. Hence middle class white women (and I do mean white) who themselves have ambitions of advancing in the corporate world are not likely to emphasize social class in their discussions of power: it is more convenient to speak of 'patriarchy', of women vs. men in the abstract. Hence bourgeois white females eager to gain the opportunity to exploit workers (and who love to complain about discrimination suffered by white women but never by black people) are not likely to be honest about just who has and has not power. And in the universities, the feminist metaphysicians promote the same antirational, antiscientific, and antihumanist attitudes as do the ruling elite in general. One prominent feminist philosopher of science referred to the _Principia_Mathematica_ as "Newton's rape manual." (I am getting sick of white women's rape fantasies.) I have publicly denounced such thinking, arguing that it will lead us to fascism. Hence I love Black's statement "'When God was a Woman' it was already necessary to abolish her." Unfortunately, Black has been keeping company with anarchist riffraff, so his bad experiences serve him right. He still has not relieved himself of his anarchist heritage: "to be a Trotskyist or a Jesuit is, in itself, to be a believer, that is to say a chump." Anyone who so bad-mouths anyone holding a systematic philosophy is himself a fool.
"Flush the family" had me in stitches. I largely agree with Smythe's debunking. Yet there is still a lack of realism. Some people will continue to have children (I vainly hope those who really fit that vocation rather than acting out of blind habit), and those children will have to be brought up somehow - letting them run wild is just as reactionary as authoritarianism. A practical alternative to the nuclear family will necessitate mass organization to realize support for the welfare of children (nuclear family or no) who are being crushed to death under Reagan-Bush-ism.
"The Power of Negative Thinking" is quite correct: ability is not enough in the modern corporate bureaucratic form of organization - attitude is, because "attitude" is now a necessary totalitarian form of social control. You can't be trusted until you have been spayed. You must be white, join the appropriate tennis and raquetball clubs, and join the good old boys or you will never rise beyond the stray middle management position. The argument unfortunately deteriorates toward the end of the article with a stupid diatribe against all organization. More infantile anarchism.
"The coming food crisis in America" - great article!
"Methods as message, or, religion as rabies." As a militant atheist, I love this article. I would love to translate this article into Esperanto and publish it in the magazine I founded, _Ateismo_.
"Language and liberty" is an important topic - unfortunately this extract lacks detail. I would like to see the author's ideas fleshed out. I don't know much about the situation in Bonanno's country, but there is much to be considered here in the U.S. Differences in language are also tied up with differences in access to information (the most crucial problem). The language differences between social groups have existed for thousands of years. How is the situation different now? How are the languages of the different social groups faring these days? In the U.S. the great divide is the language of the professional classes vs. the language of the ghetto. Are either or both of these language varieties and their mutual comprehensibility deteriorating?
In conclusion, the magazine has some good material, but its limitations exemplify the childish and intellectually vacuous heritage of anarchism: the political philosophy of the self-indulgent, decadent, escapist refuse of the middle class.
Sincerely,
Ralph Dumain
reply from Rick Harrison:
'Systematic philosophies' are philosophies of the System.
I would suggest that if you agreed with the vast majority of the particulars in _Alembic_ #1, you have already made half the journey to independent thought and the argument really concerns _attitude_ rather than facts. Instead of wondering about the "difficulties of those who are afraid of being swallowed up in theoretical systems," you might investigate the difficulties of those who are afraid to let go of such systems. Ideological systems, identified by words ending with the suffix "-ism," generally serve as substitutes for religion, and the arguments used in defense of the various 'isms are often no more logical than those utilized by proponents of, say, Creationism.
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Dear Alchemists,
I was surprised by your sympathetic treatment of the Loglan movement evidenced in the article "Announcing Lojban." Loglan has been an embarrassment to the artificial language movement because of its adherents' factionalism and their tendency to make major alterations in the grammar just when a few people thought they had learned it.
Loglan/Lojban is pretty lame compared to other artificial languages, and I have to wonder why anyone would study it. It is ugly-looking and ugly-sounding, structurally irrelevant to the everyday needs of human communication, and riddled with inconsistencies. Those who write letters to the editor of the language's newsletters repeatedly point out these imperfections, and are repeatedly assured that obvious drawbacks should be viewed instead as advantages. Loglan's most rabid promoters come off sounding like computer programmers who excuse the defects in their work with elaborate rationalizations of how "it's not a bug, it's a feature!"
Lojban, now the best-publicized faction of the logical language movement, has several hundred rules of grammar. Its promoters try to excuse this by saying the rules of English are even more numerous and haven't been totally elucidated or enumerated. What they overlook, however, is that Esperanto only has 16 official grammatical rules, and in practice you only need to know about 30 rules to be able to construct Esperanto sentences fairly fluently. There are some natural languages, like Malay, which have a similarly small number of grammatical regulations. This makes Loglan relatively non-competitive among language students who would like to get "up and running" as quickly as possible in a new language.
Loglan claims to be culturally neutral, but it is, in fact, derived from the culture of nerds - most of its advocates are sci-fi nuts, computer-philes and other pale white creatures likely to be found wearing eyeglasses and having college degrees. To actually create a culturally neutral language, I would suggest having a computer create words from randomly-chosen phonemes. Then _everyone_ would be on an even footing as far as recognizability of the lexicon is concerned. Loglan and Lojban, however, have shredded the six "most popular" languages to create hideous, Chicken-McNugget-style words. This is an acquiescence to colonialism and imperialism; after all, how did those six languages become so widespread? Mainly through the military subjugation of native peoples and the extermination of hundreds of their natural languages.
Loglan is doomed to remain obscure because the movement provides no compelling reason for people to inconvenience themselves by attempting to learn such an irritating language. Some say Loglan provides a means of testing the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, a linguistic theory stating that the syntax and lexicon of a language constrain the thoughts of the people who speak it. Yet, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been thoroughly debunked in the linguistic community, and can be easily shown to be false simply by thinking about it. What is a 'thought'? It is a combination of experience, information, images and meanings. The average thought carries more data and covers more lexical territory than any reasonably brief sentence could contain. Using language forces us to distill and excerpt our thoughts down to a communicable form. It's like trying to draw a picture using a typewriter instead of a pen; cute pictures can be made out of asterisks and other typewriter characters, but this will never come close to art, just as language will never come close to conveying thought. Thought is much more powerful and freerranging than language could ever hope to be; every poet knows this. But the Loglanic Whorfists deny it.
Other proposed uses for Loglan include international communication and the facilitation of human-to-computer communication. Since international communication is being taken care of just fine by languages like English and French, it should be painfully obvious that people will not trouble themselves to learn an unreal language like Loglan any more than they did Esperanto. And strangely, or maybe not so strangely, Loglanists have never acknowledged the ethical questions raised by trying to constrain human language to make it accommodate the needs of our retarded children, i.e. computers.
By practically making a religion out of predicate logic, Loglanists have demonstrated a hatred of spontaneous human nature. This hatred is quite apparent in the way they snarl about "irrationalities" and "ambiguities" in natural languages. So they, like religionists, attempt to apologize for being human by adhering to rigid behavioral guidelines which will ultimately make them something less than human.
Sincerely,
Mark Tierisch
Public Ptomaine Software Co.
reply from Rick Harrison:
What "sympathetic treatment"?? I reprinted part of their pamphlet and allowed them to expose themselves.
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Whew! We made it through another issue without a single mention of "alternative music" or other trendy fads which more cynical editors use to capitalize on the sheep-like tendencies of their audiences. Coming up in future editions of _The_Alembic_: Is music a drug? ~ The ideology of "Star Trek - The Next Generation." ~ Henry David Thoreau's most radical essay. ~ Is reality an authoritarian concept? ~ and more!
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Thus endeth the second Alembic.
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