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The Alembic

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The ALEMBIC
third edition, Autumn 1989

a publication dedicated to superseding pre-fabricated ideologies
for those who `think too much' and have a `bad attitude'

_The_Alembic_ is a magazine of thoughts and speculations simultaneously distributed on paper and as a computer textfile which you can download from the more enlightened electronic bulletin boards. _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. Copyright 1989 Tangerine Network. Commercial use of this material is forbidden.

Editor's note: The electronic version of _The_Alembic_ continues to be released right on schedule, appearing at its distribution points shortly after the equinoxes and solstices. Printing and mailing the paper version on time has turned out to be impossible (not to mention more time-consuming, more troublesome, and more expensive). Last year I got a mass mailing from an anarchist microfiche publisher in Australia commenting on how thoughtless alternative press readers are in their demand for paper versions of small publications. At the time I thought he was nuts but I realize now he's right! In addition to killing trees and exposing print-shop workers to chemical and physical hazards, the use of the paper-and-ink medium extracts an inordinate amount of time and money from the editors and publishers of obscure journals. Ultimately, of course, it would be nice to replace all "media'' with real communication, i.e. face-to-face interaction in real communities.

Beyond Radicalism

by Lawrence E. Christopher
copyright 1989 by Lawrence E. Christopher.
Reprinted from _Light_&_Liberty_, P. O. Box 33, Woodstock NY 12498.

Imagine that the world is enclosed in a web made of an imperceptibly fine fabric. Your slightest motion is subtly guided by the pattern of the web, which is so thin and delicate that it could be destroyed with one stroke of a pocket knife. However, most of its captives are not even aware of its existence, so they continue to be confined by it. Others see the web, but believe it to be indestructible. They, too, are never able to break free of it. This is essentially the way in which the mass media and political system control the thought processes of people living in modern industrial society.

Consider the worldview implied in any newspaper article or television news broadcast. I am not speaking of lies and biases here. I am speaking, rather, of the _context_ into which _all_ sides of every public issue are placed. The moment you read or hear terms like "the economy," "the nation," or "society," the essence of the indoctrination has been effected. What is subsequently said _about_ these entities is secondary. If you accept these entities as objectively existing aspects of ultimate reality rather than as purely subjective (though widely accepted) ideas which _you_ are free to accept or reject, then you've been taken in already, regardless of what opinions you form regarding the issue at hand.

My objective in this essay is to suggest a method of breaking this web, which is in fact made of nothing but thought. I am going to focus largely on the issue of why most radical strategies fail in this regard. As has been suggested, there are two ways in which the aforementioned web can ensnare one. The first, which is what keeps the majority of people captive, is simply to not recognize its existence. This lack of awareness on the part of the masses has been pointed out innumerable times by intellectuals throughout the ages. That is why I want to focus on the second, more subtle way this web has of captivating one. This entails the victim recognizing the existence of the web, and becoming so frightened or angry about it that he attributes far too much power to it. This is the trap radicals frequently fall into. They fail to see what a simple matter it is to eradicate this web.

Almost as soon as I began thinking about societal issues, I defined myself as a radical. My opinions on various issues changed as my ideological position on the political spectrum shifted, but what remained was the conviction that society was controlled by a power elite who ruled over a sheeplike population with force, fraud and indoctrination. This basic belief remained the focal point of my thinking as I went through the stages of defining myself as a populist, a libertarian and an anarchist.

I have not rejected the premises upon which my radicalism was grounded. More than ever, it seems apparent that we live in a world which is dominated by forces that are antithetical to any meaningful concepts of peace, liberty, or justice. Yet, I have concluded that traditional radical strategies are ultimately a futile pursuit.

I will begin with the assertion that the motivating force underlying all radical thought and action is the desire to exercise _free_will_. Human consciousness innately yearns to realize its full potential; to inhabit a reality of its own creation rather than one externally imposed upon it. Political institutions are often obstructions in our quest for this freedom. To the extent that we are free of conditioning, we resent these institutions imposing their structures upon our consciousness. There is disagreement among radicals as to the best means of achieving freedom; for example, whether by utilizing the political system in order to gain control over it (as in forming an alternative party), by peaceful protest, or by violent revolution. Radicals also disagree over what _constitutes_ liberty and justice; i.e. what kind of social system should replace the present one. Yet, all radicals agree that society in its present form stifles liberty and should be either fundamentally changed or abolished altogether.

Paradoxically, in their very attempt to assert free will, radicals implicitly hold an assumption which is antithetical to the very concept. The essence of the problem lies in the fact that true power and energy lie in _consciousness_. This includes the power of leaders and social institutions. The power which they wield is almost entirely in the realm of thought. It only extends into physical reality to the extent that people believe that it does. When, as radicals, we _believe_ that political institutions prevent us from being free, we are contributing to their power just as surely as are the obedient citizens who support the status quo. THe only difference is that the latter are contributing to what they perceive as a benign entity, while the former are contributing to one they believe is malevolent.

Action is taken with the assumption that in order to bring about a desired consequence 'y', action 'x' must be carried out. If, as radicals, our 'y' is freedom and our 'x' is, say, revolution, then we are granting that 'y' is _contingent_. We cannot be free until the revolution takes place. We are placing a limitation upon our free will, assuming that, for us to exercise it, external conditions must first be changed. Consider how much power we are thereby granting our enemies! We are conceding that they have the capacity to prevent us from existing as free individuals. Despite the fact that all radical theories place an emphasis on freedom and empowerment, there is always the built-in limitation that our liberation is dependent upon the transformation of an entire society.

It can be argued that it is objectively the case that our government can take away our freedom. It can impose laws on us, imprison us, kill us if it chooses. Here it must be stated that this essay is presupposing a certain view of human nature. I am assuming that the exercising of free will is an essential condition for a meaningful life; that fully realizing our freedom is ultimately more important than any physical circumstances we may be in. I should also mention that it is my belief that we are ultimately responsible for every circumstance in which we find ourselves. Although this is not a necessary presupposition for the rest of my argument, if you fundamentally disagree with this metaphysical position, it would be difficult to completely agree with my conclusions.

True freedom entails realizing what freedom is. Without this, no external conditions can enable one to attain freedom. One can have more true freedom in a prison cell than in a luxury penthouse apartment (although, all else being equal, the latter is still preferable to the former). Governments, of course, do not realize this. Leaders believe that they can take away your freedom. They believe that if they accumulate enough wealth and annex enough territory they can thereby control the lives and destinies of other people. "Leaders" are entirely ignorant regarding the nature of freedom and power. They desperately want to feel powerful and they attempt to achieve this by manipulating external conditions. They do not realize that the only authentic power lies within.

Two people can exist in virtually identical physical circumstances and yet perceive and interpret these circumstances in completely different ways. Evidence of this is widespread in any large city that contains a variety of ethnic and economic subcultures. For example, the government of the United States labels all people living within a certain geographical territory "Americans," and most people accept this definition. Yet, in truth, white collar middle class people living in "America" have more in common in regard to lifestyle, values and overall perception of reality with white collar middle class people living in, say, England or France, than any such middle class people have in common with, say, drug dealers in New York City (who in turn have more in common with South AMerican and Asian drug dealers than with most of their "fellow citizens.") There are many ways of categorizing people; they are grand conceptual schemes which structure reality in a particular way. There are others -- races, religions, economic classes and ideologies being the most commonly used.

Once it is established that no particular method of categorizing or structuring human beings has any objective validity, it is easier to see a way to free oneself from any such category. There is a basic reason why political movements and revolutions so seldom result in fundamental long term change. Radical ideologies teach us to define ourselves and our reality in a way diametrically opposed to that of our opponents. This, however, prevents us from ever becoming truly free from those we least esteem. To define oneself against some principle 'x' forever enslaves one to 'x'. For example, a Satanist is inextricably bound to the concept of the Christian god. Likewise, communists define their reality based on their opposition to capitalism, and anarchists must always have the belief system of government to oppose. In this way, the political system and its transgressions against liberty are more a part of the radical's reality than they are of the ordinary citizen's. Of course, the mindset of the ordinary citizen, who simply defines reality in _accordance_ with the reigning political structure, is hardly conducive to freedom. There is, fortunately, an alternative to both: a belief system which is entirely independent and self generated. This is a point which requires elaboration.

Believing that I live in a reality constructed by my own consciousness does not imply a schizophrenic state that ignores the existence of others and their beliefs. It does not entail feeling bound to perceiving reality the same way that others do. It is possible to recognize the beliefs of others and the ways in which those beliefs influence you, while at the same time maintaining your own independence from those beliefs.

The only way we can live by values that differ from those which the political system and media represent is for us to live and work from a standpoint completely independent of these institutions. If politics is a destructive force, then we will never improve things by working within a political framework. An entirely different paradigm is called for, one which does not depend on the "establishment" paradigm at all.

Living in the realm of a particular paradigm, or set of values, does not imply that there is no contact with other paradigms. Hence, living in an apolitical paradigm might at times involve confrontations with the mainstream paradigm. For example, consider war resistance. If we vote for political candidates who promise to end the war, we are working within the political, mainstream framework. If we overthrow the government and put a new, "peaceful" one in its place, we are still working from the framework of our opponents; we would be seizing _their_ institution, the one that caused the war in the first place, with the intention of using it for our own ends.

There are ways of resisting political oppression which do not themselves assume a political framework. Avoiding income taxes, refusing to be drafted, boycotting corporations which produce weapons for the military: all of these actions are independent of the political paradigm. That is, they recognize the existence of the political paradigm and they are not inhabiting it. On the contrary: they constitute a refusal to participate in it.

The essence of this strategy is for each individual to remain at all times aware of his basic sovereignty regardless of societal conditions. As much as possible, people should create and live in the society they want, rather than passively accepting the one imposed on them by the mainstream media and political system. Whenever one is threatened by another's belief system in a way that cannot be avoided, then action is required; this action should not, however, entail accepting to any degree the conceptual framework of the offender.

This can perhaps be seen more readily if we consider the mindset of a street gang. A gang has "turf" which is won and defended by violent means. Willingness to commit violent and aggressive acts is the way status is attained within the gang. If such a gang existed in the neighborhood in which you lived, preventing you from safely walking the streets, you would have a variety of possible responses to choose from. One response would be to submit to the gang's rule. Perhaps if you paid them a certain amount of "protection" money, they would allow you to walk the streets unharmed. This would be conforming to the gang's view of reality. It would be conceding that the gang indeed controls the neighborhood and that you are compelled to conform to its demands (although, in reality, one could conceivably pay the protection money without psychologically accepting the gang's view of reality, just as one may pay taxes without accepting the government's claim to legitimacy; for the sake of simplicity I am assuming in this example that one's actions are completely in accord with one's belief system).

Another response might be to form a gang of your own; your gang could then atempt to take over the "turf" for yourselves. This would also be completely accepting the (original) gang's worldview. You would be, like the gang, defining the neighborhood as turf to be won and defended with violence. Calling upon law enforcement authorities for help would be another variation of this "rival gang" alternative, for here, too, we have a group with coercive rules, demands for payment, and violent retribution against those who do not conform.

A third possibility would be to not accept the gang's view of reality at all. For example, you could organize, rather than a rival gang, a group of fellow neighborhood residents who may carry weapons, but who would only use violence in self defense. In this case, you would not be trying to win turf; you would be attempting to live in a reality in which streets city streets are not considered "turf" at all. This would be the only alternative which fully rejects the offender's view of reality.

{Editor's note: the author has failed to mention the possibility of moving to a better neighborhood where people behave differently.}

The above analysis can be applied to more organized forms of coercion, such as nation states. If we regard governments as destructive, we should not in any manner accept the government's worldview. We should not try to take over the government, or form a government of our own. We should not even let ourselves become preoccupied with the idea of eliminating governments from the planet. We would do far better if we simply made the decision to live in a government-less reality, albeit one which may at times have to interact with others to whom the government's definition of reality is relevant. Such interaction, however, can be kept to a minimum. For example, in the above example, the neighborhood patrol would not _seek_ confrontations with the gang. More importantly, it would essentially disband once the threat had passed. If America had remained true to the military strategy it adhered to during the revolution, the military as we know it today would not exist. There would only be a _potential_ citizens' army, ready to fight when necessary, but not forming an entrenched institution seeking world domination.

Freedom from those with intentions we do not share entails escaping not only their overt rules but also from the entire conceptual framework in which they reside. Although I entitled this essay "Beyond Radicalism," what I am really advocating is a truer, more radical radicalism. A radicalism that has outgrown the desire to rebel for rebellion's sake; one which recognizes that human nature has the potential for grander things than brooding over and complaining about the behavior of the least enlightened members of our species.

Time Wars

book review by Rick Harrison

_Time_Wars_
copyright 1987 by Jeremy Rifkin
Touchstone/Simon & Schuster
isbn 0-671-67158-8

Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed.

-Darth Vader in _Star_Wars_

Clocks for some reason or other always seem to be marching, and, as with armies, marching is never to anything but doom.

-Alan Watts

In his book _Time_Wars_, contemporary philosopher Jeremy Rifkin asserts that the battle for control over the expenditure and perception of time is ``the primary conflict in human history.'' The calendar, the clock, the schedule and finally the computer have given those in power tighter and tighter control over how the average person uses his time.

``We're a nation obsessed with efficiency,'' Rifkin said in a mid-1989 appearance on Larry King's radio show. ``In fact, I think if you look at it anthropologically, this culture is more obsessed with labor-saving, time-saving technology than any other culture in history. And ironically, we feel we have less free time than any culture in history. And in real terms that's true because, with all of our laborsaving, time-saving technologies -- the cellular phone, the fax machine -- the amount of activity continues to increase as a result of these new tools and so we can never catch up.

``The fax machine just gives you more material that has to be faxed, and then you have to pay more attention to it. If you have a message machine, you have to listen to all those messages every night when you come home. The fact is, most people feel that their lives are increasingly frantic, frenetic, that they're losing a sense of relationship, of a sense of bonding and community, and people feel stretched to the limit. Most people I know are experiencing information overload, they're experiencing burn-out in their day to day lives, and they're about ready to look for new alternatives.''

Rifkin's assertion that technological devices which are supposed to save labor actually lead to increasing enslavement corresponds to comments made in Bob Black's essay ``The Abolition of Work.'' Black observed, ``I don't want robot slaves to do everything; I want to do things myself. There is, I think, a place for labor-saving technology, but a modest place. The historical and pre-historical record is not encouraging. When productive technology went from hunting-gathering to agriculture and on to industry, work increased while skills and selfdetermination diminished. The further evolution of industrialism has accentuated what Harry Braverman called the degradation of work. Intelligent observers have always been aware of this. John Stuart Mill wrote that all the labor-saving inventions ever devised haven't saved a moment's labor. The enthusiastic technophiles -- Saint-Simon, Comte, Lenin, B.F. Skinner -- have always been unabashed authoritarians also; which is to say, technocrats. We should be more than sceptical about the promises of the computer mystics. _They_ work like dogs; chances are, if they have their way, so will the rest of us.''

``The average medieval serf,'' Rifkin says, `` had 185 days off per year on the Christian calendar. That's 185 days with no work -- feast days, holy days. The average American has 19 hours less leisure time per month than we had ten years ago. So I'm not sure that we're really progressing when it comes to enjoyment of life.'' Consider that twenty years ago it was possible for a husband to buy a house on his wages alone, and now in most households both husband and wife are working. The amount of time which the average individual has free to use as he pleases is definitely decreasing.

We are reminded of a passage from Benjamin Hoff's classic of Taoist propaganda, _The_Tao_of_Pooh_:

In China, there is the Teahouse. In France, there is the Sidewalk Cafe. Practically every civilized country in the world has some sort of equivalent -- a place where people can go to eat, relax, and talk things over without worrying about what time it is, and without having to leave as soon as the food is eaten... What's the message of the Hamburger Stand? Quite obviously, it's: ``You don't count; hurry up.''
Not only that, but as everyone knows by now, the horrible Hamburger Stand is an insult to the customer's health as well. Unfortunately, this is not the only example supported by the Saving Time mentality. We could also list the Supermarket, the Microwave Oven, the Nuclear Power Plant, the Poisonous Chemicals...
Practically speaking, if timesaving devices really saved time, there would be more time available to us now than ever before in history. But, strangely enough, we seem to have less time than even a few years ago. It's really great fun to go someplace where there are no timesaving devices because, when you do, you find that you have _lots_of_time_. Elsewhere, you're too busy working to pay for machines to save you time so you won't have to work so hard.

``As we increase the pace, we're increasing the impatience in our culture,'' Rifkin said in his radio interview. ``Many people have a hard time with simple things like social discourse now, because they're used to the nanosecond culture. What happens when a society starts organizing time below the realm of experience? You can't experience a nanosecond, yet computer time is based on a billionth of a second. When we get to that point, we have to re-assess exactly where we're going.''

In his book, Rifkin elaborates on this by describing ways in which people who spend an unhealthy amount of time with computers react to their fellow humans:

In clinical case studies, psychologists have observed that computer compulsives are much more intolerant of behavior that is at all ambiguous, digressive, or tangential. In their interaction with spouses, family, and acquaintances, they are often terse, preferring simple yes-no responses. They are impatient with open-ended conversations and are uncomfortable with individuals who are reflective or meditative. Computer compulsives demand brevity and view social discourse in instrumental terms, interacting with others only as a means of collecting and exchanging useful information.

Perhaps you can think of some illustration of this from your own life. I am reminded of an exchange of messages I had on a computer network with a would-be defender of the Libertarian Party. My messages were usually well thought out, often enhanced by quotations from Thoreau, Black and other philosophers, and were usually longer than the average messages in the networks. The Libertarian's replies were brief, were seldom backed up by references to other thinkers, and he objected when I used metaphors, complaining that they were `reification.' Eventually the chain of messages ended abruptly when he vituperated something like, ``I believe in the right of private property. You don't. I'm not going to waste my time talking to you any more.'' Shortly after that, the same Libertarian received a similar message from another computer user, who summarily dismissed the Libertarian's ideas as ``a bunch of crap.''

Both of these characters appeared to be operating in a vacuum, rigidly clinging to opinions that were neither supported by research nor by personal experience, making bold, blanket pronouncements about serious social issues seemed absurdly unconnected to reality, and perhaps this is not surprising since they spend so much time in the simulated universe presented on the computer screen. The Libertarian works as a computer programmer, and I suppose his objection to the use of analogy and metaphor was based on the inability of computers and their disciples to understand anything that can't be directly digitized. Another participant in the electronic conference blasted writers who use poetic devices and extensive vocabularies, claiming that eloquence is a form of obfuscation or obscurantism! Rifkin is right: technophiles like their communication to be terse, lifeless and utilitarian.

In the computer message-exchange networks, if an idea cannot be expressed in 200 words or less, it will probably be skipped over by the majority of readers. A week or a month after a message is posted, it is automatically erased, and even if the ``thread'' of discussion continues, it becomes impossible for the participants (or newcomers) to refer back to what has been said previously. If a participant's computer breaks down or he becomes ill, the thread will probably be completely gone by the time he returns. Responding to a message that is more than a week old has brought ridicule to some users: ``Where have you been, in a time warp or something? I posted that message weeks ago.'' This is the culture, or rather non-culture, which is developing among most avid computer users: messages must be replied to immediately, even complex ideas must be boiled down to a few words, and after the discussion is over, it evaporates into oblivion, leaving the participants and humanity at large with nothing to show for it.

Another example cited in _Time_Wars_:

Harriet Cuffaro offers another illustration of the different sense of temporal entrainment that ensues in computer learning, as opposed to experiential learning in a non-simulated environment. She uses the example of parking a car. If a child uses blocks as play pieces to park a car, his or her temporal skills will develop quite differently than if the child uses computer symbols. With the blocks, ``the child's eye-hand coordination must also contend with the qualitative, with the texture of the surface on which the car is moved, and with the fit between garage opening and car width.'' Cuffaro points out that ``such complexities do not exist on two-dimensional screens.'' Parking a car on the computer screen is pure action in a vacuum, ``motion without context.''

This motion without context is accompanied by emotion without context. One box of illusions, the computer, works hand in hand with its counterpart, the television, to plunge a person into a simulated life. Protected from true adventure, the future worker can only watch adventure shows on TV or play adventure games on the computer. Rigidlyheld, vehemently-expressed opinions are formed on the basis of `information' obtained from the old idiot box and the new. I am reminded of the anarchist slogan, `the society which makes true adventure impossible makes its own destruction the only possible adventure.''

The artificial time perspective promulgated by digital watches and omnipresent computers is, as demonstrated above, having an impact on the way people behave. The question to consider, then, is `who benefits from this separation of humans from organic rhythms and natural temporal cycles?' The answer appears to be, the ruling class: those who control the productive activity of the world economy.

To be a night watchman, an assembly line worker, or a dishwasher, an employee has to be able to tolerate vast stretches of boredom. The jobs of the future, however, are going to require a faster pace, and tomorrow's workers will find their every action closely monitored by computer. This is extremely stressful and offensive to most adults, but perhaps today's computer-indoctrinated children and adolescents are being molded into the ideal employees of tomorrow. The transition from organic agricultural time to tightly-controlled industrial scheduling was also accomplished through indoctrination of the young, as Rifkin observes:

For the most part, the new class of owners was unsuccessful in converting farmers and tradesmen into disciplined factory workers. They were too settled into the temporal orthodoxy of an earlier epoch. But it soon became apparent that their children, still temporally unformed, provided a much more convenient labor pool for the new industrial technology. Child labor was cheap and could be easily molded to the temporal demands of the clock and the work schedule. By spiriting children away at the tender age of five to seven to work up to sixteen hours a day inside dimly lit and poorly ventilated factories, the owners insured themselves a captive and manipulable work force that could be thoroughly indoctrinated into the new time frame.

That's what life was like in the days of laissez-faire capitalism. The computer-accelerated, impatient children of today may have a similar fate in store for them. Already we are getting glimpses of what the future workplace, designed by technocrats, will be like:

In Kansas a repair service company keeps a complete computer tally of the number of phone calls its workers handle and the amount of information collected with each call. Says one disgruntled employee, ``If you get a call from a friendly person who wants to chat, you have to hurry the caller off because it would count against you. It makes my job very unpleasant.''
According to Dr. Alan Westin, author of a 1987 report published by the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) entitled _The_Electronic_Supervisor_, between 20 and 35 percent of all clerical workers in the United States are now being monitored by sophisticated computer systems. The OTA report warns of an Orwellian future of ``electronic sweatshops'' with workers doing ``boring, repetitious, fast-paced work that requires constant alertness and attention to detail''; where ``the supervisor isn't even human'' but an ``unwinking computer taskmaster.''
In an effort to speed up the processing of information, some visual display units are now being programmed so that if the operator does not respond to the data on the screen within seventeen seconds, it disappears. Medical researchers report that operators exhibit increasing stress as the time approaches for the image to disappear on the screen: ``From the eleventh second they begin to perspire, then the heart rate goes up. Consequently they experience enormous fatigue.''

Perhaps the well-indoctrinated worker of the future, after spending his entire childhood playing video games and otherwise responding to the super-normal pace of computers, will not react so poorly to such a work environment. Perhaps the ruling class will once again succeed in creating a proletariat that is largely integrated into the productive technology that enriches the few.

In opposition to this anti-human quickening of the workplace and the replacement of real activity with simulated experiences, Rifkin believes a widespread social movement will arise to challenge the onslaught of artificial time. Just as the notion of ``bigger is better,'' advocated by supporters of centralization and mass production, was debunked by the idea of ``small is beautiful,'' advocated by those who appreciate diversity and craftsmanship, so too will there be a ``slow is beautiful'' movement, according to Rifkin. He describes this forthcoming clash of ideologies this way:

The ecological temporal orientation gives rise to a stewardship vision of the future. Its advocates would like to establish a new partnership with the rest of the living kingdom. At the heart of this new covenant vision is a commitment to develop an economic and technological infrastructure that is compatible with the sequences, durations, rhythms, and synergistic relationships that punctuate the natural production and recycling activities of the earth's ecosystems. Proponents believe that social and economic tempos must be reintegrated with the natural tempos of the environment if the ecosystem is to heal itself and become a vibrant, living organism once again.
The artificial temporal orientation gives rise to a high-technology simulated vision of the future. In this time world, an ever more complex and sophisticated labyrinth of fabricated rhythms will increasingly replace our long-standing reliance and dependency on the slower rhythms of the natural environment. Advocates of the artificial temporal orientation envision an environment regulated by the sequences, durations, rhythms, and synergistic interactions of computers, robotics, genetic engineering, and space technologies...

Consider the much-misused word `freedom.' What does it really mean, if not the ability of the individual to control what she does with the irreplaceable hours, minutes and seconds of her own life? This is the object of the real struggle for real freedom, and Rifkin's _Time_Wars_ is an important document of the emerging consciousness of this new movement.

excerpts from "Life Without Principle"

by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

{Editor's note: Thoreau's "Walden" and "Civil Disobedience" have been widely published and studied, but this essay is not so well known. It has been carefully swept under the rug by those who edit the classics.}

...Since _you_ are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveller, I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism.

Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.

This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in the fields, took it for granted that I was calculating my wages. If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for -- business! I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.

There is a coarse and boisterous money-making fellow in the outskirts of our town, who is going to build a bank-wall under the hill along the edge of his meadow. The powers have put this into his head to keep him out of mischief, and he wishes me to spend three weeks digging there with him. The result will be that he will perhaps get some more money to hoard, and leave for his heirs to spend foolishly. If I do this, most will commend me as an industrious and hard-working man; but if I choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler. Nevertheless, as I do not need the police of meaningless labor to regulate me, and do not see anything absolutely praiseworthy in this fellow's undertaking any more than in many an enterprise of our own or foreign governments, however amusing it may be to him or them, I prefer to finish my education at a different school.

If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!

Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

...The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money _merely_ is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The state does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celibrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct. I once invented a rule for measuring cordwood, and tried to introduce it in Boston; but the measurer there told me that the sellers did not wish to have their wood measured correctly, -- that he was already too accurate for them, and therefore they commonly got their wood measured in Charlestown before crossing the bridge.

The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get a "good job," but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for the love of it.

The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. You may raise money enough to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding _his_own_ business. An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed.

Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful. But I foresee that if my wants hsould be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. But as it is said of the merchants that ninety-seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men generally, tried by this standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied.

It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered written on the subject of getting a living; how to make getting a living not merely honest and honorable, but altogether inviting and glorious; for if _getting_ a living is not so, then living is not. One would think, from looking at literature, that this question had never disturbed a solitary individual's musings. Is it that men are too much disgusted with their experience to speak of it? The lesson of value which money teaches, which the Author of the Universe has taken so much pains to teach us, we are inclined to skip altogether. As for the means of living, it is wonderful how indifferent men of all classes are about it, even reformers, so called, -- whether they inherit, or earn, or steal it. I think that Society has done nothing for us in this respect, or at least has undone what she has done. Cold and hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and advise to ward them off.

The title _wise_ is, for the most part, falsely applied. How can one be a wise man, if he does not know any better how to live than other men? -- if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle? Does Wisdom work in a tread-mill? or does she teach how to succeed _by_her_example_? Is there any such thing as wisdom not applied to life? Is she merely the miller who grinds the finest logic? Is it pertinent to ask if Plato got his _living_ in a better way or more successfully than his contemporaries, -- or did he succumb to the difficulties of life like other men? Did he seem to prevail over some of them merely by indifference, or by assuming grand airs? or find it easier to live, because his aunt remembered him in her will? The ways in which most men get their living, that is, live, are mere makeshifts, and a shirking of the real business of life, -- chiefly because they do not know, but partly because they do not mean, any better.

The rush to California, for instance, and the attitude, not merely of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation to it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society! And that is called enterprise! I know of no more startling development of the immorality of trade, and all the common modes of getting a living. The philosophy and poetry and religion of such a mankind are not worth the dust of a puffball. The hog that gets his living by rooting, by stirring up the soil so, would be ashamed of such company. If I could command the wealth of all the worlds by lifting my finger, I would not pay _such_ a price for it. Even Mahomet knew that God did not make this world in jest. It makes God to be a moneyed gentleman who scatters a handful of pennies to see mankind scramble for them. The world's raffle! A subsistence in the domains of Nature a thing to be raffled for! What a comment, what a satire, on our institutions!

...It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men. The highest advice I have heard on these subjects was groveling. The burden of it was, -- It is not worth your while to undertake to reform the world in this particular. Do not ask how your bread is buttered; it will make you sick, if you do, -- and the like. A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread. If within the sophisticated man there is not an unsophisticated one, then he is but one of the devil's angels. As we grow old, we live more coarsely, we relax a little in our disciplines, and, to some extent, cease to obey our finest instincts. But we should be fastidious to the extreme of sanity, disregarding the gibes of those who are more unfortunate than ourselves.

In our science and philosophy, even, there is commonly no true and absolute account of things. The spirit of sect and bigotry has planted its hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the problem, whether the stars are inhabited or not, in order to discover it. Why must we daub the heavens as well as the earth? ...I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and liberal that you can think aloud in his society. Most with whom you endeavor to talk soon come to a stand against some institution in which they appear to hold stock, -- that is, some particular, not universal, way of viewing things. They will continually thrust their own low roof, with its narrow skylight, between you and the sky, when it is the unobstructed heavens you would view. Get out of the way with your cobwebs; wash your windows, I say!

To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, and flatter and study effect only more finely than the rest. We select granite for the underpinning of our houses and barns; we build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an underpinning of granitic truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our sills are rotten. What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and subtilest truth? I often accuse my finest acquaintances of an immense frivolity; for, while there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we do not teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity that the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual, however; for we do not habitually demand any more of each other.

...We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.

I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.

We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I do not know why my news should be so trivial, -- considering what one's dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so paltry. The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repition. You are often tempted to ask why such stress is laid on a particular experience which you have had, -- that, after twenty-five years, you should meet Hobbins, Registrar of deeds, again on the sidewalk. Have you not budged an inch then? Such is the daily news. Its facts appear to float on the atmosphere, insignificant as the sporules of fungi, and impinge on some neglected thallus, or surface of our minds, which affords a basis for them, and hence a parasitic growth. We should wash ourselves clean of such news. Of what consequence, though our planet explode, if there is no character involved in the explosion? In health we have not the least curiosity about such events. We do not live for idle amusement. I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up. ...

Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I often perceive how near I had come to admitting into my mind the details of some trivial affair, -- the news of the street; and I am astonished to observe how willing men are to lumber their minds with such rubbish, -- to permit idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind to intrude on ground which should be sacred to thought. Shall the mind be a public arena, where the affairs of the street and the gossip of the tea-table chiefly are discussed? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself, -- an hypaethral temple, consecrated to the service of the gods? I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with those which are insignificant, which only a divine mind could illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation. It is important to preserve the mind's chastity in this respect. Think of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very _sanctum_sanctorum_ for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make a very barroom of the mind's inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied us, -- the very street itself, with all its travel, and bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts' shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide? When I have been compelled to sit spectator and auditor in a court-room for some hours, and have seen my neighbors, who were not compelled, stealing in from time to time, and tiptoeing about with washed hands and faces, it has appeared to my mind's eye that, when they took off their hats, their ears suddenly expanded into vast hoppers for sound, between which even their narrow heads were crowded. Like the vanes of windmills, they caught the broad but shallow stream of sound, which, after a few titillating gyrations in their coggy brains, passed out the other side. I wondered if, when they got home, they were as careful to wash their ears as before their hands and faces. It has seemed to me, at such a time, that the auditors and the witnesses, the judge and the criminal at the bar, -- if I may presume him guilty before he is convicted, -- were all equally criminal, and a thunderbolt might be expected to descend and consume them all together.

By all kinds of traps and signboards, threatening the extreme penalty of the divine law, exclude such trespassers from the only ground which can be sacred to you. It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the barroom and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality. Our very intellect shall be macadamized, as it were, -- its foundation broken into fragments for the wheels of travel to roll over; and if you would know what will make the most durable pavement, surpassing rolled stones, spruce blocks, and asphaltum, you have only to look into some of our minds which have been subjected to this treatment so long.

If we have thus desecrated ourselves, -- as who has not? -- the remedy will be by wariness and devotion to reconsecrate ourselves, and make once more a fane of the mind. We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth.

...I saw, the other day, a vessel which had been wrecked, and many lives lost, and her cargo of rags, juniper berries, and bitter almonds were strewn along the shore. It seemed hardly worth the while to tempt the dangers of the sea between Leghorn and New York for the sake of a cargo of juniper berries and bitter almonds. America sending to the Old World for her bitters! Is not the sea-brine, is not shipwreck, bitter enough to make the cup of life go down here? Yet such, to a great extent, is our boasted commerce; and there are those who style themselves statesmen and philosophers who are so blind as to think that progress and civilization depend on precisely this kind of interchange and activity, -- the activity of flies about a molasses-hogshead. Very well, observes one, if men were oysters. And very well, answer I, if men were mosquitoes.

Lieutenant Herndon, whom our government sent to explore the Amazon, and, it is said, to extend the area of slavery, observed that there was wanting there "an industrious and active population, who know what the comforts of life are, and who have artificial wants to draw out the great resources of the country." But what are the "artificial wants" to be encouraged? Not the love of luxuries, like the tobacoo and slaves of, I believe, his native Virginia, nor the ice and granite and other material wealth of our native New England; nor are "the great resources of a country" that fertility or barrenness of soil which produces these. The chief want, in every State that I have been into, was a high and earnest purpose in its inhabitants. This alone draws out "the great resources" of Nature, and at last taxes her beyond her resources; for man naturally dies out of her. When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is not slaves, nor operatives, but men, -- those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers and redeemers.

In short, as a snow-drift is formed where there is a lull in the wind, so, one would say, where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.

What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that practically I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all. The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but as I love literature and to some extent the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much. I have not got to answer for having read a single President's Message. A strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man's door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! ...

Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body. They are _infra_-human, a kind of vegetation. I sometimes awake to a half-consciousness of them going on about me, as a man may become conscious of some of the process of digestion in a morbid state, and so have the dyspepsia, as it is called. It is as if a thinker submitted himself to be rasped by the great gizzard of creation. Poitics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite halves, -- sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each other. Not only individuals, but states, have thus a confirmed dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you can imagine by what sort of eloquence. Thus our life is not altogether a forgetting, but also, alas! to a great extent, a remembering, of that which we should never have been conscious of, certainly not in our waking hours. Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as EUpeptics, to congratulate each other on the everglorious morning? I do not make an exorbitant demand, surely.

Research for Whose Benefit?

by Masanobu Fukuoka

Reprinted from _The_One-Straw_Revolution_ c 1978 by Masanobu Fukuoka
Permission granted by Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, PA 18098.

When I first began direct-seeding rice and winter grain, I was planning to harvest with a hand sickle and so I thought it would be more convenient to set the seeds out in regular rows. After many attempts, dabbling about as an amateur, I produced a handmade seeding tool. Thinking that this tool might be of practical use to other farmers, I brought it to the man at the testing center. He told me that since we were in an age of large-sized machinery he could not be bothered with my ``contraption.''

Next I went to a manufacturer of agricultural equipment. I was told here that such a simple machine, no matter how much you tried to make of it, could not be sold for more than $3.50 apiece. ``If we made a gadget like that, the farmers might start thinking they didn't need the tractors we sell for thousands of dollars.'' He said that nowadays the idea is to invent rice planting machines quickly, sell them head over heels for as long as possible, then introduce something newer. Instead of small tractors, they wanted to change over to larger-sized models, and my device was, to them, a step backward. To meet the demands of the times, resources are poured into furthering useless research, and to this day my patent remains on the shelf.

It is the same with fertilizer and chemicals. Instead of developing fertilizer with the farmer in mind, the emphasis is on developing something new, anything at all, in order to make money. After the technicians leave their jobs at the testing centers, they move right over to work for the large chemical companies.

Recently I was talking with Mr. Asada, a technical official in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and he told me an interesting story. The vegetables grown in hothouses are extremely unsavory. Hearing that the eggplants shipped out in winter have no vitamins and the cucumbers no flavor, he researched the matter and found the reason: certain of the sun's rays could not penetrate the vinyl and glass enclosures in which the vegetables were being grown. His investigation moved over to the lighting system inside the hothouses.

The fundamental question here is whether or not it is necessary for human beings to eat eggplants and cucumbers during the winter. But, this point aside, the only reason they are grown during the winter is that they can be sold then at a good price. Somebody develops a means to grow them, and after some time passes, it is found that these vegetables have no nutritional value. Next, the technician thinks that if the nutrients are being lost, a way must be found to prevent that loss. Because the trouble is thought to be with the lighting system, he begins to research light rays. He thinks everything will be all right if he can produce a hothouse eggplant with vitamins in it. I was told that there are some technicians who devote their entire lives to this kind of research.

Naturally, since such great efforts and resources have gone into producing this eggplant, and the vegetable is said to be high in nutritional value, it is tagged at an even higher price and sells well. ``If it is profitable, and if you can sell it, there can't be anything wrong with it.''

No matter how hard people try, they cannot improve upon naturally grown fruits and vegetables. Produce grown in an unnatural way satisfies people's fleeting desires but weakens the human body and alters the body chemistry so that it is dependent on such foods. When this happens, vitamin supplements and medicines become necessary. This situation only creates hardships for the farmer and suffering for the consumer.

Retorts

audience contributions to the distillation process

Dear Rick:

I weary of working-classicists like Ralph Dumain deducing class from consciousness and ethnicity from attitude without positioning _themselves_ in the social grids they regard -- with seeming equanimity -- as determinative. If all views are ``socially determined,'' so are Dumain's and they must, pending arrival of his genealogy, resume and income tax returns, be filed away for future (p)reference. On a political scene where publishers owning a business bought with inherited wealth impersonate ``dissident office workers'' I have learned not to take class rhetoric as any evidence of class status; if anything the correlation is negative.

Ayn Rand, whom Dumain carelessly calls a ``fascist'' -- indicating his own befuddlement with the political jargon he spouts -- agrees with him that ``having no philosophy is impossible.'' Few intellectuals and fewer workers agree. If anything, in this epoch of shreds and patches, having _any_ philosophy is impossible. The philosophers, says Marx, have only interpreted the world. The point is to change it, to change it so radically that philosophy and other contemplative modes are realized and suppressed. Philosophy is contemplative capitalism, the abstract self-consciousness of the specialists in thought (formerly priests) whom the social division of labor have assigned a privileged position in every class society since Sumer and Egypt. No wonder Dumain defends ``education.''

Emending the title of my essay ``Feminism as Fascism'' to refer to ``radical'' feminism, suggested by Dumain, I actually did when I published a revised version of this 1983 text three years ago. Next revision, though, I plan to restore the original title but incorporate some differentiation of my target from mainstream feminism which is merely liberalism, an ideology I've assailed often enough elsewhere. I don't plan to make refined distinctions between these equally obnox-- ious variants so long as they discreetly downplay or disregard their own differences in thrall to some hazy feeling of ``sisterhood'' whose content, when it has any, is just anti-male resentment and whose real impetus is probably just avoidance of boat-rocking.

I'm puzzled by Dumain's caterwauling against my ``keeping company with anarchist riffraff'' -- the sort of anarchists I _part_ company with are the ones who think they have the kind of ``systematic philosophy'' Dumain, unlike most people, can't live without. I publicly broke ties with all avowedly anarchist publications and organizations in 1985. Now I deal with everybody non-ideologically and on a case by case basis. Labelling and self-labelling aren't very important to me, although people to whom they _are_ very important -- like Dumain, who coyly conceals his label -- tend to be my idea of ``riffraff.'' Anarchism like Marxism is food for thought. Let's chow down and, like Popeye, eat all the worms and spit out the germs.

Yours in struggle (just kidding),
Bob Black

an Alembic Trigram : Using the Flow

``People constantly change as they acquire new knowledge and discover new alternatives. But each person changes in harmony with his own nature, in keeping with his own desires for change and growth, in ways that make sense to _him_. Recognize each person you deal with as a different, distinct, individual entity, and you won't have identity problems.''

- Harry Browne
_How_I_Found_Freedom_in_an_Unfree_World_

``What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we will walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one.''

- Henry David Thoreau
_Walking_