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The Orlando Indicator 69
The Orlando INDICATOR
excerpts from issue 69, Spring 1988
NOTE: The Orlando Indicator was a radical newsletter published in
Central Florida from 1976 to 1988. Some of the Indicator's
observations seem worthy of preservation, so Tangerine Network
has made them available in this public domain ASCII file.
---
INTRODUCTION TO TAOISM
by Rick Harrison
A friend of mine once told me that he sometimes changes
his plans in response to the flow of events. For example, if he
is driving toward a particular destination and he encounters a
long series of red lights, he might turn back and postpone the
journey. Or, if he is working at a particular job and the stream
of events becomes turbulent and polluted with conflict, he looks
for another job. My friend calls himself a Baptist Republican
but in this respect he behaves more like a Taoist.
The Tao was "discovered" by Chinese philosophers about
2500 years ago. Since there is no [Tao ideogram] on American
typewriters, we change it to "Tao" and pronounce it "Dow." One
afternoon I heard a newscaster say "the Dow took a nosedive
today" and it took me a moment to realize she was talking about
the Dow, not the Tao.
Taoism is something between a religion and a philosophy.
It has a lot to do with the "flow" of events. At times it seems
the universe is merely a series of pseudo-random numbers. I call
it pseudo-random (a precise mathematical term) because there _is_
a pattern, although it is not easy to perceive unless you know
the algorithm being used to generate the series of numbers.
Pseudo-random also implies that the most unlikely coincidences
will happen more often than the laws of probability would
indicate. The evolution of life, the chance meetings of good
friends and bitter enemies, the person who is haunted by a
"streak of bad luck" are examples of these outrageously unlikely
coincidences that happen all the time. They're just manifestations
of the Tao. So, in some ways, being alive is like playing the
"one-armed bandits" in Las Vegas, waiting to see what kind of
pattern comes up on the slot machine.
The main "scripture" of Taoism is the _Tao Te Ching_ by
Lao-Tzu, although some historians doubt that Lao Tzu actually
existed (just as some historians doubt that Jesus Christ
actually existed). Ancient Chinese was a poetic but sometimes
ambiguous language, which explains why over 70 different
translations of this book have been published...
Perhaps the Tao can be described as a pathway which is
bounded on one side by external events and on the other side
by your true inner nature. If you try to follow any other path
through life - if you try to suppress your true inner nature,
or if you work against the natural processes of the world - your
journey will be much more difficult than the journey of one who
follows the Tao.
In his final book, scholar Alan Watts wrote, "The Tao
is the course, the flow, the drift, or the process of nature,
and I call it the Watercourse Way because both Lao-Tzu and
Chuang-Tzu use the flow of water as its principal metaphor...
The prinicple is that if everything is allowed to go its own
way, the harmony of the universe will be established... The
political analogy is Kropotkin's anarchism - the theory that if
people are left alone to do as they please, to follow their
nature and discover what truly please them, a social order will
emerge of itself.
"The order of nature is not a forced order; it is not
the result of laws and commandments which beings are compelled
to obey by external violence, for in the Taoist view there
really is no obdurately external world. My inside arises mutually
with my outside, and though the two may differ they cannot be
separated."
Taoists generally do not believe the world was created
by a boss-God who sits above the natural universe and issues
orders to be followed by His underlings (or else!). Lao-Tzu
wrote, "All things depend upon the Tao to exist, and it does
not abandon them. It lays no claim to its accomplishments. It
loves and nourishes all things, but does not rule over them."
Also consider this quotation, which was probably designed to be
irritating to those who have rigid minds: "The Tao does nothing,
yet it leaves nothing undone."
...One of the best-known proponents of Taoism was a
fictitious character: Kwai Chang "Grasshopper" Caine in the
TV series _Kung Fu_ (1972-74). Caine was a Buddhist/Taoist/
Shintoist priest who drifted through the Old West having
flashbacks and saying profound things (often at the most
inappropriate moments). When someone would swing a fist at
Caine, he would (more often than not) dive out of the way and
let their fist smash into a wall or into another attacker's
face. At the end of most episodes, Caine stood in the middle
of whatever road or field he happened to be in, looked around
to "see" which way the Tao was flowing, and started walking
toward his next adventure. Could this be an admirable way
to conduct one's affairs?
In closing, I will leave you with three Taoist
phrases that have been widely incorporated into the American
language:
Hang loose.
Take it easy.
Go with the flow.
---
EXCLUSIVE ORLANDO INDICATOR COVERAGE
OF A TWINS' SPRING TRAINING GAME
by Anonymous
March 15 - As I cycled down Wastemoreland Boulevard
toward Sinker Field, I pondered the ways in which people can be
manipulated by mere symbols. Pavlov rang a bell at mealtime and
pretty soon his hounds would salivate at the sound even if there
was no Purina Dog Chow in the house. Restaurants in malls allow
a whiff of frying onions to escape from the kitchen in order to
awaken potential customers' slumbering hungers. Poets, preachers,
politicians and other perverts use verbal, visual and auditory
symbols to produce the desired emotions in their audiences' brains.
Wave a flag, flash come cash, rev the engine of a Camaro, wear a
suit and tie or a T-shirt and jeans. No one is immune from being
manipulated by symbols.
It was unseasonably, unreasonably cold; I was shivering
upon my arrival at the timeworn stadium. In the foul smelling
restroom with its hellish odors of sulphur and ammonia, I
remembered an incident from the future in which religious
fanatics will gather at the adjacent Tangerine Bowl and cause
it to vanish into another dimension. But then again, our
premonitions about the past are always 20/20, aren't they?
I got a bleacher seat near thirst base and prepared
to watch this spring draining game between the Minnesota
Twinkies and the Houston Assholes. I was rooting through, I mean
for, the Houston team but who knows why.
How do boys select their favorite athletes? What deep
dark undercurrents run through the arena of sports? Consider
some of the terminology. Hot rookies, hotdogs, big sticks,
ribbies, rubbers, homeruns, in a position to score, good
penetration, a high fly, and most noteworthy of all, switch
hitters. In some semantic senses, "fans"="blowers" and the
power source is AC/DC. The avid baseball fan who knows Glenn
Davis' height and weight or talks about Don Mattingly having
the "sweetest swing in baseball" definitely has something
cooking on his back burner.
The catcher, firmly strapped into his gear, puts a
hand in his crotch to manipulate the pitcher with a symbolic
programming language. A hard-hurled ball smacks into the
squeaky tight receptacle of the leather glove and sends a
slight shiver of sting up the catcher's arm. The next pitch
is hit and a pop-up fly disappears into the bluish-white
glare of clear sky and never comes down.
Telepathically zooming into the outfielder's brain,
all we can perceive is the white noise static of synapses
snapping on and off, an un-interpretable stream of ones and
zeros. Meanwhile my own synapses decide that hazardous
hypothermia is setting in, so I depart at the bottom of the
second, wondering why I came and why I will return.
---
The hardcopy version of Indicator #69 contained four more
articles and some illustrations. If you'd like a reprint of it,
send $2 to Rick Harrison, Box 547014, Orlando FL 32854.
[EOF]
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