Illuminati International
VOLUME TEN
1 He did not wear his scarlet coat,
2 For blood and wine are red,
3 And blood and wine were on his hands
4 When they found him with the dead,
5 The poor dead woman whom he loved,
6 And murdered in her bed.
7 He walked amongst the Trial Men
8 In a suit of shabby gray;
9 A cricket cap was on his head,
10 And his step seemed light and gay;
11 But I never saw a man who looked
12 So wistfully at the day.
13 I never saw a man who looked
14 With such a wistful eye
15 Upon that little tent of blue
16 Which prisoners call the sky,
17 And at every drifting cloud that went
18 With sails of silver by.
19 I walked, with other souls in pain,
20 Within another ring,
21 And was wondering if the man had done
22 A great or little thing,
23 When a voice behind me whispered low,
24 "That fellow's got to swing."
25 Dear Christ! the very prison walls
26 Suddenly seemed to reel,
27 And the sky above my head became
28 Like a casque of scorching steel;
29 And, though I was a soul in pain,
30 My pain I could not feel.
31 I only knew what hunted thought
32 Quickened his step, and why
33 He looked upon the garish day
34 With such a wistful eye;
35 The man had killed the thing he loved,
36 And so he had to die.
37 Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
38 By each let this be heard,
39 Some do it with a bitter look,
40 Some with a flattering word,
41 The coward does it with a kiss,
42 The brave man with a sword!
43 Some kill their love when they are young,
44 And some when they are old;
45 Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
46 Some with the hands of Gold:
47 The kindest use a knife, because
48 The dead so soon grow cold.
49 Some love too little, some too long,
50 Some sell, and others buy;
51 Some do the deed with many tears,
52 And some without a sigh:
53 For each man kills the thing he loves,
54 Yet each man does not die.
55 He does not die a death of shame
56 On a day of dark disgrace,
57 Nor have a noose about his neck,
58 Nor a cloth upon his face,
59 Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
60 Into an empty space.
61 He does not sit with silent men
62 Who watch him night and day;
63 Who watch him when he tries to weep,
64 And when he tries to pray;
65 Who watch him lest himself should rob
66 The prison of its prey.
67 He does not wake at dawn to see
68 Dread figures throng his room,
69 The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
70 The Sheriff stern with gloom,
71 And the Governor all in shiny black,
72 With the yellow face of Doom.
73 He does not rise in piteous haste
74 To put on convict-clothes,
75 While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes
76 Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
77 Fingering a watch whose little ticks
78 Are like horrible hammer-blows.
79 He does not know that sickening thirst
80 That sands one's throat, before
81 The hangman with his gardener's gloves
82 Slips through the padded door,
83 And binds one with three leathern thongs,
84 That the throat may thirst no more.
85 He does not bend his head to hear
86 The Burial Office read,
87 Nor while the terror of his soul
88 Tells him he is not dead,
89 Cross his own coffin, as he moves
90 Into the hideous shed.
91 He does not stare upon the air
92 Through a little roof of glass:
93 He does not pray with lips of clay
94 For his agony to pass;
95 Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
96 The kiss of Caiaphas.
1 Six weeks the guardsman walked the yard,
2 In the suit of shabby gray:
3 His cricket cap was on his head,
4 And his step seemed light and gay,
5 But I never saw a man who looked
6 So wistfully at the day.
7 I never saw a man who looked
8 With such a wistful eye
9 Upon that little tent of blue
10 Which prisoners call the sky,
11 And at every wandering cloud that trailed
12 Its ravelled fleeces by.
13 He did not wring his hands, as do
14 Those witless men who dare
15 To try to rear the changeling Hope
16 In the cave of black Despair:
17 He only looked upon the sun,
18 And drank the morning air.
19 He did not wring his hands nor weep,
20 Nor did he peek or pine,
21 But he drank the air as though it held
22 Some healthful anodyne;
23 With open mouth he drank the sun
24 As though it had been wine!
25 And I and all the souls in pain,
26 Who tramped the other ring,
27 Forgot if we ourselves had done
28 A great or little thing,
29 And watched with gaze of dull amaze
30 The man who had to swing.
31 For strange it was to see him pass
32 With a step so light and gay,
33 And strange it was to see him look
34 So wistfully at the day,
35 And strange it was to think that he
36 Had such a debt to pay.
37 For oak and elm have pleasant leaves
38 That in the spring-time shoot:
39 But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
40 With its alder-bitten root,
41 And, green or dry, a man must die
42 Before it bears its fruit!
43 The loftiest place is that seat of grace
44 For which all worldlings try:
45 But who would stand in hempen band
46 Upon a scaffold high,
47 And through a murderer's collar take
48 His last look at the sky?
49 It is sweet to dance to violins
50 When Love and Life are fair:
51 To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
52 Is delicate and rare:
53 But it is not sweet with nimble feet
54 To dance upon the air!
55 So with curious eyes and sick surmise
56 We watched him day by day,
57 And wondered if each one of us
58 Would end the self-same way,
59 For none can tell to what red Hell
60 His sightless soul may stray.
61 At last the dead man walked no more
62 Amongst the Trial Men,
63 And I knew that he was standing up
64 In the black dock's dreadful pen,
65 And that never would I see his face
66 In God's sweet world again.
67 Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
68 We had crossed each other's way:
69 But we made no sign, we said no word,
70 We had no word to say;
71 For we did not meet in the holy night,
72 But in the shameful day.
73 A prison wall was round us both,
74 Two outcast men we were:
75 The world had thrust us from its heart,
76 And God from out His care:
77 And the iron gin that waits for Sin
78 Had caught us in its snare.
1 In Debtors' Yard the stones are hard,
2 And the dripping wall is high,
3 So it was there he took the air
4 Beneath the leaden sky,
5 And by each side a Warder walked,
6 For fear the man might die.
7 Or else he sat with those who watched
8 His anguish night and day;
9 Who watched him when he rose to weep,
10 And when he crouched to pray;
11 Who watched him lest himself should rob
12 Their scaffold of its prey.
13 The Governor was strong upon
14 The Regulations Act:
15 The Doctor said that Death was but
16 A scientific fact:
17 And twice a day the Chaplain called,
18 And left a little tract.
19 And twice a day he smoked his pipe,
20 And drank his quart of beer:
21 His soul was resolute, and held
22 No hiding-place for fear;
23 He often said that he was glad
24 The hangman's hands were near.
25 But why he said so strange a thing
26 No Warder dared to ask:
27 For he to whom a watcher's doom
28 Is given as his task,
29 Must set a lock upon his lips,
30 And make his face a mask.
31 Or else he might be moved, and try
32 To comfort or console:
33 And what should Human Pity do
34 Pent up in Murderer's Hole?
35 What word of grace in such a place
36 Could help a brother's soul?
37 With slouch and swing around the ring
38 We trod the Fools' Parade!
39 We did not care: we knew we were
40 The Devil's Own Brigade:
41 And shaven head and feet of lead
42 Make a merry masquerade.
43 We tore the tarry rope to shreds
44 With blunt and bleeding nails;
45 We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
46 And cleaned the shining rails:
47 And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
48 And clattered with the pails.
49 We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
50 We turned the dusty drill:
51 We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
52 And sweated on the mill:
53 But in the heart of every man
54 Terror was lying still.
55 So still it lay that every day
56 Crawled like a weed-clogged wave:
57 And we forgot the bitter lot
58 That waits for fool and knave,
59 Till once, as we tramped in from work,
60 We passed an open grave.
61 With yawning mouth the yellow hole
62 Gaped for a living thing;
63 The very mud cried out for blood
64 To the thirsty asphalte ring:
65 And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair
66 Some prisoner had to swing.
67 Right in we went, with soul intent
68 On Death and Dread and Doom:
69 The hangman, with his little bag,
70 Went shuffling through the gloom:
71 And each man trembled as he crept
72 Into his numbered tomb.
73 That night the empty corridors
74 Were full of forms of Fear,
75 And up and down the iron town
76 Stole feet we could not hear,
77 And through the bars that hide the stars
78 White faces seemed to peer.
79 He lay as one who lies and dreams
80 In a pleasant meadow-land,
81 The watchers watched him as he slept,
82 And could not understand
83 How one could sleep so sweet a sleep
84 With a hangman close at hand.
85 But there is no sleep when men must weep
86 Who never yet have wept:
87 So we--the fool, the fraud, the knave--
88 That endless vigil kept,
89 And through each brain on hands of pain
90 Another's terror crept.
91 Alas! it is a fearful thing
92 To feel another's guilt!
93 For, right within, the sword of Sin
94 Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
95 And as molten lead were the tears we shed
96 For the blood we had not spilt.
97 The Warders with their shoes of felt
98 Crept by each padlocked door,
99 And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
100 Gray figures on the floor,
101 And wondered why men knelt to pray
102 Who never prayed before.
103 All through the night we knelt and prayed,
104 Mad mourners of a corse!
105 The troubled plumes of midnight were
106 The plumes upon a hearse:
107 And bitter wine upon a sponge
108 Was the savour of Remorse.
109 The gray cock crew, the red cock crew,
110 But never came the day:
111 And crooked shapes of Terror crouched,
112 In the corners where we lay:
113 And each evil sprite that walks by night
114 Before us seemed to play.
115 They glided past, they glided fast,
116 Like travellers through a mist:
117 They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
118 Of delicate turn and twist,
119 And with formal pace and loathsome grace
120 The phantoms kept their tryst.
121 With mop and mow, we saw them go,
122 Slim shadows hand in hand:
123 About, about, in ghostly rout
124 They trod a saraband:
125 And damned grotesques made arabesques,
126 Like the wind upon the sand!
127 With the pirouettes of marionettes,
128 They tripped on pointed tread:
129 But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,
130 As their grisly masque they led,
131 And loud they sang, and long they sang,
132 For they sang to wake the dead.
133 "Oho!" they cried, "the world is wide,
134 But fettered limbs go lame!
135 And once, or twice, to throw the dice
136 Is a gentlemanly game,
137 But he does not win who plays with Sin
138 In the Secret House of Shame."
139 No things of air these antics were,
140 That frolicked with such glee:
141 To men whose lives were held in gyves,
142 And whose feet might not go free,
143 Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,
144 Most terrible to see.
145 Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
146 Some wheeled in smirking pairs;
147 With the mincing step of a demirep
148 Some sidled up the stairs:
149 And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
150 Each helped us at our prayers.
151 The morning wind began to moan,
152 But still the night went on:
153 Through its giant loom the web of gloom
154 Crept till each thread was spun:
155 And, as we prayed, we grew afraid
156 Of the Justice of the Sun.
157 The moaning wind went wandering round
158 The weeping prison-wall:
159 Till like a wheel of turning steel
160 We felt the minutes crawl:
161 O moaning wind! what had we done
162 To have such a seneschal?
163 At last I saw the shadowed bars,
164 Like a lattice wrought in lead,
165 Move right across the whitewashed wall
166 That faced my three-plank bed,
167 And I knew that somewhere in the world
168 God's dreadful dawn was red.
169 At six o'clock we cleaned our cells,
170 At seven all was still,
171 But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
172 The prison seemed to fill,
173 For the Lord of Death with icy breath
174 Had entered in to kill.
175 He did not pass in purple pomp,
176 Nor ride a moon-white steed.
177 Three yards of cord and a sliding board
178 Are all the gallows' need:
179 So with rope of shame the Herald came
180 To do the secret deed.
181 We were as men who through a fen
182 Of filthy darkness grope:
183 We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
184 Or to give our anguish scope:
185 Something was dead in each of us,
186 And what was dead was Hope.
187 For Man's grim Justice goes its way
188 And will not swerve aside:
189 It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
190 It has a deadly stride:
191 With iron heel it slays the strong,
192 The monstrous parricide!
193 We waited for the stroke of eight:
194 Each tongue was thick with thirst:
195 For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate
196 That makes a man accursed,
197 And Fate will use a running noose
198 For the best man and the worst.
199 We had no other thing to do,
200 Save to wait for the sign to come:
201 So, like things of stone in a valley lone,
202 Quiet we sat and dumb:
203 But each man's heart beat thick and quick,
204 Like a madman on a drum!
205 With sudden shock the prison-clock
206 Smote on the shivering air,
207 And from all the gaol rose up a wail
208 Of impotent despair,
209 Like the sound the frightened marshes hear
210 From some leper in his lair.
211 And as one sees most fearful things
212 In the crystal of a dream,
213 We saw the greasy hempen rope
214 Hooked to the blackened beam,
215 And heard the prayer the hangman's snare
216 Strangled into a scream.
217 And all the woe that moved him so
218 That he gave that bitter cry,
219 And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
220 None knew so well as I:
221 For he who lives more lives than one
222 More deaths than one must die.
1 There is no chapel on the day
2 On which they hang a man:
3 The Chaplain's heart is far too sick,
4 Or his face is far too wan,
5 Or there is that written in his eyes
6 Which none should look upon.
7 So they kept us close till nigh on noon,
8 And then they rang the bell,
9 And the Warders with their jingling keys
10 Opened each listening cell,
11 And down the iron stair we tramped,
12 Each from his separate Hell.
13 Out into God's sweet air we went,
14 But not in wonted way,
15 For this man's face was white with fear,
16 And that man's face was gray,
17 And I never saw sad men who looked
18 So wistfully at the day.
19 I never saw sad men who looked
20 With such a wistful eye
21 Upon that little tent of blue
22 We prisoners called the sky,
23 And at every careless cloud that passed
24 In happy freedom by.
25 But there were those amongst us all
26 Who walked with downcast head,
27 And knew that, had each got his due,
28 They should have died instead:
29 He had but killed a thing that lived,
30 Whilst they had killed the dead.
31 For he who sins a second time
32 Wakes a dead soul to pain,
33 And draws it from its spotted shroud,
34 And makes it bleed again,
35 And makes it bleed great gouts of blood,
36 And makes it bleed in vain!
37 Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb
38 With crooked arrows starred,
39 Silently we went round and round
40 The slippery asphalte yard;
41 Silently we went round and round,
42 And no man spoke a word.
43 Silently we went round and round,
44 And through each hollow mind
45 The Memory of dreadful things
46 Rushed like a dreadful wind,
47 And Horror stalked before each man,
48 And Terror crept behind.
49 The Warders strutted up and down,
50 And kept their herd of brutes,
51 Their uniforms were spick and span,
52 And they wore their Sunday suits,
53 But we knew the work they had been at,
54 By the quicklime on their boots.
55 For where a grave had opened wide,
56 There was no grave at all:
57 Only a stretch of mud and sand
58 By the hideous prison-wall,
59 And a little heap of burning lime,
60 That the man should have his pall.
61 For he has a pall, this wretched man,
62 Such as few men can claim:
63 Deep down below a prison-yard,
64 Naked for greater shame,
65 He lies, with fetters on each foot,
66 Wrapt in a sheet of flame!
67 And all the while the burning lime
68 Eats flesh and bone away,
69 It eats the brittle bone by night,
70 And the soft flesh by day,
71 It eats the flesh and bone by turns,
72 But it eats the heart alway.
73 For three long years they will not sow
74 Or root or seedling there:
75 For three long years the unblessed spot
76 Will sterile be and bare,
77 And look upon the wondering sky
78 With unreproachful stare.
79 They think a murderer's heart would taint
80 Each simple seed they sow.
81 It is not true! God's kindly earth
82 Is kindlier than men know,
83 And the red rose would but glow more red,
84 The white rose whiter blow.
85 Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
86 Out of his heart a white!
87 For who can say by what strange way,
88 Christ brings His will to light,
89 Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore
90 Bloomed in the great Pope's sight?
91 But neither milk-white rose nor red
92 May bloom in prison air;
93 The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
94 Are what they give us there:
95 For flowers have been known to heal
96 A common man's despair.
97 So never will wine-red rose or white,
98 Petal by petal, fall
99 On that stretch of mud and sand that lies
100 By the hideous prison-wall,
101 To tell the men who tramp the yard
102 That God's Son died for all.
103 Yet though the hideous prison-wall
104 Still hems him round and round,
105 And a spirit may not walk by night
106 That is with fetters bound,
107 And a spirit may but weep that lies
108 In such unholy ground,
109 He is at peace--this wretched man--
110 At peace, or will be soon:
111 There is no thing to make him mad,
112 Nor does Terror walk at noon,
113 For the lampless Earth in which he lies
114 Has neither Sun nor Moon.
115 They hanged him as a beast is hanged:
116 They did not even toll
117 A requiem that might have brought
118 Rest to his startled soul,
119 But hurriedly they took him out,
120 And hid him in a hole.
121 They stripped him of his canvas clothes,
122 And gave him to the flies:
123 They mocked the swollen purple throat,
124 And the stark and staring eyes:
125 And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud
126 In which their convict lies.
127 The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
128 By his dishonoured grave:
129 Nor mark it with that blessed Cross
130 That Christ for sinners gave,
131 Because the man was one of those
132 Whom Christ came down to save.
133 Yet all is well; he has but passed
134 To Life's appointed bourne:
135 And alien tears will fill for him
136 Pity's long-broken urn,
137 For his mourners will be outcast men,
138 And outcasts always mourn.
1 I know not whether Laws be right,
2 Or whether Laws be wrong;
3 All that we know who lie in gaol
4 Is that the wall is strong;
5 And that each day is like a year,
6 A year whose days are long.
7 But this I know, that every Law
8 That men have made for Man,
9 Since first Man took his brother's life,
10 And the sad world began,
11 But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
12 With a most evil fan.
13 This too I know--and wise it were
14 If each could know the same--
15 That every prison that men build
16 Is built with bricks of shame,
17 And bound with bars lest Christ should see
18 How men their brothers maim.
19 With bars they blur the gracious moon,
20 And blind the goodly sun:
21 And they do well to hide their Hell,
22 For in it things are done
23 That Son of God nor son of Man
24 Ever should look upon!
25 The vilest deeds like poison weeds
26 Bloom well in prison-air:
27 It is only what is good in Man
28 That wastes and withers there:
29 Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
30 And the Warder is Despair.
31 For they starve the little frightened child
32 Till it weeps both night and day:
33 And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
34 And gibe the old and gray,
35 And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
36 And none a word may say.
37 Each narrow cell in which we dwell
38 Is a foul and dark latrine,
39 And the fetid breath of living Death
40 Chokes up each grated screen,
41 And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
42 In Humanity's machine.
43 The brackish water that we drink
44 Creeps with a loathsome slime,
45 And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
46 Is full of chalk and lime,
47 And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
48 Wild-eyed, and cries to Time.
49 But though lean Hunger and green Thirst
50 Like asp with adder fight,
51 We have little care of prison fare,
52 For what chills and kills outright
53 Is that every stone one lifts by day
54 Becomes one's heart by night.
55 With midnight always in one's heart,
56 And twilight in one's cell,
57 We turn the crank, or tear the rope,
58 Each in his separate Hell,
59 And the silence is more awful far
60 Than the sound of a brazen bell.
61 And never a human voice comes near
62 To speak a gentle word:
63 And the eye that watches through the door
64 Is pitiless and hard:
65 And by all forgot, we rot and rot,
66 With soul and body marred.
67 And thus we rust Life's iron chain
68 Degraded and alone:
69 And some men curse, and some men weep,
70 And some men make no moan:
71 But God's eternal Laws are kind
72 And break the heart of stone.
73 And every human heart that breaks,
74 In prison-cell or yard,
75 Is as that broken box that gave
76 Its treasure to the Lord,
77 And filled the unclean leper's house
78 With the scent of costliest nard.
79 Ah! happy they whose hearts can break
80 And peace of pardon win!
81 How else may man make straight his plan
82 And cleanse his soul from Sin?
83 How else but through a broken heart
84 May Lord Christ enter in?
85 And he of the swollen purple throat,
86 And the stark and staring eyes,
87 Waits for the holy hands that took
88 The Thief to Paradise;
89 And a broken and a contrite heart
90 The Lord will not despise.
91 The man in red who reads the Law
92 Gave him three weeks of life,
93 Three little weeks in which to heal
94 His soul of his soul's strife,
95 And cleanse from every blot of blood
96 The hand that held the knife.
97 And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
98 The hand that held the steel:
99 For only blood can wipe out blood,
100 And only tears can heal:
101 And the crimson stain that was of Cain
102 Became Christ's snow-white seal.
1 In Reading gaol by Reading town
2 There is a pit of shame,
3 And in it lies a wretched man
4 Eaten by teeth of flame,
5 In a burning winding-sheet he lies,
6 And his grave has got no name.
7 And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
8 In silence let him lie:
9 No need to waste the foolish tear,
10 Or heave the windy sigh:
11 The man had killed the thing he loved,
12 And so he had to die.
13 And all men kill the thing they love,
14 By all let this be heard,
15 Some do it with a bitter look,
16 Some with a flattering word,
17 The coward does it with a kiss,
18 The brave man with a sword.
from The Way of the Sufi by Idries Shah
from Tales of the Dervishes by Idries Shah
from A Handful of Zen by Camden Benares
| It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea. |
I would like to challenge that idea. I don't think there is, or ever again can be, a cure for unemployment. I propose that unemployment is not a disease, but the natural, healthy functioning of an advanced technological society.
The inevitable direction of any technology, and of any rational species such as Homo sap., is toward what Buckminster Fuller calls ephemeralization, or doing-more-with-less. For instance, a modern computer does more (handles more bits of information) with less hardware than the proto-computers of the late '40's and '50's. One worker with a modern teletype machine does more in an hour than a thousand medieval monks painstakingly copying scrolls for a century. Atomic fission does more with a cubic centimeter of matter than all the engineers of the 19th Century could do with a million tons, and fusion does even more.
| Unemployment is not a disease; so it has no "cure." |
This tendency toward ephemeralization or doing more-with-less is based on two principal factors, viz:
Aristotle said that slavery could only be abolished when machines were built that could operate themselves. Working for wages, the modern equivalent of slavery -- very accurately called "wage slavery" by social critics -- is in the process of being abolished by just such self-programming machines. In fact, Norbert Wiener, one of the creators of cybernetics, foresaw this as early as 1947 and warned that we would have massive unemployment once the computer revolution really got moving.
It is arguable, and I for one would argue, that the only reason Wiener's prediction has not totally been realized yet -- although we do have ever-increasing unemployment -- is that big unions, the corporations, and government have all tacitly agreed to slow down the pace of cybernation, to drag their feet and run the economoy with the brakes on. This is because they all, still, regard unemployment as a "disease" and cannot imagine a "cure" for the nearly total unemployment that full cybernation will create.
Suppose, for a moment, we challenge this Calvinistic mind-set. Let us regard wage-work -- as most people do, in fact, regard it -- as a curse, a drag, a nuisance, a barrier that stands between us and what we really want to do. In that case, your job is the disease, and unemployment is the cure.
"But without working for wages we'll all starve to death!?! Won't we?"
Not at all. Many farseeing social thinkers have suggested intelligent and plausible plans for adapting to a society of rising unemployment. Here are some examples.
1. The National Dividend. This was invented by
engineer C. H. Douglas and has been revived with some modifications by
poet Ezra Pound and designer Buckminster Fuller. The basic idea
(although Douglas, Pound, and Fuller differ on the details) is that
every citizen should be declared a shareholder in the nation, and
should receive dividends on the Gross National Product for the year.
Estimates differ as to how much this would be for each citizen, but at
the current level of the GNP it is conservative to say that a share
would be worth several times as much, per year, as a welfare recipient
receives -- at least five times more.
Critics complain that this
would be inflationary. Supporters of the National Dividend reply that
it would only be inflationary if the dividends distributed were more
than the GNP; and they are proposing only to issue dividends equal to
the GNP.
2. The Guaranteed Annual Income. This has been
urged by economist Robert Theobald and others. The government would
simply establish an income level above the poverty line and guarantee
that no citizen would receive less; if your wages fall below that
level, or you have no wages, the government makes up the difference.
This plan would definitely cost the government less than the present
welfare system, with all its bureaucratic red tape and redundancy: a
point worth considering for those conservatives who are always
complaining about the high cost of welfare. It would also spare the
recipients the humiliation, degradation and dehumanization built into
the present welfare system: a point for liberals to consider. A system
that is less expensive than welfare and also less debasing to the poor,
it seems to me, should not be objectionable to anybody but hardcore
sadists.
3. The Negative Income Tax. This was first devised by Nobel economist Milton Friedman and is a less radical variation on the above ideas. The Negative Income Tax would establish a minimum income for every citizen; anyone whose income fell below that level would receive the amount necessary to bring them up to that standard. Friedman, who is sometimes called a conservative but prefers to title himself a libertarian, points out that this would cost "the government" (i.e. the taxpayers) less than the present welfare system, like Theobald's Guaranteed Annual Income. It would also dispense with the last tinge of humiliation associated with government "charity," since when you cashed a check from IRS nobody (not even your banker) would know if it was supplementary income due to poverty or a refund due to overpayment of last year's taxes.
4. The RICH Economy. This was devised by inventor L. Wayne Benner (co-author with Timothy Leary of Terra II) in collaboration with the present author. It's a four-stage program to retool society for the cybernetic and space-age future we are rapidly entering. RICH means Rising Income through Cybernetic Homeostasis.
("Creative potential" is not a panchreston. It refers to the inborn drive to play, to tinker, to explore, and to experiment, shown by every child before his or her mental processes are stunted by authoritarian education and operant-conditioned wage-robotry.)
As Bucky Fuller says, the first thought of people, once they are delivered from wage slavery, will be, "What was it that I was so interested in as a youth, before I was told I had to earn a living?" The answer to that question, coming from millions and then billions of persons liberated from mechanical toil, will make the Renaissance look like a high school science fair or a Greenwich Village art show.
Illuminati International
from The Illuminati Papers by Robert Anton Wilson
. Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, with out surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quitely and clearly, listen to others, even the dull and ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievments as well as your plans.
. Keep interested in your own career, however humble. It is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your buisness affairs, for the world is full of trickery, but let this not blind you to what virtue there is, many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
. Be yourself, especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love. For in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perenial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, and gracefully surerender the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are borne of fatigue and loneiness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. Above all, be cheerfull and strive to be happy.
. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with with God, whatever you concieve him to be. Whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all it's sham and drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautifull world.
Flaming June by Frederic Leighton (Pre-Raphaelite artist )
But it is argued there is no scientific data which conclusively demonstrates that exposure to obscene materials adversely effects men and women or their society. It is urged on behalf of the petitioners that, absent such a demonstration, any kind of state regulation is "impermissible." It is not for us to resolve empirical uncertainties underlying state legislation save in the exceptional case where that legislation plainly impinges upon rights protected in the Constitution itself... although there is no conclusive proof of a connection between anti-social behavior and obscene materials, the legislature of Georgia could quite reasonably determine that such a connection does or might exist. In deciding Roth, this Court implicitly accepted that a legislature could legitimately act on such a conclusion to protect "the social interest in order and morality".... From the beginning of civilized societies, legislatures and judges have acted on various unproven assumptions.
This is all very absurd, because within the criteria used in modern science and modern semantics the concept of "obscenity" must be regarded as a delusion. That is, it is a nonoperational concept, one which cannot be utilized in making measurements of the physical world -- there is no "obscenometer" which point at a book or painting or a song or a film and take a reading showing how many ergs or ounces of "obscenity" it has in it. There is no "obscenity" in any of these things, in fact; the "obscenity" is in the mind of the person passing judgements. It is, in Freudian terms, a projection, in which the mind imagines that its own contents are outside itself in the external universe; or, in semantic terms, a "confusion of the levels of abstraction," in which the mind's own machinery is identified with the non-mental things it is attempting to understand.But it is difficult or even impossible to argue that the accepted limits of obscenity should themselves be redrawn without actually infringing them in the process, and having to defend one's argument agains a charge of obscenity. In this case, one would have to prove affirmatively that a discussion of the public interest was in the public interest, which is a startling thing to have to prove in a democracy.
The effect is naturally that the present conception of the public interest becomes sacrosanct. If I merely say, speaking generally, "We call too many things obscene, we are too restrictive in our definitions," nobody will pay any attention, and our conception of the public good will remain unchanged. If, on the other hand, I give examples, saying: "Consider these," and give my reasons for thinking they ought not to be held obscene, my book may be suppressed for obscenity before anybody has had time to consider it, and our conception of the public good will still remain unchanged. Our society has painted itself into a corner... the law of obscenity has the indirect effect of perpetuating itself. You cannot argue with it without breaking it. [Italics in original.]
The man or woman who believes there is something called "obscenity" out there in the external world is thus in precisely the same state of delusion as those who imagine that gods or demons or strange voices out there are communicating with them.
As psychologist Theodore Schroeder insisted, the belief in external "obscenity" is the modern form of the witchcraft delusion.
Young Virgin Autosodomised by her own Chastity.gif by ( Salvadore Dali
"If you think you know what the -- card on R.A.W.'s desk |
What really happened was that everybody was squabbling over the apple and working up a sweat and pushing one another around and pretty soon their vibrations -- Gods have very high vibration, exactly at the speed of light, in fact -- heated up the apple enough to unleash some heavy fumes. In a word, the Olympians all got stoned.
And they saw a Vision, or a series of Visions.
In the first Vision, they saw Yahweh, a neighboring god with a world of his own which overlapped theirs in some places. He was clearing the set to change its valence and start a new show. His method struck them as rather barbarous. He was, in fact, drowning everybody -- except one family that he allowed to escape in an Ark.
"This is Chaos," said Hermes. "That Yahweh is a mean mother', even for a god."
And they looked at the Vision more closely, and because they could see into the future and were all (like every intelligent entity) rabid Laurel and Hardy fans and because they were zonked on the weed, they saw that Yahweh bore the face of Oliver Hardy. All around him, below the mountain on which he lived (his world was flat), the waters rose and rose. They saw drowning men, drowning women, innocent babes sinking beneath the waves. They were ready to vomit. And then Another came and stood beside Yahweh, looking at the panorama of horrors below, and he was Yahweh's Adversary, and, stoned as they were, he looked like Stanley Laurel to them. And then Yahweh spoke, in the eternal words of Oliver Hardy: "Now look what you made me do," he said.
And that was the first Vision.
They looked again, and they saw Lee Harvey Oswald perched in the window of the Texas School Book Depository; and he, again, wore the face of Stanley Laurel. And because this world had been created by a great god named Earl Warren, Oswald fired the only shots that day, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy was, as the Salvation Army charmingly expresses it, "promoted to glory."
"This is Confusion," said Athena with her owl-eyes flashing, for she was more familiar with the world created by the god Mark Lane.
Then they saw a hallway, and Oswald-Laurel was led out between two policemen. Suddenly Jack Ruby, with the face of Oliver Hardy, stepped forward and fired a pistol right into that frail little body. And then Ruby spoke the eternal words, to the corpse at his feet: "Now look what you made me do," he said.
And that was the second Vision.
Next, they saw a city of 550,000 men, women and children, and in an instant the city vanished; shadows remained where the men were gone, a firestorm raged, burning pimps and infants and an old statue of a happy Buddha and mice and dogs and old men and lovers; and a mushroom cloud arose above it all. This was a world created by the cruelest of all gods, Realpolitik.
"This is Discord," said Apollo, disturbed, laying down his lute.
Harry Truman, a servant of Realpolitik, wearing the face of Oliver Hardy, looked upon his work and saw that it was good. But beside him, Albert Einstein, a servant of that most elusive and gnomic of gods, Truth, burst into tears, the familiar tears of Stanley Laurel facing the consequences of his own karma. For a brief instant, Truman was troubled, but then he remembered the eternal words: "Now look what you made me do," he said.
And that was the third Vision.
Now they saw trains, many trains, all of them running on time, and the trains criss-crossed Europe and ran 24 hours a day, and they all came to a few destinations that were alike. There, the human cargo was stamped, catalogued, processed, executed with gas, tabulated, recorded, stamped again, cremated and disposed.
"This is Bureaucracy," said Dionysius, and he smashed his wine jug in anger; beside him, his lynx glared balefully.
And then they saw the man who had ordered this, Adolf Hitler, wearing still the mask of Oliver Hardy, and he turned to a certain rich man, Baron Rothschild, wearing the mask of Stanley Laurel, and they knew this was the world created by the god Hegel and the angel Thesis was meeting the demon Antithesis. Then Hitler spoke the eternal words: "Now look what you made me do," he said.
And that was the fourth Vision.
They did then look further and, lo, high as they were they saw the founding of a great republic and proclamations hailing new gods named Due Process and Equal Rights for All. And they saw many in high places in the republic form a separate cult and worship Mammon and Power. And the Republic became an Empire, and soon Due Process and Equal Rights for All were not worshipped, and even Mammon and Power were given only lip-service, for the true god of all was now the impotent What Can I Do and his dull brother What We Did Yesterday and his ugly and vicious sister Get Them Before They Get Us.
"This is Aftermath," said Hera, and her bosom shook with tears for the fate of the children of that nation.
And they saw many bombings, many riots, many rooftop snipers, many Molotov cocktails. And they saw the capital city in ruins, and the leader, wearing the face of Stanley Laurel, taken prisoner amid the rubble of his palace. And they saw the chief of the revolutionaries look about at the rubble and the streets full of corpses, and they heard him sigh, and then he spoke the eternal words: "Now look what you made me do," he said.
And that was the fifth Vision.
And now the Olympians were coming down and they looked at each other in uncertainty and dismay. Zeus himself spoke first.
"Man," he said, "that was Heavy Grass."
"Far fuckin out," Hermes agreed solemnly.
"Tree fuckin mendous," added Dionysius, petting his lynx.
"We were really fuckin into it," Hera summed up for all.
| Question Authority, Think for Yourself! |
We will explain each of the eight "brains" briefly.
I. THE BIO-SURVIVAL CIRCUIT. This invertebrate brain was the first to evolve (2 to 3 million years ago) and is the first activated when a human infant is born. It programs perception onto an either-or grid divided into nurturing-helpful Things (which it approaches) and noxious-dangerous Things (which it flees, or attacks). The imprinting of this circuit sets up the basic attitude of trust or suspicion which will ever after trigger approach or avoidance.
II. THE EMOTIONAL CIRCUIT. This second, more advanced bio-computer formed when vertebrates appeared and began to compete for territory (perhaps 500,000,000 B.C.). In the individual, this bigger tunnel-reality is activated when the DNA master-tape triggers the metamorphosis from crawling to walking. As every parent knows, the toddler is no longer a passive (bio-survival) infant but a mammalian politician, full of physical (and psychic) territorial demands, quick to meddle in family business and decision-making. Again the first imprint on this circuit remains constant for life (unless brainwashed) and identifies the stimuli which will automatically trigger dominant, aggressive behavior or submissive, cooperative behavior. When we say that a person is behaving emotionally, egotistically or 'like a two-year-old,' we mean that s/he is blindly following one of the tunnel-realities imprinted on this circuit.
III. THE DEXTERITY-SYMBOLISM CIRCUIT. This third brain was formed when hominid types began to differentiate from other primate stock (circa 4-5 million B.C.) and is activated for the linear left-lobe functions of the brain, determines our normal modes of artifact-manufacture and conceptual thought, i.e., third circuit 'mind.'
It is no accident, then, that our logic (and our computer-design) follows either-or, binary structure of these circuits. Nor is it an accident that our geometry, until the last century, has been Euclidean. Euclid's geometry, Aristotle's logic and Newton's physics are meta-programs synthesizing and generalizing first brain forward-back, second brain up-down and third brain right-left programs.
IV. THE SOCIAL-SEXUAL CIRCUIT The fourth brain, dealing with the transmission of tribal or ethnic culture across generations, introduces the fourth dimension, time.
Since each of these tunnel-realities consists of biochemical imprints or matrices in the nervous system, each of them is specifically triggered by neuro-transmitters and other drugs.The four evolving future 'brains' are:To activate the first brain take an opiate. Mother Opium and Sister Morphine bring you down to cellular intelligence, bio-survival passivity, the floating consciousness of the newborn. (This is why Freudians identify opiate addiction with the desire to return to infancy.)
To activate the second tunnel-reality, take an abundant quantity of alcohol. Vertebrate territorial patterns and mammalian emotional politics immediately appear when the booze flows, as Thomas Nashe intuitively realized when he characterized the various alcohol states by animal labels: "ass drunk," "goat drunk," "swine drunk," "bear drunk," etc.
To activate the third circuit, try coffee or tea, a high-protein diet, speed or cocaine.
The specific neurotransmitter for circuit four has not been synthesized yet, but it is generated by the glands after pubescence and flows volcanically through the bloodstreams of adolescents.
NONE OF THESE TERRESTRIAL DRUGS CHANGE BASIC BIOCHEMICAL IMPRINTS. The behaviors which they trigger are those which were wired into the nervous system during the first stages of imprint vulnerability. The circuit II drunk exhibits the emotional games or cons learned from parents in infancy. The circuit III "mind" never gets beyond the permutations and combinations of those tunnel-realities originally imprinted, or abstractions associated with the imprints through later conditioning. And so forth.
But all this Pavlovian-Skinnerian robotism changes drastically and dramatically when we turn to the right lobe, the future circuits and extraterrestrial chemicals.
V. THE NEUROSOMATIC CIRCUIT. When this fifth "body-brain" is activated, flat Euclidean figure-ground configurations explode multi-dimesionally. Gestalts shift, in McLuhan's terms, from linear VISUAL SPACE to all-encompassing SENSORY SPACE. A hedonic turn-on occurs, a rapturous amusement, a detachment from the previously compulsive mechanism of the first four circuits. I turned this circuit on with pot and Tantra.
This fifth brain began to appear about 4,000 years ago in the first leisure-class civilizations and has been increasing statistically in recent centuries (even before the Drug Revolution), a fact demonstrated by the hedonic art of India, China, Rome and other affluent societies. More recently, Ornstein and his school have demonstrated with electroencephalograms that this circuit represents the first jump from the linear left lobe of the brain to the analogical right lobe.
The opening and imprinting of this circuit has been the preoccupation of "technicians of the occult" - Tantric shamans and hatha yogis. While the fifth tunnel-reality can be achieved by sensory deprivation, social isolation, physiological stress or severe shock (ceremonial terror tactics, as practiced by such rascal-gurus as Don Juan Matus or Aleister Crowley), it has traditionally been reserved to the educated aristocracy of leisure societies who have solved the four terrestrial survival problems.
About 20,000 years ago, the specific fifth brain neurotransmitter was discovered by shamans in the Caspian Sea area of Asia and quickly spread to other wizards throughout Eurasia and Africa. It is, of course, cannabis. Weed. Mother Mary Jane.
It is no accident that the pot-head generally refers to his neural state as "high" or "spaced-out." The transcendence of gravitational, digital, linear, either-or, Aristotelian, Newtonian, Euclidean, planetary orientations (circuits I-IV) is, in evolutionary perspective, part of our neurological preparation for the inevitable migration off our home planet, now beginning. This is why so many pot-heads are STAR TREK freaks and science fiction adepts. (Berkeley, California, certainly the Cannabis Capital of the U.S., has a Federation Trading Post on Telegraph Avenue, where the well-heeled can easily spend $500 or more in a single day, buying STAR TREK novels, magazines, newsletters, bumper stickers, photographs, posters, tapes, etc., including even complete blueprints for the starship ENTERPRISE.)
The extraterrestrial meaning of being "high" is confirmed by astronauts themselves; 85% of those who have entered the free-fall zero gravity describe "mystic experiences" or rapture states typical of the neurosomatic circuit. "No photo can show how beautiful Earth looked," raves Captain Ed Mitchell, describing his Illumination in free-fall. He sounds like any successful yogi or pot-head. No camera can show this experience because it is inside the nervous system.
FREE-FALL, AT THE PROPER EVOLUTIONARY TIME, TRIGGERS THE NEUROSOMATIC MUTATION, Leary believes. Previously this mutation has been achieved "artificially" by yogic or shamanic training or by the fifth circuit stimulant, cannabis. Surfing, skiing, skin-diving and the new sexual culture (sensuous massage, vibrators, imported Tantric arts, etc.) have evolved at the same time as part of the hedonic conquest of gravity. The Turn-On state is always described as "floating," or, in the Zen metaphor, "one foot above the ground."
VI. THE NEUROELECTRIC CIRCUIT. The sixth brain consists of the nervous system becoming aware of itself apart from imprinted gravitational reality-maps (circuits I-IV) and even apart from body-rapture (circuit V). Count Korzybski, the semanticist, called this state "consciousness of abstracting." Dr. John Lilly calls it "metaprogramming," i.e., awareness of programming one's programming. This Einsteinian, relativistic contelligence (consciousness-intelligence) recognizes, for instance, that the Euclidean, Newtonian and Aristolelian reality-maps are just three among billions of possible programs or models for experience. I turned this circuit on with Peyote, LSD and Crowley's "magick" metaprograms.
This level of brain-functioning seems to have been reported first around 500 B.C. among various "occult" groups connected by the Silk Route (Rome-North India). It is so far beyond the terrestrial tunnel-realities that those who have achieved it can barely communicate about it to ordinary humanity (circuits I-IV) and can hardly be understood even by fifth circuit Rapture Engineers.
The characteristics of the neuroelectric circuit are high velocity, multiple choice, relativity, and the fission-fusion of all perceptions into parallel science-fiction universes of alternate possibilities.
The mammalian politics which monitor power struggles among terrestrial humanity are here transcended, i.e., seen as static, artificial, an elaborate charade. One is neither coercively manipulated into another's territorial reality nor forced to struggle against it with reciprocal emotional game-playing (the usual soap-opera dramatics). One simply elects, consciously, whether or not to share the other's reality-model.
Tactics for opening and imprinting the sixth circuit are described and rarely experienced in advanced rajah yoga, and in the hermetic (coded) manuals of the medieval-Renaissance alchemists and Illuminati.
No specific sixth circuit chemical is yet available, but strong psychedelics like mescaline (from my 1962-63 "sacred cactus," peyotl) and psilocybin (from the Mexican "magic mushroom," teonactl) open the nervous system to a mixed-media series of circuit V and circuit VI channels. This is appropriately called "tripping," as distinguished from straight-forward fifth circuit "turning on" or "getting high."
The suppression of scientific research in this area has had the unfortunate result of turning the outlaw drug culture back toward fifth circuit hedonics and pre-scientific tunnel-realities (the occult revival, solipsism, Pop Orientalism). Without scientific discipline and methodology, few can successfully decode the often-frightening (but philosophically crucial) sixth circuit metaprogramming signals. Such scientists as do continue to study this subject dare not publish their results (which are illegal) and record ever-wider tunnel-realities only in private conversations - like the scholars of the Inquisitorial era. (Voltaire announced the Age of Reason two centuries too soon. We are still in the Dark Ages.) Most underground alchemists have given up on such challenging and risky self-work and restrict their trips to fifth circuit erotic tunnels.
The evolutionary function of the sixth circuit is to enable us to communicate at Einsteinian relativities and neuro-electric accelerations, not using third circuit larynegeal-manual symbols but directly via feedback, telepathy and computer link-up. Neuro-electric signals will increasingly replace "speech" (hominid grunts) after space migration.
When humans have climbed out of the atmosphere-gravity well of planetary life, accelerated sixth circuit contellgence will make possible high-energy communication with "Higher Intelligences," i.e., ourselves-in-the-future and other post-terrestrial races.
It is charmingly simple and obvious, once we realize that the spaced-out neural experiences really are extraterrestrial, that getting high and spacing out are accurate metaphors. Circuit V neurosomatic rapture is preparation for the next step in our evolution, migration off the planet. Circuit VI is preparation for the step after that, interspecies communication with advanced entities possessing electronic (post-verbal) tunnel-realities.
Circuit VI is the "universal translator" often imagined by science-fiction writers, already built into our brains by the DNA tape. Just as the circuits of the future butterfly are already built into the caterpillar.
VII. THE NEUROGENETIC CIRCUIT. The seventh brain kicks into action when the nervous system begins to receive signals from WITHIN THE INDIVIDUAL NEURON, from the DNA-RNA dialogue. The first to achieve this mutation spoke of "memories of past lives," "reincarnation," "immortality," etc. That these adepts were recording something real is indicated by the fact that many of them (especially Hindu and Sufis) gave marvelously accurately poetic vistas of evolution 1,000 or 2,000 years before Darwin, and foresaw Superhumanity before Nietzche.
The "akashic records" of Theosophy, the "collective unconscious" of Jung, the "phylogenetic unconscious" of Grof and Ring, are three modern metaphors for this circuit. The visions of past and future evolution described by those who have had "out-of-body" experiences during close-to-death episodes also describes the trans-time circuit VII tunnel-reality.
Specific exercises to trigger circuit VII are not to be found in yogic teaching; it usually happens, if at all, after several years of the kind of advanced rajah yoga that develops circuit VI facility.
The specific circuit VII neurotransmitter is, of course LSD. (Peyote and psilocybin produce some circuit VII experiences also.)
Circuit VII is best considered, in terms of 1977 science, as the genetic archives, activated by anti-histone proteins. The DNA memory coiling back to the dawn of life. A sense of the inevitability of immortality and interspecies symbiosis comes to all circuit VII mutants; we now see that this, also, is an evolutionary forecast, since WE STAND RIGHT NOW ON THE DOOR-STEP OF EXTENDED LONGEVITY LEADING TO IMMORTALITY.
The exact role of the right-lobe circuits and the reason for their activation in the 1960s cultural revolution now becomes clear. As sociologist F.M. Esfandiary writes in UPWINGERS, "Today when we speak of immortality and of going to another world we no longer mean these in a theological or metaphysical sense. People are now traveling to other worlds. People are now striving for immortality. Transcendence is no longer a metaphysical concept. It has become reality."
The evolutionary function of the seventh circuit and its evolutionary, aeon-spanning tunnel-reality is to prepare us for conscious immortality and interspecies symbiosis.
VIII. THE NEURO-ATOMIC CIRCUIT. Hold on to your hats and breathe deeply - this is the farthest-out that human intelligence has yet ventured:
Consciousness probably precedes the biological unit or DNA tape-loop. "Out-of-body experiences," "astral projection," contact with alien (extraterrestrial?) "entities" or with a galactic Overmind, etc., such as I've experienced, have all been reported for thousands of years, not merely by the ignorant, the superstitious, the gullible, but often by the finest minds among us (Socrates, Giordano Bruno, Edison, Buckminster Fuller, etc.). Such experiences are reported daily to parapsychologists and have been experienced by such scientists as Dr. John Lilly and Carlos Castaneda. Dr. Kenneth Ring has attributed these phenomena to what he calls, very appropriately, "the extraterrestrial unconscious."
Dr. Leary suggests that circuit VIII is literally neuro-atomic - infra, supra and meta-physiological - a quantum model of consciousness and/or a conscious model of quantum mechanics by the turned-on physicists discussed previously (Prof. John Archibald Wheeler, Saul-Paul Sirag, Dr. Fritjof Capra, Dr. Jack Sarfatti, etc.) indicates strongly that the "atomic consciousness" first suggested by Leary in "The Seven Tongues of God" (1962) is the explanatory link which will unite parapsychology and paraphysics into the first scientific empirical experimental theology in history.
When the nervous system is turned on to this quantum-level circuit, space-time is obliterated. Einstein's speed-of-light barrier is transcended; in Dr. Sarfatti's metaphor, we escape "electromagnetic chauvinism." The contellignence within the quantum projection booth IS the entire cosmic "brain," just as the micro-miniaturized DNA helix IS the local brain guiding planetary evolution. As Lao-tse said from his own Circuit VIII perspective, "The greatest is within the smallest."
Circuit VIII is triggered by Ketamine, a neuro-chemical researched by Dr. John Lilly, which is also (according to a wide-spread but unconfirmed rumor) given to astronauts to prepare them for space. High doses of LSD also produce some circuit VIII quantum awareness.
This neuro-atomic contelligence is four mutations beyond terrestrial domesticity. (The current ideological struggle is between circuit IV tribal moralists-or-collectivists and circuit V hedonic individualists.) When our need for higher intelligence, richer involvement in the cosmic script, further transcendence, will no longer be satisfied by physical bodies, not even by immortal bodies hopping across space-time at Warp 9, circuit VIII will open a further frontier. New universes and realities. "Beyond theology: the science and art of Godmanship," as Alan Watts once wrote.
It is therefore possible that the mysterious "entities" (angels and extraterrestrials) monotonously reported by circuit VIII visionaries are members or races already evolved to this level. But it is also possible, as Leary and Sarfatti more recently suggest, that They are ourselves-in-the-future.
The left-lobe terrestrial circuits contain the learned lessons of our evolutionary past (and present). The right-lobe extraterrestrial circuits are the evolutionary script for out future.
Thus far, there have been two alternative explanations of why the Drug Revolution happened. The first is presented in a sophisticated way by anthropologist Weston LaBarre, and in an ignorant, moralistic way by most anti-drug propaganda in the schools and mass media. This explanation says, in essence, that millions have turned away from the legal DOWN drugs to illegal HIGH drugs because we are living in troubled times and many are seeking escape into fantasy.
This theory, at its best, only partially explains the ugliest and most publicized aspect of the revolution - the reckless drug abuse characteristic of the immature. It says nothing about the millions of respectable doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc., who have turned away from second circuit intoxication with booze to fifth circuit rapture with weed.
Nor does it account at all for the thoughtful, philosophical sixth circuit investigations of persons of high intelligence and deep sensibility, such as Aldous Huxley, Dr. Stanley Grof, Masters-Houston, Alan W. Watts, Carlos Castaneda, Dr. John Lilly and thousands of scientific and lay researchers on consciousness.
A more plausible theory, devised by psychiatrist Norman Zinberg out of the work of Marshall McLuhan, holds that modern electronic media have so shifted the nervous system's parameters that young people no longer enjoy "linear" drugs like alcohol and find meaning only in "non-linear" weed and psychedelics.
This is certainly part of the truth, but it is too narrow and overstresses TV and computers without sufficiently stressing the general techonological picture - the ongoing Science-Fiction Revolution of which the most significant aspects are Space Migration, Increased Intelligence and Life Extension, which Leary has condensed into his SMI²LE formula.
Space Migration plus Increased Intelligence plus Life Extension means expansion of humanity into all space-time. SM + I² + LE = infinity.
Without totally endorsing Charles Fort's technological mysticism ("It steam-engines when it comes steam-engine time"), it is obvious that the DNA metaprogram for planetary evolution is far wiser than any of our individual nervous systems - which are, in a sense, giant robots or sensors for DNA. Early science-fiction of brilliant writers like Stapledon, Clarke, Heinlein; Kubrick's 2001 - all were increasingly clear DNA signals transmitted through the intuitive right lobe of sensitive artists, preparing us for the extraterrestrial mutation.
It is scarcely coincidental that mainstream "literary" intellectuals - the heir of the Platonic-aristocratic tradition that a gentleman never uses his hands, monkeys with tools or learns a manual craft - despise both science-fiction and the dope culture. Nor is it coincidental that the WHOLE EARTH CATALOGS - created by Stewart Brand, a graduate of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters - are the New Testament of the rural drop-out culture, each issue bulging with tons of eco-technological information about all the manual, dextrous, gadgety know-how that Plato and his heirs consider fit only for slaves. Not surprisingly, Brand's latest publication, CO-EVOLUTION QUATERLY, has been devoted to publicizing Prof. Gerard O'Neill's space-habitat, L5.
Nor is it an accident that dopers seem to prefer science-fiction to any other reading, even including the extraterrestrial-flavored Hindu scriptures and occult-shamanic circuit VI-VIII trip-poets like Crowley and Hesse.
The circuit VI drugs may have contributed much to the metaprogramming consciousness that has led to sudden awareness of "male chauvinism" (women's liberationists), "species chauvinism" (ecology, Lilly's dolphin studies), "type-G star chauvinism" (Carl Sagan), even "oxygen chauvinism" (the CETI conference), etc. The imprinted tunnel-realities which identify one as "white-male-American-earthian" etc. or "black-female-Cuban" etc. are no longer big enough to enclose our exploding contelligence.
As TIME magazine said on November 26, 1973, "Within ten years, according to pharmacologists, they will have perfected pills and cranial electrodes of providing life-long bliss for everyone on Earth." The 1960s hysteria about weed and acid was just the overture to this fith circuit break-through. Nathan S. Kline, M.D., predicts real aphrodisiacs, drugs to speed up learning, drugs to foster or terminate any behavior. Those who were burned or jailed at the beginning of the Revolution of Outer Technology. Those who were jailed or beaten by cops in the 1960s were forerunners of the Revolution of Inner Technology.
STAR TREK is a better guide to the emerging reality than anything in the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS. The life-support and denfense-system engineer, Scotty (circuit I), the emotional-sentimental Dr. McCoy (circuit II), the logical science officer Mr. Spock (circuit III) and the alternately paternalistic and romantic Captain Kirk (circuit IV) are perpetually voyaging through our future neurological history and encountering circuit V, VI, VII, and VIII intelligences, however crudely presented.
In short, the various levels of consciousness and circuits we have been discussing, and illustrating, are all biochemical imprints in the evolution of the nervous system. Each imprint creates a bigger tunnel-reality. In the Sufi metaphor, the donkey on the which we ride becomes a different donkey after each imprint. The metaprogrammer continually learns more and is increasingly able to be aware of itself operating. We are thus evolving to intelligence-studying-intelligence (the nervous system studying the nervous system) and are more and more capable of accelerating our own evolution.
Leary now symbolizes intelligence-studying-intelligence by the mark, I².
On the lower levels, you see with one "I," so to speak. On the higher levels, you see with many "I"s.
And space-time shifts from three Euclidean dimensions to non-Euclidean multi-dimesionality.
Dominance
^
Area of Hostile Strength | Area of Friendly Strength
(The Tyrant) | (The Good Parent)
'I'm ok, you're not ok' | 'I'm ok, you're ok'
'I give the orders here!' | 'It's safe out here'
|
Retreat (-------------------------------------------------------) Advance
|
Area of Hostile Weakness | Area of Friendly Weakness
(The Paranoid) | (The Dependent Neurotic)
'I'm not ok, you're not ok' | 'Please tell me what to do'
'Mommy take me home' | 'I'm not ok, you're ok'
v
Submission
Notice that Hostile Strength (the tyrant) is inclined toward paranoid
withdrawal; he must govern, but he is also afraid. Note also that the
Dependent Neurotic is not in retreat at all; he or she advances upon you,
demanding fulfillment of emotional 'needs' (imprints).
Surrealist Painting "Le Viol" ("The Rape") 1934. by Rene Magritte (1898-1967)
The brain is a bio-computer; however, it can be metaprogrammed. The riddle lies in seeing what it computes, which is more than information. Unfortunately, the instruction manual is hidden.
#1. Feeling restless? You're not alone: Everybody's starting to look for more meaning in life. Start paying closer attention to those seemingly "Chance Coincidences" - strange occurrences that feel like they were meant to happen. They are actually synchronistic events, and following them will start you on your path to spiritual truth.
#2. Observe our culture within its proper historical context. The first half of the past millennium was spent under the thumb of the church; in the second half we became preoccupied with material comfort. Now, at the end of the twentieth century, we've exhausted that preoccupation. We're ready to discover life's ultimate purpose.
#3. Start to get acquainted with the subtle energy that infuses all things. With practice, you can learn to see the aura around any living being and to project your own energy around it to give it strength.
#4. An unconscious competition for energy underlies all conflicts. By dominating or manipulating others, we get the extra energy we think we need. Sure, it feels good - but both parties are damaged in the conflict.
#5. The key to overcoming conflict in the world is the mystical experience, which is available to everyone. To nurture the mystical and build your energy, allow yourself to be filled with a sense of love.
#6. Childhood traumas block our ability to fully experience the mystical. All humans, because of their upbringing, tend toward one of four control dramas:
#7. Once cleared of traumas, you can build energy through contemplation and meditation, focus on you basic life question, and start riding a steady stream of intuitions, dreams, and synchronistic coincidences, all guiding you in the direction of your own evolution and transformation.
#8. That evolution can't be done alone, so begin to practice the new "Interpersonal Ethic" by uplifting those who cross your path. Talk to people who make spontaneous eye contact with you. Avoid codependent relationships. Be there for people. Call attention to other people's control dramas. In groups, speak when the spirit (instead of the ego) moves you.
#9. Our purpose here is to evolve beyond this plane. Fewer people (a result of reproductive abstinence) and more old-growth forests will help us to sustain our energy and accelerate our evolution. Technology will do most of our work for us. As we begin to value spiritual insight more and more, we will pay those who bring it to us, and this will eventually replace the market economy and our need for paid employment. We can connect to God's energy in such a way that we will eventually become beings of light, and walk straight into heaven.
Alan Atkisson, New Age Journal, August, 1994
| Nothing is true. Everything is permissible. |
The most successful form of treatment for so-called mental disorders, the Behavior Theory of Pavlov, Skinner, Wolpe, et al., could well be summarized in two similiar words: "Reinforce often." ("Reinforcement," for all practical purposes, means the same as the layman's term "reward." The essence of Behavior Therapy is rewarding desired behavior; the behavior "as if by magic" begins to occur more and more often as the rewards continue.)
Advertising, as everybody knows, is based on the axiom, "Repeat often."
If you are told often enough that "Budweiser is the king of beers," Budweiser will eventually taste somewhat better -- perhaps a great deal better -- than it tasted before this magick spell was cast. If a Behavior Therapist in the pay of the Communists rewards you every time you repeat a Communist slogan, you will repeat it more often, and begin to slide imperceptibly toward a Communist way of looking at the world. And if a Christian Scientist tells himself every day that his ulcer is going away, the ulcer will disappear more rapidly than it would have had he not subjected himself to this homemade advertising campaign.
All this, of course, is programming your own trip by manipulating appropriate clusters of word, sound, image and emotional energy. We all do this every day; even an action as simple as popping an "appropriate" CD into your stereo is programming your brain to a desired reality.
Digital mind appliances, (like the one you're using right now) will
make this easier and more effective for more people. This computer
you're looking at, elegant as it is, is still a crude silicon extension
of the even more elegant, richly bundled wetware biocomputer sealed
behind your eyes, 4 billion years in the making.
| Question Authority, Think for Yourself! |
The views of Dr. Wilhelm Reich, as summarized in
Robert Anton Wilson's musical
play Wilhelm Reich in
Hell. Dr. Reich, for those of you unfamiliar with his works, was an
American sexologist who claimed to have 30 years worth of research proving
the existence of a "life energy." In 1957, the U.S. Government arrested Dr.
Reich, destroyed his laboratory, and had all his books and research papers
burned in an incinerator.
No that is not a misprint.
The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because you will profit from itOutside Congress, many people make important decisions on this basis. Although there is a great deal of "sincere" racism and sexism in the United States, there can be little doubt that the most outrageous racist and sexist institutions exist because certain persons are making a profit out of them; nobody who can pay Black or female workers half the salaries of white males is very eager to listen to arguments that conflict with this very potent Argument by Self-Interest.
The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because various well-known deities and divinities say so
The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because certain witnesses declare that they have been informed that various deities and divinities have that opinion
The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because you will lose the next election if they aren't distimmedThere will probably be expert legal testimony as well, and this amounts to Argument by Precedent:
The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because a frammisgosh is like a farble and distimming is like gosketing and our ancestors always gosketed the farbles
The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because in 186 studies, 66.34 percent of all frammisgoshes found undistimmed were also suffering from hangnail, poor school attendance and abuse of controlled substancesWith what some will regard as incredible optimism, I assume that some Congressentities will examine this evidence and form their own opinions of whether the statistical techniques used really "prove" the conclusions alleged. With what some will regard as dark cynicism, I also assume that some Congressentities will not bother with that at all but will accept what they heard as another form of Argument by Authority:
The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because 186 scientists say so
All mome raths need to be distimmedThis method of logic can lead to some remarkable results, and Lewis Carroll once employed it to demonstrate that some dowagers are thistles. It is for that reason that Pure Logic is in rather low repute in scientific circles thes days and a scientific proof is regarded as requiring not only logical coherence but experimental, sensory-sensual or instrumental verification in the space-time world of ordinary perception.All frammisgoshes are mome raths. Therefore, all frammisgoshes need to be distimmed.
(The scene: Wilhelm Reich is on trial in Hell. The trial looks in all respects like a 3-ring circus, complete with jugglers, acrobats, fire-eaters, etc. The prosecuting attorneys are the Marquis de Sade and Count von Sacher-Masoch, both of whom are dressed as clowns. The Ringmaster (Satan) presides as judge.Early on in the trial, Dr. Reich introduced as evidence a Computer which continually monitors the growth of the worldwide nuclear weapons stockpile. The Computer emits an ear-splitting whistle every time there is an increment in firepower equivalent to the original Hiroshima bomb.....)
SADE: Why did you rebel against Freud?
REICH: (slowly) I rebelled against Freud because he was a coward.
The Computer whistles again.
SADE: A coward? The man who challenged all the taboos of his age?
REICH:He back-tracked, he evaded, he weaseled. He would not say flatly what his theories all implied.
The Computer whistles again.
SADE: (shouting over whistle) You mean he did not share your Utopian fantasies.
REICH:Look at the photos of him; look at that jaw.
The Computer whistles again.
REICH:Look at his expression, those clenched teeth. He was holding back -- and I tell you, all of you, that is why he got cancer of the jaw finally. He wouldn't speak what he knew. He held it in, behind those clenched teeth, until it killed him.
SADE: And what is the truth Freud dared not speak?
REICH:Everybody knows it by now. Look at the crime news on TV --
Computer whistles again.
REICH:or go into the emergency clinics and talk to the rape victims. Talk to the battered wives and the abused children. Our whole species is mad, emotionally plagued. We have been mad so long that every attempt to break out of the Trap just unleashes unconscious rage and increases the violence.
Computer whistles again.
REICH:We all know we're in the Trap, but nobody knows how to get out of it. We attack each other thinking that's the way out.
SADE: What? That is the truth Freud dared not speak? I thought he said all that in Civilization and its Discontents.
REICH:He would not say there was a way out of the Trap -- one way only --
SADE: Your way, of course.
REICH:The way I discovered, gradually, after many mistakes.
SADE: Which is?
REICH:Work on the breathing and the muscle tensions. And tell people frankly that there is no metaphysical Good and Evil in the human world any more than there is in the animal world or the chemical world or the physical world of gravity and mass.
SADE: Hedonistic materialism, in short. The permissive society.
REICH:Not permissiveness. Sanity. If a child is a nuisance, tell him so. Tell him his behavior is annoying. But never, never make a metaphysical moral issue out of it. Never, never say anything is sinful or wrong in a cosmic sense. Never pass on the lunacey, the Emotional Plague, that has come down to us from ages of superstition and barbarism.
SADE: A world without morals. Anarchy. That is what you mean?
REICH: It is not anarchy. It is what every person with an ounce of sanity knows. Nobody is to blame for anything. We are all in the mess together because our ancestors were mad and a mad society has passed on their repression from generation to generation.
SADE: And the things I did before I was brought here and cured? They were not Evil?
REICH: You enjoyed feeling Evil because it made you seem heroic. The humiliating truth, Marquis, is that you were merely ill.
SADE: And Hitler was merely ill?
REICH: That is the horror of the situation. We all know it by now, but we cannot remember. We repress it and go on blaming one another -- we forget what we know, because remembering it means remembering that we are robots, too -- that we have all been crippled in different ways by trying to live in the imaginary world of morals instead of the real world of nature.
SADE: So we just teach people how to breathe properly and relax their muscles and we will have Utopia?
REICH: No. I never said it was that easy. I said it was almost impossible, but we had to try, if there was to be any chance of survival at all. Removing the Emotional Plague is just like removing bubonic plague. It will take decades of work all over the world by thousands of specialists. But if we don't try --
Computer whistles again.
REICH: We must understand that every moral idea is strictly a hallucination. It creates guilt which creates muscular tension, which creates rage. That leads to further armoring, to hold the rage in. That leads to all the psychosomatic illnesses that orthodox medicine can't cure and to all the social pathologies around us. Rape. Child-beating. War.
Computer whistles again.
REICH: (excited, beginning to harangue) You compared me to Rousseau. Yes, in the Age of Reason, he had to recreate the myth of Eden again; he called it the Noble Savage. A hundred years later, Marx had to recreate it: he called it the primitive matriarchy, before private property. Eden is always recreated, because we know there is a natural grace and a natural way of life we have lost. We lost it through the invention of Good and Evil. As soon as we believed we were sinners, the Trap closed on us. We accepted the sin and punished ourselves. Or we projected the sin outward and punished scapegoats.
Computer whistles again.
REICH: (rage bursting through) Masochism or sadism -- those were the only choices once we believed in Good and Evil, once we believed in Sin. We are animals. We are no more guilty than a dog, a cat, a horse, a chipmunk. Everybody has known it since Darwin. But we are still in the Trap.
SADE: You really hate the Morality that caused you to kill your parents.
REICH: It is causing the whole human race to kill its children! We cannot see what we are doing. We have been robbed blind by our damned Morality.
SADE turns away sharply.
SADE: Your Almightiness, the prosecution rests. We believe it is obvious, out of his own mouth, that the defendant is a menace to civilization as we know it.
REICH: Wait! Do you know why that moment in nature is so precious, that moment of peace and oneness?
RINGMASTER: The defendant will not speak at this time.
REICH: It is a moment beyond Good and Evil!
RINGMASTER: You can argue that later. Fifteen minute recess. Then we will hear the case for the defense. (He rises)
The Computer whistles three times rapidly.
MASOCH: All rise!
Houselights up. As audience starts to leave, REICH begins addressing them.
REICH: Listen to me a moment! That moment of peace, that moment in Nature, beyond Good and Evil -- that is the essence of us. Our core. Our true selves. We normally never feel it because --
RINGMASTER: Clear the Court!
REICH: because our muscles hold it down. Our muscles are chronically tense, it is so chronic that we never notice it. We only notice the peace when on a rare moment the tension relaxes. What do you think the Drug Culture is all about? Relaxing the muscular armor, getting rid of that tension for a few hours, or a few moments.
ACROBATS go down into the audience and persuade people to leave. They are very polite, like well-trained policemen, and become very threatening (in a polite way) with those unwilling to leave while REICH is still talking.
REICH: We are diseased -- dis-eased. We have lost touch with natural feeling. When the Life Force tries to break through the muscular armor, it gets deflected, I say, and comes out dis-eased and violent. That's why all political revolutions fail. That's why there are no political solutions. That's why
RINGMASTER: Silence the defendant.
MASOCH and SADE "beat" REICH with bladders again and drag him offstage right.
REICH: (as he goes) You can't feel naturally. You can't see what you are doing, or what is being done around you. You are robots. Robots. All of you. All of you.
Curtain.
"The most thoroughly and relentlessly Damned, banned, excluded, condemned, forbidden, ostracized, ignore, suppressed, repressed, robbed, brutalized and defamed of all Damned Things is the individual human being. The social engineers, statistician, psychologist, sociologists, market researchers, landlords, bureaucrats, captains of industry, bankers, governors, commissars, kings and presidents are perpetually forcing this Damned Thing into carefully prepared blueprints and perpetually irritated that the Damned Thing will not fit into the slot assigned it. The theologians call it a sinner and try to reform it. The governor calls it a criminal and tries to punish it. the psychologist calls it a neurotic and tries to cure it. Still, the Damned Thing will not fit into their slots.
Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government are interchangeable terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control. He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it be made by one man upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy.Tucker's use of the word "invasion" is remarkably precise, considering that he wrote more than fifty years before the basic discovery of ethology. Every act of authority is, in fact, an invasion of the psychic and physical territory of another. Every fact of science was once Damned. Every invention was considered impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of culture and "progress," everything on earth that is man-made and not given to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of some man's refusal to bow to Authority. We would own no more, know no more, and be no more than the first apelike hominids if it were not for the rebellious, the recalcitrant, and the intransigent. As Oscar Wilde truly said, "Disobedience was man's Original Virtue." The human brain, which loves to read descriptions of itself as the universe's most marvelous organ of perception, is an even more marvelous organ of rejection. The naked facts of our economic game are easily discoverable and undeniable once stated, but conservatives- who are usually individuals who profit every day of their lives from these facts- manage to remain oblivious to them or to see them through a very rose-tinted lens. (Similarly, the revolutionary ignores the total testimony of history about the natural course of revolution, through violence, to chaos, back to the starting point.) We must remember that thought is abstraction. In Einstein's metaphor, the relationship between a physical fact and our mental reception of that fact is not like the relationship between beef and beef-broth, a simpler extraction and condensation; rather, as Einstein goes on, it is like the relationship between our overcoat and the ticket given us when we check our overcoat. In other words, human perception involves coding even more than crude sensing. The mesh of language, or of mathematics, or of a school of art, or of any system of human abstracting, gives to our mental constructs the structure, not of the original fact, but of the symbol system into which it is coded, just as a map-maker colors a nation purple not because it is purple but because his code demands it. But every code excludes certain things, blurs other things, and overemphasizes still other things. Nijinski's celebrated leap through the window at the climax of 'Le Spectre d'une Rose' is best coded in the ballet notation system used by choreographers; verbal language falters badly in attempting to conveying; painting or sculpture could capture totally the magic of one instant, but one instant only, of it; the physicist's equation, Force = Mass X Acceleration, highlights one aspect of it missed by all these other codes, but loses everything else about it. Every perception is influenced, formed, and structured by habitual coding habits- mental game habits- of the perceiver. All authority is a function of coding, of game rules. Men have arisen again and again armed with pitchforks to fight armies with cannon; men have also submitted docilely to the weakest and most tottery oppressors. It all depends on the extent to which coding distorts perception and conditions the physical (and mental) reflexes. It seems at first glance that authority could not exist at all if all men were cowards or if no men were cowards, but flourishes as it does because most men are cowards and some men are thieves. Actually, the inner dynamics of cowardice and submission on the one hand and of heroism and rebellion on the other are seldom consciously realized either by the ruling class or the servile class. Submission is identified not with cowardice but with virtue, rebellion not with heroism but with evil. To the Roman slave-owners, Spartacus was not a hero and the obedient slaves were not cowards; Spartacus was a villain and the obedient slaves were virtuous. The obedient slaves believed this also. The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly. If authority implies submission, liberation implies equality; authority exist when one man obeys another, and liberty exists when men do not obey other men. Thus, to say that authority exists is to say that class and caste exis, that submission and inequality exist. To say the liberty exists is to that classlessness exists, to say that brotherhood and equality exist. Authority, by dividing men into classes, creates dichotomy, disruption, hostility, fear, disunion. Liberty, by placing men on an equal footing, creates association, amalgamation, union, security. When the relationships between men are based on authority and coercion, they are driven apart; when based on liberty and non-aggression, they are drawn together. The facts are self-evident and axiomatic. If authoritarianism did not possess the in-built, preprogrammed double-bind structure of a Game Without End, men would long ago have rejected it and embraced libertarianism. The usual pacifist complaint about war, that young men are led to death by old men who sit at home manning beaurocrats' desks and taking no risks themselves, misses the point entirely. Demands that the old should be drafted to fight their own wars, or that the leaders of the warring nations should be sent to the front lines on the first day of battle, etc., are aimed at an assumed "sense of justice" that simply does not exist. To the typical submissive citizen of authoritarian society, it is normal, obvious and "natural" that he should obey older and more dominant males, even at the risk of his life, even against his own kindred, and even in causes that are unjust or absurd. "The Charge of the Light Brigade"- the story of a group of young males led to their death in a palpably idiotic situation and only because they obeyed a senseless order without stopping to think- has been, and remains, a popular poem, because unthinking obedience by young males to older males is the most highly prized of all conditioned reflexes within human, and hominid, societies. The mechanism by which authority and submission are implanted in the human mind is coding of perception. That which fits into the code is accepted; all else is Damned to being ignored, brushed aside, unnoticed, and- if these fail- it is Damned to being forgotten. A worse form of Damnation is reserved for those things which cannot be ignored. These are daubed with the brain's projected prejudices until, encrusted beyond recognition, they are capable of being fitted into the system, classified, card-indexed, buried. This is what happens to every Damned Thing which is too prickly and sticky to be excommunicated entirely. As Josiah Warren remarked, "It is dangerous to understand new things too quickly." Almost always, we have not understood them. We have murdered them and mummified their corpses. A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of "monopoly in the means of production." Since man extends his nervous system though channels of communication like the written word, the telephone, radio, etc., he who controls these media controls part of the nervous system of every member of society. The contents of these media become part of the contents of every individual's brain. Thus in preliterate societies taboos on spoken word are more numerous and more Draconic than at any more complex level of social organisation. With the invention of written speech -- hieroglyphic, ideographic, or alphabetical -- the taboos are shifted to this medium; there is less concern with what people say and more concern with what people write. (Some of the fist societies to achieve literacy, such as Egypt and the Mayan culture of ancient Mexico, evidentially kept a knowledge of hieroglyphs a religious secret which only the higher orders of the priestly and royal families were allowed to share.) The same process repeats endlessly: Each step forward in the technology of communication is more heavily tabooed than the earlier steps. Thus, in America today (post-Lenny Bruce), one seldom hears of convictions for spoken blasphemy or obscenity; prosecution of books still continues, but higher courts increasingly interpret the laws in a liberal fashion, and most writer feel fairly confident that they can publish virtually anything; movies are growing almost as decentralised as books, although the fight is still heated in this area; television, the newest medium, remains encased in neolithic taboo. (When the TV pundits committed le`se majeste after an address by the then Dominant Male, a certain Richard Nixon, one of his lieutenants quickly informed them they had over stepped, and the whole tribe -- except for the dissident minority -- cheered for the reassertion of tradition.) When a more efficient medium arrives, the taboos on television will decrease.
| Nothing is true. Everything is permissible. |
| Love is the law, love under will. |