OVO

Multi-screen video display arrays are the key to solving the problem of information overload.  Actually, conceiving the problem as one of too much of one thing is a bass-ackwards approach.  Problems should be conceived in terms of too little of the other thing.  There is not too much info, there is too little cognitive ability to handle it.  The synthetic capabilities of the visual cortex (mass-free mental imaging through pictures) coupled to the synthetic potential of our matter-composed universe (molecular lego kit) provides us with a very very large number of problem solving avenues.  We are over-engineered.  Meeting the necessities of biological survival is a piece of cake; an amoeba can do it.  But systems propelled by discomfort are limited in that they focus backwards upon point-casual determinants.  These systems are automatic, not autonomous.  Systems attracted by pleasure are less focused.  They exercise forward acting (future oriented) area-casual apperception over a range of possibilities.  The implication of choice requires a modeling system which allows the consideration of options which is an autonomous function.  Problem solving is very simple given enough information.  The facts usually sort themselves out into necessity fields and mental effort is potentially freed up to pursue more and more pleasure, mainly mental pleasure.  This is creativity, this is art.  In order to become artists we are going to have to learn how to operate within an incredibly dense information matrix.  The densest info matrix is the visual one.  The human retina is capable of differentiating about two million color hues and intensities and probably a larger number of shapes, spatial attitudes, distances and motions.  We mainly use only a small portion of the visual field at any one time, a pencil thin cone of maximum attention, and we see as we read, in a scanning manner.  This leaves the peripheral visual field almost unused, merely a cue-up function.  Like hearing, an attention director.  Expansion of peripheral apperception is desirable because it allows for the simultaneous comparative gauging of visual info which will, in turn, amplify the potential within the memory and projective areas of the mind.  In short, we can make parallel processing abilities accessible to consciousness.  One can get a taste of this ability by setting two TV sets side by side, tuning in two different stations with the audio up on both and concentrating on getting the gist of both programs at the same time.  Within ten minutes you should be catching on.

(from OVO 7 INFORMATION October 1989)

TV is not cinema.  It is, above all, a multi-screen medium, and when properly acted upon by the senses, makes apparent and emphasizes that aspect of choice which is the direction of attention.  The discovery of the inherent nature of phenomena, such as TV, is simply the discovery of that action which is most efficient.  Efficient action in the realm of mental activity is verifiable and measurable as the increase of intelligence.  The TV medium, which has a high potential information density, can literally create human genius, contrary to the mutterings of “new age” mandarins.  The operant concept is: full potential.  Since potential is a pre-existant state, how do we perceive and predict the potential of any system?  This, boys and girls, is the biiiiig question.  Stated otherwise, how does human intelligence select actions which leads to its increase?  My guess is that we must categorize efficient info as possessing density over time, ie, high throughput levels parallel in simultaneous space.  We perceive many things simultaneously with our senses, but we can engage info at greater distances with greater predictive ability in comparative array via the sense of sight alone.  The greatest inventions in all history were the microscope and the telescope.  Knowledge, and primarily visual knowledge, bridges the gap between quantity and quality.  The more info you got, the smarter you is.  This axiom is predicated upon the hypothesis that the universe is ultimately knowable.  Those of you who wish to challenge this hypothesis can best do so by choosing to remain stupid.  The universe is neither random nor infinite, merely complex.  The only shape that knowledge has that is independent from the shape of the universe is its rate of growth within our minds.  Knowledge and universe act upon each other.  Mass and energy attempt to understand one another.  The TV screen is an efficient interface between these two manifolds of existence.  It is a container (medium) which allows many image phases to play upon it.  Its potential can be multiplied by itself simply by adding more screens.  With a multi-screen array, one is forced to act one’s attention upon it in a way that inescapably increases (A) the quantity of perceived material and, more importantly, (B) the potential to operate within the container of mass / energy which is simultaneously, and that, kids, is the definite characteristic of the global village.

(from OVO 7 INFORMATION October 1989)

In the modern world of controlled sexuality and rational mysticism, extremes in sensuality are basic tokens of interpersonal exchange. Visions of passion and desire that once produced states of unparalleled bliss appear bland and vapid. There is no longer any value in experiencing that which is directly obtainable. Eroticism has become a frontier whose boundaries must be expanded, and we have become explorers on this great sexual sea.

The need for increased sophistication in the methodologies of physical pleasure has led sensualists to carry out serious studies of sexual parameters (eg oriental traditions). These somewhat academic attempts at a polysexual historicity have been a great boon, providing us with a wide variety of exploratory devices (a toolkit for the backwoods ethno-eroticist). The easy accessibility of such inspirational devices in turn generated an entire body of modern folklore which has helped to make the various sexual undergrounds stronger, larger and more visible.

With the acceptance of the entire spectrum of sensual activities, it is only natural that the associated accessories enter the marketplace. Besides the commerce in the sensual items themselves, sensualist accoutrements have become increasingly important consumerist icons. The elemental nature of sexuality makes this association natural (soft tissue does indeed feel good). Virtually all products are associated with some sexual aspect and the particulars have only become more deviant.

By its very nature, the marketing of sensuality produces a valuation (price tags, sales, closeouts, seconds). In a free market, this also leads to a hierarchy of quality (you get what you pay for). The poor are forced to experience sensual pleasures with inferior products while the wealthy are able to choose from the gamut of sexual stimulants. Thus, different types or brands of sexual accessories have become identified with different socioeconomic classes and help to delineate the cultural hierarchy.

At the top of the sensual hierarchy lies the most sophisticated of sexual deviances.  Beautiful women, fiftyish, with snow white skin and ebony handled whips.  Tanned men with manicured hands holding platinum revolvers.  Coprophageous delights served in golden urns.  The smells of rotten offal kept in airtight crystal decanters.  Surgically altered individuals with all manor of appendages and self-lubricating orifices.  The gentrification of pain lies at the boundaries of sensual experience.  It presents a very appealing picture of physical pleasure that few can afford.

As sensuality becomes an increasingly open element of commerce its effect upon the definition of social classes will be more dramatic.  The disparities caused by the sensual hierarchy will become more dramatic.  Just as monetary socialism has helped to prevent economic stratification from causing cultural collapse, sensual socialism may be required to avert destruction of the social fabric.  It is only a matter of time before socialists or even communistic solutions to the problems of physical pleasure will have to be considered.

(from OVO 7 INFORMATION October 1989)

“GOOD MORNING! My name is investigator Holmes. Do you mind answering a few simple questions?” If you open your door one day and are greeted with those words, STOP AND THINK! Whether it is the local police or the FBI at your door, you have certain legal rights of which you ought to be aware before you proceed any further.

In the first place, when the law enforcement authorities come to see you, there are no “simple questions.” Unless they are investigating a traffic accident, you can be sure they want information about somebody. And that somebody may be you!

Rule Number One to remember when confronted by the authorities is that there is no law requiring you to talk with the police, the FBI, or the representative of any other investigative agency. Even the simplest questions may be loaded, and the seemingly harmless bits of information which you volunteer may later become vital links in a chain
of circumstantial evidence against you or a friend.

Do not invite the investigator into your home!

Such an invitation not only gives him the opportunity to look around for clues to your lifestyle, friends, reading material, etc., but also tends to prolong the conversation. And the longer the conversation, the more chance there is for a skilled investigator to find out what he wants to know.

Many times a police officer will ask you to accompany him to the police station to answer a few questions. In that case, simply thank him for the invitation and indicate that you are not disposed to accept it at that time. Often the authorities simply want to photograph a person for identification purposes, a procedure which is easily accomplished by
placing him in a private room with a two-way mirror at the station, asking him a few innocent questions, and then releasing him.

If the investigator becomes angry at your failure to cooperate and threatens you with arrest, stand firm. He cannot legally place you under arrest or enter your home without a warrant signed by a judge. If he indicates that he has such a warrant, ask to see it. A person under arrest, or located on premises to be searched, generally must be shown a
warrant if he requests it and must be given a chance to read it.

Without a warrant, an officer depends solely on your helpfulness to obtain the information he wants. So, unless you are quite sure of yourself, don’t be helpful.

Probably the wisest approach to take to a persistent investigator is simply to say: “I’m quite busy now. If you have any questions that you feel I can answer, I’d be happy to listen to them in my lawyer’s office. Goodbye!”

Talk is cheap. But when that talk involves the law enforcement authorities, it may cost you, or someone close to you, dearly.

(from OVO 7 INFORMATION October 1989)

The early history of philosophy, especially the history from Thales to Plato, is a splendid story. It is almost too good to be true. In every generation we find at least one new philosophy, one new cosmology of staggering originality and depth. How was this possible? Of course one cannot explain originality and genius. But one can try to throw some light on them. What was the secret of the ancients? I suggest that it was a tradition – the tradition of critical discussion.

I will try to put the problem more sharply. In all or almost all civilizations we find something like religious and cosmological teaching, and in many societies we find schools. Now schools, especially primitive schools, all have, it appears, a characteristic structure and function. Far from being places of critical discussion they make it their task to impart a definite doctrine, and to preserve it, pure and unchanged. It is the task of a school to hand on the tradition, the doctrine of its founder, its first master, to the next generation, and to this end the most important thing is to keep the doctrine inviolate. A school of this kind never admits a new idea. New ideas are heresies, and lead to schisms; should a member of the school try to change the doctrine, then he is expelled as a heretic. But the heretic claims, as a rule, that his is the true doctrine of the founder. Thus not even the inventor admits that he has introduced an invention; he believes, rather, that he is returning to the true orthodoxy which has somehow been perverted.

In this way all changes of doctrine – if any – are surreptitious changes. They are all presented as re-statements of the true sayings of the master, of his own words, his own meaning, his own intentions.

It is clear that in a school of this kind we cannot expect to find a history of ideas, or even the material for such a history. For new ideas are not admitted to be new. Everything is ascribed to the master. All we might reconstruct is a history of schisms, and perhaps a history of the defence of certain doctrines against the heretics.

There cannot, of course, be any rational discussion in a school of this kind.  There may be arguments against dissenters and heretics, or against some competing schools. But in the main it is with assertion and dogma and condemnation rather than argument that the doctrine is defended.

The great example of a school of this kind among the Greek philosophical schools is the Italian School founded by Pythagoras. Compared with the Ionian school, or with that of Elea, it had the character of a religious order, with a characteristic way of life and a secret doctrine. The story that a member, Hippasus of Metapontum, was drowned at sea because he revealed the secret of the irrationality of certain square roots, is characteristic of the atmosphere surrounding the Pythagorean school, whether or not there is any truth in this story.

But among Greek philosophic schools the early Pythagoreans were an exception. Leaving them aside, we could say that the character of Greek Philosophy, and of the philosophical schools, is strikingly different from the dogmatic type of school here described. I have shown this by an example: the story of the problem of change which I have told is the story of a critical debate, of a rational discussion. New ideas are propounded as such, and arise as the result of open criticism. There are few, if any, surreptitious changes. Instead of anonymity we find a history of ideas and of their originators.

Here is a unique phenomenon, and it is closely connected with the astonishing freedom and creativeness of Greek philosophy. How can we explain this phenomenon? What we have to explain is the rise of a tradition. It is a tradition that allows or encourages critical discussions between various schools and, more surprisingly still, within one and the same school. For nowhere outside the Pythagorean school do we find a school devoted to the preservation of a doctrine. Instead we find changes, new ideas, modifications, and outright criticism of the master.

(In Parmenides we even find, at an early date, a most remarkable phenomenon – that of a philosopher who propounds two doctrines, one which he says is true, and one which he himself describes as false. Yet he makes the false doctrine not simply an object of condemnation or of criticism; rather he presents it as the best possible account of the delusive opinion of mortal men, and of the world of mere appearance – the best account which a mortal man can give.)

How and where was this critical tradition founded? This is a problem deserving serious thought. This much is certain: Xenophanes who brought the Ionian tradition to Elea was fully conscious of the fact that his own teaching was purely conjectural, and that others might come who would know better. I shall come back to this point again in my next and last section.

If we look for the first signs of this new critical attitude, this new freedom of thought, we are led back to Anaximander’s criticism of Thales. Here is a most striking fact: Anaximander criticizes his master and kinsman, one of the Seven Sages, the founder of the Ionian school. He was, according to tradition, only about fourteen years younger than Thales, and he must have developed his criticism and his new ideas while his master was alive. (They seem to have died within a few years of each other.) But there is no trace in the sources of a story of dissent, of any quarrel, or of any schism.

This suggests, I think, that it was Thales who founded the new tradition of freedom-based upon a new relation between master and pupil and who thus created a new type of school, utterly different from the Pythagorean school. He seems to have been able to tolerate criticism. And what is more, he seems to have created the tradition that one ought to tolerate criticism.

Yet I like to think that he did even more than this. I can hardly imagine a relationship between master and pupil in which the master merely tolerates criticism without actively encouraging it. It does not seem to me possible that a pupil who is being trained in the dogmatic attitude would ever dare to criticize the dogma (least of all that of a famous sage) and to voice his criticism. And it seems to me an easier and simpler explanation to assume that the master encouraged a critical attitude – possibly not from the outset, but only after he was struck by the pertinence of some questions asked, by the pupils perhaps, without any critical intention.

However this may be, the conjecture that Thales actively encouraged criticism in his pupils would explain the fact that the critical attitude towards the master’s doctrine became part of the Ionian school tradition. I like to think that Thales was the first teacher who said to his pupils: ‘This is how I see things-how I believe that things are. Try to improve upon my teaching’ (Those who believe that it is ‘unhistorical’ to attribute this undogmatic attitude to Thales may again be reminded of the fact that only two generations later we find a similar attitude consciously and clearly formulated in the fragments of Xenophanes.). At any rate, there is the historical fact that the Ionian school was the first in which pupils criticized their masters, in one generation after the other. There can be little doubt that the Greek tradition of philosophical criticism had its main source in Ionia.

It was a momentous innovation. It meant a break with the dogmatic tradition which permits only one school doctrine, and the introduction in its place of a tradition that admits a plurality of doctrines which all try to approach the truth by means of critical discussion.

It thus leads, almost by necessity, to the realization that our attempts to see and to find the truth are not final, but open to improvement; that our knowledge, our doctrine, is conjectural; that it consists of guesses, of hypotheses, rather than of final and certain truths; and that criticism and critical discussion are our only means of getting nearer to the truth. It thus leads to the tradition of bold conjectures and of free criticism, the tradition which created the rational or scientific attitude, and with it our Western civilization, the only civilization which is based upon science (though of course not upon science alone).

In this rationalist tradition bold changes of doctrine are not forbidden. On the contrary, innovation is encouraged, and is regarded as success, as improvement, if it is based on the result of a critical discussion of its predecessors. The very boldness of an innovation is admired; for it can be controlled by the severity of its critical examination. This is why changes of doctrine, far from being made surreptitiously, are traditionally handed down together with the older doctrines and the names of the innovators. And the material for a history of ideas becomes part of the school tradition.

To my knowledge the critical or rationalist tradition was invented only once. It was lost after two or three centuries, perhaps owing to the rise of the Aristotelian doctrine of epistémé, of certain and demonstrable knowledge (a development of the Eleatic and Heraclitean distinction between certain truth and mere guesswork). It was rediscovered and consciously revived in the Renaissance, especially by Galileo Galilei.

First published in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society NS 59, 1958-9.  From Conjectures and Refutations. Routledge 1989

From 1990 until an undetermined point thereafter there will be an employment of the negation of all forms of work (and play).  This will be called The Artists Strike (1990 – ?).  Those participating will refuse to produce and / or consume artworks, creative acts,and political or philosophical activisms.  We aim to undermine existing western philosophical notions and ultimately push for the radical transformation of society.

By the refusal of creativity for the years following 1990, there will be a collapse in the capitalist system.  Art galleries will close.  Museums and cultural institutions will suffer monetary loss.  As the art world suffers everywhere, the inertia will collect on other elements of capitalism creating the desired push through, beyond the understood concepts of civilization.

Capitalism places an economic value on everything, including the mind.  It makes a commodity of the conscious reasoning and understanding society has shaped and mutated to call its own, then calls it “art.”  This exploitation is an integral part of the bourgeois capitalist formula for popularizing its banal ideologies.

Imagination, the tool of the acculturated mind, is no more authentic than its product.  Only the mind that conceives can be designated authentic.  Society has capitalized on the dull products of the imagination and through it has created the illusory reality.  In order to destroy society as it exists, we must destroy the imagination.  We can have no reform, for reform merely rearranges appearances.  Nothing changes.

Society creates a split of the established modes of reality and then offers the alternative.  The ameliorative can never be achieved since the entire affair exists in the imagination of a split mind.  Moreover, the established modes of reality are created by capitalist ideologies and philosophies which are the primary agents of repression.

Fear of cultural death commits society to an unavoidable mass suicide.  It limits primary processes (that distinguish the individual) to stratagems of unquestioned truth.  The reality consensus governs circumstantial response and thinking towards a detestable redundancy, yet dissents to its own plagiarism.  Individuality within society is a delusion.  Truth repudiates society as society negates truth.  Differentiation of the personality succeeds cultural death, the relation of cause and effect being inversely proportional.

Capitalist social relationships make desire the mechanism through which a nonexistent future prevails over the now.  It denies the present and focuses on the future.  Whatever one is, is incomplete and temporary, for only the future is significant.  Society markets destiny as a pursuit-to-become something, a means of being; without destiny one doesn’t exist.

Acting on can mutate or create new data.  Interacting with creates only the event of interaction.  After the event, all is as it was.  Noting changes.

TRUTH IS THE ILLUSORY TOOL OF THE SPECTACLE – NEGATE TRUTH.

ABOLISH PLEASURE – REFUSE CREATIVITY – SMASH THE IMAGINATION – DESIRE IN RUINS – THE PRESENT IS ABSOLUTE – EVERYTHING NOW!

(from OVO 3 1987).

The Egyptian Spirit enumerates its uncommitted sins before Osiris in order to prove that it deserves eternal blessedness; but the poet has no need to exculpate himself before any judge.

I
I have dazzled even prigs and unbelievers without abusing the marvels inherent in my art.

II
I have scorned metre, rhyme; I have polished words. ‘Music be gone!’ A plague on discourse!

III
I have discarded clarity as worthless. Working in darkness, I have discovered lightning. I have disconcerted. I have sounded the mute, confronted monsters and miracles, burned everything that exasperates the impoverished and the good soul.

IV
Man’s dreams, his deliriums, have reached their culmination in my poems. It has not been for me to make them state their name; proteiform, they have several directions. I have respected their disorder. I have given free course to their flight. My words testify to their perpetual metamorphosis.

V
I have exalted the feelings that one tests blindly and would destroy in the desire to identify. Thanks to me everyone now opens his eyes to them. He experiences them in a new intimacy. His soul is more at ease when that which he had held too tightly escapes him.

VI
I have not imitated those who acquiesce in the desires of the masses or the powerful. I have established for myself my rules, my principles and my tastes, and I have overstated their difference, comparing myself in this to great poets and, through them, to all men. I have thought there was neither a better nor a more expedient way to point out my sincerity and my final dependence.

VII
I have proposed to be inimitable. I have demonstrated my mastery; I have not hidden my boldness. I have rejected the commonly accepted disciplines. I have invented others for my own use. If anyone can imitate me (in being inimitable) it is simply my reward.

VIII
I never have had the burden of proof. Poetry is not a business: impatience and pride guard its cradle. I have avoided platitudes and obviousness. One forces locks, not images. I never have needed to proclaim myself magus and prophet.

IX
I never have feigned the indifference, the good sense and the wisdom of nations. I have noted with satisfaction that my transports have separated me from the flock of Panurge.

X
Work? Pain? Unknown. I have recalled that for water it was an easy, unquestionable course from rain to the spring. I have presented myself as a spring, producing pure water naturally. Verses rushed forth from the very first.

XI
With every word, my verses remind one that they are a negation of prose. (‘It is as oracle that I speak.’) Each vain effort to reduce their enigma, to avoid their trap, demands a new reading. One cannot penetrate their secret. In wanting it so desperately, one renders their beauty all the more unfathomable.

XII
Poetry escapes the banality, the servility and the futility of prose, that which is inappreciable. I have held all the dramas of love in a soap bubble. My verses immediately astound. Everything about them distinguishes them from ordinary language, and the spirit marvels that the ambiguous word, the long and uneasy syllable, leads it, trembling, into the woods.

XIII
To someone else belongs the care of feeding the soul with staple foods, which, though indispensable to his stagnant mediocrity, are not rare. I have wanted to force on him strange and luxurious dishes from the antipodes or the abyss.

XIV
I have seen neither majesty in a king nor ministry in a priest. I have attracted attention to the mockery of the sceptre, the slime of the sandal. I have attacked things broadside.

XV
I have not observed the same disrespect in the workshop of the artisan. But I have praised neither his labours nor his works. I have picked up a wood shaving to praise the curve, the colour and the quality. Dialectic calls for such priorities.

XVI
Imagination is neither right nor wrong. One does not invent in a void. I have resorted to chance and to magic potions. I have disdained reason and experience. I have changed, if only to have solicited from them their commanding way, the meanings of words. Words leave me, nevertheless, richer than they found me. They have enhanced my powers by confrontations are retained in the mind.

XVII
I have been rash enough to boast to boast of my audacity and to recommend it as a principle. My imprudences have always been happy; I admit it with pride. I have relied, above all, on the gifts of fate, always challenging them to accentuate the power of my imagination and the generosity of my heart. I have accepted them with pride, rejoicing once more that they should be mine.

XVIII
I have expressed that which was considered, before me, to be inexpressible.

XIX
I have divulged that which was reputed to be unknowable. I have revered the least fashionable science, knowing the impossible, every complex thing that a person considers from birth to death. But, meeting it in my verses one is struck by evidence that unchains in him the laughter of hashish.

XX
I have a pure heart. I have scandalised all the imbeciles, except those who sleep the sleep of the just.

XXI
Those who like my verses should say them when they are alone and their door opens in the night. Those who like my verses, and who love, no longer have any need of saying them.

XXII
I have given to each truth its well.

XXIII
This path has freely chosen me. The idea of success or failure is at the end of my foot.

First published in BIEF/ Jonction Surrealiste #7, June 1959.

(from OVO 3 1987)

One of the most important ingredients of our western civilization is what I may call the ‘rationalist tradition’ which we have inherited from the Greeks. It is the tradition of critical discussion – not for its own sake, but in the interests of the search for truth. Greek science, like Greek philosophy, was one of the products of this tradition, and of the urge to understand the world in which we live, and the tradition founded by Galileo was its renaissance.

Within this rationalist tradition science is valued, admittedly, for its practical achievements; but it is even more highly valued for its informative content, and for its ability to free our minds from old beliefs, old prejudices, and old certainties, and to offer us in their stead new conjectures and daring hypotheses. Science is valued for its liberalizing influence as one of the greatest of the forces that make for human freedom.

According to the view of science which I am trying to defend here, this is due to the fact that scientists have dared (since Thales, Democritus, Plato’s Timaeus, and Aristarchus) to create myths, or conjectures, or theories, which are in striking contrast to the everyday world of common experience, yet able to explain some aspects of this world of common experience. Galileo pays homage to Aristarchus and Copernicus precisely because they dared to go beyond this known world of our senses: “I cannot,” he writes, ”express strongly enough my unbounded admiration for the greatness of mind of these men who conceived [the heliocentric system] and held it to be true [...], in violent opposition to the evidence of their own senses.” This is Galileo’s testimony to the liberalizing force of science. Such theories would be important even if they were no more than exercises for our imagination. But they are more than this, as can be seen from the fact that we submit them to severe tests by trying to deduce from them some of the regularities of the known world of common experience by trying to explain these regularities. And these attempts to explain the known by the unknown (as I have described them elsewhere) have immeasurably extended the realm of the known. They have added to the facts of our everyday world the invisible air, the antipodes, the circulation of the blood, the worlds of the telescope and the microscope, of electricity, and of tracer atoms showing us in detail the movements of matter within living bodies.  All these things are far from being mere instruments: they are witness to the intellectual conquest of our world by our minds.

First published in Contemporary British Philosophy, 3rd Series, ed. H. D. Lewis, 1956. From Conjectures and Refutations. Routledge 1989

From the 1906 book The Outbursts of Everett True by A. D. Condo and J. W. Raper. With thanks to Barnacle Press.

Trevor Blake: Heavy Tank and Mark V OGRE. Work in progress.  CGI model and animation made with Google Sketchup.

OGRE is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy (http://www.sjgames.com/general/online_policy.html).

A. Getting More Free Time:
1. I am wasting less of my time (LIFE) watching, listening to and reading THOUGHT LEADERS, ie, TV, movies, radio, music, newspapers, magazines and novels. These are like spectator sports. They cause me to live life vicariously, ie, second-hand, not real, only in fantasy. These mind conditioners are subtly designed to create not only fear and anger emotions but also create feelings of guilt and inadequacy. These feeling stifle growth and keep one securely in one’s rut. And of course the more visible purpose of the media is to create the desire to acquire (BUY! BUY! BUY!) and keep up with the Joneses. ‘Buying’ uses up my savings. I spent 22 years of my TIME (life) working as a Wage Slave. I helped perpetuate the status quo, ie a world of 98.6% Slaves and less than 1% Elite (Billionaires). I don’t wish to do that any more.
2. l am talking less ‘trivia.’ I will try to take responsibility and lead conversations into areas that are meaningful and interesting to me (or l will find someone else to talk with). This will give me more meaningful input and more free time, to think about what l would really like to do with my life, to experiment with different ideas and to experience the ones l like best. I wish to discover what it would be like to be a “Natural” human being (instead of a “Normal” one, who conforms and obeys) to see it I would like that better. I plan to spend more of my time trying to discover what makes ME happy.
B. Got rid of all my debts and credit cards.
C. Getting rid of my surplus possessions.
D. Getting my rent down as low as I can.
E. Teaching myself how to choose my thoughts, so that I can choose not to linger on self-destructive thoughts, and I am learning to focus on thinking about creating more freedom and happiness for myself.
G. Learning ways to live happily on very little money, ie, becoming more independent. (People with lots of money don’t need to do this. In the present system – MONEY IS INDEPENDENCE).
H. Experimenting with food. I’m discovering which foods and how much my body prefers. It tells me when I pay attention.
I. Got rid of my vehicle as soon as it felt like a burden.
J. Won’t attempt to gain Power over anyone. A slave’s chain has two ends.
K. Striving to be free and happy. I share my methods of happiness with others if they are interested.
L. Overcoming the fear of being alone. I realize that loneliness is only a thought and I am gaining control of my thoughts.
M. Worrying less about what people (including mother) think about me.
N. Starting to try some new things, friends, places, skills, routes, foods, areas, etc.
O. Absorbing new and useful input into my biocomputer and avoiding much trivia helps me surpass my old programming of “garbage in – garbage out” ie my old way of life.

Each has the potential to become a genius in some area. But most are astray with trivial diversions.

“Plow your furrows deep while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and keep.” – Benjamin Franklin

How much is too much?
What portion of my conversation is trivia?
How can I expect to accomplish anything but TRIVIA if I allow that to be my major focus?
(However, at this point in my evolution, I seem to need some trivia. My ability to focus on the important is still limited).

DEMOCRACY IS NOT FREEDOM (Except for the Elite)
I was programed to feel reverent whenever I heard, saw or thought the word democracy. Tears would almost form in my eyes. I assumed that Democracy was a wonderful thing to have. l never looked it up in the Dictionary. I never thought of it as ‘Government and Bureaucrats.’ I thought of it as an entity; being there to protect, care for me and give me FREEDOM! What an ignoramus I was. I had no notion that there was any “alternative” except some worse kind of government. I took it all for granted. I assumed I (we) controlled it because I (we) had voted. It was DEMOCRACY! How naive I was. Just another one of the “suckers” Barnum said are born every minute.

Websters New World Dictionary:
Democracy: Government by the people, directly or through representatives.
Government: The exercise of authority over a Slate (of people), organization, etc.: control; rule.

The “Rule of the Majority” is a farce! In practice it has always been “The Rule of the Minority” ie the manipulators ie the Elite. No thank you! You can have them both. I don’t have a need or desire to be ruled by either or anyone!

DEMOCRACIES and other governments have kept people in wage slavery for the past 5,000 years or more. ALL GOVERNMENTS are basically the same – they RULE! Rules create conformity. Rules create the status quo. Rules create slavery. Rules stifle creativity. Rules prevent INDIVIDUAL freedom! I do not desire to have people rule me directly or through representatives. I am not a cow or a sheep. I refuse to remain domesticated. I am fully capable of ruling myself. I do not desire to rule anyone. I just want to be FREE! And I am getting more free because I’m not playing their games much anymore. I no longer GIVE my consent to be ruled, I no longer vote for a Ruler or for Laws!

My chosen work right now is writing and publishing. I give my work for free. My past 18 years of payless working has been far more fun than my previous 22 years of paid working. We volunteers are in control of the how, when, if, where, why, what and who we give our work to. Volunteers have more freedom than paid workers. When everyone is a volunteer everything will be free for me, and for everyone else as well!

(from OVO 2 1987)

See also:
OVO 11 CONTROL (September 1991)

Justice was done last Wednesday when the Muhammad and Waqas Parvez, the father and brother of Aqsa Parvez, received life sentences for strangling her to death in their home in Mississauga, Ontario, on December 10, 2007, when she was sixteen years old. But denial as to how a father and brother could have been moved to murder what should have been a beloved daughter and sister remains all-pervasive. If Canada, the United States and Europe are not going to be the sites of many more Islamic honor killings, that has to change.

Muhammad and Waqas Parvez murdered Aqsa because she would not conform to Islamic behavior codes for women. The Qur’an commands women to “draw their veils over their bosoms” (24:31), and in a hadith, Aisha, the favorite wife of Islam’s prophet Muhammad recounts that he commanded that once a woman “reaches the age of menstruation, it does not suit her that she displays her parts of body except this and this, and he pointed to her face and hands” (Sunan Abu Dawud 32.4092). Muhammad Parvez was determined to enforce this command on Aqsa, as well as to force her into an arranged marriage, and she was just as determined to resist. Ultimately she ran away, telling friends that Muhammad Parvez had sworn on the Qur’an to murder her if she did so. But on December 10, 2007, Waqas Parvez showed up at Aqsa’s bus stop, and took the girl home.

Less than an hour later Muhammad Parvez called 911 to tell them he had killed his daughter. His calm after the killing, and his turning himself in, is common with Islamic honor murders and other killings and attempted killings: one notable example came in February 2009, after moderate Muslim leader Muzzammil Hassan beheaded his wife. He went to a police station, shook an officer’s hand, and then shocked the unsuspecting policeman by telling him: “I want to tell you that I just killed my wife and I’m here to turn myself in.” Similarly, when Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar drove an SUV onto the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attempted to run over and kill as many students as possible (he killed none but injured nine), he appeared serene and even happy after the attack. This calm may emanate from a sense that the perpetrators have that they have performed an act pleasing to Allah, and will be rewarded for it. And that also may lead us to where Muhammad Parvez got the idea that Aqsa deserved death for her non-Muslim attitudes, and that it was his right, even his responsibility, to kill her. For the fact is little recognized but unmistakable: Islam provides a broad justification for honor killings, such that a man like Muhammad Parvez would most likely believe that in murdering his daughter, he is not committing a heinous crime, but serving his god in a way that that god would regard as a positive good.

[...] This is why honor killings keep happening — because they are broadly tolerated, even encouraged, by Islamic teachings and attitudes. Yet no authorities are calling Islamic leaders to account for this. The main thing that many analysts want you to know about the death of Aqsa Parvez and other honor killing victims is that they had nothing to do with Islam. Shahina Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Social Services Association, declared: “The strangulation death of Ms. Parvez was the result of domestic violence, a problem that cuts across Canadian society and is blind to colour or creed.” Sheikh Alaa El-Sayyed, imam of the Islamic Society of North America in Mississauga, Ontario, agreed: “The bottom line is, it’s a domestic violence issue.” Muhammad Parvez himself didn’t see it that way after killing Aqsa. He grounded his act specifically in the mores of his Islamic community, and clearly believed that that community would regard his killing his daughter more lightly than they would her un-Islamic behavior: “This is my insult. My community will say you have not been able to control your daughter. This is my insult. She is making me naked.”

The life sentences given to Muhammad and Waqas Parvez give Muslim spokesmen in Canada and the United States a new opportunity. They have a new chance to acknowledge that Islam’s shame/honor culture and devaluation of women has created communities in which abuse of women is accepted as normal. They could call for a searching reevaluation of the meaning and continued relevance of material from the Qur’an and Sunnah that devalues and dehumanizes women, and call in no uncertain terms for Muslims to reject explicitly and definitively the literal meaning of such texts, now and for all time to come. They could call for sweeping reform and reexamination of the status of women in Islam. They could call upon every mosque in the West to institute classes teaching against honor killing and directly challenging the teachings and assumptions that give it justification.

For any of this to happen, Muslim leaders in the West would have to adopt an utterly unfamiliar and uncharacteristic stance: that of self-reflection and self-criticism, rather than excuse-making, finger-pointing, and evasion of responsibility. But with the mainstream media and law enforcement continuing to abet that evasion, this is unlikely in the extreme. Much more likely is that many, many more Muslim girls in the West will die miserably like Aqsa Parvez. No one is speaking up for them or defending them.

Article continues.

I’ve become jaded of late and convinces of the impossibility of achieving anything worthwhile.  Concerning the modern state, I cannot see any way out or around or through, and it strikes me that one’s time is better spent seeking after the little (and the great!) pleasures of camaraderie, art and study.

Although not a mystic, I appreciate some of the tactical insights of Taoism… I think once the critique of organization is firmly assimilated, the whole political project of “anarchism” is exposed as a fraud. As anarchists: leafleting, speaking, proselytizing, agitating anarchists, we are continually trying to smooth over the inherent contradictions of trying to motivate people to act while disavowing any responsibility for their choice of action(s).

If we toss over organization and hierarchy (as we should) we are left with the prescriptive task of anarchist propaganda, and must face the emptiness of our individual lives, the emptiness activity was intended to mask and failed to fill. There is still the joy of provoking and of communicating, but this begins more and more to fall into the older modes: humor and art.

We must stop thinking in terms of issues, power struggles, programs, policies, and projects (state and social) before we are going to be able to not anywhere, and this means an end to most of what the modern anarchist movement consists of. Being an exemplary person is the most difficult thing; it is why so many of us are lured into prosperous schemes for publishing: promoting and capitalizing on, non-monetarily, of course, discontent with a dying culture and an oppressed world. It vanishes into the mist on some rainy afternoon, and the aftertaste is bitter. But why when grown, do we mourn for our childhood games? Let’s invent new, better ones, that don’t have this built-in self-destruct mechanism.

October 1983, published Spring 1985 in VULTURE No. 1 (Montreal). with French translations; the title presumably supplied by its editor.

(from OVO 1 1987)

Ralph America [home of The Residents] will be closing after 11 years on August 15, 2010. Changes in the music business have made it very difficult for small operations to exist as the world goes download. There are sites where you can download all RA titles for free (RSD ones too) so trying to stay in business no longer works very well. RSD will also be pulling back on issuing music due to the free download sites.

EuroRalph faced a similar situation last year and also closed down [after 17 years].

Welcome to the new reality.

We didn’t buy, and so they die.

From the 1906 book The Outbursts of Everett True by A. D. Condo and J. W. Raper. With thanks to Barnacle Press.

Trevor Blake: The Invisibles. Pen. Based on The Invisibles by Grant Morrison. April 2010.

BBC: Pakistani Couple Charged with ‘Occult Killing’ of Baby

A couple in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi have been charged with murdering their baby daughter as part of an alleged “black magic” ritual. Officers found the body of the four-month-old girl buried in the couple’s house, a court heard. Doctors say it had been there for about four days. They believe the couple were planning to murder their second daughter, a girl of three, who police found tied up.

Telegraph: Saudi ‘Sorcerer’ Who Raped 100 Sentenced to Death

He first drew them in by saying he could cast love spells, but then surreptitiously filmed their meeting and used his work for extortion and to rape them

Sky News: Russian Orthodox Believers Hospitalised After Drinking Holy Water

Those affected, including 48 children, are being treated in hospital for acute intestinal pain after drinking water from wells around a local church last week.

Seattle Times: Accused Killer Scattered Body Parts, Prosecutors Say

Christensen told police the text message was evidence Harlan had broken a “Wiccan blood oath” she’d made to break off a relationship with the other man, prosecutors allege.

Yahoo! News: Motivational Speaker Charged in Sweat Lodge Deaths

About halfway through the two-hour ceremony, some began feeling ill, vomiting and collapsing inside the 415-square-foot structure. Despite that, Ray urged participants to push past their physical weaknesses and chided those who wanted to leave, authorities and participants have said. Two people – Kirby Brown, 38, of Westtown, N.Y., and James Shore, 40, of Milwaukee – passed out inside the sweat lodge and died that night at a hospital. Liz Neuman, 49, of Prior Lake, Minn., slipped into a coma and died a week later. Eighteen others were hospitalized.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Witch-Hunt Victim Recounts Torture Ordeal

Those who beat, punched and kicked Kalli Biswokarma, 47, accused her of casting evil spells on a schoolteacher who had fallen ill in the village of Pyutar, 40 kilometres south of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu.

The Boston Globe: Haiti Calls Upon Voodoo Priests for Help

Beauvoir said the priests are counting among their own people, so they expect accurate numbers. He is confident the religious and scientific perspectives will not clash. In a nation where government barely functions, and where more than half the population of 9 million is believed to practice voodoo in some form, the assistance of these priests is considered critical to better assess the situation. The priests in Haiti dispense unofficial justice and cater to religious needs.

BBC: Voodoo Religion’s Role in Helping Haiti’s Quake Victims

“Some Christian communities do not want to give food to voodoo followers”

7online.com: Mom, Grandma Charged in Child Voodoo Burning

A mother and grandmother in Queens were charged Thursday with performing a voodoo ritual that left a 6-year-old girl – scarred for life. Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said 29-year-old Marie Lauradin and 70-year-old Sylvenie Thessier allegedly used an accelerant to set fire to the child, who suffered life-threatening injuries during the incident in February.

BBC: Child Sorcery in DR Congo

12 year-old, Henri, which is not his real name, points at a large fresh looking scar on his midriff. “People accused me of sorcery and my mother believed them,” he says. “Look, here on my stomach. She tried to kill me with a knife. It really hurt and I cannot understand why my mother did it.”

BBC: Indian Children ‘Sacrifice’ Probe

Five children poisoned to death in a village in India may have been “sacrificed”, police say. They say that the children were killed in Maharashtra state by a childless couple in a suspected black magic ritual to enable them to conceive.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation: 12 Children Die During Bad Luck Ceremony

Twenty-five children were rescued with minor injuries but 12 others – all below the age of 12 – were swept away in strong currents. The children were watching a ritual ceremony to dispel misfortune after a measles outbreak in the area. The adults were throwing offerings in the form of chickens into the river when the bridge collapsed, the official said.

All articles continue at links. Part three of a series, see also [1][2].  Magick is disappointing at best, murderous at worse.  No outcome can be known before an experiment is made.  Experiments that seem foolish may yield wonderful results.  But when outcomes are known then ignored in favor of conviction or passion (magick, religion, superstition) then the worst sort of outcomes will become normal.   For example, if one child sacrifice didn’t work then try two.  Meanwhile genuine solutions to problems (measles vaccines) or acceptance of situations that perhaps cannot be changed or are not so terrible (lack of love) are cast aside.  Magick might disappoint but make people feel better for trying.  Reason and compassion disappoint less and make people feel better for trying.  Where people are guided by reason and compassion, they do not elect for child sacrifice.  The number of people sacrificing children is small, but it would grow smaller still were the ‘nice’ magickians around them to be less satisfied with their disappointments in magick and turn to other pursuits.  Without the camouflage of the mean, the extreme withers.

From the 1906 book The Outbursts of Everett True by A. D. Condo and J. W. Raper. With thanks to Barnacle Press.

Trevor Blake: Victory. Pen. May 2010.

1982 (age 16): I find Factsheet Five and by way of that magazine I find Kerry Thornley. By way of Kerry and Factsheet Five I find many anarchist periodicals and pen pals.  Anarchism seems smart, strong, right.  Looking back, I used the word to describe what I liked and wanted and what was ‘mine.’  It’s something about the sovereignty of the individual, or you can’t tell me what to do, or something in between.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I think that these ideas are so good that the only reason they aren’t in practice now everywhere is that they haven’t been tried.  Or perhaps tried just right.  Or perhaps the ideas aren’t widely distributed, and if people only knew about anarchism they would sign on.

1987: I find an anarchist poster on the campus of the University of Tennessee and by way of the poster I find The Alternative, an anarchist group in Knoxville.  We talk and do things, but anarchism does not flow out from us like a river.  And while we’re all on the same team against a much larger and more powerful team, we certainly do bicker.

1987: I published Letter from the Graveyard Shift by Gerry Reith in my zine OVO. Early questioning

1988-1989: I attend anarchist events in many cities.  I meet with anarchists in the South and on the East Coast.  I am a guest lecturer on anarchism at the University of Tennessee.  The same imp of the perverse that led me to read about anarchism pricks up his ears when he hears a friend say how concerned he is that another friend is reading Ayn Rand.  Not that the friend is signing on as a true believer, but that the books themselves are wicked.  Noted.

1991: I write “Anarchist: Think for Yourself,” published in the book Anarchy and the End of History.  A high point in nine years of letters, essays and art published in anarchist magazines around the world. Factsheet Five continues to create contacts for me, including an unsolicited letter from George Walford in England.  I correspond with George until his death in 1994.

1992 (age 26): I move to Portland, Oregon and find radical bookstore Laughing Horse Books.  Make a friend who volunteers there.

1993: From a letter by George Walford: “You remark the scarcity of ‘real live human being stories’ in anarchist literature. Very perceptive. But it’s not an accident. Anarchism is not about people as we meet them, it’s about abstruse principles and theories (and, even more, about the resistance these encounter). The real human stories appear in the literature at the other end of the range, in the popular romances, thrillers, love-songs and — perhaps most of all — in tabloid newspaper stories, which go to extreme lengths to personalise (humanise) political events.  Your own view of anarchism has it that people should be free to do what they want. The overwhelming majority of those who have encountered anarchism have shown very clearly that they do not want to do what anarchists want them to do. They prefer to do what they are doing now. We have no reason to expect the others, when they meet anarchism, to respond differently. Can your anarchism accept this? Or do you feel bound to impose (however gently and rationally) your ideas of what it is good for them to do? The dilemma of orthodox anarchism cannot be escaped by ‘practical living anarchy’ within present society. We cannot live without taking part in society, paying taxes and supporting capitalism by our consumption, and orthodox anarchism condemns all of this. The attempt to live the anarchist life is a living demonstration of the arid, empty, abstract unreality of orthodox anarchism; it cannot be put into practice, it is virtually nothing but theory.”

1994: My friend from Laughing Horse Books and I attend a meeting.  The meeting is made up of people who want to start an anarchist bookstore in Portland.  The bookstore is to be called 223.  I offer to help write the mission statement, including a definition of anarchism. Not trying to define a thing into existence, not trying to exclude, not trying to control, just trying to clarify our goals and means and provide a base to start from.  Having a definition of anarchism is discouraged, as it will be divisive and we all know what we mean anyway.  Anarchism is smart, strong, right.  I notice that in twelve years of being around anarchists, most of us are under thirty.  Where are the older anarchists in a movement that started in the 19th Century?  And what has anarchism done… ever?  I work on a definition for myself, looking for the first time with any degree of seriousness into the history and accomplishments of anarchism for source material.

1994: From a letter by George Walford, responding to my essay in Anarchy and the End of History: “I have to say one or two things about the content. You ask one of the crucial questions: ‘if anarchy is so great, how come we’re not all anarchists?’ You ask it, but you don’t answer it, sliding off into discussing whether individuals can live as anarchists — also important, and certainly connected, but not the same question. Your omission is not surprising, for that question cannot be answered within the orthodox anarchism which your article accepts. The position is in fact even worse for anarchism than that sounds, because that is only half the problem, the other half being that some people, few but enough to form a movement, have become anarchists. A differential explanation is needed, and significant, enduring, social distinctions between groups of people orthodox anarchism cannot accept. Third (this one we’ve had before), your first new para on p.128, the one beginning: ‘Just as …’ in which you blame the personal inadequacies of individual anarchists for the failure of anarchy. This does not stand up any better than blaming individual supporters of capitalism for the failures of that system. In each case the failure is sufficiently constant and widespread to indicate a structural source, something built into the position. The only way to get past that sort of difficulty is to move on to another position. Examples of anarchist successes will be springing to your mind, but if you examine them you will find that (so far as they are successes in any field other than theory and argument) they are not distinctively anarchist. This of course links up with the first problem raised above. They both arise because orthodox anarchism, far from being “so great” is extremely limited. Not only can anarchy not be practiced under the state, it can’t even be thought out as an independent social system, in any concrete way, without running into contradictions that, appearing in practice, would wreck the new world.”

1994: I define anarchism as the belief it is possible and desirable to maintain the world’s population at the current standard of living without government and without a period of transition from the present to an anarchist world.  The moment I put the definition on paper, I ask myself if that is what I believe and I answer myself no I do not.  Thus I am not an anarchist.  I go to my anarchist friends to see if they can find an error in my thinking – they run away from that conversation, and my doubts are not lessened for it.

1994: I read extensively in the works of George Walford and his peers.  The idea of the ‘mass rationality assumption’ hits home.  People project their values on others, and this includes intellectuals.  Intellectuals think that most people would prefer to solve problems with intellect, and most people are capable of solving problems with intellect.  Neither are true.  Intellect and reason aren’t forbidden to most people, they just aren’t valued as much as convention and passion.  Assuming otherwise is what keeps intellectuals in the political minority.

1995: One of George Walford’s best critics, David McDonagh, writes me.  David proceeds to poke holes in my thinking from that point onward.  Looking into what David considers good thinking, I am introduced to the works of Sir Karl Popper.  Popper’s book Conjectures and Refutations causes the bottom to drop out of everything I knew about science, rationality, history and politics.  What a rotten foundation it was. David also directs me to “The Impossibility of Economic Calculation under Socialism” by David Steele.  This essay kicks the chair out from under socialist economics.  I start reading about economics.  What a fool I’d been, thinking I’d understood it before.

1996: Feeling free of anarchism and a little burned by what I now see was my own hooded thinking, I call up the imp of the perverse to see what other forbidden ideas might be out there.  Ayn Rand is suggested, and I read her works.  Having already shed one hood I’m less inclined to put another one on, and I do not become an Objectivist.  But moving through Objectivism brings libertarian thinking to my attention.  It’s something about the sovereignty of the individual… but I’ve walked down that path already and don’t sign on as a libertarian either.

2001 (age 35): September 11th.  I’m at work at a homeless shelter.  The base nature of much of humanity stops being abstract and my appreciation for individuals who are basically decent increases.  The idea that we can all just get along stops scratching on its coffin lid.  The need for having hard men on the payroll to keep away other hard men makes sense.  I support the State, the army, the police as better than the alternative.

2005: The imp of the perverse continues to slip books into my hand, emboldened by the importance I place on reading one’s critics gained by my reading of Popper.  Nothing seems more important than finding critics who will point out errors in my thinking – friends who think like I do never will. I read extensively about right wing politics and pay more attention to mainstream politics.   All houses poxed long ago.  That being said, when a fact or idea rings true I don’t turn up my nose if the source is otherwise unpleasant.

2010: What am I now?  I try to be a good person and keep out of harm’s way.  I hammer at the chains of religion and theocracy.  My atheist efforts are small, but I’ve seen small changes from them and that is satisfying.  I think humanity’s best hope is the open society described by Sir Karl Popper.  I lean towards the free market and small government and the sovereignty of the individual, but I don’t see these as flawless or always appropriate.  Whatever I am, I’m definitely not an anarchist.