from BLACK BART BRIGADE #1
It seems to be an opinion of some general acceptance among those of us in the more "mature" and settled age ranges that revolution is something which may only be directed toward corporate and government levels and pursued by the young. Although most of us now recognize that revolution may have many meanings, we almost universally accept the concept that it means a changing of society, whether by guns in the manner of Eldridge Cleaver, by disruption in the manner of Abbie Hoffman and/or by legislation in the manner of John Gardner. We have a certain fixation with the idea that when the society changes, it will gradually filter down into our own lives, and that we must keep the machinery and ourselves functioning with orderly precision until that time arrives.
There is, however, a far more profound concept gaining ground today and quietly attracting young and old alike because it actually works. It works first of all because it brings an instant and beneficial change into our own personal lives, and secondly because it follows the very basic rule that society and governments are composed of people and they will ultimately become as those people become.
Quite simply, it is revolution in ourselves:our values, our goals and our way of thinking.
This is a cliche for many, and a call to superficiality for many others. Far too many of us think that by opposing the war and perhaps letting our hair grow a bit free that we are somehow changing our values. Of course our level of identity is altered, but our lives do not change in that manner any more than they do when we put a down payment on the newest super-sex status symbol out of Detroit, or find ourselves moved into a somewhat larger and more sumptuous office down the hall. These kinds of things will momentarily pacify a yearning for change, but they are ultimately only another step on an endless and frustrating ladder. Similarly, keeping up with styles, either ideological or tonsorial, does not in any way remove us from the treadmill.No, I am talking about an actual rethinking of some of the basic things we're doing with our lives, and whether not they are really bringing us the satisfactions we once expected of them. And if not, what can be done about it.
There is not a single one of us who can legitimately escape this challenge. What I mean by that is that we are living in a society where there are no longer any movers, there are only the moved. More correctly, there are the shoved, the manipulated, the displaced, the distorted and the used. There is not a man or woman reading this who will not personally recognize one or more of those categories. It is patently absurd to expect to be given human dignity by those who do not have it themselves, so to look toward government or corporate benefactors as somehow holding any keys to our personal salvation is simply to delude ourselves into continued acceptance of our condition.
Furthermore, the belief that we are in today's world of human automata and the submersion of the individual as an inevitable consequence of our technological development is as erroneous as the concept that we must develop wings because we are in an aeronautical age. It is a simple rationalization of what we have done to our lives, and it was neither inevitable nor in any way helpful. The problem is that we have created systems and then proceeded to measure ourselves in terms of those systems.
When we entered the industrial age all things became units of work, and one's value was measured in terms of his productive capacity; the term manpower presently emerged to replace horsepower.When we entered the corporate age it was soon apparent that the corporate machine was measured in terms of profit and loss, and we shaped ourselves then in terms of that image, as receivers and spenders of money, so that one is said to be worth so much per year or per hour .
Now we are entering the electronic age and we find that the system flow of computers is based upon differentiation, so we proceed in utter thoughtlessness to give ourselves numbers and numeric values in all things. Instead of shaping our systems around ourselves, as unique and multifaceted human beings, we have bent and squeezed and warped the ourselves to conform to one-dimensional systems because it seemed the easier thing to do at the time, and now we're paying in misery and cannot either admit to or correct our errors.
Those of us who feel that the system is capable of recognizing its inadequacies and taking steps to correct them, and those of us who are content to tolerate the inequities of their condition until such alteration hopefully takes place should consider the full scale of the odds against them so that they may at least make their choices with a realistic awareness of future probabilities. Industrialism, corporatism and technology are so deeply intertwined in this country that it will take some kind of major revolution to shake their foundations. If and when that revolution does come, there will be no padded cushions or comfortable retreats for anyone.
As a current poster states it: "Revolution is not a spectacle! There are no spectators! Everyone participates whether they wish to or not." Those who have refused to accept the challenge and meet it half way will find it thrust upon them with no self preparation at all. If, on the other hand, there is no revolution, or only a quiet long term evolutionary thing, it will not reach a deeply into the corporate structure within our one lifetime, and each one selling their soul today will be selling it at the same expensive price 10..20..30 years from today. Those are the grim alternatives before us.
We have not wanted to recognize the reality that we cannot re-direct the system. This is understandable because most of us have invested our entire lives in the values of the corporate system and in their perpetuation. We were brought up in the flowering age of that system at a time when we could not see with clarity what it was doing to our lives. There has been a natural reluctance to relate the structure to the diminishing quality of life as cause-to-effect , and we have certainly been unable to accept the inevitability of that relationship. But facts and circumstances which point in that direction have been surfacing with increasing frequency and force during the past decade. As the flaws and miscalculations of the corporate/industrial system have come to light in areas of militarism, environmental destruction, consumer manipulation and many others we have been told point blank that the economic imperative is to continue on our course or else suffer such severe dislocation as to make a revolution almost preferable by comparison. By their own admission, we have thus been told by both business and government leadership that we have no choice but to love it, live with it, or leave it.
I shall leave it to others to consider why government must destroy and why corporations must manipulate. I conclude quite simply in my own mind that is the nature of the animal, and thus free myself to pursue the more rewarding channels of what I might do in areas where I still have control of my own life, and of how I may regain control in those areas where I have lost it.
Actually, there is a much more powerful
rationale for considering how we might take our own lives
back into our own hands. We happen to be living in a country which is
uniquely structured on the premise that, to the greatest possible
extent, each one's life should be totally one's own. It is one of the
greatest ironies of this age that we should find ourselves in this
country so completely powerless to pursue our own personal
fulfillment. It would appear that if our liberties are not, by
governmental structure, denied to us that we find it necessary to
work towards some substructure which accomplishes the same end.
What is perhaps closer the truth is that we have come to rely so heavily upon the thesis of Liberty that we have permitted ourselves to be manipulated disgracefully in the very name of that thesis by its misapplication and dilution to the level of a common cliche. Thus . . .
But the thesis itself seems to have magnificent powers of consolation, so that we are seldom more than somewhat indignant at the ways in which the bad system is so "slow and lumbering" in response to our requirements (how often I have seen that phrase in editorials!). Has it occurred to many of us that the system does not at all care to respond, and that it has the inertia and the entrenched power to avoid doing so?
There is a good deal to be said for political and corporate activism in an effort to change these conditions from within the structure, and I intend to pursue those directions in future issues. But the proper starting point, certainly for a publication gracing itself with the name of Black Bart, is a consideration of how we may approach the realization of self-fulfillment through some alteration in our own personal lives.
Let's examine, first of all, this situation of outside control of our lives and activities, and see how it derives in a supposedly free society. Why is it so compelling that it causes us to willingly relinquish our freedoms like so many broken and pacified stallions coming "freely" into the corral every night from open pasture?
Perhaps there is a more than passing validity in the comparison with domesticated animals. As this very passage is being written, I am watching six or seven blue jays whom I just seduced from their wild freedom by the offering, in bits and pieces, of a slice of bread. The bread is gone, but the blue jays are not; they're clustered around, all squawking for another handout. To them, I have momentarily become a provider -- a dependable source of food in ready quantity. To myself, I am a benevolent soul who has eased the efforts of their hunt and has made friends with them. All well and good, but something else has taken place here. If this relationship is pursued, they shall have lost their desire and perhaps their ability to forage for themselves, and I for my part shall have literally created a need for food supply which never existed before.The parallel, while simplistic to be sure, is not to be taken lightly. Those blue jays have survived on their own initiative all through the generations which brought them here, and they are quite capable of continuing to do so. But if given the opportunity for a regular food supply, they will willingly relinquish their wild ways, and their freedom if necessary, in order to fatten themselves. It is not for survival!
In the very same way, we have made ourselves a full party to the slavery which we so loudly decry. But we have been want for so many years and decades that it is no longer the simple necessities of food and shelter for which we sell our freedom. We have expanded our "needs" to encompass a great deal more under the blanket label of "standard of living", and in doing so we have enlarged the gap between our foraging capability and the various comforts and luxuries we have become addicted to, and which are beneficentlywe provided by the corporate state.
So we are prisoners largely of our own making, and if we hope to
correct the situation, we must find some way back to a more simple
forage level of living, and the courage to tear ourselves loose from
the corporate provider. And let me hasten to add that I am not
talking about hunting food with club and spear, but some effective
compromise between our purely physical needs of food, shelter and
clothing, and our emotional demands for a kind of life that we find
worth living, whatever one that may individually mean.
Personal revolution it is a hard choice to make.It requires some significant reduction in our standard of living and certain risks that we have not faced since we first emerged from the security of childhood innocence. But the thing to bear in mind his that it is a choice we can make, that others have done it successfully and are doing it every day, and that the alternative is a non-life of dependency, servitude and dehumanization for the rest of our years. Its rewards are a new sense of the wonder and adventure of living -- something many of us have not felt for so long it may well be forgotten -- and the development of a personal competence and adequacy in a world of more question marks than certainties. It's further rewards are the opening of more new avenues of experience and activity than we ever dreamed possible in our limited worlds of corporate and domestic senility.
Those who have made the effort to re-evaluate their standard of living and to separate the real necessities from those which have come, from habit and easy usage, to seem like necessities have often found that they are able to reduce the cost of living from 40-60% without suffering deprivation in the process. It is a highly personal matter, of course, and some are able to make deeper cuts than others, but the experience which is common to all is the sense of enrichment through simplicity. They learn that much of what we commonly consider to be normal and necessary expenditures are in reality addictions which have been acquired over the years and sustained because the money and the means to credit were readily available. There is a kind of "withdrawal" period, ranging from a few weeks to a few months, and then the sense of freedom and actual liberation from the burden of consumption begins to return rich rewards in an entirely new outlook on life.
Thoreau discovered this principle many years ago when he wrote:"Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meager life than the poor."
And Thoreau was speaking of comforts and luxuries when they did not include automobiles, electric appliances, pre-prepared foods and other embellishments of a technological and force fed society of consumers.
The thing that most of us fail to
see and understand from our perch upon the ladder of
material success is that by working toward a higher standard of
living, we are not simply pursuing some isolated goal which will
provide a luxurious facet to an otherwise enriched life. We are
buying a full and complete package which makes no provision
for enrichment of life in any but the most crass and material aspect.
Any man or woman who has been upon this ladder for very many years
can see that if they will stand back for a moment and view the
totality of the life they are leading.
It is filled with deadlines, appointments, meetings, all of which concern nothing of deep personal meaning, but only the very commercial and competitive aspects of life. Our evenings are weary, our weekends filled with the personal chores of survival, and even our vacations are timed and organized to cram enough into two or three pitiful weeks to justify a year out of our lives. How often have we found enough time for reading, contemplation, conversations which are not superficial or business oriented, afternoons of solitary walking or in pursuit of something we feel personally intense about? There is no room for any of these because we buy a full and complete package which does not include them.
Since the very cornerstone of that package is income, its continuity and increase, it follows that this is the point which must be attacked and reversed. Then we establish an entirely different kind of package and framework of reference. Time, instead of money, becomes the cornerstone. We begin to see life in terms of what we can buy with time instead of with money, and that after all it is the true commodity of our lives -- the God-given commodity, not the artificial man-made one.
The only way to achieve that reversal is by a very conscious and deliberate rejection of all of the premiseswith which go to support the framework we are in. The idea that income must be a major pursuit, the idea that work for income must be a full-time project, the idea that security is worth more than freedom, the idea that responsibility relates to the future instead of the present and that it concerns duty to society instead of duty to self: all of these are fabrications of reality which lock us into the existing system, but they are all capable of complete reversal.
Admittedly, society makes it difficult to make that reversal. We have not only been seduced by the superficial rewards of the system, but we have been totally brainwashed by concepts which make ethical things out of work and responsibility, orienting both of them to sacrifice as some kind of noble thing. We are surrounded by a corporate environment which does not tolerate deviation from the universally enforced patterns. We are isolated and we further isolate ourselves from many sources of emotional support in a search for alternatives.
Fortunately, however, we have reached a point in time where the unthinkable is now being contemplated and openly advocated. Increasingly, alternatives are being created by both individuals and institutions, and there are resources being made available to those who wish to make the long leap. But the primary requisite must still be the personal courage to make that leap; the awareness and the conviction that there are better ways to live, and the willingness to accept the risk and challenge inherent in finding them.
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