💾 Archived View for gemini.spam.works › mirrors › textfiles › fun › CAA › gecaa-20 captured on 2023-01-29 at 14:34:20.
⬅️ Previous capture (2020-10-31)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
From slcpi!govt.shearson.com!mjohnsto@uunet.UU.NET Mon Jan 7 17:20:21 1991
To: wordy@Corp
Subject: chapter-20
CHANGING THE WORLD IN MENDOCINO
#20 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Point Arena, CA; 11,363 miles.
(c) January 15, 1987
Nowhere is the infinite interconnectedness of human relationships so clear
as in a succession of small coastal towns, isolated from the rest of the world
-- towns small enough to be interdependent, yet large enough to be vigorous;
places rugged enough to discourage the lazy, yet beautiful enough to attract
the intelligent. Such a zone is the western edge of Mendocino County: a sort
of meta-community spread along the cliffs of northern California. We've been
traipsing through a sparse network of linked relationships like a couple of
hundred dollar bills in Miami.
This coastal culture differs dramatically from the rest of the country.
To some extent, it can be attributed to the scenic character of the land,
something that can have sweeping effects on natives. Beauty sells, you know:
Highway 1 winds along the coast like a varicose vein, offering the seasonal
torrent of tourists an optimum view as they bring economic hemoglobin into
these areas of marginal industry. A long-established love-hate relationship is
in force here, a reluctant symbiosis between hawker and gawker.
There's something about low-bandwidth communication between non- miscible
cultures that affects everybody. I've seen it in other tourist areas: each
group, locals and visitors, begins to generalize about the other -- to lump
them together into a single stereotype. The brash tourist. The uppity local.
Those stupid RV'ers. Those weird hippies. Residents look the other way as
they draw their livelihood from the people who prompted their flight from the
city in the first place.
But there's more, though, quite a lot more. Success in these parts isn't
on the same economic scale as it is in mainstream America. Trade work abounds.
The land provides. Friends support each other. And it works well because the
economic bottom line is simply not the point; quality of life is. And the
deeper you look, the more interesting it becomes...
These little towns harbor a remarkable population of creative people --
the kind you would normally expect to find in high-tech node cities blanketed
in stimulating vapors of silicon. Boat designers who combined the dimensions
of Noah's ark with computer analysis to yield a high-performance open-ocean
kayak. Networkers who have eschewed systems with a corporate substrate in lieu
of electronic anarchy (FIDO and packet). A guy who turns Cadillacs into
bizarre artworks. Another who builds high-performance audio cassettes.
Monkeywrenchers dedicated to the battle against despoilers of the wildernass,
practicing "ecotage" on an increasing scale. A fabricator of custom dental
equipment. A man who makes computerized biofeedback systems that sell for
nearly $50,000. And everywhere, literally everywhere, a degree of awareness
that fulfills the oft-lamented promise of the 60's. Even the bookstores, small
though they be, are dizzying.
And encounters can be funny. Phoenix introduced herself as having "seven
fire signs, and two air signs to fan the flames." A fellow named Raven B.
Earlygrow runs a travel agency. A Mendocino radio pirate got busted for his
innovative auto-answer "you're on the air" machine, bought into a public-access
cable TV channel, and now broadcasts whatever people send him. Reagan is
profoundly unpopular around here, to the point that I was recently presented
with an interpretation of ancient biblical prophesy predicting his demise on
August 17, 1987. And a friend in Elk explained the lingering personal effect
of the World Instant of Cooperation: less cynicism. This is the land of rural
counterculture.
The thing that's pleasing about it all, despite frequent overdoses of HMB
(hip metaphysical bullshit), is an intellectual liveliness that has at its
roots a lot of the right motives: protection of mother earth for reasons beyond
her continuing usefulness to Man, prevention of human self-destruction over
matters of idealogical nonsense, revision of our self-poisoning habits, and the
general objective of peace on all levels. A lot of us, um, sorta forgot about
those things as we "grew up" from the Age of Enhanced Consciousness into the
Epoch of Bottom Lines -- a dubious maturation indeed.
But isn't it hard to change the world when you're eking out a small-town
living as a part-time pump repairman, part-time gatherer of sea urchin eggs,
and part-time poet of the revolution? So what if one of your poems ran in the
Mendocino Review last summer, and so what if you successfully planted a
tire-spiker in a fording spot up Elk Creek to discourage the mob of littering,
noisy off-roaders? It's a big world. How ya gonna change it from here?
Well, my wanderings have suggested an optimistic comment on that. Contrary
to popular news stories of the day, social change does not hinge on government
overthrow. Those are just the warrings of competing ideologues, not
incremental steps in the evolution of consciousness. Growth -- the recognition
and elimination of ignorance -- happens on a human level, slowly, building over
time like the gradual conversion of a successful anomaly into a whole new
species. Governments and eco-trashers simply apply selection pressure, insuring
their eventual deterioration.
The essence is communication, one of my main motives for becoming a writer
in the first place. Freelancing is actually a maddening business, as the
frustrated ramblings of Chapter 18 may have suggested -- not many people make a
full-time living at it. I barely manage. But amassing private riches is not
nearly as important as protecting public ones; a larder full of stocks and
bonds is but a hollow trophy without good food, air, water, communication,
recreation, security, and personal freedom. Whatever one person can do to
raise the awareness of another is the best social contribution of all -- one
small step at a time until we ALL realize which of our systems are healthy...
and which ones should be replaced.
This coast is an area that enforces understanding of whole systems. You
can't pick your way among the tidepools, marveling at geometric chitons and
subtly-hued anemones, bending to touch massive starfish and strange whiplike
growths 20 feet long, without sensing something of the planet's complexity and
deep interconnectedness. Everything is part of the food chain -- we've just
grown cocky because we happen to be on top.
All we need now is a few healthy predators to remind us that we're all in
this together: one species, one planet, one whole.
-- Steve