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The ALEMBIC
first edition / Spring 1989
a magazine for those who "think too much" and have a "bad attitude"
*The Power of Negative Thinking
*Language for Social Control
*The Coming Food Crisis
*Feminism as Fascism
*Religion as Rabies
...and more!
WARNING! Contains controversial material.
Parental discretion should be exorcised.
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Editorial: The Naming of Names
When I embarked upon the search for a worthy name for this new magazine, I recalled an experience I had in the early 1980's when I attended a meeting of liberals, left-wingers, artists and musicians who were trying to start a counter-culture magazine. One of the first questions we grappled with was what to call the thing, and I suggested "kaleidoscope." I got my first taste of liberals' hypocrisy when the ones present at that meeting said the poor working masses wouldn't know what a kaleidoscope is, and anyway it sounded too much like "collide" and therefore wasn't mellow enough. I immediately withdrew from that project and swore that someday I'd start a magazine with a really obscure word as its name, a magazine that wouldn't be crippled by compromise, committee thinking, or fear of controversy. And so, after many years of dicking around with various media experiments, I've finally gotten around to fulfilling this promise to myself.
An "alembic" is a type of mediaeval distillation apparatus used by alchemists and others interested in the refinement and purification of substances and ideas. An apt slogan might be, if you can't stand the heat, stay out of The Alembic. -RKH
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The ALEMBIC is published sporadically. No copyright. To receive the next four editions, send five dollars (cash currency please) to The Alembic, Box 547014, Orlando FL 32854 USA.
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Editor's Note: Choosing an appropriate lead-off article to set the tone for the rest of The Alembic's existence was a difficult task requiring months of reading and careful thought. I selected this essay by the most radical philosopher currently living on the earth, a man who finds most anarchists to be too conservative for his taste. Bob wrote the following article several years ago inspired by incidents in which fanatical feminists fire-bombed pornography dealerships in hopes of drawing attention to porn and getting the legal system to clamp down on the dealers. Although these "actions" were supported by some firmly-entrenched anarchist 'zines, notably the hideous Open Road and Kick it Over, Bob was one of the few writers in the anti-authoritarian world with the courage to point out that such actions and motivations have nothing to do with the quest for freedom. For exposing irrationalities and contradictions in spite of the social consequences, we award Mr. Black the lead-off position in our batting order.
Feminism as Fascism
by Bob Black
As the title of a childhood classic points out, Pigs Is Pigs - and this is regardless of the shape of their genitals. Ilse Koch was a Nazi, not a "sister." Love is not hate, war is not peace, freedom is not slavery, and book-burning is not liberatory. Anti-authoritarians who would be revolutionaries confront many difficult questions. First, though, they should answer the easy ones correctly.
? All hyperbole and metaphor aside, what passes for "radical feminism" is fascism. It promotes chauvinism, censorship, maternalism, pseudo-anthropology, scapegoating, mystical identification with nature, apartheid, tricked-up pseudo-pagan religiosity, and enforced uniformity of thought and even appearance (in some quarters, Hera help the ectomorphic or "feminine" feminist!). Here is all of the theory and too much of the practice we should all be able to recognize by now.
An ominous tactical continuity with classical fascism, also, is the complementarity between private-vigilantist and statist methods of repression. Thus Open Road, the Rolling Stone of anarchism, applauded some anti-porn actions in Vancouver, not as direct action, hence understandable even if misdirected, but rather because they encouraged lethargic prosecutors to persecute. In post World War 1 Italy, fascist gangs attacked socialist and trade-union organizations with the tacit approval of the police, who never intervened except against the left. (The suppression of the IWW in America followed a similar pattern.) As I once wonderingly asked, "How come these women won't get in bed with any man except the DA?"
Not that I could care less about the porn-for-profit industry, for its "rights" of free speech or property. That is beside the point, which is: why single out this species of business? To target porn bespeaks planning and priorities, not elemental anti-capitalist spontaneity. Those who carry out a calculated policy can't complain if their reasons are asked for, and questioned.
Fascist ideology always incongruously asserts to its audience, its chosen people, that they really are at one and the same time oppressed and superior. The Germans didn't really lose the First World War (how could they? ex hypothesi they are superior) therefore, they were stabbed in the back. (But how could a superior race let such a situation arise in the first place?) Men alone, we are told in a feminist Anti-Pornography Movement diatribe in Toronto's Kick It Over,?"have created the nature-destroying and woman-hating culture." If so, then either women have contributed absolutely nothing to culture, or there is something more or something else to this culture than destroying nature and hating women.
For their own purposes (some of which are as mundane as sexual rivalry with straight men for the women they both desire), self-styled radical feminists actually reduce women to nothing but helpless, cringing near-vegetables, passive victims of male contempt and coercion. This profoundly insults women in a way which the worst patriarchal ideologies - the Jewish notion of woman as a source of pollution, for instance, or the Christian nightmare of woman as temptress and uncontrollable sexual nature-force - fell short of. They defamed woman as evil but could hardly regard her as powerless. The new woman-as-victim stereotype is directly traceable to 19th century Victorian patriarchal attitudes reducing (bourgeois) women to inert ornaments. By denying to women the creative power inherent in everyone, it places women's demands on a par with those advanced for, say, baby seals.
Suppose instead what only the most demented feminists and misogynists deny, that things aren't quite that bad, that women have been subjects as well as objects of history. Then how can women - or any other subordinated group: workers, blacks, indigenous peoples - be entirely acquitted of all complicity in the arrangements which condemn them to domination? There are reasons for these accomodations. There is no excuse for denying their existence.
(Just a quick comment on a striking imbecility in the quoted comment which passed unquestioned in Kick It Over. It is generally supposed, and not only by the When God Was a Woman crowd, that women probably invented agriculture. Among the consequences of this discovery were - to say nothing of the state, class society, property, etc. - the destruction of most of the ecosystems which previously flourished. Agriculture has annihilated much of the diversity of the biosphere already, creating deserts and extinguishing the habitats not only of countless plants and animals but also of the last remaining stateless, classless human societies. What then of woman's innate affinity with nature? "When God was a woman" it was already necessary to abolish her.)
This isn't sour grapes. It has never bothered me that some women dislike men, even to the point of having nothing to do with them. I don't like most men myself, especially the archetypal "masculine" ones. I can't help but notice, though, that the vast majority of women feel otherwise. The radical feminists have noticed it too and it drives them to distraction. I would be the first to agree that vast majorities can be wrong. But then I criticize majorities, I don't pretend to speak for them. Radical feminists, in contrast, are vanguardists. As such they need to rationalize their animosities, and so they have, making a dick-determinist demonology out of their prejudices. As man-haters they can't help but be woman-haters also.
To equate pornography with rape - beneath the rancorous rhetorical froth, this seems to be the core APM axiom - is presumably intended to make porn seem more serious. And yet, if men call the shots and the system's built-in tendency is (as we're told) to denature oppositional initiatives of which the feminists' is the most revolutionary, then the likely result is rather to make rape seem more trivial. It's the old story of the womyn who cried wolf.
According to feminoid epistemology, men understand nothing of the real nature of women. One might logically suppose that the estrangement of the sexes resulting from disparate r?les and discrimination would work both ways, and so most of us attending to our actual experience reluctantly conclude. But no: men don't understand women, but women (at least their radical feminist vanguard) understand men. Women - feminist experts, anyway - understand pornography and its meaning for men much better than the men who write and read it - and lesbian-separatists, who avoid men and decline to have sex with them, appreciate these verities best of all. The more remote your experience is from the real life of actual men, the better you understand them. Turning this around, isn't the Pope, as he claims, the ultimate authority on women and sexuality?
The asserted connection of porn with rape is allegorical, not empirical. As a correlation it compares with the recently revived "reefer madness" marijuana-to-heroin Rake's Progress line in its absurdity and in its suitability for the state's purposes. If feminism didn't exist, conservative politicians would have had to invent it. (Why, pray tell, did all-male legislatures ever criminalize "obscenity" in the first place? And why do all-male courts arbitrarily exclude it from constitutional protection?) APM harpies, should they ever deal with people instead of their own fevered projections, would discover that porn is of no interest to the majority of post-pubescent males - not because they are politically correct but because most males find porn gross, sleazy, and above all, inferior to the real thing.
The feminist book-burners are cowardly opportunists. If what they object to is the subliminal socialization of women into subservient r?les vis-a-vis men (curiously, adopting the same r?les vis-a-vis butch lesbians is harmless fun), their primary, near-pre?mptive preoccupation would have to be Cosmopolitan, Barbara Courtland romances, and the vast cryptopornographic pop literature written for and snapped up by women. After all, the gore and violence are derivative: only victims can be victimized in any way. Fifteen years ago, the original women's liberationists (subsequently switched like changelings with today's priestesses, lawyers and upscale bureaucrettes) at least lashed out at influential enemies like Hugh Hefner and Andy Warhol. Nowadays they terrorize teenage punk anarchists whose collages insinuate, for instance, that Margaret Thatcher is a ruler, the "mother of a thousand dead," not a "sister." Such is the logic of this bizarre biological determinism: any animal equipped with a vagina is one of Us, any prick-privileged person is one of Them. One can only echo The Firesign Theatre: "Who am us, anyway?"
Male leftists are easy and often willing yes-men to feminist aggrandizement. They combine guilt at past improprieties (by and large, those who feel guilty - toward women, blacks, foreigners, whatever - usually are) with a present ambition to get into the leftist-feminists' pants. Thus Berkeley, California, where I used to live, is crawling with male "feminists" who converted, the easier to get laid. Much the same scam seems to be happening in Toronto and, doubtless, many other places. These ulterior ambitions don't in themselves discredit the ideologies to which they are appended - one can come to the right conclusion for the worst of reasons. But insofar as the opinions at issue certainly seem to be idiotic to anyone without an extraneous interest in embracing them, otherwise inexplicable paroxysms by (male) intellectuals seem to be most plausibly explainable as self-interested insincere rationalizations.
Possibly the ideology I've excoriated is something that some people had to work through in order to free themselves to the extent necessary to venture upon a project of collective liberation. Already a few alumnae of feminism have moved on to the common quest for freedom, and some are the better for what they've been through. We all have our antecedent embarrassments (Marxism, libertarianism, syndicalism, Objectivism, etc.) to put behind us. Had we not thought in ideological terms it's hard to believe we'd ever get to the point where we could think for ourselves. To be a Trotskyist or a Jesuit is, in itself, to be a believer, that is to say a chump. And yet a rigorous romp through any system might show the way out of the Master-System itself.
Not likely, however, when women critics are ostracized as renegades while male critics are ignored or defamed as a matter of principle. (A precisely parallel mechanism for maintaining a conspiracy of silence is worked by Zionists: Gentile critics are "anti-Semites," Jewish critics can only be consumed by "Jewish self-hatred.") Separatism may be absurd as a social program and riddled with inconsistencies (scarcely any separatists separate from patriarchal society to anything like the extent that, say, survivalists do - and nobody intervenes more to mind other people's business than separatists). But semi-isolation makes it easier to indoctrinate neophytes and shut out adverse evidence and argument, an insight radical feminists share with Moonies, Hare Krishna, and other cultists. It's fortunate that their doctrines and subculture as initially encountered are so unappetizing. Indeed, I've noticed a graying of radical feminism - as Sixties politics and culture continue to gutter out, less and less women have had the proper pre-soak preparing them for feminist brainwashing. Radical feminists (so-called) in their early twenties are rare, and getting scarcer.
Radical feminism (no point disputing title to the phrase with its present owners), then, is a ludicrous, hate-filled, authoritarian, sexist dogmatic construct which revolutionaries accord an unmerited legitimacy by taking seriously at all. It is time to stop matronizing these terrorists of the trivial and hold them responsible for preaching genocidal jive and practicing the very evil (even, if the truth be told, rape!) they insist has been inflicted on them. (Or, rather, as it usually turns out, some other suppositious "sister": the typical radical feminist has had it pretty good.) How to thwart femino-fascism? That's easy: just take feminists at face value and treat them as equals... then hear them howl! The Empress has no clothes...and that's what I call obscene.
Our thanks to the author for providing the current version of the above. A book of his collected essays is available for $6 postpaid: Bob Black, P.O. Box 2159, Albany NY 12220.?
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Non-Voters Defeat Politicians
by Rick Harrison
The news media have been very quiet about the fact that half the population didn't vote on November 8th. They have also tried to avoid reporting that 29% of American adults refused to register this year in defiance of the increasingly shrill and emotional shrieking of newscasters, commentators and other clowns in the media circus. Once again the band of looters known as politicians have suffered a defeat at the hands of the non-voters. The growing number of abstainers are calling into question the phony form of democracy foisted off as "free and open elections" in this country. The false nature of elections and their irrelevance to our everyday lives are becoming so obvious that even ordinary people are starting to notice.
In Marxist nations' phony elections, the voter is given a ballot with the name of the Communist Party's candidate, a box labelled "yes" and a box labelled "no." The majority of voters mark the "yes" box because a "no" vote would be futile; the Party candidate would take office anyway.
In the United States, the voter is presented with an equally bleak choice: Republican or Democrat. And, thanks to the antics of pollsters and newscasters, the outcome of the election is equally pre-determined. The difference between the two "choices" is increasingly small. It is almost impossible for other political parties to get on the ballot, and even if they succeed in doing so, they cannot get serious media attention, and cynical commentators tell people that voting for a third party is like "throwing your vote away" - as if voting for the Republi-crats were any less futile.
In this year's Presidential race - and it is a 'race,' similar to a horse race - the "choice" was so distasteful that over four hundred newspapers across the country refused to endorse either candidate! The Democrats and Republicans are really just two branches of the same scurrilous party, the political mafia, which funnels tax dollars extorted by force from productive citizens into the pockets of defense contractors and other profiteering pirates.
Large advertising budgets and negative, selfishness-inducing TV commercials are what win elections. The candidate's personality, if any, is hidden behind a carefully built media image. Voters dutifully march off to the polls and select their favorite illusions. The apparent importance of the ceremony is propped up by the media who try to make themselves look important by rushing around to cover the masochistic farce. The true "bias" of the media - a leaning toward shallowness and conformity - is shown by their support of the electoral spectacle. It is widely conceded that only wealthy and influential persons can successfully run for a national political office. This situation bears no resemblance to true democracy, to say nothing of true liberty.
This year the non-voters have, once again, outnumbered the supporters of any political party. A significant number of people are moving toward real freedom by shrugging off the government-sponsored, duty-polluted ritual of voting. We frighten the establishment; this is obvious in the hysterical tones of their pro-voting advertisements. How long can they pretend to be running a legitimate government? These vermin should be ashamed to take office. What if they had an election and nobody came? With any luck, we'll find out pretty soon!
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Flush the Family!
by Carlos Eagle Smythe
Politicians and religion-pushers place great value on "the family" and use it as a basis for many of their absurd claims. They're in a frenzy to create a police state to "save our children from drugs;" we have to sacrifice our right to privacy and submit to searches and urine tests, they say, because "drugs are destroying our families." They want to reward promiscuous heterosexuals with tax credits for their irresponsible, uncontrolled production of noisy, repulsive babies because "the family is the foundation of our society." During campaign season - the most depressing aspect of autumn - flabby white men wearing suits parade their pale, ugly, beardless, wimpy faces in front of us and claim that we should vote for them because they're "family men." If authoritarians and moral tyrants are so bloody enthusiastic about "the family," it obviously must be one of the delusions from which their illegitimate power is derived.
The fantasy of the ideal family has been explored in TV shows like The Waltons and Leave it to Beaver. The hideous reality has been hinted at in movies like "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf." The dichotomy between the typical destructive family and the imaginary supportive family is a source of stress and distraction for many individuals leading dissipated lives. Phone-in talk shows, office gossip sessions and psychiatrists' couches are full of people wondering why their parents don't approve of them, why their children aren't obedient, or why they can't quite force themselves to love the more repugnant members of their families. Instead of trying in vain to realize the untenable ideal of "normal family life," these tormented souls should gleefully cast off that yoke of unfounded obligations and endeavor to become free individuals. The "family bond" is a noose!
Being part of a family is like having a job or being in prison - it forces you to associate with people you would never voluntarily go near. The idea that one should tolerate a tyrannical parent or an irritating sibling just because that person is related to you, through an accident of birth over which you had no control, is ludicrous. But today's apologists for authority support the family precisely because it is based on involuntary servitude. The obligatory nature of the traditional family puts it in direct opposition to the anti-authoritarian ideal of voluntary, face-to-face co-operation among agreeable individuals. Of course, if you have a relative to whom you feel favorably disposed, I'm not suggesting that you should tell him/her to take a flying leap. On the other hand, if any of your kinfolk are trying to obligate, coerce or manipulate you in some way, consider the liberatory possibilities of telling them to take a long walk on a short pier.
In those households where it's still intact enough to be recognizable, the family is the primary training ground for blind obedience and delayed (i.e. denied) gratification. The catch-phrases used by familial dictators include:
"Because I said so, that's why!" (brilliant example of authoritarian logic);
"As long as you live under my roof, you'll live by my rules!" (as if children have any choice about where they live);
and, who could forget, the barbarian's stand-by, "Do you want to get spanked?!" Authority is also maintained by various punishment-and-reward schemes which remind me of the way people train puppies not to crap on the carpet. It seems strange - not to mention morally questionable - that the average ignoramus who happens to have children uses methods of discipline that would be more suitable for dealing with pets. The traditional techniques of child-rearing, like sausages, are easy to swallow as long as you don't examine them too closely.
More often than not, families only succeed in passing on their worst characteristics to successive generations. Victims of child abuse frequently become child abusers. Likewise, alcoholism, ignorance, religion, military careers, vulgar accents, various physical diseases and other hideous traits are the repulsive legacies which many parents leave to their offspring.
The nuclear family has been so effectively merchandised that we may have difficulty imagining more ethical ways to deal with those little rascals known as children. For starters, maybe kids shouldn't be considered prisoners who always have to be in the custody of some parent, teacher, day-care drone or other self-appointed dictator. Sending children to school every morning prepares them to waste their lives going to work every day to perform tasks they consider meaningless, so the abolition of school is a top priority, and the high drop-out rate may be a hopeful sign that millions of untrained, uncontrollable people are entering the population. They are likely to be morons but at least they will have escaped a considerable amount of brainwashing.
As human beings, we have a duty to ourselves to consider the ways in which the irrational institution of the family has interfered with our freedom, and to formulate alternative ways of living. For starters, we can wipe our disagreeable relatives off our buttocks, drop them into the commode, and flush the family!
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The Power of Negative Thinking
anonymous
A particular form of social submission is very popular these days. Known as positive attitude, positive energy or positive thinking, this style of rolling over and playing dead is widely endorsed by bosses, psychologists, religious leaders and others who have an interest in controlling people. I am not suggesting that there's anything wrong with optimism if it fits the circumstances and your personality. However, the current promoters of positivity have taken phony optimism to an extreme and transformed it into a tool for dominating others.
I've experienced several workplaces where the people in charge considered a willingness to smile and hug more important than having the talent or intelligence to do one's job. One place went down the toilet financially because its customers and directors were more interested in exchanging "warm fuzzies" than in doing the things necessary to make a business survive. This particular case, the demise of the local health food co-op in 1986, serves as a vivid example of how pre-occupation with attitude and atmosphere can eclipse more significant concerns. Although the co-op financially self destructed by bending over backwards to project an aura of mellowness, for example by failing to sue or prosecute a former manager who allowed hundreds of dollars to "disappear," its collapse paradoxically created a lot of hard feelings when the members realized they would not be able to recover their "membership investments." There's no way you can win when you play the attitude game.
In most social circles, this positive stupidity is used bluntly to squash any opposition to the establishment. In certain "liberal" and even "anarchist" groups and publications, anyone who points out factual errors, flawed logic or questionable tactics is brushed off as "just being negative" or "engaging in a personal vendetta." The reactions of innumerable "radical" magazines to Bob Black's criticisms of their flaws serve as a glaring example of this tactic. On the local scene, professional activist Bruce Gagnon returns mail unopened when it comes from anarchists who've had the nerve to point out the silliness of his collaborating with earth-destroying corporations, the miserable masochism of his groups' choreographed marches and spectacular arrests, and other conspicuous contradictions. The anarchists are too negative and fanatical, he would say, which means they threaten his livelihood by revealing that he is a steam valve which protects the repressive machinery he pretends to resist.
In any organization, whenever someone points out the leadership's blunders, the affected bureaucrats throw up a smoke screen by wailing about negativity, bad attitude, sour grapes, personal attacks, etc. They try to divert attention away from their error by making it look like there's something wrong with the person who pointed it out. However, in most cases, the person accused of having a "bad attitude" is merely saying what everybody else is thinking.
I have a friend who works in a corporate environment where people are advanced or demoted mainly on the basis of their attitude. The people who run this company are something less than geniuses. Their letters and memos are full of spelling errors and flawed grammar; their speech reveals an inability to deal with complex thoughts or logical reasoning. It's amazing that other companies are willing to deal with an enterprise which so openly displays the subnormal intelligence of those who control it. On second thought, maybe it's not so amazing; maybe the clients hope to take advantage of these businessmen's stupidity.
Anyway, my friend was doing pretty well at this company; his hours and responsibilities were steadily increasing, and he was looking forward to a promotion to full-time status. Then, one Friday morning, the corporate brass suddenly asked him to work the next night, but he declined because he had long ago made plans to take his girlfriend to a party that evening.
Later, this friend of mine was discussing an upcoming event with one of his supervisors, a woman who leaves a trail of confusion and inaccuracy everywhere she goes but who manages to cling to her job by hugging and smiling a lot. Three times during the meeting, this spacey supervisor said that a certain event would occur at one location, and my friend pointed out that it was actually planned for a completely different location. The third time this happened, she glared at him and said through clenched teeth, "DON'T PUSH IT!"
Oops, her mask came off! For a moment the phony facade, the vacuous corporate smile, slipped away and revealed the insecure, confused, power-grasping bureaucrat that lies beneath the hugging and grinning disguise!
It is generally known throughout the corporation that, as a result of these two incidents, my friend is no longer considered to have a 100% positive attitude, and his chances of getting official full-time status with benefits are nil, even though he works six days a week! But this is typical of business shrouded in the fog of phony positivity; they'll smile at you, shake your hand or hug you while simultaneously passing judgement on you, exploiting you, violating contracts and union regulations and labor laws and anything else that might impede their profits. And, maybe even worse, they'll continue to make mistakes and stupid decisions that make your life harder, and then they'll fire or demote you if you lose control of yourself and blurt out the truth about their imbecility!
Those of us who are boldly negative (toward bureaucrats' lies) are feared and despised in every organization precisely because our bluntness has the potential to depose every nasty little authoritarian who relies on social sleight of hand to maintain power over others.
It should come as no surprise that every organization, company and
movement depends on dirty tricks to keep itself glued together. This is precisely why practitioners (as opposed to professors) of philosophy rarely if ever belong to any organizations. As one compulsive truth-teller observed, "Every organization has more in common with every other organization than it has with any of the unorganized."
If someone accuses you of being negative or having a bad attitude, what they really mean is you've given them an unwanted dose of reality, a shocking glimpse of truth which threatens to dislodge the makeshift mental structures with which they've propped themselves in an untenable position.
Being opposed to stupidity or negative toward irrationality is nothing to be ashamed of. Don't let the lying bureaucrats of the world get away with referring to honesty as negativity. When they offer you a chance to support their illusions, JUST SAY NO.
Post Scriptum. The friend mentioned above finally did get full-time status, but if he ever divides his salary by the number of hours he's working, I don't think he'll be too thrilled.
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The Coming Food Crisis in America
by Lawrence Livermore
excerpted from Lookout!, a sporadic leftwing magazine available for $1 per issue from Lookout!, P. O. Box 1000, Laytonville CA 95454.
Probably you don't give a whole lot of thought to where food comes from; it's one of those things like water or electricity or television that you can pretty much count on always being there, provided, of course, that you have the money to pay for it.
That's the way it's been as long as most of us can remember. In fact, for much of the 20th century, the industrialized countries of the world have been producing more food than they could possibly use. True, millions of people have starved to death during that time, not because of a shortage of food, but because a certain amount of hunger is deemed necessary to keep the food business profitable. In theory, if the world's harvest were distributed more or less equally, no one would lack adequate nutrition.
That may have been true up until now, but that same lack of enlightened leadership has produced a potentially disastrous situation. The United States has squandered its agricultural resources so badly that we may be forced in our lifetimes to deal with severe shortages of food, perhaps even outright famine.
Already the quality if not the quantity of what we eat is in doubt. A person from the 19th century set loose in a modern supermarket might well wonder where the food is kept. Except for one aisle of produce and one of meat, the rest of the store would present a bewildering array of cans and boxes with lists of ingredients that read more like a chemistry experiment than the components of a nutritious diet.
And it is an experiment, the results of which remain to be seen. Consider that throughout all of human existence, the things that people ate remained remarkably unchanged, being limited to what they could catch or what grew up out of the ground. Processed and refined foods are almost completely a development of the past century. Omnivorous man would appear to have adapted well to the many strange and bizarre foodstuffs that have emerged out of the lab and the factory, but perhaps it is still too soon to tell. Life expectancies are greater than at any time in recorded history, but so is the occurrence of diet-related illnesses like cancer and heart disease.
But regardless of whether we eat our food fresh from the ground or only after it has been packaged and sanitized, we can produce nothing without the basic raw materials. In the case offood, the raw materials are so simple that the temptation to take them for granted is overwhelming. Earth and water: two of the most common things in the world. And sunlight, of course, something of which we have a free and never-ending supply.
But with the earth's protective ozone layer being rapidly stripped away by pollution, even the sun threatens to become the destroyer rather than the giver of life. And soil and water are disappearing at a rate that should constitute a national, actually a global crisis. But there is a general sense of complacency, even among those actually engaged in agriculture, let alone those who know little or nothing about its workings. Technology has increased the efficiency and yield of the modern farm dramatically; why should we not assume that it can deal with any new problems that might emerge?
Part of the problem is that, as poet (and farmer) Wendell Berry points out, we have lost much of our sense of "culture" involved in agriculture: "?the economy of money has infiltrated and subverted the economies of nature, energy, and the human spirit." In the same way that city dwellers have largely lost touch with the nature of the earth that sustains them, many farmers have, strange as it may seem, become alienated from the land that they cultivate.
Though there are other factors involved, by far the biggest one
is economics. As much of a disaster as collective farming has been in the Soviet Union, so has capitalism been in the United States, albeit
in a completely different way.
There is enormous pressure on the individual American farmer to continually expand at any cost. The average size of farms has grown while the number of individuals involved in farming has drastically shrunk. This is especially true in the western United States, where the costs of irrigating and fertilizing marginal land make it almost inevitable that the corporate farm will become dominant.
In traditional farming, a family might have had as little as 10 or 20 acres that would be passed down from generation to generation, and which would be that family's sole source of sustenance. It would obviously be in the farmer's interest to know that land as well as he knew his own children, and to take equally good care of it. He would not be inclined to casually experiment with some potion offered him by a city slicker with the promise that it would produce twice the crops in half the time.
But what is such a farmer to do when a large company buys up the adjacent 5000 acres, spikes the soil with potent fertilizers, plows out all the windbreaks and protective contours, and sinks deep wells that suck out ground water twice as fast as it can be replenished? In the long run such techniques will lead todisaster, but in the meantime they will produce large yields that will drive prices down, and if the smaller farmer doesn't adopt similar techniques to keep up with the competition, he's out of business.
?At this point some sort of food crisis is nearly inevitable; even if we start today to make all the necessary changes in our agricultural practices (something which is really not likely to happen until some sort of obvious calamity shocks people into action), we are not going to be able to continue producing and consuming food so profligately. Those who stand to suffer the most are the ones who assume that they will always be able just to stroll into Safeway and pick up whatever they need, and those farmers who have mortgaged their futures to agricultural techniques that are rapidly becoming obsolete and self-defeating.
One absolute essential is that we reduce our agriculture to a manageable scale, not just back to the old-fashioned family farm, though that would be a step in the right direction, but to the point where back yards and vacant lots all over our cities begin producing things more useful than ornamental (and extremely wasteful) lawns and shrubberies. Our present system of mass-producing food in one location and then trucking it all over the place is insane; not only is the amount of energy thus squandered unconscionable, but it leaves us dangerously dependent on a system of transportation that could be rendered useless by even a brief interruption in our oil supply.
On a society-wide basis, we need to make major changes; there's no denying that. Among them are the elimination of all toxic herbicides and pesticides, a ban or a severe limitation on the production of non-biodegradable materials, mandatory recycling of all waste products, sustained yield management of our water resources, and the end of all subsidies to massive corporate-run farms. We also need to increase people's consciousness about what they put into their bodies and to help them realize that fresh, whole foods are better both for them and for society as a whole.
If we wait for the rest of the country to institute these changes, we're going to be in deep trouble. The best thing we can do is to begin learning how to provide for ourselves in a healthy, ecologically balanced manner, and in the process demonstrate to others how much better things work that way. But it's important that we get started now. Otherwise, things could get pretty hungry around here.
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Superceding Situationism
The following item appeared as a letter to the editor in SNARL, formerly known as SMILE (available for $1 plus postage from Box 3502, Madison WI 53704). Whether situationism is a valid form of political analysis or just a particularly oblique and obfuscatory style of writing is still a matter for debate, in our opinion...
I noticed that SMILE is very much influenced by the Situationist writings. Since they have been a major influence in the development of my own analysis and practice, I won?t tell you that you are making a mistake, but be aware that Situationist thought is not beyond criticism. Its proponents seemed to try to make it appear so, as did the proponents of its predecessors ? Marxism and Hegelianism.
The failings of Situationist thought are as follows:
1) An inadequate investigation of the natures of technology and of organization, and of their relationships to work and to domination.
2) A continued, unadmitted adherence to humanism.
3) An inadequate analysis of the nature of use value and its place in the suppression of free play.
4) An inadequate analysis of self-management; non-recognition that it may, in fact, be the most efficient form of capitalism.
5) An inability to see the need to eroticize the world, not just the human race.
6) A continued willingness to suppress the immediacy of desire as shown by their attachment to high-tech fantasies which would require production.
7) From which follows, an inadequate analysis of the nature of production and economy.
-Feral Fawn
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Methods as Message, or, Religion as Rabies
by X. Rayburn
People who have political or religious beliefs usually try to convince others to share their beliefs, and their methods of persuasion can say a lot about the validity of their concepts. Factions which publish their ideas or share them face-to-face with others are contributing to the evolution of mankind's understanding of the universe. Factions which engage in bully tactics such as bombings, threats, hostage-taking, or having their opponents jailed or executed, are simply wrong. Their ideas are wrong and they instinctively know it, but they've become addicted to the adrenalin rush of fanaticism, so they cling to their beliefs and practically try to force others to adopt them.
Consider the religious conversion of Duffey Strode, a North Carolina schoolboy who has been suspended several times for disrupting school activities by shouting hateful, abusive, religious comments at people. A recent Washington Post article reveals how this boy was introduced to his inhumane faith.
His father David Strode came home from work one day when the boy was five years old and described the horrors of "hell" in graphic, terrifying terms. He then told his son, "You are a sinner and you are going to hell." {The Strodes' religion teaches that god is going to punish people for the imperfections which god himself created. The fact that this makes no sense at all never seems to dawn on them.}
David Strode describes the subsequent conversion of his son in these terms: "Man, those tears begun to run and he looked at me and he said, 'Daddy, I don't want to go to hell.' I said, 'I know somebody who will get you out of hell and his name is Jesus Christ.'" The young boy who had been scared out of his wits said, "Daddy, I want to be saved."
He needs to be saved, for sure - not from the imaginary deep fat fryer of "hell" but from his father, and the howling hobgoblins of dark-ages superstition.
Barry Weaver, another Carolina street preacher, similarly told his daughter that she was going to burn in "hell" when she was five years old. Weaver, in the hick dialect of English frequently used by such morons, brags, "I let my daughter lay and cry herself to sleep for a week straight about the flames of hell. I could have ran right in there and gave her the gospel and she could have made a profession of salvation, but I let it get deep into her memory...that there is a hell. And that will affect her whole life. That's why she's an obedient child."
Thanks, Mr. Weaver, for showing us the links between the inhumane institutions of religion, authority, and the traditional family. If there were a hell, it would be reserved for sadistic bastards like you who make themselves feel powerful by mentally torturing their own helpless offspring.
The fact that these whackos have to terrorize young children to get converts says something about their religion. These fanatics, who are hated by hundreds of their townspeople, cannot persuade adults through rational conversation and logical argument; instead, they shout about "hell," as if increased volume of voice could turn fantasy into fact, and they scare infants into submission.
As their methods of conversion show, their whole religion is based on fear, hence the phrase "god-fearing people." The fear in question is probably a fear of the unknown, and in the case of these rabid lunatics who terrorize children, "the unknown" includes practically everything.
Remember, this is the same religion that used to imprison, torture, hang and burn individuals who dared to be non-believers. The followers of this faith would do the same today if given the chance, but their power has been diluted somewhat by the forces of science, philosophy, and an increasing number of people who resist the moralistic meddling of wretched religionists. We must never cease to defend ourselves against the fanatically faithful.
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Language and Liberty
by Alfredo Bonanno
from the book From Riot to Insurrection, translated by Jean Weir, published by and available from Elephant Editions, B.M. Elephant, London WC1N 3XX, England. Bonanno points out that robots and automated devices are replacing workers at a rapid pace, creating a huge and permanent underclass of under-employed and un-employed persons whom he calls "the excluded." He asserts that the potentially dangerous hordes of the excluded will be pacified and controlled through, among other things, language?
So what will the privileged try to do? They will try to cut the excluded off from the included. Cut off in what way? By cutting off communication. This is the central concept of the repression of the future, a concept which, in my opinion, should be examined as deeply as possible. To cut off communication means two things. To construct a reduced language that is modest and has an absolutely elementary code to supply to the excluded so that they can use the computer terminals. Something extremely simple that will keep them quiet. And to provide the included, on the other hand, with a language of "the included," so that their world will go towards that utopia of privilege and capital that is sought more or less everywhere. That will be the real wall: the lack of a common language. This will be the real prison wall, one that is not easily scaled.
This problem presents various interesting aspects. Above all there is the situation of the included themselves. Let us not forget that in this world of privilege, there will be people who in the past have had a wide revolutionary-ideological experience, and they may not enjoy their situation of privilege tomorow, feeling themselves asphyxiated inside the Teutonic castle. These will be the first thorn in the side of the capitalist project. The class homecomers, that is, those who abandon their class. Who were the homecomers of the class of yesterday? I, myself, once belonged to the class of the privileged. I abandoned it to become "a comrade among comrades," from privileged of yesterday to revolutionary of today. But what have I brought with me? I have brought my Humanist culture, my ideological culture. But the homecomer of tomorrow, the revolutionary who abandons tomorrow's privileged class, will bring technology with him, because one of the characteristics of tomorrow's capitalist project and one of the essential conditions for it to remain standing, will be a distribution of knowledge that is no longer pyramidal but horizontal. Capital will need to distribute knowledge in a more reasonable and equal way - but always within the class of the included. Therefore the deserters of tomorrow will bring with them a considerable number of usable elements from a revolutionary point of view.
And the excluded? Will they continue to keep quiet? In fact, what will they be able to ask for once communication has been cut off? To ask for something, it is necessary to know what to ask for. I cannot have an idea based on suffering and the lack of something of whose existence I know nothing, which means absolutely nothing to me and which does not stimulate my desires. The severing of a common language will make the reformism of yesterday - the piecemeal demand for better conditions and the reduction of repression and exploitation - completely outdated. Reformism was based on the common language that existed between exploited and exploiter. If the languages are different, nothing more can be asked for. Nothing interests me about something I do not understand, which I know nothing about. So, the realisation of the capitalist project of the future - of this post-industrial project as it is commonly imagined - will essentially be based on keeping the exploited quiet. It will give them a code of behavior based on very simple elements so as to allow them to use the telephone, television, computer terminals, and all the other objects that will satisfy the basic, primary, tertiary and other needs of the excluded and at the same time ensure that they are kept under control. This will be a painless rather than a bloody procedure. Torture will come to an end. No more bloodstains on the wall. That will stop - up to a certain point, of course. There will be situations where it will continue. But, in general, a cloak of silence will fall over the excluded.
However, there is one flaw in all this. Rebellion in man is not tied to need alone, to being aware of the lack of something and struggling against it. If you think about it, this is a purely illuminist concept which was later developed by English philosophical ideology - Bentham and co. - who spoke from a Utilitarian perspective. For the past 150 years our ideological propaganda has been based on these rational foundations, asking why it is that we lack something, and why it is right that we should have something because we are all equal; but, comrades, what they are going to cut along with language is the concept of equality, humanity, fraternity. The included of tomorrow will not feel himself humanly and fraternally similar to the excluded, but will see him as something other.?The excluded of tomorrow will be outside the Teutonic castle and will not see the included as his possible post-revolutionary brother of tomorrow. They will be two different things. In the same way that today I consider my dog "different" because it does not "speak" to me but barks. Of course I love my dog, I like him, he is useful to me, he guards me, is friendly, wags his tail; but I cannot imagine struggling for equality between the human and the canine races. All that is far beyond my imagination, is other. Tragically, this separation of languages could also be possible in the future. And indeed, what will be supplied to excluded, what will make up that limited code, if not what is already becoming visible: sounds, images, colours. Nothing of that traditional code that was based on the word, on analysis and common language. Bear in mind that this traditional code was the foundation on which the illuminist and progressive analysis of the transformation of reality was made, an analysis which still today constitutes the basis of revolutionary ideology, whether authoritarian or anarchist (there is no difference as far as the point of departure is concerned).
We anarchists are still tied to the progressive concept of being
able to bring about change with words. But if capital cuts out the word, things will be very different.
We all have experience of the fact that many young people today do not read at all. They can be reached through music and images (television, cinema, comics). But these techniques, as those more competent than myself could explain, have one notable possibility - in the hands of power - which is to reach the irrational feelings that exist inside all of us. In other words, the value of rationality as a means of persusasion and in developing self-awareness that could lead us to attack the class enemy will decline, I don't say completely, but significantly.
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Announcing Lojban
excerpted with the permission of the Logical Language Group
Lojban is a constructed language: the culmination of a project first described in the article "Loglan" in Scientific American, June, 1960. The language has been built over three decades by dozens of workers and hundreds of supporters. There are many artificial languages, but Lojban has been engineered to make it unique in several ways.
Lojban was originally designed for the purpose of supporting research on a concept known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Simply expressed, this hypothesis states that the structure of a language constrains the thinking of people using that language. Lojban allows the full expressive capability of a natural language, but differs in structure from other languages in major ways. This allows its use as a test vehicle for scientists studying the relationships between language, thought, and culture. Since it was intended for scientific research, several constraints were imposed on the Lojban design that are not found in other languages.
Like computer languages, Lojban can be parsed by automated algorithms. Unlike natural languages, Loglan has no syntactic ambiguity. Yet, unlike computer languages, Lojban can be spoken naturally by people in everyday communication. Examples of this type of ambiguity in English include the phrase "pretty little girls school." There are no English rules that dictate the grouping of modifiers in the phrase. Lojban has unique ways of expressing each of the twenty logical interpretations of this phrase.
Lojban's grammar is simpler than any natural language. Most of the syntax was tested on a CP/M-based personal computer. (Computers played a vital role in developing and testing the language. Tools used to design computer languages were used to prove that the syntax is unambiguous.) Lojban has none of the standard parts of speech with which you may be familiar. Lojban's predicates (gismu and their compounds) are all of the same part of speech. Each can serve as the equivalent of a noun, verb, adjective or adverb, simultaneously and interchangeably.
Lojban developers have emphasized the early development of computer-aided teaching tools to further enhance learning of the language. You can learn Lojban at home with the help of your personal computer. The orientation in the Lojban community towards computer-based instruction is unique among constructed languages, and solves the problem of how to rapidly spread the language from a small initial base of speakers.
The perceptions of those who have worked on Lojban are that it has already changed our thinking in significant ways. Even those who have never successfully learned other languages have found that we see new meanings in everyday speech, new ways of expressing ideas, and new ideas to express. When the Sapir-Whorf experiment is finally conducted, we have no doubt that Lojban will verify the hypothesis.
Lojban has been developed almost totally by volunteer labor and small donations of money. Like science fiction conventions and computer software development, Lojban attracts people who are willing to devote a lot of time to seeing their dreams become reality. You can register to receive Lojban newsletters and materials by contacting: The Logical Language Group, Bob LeChevalier, 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031, phone (703) 385-0273.
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Alembic trigram #1: College
"How has your college education helped you? Can't you make a cup of tea without understanding osmosis, brownian motion, capillary action, the meniscus, the laws of thermodynamics and the principles of fluidics? You'd probably make better tea, better in flavor and spiritually more honest, if you'd never studied those academic abstractions."
-Eric Fahrender in conversation, 1979
"I can only say that for my own part I've come to the conclusion that almost every single moment I spent in authoritarian educational systems was wasted, and I wish now that I'd managed to get myself kicked out when I was 15 instead of 25. Education and learning are good things, but not the way they're conducted at present... Learn whatever you want to learn by reading books and magazines, and thus educate yourself without becoming a mental slave."
-Fred Woodworth in The Match!, 1988
"If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where anything is professed and practiced but the art of life; - to survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not know how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar."
-Henry David Thoreau in Walden, chapter one
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Connections
by the Alembic staff
This column is a compendium and encapsulation of recent receptions.
"Mormonoids from the Deep" is a highly unusual adventure game for the Macintosh computer. The player has to navigate through the surreal town of Mormonville, Utah without being killed, converted, or sobering up. On two diskettes for $10 from Robert Carr, c/o Smurfs in Hell, 2210 North 9th Street, Boise ID 83702.
Possessed is a quarterly magazine of poetry, collage, and radical commentary; sample for $1 from P. O. Box 20545, Seattle WA 98102.
Chalcedon Report is a magazine of Christian commentary. A recent edition celebrates a British law mandating that state-sponsored schools have a Christian slant and suggests that Nature itself and human-kind's natural condition are basically devilish and desparately in need of salvation. Bizarre and erroneous. Available for a donation from Box 158, Vallecito CA 95251.
Homocore is a magazine of poems, comics, photos and snide comments for gay punk rockers and other "social mutants." $1 from P.O. Box 77731, San Francisco CA 94107.
"Radio Free America," not be confused with the RFA being done in California or the RFA that transmitted from a ship in the Atlantic, is an audible anarchist magazine on cassette tape assembled by your humble editor. $5 from Rick Harrison, Box 7014, Orlando FL 32854.
Sound Choice is 96 pages of reviews and ads for independently published musical recordings, $3 from Audio Evolution Network, Box 1251, Ojai CA 93023. Indispensible for those who produce or consume unusual musical commodities.
Dream World by Kent Winslow is the autobiography of a contemporary anarchist, detailing his hassles with cops, run-ins with bullies, landlords, religious nuts, and other elements of a world that doesn't appreciate his attempts to improve it. $8 from Fred Woodworth, Box 3488, Tuscon AZ 85722.
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Coming up in future editions of The Alembic: merciless attacks on automobiles, New Ageism, copyright laws, television, and everything else that the average ignoramus takes for granted. Relevant contributions are welcome. Letters to the editor will also be published, providing they are sufficiently concise, controversial and somehow related to past or future articles in this magazine.
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Footnote to the Electronic Edition
by Rick Harrison
At one point in history, the development of paper made the use of clay tablets seem ridiculous. We're entering a time when the development of electronic data transfer is likely to make the use of paper and ink seem equally clumsy and absurd.
Computers make it possible to electronically transmit text and graphics over ordinary phone lines almost instantly; to store an amount of text equal to 12 hardcopy editions (240 pages) of The Alembic on one small diskette; and to encrypt text so that it can only be read by the desired audience. Computers can read text aloud to visually handicapped readers, can display text in your choice of type style and size, and make it easy to correct mistakes or otherwise re-work written material.
Electronic data transfer can accomplish all this and more without requiring the slaughter of oxygen-producing trees; without requiring anyone to work around noisy, sometimes dangerous printing presses that have to be cleaned with toxic, volatile chemicals; and without providing print shop owners and post office cretins an opportunity to suppress or mangle material they don't approve of.
Paper-and-ink publishing is a dinosaur. High quality printing may continue to exist as a fine art, as calligraphy has, but periodical publishers and audiences who cling to hardcopy too long will eventually come to be regarded as selfish, backward, tree-murdering neanderthals.
That's why I have taken advantage of Mike Gunderloy's bold offer of an opportunity to leave this magazine on the Factsheet Five electronic bulletin board. This form of distribution makes The Alembic freely available to everyone who has the wits and good taste to download it, at no cost other than the long distance phone line (and of course the cost of the computer equipment, but many people can get free access to computers from friends or at their workplaces). This completely solves many of the problems that I faced as an ultra-small-press publisher, problems like: how to pay for the postage, how to find potentially appreciative readers, how to physically mail various sizes of magazine without having them get chewed up by the postal service. I was never able to afford to advertise, purchase mailing lists and/or mail many free samples of my hardcopy publications to people, so it was impossible for me to build up a readership of financially self-sustaining size; here in the ethereal world of electronic data transfer, I can make a magazine available to a potentially infinite number of readers for the cost of one upload.
Since all of my print-media publications have operated at a financial loss, as is usually the case with the very small press, I'm not going to bother trying to extract money from the audience. If you feel that reading The Alembic was worthwhile, you could send me a small financial donation to help me recover the long distance charges I incurred while uploading it, but I would just as soon have you leave a written response on this BBS or on CompuServe's E-mail service, which has the embarrassingly silly name of "Easyplex" (my user ID there is 72537,1203). Audience feedback is the main reward sought by small-press publishers, and I am no exception.
Until we meet again, thank your for your attention. Have a good time.
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The Alembic is a Tangerine Network production. [EOF]
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