 
ReSent-Message-ID: 
ReSent-Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 10:29:12 -0500 (EST)
ReSent-From: "Jon C. Slenk" 
ReSent-To: +dist+/afs/andrew/usr/js9b/Public/camc.dl@andrew.cmu.edu
To: Bill Eichman 
Cc: angst+@CMU.EDU, Thomas_Price@KANGA.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Re: apocalyse musings 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 17 Nov 92 15:39:50 EST."
             <4wHeuB3w165w@hogbbs.scol.pa.us> 
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 92 15:39:54 EST
Message-Id: <1969.722205594@KANGA.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU>
From: Thomas_Price@KANGA.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU


>There's still a possibility for a cultural leap, for a move to a more
>advanced and self-sustaining civilization.

If there's going to be a cultural leap ... we need new myths. 
(Actually, there's more detail available than that -- we need a new
spatial experience (which we have -- telemedia) out of which come the
related developments of a new mathematical consciousness, a new monumental
architecture, and new myths ... Oswald Spengler's _Decline of the West_
is the relevant reference book here) So we need people able to hack 
around with them. The problem that I see so far is that most people 
working with myths are fruitcakes. What we need are talented people 
who have a *cynical* take on the hippie worldview: all religion is metaphor,
all magic is either metaphor or electromagnetism. The human body produces
"vibrations" (as good a term as any) and all the rituals and exercises
of magic and religion have had as their real effect -- insofar as they have
had any -- to affect the mind/body "vibration generator" so that the
appropriate vibrations (externally) or complexes of thoughts and feelings 
(internally) are produced and the desired result obtained. 
There is only one Universal Mind organized locally into
autonomous subsystems, and the organizing principles are the metaphors of
religion. So far so good. This sort of outlook is the only one that
will provide real respect for all traditions, necessary before they can
be understood or used, but at the same time an irreverent ruthlessness
in working with them (e.g. "I'm not dealing with gods or spirits or some
bad future karma here, I'm working with the toolbox that exists for 
manipulating consciousness, which is the ultimate indivisible substance that
we've got to work with, and I want results, and there's nothing to fear").

Where was I? Oh yes. I got excited about particulars. Cultural leaps
have happened before, and we can see how they worked -- in addition to
the modality (the stirrup, capitalism) there was the idea (Hierarchical 
chain of being, protestantism) and while it 
looks like the modality carries the idea, the idea made the invention of the 
modality possible and is closely bound up with its entrenchment in the
populations it spreads into. Nowadays we need to fight with every weapon
we have, and there's more out there than (the vital weapons of) corporate
legal organization and biotechnology.

>What I expect is what I call periods of patchwork collapse, in which the
>federal government keeps an iron hand over strategically important
>resources-- certain cities, power sources, roads, rivers, food-producing
>regions. The feds will be so busy with these that, except for political
>threats, large areas of the rest of the country will be left to fend for
>themselves. As you say, in some areas local government will be strong
>enough to retain acceptable safety, in some areas the local govs will
>become thugs, and in other's there will be no local gov at all,
>sometimes with good results, sometimes with results that will bring
>somalian misery to american soil.
>
>No matter where we are, we're going to have to think about self-defense.
>I think that self-defense is going to be a huge, huge issue, for
>everyone in this country, communitarian or not.

I agree and on pragmatic, temperamental, and ethical grounds I suggest that
the easiest and most secure self-defense will be poverty and mobility.
Thoreau has been the only significant "Free Philosopher" of this nation, but 
there have been thousands like him all through history -- consume little, need 
little, have no material roots -- and have great freedom and power, and 
moral and intellectual influence. (Aldous Huxley's excellent monograph
on mysticism, _The Perennial Philosophy_ talks around this issue, as do 
extended passages in his book on progressive social reform, _Ends and Means_.)
If you've got nothing but the clothes on your back, a rucksack with notebooks,
your incoming mail, and the enduring friendships of your scattered 
co-conspirators, "they" can't break you and they won't need to kill you.

Obviously this will be an extremely difficult lifestyle for a man in his
50s, a reasonable estimate of my age when everything hypothetically will
be going to Hell and necessitating such security measures. But we're 
talking about as much of a frontier as the ocean -- the post-cataclysmic 
social consciousness, to be precise -- and I don't think it'll be nearly as 
hard to live as a Humanist Mendicant, so to speak, as it will be to organize 
sea-stations of the kind Bill has been posting about. 

Has anyone else here thought of Humanist monasticism, or an organization
along the lines of the religious orders? They kept learning alive through
the Dark Ages and, being as they are based on close working relationships 
among highly disciplined human spirits (rather than being based on 
telecommunications, say, among the overgrown children / puppets-of-the-
advertising-and-media-industries who run this nation's society) they are
highly stable in times of chaos. Also, being organizations of generalists
rather than of specialists, they are highly flexible in times of chaos.

Oops, they need a common mythology, if only a collection of brief theatre 
pieces about Sinbad the House-trimaraner, for instance. That's how they
get away with being generalists; everything is organized around the 
mythology and the common ideal of life.

>Truly independent colonies will need (a) weapons and (b) something, some
>product, that's very valuable to trade for protection and patronage. I
>figure it'll take a few decades minimum to put that package, plus the
>viable ocean technology, together.

I have a new friend who is Swiss and an old friend who is an International
Relations grad student, and they've explained to me why Switzerland hasn't
ever been invaded: not because their land is useless (although it is and that
doesn't hurt), not because their militia is excellent (although it is
and that doesn't hurt either), but because their banks are vital to the
economy of the entire region and any civil disturbance like an invasion would
disrupt the banks and hurt everybody.

Apparently that's how to be safe from governments, if you're a small country 
or colony. Pirates look like another matter. Somehow you've got to convince 
a real-live navy to discourage them for you? -- there's also the dodge :-)
of having the people who would be poor and desparate (and threatening)
without you be prosperous and useful *with* you by providing mutually
beneficial ways for them to become a part of your society. Local sea-militia
could work too -- but of course this is all off the top of my head and
others have been thinking about this for years. Anyway, I'm interested in more
detailed information about this problem, so that my new realization about
how slick Switzerland's situation is can be expanded upon.

Tom

 *****************************************************************************
 Tom Price  |  tp0x@cs.cmu.edu  |  "Painting is washed up" -- M. Duchamp, 1912
 *****************************************************************************
  plutoniumsurveillanceterroristCIAassassinationIranContrawirefraudcryptology


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