 
ReSent-Message-ID: <4fmjfJO00awF9CvVQA@andrew.cmu.edu>
ReSent-Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1993 13:39:33 -0400 (EDT)
ReSent-From: "Jon C. Slenk" 
ReSent-To: +dist+/afs/andrew/usr/js9b/Public/camc.dl@andrew.cmu.edu
From: wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us (Bill Eichman)
Message-Id: 
Date: 	Mon, 12 Apr 1993 16:22:22 -0400
To: angst+@CMU.EDU
Subject: old mail #1
Reply-To: wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us

Please pass this along, Jon...

Date: Wed, 31 Mar 93 22:32:43 GMT
Subject: Has the Cat gone the way of the Dodo?

Jesse, In your message you write:

> what do I find? The Corporation-Ate-My-Cat seems to have fulfilled its
> name!!  O tell me it's not true!  Anyone still participating in this list,
> or what? Wake up, repost, or at least "ping" if you can hear me, eh?

I'm here; still doing my thing. Things are going fine, but there's a
certain boring quality to talking about the day-to-day business of
saving money and building an organized effort.

>    Know what? I may be slightly more cynical than Bill in this regard--
> seems to me like no one actually *gives* enough of a shit to silence us
> doomsayers in such fashion.  People are so future-shocked, so overwhelmed
> with info-anxiety, that they cannot be stirred from their torpor... Aside
> from those criticizing government policy in very public ways, such as the
> scientist who got censored by his department at the EPA, people who forsee
> disaster are generally received with... boredom.

I predict that as you get older, and climb in the heirarchies of
university, corporation, or business, the reaction will change from
boredom and dismissal to passive reprisal and eventually active
reprisal. I used the expression "kill", which I meant metaphorically,
refering to the way baboons and chimps and humans will harass and
eventually kill 'alien' or 'outcast' members of their own species.

Now, you're in a category of person that can be dismissed. When you stop
being dismissable as a person, by virtue of your position in society,
people's reaction to you will change. I'm exaggerating the reprisals by
making them seem _obvious_-- they are not obvious, in general, but are
instead covert, a type of 'blacklisting', the unprovable attacks which
are endemic to the corporate or academic lifestyle.

>    No kidding.  Imagine this future population chart: the world tops 12
> million, peaks, drops a bit, and levels off at something around twice what
> we got already.  *And stays there.* The rate of birth incredible,
> overwhelming, matched by just as stupendous a rate of horrid, miserable
> death.  An eternally overcrowded world with a shitty but just barely-livable
> environment, inhabited by a huge, plague-ridden global proletariat ruled
> by an even tinier elite.  A population plateau kept going by the
> supercharged global capitalist technosphere, our *k* value artificially
> extended to the point of guaranteed endemic misery.
>    That, m'friends, is truly Sartresque.

The future can only be predicted as probabilities; I'd say the scenario
you paint has a very high probability, at least as far as the next
century is concerned. It's hard to imagine that we humans would be so
stupid as to accept such an existence century after century-- then
again, no-one ever went broke overestimating the stupidity of humans.

I don't believe that anything can be done about the future; we are
involved in a planetary process that overwhelms individual concerns and
efforts.

The best we can do is educate and prepare ourselves for as many
eventualities as possible.

> Nevertheless, to my disappointment, they remain stuck in the rut of being
> a "demonstration" community, rather than a genuinely self-sustaining
> village unit-- they are mostly self-sufficient for power, but still must
> occasionally draw from the local grids, and only produce (if I remember
> the figure correctly) about 10% of their own food; plus, most of the CAT
> people live in the town, not on the site, and some of them are even
> depending on the dole!  Moreover, the original idealism of the group has

This is quite typical.

I've already made my arguments that self-sufficiency is not possible.
Self-reliance is a more realistic goal.

> tapered off somewhat, as people grew older and reconceptualized their
> mission (several of the engineers formed corporations to market solar and
> wind-power technology commercially, for one).  Still, there are folks
> there like Roger MacLennan, who has been there for 14 years, living and
> working on-site with his family, patiently pushing for his dream.
> Amazing.  I heavily recommend you look them up. :-)

Did you take any photos? Did this scottish CAT have any books or reports
for sale? How did they obtain their land?

One of the benefits of having a DTP business as part of the community
economic structure is that the "Demonstration" can be transmitted to a
much larger number of people.

"As people grew older"-- such a universe contained in that phrase!

One of the people in my local network here in State College just came
into a fairly hefty bundle of money which she has been advised to spend
on land. Because of her circumstances, I'm recommending she try to buy a
house in town. Things are moving, sometimes excruciatingly slowly, but
moving.

Later, Bill


 prev message 
 next message