Off the Reservation

In this desert of sensory exhaustion, in this banal, repetitive nightmare dream called the middle class (the wasp’s contribution to the programming of the American mind), it’s easy to let yourself go and begin seeing things – things that could be our way of life like creating a new financial system and a cultural structure with an emphasis on efficiency and care.  Oh, that’s impossible.  Man’s nature just the way it is here on earth the territorial imperative rules.

If all our activity is based on making money we will always have emergency sirens not Bach; war over joy and the trap door will shut upon us from above occluding our chance to evolve.

We need to dig deeper into the world of art.  In the world which stems a tide and catches the fire and beauty of a given time the turn of the 19th century is hard to beat for its spirit of intense collaboration leading to breakthroughs in all fields of endeavor.  All great art is made that way by a self-awareness, a confidence which insures its longevity.  As soon as that collaborative strength is lost, the walls of the art kingdom crumble.

Our psychic pain is our amnesia.  We recall very little of our personal history and practically nothing of man’s experience which is why we repeat ourselves over and over.  The familiarity makes us feel secure, free of pesky thinking and the need to alter one’s course.

Thinking is an art.  Perhaps that is the reason why there is so little intellectual content in our media and art.  Art takes decades to develop.  This society of ours doesn’t pay you to practice.  In a mass culture, the absence of critical thinking creates a vacuum for the quick, the mindless and the violent to rush in.

During a brief stent as a teacher at San Quentin Prison, I spoke with Sal, a huge man sort of the opposite of the gentle giant.  Sal bristled with an anger he couldn’t control.  He had been imprinted at an early age to be the enforcer.  With tears in his eyes he turned to me and said, “I can’t believe it but it’s true – I’m safer in here.  I’m not fit… to live out… there.”  I have never forgotten his look – the real human baffled by his circumstance imprisoned with no discernible way out.

We’re pounding away at the old Humanist Culture like the ape men in Kubrick’s 2001, holding large animal bone and pounding.  The destruction of the old will be replaced by Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World – blanched out world of pharmaceuticals, computers, weapons and pleasure domes.  The pleasure domes are really great poundings.  Stadiums and halls where we get together and root.  You get it?  I prefer subtle sex but apparently a lot of pounding takes place.

The slight scratching sounds you hear are men and women’s fingers brushing key pads.  The computerized voices can drive you mad.  Humans get harder to find unless you get off the reservation.