{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

As I recently learned through research, "communes" tend to be quite selective, and their criteria tend to be disappointingly mundane. For example, my wife (yes, I am married now) was disqualified from one of the more notable ones for having debt. We also applied for a "work-study" arrangement at a Buddhist center, but never heard back. I have no way of knowing, and you can call me psychic if you want, but I am somehow convinced they ran a credit check.

I wouldn't put too much stock in "communes." They seem to be for the most part merely a skin-deep reaction to the dominant paradigm. A good place for hippies with money to feel like they are "dropping out." This ain't the 60's anymore. Communes seem to distrust those who are "not economically viable" as much as everyone else does.

Communes seem to distrust those who are "not economically viable" as much as everyone else does.

This was the vibe I had encountered with the "Wilderness Survival" movement.

*Lumpenproles* need not show up. Five hundred dollar fee for basic philosophy.

Good call brother. The truth is not pleasant. We can rid ourselves of the virus of hope once and for all. Maybe George Carlin was on to something when he said, "If you think there is a solution, YOU are part of the problem."

* Lumpenproletariat - the lowest level of the proletariat comprising unskilled workers, vagrants, and criminals - and characterized by a lack of class identification and solidarity

Amongst educated unemployed youth, assorted marginals from all classes, brigands, robbers, the impoverished masses, and those on the margins of society who have escaped, been excluded from, or not yet subsumed in the discipline of emerging industrial work ... in short, all those whom Marx sought to include in the category of the lumpenproletariat.

Isn't this the "non-class" that the Black Panther Party sought to organize?

I must be a lumpenprole, since I seem to have a lack of class identification. From the mainstream, all I hear about is the endless troubles and travails of the comfy "middle class," who are mini-exploiters ("little Eichmanns") who can go pound sand for all I care. But from the socialists and most of the other alternatives, all I hear about is the wage-slave "working class," who also mean nothing to me because I'm deeply anti-work. Who talks about my class, the work-averse freedom lovers? Nobody but those who want to demonize us. In the "land of the free," nothing is more taboo than an actual desire for freedom.

Who stands for reading, writing, and napping all day? Who represents the person in the park, laying down for no reason but to watch the clouds?

The one in northern California that I recently considered, although not that seriously, wanted $400 a month. I guess that they want you to come out for a month at a time to get a feel for it and then if you like it (and they like you), you can stay for the longer term. A lot of these places have "trial" periods like this. I understand why they charge money, as **** ain't free, but I probably wouldn't want to stay somewhere that charged that much money. I find it especially odd that this place claimed to eschew wage-slavery like we do and put an emphasis on play. One of my biggest beefs with some of these places is the apparent buddy buddy atmosphere that they have, especially if they are on the smaller side. It's almost like you are flying in from across the country into someone elses friend cricle. Unless you are at least somewhat outgoing, how can you expect to make it happen? Maybe I'm making it out to be more difficult than it actually would be. I think I'd rather start my own "commune"/small farm and gather people that I already know. Mike, you can have your own drum banging/writing hut.

"A man's reach should exceed his grasp," yadda yadda, you know the rest.

I too dream of the end of Takerville. But some dreams should be respected for what they are - dreams. It will not happen in my lifetime, but it will happen. It must happen sooner or later, for Takerville has been doomed since its inception. The trendy modern term for this is "unsustainability." I sometimes prefer the pithier "**** stupidity," but ultimately, they mean the same thing. A virus which kills its host dies. A "society" which kills its host (Earth and the stolen vitality of alienated human beings who inhabit it) will also die just as surely. These are simple facts of Nature.

All of this is happening simply because a relatively few people like to play God on Earth and control everything. These enormous parasites not only leech the physical, psychological, and spiritual lifeblood out of everything, but also train the rest of the thoughtless, stupefied gorts into going along with it and even rushing to their defense. They have it all sewn up, and none of them care that it will eventually collapse, because they will be dead by then.

As Gene Ray of "Time Cube" fame says, people are "educated stupid." The process begins at birth and is basically inescapable unless one suffers some horrible psychological accident, such as the curse of a high IQ and/or rejection by society. Usually it takes both. Only such "gifted/rejected" people are free to look critically at the society they have been excluded from. Those allowed into the mainstream will never see beyond it - they are Gort Farm residents for life.

Every infant is born with infinite worth and potential, both of which are systematically stolen from them until they are nothing more than a mindless wage-slave and oxygen waster. It's spiritual homicide. The gorts are basically automatons, worker drones, and human tools ("human resources"). They have been robbed of any opportunity for a meaningful life and swindled into believing the fraudulent substitute they are given is the best thing since sliced bread.

There's no hope of beating the Gort Farmers. But happily for Earth, their onslaught will not continue forever, because they have already beaten themselves, right from the start. Their paradigm of infinite economic growth and production/consumption is completely insane and cannot last more than the bat of an eye in history. But that bat of an eye is enough for them, if they can live their piggish lives within it.

I've been called "uneducated" by some. How wonderful. Sadly, it's not entirely true. As Mike is fond of pointing out, we all have our own "inner gort" installed somewhere along the line, and I'd like to bust those remnants of "education" and become totally uneducated. A genius is simply one who remains intelligent in spite of education. We are all born geniuses - we have to be taught how to be mindless gorts.

And that, in a nutshell, is the purpose of "civilization."

I appreciate these colorful terms you come up with, from "the zoo-keepers" to "the Gort Farmers."  Reality is stranger than science-fiction. For the moment, I do feel fortunate to be so alienated from gort society. What a blessed paradox!

Perhaps we're the Overgrown Children, the Ones Who Never "Grew Up." Every teenager knows something is terribly wrong, even if the realization lasts just a few weeks before Mom and Dad offer some kind of bribe or exert some kind of force and the "phase" passes. But what about people in their late 30's and late 40's for whom the "phase" never passes?

Just the other day, I turned 37. I didn't experience a sudden revelation that "civilization" is acceptable, just as I didn't at 17. I doubt I will at 57 either, if I make it that far. I have not yet "matured" and I don't suppose I ever will, now that life is a little beyond the (statistical) halfway point. "Maturity" sounds as crazy to me now as it did at 17.

I don't know how to say this without appearing "mentally ill," since society has pathologized anything other than its version of "adulthood." But I am very much an adult, and a "man of the world." I am just not the sort of man I "ought to have been," and therefore, in society's eyes, I'm not one at all, or I am some kind of damaged goods/defective product.

It doesn't matter. I know who I am, and I am not ashamed. No harm, no foul. Just reality.

I am reminded of phrases like "sell outs," drones, etc. I think what we are is authentic.

[UNDERSTATEMENT]