It’s happened before.
Jimmy Carter, then-Governor of Georgia, saw a bright green object just after sunset in 1969 as he was preparing to give a speech to the Lions Club in Leary. Before it “received into the distance,” its color changed several times.
Although all evidence points to an incident in January, Carter claimed that the event occurred in October in his report to International UFO Bureau. The peanut farmer’s glowing body was transformed into a celestial prodigy by the Memory’s trick of conjoining important events. This heralded the Days of Rage, an attempt by the Weather Underground to “bring war home” in Chicago.
Carter’s lapse was a gilded lily. The January omens were not unusual; 1969 was a difficult, bizarre year that began to end. Altamont and Woodstock put an end to an era with sharp edges, dark spots that were softened by the Windsor spectacles. Nixon and the adults had control. The Beatles split up. Bobby Seale, co-founder of Black Panthers, held an event at Yale, while his goons tortured one man to death because he allegedly informed on the Party to FBI. Things turned dark after the good will faded.
A contemporary sage and physician said, with calendrical inaccuracy yet spiritual truth, that “The greatest decade in human history is almost over.” They’re selling hippie hair wigs at Woolworth’s. It’s ninety-one more days until the end of this decade. As Presuming Ed has repeatedly pointed out, it is not black.
The answer was to drop out. This was the dawn of the age of the commune. The Whole Earth Catalog was first produced in 1968. The purpose: “We can be gods, and we might as well get better at it.” To date, no one has ever remotely achieved power and glory, whether via government, big business or formal education. This is because of gross defects that obscure the actual gains. This dilemma has led to the development of a new realm of personal, intimate power. The WHOLE EARTH CATLOG is promoting tools that can aid in this process.
As I’ve stated, the American hippie movement was fundamentally reactionary. It was anti-progressive, obsessed with folkways and, in its Whole Earth Catalog -inflected form , yearning for the return to a earlier stage and space of American history development, the frontier. Like the Catholic religious reforms in the last century and the Protestant reforms since inception, archaeology was accompanied by iconoclasm. The destruction of forms, traditions, and forms could only be justified by appealing to a purer, older form.
History is full of stories. Stewart Brand, the editor of the Whole Earth Catalog was first employed by the State of California under Governor. Jerry Moonbeam Brown was then with the Global Business Network, and the MIT Media Lab. He is currently advising Jeff Bezos about how to build a large clock within a mountain. A subtler example is Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone founder. This memoir, like a Rolling Stone describes how his magazine and counterculture became a tool for pushing the candidacies for the Big Business-friendly Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.
This horrible collection of mental debris has been floating around my head.
The times are weird in the post-Floyd post-pandemic post-(????) world. )-Trump world. The president of Mexico, who, according to our hysterical media, is quickly becoming an enemy of democracy and a dictator, an authoritarian, and an autocrat, posted last week what he claimed was a picture of a preColumbian elf, or woodland spirit. The post came close to a week-long period in which several unidentified flying objects were shot down by the American military. While some appear to be hobbyist balloons others, such as the “octagon”, remain mysterious.
The practice of divination is back; both the old methods of bastardized Ptolemaic astrology and tarot, but also through powerful symbolic computers–“artificial intelligence”–trained on statistics and bodies of text inaccessible by human beings just because of their vast scale. The bot responds to your questions with electricity and complex statistics. It is not unlike Stewart Brand’s I Ching which uses gravity and statistics in order to create practical gnomons. I is likely to be subject to diabolical influences, just like the I Ching.
Inflation, low-grade civil unrest and the shadows of the mushroom cloud are all back. Liberalized drug use, sophisticated experiments in sexual deviancy and environmental catastrophes in Ohio-back, back again. It’s all back.
As I was reading the article by James Pogue (a friend of American Conservative), about how a motley group of broadly right-aligned technologists and writers are “exiting”, I hooted in triumph. They’re buying land, stockpiling arms, and waiting for “remotely achieved power and glory” to collapse, It is clear that the right will have itsWhole Earth Catalog moment. I thought to my self. My heuristic is that we live through the early 1970s with worse music. has not been beaten. The solution is to cut back on the unnecessary and build again.
However, I was thinking about the possible sequelae. To be a man in the right is to love a lost cause and to be ready for any kind of betrayal by friends or ally. What will happen if the Whole Earth Catalog moment sees its founders and heroes not only return to mainstream society but become The Man-billionaires’ handmaidens and boosters for the Deadhead president firing missiles at Bosnians? Even if “exiting” does bring something new and compelling to the mainstream.
Sohrab Ahmari warned about the dangers of lifestyle rightism. All this was possible because of the transformative political figure. Now, he backs the most ingrained swamp creatures. How many exiteers will be back in two, five, or ten year’s time to preach Grover Norquistism on buckskin? Will the Urbit Foundation alter its profile picture on Twitter to support war in Iran? They will be eating carnivores at the Bridgewater corporate leadership retreat.
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It is possible to believe that the “exit” of many people is the prelude to a Great Awakening. This would be a lasting renewal of American cultural and moral tradition. We must not lose sight of the cause and keep faith. We should also be prepared to be disappointed or even betrayed. Pogue shared a scene from the end of the Urbit conference in Miami. “Nothing is normal anymore,” he said, apparently to himself, while I was heading toward the water. “And it will never be again.”
Maybe. Normal–the axis that includes Wall Street, Washington and the World Economic Forum- has a way to win, and turn its enemies against itself. They are selling hippie hair in Woolworth’s. Dylan is going electric. Do not be surprised, 2029, if we fail to paint it black again despite our long and hard work.
It’s happened before.
