PREFACE
I began writing this book as an intellectual and aesthetic exercise. The aim was
to seek convincing evidence and argument for a rational consideration of the
possibility of an anarchist utopia. It is my hope that more people would take this
sort of thought seriously; really, it is my hope that a wider range of the human
population would take any sort of “higher“ thought seriously.
Though I intended to write from a perspective founded in a16 year Buddhist
meditation practice, there is certainly the spirit of something less than Buddhist
arising in areas of the book. Partly, this is the artist in me reaching for
rhetorical impact, and partly it is because I was trying all I could to provide
value for the attentions of those who might not usually be interested in anarchism
or Buddhist study and practice, which is to say I was trying to be entertaining. I
would like to penetrate the thought of those who have never considered life as
being something other than a game to win, or a burden to lose, or to at least give
those of further sight inspiration and fodder by which they might try to penetrate
these sleepwalking minds in their daily dealings with them. As I admonish near the
end of the book, one must “Cast [their] net widely and let it sink in deep.“ There
is just no use in preaching solely to the choir.
Parts of the book are technical, whereas other parts are poetic; and still other
parts have intentionally been left feeling a bit unfinished or sloppy, kind of like
life. And other parts were left unfinished because I was so fucking bored with it
all. Anyway, aesthetically I intended a sense of unevenness and imbalance for a
large part of the book--just because it is something you wouldn’t do yourself, and
just because it is something you don’t understand, does not mean there is something
wrong with it.
My affliction is to defy the mundane.
People put on airs and look down on others in mundane life because their
personalities are fed only by the cultural compost of the symbolic. They do not
perceive the fathomless truth of their majesty, and therefore are only able to
behave in as near an approximation of majesty as they can generally refer in the
ignorant haze of symbols, of “portraying” themselves to the “outside” world, not
knowing they are it, are the total of nature and cosmos.
And throughout my writing I keep the difference between symbols for things (words
are symbols) and the things themselves prominent in my mind. The intellectual,
cultural, economic, and political climates of our society are almost entirely based
on symbols. Money is a symbol, all our advertising and entertainment are symbols,
and even our food can seem symbolic--in its mass-produced, profit-maximizing form,
never quite reaching a state of what could be referred to truly as real food. Even
our very conscious experience can be, of sorts, “symbolic” when one prefers the
consciousness-altered experience of drugs to the full range of actual
consciousness.
If the species largely understood its beauty and mystery, egoic airs, separation,
error itself, would cease. But the world is the way it is, and no one quite treats
anyone as they should be treated. Only the greedy are bold as the true lovers
should have been since before birth.
In a society of symbol -fetishists we come to feel the only import of life is in
the manipulation of symbols rather than in the true appreciation of not only our
life, but of being itself. Well… Of course symbols can be made to have good and
bad effects. Imagine a world in which the food, trade, and information were real
and the murder and wars were symbolic. Video games and the internet may be the new
messiahs. I can see McDonald’s becoming a global chain of vegan internet cafés in
the not too-distant future. I just have no sense of the profitable.
Believe me, I would rather have written something that makes sense for the symbolminded,
and brings more of these $ymbol$ to me, but I have been stuck in the mind
of true art since before birth. My “Plan B,” since before birth also, is what I
currently am doing for a living. I’m a mechanic. So it turns out that neither am
I the sense-maker of all the cosmos, micro and macro; and sadly God doesn’t listen
to prayers for a revolution of beauty (at least not from me,) and it just doesn‘t
seem right to force it. So, here’s the book.
I began writing this book as an intellectual and aesthetic exercise. The aim was
to seek convincing evidence and argument for a rational consideration of the
possibility of an anarchist utopia. It is my hope that more people would take this
sort of thought seriously; really, it is my hope that a wider range of the human
population would take any sort of “higher“ thought seriously.
Though I intended to write from a perspective founded in a16 year Buddhist
meditation practice, there is certainly the spirit of something less than Buddhist
arising in areas of the book. Partly, this is the artist in me reaching for
rhetorical impact, and partly it is because I was trying all I could to provide
value for the attentions of those who might not usually be interested in anarchism
or Buddhist study and practice, which is to say I was trying to be entertaining. I
would like to penetrate the thought of those who have never considered life as
being something other than a game to win, or a burden to lose, or to at least give
those of further sight inspiration and fodder by which they might try to penetrate
these sleepwalking minds in their daily dealings with them. As I admonish near the
end of the book, one must “Cast [their] net widely and let it sink in deep.“ There
is just no use in preaching solely to the choir.
Parts of the book are technical, whereas other parts are poetic; and still other
parts have intentionally been left feeling a bit unfinished or sloppy, kind of like
life. And other parts were left unfinished because I was so fucking bored with it
all. Anyway, aesthetically I intended a sense of unevenness and imbalance for a
large part of the book--just because it is something you wouldn’t do yourself, and
just because it is something you don’t understand, does not mean there is something
wrong with it.
My affliction is to defy the mundane.
People put on airs and look down on others in mundane life because their
personalities are fed only by the cultural compost of the symbolic. They do not
perceive the fathomless truth of their majesty, and therefore are only able to
behave in as near an approximation of majesty as they can generally refer in the
ignorant haze of symbols, of “portraying” themselves to the “outside” world, not
knowing they are it, are the total of nature and cosmos.
And throughout my writing I keep the difference between symbols for things (words
are symbols) and the things themselves prominent in my mind. The intellectual,
cultural, economic, and political climates of our society are almost entirely based
on symbols. Money is a symbol, all our advertising and entertainment are symbols,
and even our food can seem symbolic--in its mass-produced, profit-maximizing form,
never quite reaching a state of what could be referred to truly as real food. Even
our very conscious experience can be, of sorts, “symbolic” when one prefers the
consciousness-altered experience of drugs to the full range of actual
consciousness.
If the species largely understood its beauty and mystery, egoic airs, separation,
error itself, would cease. But the world is the way it is, and no one quite treats
anyone as they should be treated. Only the greedy are bold as the true lovers
should have been since before birth.
In a society of symbol -fetishists we come to feel the only import of life is in
the manipulation of symbols rather than in the true appreciation of not only our
life, but of being itself. Well… Of course symbols can be made to have good and
bad effects. Imagine a world in which the food, trade, and information were real
and the murder and wars were symbolic. Video games and the internet may be the new
messiahs. I can see McDonald’s becoming a global chain of vegan internet cafés in
the not too-distant future. I just have no sense of the profitable.
Believe me, I would rather have written something that makes sense for the symbolminded,
and brings more of these $ymbol$ to me, but I have been stuck in the mind
of true art since before birth. My “Plan B,” since before birth also, is what I
currently am doing for a living. I’m a mechanic. So it turns out that neither am
I the sense-maker of all the cosmos, micro and macro; and sadly God doesn’t listen
to prayers for a revolution of beauty (at least not from me,) and it just doesn‘t
seem right to force it. So, here’s the book.
