When the Machine Stops

When the machine stops, 

Those already homeless will become the gods and masters.

Aphorisms Against Work

Because of the dogma of workerism, unemployment is a problem rather than the boon to humanity that it should be.

The tragedy is that those who do work, work so much they are no longer human.

This Week's Hikes

Rules and Resources in Social Groups: An Armchair Social Model

The following is another way of thinking about how your world works.

Social systems are shelters that accumulate and control resources.  A social system develops, persists, and grows in virtue of the common agreement/collective acceptance of its members about rules for thinking and acting.  Members of the system follow these rules in exchange for a share of the resources and may be ejected from the system when they fail to follow the rules.

One wants to ask: Who is in charge of these systems?  I answer:  Nobody in particular.  Social systems represent broad patterns in human behavior, not the contrivances of individuals.  In other words, there are misguided moral assumptions behind this question.  These assumptions ride the liberal myth of “an evil elite” in some secret, smoke filled back room that plays chess with the innocent masses.  As a matter of fact, "the evil elite" are entirely unnecessary for social systems to function, even obese systems like our own (USA).  This is because social systems operate in virtue of social dynamics that are beyond the control of individuals (leaders) or institutions (government).  My point is that, when there are limited resources and those resources are deemed necessary for survival, this pattern will inevitably follow.

Let us assume for the moment that morality is not an issue here (a big assumption, I know).  My discussion concerns only the dynamics of the pattern itself, not “who is to blame” or “about whom shall I write a letter to my Senator?” and other such silliness.  So, to continue…

 In larger societies, the rules are structured in gradations of rigor, so that a member can obtain more resources from the system by obeying the rules to a more rigorous degree.  This is because, the greater the appeal of your resources, the greater energy you will derive from your constituency in the way of rule following.  If you offer me a hamburger, I’ll walk a mile.  Offer me a new car, I’ll walk a marathon.

In short: The size and power of a social system is generally proportional to the value of its resources since, as I say, the appeal of its offerings is what attracts its constituents.  This results in my first general principle of social reality: 

A) The power of a social system to draw and retain members is proportional to the mass and appeal of its resource pool. 

The next claim I want to make is that, as a social system becomes more powerful (in the sense described above), its rule system becomes more intricate and demanding.  In other words, if I set my mind on getting the biggest and best in the way of social benefits, I will be required to obey a more rigorous and—as regards my individual right-to-choose—a more freedom-destroying set of rules.  

Here’s where my “morality”  comes into play.  This dynamic creates a problem for those of us who find themselves already playing the game in a system with a rigorous set of requirements but who also desire the freedom to be self-determining.  When the rules conflict with our choices, we must either relinquish our freedom or give up our share of the resources.  Tough call, eh? 

However, as a system grows (e.g., into a nation state), individual members become more anonymous.  This allows entry to imposters who try to obtain resources without obeying the rules necessary for those resources (freeloaders).  Freeloaders cause weaknesses and fractures in a system by disrupting its processes and, in effect, squandering its resources.  In response to this threat, a social system will naturally strengthen itself by developing mechanisms for detecting freeloaders.  Moreover, the bigger social systems--those with the most appealing resources--will naturally draw the more cunning imposters and will, in turn, continuously develop more sophisticated defense mechanisms.

This is the reason that, in societies with the most resource offerings and the largest constituencies, there is always a trend toward increased surveillance, policing, legislation, moral propaganda, and other enforcement mechanisms.  The rules are designed to protect the system from freeloaders.

To appear valid, these mechanisms must draw support from the unified agreement of a system's constituency.  This results in national ideologies in virtue of which members of the system become voluntary policing agents.  Members are required to exhibit certain imposter-detection skills before they can partake of the resources ("Hello, 911?  I think my neighbor might be a drug dealer").  In other words, societies instill moral ideologies that are designed to enforce the rules and further suppress the capacity of its members to fake their adherence to the rules (my neighbor knows me better than the cops do).

more to come on this topic...

"Mental Illness" and Social Control

After reading Foucalt in college years ago, I became suspicious of psychiatric labels.  They seemed to me reflective of the moral preferences of politically connected groups (especially the psychiatric establishment and the courts) and, even worse, capable of marginalizing individuals whose thinking and behavior tend to be injurious to the interests of those groups.  This happens when psychiatrists segregate individuals as either 'insanity' or 'insane' and then restrict the freedom of those labeled 'insane' by subjecting them to mechanisms of control (sedation, incarceration, social ostracization, and other forms of coercion that follow from being labeled 'insane').   

In other words, any entity with the power to establish the criteria for 'sanity' can be easily coopted by power-hungry institutions (governmental bodies, religious groups, industry coalitions, etc.) to suppress, control or quarantine any and all dissenters. For example, custody courts routinely appeal to psychiatric language to strip parents of their rights to raise or even visit their own children, even if the diagnosis is unproven,  has no observable testing in its proof, and has never posed a material threat to the children. Without the psychiatric angle of naming a parent as 'medically insane', the burden of proof would be much higher before a parent could be legally stripped of their right to raise their own children.  

In the United States of America, the government now has the power to incarcerate (e.g., in mental institutions), take away children, and administer "normalizing drugs" solely on the decisionmaking of the very people setting the standards for the burden of proof (the psychiatrists and their diagnostic manuals).  Are these not the most despotic and violent forms of social coercion available to any government?  And where is the accountability for these so-called "medical professionals"?  Among themselves.

Control:  - Take this drug or be locked in a mental home against your will.  -Think and behave in ways that we have deemed "insane" and you will have your children removed from your life.  - Give this drug to your child or she will be expelled from school.  These are forms of coercion that would put Stalin and Hitler to shame.

 
In other words, as things stand now, if we don't happen to think and behave in a way that the psychiatric establishment and their institutional allies have deemed 'normal' and 'mentally healthy,' we are threatened with the deprivation of our most fundamental liberties (the right to choose our own beliefs, control what we do to our own bodies, the right to raise our own children, etc.). This power structure is not immediately obvious to most people because, by definition, a person is “sane“ if he/she believes and acts like “most people.” So if you’re part of the “sane” group, you will naturally endorse any social structure that protects your interests.

This becomes obvious in historical hindsight when the criteria for 'mental illness' are modified. Until the mid-70's, homosexuality was officially classified in the APA diagnostic manual as a treatable mental illness. If they resisted 'treatment,' homosexuals would be saddled with the social consequences of being 'insane' and were legally deprived of the right to raise children. Now it is generally agreed that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice, not a disease, so the rights of homosexuals are being returned. In the 19th century, even masturbation fell into the category of a 'mental disease' and, if discovered and deemed 'untreatable,' could easily earn you a one-way ticket to complete social ostracization.
 
The criteria for sanity may change over time, but the dynamics supporting the establishment of those criteria remain the same: People are labeled 'insane' if it is discovered that they think or behave in ways that conflict with common ethical preferences. For example: Teachers dealing with overcrowded classrooms will generally assume that little boys should sit quietly and “fit in” with the other boys and so, if they don’t, the parents are pressured toward an ADD diagnosis and the child is drugged back to “normalcy.“ As social scenarios change, the public conception of behavioral normalcy changes to accommodate them (hence the ever evolving diagnostic manuals for identifying “insanity“). The criteria change because they are based on value judgments and aimed at reducing the visibility of beliefs that threaten the interests of political, religious and economic powers.
 
These days, in response to the waning acceptance of religious justifications for social policy, a new justification is needed to convince people that the official criteria for “sanity“ are legitimate and worthy of public endorsement. This is why psychiatry began re-establishing itself under the rubric of medical science. Most people disagree on religion but can agree on the reliability of science, so medical science became an appealing option for consolidating public agreement about psychiatric claims. At the core, this has resulted in the depiction of abnormal behavior as the expression of a diagnosable disease.
 
But there is a very serious problem with this strategy: 'Mental diseases' like depression, post-traumatic stress, schizophrenia and social anxiety have no testable, biological correlates. Psychiatric diagnoses are based solely on the psychiatrist's subjective reading of self-reported behavior and cannot be achieved otherwise. That being the case, the appeal to medical science without the rigor of real medical science has only increased the usefulness of psychiatry as an instrument of power. The door is still wide open for value judgments to become the norms for mental disease diagnosis.
 
I ran accross an article (below) that nicely summarizes this position. It is written by a renound (ex)psychiatric researcher from NYU who, after Foucalt, was the first to offer an intellectually rigorous critique of psychiatry and its alliance with the social establishment. Above the article, I have posted a link to a UTube video summarizing his core argument. If you find this interesting, other links follow the article below (including one about the clinically insane and socially deviant Martin Luther King, Jr.).

 

Video clip (get past the accent and the guy is pretty good):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj7GmeSAxXo
 
THE CONTROL OF CONDUCT:
AUTHORITY VERSUS AUTONOMY
Thomas S. Szasz, M.D.

     There is only one political sin:
independence; and only one political virtue:
obedience.  To put it differently, there is
only one offense against authority:  self-
control; and only one obeisance to it:
submission to control by authority.

     Why is self-control, autonomy, such a
threat to authority?  Because the person who
controls himself, who is his own master, has
no need for an authority to be his master.
This, then, renders authority unemployed.
What is he to do if he cannot control others?
To be sure, he could mind his own business.
But this is a fatuous answer, for those who
are satisfied to mind their own business do
not aspire to become authorities.  In short,
authority needs subjects, persons not in
command of themselves -- just as parents need
children and physicians need patients.

     Autonomy is the death knell of authority,
and authority knows it:  hence the ceaseless
warfare of authority against the exercise,
both real and symbolic, of autonomy -- that is,
against suicide, against masturbation, against
self-medication, against the proper use of
language itself!(1)

     The parable of the Fall illustrates this
fight to the death between control and self-
control.  Did Eve, tempted by the Serpent,
seduce Adam, who then lost control of himself
and succumbed to evil?  Or did Adam, facing a
choice between obedience to the authority of
God and his own destiny, choose self-control?

     How, then, shall we view the situation of
the so-called drug abuser or drug addict?  As
a stupid, sick, and helpless child, who,
tempted by pushers, peers, and the pleasures
of drugs, succumbs to the lure and loses
control of himself?  Or as a person in control
of himself, who, like Adam, chooses the
forbidden fruit as the elemental and
elementary way of pitting himself against
authority?

     There is no empirical or scientific way
of choosing between these two answers, of
deciding which is right and which is wrong.
The questions frame two different moral
perspectives, and the answers define two
different moral strategies:  if we side with
authority and wish to repress the individual,
we shall treat him as if he were helpless, the
innocent victim of overwhelming temptation;
and we shall then 'protect' him from further
temptation by treating him as a child, slave,
or madman.  If we side with the individual and
wish to refute the legitimacy and reject the
power of authority to infantilize him, we
shall treat him as if he were in command of
himself, the executor of responsible
decisions; and we shall then demand that he
respect others as he respects himself by
treating him as an adult, a free individual,
or a 'rational' person.

     Either of these positions makes sense.
What makes less sense -- what is confusing in
principle and chaotic practice -- is to treat
people as adults and children, as free and
unfree, as sane and insane.

     Nevertheless, this is just what social
authorities throughout history have done:  in
ancient Greece, in medieval Europe, in the
contemporary world, we find various mixtures
in the attitudes of the authorities toward the
people; in some societies, the individual is
treated as more free than unfree, and we call
these societies 'free'; in others, he is
treated as more determined than self-
determining, and we call these societies
'totalitarian.'  In none is the individual
treated as completely free.  Perhaps this
would be impossible:  many persons insist that
no society could survive on such a premise
consistently carried through.  Perhaps this is
something that lies in the future of mankind.
In any case, we should take satisfaction in
the evident impossibility of the opposite
situation:  no society has ever treated the
individual, nor perhaps could it treat him, as
completely determined.  The apparent freedom
of the authority, controlling both himself and
subject, provides an irresistible model:  if
God can control, if pope and prince can
control, if politician and psychiatrist can
control -- then perhaps the person can also
control, at least himself.

     The conflicts between those who have
power and those who want to take it away from
them fall into three distinct categories.  In
moral, political, and social affairs (and I of
course include psychiatric affairs among
these), these categories must be clearly
distinguished; if we do not distinguish among
them we are likely to mistake opposition to
absolute or arbitrary power with what may,
actually, be an attempt to gain such power for
oneself or for the groups or leaders one
admires.

     First, there are those who want to take
power away from the oppressor and give it to
the oppressed, as a class -- as exemplified by
Marx, Lenin, and the Communists.  Revealingly,
they dream of the 'dictatorship' of the
proletariat or some other group.

     Second, there are those who want to take
power away from the oppressor and give it to
themselves as the protectors of the oppressed --
as exemplified by Robespierre in politics;
Rush in medicine; and by their liberal,
radical, and medical followers.  Revealingly,
they dream of the incorruptibly honest or
incontrovertibly sane ruler leading his happy
or healthy flock.

     And third, there are those who want to
take power away from the oppressor and give it
to the oppressed as individuals, for each to
do with as he pleases, but hopefully for his
own self-control -- as exemplified by Mill, von
Mises, the free-market economists, and their
libertarian followers.  Revealingly, they
dream of people so self-governing that their
need for and tolerance of rulers is minimal or
nil.

     While countless men say they love
liberty, clearly only those who, by virtue of
their actions, fall into the third category,
mean it.(2)  The others merely want to replace
a hated oppressor by a loved one -- having
usually themselves in mind for the job.

     As we have seen, psychiatrists (and some
other physicians, notably public health
administrators) have traditionally opted for
'reforms' of the second type; that is, their
opposition to existing powers, ecclesiastic or
secular, has had as its conscious and avowed
aim the paternalistic care of the citizen-
patient, and not the freedom of the autonomous
individual.  Hence, medical methods of social
control tended not only to replace religious
methods, but sometimes to exceed them in
stringency and severity.  In short, the usual
response of medical authority to the controls
exercised by non-medical authority has been to
try to take over and then escalate the
controls, rather than to endorse the principle
and promote the practice of removing the
controls by which the oppressed are
victimized.

     As a result, until recently, most
psychiatrists, psychologists, and other
behavioral scientists had nothing but praise
for the 'behavioral controls' of medicine and
psychiatry.  We are now beginning to witness,
however, a seeming backlash against this
position, many behavioral scientists jumping
on what they evidently consider to be the next
'correct' and 'liberal' position, namely, a
criticism of behavioral controls.  But since
most of these 'scientists' remain as hostile
to individual freedom and responsibility, to
choice and dignity, as they have always been,
their criticism conforms to the pattern I have
described above:  they demand more 'controls' --
that is, professional and governmental
controls -- over 'behavior controls.'  This is
like first urging a person to drive over icy
roads at breakneck speed to get over them as
fast as possible, and then, when his car goes
into a skid, advising him to apply his brakes.
Whether because they are stupid or wicked or
both, such persons invariably recommend fewer
controls where more are needed, for example in
relation to punishing offenders -- and more
controls where fewer are needed, for example
in relation to contracts between consenting
adults.  Truly, the supporters of the
Therapeutic State* are countless and tireless --
now proposing more therapeutic controls in the
name of 'controlling behavior controls.'(3)

     Clearly, the seeds of this fundamental
human propensity -- to react to the loss of
control, or to the threat of such loss, with
an intensification of control, thus generating
a spiraling symbiosis of escalating controls
and counter-controls -- have fallen on fertile
soil in contemporary medicine and psychiatry
and have yielded a luxuriant harvest of
'therapeutic' coercions.  The alcoholic and
Alcoholics Anonymous, the glutton and Weight
Watchers, the drug abuser and the drug-
abuseologist -- each is an image at war with its
mirror image, each creating and defining,
dignifying and defaming the other, and each
trying to negate his own reflection, which he
can accomplish only by negating himself.

     There is only one way to split apart and
unlock such pairings, to resolve such
dilemmas -- namely, by trying to control the
other less, not more and by replacing control
of the other with self-control.

     The person who uses drugs -- legal or
illegal drugs, with or with or without a
physician's prescription -- may be submitting to
authority, may be revolting against it, or may
be exercising his own power of making a free
decision.  It is quite impossible to know --
without knowing a great deal about such a
person, his family and friends, and his whole
cultural setting -- just what such an individual
is doing and why.  But it is quite possible,
indeed it is easy, to know what those persons
who try to repress certain kinds of drug uses
and drug users are doing and why.

     As the war against heresy was in reality
a war for 'true' faith, so the war against
drug abuse is in reality a war for 'faithful'
drug use:  concealed behind the war against
marijuana and heroin is the war for tobacco
and alcohol; and, more generally, concealed
behind the war against the use of politically
and medically disapproved drugs, is the war
for the use of politically and medically
approved drugs.

     Let us recall, again, one of the
principles implicit in the psychiatric
perspective on man, and some of the practices
that follow from it:  the madman is a person
lacking adequate internal controls over his
behavior; hence, he requires -- for his own
protection as well as for the protection of
society -- external restraints upon it.  This,
then, justifies the incarceration of 'mental
patients' in 'mental hospitals' -- and much else
besides.

     The drug abuser is a person lacking
adequate internal controls over his drug use;
hence, he requires -- for his own protection as
well as for the protection of society -- external
restraints upon it.  This, then, justifies the
prohibition of 'dangerous drugs,' the
incarceration and involuntary treatment of
'addicts,' the eradication of 'pushers' -- and
much else besides.

     Confronted with the phenomena of 'drug
abuse' and 'drug addiction,' how else could
psychiatry and a society imbued with it have
reacted?  They could respond only as they did --
namely, by defining the moderate use of legal
drugs as the result of the sane control of
resistible impulses; and by defining the
immoderate use of any drug, and any use of
illegal drugs, as the insane surrender to
irresistible impulses.  Hence the circular
psychiatric definitions of drug habits, such
as the claim that illicit drug use (for
example, smoking marijuana) causes mental
illness and also constitutes a symptom of it;
and the seemingly contradictory claim that the
wholly similar use of licit drugs (for
example, smoking tobacco) is neither a cause
nor a symptom of mental illness.

     Formerly, opium was a panacea; now it is
the cause and symptom of countless maladies,
medical and social, the world over.  Formerly
masturbation was the cause and symptom of
mental illness; now it is the cure for social
inhibition and the practice ground for
training in heterosexual athleticism.  It is
clear, then, that if we want to understand and
accept drug-taking behavior, we must take a
larger view of the so-called drug problem.
(Of course, if we want to persecute 'pushers'
and 'treat addicts,' then information
inconvenient to our doing these things will
only get in our way.  Drug-abuseologists can
no more be 'educated' out of their coercive
tactics than can drug addicts.)

     What does this larger view show us?  How
can it help us?  It shows us that our present
attitudes toward the whole subject of drug
use, drug abuse, and drug control are nothing
but the reflections, in the mirror of 'social
reality,' of our own expectations toward drugs
and toward those who use them; and that our
ideas about and interventions in drug-taking
behavior have only the most tenuous connection
with the actual pharmacological properties of
'dangerous drugs.'  The 'danger' of
masturbation disappeared when we ceased to
believe in it:  we then ceased to attribute
danger to the practice and to its
practitioners; and ceased to call it 'self-
abuse.'

     Of course, some people still behave in
disagreeable and even dangerous ways, but we
no longer attribute their behavior to
masturbation or self-abuse:  we now attribute
their behavior to self-medication or drug
abuse.  We thus play a game of musical chairs
with medical alibis for human desire,
determination, and depravity.  Though this
sort of intolerance is easy, it is also
expensive:  it seems clear that only in
accepting human beings for what they are can
we accept the chemical substances they use for
what they are.  In short, only insofar as we
are able and willing to accept men, women, and
children as neither angels nor devils, but as
persons with certain inalienable rights and
irrepudiable duties, shall we be able and
willing to accept heroin, cocaine, and
marijuana as neither panaceas nor
panapathogens, but as drugs with certain
chemical properties and ceremonial
possibilities.


REFERENCES
1.  Szasz, T..  The Second Sin.  Garden City,
N.Y.:  Doubleday, 1973.
2.  Mises, L.  von.  Human Action:  A Treatise
on Economics.  New Haven:  Yale University
Press, 1949.
3.  See, for example, S.  Auerbach, 'Behavior
control' is scored, Miami Herald, Dec.  28,
1972, p.  15-A.

 Other articles:

http://www.oikos.org/soliloqu.htm

http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/march02levine.htm
 
Someone we all admire that would be diagnosed clinically insane by current ADA standards:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/madpride/mlk-iaacm/mlk
 

Hobo Poem

You wonder why I'm a hobo and sleep in the ditch 
Well it's not because I'm lazy, I just don't want to be rich. 
Now I could be a banker if I wanted to be, 
But the thought of an iron cage is too suggestive to me. 
Now I could be a broker without the slightest excuse, 
But look at 1929 and tell me what's the use. 
- A hobo poem

Just Say Yes To Drugs (Unless A Shrink Gives Them To You)

The world of psychiatry is dedicated to continuously refining the requirements for being ‘normal’.  As the requirements are refined, it becomes more difficult to think and behave in the officially 'normal' way, so that the number of people diagnosed with 'mental disorders' continues to increase.  Further, because 'mental disorders' are regarded as brain malfunctions, they are treated like other bodily malfunctions: With drugs.  

Of course, psyciatrists make these determinations based on the self-reported behavior of their patients and not, like other doctors, on real medical tests (brain scans, blood tests, etc.).  So, not only do psychiatrists get to decide whether you are 'normal', they can do so without any empirical evidence of any kind.  

There are two frightening consequences of this system:

1. The psychiatric community is given the power to make detailed determinations about the patterns of thought and behavior that qualify us as 'sane', 

2.  and they are given coercive power to force people into conformity to these definition, whether by drugging them, incarcerating them (in mental institutions) or publicly villifying them (with various labels for insanity).  

As the definitions for normalcy become more finely tuned, the drugs to 'treat' people become more powerful in their capacity to control specific areas of thought and behavior.  It follows, then, that whoever controls the distribution, legalization and prohibition of drugs can, in an indirect way, control the thinking and behavior of populations.  And we have handed these powers over to the state, allowing them to determine what, why and when we put drugs into our bodies.  In turn, as psychiatric definitions and their attendant 'treatments' become more refined and expansive, there is a corresponding increase the capacity of the state to control the thinking and behavior of the populace.  By way of the FDA, DEA and other state-controlled enforcement instutions (police, courts, prisons, mental hospitals, etc.), the government has been handed the authority not only to tell us how to think and behave, but also the authority to drug us and incarcerate us when we don't comply.

In other words, the advancement of the psychiatric establishment has provided the state with the most despotic and powerful machine for social control that could be imagined: The power to coerce the population into thinking and behaving in whatever way they see fit.

----

 Anti-drug campaigns and ‘mental health’ advocacy are especially powerful when children are involved.  The ostensible reason for this emphasis is that children are especially vulnerable to 'disorders' and 'illicit drugs'.  However, if my argument above is correct, the real reason likely to be that the state needs to prepare people for control at their most formative and impressionable stages.  Children are taught to say "no" to a certain list of drugs and to say "yes" to another.  The "no" list tends to include drugs that open the mind to ways of thinking that are subversive to the interests of the state.  The "yes" list tends to include drugs that inhibit creative thinking and allow authorities to more effectively control behavior.

For example:

 

“You must consume this medicine called Ritalin because your doctor and school nurse have diagnosed you with a disorder.  You are disordered because you do not behave and think in a way that we deem useful to the social order we are commissioned to enforce.” 

 “In spite of its proven safety and non-toxicity, you may not consume psilocybin because it will cause you to become disordered" (i.e., open your mind to new ways of thinking that don't support the interests of the state).

 “What you do in your own home is your business. Well, unless it involves the consumption of certain species of plants or fungi.  This is because they might make you think or act abnormally, as determined by our definitions of normality."

---

Call me crazy (and many do!), but I say that both children and adults be given the freedom todo  whatever the fuck they want with their own minds and bodies, especially when it helps you to think in ways that run contrary to the social norms and government propaganda.  Just say YES to magic mushrooms, weed, LSD or whatever else you freely choose to put into your own body, and say NO to the control-pills given to you by your shrink.  It's YOUR mind and YOUR life: Never give up that fact (even when commanded at gunpoint to do so).

A Preference for Insects (Waking Up Changed)

I don’t care what Kafka says.  It’s one thing to wake up in the morning as a bug, but quite another to wake up as a nihilist.  Offered only the two, I’d opt for insecthood any day.  At least I’d have a tangible shell to protect me instead of a melting, plastic shield of dying beliefs.

The Razor's Edge (Psychedelics and Morality)

To say that a particular idea is “right” or “wrong” to “some particular degree” is the same as to say the social acceptance aggregate, as determined by my interests, is either strong or weak.  Which is to say, the idea is more or less useful around certain kinds of people (the ones I need to stay linked to). 

 Moral claims both spoken (“this should be done”) and unspoken (“I am doing this, which is my bid for its needing to be done”), are offers for an exchange of social capital.  They are economic transactions. 

 Everything is mathematical, a play of numbers, an algorithm at the razor’s edge between “nothing” and “something.”

 Psychedelics, properly used, provide an experience of this edge.

Suicide and Inertia

"I" continue to exist to the extent that my behaviors are meaningful to others.  This is because socially determined meanings are necessary for movements to be actions, and actions are further subsumed as meaningful with reference to "me" as the person acting. 

In other words, "I" am a product of the attitudes held by others about the meanings of my behaviors.  

But this implies a kind of enslavement, since my self is constructed from outside of me and apart from my own choices.  When I recognize this slavery, I may feel threatened and become disillusioned with my world.  This results in my innate desire for freedom, a desire to be self-determining in the construction of my identity and my choices for acting.  

But I can only attain this freedom if I refuse to behave in ways that will be meaningful to others.  Self-determined "actions" lose the meaningfulness that makes them "actions," so that they become mere events.  As a result, my desire to escape from enslavement is also an embrace of inaction.  

Freedom, then, is only achievable through inertia.

Inertia and suicide are two ways of describing the same experience.  The desire for suicide is the desire to abstain from meaningful movement (action) and suicide is the successful attainment of such abstinence.  It seems, however, that that such a mission cannot be entirely authentic since it sets up inertia (escape, suicide, etc.) as an objective.  By replacing old objectives with a new one, I have simply assumed another socially construct that underwrites the meaninfulness of my behaviors (making them actions).  

This suggests that, to really commit suicide, I cannot not use a gun or a knife (which would involve meaningful behaviors and objectives, ie., actions).  The authentic suicide requires a resting in inertia, voilitional stillness.  This is death through inaction, outside of choice (illustrated by the passive starvation of the protagonist in Knut Hamsun's Hunger).

On this account, suicide is the cessation of action, sustained non-movement without deliberation, complete inertia.  I have described this elsewhere as "trading places with the vagrant," by which I relinquish all possessions and commitments that provide me with identity.  This is "death" in a very profound sense, is it not?  

So, in the end, freedom can only occur in the process of pure suicide.  If tomorrow I will not exist, I am free to do anything today.

Writing on Napkins (An Unsober Reflection on Freedom)

(transcribed from notes on my bar napkins)

Availability as potential absence = alcoholism.

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When, finally, I can see objects as objects, I will be free.

And in any event, there are two ways to be free:  To be (1) attuned to the social structures, and (2) to be entirely naïve with respect to them.  The dances between the former and the latter are the reason I’m an alcoholic.

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The fragility of a social structure is determined by the degree to which you recognize it as a social structure.  The neurotic (psychotic?) tend to shatter everything because, in the light of their gazes, everything becomes fragile and a path can be laid in any direction.

Falling Asleep

When you’re at the edge of sleep, the little nervous geists in the back of your head begin to emerge, and your fears flash before your eyes.  The events and things and people that you do not want to look at, they are always there, waiting to look at you.

A Note About Existing Things

In short, things are.  The rest is a sham, wrapping paper, undebugged programming, a history of contests woven into protective garments that cannot be removed, only decayed (death).  

Why I Stopped Believing In "God"

4/25/02

I don’t believe in God anymore.

I spent years searching for resources to prop up my dying faith.  I sifted through every potentially useful theological and philosophical apparatus I could find.  Every one of them dissolved in my hands.

I can no longer look into the eyes of the suffering—all of their eyes, past and present—and believe that a God of any interesting sort is really out there.  If there is a God, this God is either a malicious tyrant, an impotent sub-deity, or somehow preoccupied with other things.  In any event, such gods hardly suffice for religious devotion.

Small excerpt from the chronicle of those burned at the stake in the city of Wurzburg in the year 1598 under suspicion of witchcraft:

“The steward of the senate named Gering; old Mrs. Kanzler; the tailor’s fat wife; the woman cook of Mr. Mengerdorf; a stranger; a strange woman; Baunach, a senator, the fattest citizen in Wurtzburg; the old smith of the court; an old woman; a little girl, nine or ten years old; a younger girl, her little sister; the mother of the two little aforementioned girls; Liebler’s daughter; Goebel’s child, the most beautiful girl in Wurtzburg; a student who knew many languages; two boys from the Minster, each twelve years old; Stepper’s little daughter; the woman who kept the bridge gate; an old woman; the little son of the town council bailiff; the wife of Knertz, the butcher; the infant daughter of Dr. Schultz; a little girl; Scharts, canon at Hach…”

Need I say more?

----

The above—the problem of evil—is my main reason for giving up on God (god?).  My second is the one cited below, a modified excerpt from a paper I wrote in grad school:

In spite of what many sociologists say, I am of the opinion that religion in a robust sense isdying.  Its death is not identifiable with, say, reduced denominational loyalty or neglect of traditional doctrine, but with a trajectory of retreat accompanied by a demotion in function.  It has assumed a defense strategy that has been formed in response to modern threats to religion. 

First, what do I mean by “demotion in function”?  I arrive at this idea by dividing the history of American religion into two stages: before and after the onset of the “quest culture.”  Before the quest culture, in keeping with the larger part of the history of religion, institutions and doctrines functioned chiefly as explanation.  Backed by divine authority and revelation, they answered questions like: Where does the world come from?  Where do humans come from?  and, Why did this or that event happen?   In the late modern era, however, this role was gradually discredited owing, among other things, the increasing acceptance of scientific forms of explanation.  For instance, only a hundred years ago, if the average American were asked, Where did the world come from?, he or she would probably reference the doctrine of creation: “God made it.”  These days, fewer and fewer people would respond this way, citing instead the Big Bang or some other science-related explanation.  This suggests that religion has largely lost its validity as a way of explaining how the nuts-and-bolts of the world hold together and where they come from.  So, when I say that religion has been demoted in its function, I mean that, except in some Fundamentalist enclaves, religion is no longer allowed to function as an authoritative explanation of the outside world (at least, not to the degree that it had in the past).  Viewed from another angle, this may simply be described as a feature of societal differentiation: religion no longer supplies an overarching umbrella of explanation and has become, alongside politics and the arts, one of many parts of a fragmented social order.

Second, in response to this demotion, religion has been forced to protect itself by assuming a trajectory of retreat.  This notion relates to the fact that American spirituality has become so radically individualized and psychological.  If, as I suggest, religion has lost its authority as explanation, the individualization of religion appears to be a kind of defense strategy: threatened by the growing dominance of secular explanations of the “outside world,” religion has retreated to the inner sphere of subjective experience where it can perform another, more practical role and can insulate itself from scientific critique.  So, whereas scientists can easily question a religious claim like, “God makes the wind blow,” they would be hard pressed to question a claim like, “When meditating, I often feel the presence of my inner goddess.”  In short, I am suggesting that American quest religion is, in part, a prophylactic strategy that keeps science on the outside where it can do no harm to religion, and which keeps religion on the inside where it will not feel threatened by science (although, of course, I have more than just science in mind).

In my view, this conception helps unify many features of contemporary American religion. 1) Quest:  without the explanatory apparatus of religion to map out the world, it has become commonplace for people to feel as if they have lost their moorings.  2)  Autonomy: without an overarching explanatory structure, it has become necessary for religion to make more modest claims about the scope of religious “truth”; a single belief system is no longer true for everybody, it need only be true “for me.”  3)  God as immanent:  secular thought forms have made it difficult to maintain that there is a personal being “out there” who, from time to time, interferes in worldly affairs.  It seems more plausible to say that God is within my subjective experience since, in that way, no one except myself can have access to it.  Having lost explanatory transcendence, God has become so immanent as to be above critique.  4)  Achieved religious identity: if religion has no power to explain my place in the universe and if it is not “out there” in the structures of reality imposing itself upon me, I must trust my inner voice and, reflexively, choose my own religious identity.  More examples could be cited, but these will suffice to illustrate how my second claim can unify a broad range of religious phenomena.  Put differently, my claim is simply this: just as a turtle retracts its head and appendages within its protective shell upon seeing a predator, so American religion has retreated to a place within where it can avoid potential attacks from science and other non-religious modes of explanation.

In short, religion has been reduced to superstition (hardly a preferred destination for those who desire truth).

The History of Philosophy as Theater

2/18/02

A theater-performance demands its characters.  If a character is needed, the playwright senses it and the play, as if by its own volition, fills itself in.  Situations open up vacuums.

The history of philosophy is a theater-performance and it, too, demands its characters.  The pre-socratics brought a demand for a Diogenes, Hegel’s dominion brought a demand for a Kirkegaard, the analytics brought a demand for a Rorty. 

But there is no playwright.  We must write ourselves in.  To repeat with a different emphasis, we—that is, we philosophers—MUST write ourselves in (when our performance is demanded).  The performance, the situation, elects us to this call.

Further, we must play our part properly, if grudgingly, as it is given to us.  We must wear the masks we are given (even when they are ugly).

To be concerned about the performance, about its successful progression, is to be concerned about truth.  Therefore, to demand our own place, to demand that we ourselves BE the whole of the performance—the ones having “arrived at truth”—is to detract from the success of the project.  Imagine a worker assigned to drive bolts into the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge who says, “The bridge project isn’t about these damn bolts.  Its about getting across the bay mouth.  Fuck this job!  I’m just going to take a boat.”  The worker does not sense the worth of the fully constructed bridge because he is fixated on the minute and seemingly stupid character of his own task.

It is not attaining the form of the good, but being a part of the means by which it is attained, that we must strive for.

Losing My Moorings

9/27/01  

I have lost my moorings and see only a horizon, and don’t have a clue where I am going or why. 

When I was younger, my life had two anchors.  The first was my set of objectives in life: my career, religious goals, etc.  Second was my structure of meaning, the way I ordered my world, religiously or otherwise.  These two anchors were crucial in keeping me motivated and sane, but now I fear they are slipping away.

The first to go has been the “structure of meaning” anchor.  When I contracted that God-awful disease in college (which they call “philosophy”), my assumptions about the world began first to shift from one place to another, and after that to disintegrate as if by old age.  I am like a piece of metal that is severed because it has been bent too many times in the same place.  My disease has so progressed that now I believe in bad faith, as a way to cope, but not in any deep or complete way.  My beliefs do not permeate me anymore; they are out on the surface; they are thin and fragile. 

The next to go was the “objectives” anchor.  I am no longer certain of what I want to accomplish in my life.  My greatest fear—that I will wake up one day near the end of my life and discover that it had all been quite ordinary—is beginning to come true, if no other reason than that my destiny is slipping away from me, leaving me behind with “the masses in mediocrity.”  I have no destiny anymore.

My destiny is gone because it can find no purchase: I have a bifurcated mind.  On one side there is a chaotic mind that has given up on the hope of finding any real meaning in the world, or order, or reason to exist and go on.  This mind sees only the “booming buzzing confusion” and, because it is ruled by nothing but doubt, cynicism and disappointment with all of its previous attempts at ordering the world, it wants to do nothing and would become nothing if it had not been coupled with the other side of my mind.  The other side of my mind is the fantasy that I choose to accept.  It is my ostensible reality, framed not out of conviction but out of…what?...my need to survive, to cope, to at least enjoy life a little? 

The two sides are at war and I am detecting a trendline that is forecasting the winner.  It says that the chaotic mind will ultimately be the victor, that I will lose that last bit of conviction that keeps me from throwing in the towel.  Sometimes I feel like writing off the world—the whole damn thing, the whole, stupid damn thing—as one big absurdity.

What is better, lady piety?  to be honest with myself and give in to nihilism, or to squelch the chaos with lies about meaning and order, and gratify my thirst for pleasure? 

Nietzsche makes my wine taste bad. 

I suppose one should say that, in this case, it is wiser to be the hedonist; at least it promotes survival.

Poetry Defined

Poetry is honesty…broken up into chunks.

(Honesty is always too itself to be recognizable when whole).

Kafka and the Smell of Truth: Poetry at the Fringes of Thought

Where was Kafka getting it right?  Why do we enjoy his stories?  What about them can account for their intrigue and apparent importance?  

The world is like Reagan’s joke, wherein the optimist gleefully digs in the pile of manure, saying, “There’s gotta be a donkey in here somewhere!”  With Kafka, we find the manure and we have the premonition of finding a donkey, but what is the donkey?  Is it truth?  Is THAT why truth is valuable, namely, that it lies beneath all that is explicit?  That it is intractably hidden?  Perhaps, after all, the notion that truth is “god” has got it right, insofar that is, that this notion acknowledges the invisibility and irretrievability of truth.  Dig as you may, you never turn it up, yet it smells strong all the while.

 Truth is what lies behind that sneaking sense that one can and must escape from oneself in matters of perception and understanding.  That one can get at what lies out there in the god’s eye view…

 No, I’m getting this all wrong.

 Truth, rather, is a gas (Wittgenstein’s comments on mathematics.  Mienong cannot find his objects here, because they cannot be held by hands).  We make cracks in our encrusted what-it-is, in our everydayness, and we begin to smell something seeping up through the cracks.  This compells us to search for the source of this smell, but search as we may, we always come up with nothing.  But most people have their mouths too full of shit to search anyway, and they wonder why we philosophers attend so neurotically to what's underneath. 

 Kafka made cracks, and that was his genius.  Those cracks are the stuff of nightmares, they give us the guilt.  The guilt that we haven’t followed our noses, or perhaps it is this: that had we followed our noses, we would have in the end discovered our wrongdoing (now Dostoevsky). 

It just occurred to me: Humans are copies, archives, of a primative form.  Even their thoughts are reproductions insofar as batteries of mechananisms have produced them, their variance being mere pathetic attempts at variation.  We are like products on shelves—bags of candy—with a “net weight” but not an “exact count or volume,” since “contents may settle during shipping” and besides, the machines do not bother to count each M&M because that wouldn’t be profitable.

 So we are these “net weights,” these approximations, these mass produced goods fit for consumption by time and nature.  Individuals are good for nothing, but are designed to be piled in with all the others (the chief concern of our design being to approximate our mass-produced neighbors on the shelf). 

 In other words, in a naturally evolved world, there is no “me.”  There is not even an “us.”  There are instead reproductions with strategically implanted variations.  But we make the grand, miserable, pathetic mistake of assuming that those variations constitute unique personal identities.  But personal identity is a sham, because the source of our personal identity is a manufacturing facility with machinery having a built-in randomizer. 

 We are only ourselves because it was strategically necessary in the marketplace of survival.  Hume was right:  Personal identity is an illusion.  But he was wrong in defending this perspective by appealing to the disconnectedness of perceptions.  He should, rather, have noticed the common source of our perceptions (the mass production behind the stuff we call the ‘self’) and realized that, in fact, we are all—thoughts and dreams and all—variations on a theme for the purpose of not losing everything when the next pressure to survival comes to town.

 We are bundles of programming with net weights (go to a finer level of measurement, and even that comes out with variation, betraying the mutancy of what the bag contains).

 So, back to Kafka.  Kafka made cracks. That was his genius.

 

So, Kafka’s Cracks

A cockroach

Iron

Descends upon the tempered glass

the crackling lawn

the us

Whose expectations clamor for common recognition

 

And nothing breaks, but

cracks are formed like spiders legs

cold and icy and prying apart

Arctic backgrounds yet unnoticed

Before us

Behind us

invisible.

 

Gas ascends

Putrid rising

I recognize it and fear

My own wanton lust for its

Source in the dark abyss

Beneath the ice.

 

So tempted are we by Kafka

That we want and plead and grope

With a crazy horny desire

To slip ourselves between the cracks

And drown within the darkness

Below

Where truth’s fragrant beams

Are all at once quaffed

And appealingly undiscovered.

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Art is terrifying insofar as it happily reduces any anxiety that we my have about living life as we ought.

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Kafka’s art invites us to receive everything as a potentially other, since beneath everything, is something so other to us, that its smell alarms and, in the end, murders us (The Trial).  Kafka bothers us because he hints at the idea that, in the end, truth is a killer instead of a life-giver.  That smell emanating from the cracks is poisonous, but—AND THIS IS WHY WE PHILOSOPHERS IMBIBE THE FRAGRANCE IN SPITE OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF ITS NOXIOUS ESSENCE—the smell is a laughing gas.  It makes us laugh at everyone who has failed to smell the gas coming from the cracks.  They die without knowing why, whereas we miserable ones die from deeply breathing in the noxious odours of truth.  We mean to breath it.  Social gas masks look unattractive to us compared to the glamour of the powdered nose.  The padded cell with it’s freedoms (more cracks than the psych-techs can see…notice the icy floor).

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Kafka wanted us to feel guilty about something, but what?  Disaprobation from family (The Metamorphosis), litigation by a mysterious elite (The Trial).

Here is where the guilt comes from, really, I think, if we read between the lines.  This, namely, the…

loneliness

of your own “right-here-right-now-in-this-place-with-this-shape-and-color-and-texture-and-plasticity-and-sameness-to-all-that-like-myself-are-subject-to-death-without-being-noticed.”

That didn’t capture what I wanted to express.

GUILT.

There is something important about that way of seeing things (things experienced as one who feels guilty).

Dostoevsky needs to give up gOD here in favor of mass-productive-equivalence.

That’s god without meaning and purpose and worthiness.

Not god but garbage that still works when plugged in.

 It makes us uncomfortable, does it not (I revel here!)?

To juxtapose the words GOD and

                                    GARBAGE

                                                ?

 Why?

 Because both smell funny, which is why both are so intriguing and sweet and subject to that “what’s-beneath-this-object”ness that, in my view, helps bring forth truth’s gases.

The unreality of a number is the crack that gives way to a gas which smells like infinity.

I’m not trying to sound deep here.  I’m trying to give voice to a metaphor that I feel, but cannot express properly.  I am trying, hoping, longing, wishing, assuming, giving-my-best-shot-at poking at “the divine.” 

God is never found, never known, never touched.  God is not a being, not a person, not a savior.  God kills us by sneaking into our awareness.  God is the black whole beneath us, drawing us into the dark depths of giving-up.  God is the prophecy of Sagan about the expansion of the sun—no!—God is the hunch had by one about to die—no!—god is…

...The personification of the fear and guilt that happens when cracks are opened up in our everydayness.

Book of Disquiet, an excerpt

“To submit to nothing, whether to a man or a love or an idea, and to have the aloof independence of not believing in the truth or even (if it existed) in the usefulness of knowing it—this seems to me the right attitude for the intellectual inner life of those who can’t live without thinking.  To belong is synonymous with banality.  Creeds, ideals, a woman, a profession—all are prisons and shackles.  To be is to be free.  Even ambition, if we take pride in it, is a hindrance; we wouldn’t be proud of it if we realized it’s a string by which we’re pulled.  No: no ties even to ourselves!  Free from ourselves as well as from others, contemplatives without ecstasy, thinkers without conclusions and liberated from God, we will live the few moments of bliss allowed us in the prison yard by the distraction of our executioners.  Tomorrow we will face the guillotine.  Or if not tomorrow, then the day after.  Let us stroll about in the sun before the end comes, deliberately forgetting all projects and pursuits.  Without wrinkles our foreheads will glow in the sun, and the breeze will be cool for those who quit hoping.” 

Fernando Pessoa

Becoming the Vagrant (a Dream)

Euclid Avenue, Berkeley, in the morning.  Students study the ground before them, walking silently, considering the tasks demanded of them today, tomorrow, next week.  The dawn light, muted by that familiar nebula of haze that shrouds the bay, pours itself over the scene, the street, sidewalk, and shop windows painted by its pink luster.  I hear commuters’ engines slowly pass before me, behind, on my left, their irritated growls betraying the failed hunt for streetside parking close to campus.  As if on cue, the smell of donuts belches from a roofpipe as I pass the shop of that old Asian baker, the one who makes the strong coffee that I often fetch before my mid-afternoon classes.

But this scene is all background and white noise.  As I walk, nothing is real to me except for my projects.  The term papers, the deadlines, the thesis ideas, these all swim back and forth like schools of fish in my mind, my consciousness fixed on them.  These account for my brisk stride, my hurried glances at the clock tower.  It is as if the swirling motions in the scene around me are sustained by these projects, or rather, that my projects have thrown me into this scene without my consent.  They are the energy of my movement: My tasks and concerns are the libido of my world.

I notice a vagrant beneath a bush on my right.  His eyes turn toward me.  They are blue, sagging upon a contorted jaw, its mechanism rotating a set of bare gums.  His gaze captures me as if by a spell and my gait is halted.  As I look back at him, I begin to see not a face, but things.  His face disappears, as it were, and strange objects appear in its place.  There is a sunburned brow, a piece of noodle clinging to shaggy hair, stubble.  Beneath the bush around him I begin to see filth and unmoving chunks, lumps, debris.  A crumpled bit of paper, a half-dried puddle of mucous, a lard stain.

Then, as if startling myself in a mirror while alone in a room, I begin to notice my own body.  With the vagrant’s face, I too have disappeared.  Instead of me, there is only this lumpy mass of objects, disparately organized, heavy, soft in parts and hard in others.  It wants at first to be in motion, but the energy putting it in motion begins to subside and it sits unmoving.  Then the feet appear, two wraiths suddenly appearing to collect me.  Everything grows cold: a book in my hands, the breeze seeping into my shirt.  I smell the donuts again and I smell shit in the bush at the same time.

And I begin to lose my grip on things familiar.  My concerns are fading from the front of my mind like visitors departing without saying goodbye.  My mind is following a strange scent into a place it has never visited before: the background of my world. 

 

A raspy voice is calling me into the bush.  The old man with his wizened hands and filth.  He is saying something and now, as if entranced by his voice, I am wholly occupied by him.  I want to touch his face. 

            And a strange kind of terror begins to take hold of me.  The same terror attending a descent into paralysis.  Every option for acting—an infinite number—is suddenly available to me.  Every way I look with my minds eye, I see nothing except objects overlaid with options.  This paralyzes me.  I cannot decide which option to choose because I see no means of preferring one over another.  Yet I feel that I must choose, so I turn round and round in my mind, possibilities swimming before my eyes.  But, as if I am viewing them from a high speed carnival ride, they become a blur. 

In this condition, I feel that I may sit here all morning, all day, all night.  I could remain tomorrow, the next day, and the day after until, like this man, I begin to resemble a bag of garbage.  Having become this, all of my projects will disappear completely and cease to exist.  Indeed, to this point they have merely resided on the edge of existence, not having any being except in my own mind.  Having existed only in my mind and cast out by my mind, they will be extinct. 

I consider that my sitting will not draw the slightest attention from the students walking on Euclid because it would make me part of their white noise.  They would not see me.  I would be a venue for their projects.  No, rather, I have always been such, but did not know it because I was using them in the same way (using them through neglect).  I have fallen into another world or, perhaps, I have clambered out of the world into which I had, in the beginning, already fallen. 

My existence is becoming suspect.  Something—the vagrant?—has punctured my world and deflated it, and now I cannot take hold of it anymore.  I only see things attached to other things, and everything without any attitude or relation to me.  Pieces of gum, black and round, spotting the pavement.  Dried leaves clustered in cobwebs beneath the hedge.  My own hands, as if I had never seen them before.

And I wonder what is beneath the skin of that hand I find before my face.  This wondering reinforces an option for acting and this—acting—slows the dizzy spin.  I reach into my bag for another object, a pen, cheap, stolen from the library.  I plunge it into the palm of my left hand and the pain emerges as if it, too, were an object, a thing outside of me.  I perceive it in the same way I perceive the pen.  I do not perceive it as pain.  The as-ness of the world is fading.  There are only frightened nerves.  The oozing begins and I fall backward into the bush, twisting the pen deeper and harder, aiming between the bones.  I ponder the surfaces of these sensations as I might those of a stone, absent-mindedly.

Blood is running down my arm.  I feel it chilling and notice the strange color that appears when it contacts my pale blue shirt.  The pen has plunged so deeply now that I can see a dancing peak on top of my hand as the tip of pen tries to pierce its surface.  But I lose my interest and toss the pen into the street as if it had become empty.

The blood reaches the sidewalk.  Shoeprints form and fade in twos and threes as students, unnoticing, step through it.  It will dry soon, I think, and silently watch.

The vagrant turns his gaze to me, his yellowed eyes gaping.  And suddenly, as if taken by a fit, he flies upon me, his long, twisted fingers about my neck, clutching.  I hesitate for a moment, noticing the sensations: his greasy, trembling hands, his bony legs bent backward.  Vapors of vodka and tobacco.  Teeth like little shards jutting from gray gums. 

My left hand scrambles across the pavement and I find the pen near the gutter as my vision begins to dim.  I realize now that the vagrant is squeezing harder, asphyxiating me. 

Fight.  Finding my strength, I roll over, trading places with my assailant, pinning him to the sidewalk.  His eyes are shut hard now and his mouth is bent downward at the sides, clownish.  In our tumble, his head hits the pavement; he is grunting and coughing, remembering his weakness.  I release my grip and the pen falls to the ground again.

            Others have noticed us now.  They have seen the blood and the conflict and some have stopped.  They are murmuring with disguised voices.  I look up at them, panting and vicious.  “I am this stuff,” I say, displaying my wound.  One of them grimaces and walks off.  Another of them—a young woman—waves her arms at someone across the street.

“He killed the old man!”  She shouts.  She has an Asian accent.  I don’t immediately understand why she is shouting.  I cannot find meaning in anything except fighting, but that is done now. 

Others approach and form a small crowd.  Their faces fill me with terror.  I try to explain:  “There is no point in doing this.  I can sit under the bush.  I can just be here like him.  I am just this.”  I raise my hand to them, proving my case, but to no effect.

I stagger to my feet and stand over the vagrant.  The crowd moves back, forming a semi-circle around us.  I gently nudge the man’s head with my shoe, then again and again, harder so that I’m kicking.  There is no response.  I point at the man, “I don’t know who he is.  I don’t know where to go.”  These words seem to be addressed to myself, but I only hear the sounds in my head that do not speak to me.

Down the block, I see a police car round the corner. 

Flight.  I find a gap in the crowd, dart forward and run, thwarting someone’s attempt to block me.  The crowd is pointing and shouting at me but their voices merging with the noise of the traffic. 

I run between two buildings, behind a row of bushes beside a hotel, through a sea of cars in a parking lot.  I have the disturbing sensation of the perfect freedom of going nowhere and anywhere, of moving without acting and without destination.  The self I had forged among others is dead and gone.  I am a vagrant; an animal with no identity.  I have committed suicide, perfectly and purely.