Chapter 16: Science or Opinion
I say things as if they were true because I want them to be true. I have always admired men like Edward Abbey, Nietzsche, Malcolm X, and even Jesus, who stood up and said what needed to be said. Perhaps these men sometimes twist the truth a little, but they said things the way they needed to be said.
I have never lived as part of a primitive society that lives as part of Nature. Almost all primitive cultures are now dead. The few who survived have been absorbed by other cultures. Many of these people are now part of the lower class, which is what has happened to all primitive cultures that civilization, has absorbed. The old ways are dying everywhere. Some of their cultural heritage remains, but it’s not the same as when they, actually, lived wild, and the forces of Nature actually surrounded them and made them act like savages.
I’ve met a few individuals who reject civilization, and prefer a more wild lifestyle, but these few men are isolated individuals and are not really a society. They don’t experience the tribe that was an important part of the savage lifestyle. There are a few groups of people who have tried to leave civilization, but there is not really anywhere they can go to get away from the system. They all end up back in civilization, because the pressures of civilization catch up with them. They are not in the wild long enough for their culture to become natural. Now there are no more savages, which is sad. The little Nature that is left is set aside for campers, who are out for the weekend, and bring their portable electronic entertainment systems.
People accuse me of having a false image of primitive people. How do they know? Where is this accurate report that I supposedly missed. Could they believe false stories? Some people tend to accept the opinions of the experts rather than use their own brains. What if the experts are idiots? Whenever knowledge is limited to a few people, we end up with few people to correct mistakes. Without outside opinions, the specialist can get use to repeating the same old mistakes. There are many lies circulating about, and few people know how to correct these lies. Test opinions. Do your own research.
Unfortunately, books about Man are unreliable. The study of Man is difficult, because the scientific method does not work on Man as well as it does in physics. In physics you can discover yourself wrong if your ideas do not fit observations. Few psychologists or sociologists have ever proven themselves wrong. Instead, they have found unlimited support for any ridiculous idea. One researcher may believe that liars smile. Another may think that liars never smile. Man is so dynamic that both researchers may find evidence that supports their contradictory conclusions. In the study of Man, the specialist knows just as little as the guy down the street.
Often, primitive cultures had no way to tell their own story to outsiders. Any outsider will change the story to fit the way he thinks it should be. During the Victorian Age it was thought that the Indians were evolving from a primitive thinking too more advanced consciousness. Scholars gathered information that supported this conclusion. Most of this information was speculation that was not supported by fact. To support this speculation they invented words like fetish, fertility, and taboo. They studied these words rather than real cultures. During the mid-20th century it was thought that all mythology came from the same model in the unconscious mind, and they found myths to fit this model. They were able to get it to fit by ignoring parts of stories that did not fit, and they exaggerated the parts that did fit. During the 60’s and 70’s, they thought American Indians had a higher Zen consciousness that conservative, right wing, Midwestern America had forgotten. More recently, people have reviewed the old reports and found that scholars sometimes translate and change the wording of a narrative to fit their own interpretation. It is better to study, what people say in their own words.
Unfortunately even a person who is a member of the tribe might not know what he is talking about. A tribe member may have lived with civilization so long that he has lost all contact with his people. His report is made up mostly of what he read in books. His picture of his people is just a copy of civilization’s lies. Good, truthful reports on primitive people are hard to find. There are a lot of books I use to think were true, only to later find were false.
A researcher might not understand a custom, so the people give him an incomplete story. All cultures have their own secrets, and sometimes find it funny when an anthropologist doesn’t get it. Sometimes they have to keep these secrets because the civilized authorities would freak if they knew. Their small culture is surrounded by the larger civilization, which has complete power over them, and can persecute them at any time. Anything they say will be misunderstood and used against them. The larger society can dominate social organizations and make anyone who does not conform an outcast in his own hometown. Christians have had people killed just for doing harmless traditions.
Psychologists and sociologists have a really hard time understanding Indian trickster stories. They think that the stories are idiotic, thought they don’t use the word "idiotic." They prefer to use one of those technical, psychological terms which means idiotic but seems more scholarly. They think that the stories say something about the culture, which invented these stories. Similar stories exist in our culture. Ever watch Bart Simpson, or how about Beavis and Butthead? These are not statements about a culture; they’re just stuff people like because they’re funny. Tricksters often have a kind of insight that some people don’t understand. Not all Indians appreciate the trickster stories, but they accept the trickster as a sacred person in their religion, because they let people with a good sense of humor add fun to their culture. Christians invent boring religions, because boring people dominate their culture. Psychologists and sociologists who can’t understand the trickster stories are probably no fun. They might even think of a more civilized, less obscene clown to replace Bart; someone who benefits their civilization by being a good role model. They are so quick to condemn what they don’t understand, and replace it with something they think they do understand.
The new, ecologically-politically correct intellectuals think that primitive people actively maintained their fragile ecosystem. Occasionally, older, well-established agricultural communities, called first people, will have what looks like a harmony with their environment. We should ask if this is really maintenance of the ecosystem. It seems to me to be interference with the ecosystem. These communities have found a way to preserve the interference. They are nonprogressive civilizations. They are fighting a war with Nature, but have hit a temporary stalemate. Progressive civilization is the one who keep advancing and beating Nature.
These first people do not live in real a natural ecosystem and their life style is not natural. Such communities usually have to struggle to keep this harmony. Their life becomes a constant fight to patch up the wound they keep making in the Earth. They might be able to make the dessert bloom in an unnatural way, but a natural dessert has its own value that these people have lost. In the long run, this harmony of theirs might actually lead to all kinds of civilized problems.
Hunter-gatherers maintained Nature mostly by not interfering with it. Their influence was small compared to civilization's interference. The idea of active maintenance allows progressive people to believe that civilization could one day maintain the ecosystem. This latest breed of civilized intellectuals are inventing lies just like the old ones did. Even those who see destruction that progress have caused keep a faith in progress by inventing new progressive thinking.
Socialists generally want to replace capitalism with a bureaucracy, which would control peoples lives even worse than capitalism. They want to restructure society by dominating the news media. They don’t want people with different ideas to get any publicity. Some socialist have become ecologists in order to blame capitalism for the worlds ecological problems. I think the problem is too much industry. Industrialized Socialist countries, such as Romania, have ruined their ecosystem too. The ecologist socialist hate people who believe that Nature severs it’s own purposes, because they think that everything should serve their political dogma, including Nature. Their dogma is a kind of philosophy of history that few understand, because it’s all bullshit.
When I tell a socialist that I care more about nature and freedom than their politics, they accuse me of being insensitive to starving people in Africa. I don’t know how to solves the over population problems in Africa. Maybe people in Africa would solve their own problems if other countries left them alone. This world has enough bureaucracy screwing things up.
Some people accuse me of wanting a world where disease war and famine would control the numbers of blacks in Africa. I don’t feel that way at all. Disease, war and famine does not control human population, instead misery causes populations to increase. Populations stabilize when a society is stable. Africa was stable till western civilization started to exploit them.
EARTH FIRST! I don’t care about blacks, but I am not trying to hurt then. One average rich white person uses more of the Earth’s resources and causes more ecological damage that several hundred poor blacks. Whites people need killing more than blacks.
Our natural social instincts create stable societies. Perhaps small separate tribes are better than large governments. In a small tribe the individuals contribution is important. In a large government the system rules over the individual, and the individual instincts are not allowed to create a stable natural society.
Some people have told me that we need governments to protect the wilderness from developers. I refuse to believe that. Governments are not trust worthy. Groups of people protect Nature. Governments only act if these groups push them. Rather than go to Washington, why not just protect Nature yourself? We should not need governments for anything. I see an age of people who understand Nature. They live as part of it. They know what it means to be human. I recommend that you find a group of friends, go out, destroy some machines, and have Fun. Become a warrior. Teach your enemies how to fear you. Laugh at civilization. Celebrate you victories.
To try to fit a man in civilization is like trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. It works if you break the peg Civilized people are broken people. I’d rather break the hole and destroy civilization. If you don’t like civilization, destroy it. There is no law.
I’ve compared a lot of books and end up having to invent opinions, only, loosely based on what might be fact. I have a lot of faith in Man. It seems to me that Man is good and should be free. I build my opinions on this assumption. I don’t claim to be a scholar. Half the time I don’t even know what I am talking about. I have tried to free myself of civilized lies. This book gives a few of my results. Many civilized people don’t understand because they have never considered what to them is unthinkable. Someone who has questioned civilization, and tried to rediscover Nature, might find this book very much worth reading.
I know I use bad grammar. Give me an "F" in English. I could hire a grad student to rewrite this book so that it would look scholarly. I could even have him include quotes from highly respected PHD. guys. None of that would make this book any truer. I say what I feel to be true. I say it the way I want to say it. There are plenty of people with good grammar who can’t see their own lies. I was raised surrounded by salesmen, all of whom were good at selling anything. Their grammar was very effective, but the stuff they made you buy was crap.
I would listen to a bum yelling in the subway under Time Square if he has something true to say. All those business people, who pass him by, would rather worry about unimportant facts, like who’s president or how the Dow-Jones is doing. I got off that boat, and now those things don’t matter to me. In a civilization full of lies, what is important is whether you, yourself are for real. Don’t worry about me or my bad grammar.
Even if we don’t know if certain things are true, we can ask ourselves why we think that they are true. This is an important question when we examine what we believe about man. "Because your a jerk" is often the correct answer.
Since that the night on the beach, I have spent a lot of time searching for something, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I was in South Dakota, in some sleazy backdoor club, where I had just drunk a few bottles of Cisco; I met a sacred prostitute. He had apparently done a few Ciscos himself, too, and was the drunkest Indian I had ever seen. We started arguing incoherently, till he started bragging about himself. Most of it was sexual, about how much he can take and how much every man in town wants his flesh. I called him a fag and mostly made fun of everything he said, till he talked about walking in the way of his Animal. My mind was opened; I seemed to find what I was looking for. I realized that what I wanted was something that would support my faith, more than books, more than my imagination. The guy in front of me was the real thing. In his culture, he is God on Earth. He is the word made flesh. He must have been able to tell that I just realized something meaningful because he tore a page out of a porno magazine, gave it to me, and said, "Keep it, because now you know the shit." I left the bar, and began to walk north. My shoes were all worn out so I took them off. The Earth felt good on my feet, which have been bound in a civilized garment for so long. I am a shaman who can feel the next age coming. My visions are all strange distortions of what I really see. I can see it clearer now. Aquarius is a male concubine who pours the waters of life. Like it or not, that is the age that is about to begin. You might say that I am decadent and that I have allowed myself to fall into chaos and corruption. You might be right. I tend to dislike the orderly and lawful light. I prefer primal darkness. Most people are secure in their protected civilization and have no need to face the horrors outside. I tend to be attracted to the sleazy underworld. Some people think that Mankind has struggled to rise above the primal slime. I seem to want to slide back into it.
Ask yourself, what is this light you follow? Am I really so evil compared to you? I don’t contribute to civilization, nor do I expect anyone to serve the system. Do you? Exactly what is it that you support? Just for the hell of it, take a walk around any civilized city. You might see some not-so-pleasant sights. A progressive thinker might think that carefully well thought out progress could one day solve some of these problems. He might even think that civilization is still better off that the uncivilized man. Are any of his opinions true, or does his faith in progress convince him to believe in more progress, and prevent him from seeing the truth?
If he could see things as I see them, he would see a completely different picture. Now try to doubt progress. Let the illusion disappear and see things as they really are. Try to see things the way someone as decadent as I am sees them. I let my biological feeling tell me what to see. I think my way is the natural way. By accepting Nature, I have received an ever-more-profound understanding of the mystery that is its essence. I hope to find ways to make my thinking even more wild.
While I was walking down the road a cop drove up next to me. I was very close to the state line. The other side is beyond his authority. He gave me one of those cop attitude looks, like I was supposes to submit. I should kill him just for looking at me like that. Even before I was born civilization was my enemy. Their institutions were ready to domesticate me. Many people are scared. They want a safe place to hid. They cage themselves in. They want freedom from sufferings. They fear the beast within who wants to leave the cage. They want freedom from the beast. I want freedom to be my animal. Say yes to life. Don’t fear. Let all Hell break loose. I looked at the cop and said, "I walk where I want to walk."
The End
Live wild or die