9 May 2007
Taos, New Mexico
Dear Vin Suprynowicz:
Your books have recently been brought to my attention by my eldest (homeschooled) adult son. I read The Black Arrow1 first, and was hardly able to put it down until I had quite finished it; after which I immediately passed it on with high recommendations to my youngest (homeschooled) adult son, who began reading it concurrently with Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Meanwhile, I have recently finished reading The Ballad of Carl Drega,2 which prompts this letter. The purpose of this introductory paragraph is simply to clue you early that what follows is not "hate-mail." It is somewhat lengthy, however. You're O.K. with "lengthy?" Somehow, you do not strike me as a man who requires spoon-feeding with "sound bytes." I found your book highly stimulating, and there is much I would like to say to you, and to a possibly wider circle of readers, in response.
My first impulse after reading Carl Drega all the way through was to lean back with a sigh of profound gratitude as I reviewed the seemingly "charmed path" I have walked the past few decades, in many ways oblivious of the mortal minefields through which I have passed; and the thought began to form in my mind that perhaps you and others might appreciate the story of an in some ways "kindred spirit" who has somehow not experienced the nightmares common to many described in your book. This is not to lay claim to any special knowledge or skill on my part in traversing the troubled waters of our time and place in human history. If anything, all I can summon to account for the peculiar turns my life has taken is a liberal measure of "dumb luck;" for when I read about the many who have had their doors kicked in, their children drugged and abducted, or who were simply shot down like dogs, I marvel all over again, and whisper, "There, but for the grace of... (Something Profoundly Mysterious), go I."
You sounded pretty down-in-the-mouth, Vin, when you wrote in Carl Drega,
I do not sit down today to write a call to arms. I am 51 years old, and I believe I have learned a few things.
I do not see in 96 percent of the population of this nation today the slightest hint of the smoldering fire of liberty that burst forth to illuminate our ancestors' struggles in 1775 or 1861.
Yes, the final battle of a 70-year campaign is about to be joined. But I believe it is my duty to the truth to report that this battle is, for all practical purposes, already lost.
•
•
•
All the beauty-pageant contestants are taught to wish for "world peace." But in fact, freedom and progress have ever developed only in lands of ongoing struggle – albeit shot and shell can usually be supplanted, between pirate suppression raids, by the "creative destruction" of healthy commerce and competition: war conducted by other means.
But that's not the kind of robust, chaotic, pluralistic "peace" the victim disarmament gang have in mind. No, their vision of a peaceful world has been common to Caesar, to Stalin, to Hitler and Mao: a world at peace ... because no peasant dares raise his head or rise from his knees as they pass.
We used to wish each other health and long life. Join with me instead, now, in wishing that we do not survive to see the culmination of this new Pax Americana.
I've already seen enough.3
I can join with you, Vin, in your wish that we not live to see the emerging Pax Americana inflated to its final hideous shape – which we have already seen many times before in the course of human history. But there is something I would like to say in reply to your remark that the battle is already lost; to which I will return in due course.
Meanwhile, I happen to notice the amazing fact that I am still drawing breath, as I sit here quietly, carefully, and with painstaking deliberation, composing this letter to you. True, my door may at any moment come crashing in under the weight of a dozen or so black-suited state terrorists, as I finally face the stark reality that "It is a good day to die." But so far, that hasn't happened. And so, I still remain at large, and at liberty to conduct my life more or less as I choose, within the constraints of circumstances as I happen to find them in the world about me, and within me.
In assessing myself, and my life so far, I do not notice anything particularly remarkable, or "special." As far as I can tell, I am just a random sample of one among six-some billions of human individuals with whom I am currently sharing this planet; of all but a very few of whom I know next to nothing. Because they are all by definition human, I am able, by observing myself, and that tiny minority of other humans with whom I am personally acquainted, to make certain surmises about them, which may have some degree of plausibility.
I observe about myself, for instance, that in the course of time, like you, "I have learned a few things." Not very quickly, I must admit, or particularly brilliantly; but I do in some measure share with my fellow humans, and with all living things, the ability, eventually, to learn from experience. And so I surmise, the ability to learn not being unusual or unique to myself, that some of the things I have learned may have been learned as well by others besides myself; and conversely, that some of the things others have learned already, I may learn yet, if I live long enough.
I notice also that this process of learning from experience is not highly visible, or obvious. I may experience at a particular moment an "earth-shaking revelation," a realization of such profound importance that it changes the course of my life, within an hour, or a day, or a relatively brief interval. Yet very few around me, if any, are able, or interested enough, to notice the slightest change in me; and I might not even myself recognize the importance of some thought or insight, until years later. Most often, human encounters go something like this:
"Hay! Long time, no see, ol' buddy. How ya doin?"
"Oh, same as usual, keeping on keeping on. Yourself?"
"Oh, you know, same ol' same ol'. Well, good seein' ya; gotta run along now."
In the bland, nondescript exchanges typical of what we smilingly call "contemporary culture," nothing remarkable is visible, usually, even though I, or my chance acquaintance, may have passed through an indescribably transforming experience only a half an hour, or a day, or a week before. This has happened to me many times, and sometimes makes me feel lit up like a Christmas tree; yet I seem to be the "Invisible Man" to all around me. I imagine that if I am a random sample of typical humanity, others around me, and around the planet, must be having parallel, or comparable experiences from time to time as well; quietly, invisibly, imperceptibly, one person, and one thought at a time.... And this image keeps alive within me the hope that never seems to die – that perhaps, just maybe, we may not all "go down with the ship," after all!
A few years ago – I think possibly not long after you had first published Carl Drega – I happened to catch sight of a bumper sticker which, at the time, seemed to sum things up rather neatly. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention! it said. Yeah. And I was feeling that outrage keenly, and had been for a good many years prior. And your book, The Balad of Carl Drega, expressed that outrage eloquently and at length; only I hadn't read it yet, and was still several years away from even hearing of you; and a number of elements you brought into high relief had not yet any part of my awareness, and wouldn't have until I had read your book, which I have only recently finished reading in April 2007.
Books are wonderful things. They persist, and an author can never know how, or when, a thought he or she has casually expressed in one context – and maybe even forgotten – might connect with the experiences of another human life somewhere entirely else; and set in motion, or take an influential part in a chain of events in other lives, with possibly unimagined, and unimaginable consequences. I suspect this kind of thing is going on in many places, all the time; yet it is next to impossible to budget for in peering ahead into the murky unknown – with the consequence that the future we imagine, with our keenest vision and analysis, may turn out to be strikingly different from the future which actually emerges into reality.
Mainly Autobiographical
And so it occurred to me that, by way of complimenting the stories of the many unfortunate individuals who have suffered the indignities and abuses of, as you have called them, "alien automatons, programmed to make us think they share our insights and feelings, but actually incapable of feeling the slightest sympathy or compassion for us 'weak waterbag organisms,' instead hiding some secret, revolting, and unknowable agenda of the alien hive,"4 ...it might be illuminating to lay before you the story of the gradual awakening of someone who started out as clueless as anyone I know, or have ever heard of, yet who by incrimental stages began sorting facts, observations, and the inconsistencies among them, thereby bootstrapping his awareness into... at least a vision of greater clarity than it had been before. The individual of whom I speak is myself, and the process of his illumination is a work in progress, helped along at intervals by seemingly "chance encounters" with works like yours.
In Carl Drega you cover a great deal of ground, and draw together many diverse lines of thought which combine very persuasively in a vivid representation of your vision of "things as they are." Of these, I think my favorite right now is section XII, Burn the Schools5 – perhaps because this is the domain in which my awakening began.
I don't remember her name now, or how I became acquainted with her, but my gratitude to her will never cease, for inviting me into her home in New Carrolton, Maryland, one day and sharing with me her insights into the public school system in America. At that time, our eldest son had not yet, or only just, been conceived; so school was not exactly a pressing issue – yet. But somehow I got into contact with a woman for whom schooling was a pressing issue, and she gave me some books and pamphlets to read, and I came away with the understanding that maybe public school was not the best option for our anticipated children.
Anyway, I "stored it up in my heart," and in due course our first son was born – at home, in Laurel, Maryland, assisted by competent midwives, myself in active participation. About 18 months later, his sister followed him, another beautiful home-birth in the same apartment, under the same circumstances. And about 4½ years after that, our youngest son was born – but not at home, although that was our original intent.
Our midwives, with whom we were by then well acquainted, felt the birth of our third child was not progressing quite as it should, so in an orderly, unhurried fashion we changed the birthing venue to the local hospital, where our very competent Pakistani doctor spent several additional hours attempting to stimulate a natural birth; but at length decided that a Caeserean section was the only remaining option, and acted upon that decision promptly. I was in the operating room, in mask and gown, and my second son was handed directly to me, at my insistance, without washing off his buttery coating of vernix, which his healthy little body quickly absorbed. Mom and infant son in due course returned home, healthy and whole, and life went on.
Meanwhile, our firstborn was approaching "school-age," and so we began to think that over with a little more attention than we had before. What we thought about it was... um, maybe we'd best give it a miss. And so, that is essentially what we did: nothing. And when our daughter reached "school-age," we continued to do... nothing in particular.
Well, that isn't the whole of it. We loved (and still love) our children very much, and all during their childhood they were never out of sight of at least one of their parents. We never went anywhere without them, they never had a baby-sitter, and we read to them, every evening. Our favorite and most frequent form of family enertainment was a trip to the local Library. We'd do that about once a week, and we routinely checked out and returned a big box-load of books every trip. Oh yes, and we never had a television. I think we may have had one when our firstborn came along, but we soon got rid of it, and never had another. Never. Still don't. At least, I don't.
I remember the day our firstborn learned to read. We had a home in Bowie by then, a few miles outside the Washington Beltway. I was upstairs in my office, doing something with my computer, and our son was across the hall, teaching his Bunny how to read. The assigned lesson was The Cat in the Hat, which we had read out-loud many times, and I imagine the lad had it about memorized. And so I could hear him sounding out the words for Bunny – and all of a sudden, he got it himself – and just like that, he knew how to read! I don't remember now how old he was then; I don't imagine he was particularly early learning to read – although all of our kids learned to read at a much earlier age than I did. But then, I never did very well in school, at any time.
We never kept track of how our kids were "progressing" against any statistical standard. Once they all knew how to read, it was just, turn 'em loose, and stay out of the way! Once they understood that they could learn as much as they wished about anything that interested them, just by checking out a few books on it, they orchestrated their own educations – which turned out to be quite comprehensive; and like mine, are still in progress.
I don't recall having a very strong sense that we were doing anything "wrong" in schooling our children in this way. We had checked out some of the available home-school curricula in which we might have enrolled our children; but they all seemed too structured, and regimented, as if they were clones of the public school curricula we were deliberately avoiding. So we never pursued that path. I think we were aware that we might ruffle some feathers if we drew attention to ourselves; so we didn't, and for the most part, we didn't; ruffle any feathers, that is.
We did experience one episode that could easily – particularly in retrospect, now having read your book, Vin – have become a little dicey. While I spent my days at work in Washington, their mother raised our children at home, and over the back fence, became acquainted with a neighboring mom who also had some little ones, much younger at this time than ours. One day, I received a call from my wife, who related the upsetting news that our neighbor had just informed her that, obeying her conscience, she had reported to the Prince Georges County School Board that we were illegally home-schooling our children. Well, nuts! That was a kick in the head. Nice neighbor, just trying, oh so kindly, to "do the right thing."
Well, there happened to be a local chapter of a legal defense group dedicated to home-school issues. I had heard of them, but had never solicited their services. I gave them a call, and told whoever answered the phone what had happened, and asked what I might best do about it. I was advised over the phone not to panic, and that if someone from the County should knock on our door, under no circumstances should we invite them in, or answer any questions. Instead, we should insist that they conduct any necessary business with us via signed correspondence, and we would reply timely, in kind. It seemed like sound advice, and had the effect of calming both of us down considerably.
In the event, no further developments ensued. Nobody came to our door; nobody notified us we were in violation of anything; nothing; nada; zip.
Several months, or maybe even a year or so later, my wife had another encounter with our "well-intentioned" neighbor, who neither of us had seen in all the intervening time. The neighbor told her that since reporting our family to the County, she had been horribly conscience-stricken, and had eventually been overtaken by a nervous breakdown. She was terribly sorry, and was very relieved to learn that nothing at all had come of her now deeply regretted indiscretion.
After reading your book, in which I learned about how the "default setting" in official circles in such matters is to use any pretext to remove the children from their homes and separate them from their parents – I practically collapsed into a swoon, imagining what might have happened, and what nightmares we had barely skirted in virtual oblivion. Looking back, I wonder, had I known then what I know now, particularly what I have lately learned from you, would I have maintained my course anyway; or would I have chickened out, and sent my children to school? I'm pretty sure I would have kept my course, with redoubled determination; because I would also have had even greater conviction than I actually had at the time, of the catastrophic results of sending my children to school. Anyway, all our children appreciate the decisions we made, and have thanked their parents repeatedly for keeping them out of school.
So, shocked readers may wish to know, who may have difficulty understanding how responsible parents could have made such irresponsible and uninformed decisions about the raising of their own children, what were the long-term results of those decisions? That was quite an "irresponsible gamble," wasn't it, to have "deprived our children of a proper education?"
Yes, it was a gamble – an "experiment in child-rearing," performed by open-eyed parents keenly aware that the results of the experiment could not be known for at least 18 or 20 years into the unknowable future; by which time it would be far too late to reverse the results of the experiment. The alternative, of course, to conducting our own experiments on our own children, would have been to turn our children over to the government schools, and allow them to experiment on our children instead. So our decision wasn't entirely uninformed after all; for we had both been through the school system of our time, and were not particularly impressed by the results it had achieved with us. Myself, I had never done well in school, having repeated both my first and sixth grades; and had become convinced that my childhood would have been much more profitably spent, had my loving parents kept me at home, and let me play, or pursue my own initiatives, than to have, as they did, sent me off to school. But that's another story.
In our story, our healthy, intelligent, well-adjusted children grew by degrees into healthy, intelligent, well-adjusted adults. Not only did they side-step being dosed with Ritalin, Prozac, and other psychoactive drugs of uncertain effectiveness; none of them ever got involved with such drugs as I had experienced in my callow youth, pot and LSD. Was this because we forbade our children from experimenting with drugs? No. I simply shared with them frankly and honestly what my experiences had been.
I had lived in San Francisco during the 1960s, and had spent a good deal of my time stoned every day. Pot was a social sacrament among my circle of friends at the time, and the first order of the day, whenever anyone showed up anywhere there were other people, was to pass around a joint. It was practically a social obligation, by which no one seemed to feel particularly oppressed.
I experimented with LSD too – until one particularly "bum trip," from which I deeply feared I may never return to sanity again. After a few thousand years of utter and unmitigated hell, the effects of the drug eventually waned, and I found myself with profound releaf back into my familiar old "right mind" again, such as it was; and that was the end of my experimentation with LSD.
It was an extraordinary time, and an extraordinary place, to be alive and young, in San Francisco, California during the 1960s. But as the '60s wound into the '70s, I found myself increasingly depressed and out of sorts. I didn't know if it was a cumulative effect of being stoned all the time, or what, but I became extremely irritable and unhappy. I also became aware that the effects upon me of pot were evidently residual and cumulative, and were affecting my consciousness all the time, whether I toked up or not. So I decided to quit smoking pot.
Oh, I had a moment of indecision, when a friend offered me a lid of grass one day; and I bought it, and took it home. But before I rolled a joint out of it, I thought it through once again, and decided instead to stick by my prior decision, and returned the lid untouched to my friend the next day. My reasoning was that I was taking into my nervous system a substance that obviously affected my mind – the very mind I was using to conduct my self-analysis. So if my mind was being influenced by a foreign substance, how could I make an "objectively sound" decision about whether or not to ingest the substance that was influencing my mind? I never smoked pot again.
Except one time. Over 30 years later, in another place and time, I was with a group of friends one night around an outdoor fire, and they passed a pipe around, and so I shrugged and took a hit – first time in thirty-some years – and knew immediately that, for me, I had made the right decision back in 1970. Wow! that was some righteous weed, man, and one toke was all it took to send me soaring. But I didn't enjoy it. I found I really didn't like the sensation of having my mind wrenched like that; that I much prefered my normal waking state of consciousness. So, I endured the "high" quietly for the remainder of the evening, and was glad to have my old familiar head back again, once the effects wore off.
So that's basically what I told my kids about drugs, and they never got into drugs of any kind. I would never attempt to impose my decision for myself upon anyone else, including my own children; yet I think they basically agreed with me that, as I believe Woody Allen had it, "My brain is my second-favorite organ."6 So why monkey with it and risk messing it up? "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
My approach to kids and drugs may not be entirely congruent with yours, Vin; but then, a) I had not read your book during those years, nor had you, before 1994, yet written any part of it; and b) I was not at the time the man to exercize your recommendation. My experimentation with drugs had not been very well informed, aside from the several books and articles I read about them during the years I was using them, and I had not myself enjoyed the mentorship of an experienced adult who could "take [a three-month leave] of absence, pack up the lad with some rifles and camping and fishing gear and a good supply of potent hallucinogens, and head off into the wilderness for the summer to hear the voice of God and talk about life, sex, and manliness."7 Under different circumstances, perhaps I might have been that kind of a father for my children. Instead, we did something else.
Although not oppressed, uncomfortable, or unhappy in our cozy situation just beyond the Beltway, we did begin to feel a mild unease about the general way of life we were sharing with everyone we knew, or could observe around us. This story is told in part in my book,8 so I'll try not to indulge in twice-told tales. The upshot was that after a protracted period of indecision, we sold our home in suburban Maryland, abandoned my entirely satisfactory career with computers, and relocated our family to an isolated log cabin in the woods on the Olympic Peninsula in (the other) Washington – sans electricity, sans telephones, sans indoor plumbing. And there we continued to raise our young children, which were at that time between the ages of two and eight.
We lived in that cabin for the next five years, and it was a life-changing experience for all of us. Then we sold our property, and moved to an even more remote homestead farther west on the Olympic Peninsula, where we lived for another eight years. Those were rich, never-to-be-forgotten years for each of us – although not always idyllic, or uniformly comfortable – and I do believe we all became quite different people than we would have been, had we remained in our "semi-comfort zone" on the East Coast.
During that period, particularly the final eight-year stretch of our adventure, I began to become much more aware than I had been of some, but not all, of the factors you discuss, Vin, in your books. I remember clearly the creepy sensation I had, after I got over my initial denial, and looked deeper into the actual state of life for typical Americans like myself, of discovering myself to be thoroughly infested by parasites. I wanted to take a bath in something strong and cleansing, to wash the infestation off me, to get away from it, to somehow become clean again. I saw myself and my family tangled in a labyrinthine web of malicious deception, duplicity, and corruption that caged us like cattle, from cradle to grave, sheering us like sheep, and sucking our very blood....
If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention! Well, I hadn't been paying very close attention, all right, but now I was certainly outraged, enraged, and thoroughly incensed by how utterly and cynically I was discovering our "trusted leaders" were now, and always had been, betraying their trust, and leading us naïvely down the primrose path to our self-destruction. And I wanted OUT!
While living in that homestead, I witnessed an annual performance that seemed to me to sum up succinctly and accurately the situation of American "small-c citizens" – and indeed of anyone living under "government authority," anywhere on Earth. Immediately beside our homestead there was a fenced pasture where a neighbor kept a few calves and young cows. During the winter months he used to come by in his pickup truck every day with a broken-up bale or two of hay he pitched at intervals over the fence for them; and they always came running at first sight of his familiar truck. He took evident good care of his livestock, and they ran to meet him whenever he showed up.
One day every year, however, our neighbor showed up at the gate to his pasture in company with another man with a big truck. This time, when his fattened calves ran to meet their estemed human friend, instead of feeding them, he summarily shot them all dead, and his companion, the butcher, skinned them, and hung them up in his refrigerated truck, and drove them away. This, it struck me suddenly, was a perfect metaphor for the fundamental purpose of... any so-called "nation" governed by preemptive force.
In contrast to our neighbor's cattle, there was also a herd of about 20 to 30 elk that passed through his pasture, our front yard, and wherever else they elected to wander, throughout the entire region. They weren't always around, but it was always a treat to see them when they came through. The fences that effectively penned our neighbor's cattle meant nothing to the elk, which were no smaller than full-grown heifers, but were ever-so-much more agile. Like giant gazelles, they leaped the fences in turn, and roamed wherever they pleased in that sparsely inhabited land.
There was a lesson here, and I took it: If you want to live fat and easy, take the hand-outs of those who mend your fences – but be aware that anyone who feeds cattle has a purpose for doing so. If you want to live FREE, learn to jump the cattlemen's fences, or avoid them – and feed yourself, or go hungry.
Our eldest son, meanwhile, was beginning to grow restless in our rural, primitive setting. He was developing a hankering for the bright lights of the big cities – which were not directly visible from our homestead, but due to amenities we had not enjoyed in our cabin, which had been really primitive, we now had electricity, telephone, indoor plumbing – and access to the Internet. When he was of an age to graduate from high shcool, the young man took the GED examination, passed it handily, at the high end of all subjects, and began looking to continue his education at the two-year community college in Port Angeles. We encouraged him in this, but it developed that the only way available to meet the cost of his tuition would be for him to take out a federal loan. Well, he was of age, he could do that – but no, it turned out that until the student was 24 years old, his parents would have to co-sign for any such loan.
This I refused to do; for I had resolved never again to be signatory to a government form, or solicit government assistance for anything; for it was my perception now that the price-tag attached to any such "assistance" was the exhorbitant surrender of my liberty; and this I was resolved never voluntarily to compromise again. I had already rescinded my "taxpayer" status in a Notorized affidavit which I had sent Certified Mail, return receipt requested, and received, to every government agency I could think of; and I wasn't about to invalidate my own sworn statement by putting my signature to a federal loan application.
Pretty hard-hearted old curmudgeon, wasn't I? Most of my family were not in complete accord with me at the time, and I struggled manfully with the issue myself; for I certainly didn't want to be an obstacle to my son's continuing education. Yet whenever I came down to it, however I revolved the matter over in my mind, I simply could not put my signature on that government form. So our son had to opt for Plan B.
Plan B turned out to be that, using the Internet, he took certain examinations in programming proficiency, which he had entirely mastered on his own, and on the strength of that, got himself hired by a temporary agency, which placed him in a programming project at a large corporate facility in Olympia. So he moved out of the old homestead, and commenced his programming career at a higher salary than I had ever achieved during my erstwhile computer-oriented career on the East Coast. After a few months of that, the corporation hired him into their own programming division on a permanent basis, and he was with them in that capacity, moving steadily up in performance and pay, for the next five years; during which he bought and sold a boat, in which he lived for awhile; bought a really nice car; and a house; and generally did quite well for himself. While living and working full-time in Olympia, he also took a full course-load at a local community college, and maintained a 3.7 grade-point average while there; and concurrently held the position of Chairman of the Thurston County Libertarian Party. So that is how our "irresponsible gamble" in "denying our children a proper education" played out for our eldest son.
Our daughter, on the heels of her older brother, was of quite a different temperament, with entirely different interests. Except that she too began yearning to leave the homestead. After her brother had been away for a good many months, and had settled into a comfortable apartment in Olympia, his sister joined him, and began working as a waitress there. They shared that apartment for a couple of years or so, and the rest of the family visited them on holidays, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Meanwhile, those years were not very happy ones for the parents of the household. We never, never quarreled, during all the years we were together; yet I don't believe we ever deeply understood each other either, and our marriage gradually became less and less satisfactory for both of us. Eventually, there came a shattering day which took me completely by surprise, when I came home to find my wife just going out the door. I hadn't seen it coming at all, but she simply left, and I was utterly devastated. She returned later on, and I welcomed her back; but that didn't last, and wound up eventually with us selling our home, amicably splitting the proceeds, and going our separate ways. Our youngest son elected to go with me, and the two of us went to New Zealand for awhile, and Mom went to California, and hooked up with another partner.
The time that followed was pretty bewildering for me, although my teenage son and cheerful companion seemed to take it in stride with enviable aplomb. We saw a bit of the world neither of us had ever seen before, and eventually wound up in a remote outpost in northern New Mexico, the land of my infancy and youth. I hadn't any plans, or goal, or objective, but there was something about the place we "just happened" to have found ourselves in that embraced us and made us feel in some way "at home." The people there welcomed us and accommodated us with a modest place to live, in exchange for a modest rent; and although we might have wandered on the day after we arrived, we wound up staying. I found I could meet our expenses by doing Web page design for risidents of the community. We lived, as we had lived for many years, on a narrow margin of sustenance, yet somehow, we always got by.
Then during that time, something quite extraordinary happened. Like wayward dandilion seeds, our family had scattered in the wind; Mom in California with her new partner; Big Brother and Sis in Olympia; Little Brother and Dad in New Mexico. It looked like something that all the King's horses, and all the King's men, would never be able to put back together again. Yet one day, I received a message from Mom saying that she and her partner were planning a kind of "vision quest," or "walkabout" in the Four Corners region, and that Sis had decided to join them. And they wondered if there might be a place for them to camp for awhile, where we were living, from which they might stage their "walkabout?" Well, sure, I replied. Conditions here were pretty basic, and by no means luxurious, but there was plenty of room among the piñons to pitch a tent or two, and that would be fine.
And so, in due course, members of my family I didn't know when, if ever, I would be seeing again, arrived in our midst, and camped in our yard. I got to see Mom again, and met her partner, who seemed an O.K. fellow, and was possibly in much more intuitive rapport with her than I had ever been.
(I think as an aside, I'll mention here that I had never felt posessive of my wife; and in later years had come to question the fundamental validity of such concepts as "my wife," or "my husband." As if it were legitimately possible for one human to "own" another. I had never felt I "owned" Mom, and if she preferred to spend her time in someone else's company than in mine, well that was her choice, and she was entitled to it, as far as I was concerned. What business was that of mine? Consequently, I felt no ill will toward Mom, or toward her partner, and we all got along – at least as well as might have been expected, under the circumstances. End of parenthetical aside.)
In the event, they never took their planned "walkabout" around the Four Corners, but as we had, gradually integrated themselves into the hospitable community Little Brother and I had blundered into. They made friends with people, as we had, and found living opportunities of various kinds at different times and places. Eventually, Big Sis and Little Brother found jobs and rented a house together in Taos, while Mom and partner took care of a remote homestead for awhile west of town on the far side of the Río Grande Gorge. Eventually too, I moved down to Taos, by which time the rest of the clan were all living there too, except for Big Brother, who was still working in Olympia.
All this took place over the course of a number of years – during which Big Brother was having second thoughts about the "high life" for which he had opted. Corporate life had been a lot of fun for him during the early months and years, while he was trying his wings, and flexing his muscles; but it was beginning to wear a little thin for him later on. The past few years, he would take a nice long vacation each summer, and drive down here to visit the rest of the clan. So it didn't come entirely as a surprise when he dumped his career, sold his home, and... moved to Taos!
So somehow, for some reason, mysteriously, and without any particular plan – at least among any of us – the whole clan is back "together" again, where none of us imagined we'd ever be. Taos? Why Taos? I don't know; I didn't write the script for this. We're not living under the same roof, but we're close enough that we get to see one another as often as any of us might wish, which is a heck of a lot closer together than a lot of American families live; and I think it's just plain extraordinary! Little Brother is sharing a house near where I live with another fellow, with whom he also shares an uprorious appreciation of Monty Python and country music, and is working into a career as a gourmet cheff at an upscale restaurent in town, where he started out working as a janitor. Big Sis lives in the heart of Taos and has demonstrated over the years an uncanny facility for landing on her feet like a cat, no matter what unexpected twists and turns her path takes. Big Brother lives by himself in a rented adobe house near here, and has lately been joining me in significantly expanding the capabilities of my little Web design enterprise. And Mom shares with her partner another picturesque adobe house in the same end of town; and has developed, among other things, into as talented and skilled a "Taos Artist," I believe, as can be found anywhere around here, in "The Land of Enchantment – and of Talented Artists."
Introspections
During all these years, whose physical events I have just summarized, I have been desperately seeking to understand something that has puzzled me for as long as I can remember. I clearly recall a moment when I was sitting in a sixth grade classroom for the second year in a row, and the thought entered my mind, What if the "reality" I see all around me everywhere, all the time, is somehow entirely different from what it appears to be? Where had that thought come from? I don't know, and at the time, I was not intellectually equipped to follow up on it. Unbidden, the thought had simply come; yet in the intervening years, I have discovered it to have been uncannily near to what is evidently so. In fact, I recently encountered a quote of extraordinary candor, attributed to William Casey, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency during the Reagan administration:
We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.
I remember another moment, when I was quite young, waiting in our green GMC Suburban Wagon while my father went into the Post Office to pick up the mail. I must have been pretty small then, because the picture I have in my memory is of the view out the windshield from the front seat where I was sitting, and only the roof-line of the Post Office was visible to me – as I idly mused that, If I were visiting here from another planet, I would find this place very strange. The thought occurred in the context of a mental review of commonplaces among people I had observed through my child's eyes and ears, which had struck me as worthy of notice. I don't remember what my observations had been that had prompted the thought; but that sensation of strangeness, I realize now, has never, throughout my entire life, been very far from me.
I have taken the time over the years to think about this quite a lot, and I believe I have made some progress in understanding, in part, what this perceived strangeness is. The "growing tip" of my gradual, groping-in-the-dark learning process is set forth in my three-volume work, Metaconsciousness: Mythology for a Post-Civilized World, in progress. Or more precisely, the "growing tip" is being set forth right here in this letter; because this is what I'm working on right now. This exploration is always in progress, and never ceases.
An element, for instance, brought forcefully to my attention by your writings, Vin, which had not earlier been prominent in my analysis, is the matter you describe as "victim disarmament," otherwise known as "gun control," in flagrant violation, in America, of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. If asked, I believe I would at any time have lined up on the side opposing "gun control;" but before reading you, and some of L. Neil Smith,9 the "gun issue" was not high on my agenda, primarily because it was difficult for me to imagine a scenario in which I was likely to find a gun very useful. Your writings have boosted my defficient imagination significantly, and have occasioned a reordering of my priorities.
Additionally, I have found many of your arguments in section IV Mean Greens: Environmentalism as a State Religion10 to be very persuasive, particularly remarks from your address to the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, Las Vegas, Nevada, July 2001. The global ecology is a matter I have discussed in my writings at some length in several places,11 and it is sobering to be confronted with the probability that I may have gotten at least some of it wrong, and may be in for considerable revision in future versions of Metaconsciousness: Mythology for a Post-Civilized World. Informed in part by Bjørn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist,12 or by reviews or discussions of it, you have drawn into serious doubt what "everyone knows" about the impending or in-progress ecological calamity allegedly threatening to destroy the web of life aboard Spaceship Earth.
This disclosure, if so, is in some ways a "heavy hit" for me, and I shall have to devote some energy to following up your arguments, particularly by reading Lomborg; for I have placed considerable weight upon the assumption that "business as usual" has a limited shelf-life in the immediate future, largely, but not entirely, because it is no longer ecologically sustainable on the planet. If this assumption turns out itself not to be sustained by "the real facts," my thesis may be somewhat compromised, or at least complicated. Fortunately, I am not strongly attached to being "right," and consider the loss of an illusion to be as significant a gain as learning something new. I will not be dismayed if my investigation confirms, as I expect, that everything you have written about "global warming," etc., turns out to be substantially so; for I am keenly aware of having been thoroughly duped in the past, and would find it actually surprising if I discovered that I have shed all of my illusions.
The Power of Personal Myths
In the course of my explorations I have discovered what has turned out to be a very powerful realization: that everything I or anyone else firmly believes about anything at all, is actually a myth – in the same sense in which the beliefs of the Ancient Greeks, say, were myths. This of course is not the common construction most people place upon their beliefs; for most people fiercely believe their beliefs to be actually true, and that their current views of reality are realistic and accurate – even though they change continuously over time. I imagine the Ancient Greeks felt essentially the same way about their beliefs, which today we, not the Ancient Greeks, call "myths."
This is not an idle intellectual exercize. It has profound implications, and applied to daily life, yields profound consequences. Over the course of most of the past century, the scientific discipline known as quantum theory has rigorously and unambiguously confirmed that the total reality of anything cannot be simultaneously observed or described, and that therefore every observation is at best a partial view of "what is."13 Heisenberg's not universally welcomed uncertainty principle articulated this discovery at the quantum scale; and although many "classically trained" physicists attempted to take refuge in the assumption that it was only applicable to the minute scale of quantum events, and could be ignored at the macro scale of artillery shells, people, planets, and solar systems, this hedge has turned out not to have been viable. Quantum events, although individually minute, are ubiquitous, and all events, at every scale throughout Cosmos, are disclosed to be, at bottom, vast amalgams of innumerable quantum events.
Thus it must be admitted that the very best our most exacting experiments, observations, and rigorous rational analysis can ever achieve for us are partial descriptions of reality, or of any of its components upon which we elect to focus our attention. Therefore, our conception of reality, while potentially informed by precise observations and descriptions of very real phenomena, also consists unavoidably of imaginary constructs which we manufacture in our own minds to fill in the vast "blank spaces" precluded from observation by our own observational choices. That is, our conception of reality inevitably includes a large element of myth, no less so than did the conceptions of reality of the Ancient Greeks, or of any other humans who have ever inhabited this planet.
Such, anyway, is a significant constituent that I have deliberately incorporated into my myth (or conception of reality); and I have found it to be powerfully liberating. By consciously acknowledging that whatever I believe about anything, I also believe to be a myth, I find myself completely liberated from, and unattached to, my beliefs. They, and my relationship to them, have lost their rigidity; they are flexible and malleable, and may be reshaped at any time, in immediate response to my needs, discoveries, and choices. If I discover, for example, that some component of my myth is contradicted by observable reality, as may be the case in my encounter with your and Lomborg's analysis of the myth of impending ecological catastrophy, I am at liberty to amend my myth, in recognition of verifiable information of which I had not previously been aware. This happens all the time, and is no big deal. It's called learning from experience. The result of all such encounters is simply an amended and more useful and reliable myth, which I believe gives me significant "survival advantages" over those encumbered by more rigid and confining myths.
Whether or not the myth of impending ecological catastrophy turns out to be an exploded myth, it still remains plausible to me that our contemporary civilization, by reason of quite a number of swiftly convirging circumstances, may be on a relatively short-term trajectory toward some kind of major discontinuity. Such a discontinuity could arise from a combination of factors, such as widespread economic collapse, combined with pandemic plagues, combined with chaotically escalating nuclear, biological, or chemical exchanges amongst several nations, combined with other factors very difficult to anticipate in advance. One of the imaginable consequences of such a discontinuity is that large numbers of people may perish within a relatively brief interval; and the world that emerges after such a convulsion would be in many ways quite different for any survivors from the world familiar to us today.14
This is neither a prediction nor a wish, nor anything other than what seems to me a plausible speculation. Were such an eventuality to materialize in some form, I can imagine very little in the way of effective preparation anyone might reliably make for it in advance, such as stockpiling food, weapons, fuel, etc. Any such preparations might, or might not "pay off" for those who made them, depending upon the eventual play-out of an essentially chaotic storm of global scope. However, certain "internal factors" within individuals might well be of decisive importance to the way the selective line is drawn between those who survive and those who do not. The cause, timing, course, and severity of such a discontinuity would be impossible for anyone to predict or prepare for in advance, and each of us would be overtaken by it wherever and however we happened to be at the decisive moment. Maybe some of us would see it coming, and have a chance somehow to "brace for it;" but the line between life and death would be drawn on the basis of an imponderable combination of chaotic external circumstances, and the internal conditions that define what each of us is "made of" at that particular moment.
What Each of Us is "Made Of"
Of all the imponderables associated with such a calamitous eventuality, the only one over which any of us has any control at all is what each of us is "made of." This is the legitimate domain, and a matter subject to the exclusive choice, of each of us. Therefore, it seems to me a matter deserving of focused attention. Elsewhere, I have attempted to make the case that what we do, the choices we make in the course of our lives, are profoundly affected by our myths – by what we believe to be true about ourselves, and about the world in which we live; and that our myths can provide us consequential advantages, or be catastrophically suicidal. They form, in other words, a very large part of what each of us is "made of."
Therefore, I submit that the discovery that our myths are flexible and malleable, and may be reshaped at any time, in immediate response to our needs, discoveries, and choices, is a very powerful discovery indeed, and may, under certain imaginable circumstances, provide the decisive difference between life and death, between surviving and perishing. Indeed, I submit further that the content of our myths may decide for us between life and death, not only in the eventuality of a catastrophic discontinuity, but do so anyway, everywhere, every day, in the world as we find it around us right now. For the world is now, and always has been, in the midst of a fundamentally chaotic, and impenetrably complex evolution between what has been and what will be; and the only lever any of us has within reach, for determining what part, if any, we shall play in this ongoing evolution is the ability to decide, and to shape, deliberately, or unconsciously, the ever-shifting content of what each of us is "made of."
I think now that the strangeness I sensed as a little boy, which has never left me, is the sensation of living in a world in which it is almost universally expected that people should not take responsibility for the only factor in our lives over which any of us have any legitimate or consequential control: the ability to determine for ourselves what each of us is "made of;" the ability to determine our own myths. I think it strange that so many among us have instead elected, or meekly acquiesced to the delegation of these responsibilities to ecclesiastical, secular, political, "legal," medical, military, economic, academic, etc., self-appointed so-called "authorities," and then wail and gnash our teeth when these parasites15 bleed us white.
If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention! Well, yes, I am paying attention, now; but I'm not outraged anymore. That was one stage in a continuum, when I used to believe what I was taught in school; that our parasites are our friends, and are there to help us; that it is right and proper for us to cooperatively bare our necks, and make it easy for them to suck our blood – and then discovered the horrifying revelation that our parasites are not our friends at all, and that they by golly lied to us! (Gasp!)
Yes, I was plenty outraged, then. But in the larger perspective, what's wrong with parasites? Perfectly honorable profession. They're just another part of the planetary ecology. Parasites thrive where they are hosted. "lie down with dogs, get up with fleas." Perfectly natural. So it turns out, contrary to what the parasites themselves tried to teach me, that I eventually discovered myself to be living on a planet infested by parasites. Well, I can't say I'm crazy about the idea, but at least finally understanding this little tidbit has some advantages. I don't have to get mad about it anymore. I can do whatever my resourcefulness can contrive to avoid them. Put up mosquito netting; don't associate with them more than absolutely necessary; keep clean; recognize them from a distance, and steer clear. There's lots of things I can do, you can do, anyone can do, once we realize the situation we're in. Build alternative networks among aware individuals. Sidestep parasitic institutions. Build alternative institutions. Disconnect the tethers and the levers that have the effect of steering our lives in different directions than we actually wish to take. Diversify; spread out; disappear. Bucky Fuller advised, "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
Some of the things I've done, I've described earlier. They might not all have worked. The parasites might have descended upon me en masse, abducted my children, murdered my wife, and me, burned our home to the ground. They've certainly done it to others, without a qualm, or a "by your leave." But they haven't done it to me – yet. Maybe they won't get around to it, at least for awhile. Maybe they've got more important fish to fry. But whatever the case, I feel no obligation whatsoever to volunteer to have more of my blood sucked out.
You wrote that "I do not see in 96 percent of the population of this nation today the slightest hint of the smoldering fire of liberty that burst forth to illuminate our ancestors' struggles in 1775 or 1861;" and that "Yes, the final battle of a 70-year campaign is about to be joined. But I believe it is my duty to the truth to report that this battle is, for all practical purposes, already lost." If that is your myth, Vin, you are entitled to it; but "the truth" which commands your duty is at best only partially known – which leaves abundant room for alternative plausible myths.
My myth, in part, is that liberty is more than a philosopher's notion of a "good idea." I believe that liberty is a fundamental attribute of life itself, everywhere, always; and that those who endeavor to hem it in, stifle it, and stomp it out, do so at their own hazard, and will be the ultimate losers, because they are stifling and throttling the very vitality upon which their own lives depend – and therefore, that "This too shall pass." Perhaps, if we are fortunate, we shall live to see it pass, for the race is close, and the time may be short. If not, then life and liberty will prevail anyway, with us, or without us; for life and liberty are fundamental properties of "That Which Is," and nothing bridles them for very long. This too, it seems to me, is a plausible myth.
I am pleased to have made your acquaintance, Vin Suprynowicz.
Love, Peace, Joy, Now,
J. Harmon Grahn
harmon@harmonhouse.net
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1. Vin Suprynowicz, The Black Arrow, Mountain Media, Las Vegas, Nevada, 2005.
2. Vin Suprynowicz, The Ballad of Carl Drega, Mountain Media, Reno, Nevada, 2002.
3. Ibid., pp. 384-7.
4. Ibid., p. 531.
5. Ibid., pp. 529-66
6. I believe I heard Woody Allen make that remark one evening when he appeared at the hungry i in San Francisco.
7. Suprynowicz, 2002, p. 552.
8. Metaconsciousness: Mythology for a Post-Civilized World, I. 10. Lessons From Life, My Approach to Dealing with "Civilization".
9. E.g. Why Did it Have to be ... Guns?
10. Suprynowicz, 2002, pp. 183-216.
11. Parts of the standard litany of ecological woes appear e.g. in the Introduction to Volume I; in the Prologue; may be implied in parts of I.12. The Future of the Future; are suggested in parts of II.1. A Post-Civilized Creation Myth, and of II.3. The Myth of Human Destiny, such as the subsection, Learning to Live Within Our Means; and occupy a significant place in III.1. Vision for a Future History.
12. Bjørn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, Cambridge University Press, cited in Suprynowicz, 2002, pp. 685-6.
13. See I.4. Metaconsciousness Among the Quantum Fields, and II.5. The Myth of Objective Reality, for elaboration.
14. I have made a preliminary attempt to visualize such a scenario in III.1. Vision for a Future History.
15. I think a suitable generic definition of a parasite is "An organism which takes from its host without returning something of equal value to the host." Such an organism can be a microbe, an insect, or a "superorganism," such as a government. Parasites of all kinds sap the strength of their hosts, and therefore cannot be tolerated or sustained by any genuinely survivable organism.
