autor: Boyd Rice
editora: Edição de Autor
nº de páginas: 166
isbn: 978-1976-39277-1 / 9781976392771
data: 2017
Third
Edition
Copyright
© 2017 Boyd Rice
First
and second editions originally published in limited edition format by Heartworm
Press. This edition published independently by Boyd Rice and printed by
CreateSpace.
Layout
and additional editing for this version by Whale Song Partridge.
Thanks
to Brian M. Clark for editing the Rebellion chapter, and to Rory Hinchy.
Special
thanks to Karin Buchbinder
166
PÁGINAS
978-1976-39277-1
9781976392771
Prologue
and Introduction à on demand.
ÍNDICE:
I –
Prologue
II –
Introduction
1. LIES
3.
EQUALITY
7. INDIVIDUALITY
9.
LIBERTY
11.
PEACE
14.
HARMONY
17.
DIVERSITY
20.
IMPERIALISM
24.
CAPITALISM
28.
CONSUMERISM
31. WORK
34.
POVERTY
37. NO
FREE LUNCH
40. TIPS
43.
COMPETENCY
45.
RIGHTS
46.
POLITICS
53.
DEMOCRACY (DIVIDED WE STAND)
56.
RELATIONSHIPS
59. THE
SEXES
64.
HOPES AND DREAMS
70.
COMPLAINTS
72.
RESPECT
23.
KEEPING IT REAL
74. IT’S
ALL GOOD
75.
OUTSIDE THE BOX
77. THE
STATUS QUO
80.
HYPOCRISY
83.
IDEALISM
86.
REBELLION
95.
ACTIVISM
97.
TRANSGRESSION
100. IN
YOUR FACE
102.
ANGER
105.
BLAME
107. LAW
AND ORDER
110.
POLICE STATE
112.
THOUGHT POLICE
114. THE
NAZIS
118.
CULTS OF PERSONALITY
121.
FAME / SUCCESS
124.
LAZINESS
127. THE
WILL
129.
PRIVACY
132.
INFORMATION
136.
INTELLIGENCE
139.
COMMON WISDOM
140.
CHOICE
142.
DELUSION
144.
MEANING
147.
PHILOSOPHY
151.
UTOPIA
153. THE
APOCALYPSE
155.
SOCIOPATHY
158. THE
PERENNIAL DICHOTOMY
161. THE
DICHOTOMOUS MIND
165.
EPILOGUE
COMPLAINTS
“Never
complain and never explain”
Benjamin
Disraeli – 19th Century British Prime Minister and statesman
If
you’re going to complain about something to someone, please don’t let it be me…
It’s not that I don’t care, per se (I don’t), it’s because it is an exercise in
futility to complain about something (to anyone) unless they’re in a position
to rectify the situation. And in regard to complaints, this is rarely ever the
case.
If, for
example, you and I went out to breakfast and your eggs were over, or under,
done, and you complained to me but proceeded to eat the unacceptable meal – who
profits? Certainly not me. And I would have had to endure your whining first
thing in the morning (not a pleasant eye-opener). And surely you wouldn’t have profited
either. Your meal would still be bad, though venting about it may make you feel
better somehow.
Guess
what? Most folks find the “venting” of others much less tolerable than poorly
cooked eggs. Guess what else? No one gives a fuck about your problems. If you
really cared about dealing with your situation, you’d address your complaints
to the waiter; the one person who could have your eggs returned and cooked
properly. It’s that fuckin’ simple.
Of
course, bad breakfasts are a small problem, perhaps the smallest. Bigger
problems, however, require the use of the same tactics and strategies, and
provoke the same attitude on my part. If I can’t fix it for you, I don’t want
to know about it.
Your
stepfather blew his brains out? Tough break. Your car caught on fire? That’s a
shame. Life’s unfair? Welcome to the world.
Other
people’s problems are like other people in general: they tax your consciousness
and deplete your calm. Their problems, of course, will never be resolved,
merely rehashed ad infinitum. That’s (I’m sure) as they’d wish it. At the end
of the day, I care less about such problems being fixed, as I do they be
discussed elsewhere.
A wise
friend once advised me never to burden others with your problems, unless it was
evident they wanted to help. Great advice, but unfortunately, the fellow
stopped short of completing his thought. He never went on to explain that most
“others” were incapable of helping. Why? Because life is sometimes unfair.
Because bad things happen to good people. And because some folks seem to be
nature-ordained losers. The latter are easy to spot – because they love to
complain.
OUTSIDE THE
BOX
People
love the idea of, “thinking outside the box,” but don’t seem to care much for
those who actually do so. Why? Because it involves venturing into realms beyond
their comfort zone, which virtually no one desires (or relishes).
It’s
fine when cutting edge thoughts or actions belong to those already dead. Such
things pass into the arena of mere abstractions and cease to be realities. But iconoclastic
ideas espoused byy the living seem to constitute conditions which need to be
confronted and dealt with. Or at least the general public seems to feel so.
Oscar
Wilde is a British national hero – a great poet and author. His statue today
graces a public square and historical plaques adorn paces where he once lived.
In his own way, he was imprisoned. Once free he was driven from his native land
to be exiled in France, and died a broken man. But hey, all that’s in the past:
let bygones be bygones.
The
history of our world is a story of people who were pilloried, imprisoned, burnt
at the stake, or made to drink poison for thinking outside the box. The list of
their names could go on for pages…
So
what’s changed? Certainly not the desire to embrace radically new and different
modes of thought. Few want that and far less could accept it. Most people want
business as usual; little more, little less.
What’s
really changed are people’s ability (most people’s) to embrace whole-heartedly
concepts and ideals that aren’t part and parcel of their true character.
Perhaps, at the most fundamental level, they understand instinctively that
they’ll never be called upon to adopt certain ideas so long as they possess the
capacity to pay lip-service to them.
After
all, it’s in no one’s interest to live out new and radical percepts while
simply pretending to understand, or tolerate them, will do.
Ideas
can be controlled, those who espouse them cannot. Ideas can be defined,
redefined, and interpreted this way or that; perhaps even edited, censored, or
nullified. They can even become the subject of college courses and academic
study, but only as long as those who originally elucidated them no longer
intervene.
Dead men
have it easy, but the ideas they birth during life are like an infant child
abandoned on the plains of the Serengeti.
REBELLION
Q: “What
are you rebelling against?”
A: “What
have you got?”
The Wild
One (1953)
The
notion of rebellion is bullshit. It’s been the dominant paradigm of the
so-called counterculture for 50 years or so, yet hasn’t existed in any tangible
manner for the lion’s share of the time. Nor, for the matter, has a
counterculture. So-called manifestations of “underground” culture – art, music,
movies, publications – are simply expressions of those categories which exhibit
a far smaller degree of success than their mainstream counterparts. Commerce
alone decrees whether something is mainstream or relegated to the underground.
In the
late-Seventies, a well known punk rock singer made a name for himself with an
ironic anti-capitalist song called, “Kill The Poor”, and walked the streets of
San Francisco in an “Eat The Rich” t-shirt. Today he lives in a
multimillion-dollar house in the city’s Noe Valley; a house paid for by the
very anti-capitalists who wore his band’s t-shirts and sported their own “Eat
The Rich” bumper stickers on their vehicles. Obviously, one can’t go broke in
the U.S. of A. selling platitudes to those who want to believe in them. Even
more obviously; however easy it is to reject capitalism, it remains far harder
to reject the results of its clear-cut success. One’s bank book doesn’t lie.
For now, the same singer/songwriter who ironically penned, “Kill The Poor”,
assures himself that he remains steadfast in his anti-authoritarian stance by
affixing a “Kill Your Television” bumper sticker to his large-screen plasma TV.
But the day perhaps draws near when the more hardcore of his fans storm his
multimillion-dollar sanctuary and turn him into the main course at a punk rock
barbecue.
In the
Fifties leather jackets became a symbol of rebellion. Why? Because rebellious
behavior was synonymous with people who role motorcycles, and motorcycles wore
black leather jackets. Marlon Brando became the archetype of the postwar rebel
in The Wild One, and the image stuck. Flash forward too the late-Seventies. In
the years that intervened between The Wild One and the inception of punk rock,
the archetype of the rebel became more important than rebellion itself.
Behavior and lifestyle took a back seat to pure symbolism. The Ramones sported
black leather jackets, but had probably never mounted a bike in their lives. In
their wake, a whole generation donned “motorcycle jackets” as a visible signifier of their rebellion, their outward
rejection of mainstream values. But if mainstream values equated leather
jackets with rebellion, were they actually more an extension of those values
than a denial of them? Buying a leather jacket on mom and dad’s dime while
living in their house in the suburbs represents a rejection of nothing.
Across
the pond, in England, the leather jackets became a symbol of even greater
potency. Why? Because it was an American archetype, and America remains a
mysterious abstraction to the Brits. In England, punk was purportedly about
“working class values” and being poor in a land with little or no jobs
prospects. Yet all these poor punks sported expensive, brand new leather
jackets with slogans or band names painted on the back. How is this possible?
Simple; the kids bought the jackets with money from their dole checks. They
were purchased courtesy of the British government; the same government they
wished to destroy. Meanwhile, these rebels lived in their parent’s homes, ate
meals there and probably watched the weekly episodes of Coronation Street with
mum and dad. Today, 30 years later, it’s doubtful much has changed. These
‘kids’ now have kids of their own, watch the same programs, and eat the same
food. Only now there is an excess of the sort of mediocre jobs such folks so
mourned the absence of in the late-Seventies. Members of the punk band Chelsea
who demanded the “right to work” in 1978, no doubt got it in spades. Be careful
what you wish for…
Hippies
embraced peace and love as a means of transcending the unthinking consumerism
of the Baby Boom Era. Punks embraced hate and violence as a means of
transcending the hippie ethic, and as a rejection of the emerging yuppie ethic.
Of course, long hair or short, hippies and punks were one and the same. Both
became yuppies when and if commerce permitted.
Today,
erstwhile Sex Pistols front man Johnny Rotten dwells in an expensive seaside
home in Venice, California, a stone’s throw from the pier there. In his yard is
a hot-tub. Does his worldly success render him a hypocrite? Of course not. But
there is surely an abyss that separates his real life from the message which
subsidizes the details of it. The youth which continue to purchase Sex Pistols
albums make take seriously the message of anarchism; but in truth, John’s
success is more a story of capitalism. Selling the notion of anarchy to
hundreds of thousands of consumers is still, at the end of the day, more a
manifestation of capitalism than anarchy. In words, Johnny is an anarchist; in
deeds, a capitalist. One is an abstraction, the other a reality. To know what
he is, observe what he does. In truth, of course, Johnny is little more than a
singer/songwriter. An entertainer.
Those
who fancy themselves rebels place the label of integrity at a premium.
Integrity?! Really? The idea has been in the air since Rebel Without A Cause,
or before that. The Fountainhead. You have the archetype of the lone, rugged
individualist who’d rather sacrifice everything than betray their unique vision,
or relinquish their integrity. But think a moment; how many people do you run
across in the course of a day who you imagine possess any degree of integrity
whatsoever? And how many people have you encountered in your entire life
possessed of what might be deemed a unique vision? Most people’s daily lives
are bereft of unique visions and lack the need for integrity. Characters in
novels and films grapple with such issues – the common man and woman only
imagine they do, or wish they could. Another common theme interwoven with the
notion of rebellion is the steadfast desire to never sell out. Again, most
people will never even be presented with the opportunity to sell out. They have
nothing to sell and no one wants to buy. Yet the idea remains central to their
identity somehow. Since many people live their lives and practice their
rebellion vicariously through certain celebrities. It’s the celebs that may
most suffer the downside of this archetypal abstraction. Faux bad boys are the
saints of the New Church, but if their ersatz rebellion should sell too well or
to widely they are quickly cast aside as “sell outs”. The people harshest in
their judgment of such types are folks who have never done anything whatsoever
and never will. They purchase the product of the self-proclaimed outsider,
imagining they are participants in the lifestyle or worldview being promoted.
They aren’t. Those most vehement in their opposition to selling out are largely
those whose only options are futile attempts to buy in. They buy into
abstractions and ideals. They do so by buying the products created by those who
seem to embody the ideals and abstractions they want so desperately to believe
in – to claim as their own.
The
rebellion in America over the last half century is a media-driven masterpiece
of marketing. Over-the-counter counterculture. Punk was an extension of the
Hippie Movement, which appeared to be an extrapolation of the Beat Generation.
But was it? If most assume the Maynard G. Krebs character from The Many Loves
of the Beat ethos, then the thread connecting it all seems fairly clear-cut.
But Jack Kerouac was not Maynard G. Krebs. Jack was an arch-conservative. He
was a lapsed Catholic in search of God. He was less a rebel than a man who
desired to get married and live happily ever after. He desired above all a
bourgeois conservative life, but lacked the ability to achieve even that. In
short, he was a fuck-up. A loser. He spent far more years living with his
mother – subsidized by her – than ever did hitchhiking across the U.S. Those
who’ve followed in his wake hit the mark insofar as being fuck-ups and losers,
but lost the message of conservatism so central to his true vision.
Jack’s
pal William Burroughs was a trust fund kid, heir to a fortune from the adding
machine company which long bore his family’s name. His faggot-junkie lifestyle
and trips to Morocco were subsidized by an inherent fortune, as was his
literary career. Again, this doesn’t necessary render him a hypocrite or
invalidate his literary works – but I’m just sayin’…
Neal
Cassidy, the larger-than life protagonist of Kerouac’s On The Road, seems a
figure destined for literature. But then so do mentally-unbalanced chicks. What
seems romantic on the printed page or movie screen is often, in real life,
little more than a royal pain in the ass. Neal Cassidy was obviously a
professional bullshit artist and a sociopath; a marginal personality who
managed to get through life on a combination of lies and charm. Great character
for a novel, horrible guy to have in your life. Though it’s endearing to know
he could quote Schopenhauer. It’s a shame that none of the Beat Generation took
his lead. If they had, things might have turned out different…
By the
time On The Road came out, it was already a period piece. It took six years to
get published and many of the events discussed within it were then ten years
old. The America that Kerouac had set out to discover no longer existed. By the
time the book had generated an audience, interstate highways had all but
rendered hitchhiking a thing of the past. If Kerouac had documented his
post-Road life, it may well have been called On The Couch. He devoted his time
mostly to drinking and watching TV in his mother’s living room while she worked
at a shoe factory to pay the bills. Sound pathetic? Well, maybe.
Mind
you, this was the Golden Age of Television. Gin and daytime TV may have
actually been far more intense than smoking dope in Denver, Colorado.
At the
end of the day, Jack and Neal had the great good fortune of simply having good
genes: they were born good looking. Let’s face it. America requires its rebels
to be photogenic. Outsiders are only interesting or compelling insofar as
they’re handsome. On The Road would never have sold had it been written by a
pudgy nebbish or a pencil-necked geek.
There is
an ancient bronze bust of the Greek god Apollo which – though it is well over
2,000 year old – resembles precisely a young Elvis Presley. The eyes, lips,
nose, and contours of the face are identical. Obviously, our sense of aesthetics
hasn’t changed much in two millennia. Nor has our capacity to confuse imagery
with ideology changed much either. How can it be that an image, a face, a
countenance, can encapsulate and manifest ideals so seemingly intangible? And
in a manner so seemingly real?
Why is a
mere actor, 50 years after his death, still synonymous in the minds of so many
with rebellion? The life of James Dean amounts to this: he only ever play-acted
three roles in three movies. Actors are by their very nature inauthentic. They
pretend to be what they are not. Their stock-in-trade is a falsehood. Pretense.
Dean was a guy paid to wear a costume and mouth lines written by someone else.
He was a guy working for paycheck – no more, no less. James Dean had the
incredible luck to die young. He never choose to live fast and die young, he
just fucked up. He wasn’t acting out a philosophy, just acting. It’s doubtful
that he even had a philosophy.
The
Beats, for all their faults, were at least well read. They could quote
Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Dante, The Vedas; you
name it. The Hippies read maybe Herman Hesse or Carlos Castaneda, but most of
their information about the world of ideas was gleaned from Top 40 radio and
long-playing records. In such a milieu, a literate figure like Jim Morrison
seemed like a genius – the proverbial one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind.
Jim was so smart he could compare himself to Dionysus! Wow! To a generation
raised on “Combat,” “Gunsmoke,” and “Ozzie and Harriett,” a guy who took a
class in comparative mythology at U.C.L.A. must have looked the modern
incarnation of The Oracle at Delphi.
Flash
forward a decade or so… The audience is even less well-read with even fewer
points of reference. They’ve never even heard of Melville, Whitman or The
Vedas; or even Hesse or Castaneda. Enter a brilliant entrepreneur who witnessed
the Paris Riots of May ’68 – or at least remembers it. Malcolm McLaren, who cut
his teeth as manager of the New York Dolls (David Johansen called him their ‘haberdasher’),
resurrects the hyperbole of Situationism to promote the emerging phenomenon of
Punk Rock. Music critics bought into it hook, line and sinker. As did social
critics. England was on the verge of collapse. Punk was a response to this
collapse. McLaren had tied it all up with a bow and handed it to the Press.
The
Paris Riots of May ’68 were, and still are, a wet dream to leftists. Student
rebellions collapsed the government and youth took the reigns of power. Ten
years later, tourists visiting the Sorbonne could still see the visible signs
of the rebellion – where students had pried bricks from the pavement to throw
at cops. One of the leading lights of Situationism was Guy Debord, who penned
the movement’s manifesto, The Society Of The Spectacle. It maintained that in
the modern world, very little was real anymore, that most of what transpires is
pure spectacle – empty symbolism. Debord and his philosophy were obviously
derided by those who “restored order” to Paris following the student uprisings.
They conceded that the protesters were likely sincere, but following an “ill
conceived,” “half-digested” philosophy that lacked any understanding of the
world. Was it? Certainly it suffered from left-leaning idealism, but was the
basic premise flawed? Are we not living in The Society Of The Spectacle? What
Debord spoke of as a relative abstraction in 1968 is today a simple fact of
life.
Malcolm
McLaren took the Situationist images, slogans, et cetera, as his point of
departure. Yet, he consciously knew he was marketing it all, that he was using
The Society Of The Spectacle itself as a marketing tool. If Debord’s contention
was correct, then so were McLaren’s actions. If society thrived on empty
symbolism, he’d give it to them, explaining its meaning and collecting a check
for so doing. And he did just that for a good long time. The critics ate it up.
They loved it because it conformed to every falsehood and conceit they’d
learned at university.
But at
the end of the day The Pistols weren’t The Monkees, and McLaren was not Don
Kirshner. Yet the similarities between the two were nonetheless eerie. As The
Monkees proved uncontrollable, so did The Pistols. Neither group understood or
appreciated the role played by their respective Svengalls. But were little more
than studio musicians tossed together by producers. In the Sixties, The Monkees
were treated as seriously as The Beatles, The Doors, or Hendrix. In the
late-Seventies, The Sex Pistols were seen as the gold standard of the serious
rock band. Why? Because of marketing, plain and simple.
But the
marketing of The Pistols is precisely what renders them irrelevant. They were
always intended to be a manifestation of The Society Of The Spectacle, never a
refutation of it. Nor could they be. From the word go, they were empty symbolism;
never a true threat. If four or five years on, you steal your haircut from
David Bowie or your riffs from The Dolls, who’s threatened? In a better world,
David Johansen might kick your ass, but I’m not holding my breath.
Empty symbolism
is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories. Where yesterday there were
meat and potatoes, today there’s an all-you-can-eat buffet of Twinkies, Ho Hos,
and cotton candy; and the populace grows fat and satiated on a diet of
meaninglessness. Sure, this smile sounds all together trite and corny. I wouldn’t
even bother writing it, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s so fundamentally
true. In terms of genuine rebellion, the meat and potatoes seem virtually
nowhere to be found.
Bon
Appetite!
