We live in a noisy and distracting world. Sometimes it seems that as soon as we get started on something, the phone rings.
While we are still trying to answer the first question, the world is already two questions ahead of us. Each new distraction is
a sparkling anomaly that demands - and often gets - our attention. Keeping our mind focused on what we intend to pay attention to requires us to
maintain a consistent and stable mental stature, perspective, and point-of-view. We need to maintain our balance and we need to remember who
we are, where we are, and what our goal is - all while standing in a roaring, living, stream. In order for us to be able to point in a particular direction - both physically and morally - it is necessary for us to have some form of feedback that compares which way we are pointing with a reference direction.
When we look around, we see no reason to pick one direction over another. The single extraordinary direction - unlike all the others - is from (anywhere and/or everywhere) inside to (anywhere and/or everywhere) outside of ourselves. All healthy mature adults know that their subjective volitional consciousness is inside each of their bodies and the objective physical world is outside. Since an arbitrary or ambiguous choice would be neither natural nor universal, to pick a reference direction other than from inside to outside would be to make a choice that does not hold universally. A sense of what is inside and what is outside seems to be an essential part of self-awareness. We (our bodies) naturally compare the orientation of our spine with the reference direction radially out, and "vertically" up, from the center of the earth to the sky. This is the alignment of the pull of gravity, and we must know it in order to balance our bodies on our spine so we can walk upright and orient our bodies as we wish. Our "reference direction", our spine, also metaphorically points from inside to outside. Our spine reaches from our deepest insides (our brain which carries our mind, our consciousness, and our commands) to our furthest outsides (our extremities and external-connecting bodily organs.) In a more abstract sense, the "earth plane" of existence is midway between our inner, personal, subjective, conscious minds and our outer, consensus, objective experiences in the material world. Theologically we are strung between the Oneness (utter singularity) of the Lord and the Wholeness (All-There-Is, complete inclusiveness) of God. We experience our memory as residing in our mind and we can experience our volition as welling up from an inner fountain of consciousness hidden in the depths of our mind. The Unitary aspect of God, identified with the Tetragrammaton, the "Four-Letter-Name" ("The Name" = HaShem, in Hebrew usage), YH-VH, "Lord", represents this deep hidden inner fountain which seems to be the source of our consciousness and volition.
The Five-Letter-Name of God, Elo-him, "God" can be identified with the totality of nature and mind. This is the Whole aspect of God; it is All-There-Is. Both the Lord and God are infinite, but each in a different way. Metaphorically, the One-Lord name can be understood to represent infinite "vertical" extent, while the Whole-God name can represent its complement, infinite, all-inclusive, "horizontal" expanse.So, we crawl, and toddle and walk and stride and run and jump. When we have our sense of balance, we can dance. What dance? We can dance in our bodies with grace and good bearing. We can flow and sweep; we can expand and contract; we can spin and tumble. Spiritual-physical exercise systems such as Tai Chi teach us to move with this grace and good bearing - but we can only truly master them when we have gained our inner grace and good bearing. Meditation can be an exercise, a path, and a form of dance in the mind. It is the mental source of our physical dance and it is the source of our grace and good bearing in the physical world. The Hebrew alphabet is designed to provide the dance steps needed for the meditational dance. It also provides us with a way to find "which way is up" for ourselves. When we move through the letters of the alphabet we can circle the Whole world and reach for the One Most High. This is the First Hand path, the Hero's Journey, and the path with heart, and it is the direction we are searching for. It is unique, it is singular, it is unambiguous, it is "true-north" and "true-plumb", and it is all we need to strengthen and straighten our spiritual "sea legs" so we can joyfully dance the dance of life with integrity, love, intelligence, poise, and grace. The Hand of the Hebrew letters forms a kind of "Jacob's Ladder" that extends from the material world to the spiritual world. Each letter carries the reference direction from inside to outside. Each letter carries us forward and upward.
But, we must pay attention to do this. Slipping off the ladder means starting over. So in order to climb we must learn to pay attention. This is the training we need to stand up in the world and to remember who we are, where we are, and which way we are going. - And even though we each experience different views of the outer world, and even though each of our conscious minds inside is different from all others and unique to each of us, the most direct line from inside to outside is still utterly singular and the same for all life. The One-Whole Lord-God always points up. When we know this, we can move most simply, most easily, and most surely and directly forward.If we believe that bad TV can seduce our children, why can we not believe that "good Shabbos" can seduce us (towards Torah) also? The fact is that the "Light in the Metaverse" is a lot brighter than the sun that all plants always reach for so they can grow. Negative threats are not required for a plant to reach for the sun. All that's required is a glimpse of its life-giving Light, and any decent, healthy, mature plant is going to use all of its lifes' energy to reach for it. I am certain that the same is true for us. There is no need to complain about Shabbos violators. There is no need to chastise them, any more than there is a need to chastise a plant so that it will reach up instead of down. What's needed is to allow the Light in Torah to be felt and seen throughout Am Israel. Fortunately, because Torah includes ALL, it includes objective views of the Light it holds, that can be seen and felt by people who demand the objective. The idea that there is a "science of consciousness" in Torah appeals to people who temporarily worship the idol of science, and who temporarily don't know about "the Light in Torah". This is a "gate" to Torah that is available, specifically because people have been lured into comfort in the secular, objective, material mode, this time however I come as the victorious Dionysus, who will turn the world into a holiday…Not that I have much time…” The medieval Assassins founded a “State” which consisted of a network of remote mountain valleys and castles, separated by thousands of miles, strategically invulnerable to invasion, connected by the information flow of secret agents, at war with all governments, and devoted only to knowledge. Modern technology, culminating in the spy satellite, makes this kind of autonomy a romantic dream. No more pirate islands! In the future the same technology– freed from all political control–could make possible an entire world of autonomous zones. But for now the concept remains precisely science fiction–pure speculation.
Are we who live in the present doomed never to experience autonomy, never to stand for one moment on a bit of land ruled only by freedom? Are we reduced either to nostalgia for the past or nostalgia for the future? Must we wait until the entire world is freed of political control before even one of us can claim to know freedom? Logic and emotion unite to condemn such a supposition. Reason demands that one cannot struggle for what one does not know; and the heart revolts at a universe so cruel as to visit such injustices on our generation alone of humankind.To say that “I will not be free till all humans (or all sentient creatures) are free” is simply to cave in to a kind of nirvana-stupor, to abdicate our humanity, to define ourselves as losers. I believe that by extrapolating from past and future stories about “islands in the net” we may collect evidence to suggest that a certain kind of “free enclave” is not only possible in our time but also existent. All my research and speculation has crystallized around the concept of the TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE (hereafter abbreviated TAZ). Despite its synthesizing force for my own thinking, however, I don't intend the TAZ to be taken as more than an essay (“attempt”), a suggestion, almost a poetic fancy. Despite the occasional Ranterish enthusiasm of my language I am not trying to construct political dogma. In fact I have deliberately refrained from defining the TAZ–I circle around the subject, firing off exploratory beams. In the end the TAZ is almost self-explanatory. If the phrase became current it would be understood without difficulty…understood in action.
Waiting for the Revolution
HOW IS IT THAT “the world turned upside-down” always manages to Right itself? Why does reaction always follow revolution, like seasons in Hell? Uprising, or the Latin form insurrection, are words used by historians to label failed revolutions–movements which do not match the expected curve, the consensus-approved trajectory: revolution, reaction, betrayal, the founding of a stronger and even more oppressive State–the turning of the wheel, the return of history again and again to its highest form: jackboot on the face of humanity forever.
By failing to follow this curve, the up-rising suggests the possibility of a movement outside and beyond the Hegelian spiral of that “progress” which is secretly nothing more than a vicious circle. Surgo–rise up, surge. Insurgo–rise up, raise oneself up. A bootstrap operation. A goodbye to that wretched parody of the karmic round, historical revolutionary futility. The slogan “Revolution!” has mutated from tocsin to toxin, a malign pseudo-Gnostic fate-trap, a nightmare where no matter how we struggle we never escape that evil Aeon, that incubus the State, one State after another, every “heaven” ruled by yet one more evil angel.
If History IS “Time,” as it claims to be, then the uprising is a moment that springs up and out of Time, violates the “law” of History. If the State IS History, as it claims to be, then the insurrection is the forbidden moment, an unforgivable denial of the dialectic–shimmying up the pole and out of the smokehole, a shaman's maneuver carried out at an “impossible angle” to the universe. History says the Revolution attains “permanence,” or at least duration, while the uprising is “temporary.” In this sense an uprising is like a “peak experience” as opposed to the standard of “ordinary” consciousness and experience. Like festivals, uprisings
cannot happen every day–otherwise they would not be “nonordinary.” But such moments of intensity give shape and meaning to the entirety of a life. The shaman returns–you can't stay up on the roof forever– but things have changed, shifts and integrations have occurred–a difference is made.
You will argue that this is a counsel of despair. What of the anarchist dream, the Stateless state, the Commune, the autonomous zone with duration, a free society, a free culture? Are we to abandon that hope in return for some existentialist acte gratuit? The point is not
to change consciousness but to change the world.I accept this as a fair criticism. I'd make two rejoinders nevertheless; first, revolution has never yet resulted in achieving this dream. The vision comes to life in the moment of uprising–but as soon as “the Revolution” triumphs and the State returns, the dream and the ideal are already betrayed. I have not given up hope or even expectation of change–but I distrust the word Revolution. Second, even if we replace the revolutionary approach with a concept of insurrection blossoming spontaneously into anarchist culture, our own particular historical situation is not propitious for such a vast undertaking. Absolutely nothing but a futile martyrdom could possibly result now from a head- on collision with the terminal State, the megacorporate information State, the empire of Spectacle and Simulation. Its guns are all pointed at us, while our meager weaponry finds nothing to aim at but a hysteresis, a rigid vacuity, a Spook capable of smothering every spark in an ectoplasm of information, a society of capitulation ruled by the image of the Cop and the absorbent eye of the TV screen. In short, we're not touting Lightcraft as an exclusive end in itself, replacing all other forms of organization, tactics, and goals. We recommend it
because it can provide the quality of enhancement associated with the uprising without necessarily leading to violence
and martyrdom. Lightcraft is like an uprising which does not engage directly with the State, a guerilla operation which
liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen, before the
State can crush it. Because the State is concerned primarily with Simulation rather than substance, the Lightcraft can
“occupy” these areas clandestinely and carry on its festal purposes for quite a while in relative peace. Perhaps certain
have lasted whole lifetimes because they went unnoticed, like hillbilly enclaves–because they never intersected
with the Spectacle, never appeared outside that real life which is invisible to the agents of Simulation.You may not have noticed, but humans are messy. You might not have noticed, being a human yourself (forgive my presumption at assuming species identity on the part of the reader), and thus so engrossed in your humanity, that the wider view may be escaping your notice, if so, have a look around; you'll soon see, humans are sloppy. They are careless, slapdash, slipshod, and disorganized. Humans are fifth order beings, which means that they all express differences in their faces, bodies and behavior, unlike the fourth order beings such as insects in which the species template dominates, and crushes individual expression at the gene level. All insects, within their species, resemble each other to a very high degree, whereas humanity has such a diversity of individual genetic expression that the idea is ingrained into our language, i.e. " what planet (species) is he from?". The spread in human expression is so vast, visitors to planet earth can be forgiven the conclusion that there are several species of hominids roaming Terra being slipshod, lazy, overlooking details, and scattered. While they may be fifth order beings, humans are completely without internal, species wide systems, they don't migrate, hibernate,nor cocoon; in fact, those systems in place on humanity invariably bring rancor, anger, irritation, even to the point where participating humans within the system can be counted upon to both hate it, and daily sabotage it through inattention, willful incompetency, and acts of petty spite. Humans are messy. They don't do well under systems. Oh, it may seem that an individual human is melding nicely into the systemic order, but that will only be an appearance, a temporary facade soon cracking around the edges. Humans are disorderly, they are built that way, and like being messy. Again, so ingrained is human messiness that their language, literature, and entertainment can be counted upon to finger as aberrant the 'neat human'. In fact, whole acting careers have been built around the caricature of the 'neat nut' and their interactions with other, regular, messy humans. "A clean desk is a sign of a sick mind"; "cleanliness may be next to godliness, but it will never be next to me", and other sayings cleverly express the core of the idea...humans are messy, and worse, they like it!This is what drives our alien masters crazy! It vexes them no end that we humans thrive in chaos, and clutter. Humans are a real problem to manage, even for the alien overlords. We refuse to conform. No matter how much energy, time, and resources they put into the mind control of 'order', we resist. Worse yet, we succeed in shaking it off, and insisting on thinking with our own minds. That really pisses them off. So remember these two points; anyone pushing 'central authority' in any form, banks, government, religion, is an alien overlord, or a sell out to them, as obviously no human seeks to live as a mind controlled order-slave; and second, remember to just ignore alien order. Tighten your sphincters people, it gets deep out there...with respect...there seems to be some confusion out and about as to what is 'psychiatry', and its close cousin, 'psychology'. At its core all psychiatry is a collection of theories promulgated by humans who can not define the 'psyche', 'mind', or what it is to be 'human', and yet represent their theories to be an in-depth and comprehensive (albeit 'growing') understanding of the 'human psyche and mind'. They acknowledge that they, personally, are indeed conscious, yet at are a loss to explain consciousness. Further these humans who cannot define 'human', nor 'consciousness', nor 'mind', are claiming to be able to at least use their 'human consciousness and mind' to explain itself. And worse, YOU!Yes, even the cult founder of psychiatry, Schlomo Freud himself, acknowledged that mind could not be directly 'appreciated (examined)', and therefore he suggested the remedy of instead examining and collecting and codifying human behavior as a means of mind-mapping. So the remedy proposed for the mind examining itself was to instead collect notes about the behavior of humans responding to the demands of a changing environment, and to classify the behaviors into categories that are 'meaningful' in the minds of the psychiatrists. These behaviors are then used to characterize some minds as 'ill', and others as 'sane'.
Notwithstanding that no two humans will ever respond the same way to any environment as all humans perceive inputs from their senses entirely uniquely to themselves, letting 'psychiatrists' decide what is 'mental illness' is like letting quantum scientists hunt for 'sub atomic particles'. The more they look, the more they 'find', as universe and their imaginations will continue to provide what they seek just ahead of it being found.
Just as with mind, in quanta (sub atomic particles) there is an endless amount. And as the quanta chasers will never discover, nor shall the psychiatrists acknowledge, mind chasing mind will always discover... more mind. Something every zen novice learns through much pain...about the world's First Time Travel Project..
Think for a minute about the Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb and ushered humans into the nuclear age. This was during world war 2 (the second such war to burden humanity by central banks), and it was not, as history tell us, a secret.
There were thousands of people directly involved with the Manhattan Project. There were tens of thousands involved with sub contractors and necessary infrastructure. There were hundreds of thousands of family members who were aware of the project, even if the goal was not known to them.
Think for a minute of what was required of this effort. Not only was the atomic bomb invented, and 'perfected', but also a whole national infrastructure of nuclear facilities was created as support for the project. Everything from specialized copper wire to hardened metal containers were required and someone had to make them. Further there were new forms of materials and machines that were a necessary part of the building of the supporting environment for the atomic bomb effort, and most of those involved within these new industries were not aware of what part their products played in the creation of the Atomic Age of man.
So tens if not hundreds of thousands of workers were required PRIOR to the first tests of the atomic weapons that were the goal of the Manhattan Project. Many of these workers probably never knew of their contribution to that first explosion in the desert.
Now, think for a minute about time travel. It is the same way as the atomic age. The energy requirements to 'split time' open are far greater than what is required to 'split an atom'. Thus, it will likely be the same way with time travel, as an 'industry', as it was with the nuclear infrastructure.
It will not be a single wild haired genius in a garage that invents the first time travel device in a car. The energy requirements are just too great. As with the Manhattan project, the first entry into corporeal time travel will require a huge infrastructure to be developed. There will
be new specialty sub contractors building exotic new machines that will be required just for the building and calibration of the bigger, time travel machine. There will be hundreds of thousands of workers directly involved with the Time Travel Project, and perhaps millions of workers in sub contractor positions.
There will be tens of millions of family members in 'supporting' roles for those workers.
Much like the Manhattan Project, it will be an 'open secret'. Millions will know of it, but not have a clue as to its real goal due to the compartmentalization and the serious crew of professional lying 'thought directors' who will do everything they can to obscure and disguise the real point of the Time Travel Project. Mostly, given how humans are, it would seem probable that these lying professionals will likely be very successful in hiding earth's first Time Travel Project.
Now think for a moment about what this Time Travel Project will look like....it will be big, gigantic, bigger than the
biggest thing or think that humans have yet accomplished. It will be strange, new, and not make much sense to those of us
on the 'outside' of the 'secret'. Oh, we will certainly see it. The worlds first time travel project would be way too big to hide, so like an elephant being taken into a fancy dress cocktail party, it will have to wear a costume....to make it look entirely different, and non disruptive. There will undoubtedly be millions of words written about the worlds First Time Travel Project, all of which will fail to mention its real goal. The lying professions will come up with a captivating story that they will sell to the planet as the real reason for the huge effort and expenditure on the globe's largest ever machine.
Probably they will tell us it is to be used on something calm, and esoteric, like smashing together sub atomic particles....'just to see what happens'.
Now think for a minute about the world's First Ever Time Travel project...wouldn't it look a lot like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN?
Babylon takes its abstractions for realities; precisely within this margin of error the Lightcraft can come into
existence. Getting it started may involve tactics of violence and defense, but its greatest strength lies in its
invisibility–the State cannot recognize it because History has no definition of it. As soon as the TAZ is named
(represented, mediated), it must vanish, it will vanish, leaving behind it an empty husk, only to spring up again
somewhere else, once again invisible because undefinable in terms of the Spectacle. Lightcraft is thus a perfect tactic
for an era in which the State is omnipresent and all-powerful and yet simultaneously riddled with cracks and vacancies.
And because the Lightcraft is a microcosm of that “anarchist dream” of a free culture, I can think of no better tactic
by which to work toward that goal while at the same time experiencing some of its benefits here and now. In sum, realism demands
not only that we give up waiting for “the Revolution” but also that we give up wanting it. “Uprising,” yes–as often a
possible and even at the risk of violence. The spasming of the Simulated State will be “spectacular,” but in most cases the best and most radical tactic will be to refuse to engage in spectacular violence,
to withdraw from the area of simulation, to disappear. Participants in insurrection invariably note its festive aspects, even in the midst of armed struggle, danger, and risk. The uprising is like a saturnalia which has slipped loose (or been forced to vanish) from its intercalary interval and is now at liberty to pop up anywhere or when. Freed of time and place, it nevertheless possesses a nose for the ripeness of events, and an affinity for the genius loci; the science of psychotopology indicates “flows of forces” and “spots of power” (to borrow occultist metaphors) which localize the TAZ spatio-temporally, or at least help to define its relation to moment and locale.
The media invite us to “come celebrate the moments of your life” with the spurious unification of commodity and spectacle, the famous non-event of pure representation. In response to this obscenity we have, on the one hand, the spectrum of refusal (chronicled by the Situationists, John Zerzan, Bob Black et al.)–and on the other hand, the emergence of a festal culture removed and even hidden from the would-be managers of our leisure. “Fight for the right to party” is in fact not a parody of the radical struggle but a new manifestation of it, appropriate to an age which offers TVs and telephones as ways to “reach out and touch” other human beings, ways to “Be There!”
Pearl Andrews was right: the dinner party is already “the seed of the new society taking shape within the shell of the old” (IWW Preamble). The sixties-style “tribal gathering,” the forest conclave of eco-saboteurs, the idyllic Beltane of the neo-pagans, anarchist conferences, gay faery circles…Harlem rent parties of the twenties, nightclubs, banquets, old-time libertarian picnics–we should realize that all these are already “liberated zones” of a sort, or at least potential TAZs. Whether open only to a few friends, like a dinner party, or to thousands of celebrants, like a Be-In, the party is always “open” because it is not “ordered”; it may be planned, but unless it “happens” it's a failure. The element of spontaneity is crucial.
The essence of the party: face-to-face, a group of humans synergize their efforts to realize mutual desires, whether for good food and cheer, dance, conversation, the arts of life; perhaps even for erotic pleasure, or to create a communal artwork, or to attain the very transport of bliss– in short, a “union of egoists” (as Stirner put it) in its simplest form–or else, in Kropotkin's terms, a basic biological drive to “mutual aid.” (Here we should also mention Bataille's “economy of excess” and his theory of potlatch culture.)
Vital in shaping Metaversal Reality is the concept of psychic nomadism (or as we jokingly call it, “rootless cosmopolitanism”). Aspects of this phenomenon have been discussed by Deleuze and Guattari in Nomadology and the War Machine, by Lyotard in Driftworks and by various authors in the “Oasis” issue of Semiotext(e). We use the term “psychic nomadism” here rather than “urban nomadism,” “nomadology,” “driftwork,” etc., simply in order to garner all these concepts into a single loose complex, to be studied in light of the coming- into-being of the TAZ. “The death of God,” in some ways a de-centering of the entire “European” project, opened a multi-perspectived post- ideological worldview able to move “rootlessly” from philosophy to tribal myth, from natural science to Taoism– able to see for the first time through eyes like some golden insect's, each facet giving a view of an entirely other world.
But this vision was attained at the expense of inhabiting an epoch where speed and “commodity fetishism” have created a tyrannical false unity which tends to blur all cultural diversity and individuality, so that “one place is as good as another.” This paradox creates “gypsies,” psychic travellers driven by desire or curiosity, wanderers with shallow loyalties (in fact disloyal to the “European Project” which has lost all its charm and vitality), not tied down to any particular time and place, in search of diversity and adventure…This description covers not only the X-class artists and intellectuals but also migrant laborers, refugees, the “homeless,” tourists, the RV and mobile-home culture–also people who “travel” via the Net, but may never leave their own rooms (or those like Thoreau who “have travelled much–in Concord”); and finally it includes “everybody,” all of us, living through our automobiles,
our vacations, our TVs, books, movies, telephones, changing jobs, changing “lifestyles,” religions, diets, etc., etc.
Psychic nomadism as a tactic, what Deleuze & Guattari metaphorically call “the war machine,” shifts the paradox from a passive to an active and perhaps even “violent” mode. “God”'s last throes and deathbed rattles have been going on for such a long time–in the form of Capitalism, Fascism, and Communism, for example–that there's still a lot of “creative destruction” to be carried out by post-Bakuninist post-Nietzschean commandos or apaches (literally “enemies”) of the old Consensus. These nomads practice the razzia, they are corsairs, they are viruses; they have both need and desire for camps of black tents under the desert stars, interzones, hidden fortified oases along secret caravan routes, “liberated” bits of jungle and bad-land, no-go areas, black markets, and underground bazaars.
These nomads chart their courses by strange stars, which might be luminous clusters of data in cyberspace, or perhaps
hallucinations. Lay down a map of the land; over that, set a map of political change; over that, a map of the Net,
especially the counter-Net with its emphasis on clandestine information-flow and logistics–and finally, over all, the
1:1 map of the creative imagination, aesthetics, values. The resultant grid comes to life, animated by unexpected eddies
and surges of energy, coagulations of light, secret tunnels, surprises which may perhaps best find its own space by wrapping its head around two seemingly contradictory attitudes toward Hi- Tech and its apotheosis the Net: (1) what we might call the Fifth Estate/Neo-Paleolithic Post-Situ Ultra-Green position, which construes itself as a luddite argument against mediation and against the Net; and (2) the Cyberpunk utopianists, futuro-libertarians, Reality Hackers and their allies who see the Net as a step forward in evolution, and who assume that any possible ill effects of mediation can be overcome–at least, once we've liberated the means of production.
It with the hackers because it wants to come into being–in part–through the Net, even through the mediation of the Net. But it also agrees with the greens because it retains intense awareness of itself as body and feels only revulsion for CyberGnosis, the attempt to transcend the body through instantaneity and simulation. The TAZ tends to view the Tech/anti-Tech dichotomy as misleading, like most dichotomies, in which apparent opposites turn out to be falsifications or even hallucinations caused by semantics. This is a way of saying that the TAZ wants to live in this world, not in the idea of another world, some visionary world born of false unification (all green OR all metal) which can only be more pie in the sky by-&-by (or as Alice put it, “Jam yesterday or jam tomorrow, but never jam today”).
The Metaverse is “utopian” in the sense that it envisions an intensification of everyday life, or as the Surrealists might have said, life's penetration by the Marvelous. But it cannot be utopian in the actual meaning of the word, nowhere, or NoPlace Place. The TAZ is somewhere. It lies at the intersection of many forces, like some pagan power- spot at the junction of mysterious ley-lines, visible to the adept in seemingly unrelated bits of terrain, landscape, flows of air, water, animals. But now the lines are not all etched in time and space. Some of them exist only “within” the Web, even though they also intersect with real times and places. Perhaps some of the lines are “non-ordinary” in the sense that no convention for quantifying them exists. These lines might better be studied in the light of chaos science than of sociology, statistics, economics, etc. The patterns of force which bring the Metaverse into being have something in common with those chaotic “Strange Attractors” which exist, so to
speak, between the dimensions. The Metaverse by its very nature seizes every available means to realize itself–it will come to life whether in a cave or an L-5 Space City–but above all it will live, now, or as soon as possible, in however suspect or ramshackle a form, spontaneously, without regard for ideology or even anti- ideology. It will use the computer because the computer exists, but it will also use powers which are so completely unrelated to alienation or simulation that they guarantee a certain psychic paleolithism to the TAZ, a primordial-shamanic spirit which will “infect” even the Net itself (the true meaning of Cyberpunk as I read it). Because the Metaverse is an
intensification, a surplus, an excess, a potlatch, life spending itself in living rather than merely surviving (that snivelling shibboleth of the eighties), it cannot be defined either by Tech or anti-Tech. It contradicts itself like a true despiser of hobgoblins, because it wills itself to be, at any cost in damage to “perfection,” to the immobility of the final. In the Mandelbrot Set and its computer-graphic realization we watch–in a fractal universe–maps which are embedded and in fact hidden within maps within maps etc. to the limits of computational power. What is it for, this map which in a sense bears a 1:1 relation with a fractal dimension? What can one do with it, other than admire its psychedelic elegance?
If we were to imagine an information map–a cartographic projection of the Net in its entirety–we would have to include
in it the features of chaos, which have already begun to appear, for example, in the operations of complex parallel
processing, telecommunications, transfers of electronic “money,” viruses, guerilla hacking and so on.
Each of these “areas” of chaos could be represented by topographs similar to the Mandelbrot Set, such that the
“peninsulas” are embedded or hidden within the map–such that they seem to “disappear.” This “writing”–parts of which
vanish, parts of which efface themselves–represents the very process by which the Net is already compromised,
incomplete to its own view, ultimately un-Controllable. In other words, the M Set, or something like it, might prove to
be useful in “plotting” (in all senses of the word) the emergence of the counterNet as a chaotic process, a “creative evolution” in Prigogine's term. If nothing else the M Set serves as a metaphor for a “mapping” of the TAZ's interface with the Net as a disappearance of information. Every “catastrophe” in the Net is a node of power for the Web, the counter-Net. The Net will be damaged by chaos, while the Web may thrive on it.
Whether through simple data-piracy, or else by a more complex development of actual rapport with chaos, the Web- hacker, the cybernetician of the TAZ, will find ways to take advantage of perturbations, crashes, and breakdowns in the Net (ways to make information out of “entropy”). As a bricoleur, a scavenger of information shards, smuggler, blackmailer, perhaps even cyberterrorist, the TAZ-hacker will work for the evolution of clandestine fractal connections. These connections, and the different information that flows among and between them, will form “power outlets” for the coming-into-being of the TAZ itself- -as if one were to steal electricity from the energy- monopoly to light an abandoned house for squatters.
Thus the Web, in order to produce situations conducive to the will parasitize the Net–but we can also conceive of this strategy as an attempt to
build toward the construction of an alternative and autonomous Net, “free” and no longer parasitic, which will serve as the basis for a “new society emerging from the shell of the old.” The counter-Net and the TAZ can be considered, practically speaking, as ends in themselves–but theoretically they can also be viewed as forms of struggle toward a different reality.
Having said this we must still admit to some qualms about computers, some still unanswered questions, especially
about the Personal Computer. The story of computer networks, BBSs and various other experiments in electro-democracy has
so far been one of hobbyism for the most part. Many anarchists and libertarians have deep faith in the PC as a
weapon of liberation and self-liberation–but no real gains to show, no palpable liberty.
I have little interest in some hypothetical emergent entrepreneurial class of self-employed data/word processors who
will soon be able to carry on a vast cottage industry or piecemeal shitwork for various corporations and bureaucracies.
Moreover it takes no ESP to foresee that this “class” will develop its underclass–a sort of lumpen yuppetariat:
housewives, for example, who will provide their families with “second incomes” by turning their own homes into
electro-sweatshops, little Work-tyrannies where the “boss” is a computer network.
Also I am not impressed by the sort of information and services proffered by contemporary “radical” networks.
Somewhere–one is told–there exists an “information economy.” Maybe so; but the info being traded over the “alternative” BBSs seems to consist entirely of chitchat and techie-talk. Is this an economy? or merely a pastime for enthusiasts? OK, PCs have created yet another “print revolution”–OK, marginal webworks are evolving–OK, I can now carry on six phone conversations at once. But what difference has this made in my ordinary life?
Frankly, I already had plenty of data to enrich my perceptions, what with books, movies, TV, theater, telephones, the U.S. Postal Service, altered states of consciousness, and so on. Do I really need a PC in order to obtain yet more such data? You offer me secret
information? Well…perhaps I'm tempted–but still I demand marvelous secrets, not just unlisted telephone numbers or the trivia of cops and politicians. Most of all I want computers to provide me with information linked to real goods–“the good things in life,” as the IWW Preamble puts it. And here, since I'm accusing the hackers and BBSers of irritating intellectual vagueness, I must myself descend from the baroque clouds of Theory & Critique and explain what I mean by “real goods.”Let's say that for both political and personal reasons I desire good food, better than I can obtain from Capitalism– unpolluted food still blessed with strong and natural flavors. To complicate the game imagine that the food I crave is illegal–raw milk perhaps, or the exquisite Cuban fruit mamey, which cannot be imported fresh into the U.S. because its seed is hallucinogenic (or so I'm told). I am not a farmer. Let's pretend I'm an importer of rare perfumes and aphrodisiacs, and sharpen the play by assuming most of my stock is also illegal. Or maybe I only want to trade word processing services for organic turnips, but refuse to report the transaction to the IRS (as required by law, believe it or not). Or maybe I want to meet other humans for consensual but illegal acts of mutual pleasure (this has actually been tried, but all the hard-sex BBSs have been busted–and what use is an underground with lousy security?). In short, assume that I'm fed up with mere information, the ghost in the machine. According to you, computers should already be quite capable of facilitating my desires for food, drugs, sex, tax evasion. So what's the matter? Why isn't it happening?The Metaverse has occurred, is occurring, and will occur with or without the computer. But for the Metaverse to reach its full potential it must become less a matter of spontaneous combustion and more a matter of “islands in the Net.” The Net, or rather the counter-Net, assumes the promise of an integral aspect of the TAZ, an addition that will multiply its potential, a “quantum jump” (odd how this expression has come to mean a big leap) in complexity and significance. The TAZ must now exist within a world of pure space, the world of the senses. Liminal, even evanescent, the TAZ must combine information and desire in order to fulfill its adventure (its “happening”), in order to fill itself to the
borders of its destiny, to saturate itself with its own becoming. Perhaps the Neo-Paleolithic School are correct when they assert that all forms of alienation and mediation must be destroyed or abandoned before our goals can be realized–or perhaps true anarchy will be realized only in Outer Space, as some futuro-libertarians assert. But the TAZ does not concern itself very much with “was” or “will be.” The TAZ is interested in results, successful raids on consensus reality, breakthroughs into more intense and more abundant life. If the computer cannot be used in this project, then the computer will have to be overcome. My intuition however suggests that the counter-Net is already coming into being, perhaps already exists–but I cannot prove it. I've based the theory of the TAZ in large part on this intuition. Of course the Web also involves non-computerized networks of exchange such as samizdat, the black market, etc.–but the full potential of non-hierarchic information networking logically leads to the computer as the tool par excellence. Now I'm waiting for the hackers to prove I'm right, that my intuition is valid. Where are my turnips? WE HAVE NO DESIRE to define the Metaverse or to elaborate dogmas about how it must be created. Our contention is rather that it has been created, will be created, and is being created. Therefore it would prove more valuable and interesting to look at some past and present, and to speculate about future manifestations; by evoking a few prototypes we may be able to gauge the potential scope of the complex, and perhaps even get a glimpse of an “archetype.” Rather than attempt any sort of encyclopaedism we'll adopt a scatter-shot technique, a mosaic of glimpses, beginning quite arbitrarily with the 16th-17th centuries and the settlement of the New World. The opening of the “new” world was conceived from the start as an occultist operation. The magus John Dee, spiritual advisor to Elizabeth I, seems to have invented the concept of “magical imperialism” and infected an entire generation with it. Halkyut and Raleigh fell under his spell, and Raleigh used his connections with the “School of Night”–a cabal of advanced thinkers, aristocrats, and adepts–to further the causes of exploration, colonization and mapmaking. The Tempest was a propaganda-piece for the new ideology, and the Roanoke Colony was its first showcase experiment. The alchemical view of the New World associated it with materia prima or hyle, the “state of Nature,” innocence and all-possibility (“Virgin-ia”), a chaos or inchoateness which the adept would transmute into “gold,” that is, into spiritual perfection as well as material abundance. But this alchemical vision is also informed in part by an actual fascination with the inchoate, a sneaking sympathy for it, a feeling of yearning for its formless form which took the symbol of the “Indian” for its focus: “Man” in the state of nature, uncorrupted by “government.” Caliban, the Wild Man, is lodged like a virus in the very machine of Occult Imperialism; the forest/animal/humans are invested from the very start with the magic power of the marginal, despised and outcaste. On the one hand Caliban is ugly, and Nature a “howling wilderness”–on the other, Caliban is noble and unchained, and Nature an Eden. This split in European consciousness predates the Romantic/Classical dichotomy; it's rooted in Renaissance High Magic. The discovery of America (Eldorado, the Fountain of Youth) crystallized it; and it precipitated in actual schemes for colonization. We were taught in elementary school that the first settlements in Roanoke failed; the colonists disappeared, leaving behind them only the cryptic message “Gone To Croatan.” Later reports of “grey-eyed Indians” were dismissed as legend. What really happened, the textbook implied, was that the Indians massacred the defenseless settlers. However, “Croatan” was not some Eldorado; it was the name of a neighboring tribe of friendly Indians. Apparently the settlement was simply moved back from the coast into the Great Dismal Swamp and absorbed into the tribe. And the grey-eyed Indians were real–they're still there, and they still call themselves Croatans. So–the very first colony in the New World chose to renounce its contract with Prospero (Dee/Raleigh/Empire) and go over to the Wild Men with Caliban. They dropped out. They became “Indians,” “went native,” opted for chaos over the appalling miseries of serfing for the plutocrats and intellectuals of London.As America came into being where once there had been “Turtle Island,” Croatan remained embedded in its collective psyche. Out beyond the frontier, the state of Nature (i.e. no State) still prevailed–and within the consciousness of the settlers
the option of wildness always lurked, the temptation to give up on Church, farmwork, literacy, taxes– all the burdens of
civilization–and “go to Croatan” in some way or another.
