CONTENTS - ouroboros ponderosa

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coherellCY (If our fedillgs or insights through allcrnalivc groupings.
structures, cultures, and so t()rth. We must go much further. Failure to
press coherently to the sources of our malaise simply leave us carrying
thIS offal about, e . ndlessly . failing to understand anything, repeating
forever the stupIdItIes trappmg us here, reducing everything to a cynical
charade. We will be continually victimized, our best insights nothing if we
are not to become visionaries, insisting more of life than a never ending
senes of computer gadgets, new "causes," new mysticisms or re-runs of
Dr. Strange love ad nauseam.
John's essays make all this abundantly clear. Here it is axiomatic that
time, technology, work and other aspects of our social lives-hailed as
the liberators of humanity-are, in fact, the co-conspirators of domestica­
tion and domination. Today, more than ever-as you will see from this
modest collection-they stand exposed. If some think these efforts are
simply a theory of spontaneity they will fail to understand anything, much
less the end of illusion, how to separate the authentic from the corrupt
and recuperable.
If de-mystification is difficult, tInding those prepared to listen or to
undertake the necessary doings is more so. The blat of everyday survival
threatens to drown out some important voices of our time. A few I would
point out, for example, are Fredy Perlman, Frederick Turner, Jacques
Camatte, P,erre Clastres, Marshall Sahlins, Richard Drinnon, Stanley
DIamond, Howard Zinn and the lively, changing groups of people who
have been involved in marginal and periodical publications, such as the
Fifth Estate in Detroit. These people constitute no school or homoge­
nous . group. They are diverse individuals whose disagreements,
opposItIons and arguments are as integral to their activity as the
commonality of their projects. At the core we see much of what is vital
to any authentic revolution: to have done with the "civilizing" myths
destroymg us .
. Much of their work is necessarily "anthropologically" grounded. The
Importance of this digging cannot be underestimated. It isn't a rooting
about for utopia or silly sociological role-models. We are so locked in
n:entally and physically to "what is" that we fail to recognize that our
ktngdom IS a pnson. The overwhelming power of present-day ruling
notions and the reqU1;ements of sheer survival leave many of us virtually
tncapable of recognIZIng how dIverse arc the possibilities of life.
l! is not the power of the State, of capitalism, mass media, nationalism
. . ,
raCIsm, seXIsm, work routine, class, language, schooling, or culturaJization
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