The Empire never died and Nixon's police state was never dismantled: crack wars, toxic dumping on Indian reservations, a Mexican border militarized zone, a national computer identity registry, the Digital Telephony Act, chaos control on wall street, a republican "contract" to curb mass disillusionment with the two party system, Prop 187 - these are desperate measures undertaken by desperate individuals to prevent the destruction of a 5000 year old theocracy, but the horse has already bolted from the stable.
Is there anything to suggest that the USA can escape the collapse formenting in other parts of this global system? The US is already reeling from the impact of social upheaval brought on by the second "industrial" revolution while across the Atlantic the sudden transformation of stagnant political power blocks into thriving if turbulent competitors in the race towards true democracy show that things can never be the same again. A social change fractal has circumnavigated the globe at lightening speed, the Soviet Union implodes, Eastern Europe disintegrates into tremulous fragments, Communist China accelerates into unprecedented economic growth and South Africa usurps America's claim to be land of the free. These all represent major ingressions into social novelty. And to ram it home consider for a moment this underpublicised fact - South Africa is the first nation in history to willingly give up its nuclear weapons status in favor of being a nuclear free zone, it is also the only country in the world to enshrine protection of gender ORIENTATION in its constitution. And I am talking about a country of 40 million people. The myth of world leadership by a western elite finalized by the post world war ii Bretton-Woods agreement is taking strain.
Quick Reality Check: It is distracting to become fixated with the American experience. Consider this, by the year 2000 there are likely to be 57 mega cities: 42 of them in the developing world. 25 cities will have populations of more than 10 million with all but three of them in the south. And top of the urban hit-parade will be Mexico city, the largest with a population approaching 30 million. (source UN census)
At the same time as we experience this socio-economic turbulence, and the crumbling of old style NORTHERN ECONOMIES we are experiencing the rise of a permanent autonomous zone (PAZ), a future perfect state (FPS), a fourth world (FW) rising up like grass growing admidst the cracks of the old order concrete. The empire never died, but neither did the resistance. In this startling reversal of fortunes, a fragmented rag-tag nation of reality technicians, cyber operatives, pagan evolutionaries, trance guerrillas, and ZIPPIES make themselves known to the world aided by African Shamanic Technology.
Seen from another perspective, in an error from which it can never recover, The Empire forgets why it was burning witches, torching pagans and exorcising that "devil music". Infection can be traced along the slave routes. The American empire is no more vigilant than the British or classical hegemonies before them. Each one is infected by a music whose characteristic sound is the "emission of a succession of repetitive beats". A music as distinct from the balladic oral tradition of "song" as the aeorta is to the cerebellum. This African Shamanic Technology (AST) or drumming is THE pre-lingual primal culture primer birthed in the African Olduvai Gorge.
The Eleusinian Mysteries predate the discovery of Rock 'n Roll in the west by only a few thousands years. But the AST was no less inspiring to the Magic Mushroom Munching Minoans as our modern audience. Attempts are made to counter the infection with similar technology. An early insight is that marijuana seems to promote the Shamanic ritual, so the Drug War begins. But rock n' roll rebellion prove to the Sony Scientists, that even without the drugs, a shamanic element is invested in the act of merely dancing to the music. So Muzak is invented.
Metaprogramming discoveries suggest the counter-measures work by invoking boredom. A sure hit is reduced to crap within days by having its heart or transcendental rhythm cut out and replaced with a lower tempo analogue designed to dull the mind. Muzak combined with drug prohibition present a potent deterrent at the hands of Control.
Then in our worst and bleakest hour of mid-eighties New Wave Muzak, Reagan and CIA Cocaine Ego-Tripping, a sudden ingression into audio novelty, the Zippy Underground Rocket Scientists hand us the Roland 808 and a new style of music evolves designed to counter all attempts at curtailment - Rave, 120 - 220 bpm full blown shamanic trance-formation. Chaos Theory hits the soundscape of civilization. Nearly ten years later, the last of the last line of British Empire Conspirators, goes public with his anxiety and throws a desperate punch banning the entire concept of sound. A Major commanding the sea to go back as it were. But as I said, the unicorn is out of the stable , the quantum cat is out of its bag.
And alongside this steady rebirthing of individuals into psyche-space, the unfolding of cyberspace. A behind-their-backs triple whammy for the patriotic perverts - the destruction of all symbolic geographies, of all artificial borders and boundaries, by the Internet. Dialing into New Dehli or flitting in on FTP to Finland makes the very idea of border-patrol meaningless. The insane system as we know it has collapsed except for an ironic twist, - we *really* don't know it. And Gore and Major (with the aid of MCI Corp) ready themselves to attempt that greatest of con-jobs, the last great rock 'n roll swindle of the hypermillennium. They have lost the keys to the castle, the belly of the beast has been breached but the natives haven't realized, "I wonder if they'll let us haul that damn drawbridge up again" says Gore.
Which is where the ZIPPY INTERNET INVASION comes in, applying information theory, systems theory, chaos theory to that fractalling asymptote - The Internet, while it extends itself beyond its current reach of 152 countries growing at a rate of 12% per month. "This is not just an invasion. its an INTER-VASION" says Timothy Leary, a behind their backs zen maneuver spreading the concept of a GLOBAL VOTE via E-Mail against the UK Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. (That's the act with the ban on "repetitive beats"). Then High Drama as Hippies call foul over the use of "militarist language" forgetting that there is no game on this program labeled "Global Thermonuclear War", a "virtual attack." remains just that - finetuning the nonviolence needle by ridding it of that parasitic meme - the idea of a sit-on-your-butt-do-nothing-non-resistance. "Luke Skywalker, lets get this straight, its non-violent passive resistance not passive violent non-resistance". Hippies, Zippies, Cyber Chippies, Pagan Neural Nomads, its time to fly the damn oneiric airplane, its time to re-awaken this sleeping giant of an ICBM (intercontinental balancing meme), that Biblical Behemoth and cruise into Bethlehem.
The evolution that the internet-plus-rave-culture represents (virtual geography-plus-geographic-virtualiti) is not the Al Gore, AT&T revolution in entertainment advertised on television where the entire culture of western society gets sucked or uploaded into Hollywood-Space. It is a downloading of political expression and reverie learnt on the dancefloor and inside the webs of networked mainframes INTO the OUTSIDE geography of LIFE AS WE KNOW IT. This is that Self Explanatory Planetary Information we are all talking about, it is a neural pathway filled with DIRECT GLOBAL DEMOCRACY, ENHANCED TRANCE CONSCIOUSNESS and balanced by FEELGOOD FREEDOM FINESSE.
This could be *the* most important social manifestation in the history. of humanity Except we have become fixated on its value as just another entertainment tool. Sex, Drugs, Music and Cyberspace in themselves are uninteresting. They become more interesting when we look at them as tools and expressions for how we run society and how we live our lives. Sexual freedoms won at home are nothing without a corresponding awakening and balancing of libidinal energy in society at large. Access to drugs is of little use without a corresponding mytho-shamanic-decoding. Rave-Music-Tranceploration might get you into a pomo-voudon reverie but without a personal integration with social action it is mere meminglessness. And Cyberspace is just another word for carpal tunnel syndrome without a physically enhancing interface to our reality-scape. And while we puzzle over the significance of all these new technologies the regional political monopolies show that they are catching on fast. Al Gore and John Major seem intent on capturing the debate on electronic democracy and surgically removing any internationalist impulse. The Internet Backbone will be sold to MCI and even the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is powerless to do anything but temper the Digital Telephony Act, while a Wired Whitehall has already been packaged.
The Temporary Autonomous Zone precedes the Permanent Autonomous Zone. But it must first give up its temporary nature. The future perfect state can only arrive if we allow it to land. The internet-plus-rave-culture indicate that this moment is at hand. But first we have to take our techno toys out into the streets. A process of recolonizing the psyche-space of the entire superstructure of society. There is no space-time for a digital elite. It is time to use our newly won tools-of-the-gods or Deity Devices as true extensions of our being, and to use them to right the wrongs, to increase the emotion for change (Social Idealism), for the creation of a perfect and beautiful deep green world
e-mail: megatrip@best.com