"Thornley, Kerry - Zenarchy v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thornley Kerry)

"The True People of Old," says Chuang Tsu, "were kind to one another without knowing it was called compassion. They deceived no one and did not know it was called honesty. The were reliable and did not know it was called dependability. They lived together freely giving and taking and did not know it was called generosity. For this reason their actions have not been recorded and they made no history." Calling this the Age of Perfect Peace, the sage tells us its citizens lived like deer in the forests, sleeping without dreaming and awakening without anxiety.
Sociality comes as easily to the unconditioned mind as reason or sex. When Dom Aelred Graham complained in his Conversations Christian and Buddhist that Zen seemed to him amoral due to the absence of anything like the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule, a Zen master responded that compassion is one of the definitive components of Zen enlightenment, and that without compassion it isn't Zen.
Rules - unlike contractual agreements useful to many situations and at least bilateral in nature - are only needed by those who have lost the capacity to govern themselves humanely. Once they are established it is a vicious cycle, for those who grow up under them never reach the maturity required for common-sense living.
Having mentioned that the fourth characteristic of unconditioned personality is spirituality, I'll begin by pointing out that I am obviously not talking about theological belief systems, since those things can be argued forever without any corresponding change in human actions. Metaphysics should not stubbornly be dragged into community affairs; in return, the community ought to respect freedom of personal belief among its individual members. Otherwise, it will be divided and ruled.
All religions participate in spirituality. Yet it is something also available to the skeptic, as Julian Huxley shows in Religion Without Revelation. Psychedelic consciousness is at this point a rather passe term, yet it functions to show that what we are talking about is not a monopoly of religious faith. Quoting Blake, Aldous Huxley called it a cleansing of "the doors of perception" in his book by that name. Since nothing direct can be said about it, and since most of this book is devoted to indicating how it may be experienced, further elaboration is next to useless. Lord Buddha responded to all inquiries about metaphysical spirituality with what he called "a noble silence". For that reason he is sometimes called the Silent Sage.
That what we are discussing, under whatever name, is closely related to our sense of the beautiful is clear because it has always inspired the creators of great art. Like reason and sex and compassion, esthetic discrimination seems largely inborn. And, therefore, Zenarchists who are skeptical of religion may prefer to call this characteristic of unconditioned mind esthetic, instead of spiritual.
Buried under all the layers of ignorant assumption and fable and reflex conditioning called individual personality, at the center of every human soul, is a pure flame of undivided rationality and sexuality and sociability and spirituality. When you reach that flame in self or other without evoking a knee-jerk reaction from armoring which imprisons it, you have touched the most private holy of holies within the living human being. You are then participating in the work of Subjective Liberation.

Change Number Two:
Economic Independence
As Marx and Kropotkin and other revolutionaries have observed, trying to attain and maintain psychological liberation under deficient material conditions is practically impossible. More than scarcity is involved.
Regimented working conditions (endured today in both capitalist and socialist nations) are also deadening to the spirit. Equally difficult is finding any options in the struggle for freedom when you must report for work like a soldier to muster in order to produce, must dress and conduct yourself in such a way as not to scandalize the sensibilities of your boss, and must remain at production until a given hour when you are dismissed.
Lack of control by workers of the means of production is certainly the root of the problem. Marx erred, though, in thinking if corporations were turned into public bureaucracies the monotonous routine would transform itself. Until the communist anarchist dream of direct expropriation of the tools of production is realized, or until there is a laissez-faire free market where small businesses can survive easily enough that we can become self-employed, it is up to us to find ways to break out of the predominant system. For an independent economic base of action is almost necessary for maintaining inner liberation and making the imaginative responses to political authority required by the counter-game.
Fortunately a wealth of information for attaining that much is readily available in The Whole Earth Catalog publications.
An excellent preparatory step is to heed Henry David Thoreau's observation: we are rich not according to what we possess, but according to the number of things we can do without. Take inventory of what you own or consume that genuinely contributes to your happiness. Identify what you purchase in order to impress others whose opinions do not matter. Many people own stocks, for example, because of an addictive compulsion to gamble, not for reasons of a security that leads to peace of mind. What is the point of winning and losing symbolic wealth that is seldom if ever seen, touched or tasted by the owner? Much the same thing can be said for the desire to purchase, year after year, a late-model car. How many home appliances cost more trouble and money in maintenance than they are worth?
For direct enjoyment of living, what about purchasing your own tools of production and using them with your own brain and hands? The Whole Earth Catalog and its widely available sequels are subtitled "Access to Tools". Once in possession of your own means of production, you fit both capitalist and socialist definitions of the free individual. And if you don't own enough luxuries to sell to buy the tools, you need not despair. Knowledge is as valuable as capital for self-employment and can often be used to acquire any tools you may need.
A statement of purpose in The Whole Earth Catalog reads: "We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far remotely done power and glory - as via government, big business, formal education, church - has succeeded to point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing - power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by The Whole Earth Catalog." To be included, an item must be deemed useful as a tool relevant to independent education, of high quality or low cost and easily available by mail.
Guides and implements listed make it possible for you - if you want - to forage, grow, hunt or raise your own food, make your own clothing and shelter, provide yourself with competent medical care for most ailments. That isn't the only use for The Whole Earth Catalog and how far you or your group wants to go in that direction is of course optional. No matter how much or how little time and effort you expend in learning independent survival, though, you are that much ahead of the game. For to tread the money mill, if you are not a banker, is to labor against house odds.
"A bank may, under Federal Reserve rules, loan eight times as much as it has on deposit," cautions Robert Anton Wilson, asking then, "if seven dollars out of every eight that are so produced by bank credit are not created out of nothing, what are they created of?"
Inflation is the name of the result. Note the power of the banks when you read articles and hear speeches on inflation by apologists for capitalism and socialism alike. They seldom mention banks.
Not only does fractional reserve banking erode your purchasing power, you also pay in the same way for deficit spending by government. Again, only bankers benefit. They collect the interest. And interest is made necessary only by coercive regulations on money supply, amounting to a bank-government partnership. Otherwise you could issue I.O.U.'s on your own collateral and buy things with them, paying only a minimal fee for a credit investigation.
In Great Britain the average worker also spends one working day out of every nine paying for his or her automobile - in purchasing cost, repairs, insurance and highway taxes. Add to this the burden of taxation in general, both direct and hidden in prices of what we buy from taxed and tariffed industries. Then take into consideration the giant's share of your paycheck you probably fork over for rent. You can't possibly secure a just return for your labor.
"Never buy what you can make," my grandfather used to say. If you follow that advice you will gain much more than you lose by forsaking what were once the advantages of division of labor. Beyond that, of course, is producing something useful or desirable in goods and services for purposes of barter.
First, though, exchanging goods and services depends on your ability to communicate with other independent producers.

Change Number Three:
Parallel Communications
Every center of political-economic authority strives to monopolize communications. Mass media, telephone and postal systems are all controlled by corporate-government oligarchies. If we enjoy freedom of expression, it is managed freedom of speech.
Unfettered communications between self-liberating people is required for both communal and free market activities outside the rip-offs of coercively monopolized capital.
Brainstorming and combing publications of the libertarian right are both useful methods for developing ideas about creating alternative communications. Networks using advanced electronics, associations of nomadic individuals and, when necessary, cyphers and codes, are among these alternatives.
Periodicals and books pertaining to libertarian right applications of principle can usually be found among individuals on the fringes of the Libertarian Party, since even many politically active libertarian capitalists are also interested in direct free market action outside the system.
By scrutinizing advertisements in libertarian publications for yet other printed material and products and by corresponding and personally visiting libertarian technicians and entrepreneurs, you will quickly find much that will contribute to creating and participating in liberated systems of communication.

Change Number Four:
Liberated Trade
Free contracting for the exchange of labor for goods and services, barter and monetary (accounting) systems free from inflation and usury - parallel market places are the modes of Liberated Trade. Libertarians call them agoric systems of production and exchange.
Both the Whole Earth movement and the libertarians you meet for creating parallel communications will be able to show you how to comprehend this activity and make it, or let it, work for you.
Having previously mastered the first three changes you will find it easy to now become an essentially free person or family or tribe. For by this time you will know where to acquire further data for participating in Liberated Trade.

Change Number Five:
Objective Freedom
"Now that you have your freedom, how will you hide it from robbers?"
Political governments, organized crime syndicates and intelligence community bureaucracies known popularly as conspiracies, are the only threats to your liberty at this point. You don't necessary have to overthrow them to be free of them. That would, besides, be like cutting the heads off a Hydra.
What they all possess in common is the blunt recognition that, as Chairman Mao said, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Governments are generally devoted to public relations for the purpose of obscuring that fact. Mafia dons have traditionally been more honest about their line of work, but they are getting smarter.
Self-defense skills, defensive weaponry and technology, authoritarian psychology and, if you are fanatical, emergency suicide techniques can all be studied for the purpose of coping with violent enslavers. If you let it be known that you are prepared to kill yourself rather than submit to coercive authority - and have the means at hand, such as a poison pill in a locket around your neck - you may find that many an authoritarian will decide harassing you would cause too many problems.
Judo, karate and other Oriental methods of arguing by hand are additionally valuable as Zenarchist disciplines. Non-lethal weapons such as gas guns are useful for people who would rather attain instant security in this area. Other defensive weaponry can include alarm systems for protecting personal property and communication arrangements for identifying potential oppressors. One application of authoritarian psychology is to make an appointment with a harassing bureaucrat at 4:30 Friday afternoon and then borrow the neighbor's kids and dogs and bring them along.
These are just a few examples of the many methods of dealing with the ultimate source of political authority - the armed agent, as cop or squad of soldiers or hit man.
Since the eye is superior protection to the sword, evolution equips all animals with sensory organs - only a few with fangs or claws or horns, etc. It behooves you to devote the most attention to whatever will expand your awareness, including fancy alarm systems.
Or use them to enlighten your oppressor.
Doctor George Boardman, a libertarian who believed in living without the dubious protection of government, once suggested what I would call a Zenarchist burglar alarm. A nocturnal intruder triggers a mechanism to flood the area with blinding light and activate an amplified recording that says: "How about a little light? Thief."