Historically, futurist thought is nourished and indeed flourishes in times of oppression. Look at the world the Situationists came out of. The darker things look, the greater the potential for a sudden lurch forward.

I see more and more examples of TAZes as time goes by. PAZes cannot, in my opinion, exist. Nothing is permanent, after all. However Autonomous Zones can attain a form of permanency in that they always exist, even if not always with the same people or in the same forms. (And in truth, the only Autonomous Zones that ever actually exist, exist in people's heads.)

As much as I respect the Old Futurist Thinkers, I have a number of problems with the attitudes dominant of the day. Primarily, they tended to think that the the Rules of the Game (mainstream society) could be essentially ignored. I think this is an error on two counts. Firstly, the fish can only ignore the water it swims in by remainined unaware. Second, you cannot ignore the system you are trying to change. "Fight from the inside" is a truism because it has truth.

My preference is more along the Barlow way of thinking (although he's a poor example). That is to actively subvert the rules. Play the mainstream game, but play it by running between the lines.

Posted by: JohnFen at August 20, 2004 12:19 PM

Along current trends, I think our future is rather dark. Although, it's still entirely up for grabs. We all need to start working together to open people's minds and hearts to the earth and it's rising oppression.
I think this is a good article on the subject. Let me know what you think of it.

2012Eschaton

Posted by: Otaku at August 20, 2004 12:30 PM

I remember in Steward Brand's "clock on the long now" a quote by somebody (I think it was John Cage) that was more or less something like : "things are getting better. but very slowly". sure, America is right now in a dark phase, but is Bush really worse than Nixon, or McCarthy, for instance? Simultaneously, there are some good news: gay weddings are celebrated; the words "under god" from the pledge are questionned...And an idiotic and unjust war get some oppositon much more quickly than in the time of vietnam. I don't doubt the bad agenda of the current administration, but I am pleased by the rather quick opposition it has raised.But this does not means that american people should not be vigilant, of course (we have our share of problems in Europe!). Nevertheless, I think things are slowly getting better. But we need to move beyond the "we want the world and we want it now" frame of mind and accept to work with slow and convoluted evolution.
A question now about the burning man. Of course I never attended, and I see that from the distant eye of an european, but I fail to understand what is so extraordinary about it. It seems to me, from the outside, to be nothing else than a Woodstock or a loollapalaza without rock bands, or the reactivation of the old 60's be-in. Having not been part of the experience, I am certainly wrong, but I'd like to ask this question: what is the output of the burning man? What is created there that can benefit to people all over the world? I wasn't in the San Francisco be-in (I was 6 and in france!), but from there came a music, a philosophy, a way of life, a litterature that changed the whole world. what is Burning Man giving to the world ?

Posted by: remi at August 20, 2004 03:43 PM

Paul, Paul, Paul...

what is the point of all this psychedelic futurist talk? What is the point of this blog – what good is it anymore? What is the point of all the visionaries, the insights, and all our drug-inspired visions...

Hope, experience, community, communication, pushing the human morphogenetic field towards imagination and transformation. What you're really saying here is "What's the point of gettin gout of bed in the morning?". Well the point is to fucking live life in all its colors.

Are we planting the seeds of the New Aeon or are we reveling in our own decadent narcissim just as the Romans did right before the end?

Both. You can't look at the world as a monolith. If you only watch/read the news, you'll hear a lot about all of the bad things, and a little about the good. But there's just as much positive creation as there is negative destruction. As remi commented, things are in many ways much better than they were. Environmental awareness, civil rights, medicine, the availiability of information... Think of the 50's. Or the early industrialisation of England. Dynasties & empires rise and fall. It's been happening as long as history. We are ultimately bound to the ebb and flow of nature. All structures ultimately dissipate.

Within a few weeks there will be nothing left of Burning Man, no evidence it was ever there, other than in the minds and hearts of the people who left. That’s because Burning Man is a Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ). And I think the prevailing reason it’s temporary is that our society and increasingly our government would never allow anything close to something like Burning Man become a permanent community.

As JohnFen noted, this isn't really the point. The beauty of the TAZ, and the beauty of Burning Man, is that, like life itself, it is ephemeral. The life we lead at Burnning Man is only possible because we save our work money during the year so we can live the ideal for a week or so. Can you imagine tryin gto survive for an extended amount of time out there? Or anywhere? We tend to have a very romaniticized view of living off the land but it's fucking hard work. Remember that the average lifespan of most people 200 years ago was like 35.

When a TAZ becomes a PAZ it tends to become infected with hierarchies & conflicts. It stangnates and gives rise to power structures. Bey advocates sudden timeless events that dissipate back into the aether. He values nomadism and change. This is, after all, the ultimate way of nature. Everything changes. The industrialized mind thinks it can resist change with order and structure but this will always fail in the end.

Psychedelic futurism is a roadmap for change, for charting the unknown. The value of visions is to break the bonds of rationality to glimpse the ineffable and map out the future of possiblity.

Remember that psychedelic means "mind manifesting".

Within a few weeks there will be nothing left of Burning Man, no evidence it was ever there, other than in the minds and hearts of the people who left. That’s because Burning Man is a Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ). And I think the prevailing reason it’s temporary is that our society and increasingly our government would never allow anything close to something like Burning Man become a permanent community.

It already is. Look at the web. think about how much is known - or readily available to be known - about the misdeed wrought by our corporate military overlords. More is know about these crooks now than ever before. Technology has enabled a decentralized, encryptable worldwide network of information.As long as its on it will never be tamed. And hypersurveillance is another name for hypermedia. The global mind wants to see itself in as fine a resolution as possible. You go on the web and you will see things in 5 minutes that would've taken months of grueling travel, risk of life and limb, to even get a glimpse of. From the absolutely mundane to the phenominally sublime - it's all available at oour fingertips. Information overload is the predecessor to the eschaton.

Can we afford to continue as dettached hippies, or should we become more involved like John Perry Barlow is now doing?

No and yes. We must act. Detachment is OK for the truly ascendant masters (do you know any?) but for the rest of us it's just escapism. We must be active. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to march on the steps of Wash or give all your money to PACs. Change begins within and at home. Make a difference with the way you spend your money. The big evil here is corporate greed so hit them where it hurts. Examine you lifestyle and try to trim or cut out purchases that you know go directly to nefarious corporations. Meanwhile, don't be afraid to speak out. Get the word out while you still can. (That's the point of this blog, yeah? To continue the Great Work and help other people get this very important info.)

As I said in the beginning of this long-winded response, all structures ultimately dissipate. The psychedelic experience is an awareness of change as the fundamental reality of life; an awareness of the the wondrous joy of creation in all of its forms; an understanding and a belief - Faith - that it will all work out in the end. Whether we are governed by great Kings or evil despots, life coninues unabated.

Stay Positive. It is essential to keep optimism flowing into our world.

And remi, I'll forgive your ignorance of Burning Man. Did you read my post below? Now check out the calendar of events at Burnning Man this year and tell if you can see how much people bring to the playa, and take with them to the rest of the world. IMHO, it is the largest expression of freedom on the planet right now.

Finally, real change takes time. And it may be that the necessary change will be accompanied by fire and brimstone. All we can do is keep trying to help things along in any way we can, and enjoy the ride while we're here.

Posted by: lvx23 at August 20, 2004 04:32 PM

Lux23:
And remi, I'll forgive your ignorance of Burning Man. Did you read my post below? Now check out the calendar of events at Burnning Man this year and tell if you can see how much people bring to the playa, and take with them to the rest of the world. IMHO, it is the largest expression of freedom on the planet right now.

Some time ago, american people I knew offered me a DVD about Burning man. I found it highly interesting, but there is obviously something that definitively escapes distant media, something that cannot be recorded. In some way, this is good, because it escapes from gross marketing and fashion etc.But it makes more difficult to outsiders like me to understand what is really happening!

One year, perhaps, I will try to attend...

Posted by: remi at August 20, 2004 04:59 PM

Paul, my initial reaction when I heard about the federal ruling on reporters revealling sources yesterday was that this might be an attempt to get at Novak and find out who blew Valerie Plame's cover (Karl Rove).

Posted by: lvx23 at August 20, 2004 05:08 PM

Remi, it really is one of those "you've just got to experience it" sort of things. Suffice it to say that many people leave BM radically altered in many ways. Given that many of the attendants are Silicon Valley engineers and executives (I.e. people who have the brains and power to make a difference) it certainly has more far-reaching effects than we may realize.

Posted by: lvx23 at August 20, 2004 05:10 PM

Hi LVX23,

The "Paul, Paul, Paul" could be read as a supportive hug or a big tiresome sigh. I'll take the hug. :)

As I have mentioned I'm going through a phase of INTENSE questioning of all of my values - values which I have never truly questioned. Oh, I say I have and like to think that I hold no sacred Chao's, but I'm now at a point, where this is no longer a choice I'm making, but a reality, a depth of authenticity I'm facing. To not hold our most sacred ideas under scrutiny is to shirk our responsibility as proselytizers of them. I'm now old enough and wise enough to feel secure enough in my self to be able to do this and not feel threatened or 'depressed'. It's has a very logical feel to it, if that makes any sense. From the tone I perceive, I get the suspicion you think I'm totally down in the dumps. This is not entirely accurate. It is more a state of extreme neutrality or dispassion. Trust me, it is a rather alien place for me to be. I have always been quite passionate and enthusiastic, and indeed still have spurts of this - especially that Bman is almost here. yeah!

So let me re-capsulate my thoughts on this matter. Despite all the cultural forces and paradigm shifting, new age promotion, New Aeon invocation, and burning man celebration... much of the most pressing issues have all gotten worse. Worse still, there has been even less of a mobilization against it than in any time I have been alive. Perhaps I have a somewhat idealized view of the 60's, but I don't see that happening. Instead the opposition has become increasingly muted and marginalized. Don't get me wrong, people are pissed. Our country is more polarized than ever... but "THE SIXTIES" this is not. Not even close. Burning Man is great, don't get me wrong. I consider it to be my absolute most favorite place to be.. period. It is a precious time for me - a place of renewal, regeneration and rebirth. I'm looking forward to this years event with great anticipation. None of that has changed in me. No, what has changed is a stark realization that it may no longer be enough. You talked about enjoying the here and now, and living life because that's whats its all about. Of course, this is essential, however is it enough to turn the course for humanity? I'm now feel compelled to pursue a course that lays the seeds of meaning and prosperity for future generations. However, these "mind children" may never be born if the powers of oppression and possibly global catastrophe lay waste to our world. This is no longer mere hyperbole, but an escalating possibility with each passing day.

You mention that many of the Bman's participants are movers and shakers in Silicon Valley, yet their voice is obviously not being heard in the halls of washington. The recent victory of p2p companies over hollywood is a mere small victory in the wake of massive and long-running defeat. How bad must it get before people finally rise up and say enough is enough? For me this time came a long time ago, yet here we are in 2004, and Bush still might take the whitehouse. We will still be in Iraq, and there is a very high liklihood a military draft will be implemented within 12 months. Have we not learned our lessons from history. Perhaps we have to the extent that the maximum number of people are ALREADY MOBILIZED. And yet it may not be enough to turn our country away from this voracious crypto-facism that grows less crypto by the day, yet ever more secretive.

I have hope, but I have run out of optimism. Talk of morphogenetic fields sounds great, and echos my own thoughts of the past 10 years, but the global tidalwave of empire has washed away my remaining idealism. Will it return? I sincerly hope so. My hope remains vigilant.

Love,

Paul

Posted by: Paul at August 20, 2004 10:47 PM

Just the thought that nothing has to be "permanent", if it is well enough connected. Like, a party doesn't have to be in the same place every time. It is more fun if it is in different, somewhat surprising places each time, but you still manage to find out about it. The same with learning experiences, inspiring meetings, and many other desirable events. They work just as well, or better, if they're in different circumstances each time. Their circumstances are temporary. Temporariness helps us be in the moment and pay attention. The problem with Burning Man, even though I haven't been and I'd love to go, might be that it has become too predictable. More of a routine, however amazing, than might be good. And it is something that could be resisted and stopped, if some politicians decided to. Because you know exactly when and where it will be, and who's "in charge", and what kinds of stuff will happen. At least "what kind of stuff" when seen through the eyes of government or police.

The real trick might be how to maximize the variety and frequency and vibrancy of different kinds of events in different places, and the degree to which they're connected together, into something that grows and flourishes, no matter the details or locations or people involved.

Maybe that is already happening and we don't quite notice the big picture of connection. Maybe we need to develop our awareness of how things fit together. Or maybe we really do need stronger connectivity, and work on figuring out what it is that connects together and how and why, and what it means, and how we talk about it.

Posted by: Flemming at August 21, 2004 03:04 AM

First, respect to Paul for honesty. It's hard to turn some of these feelings and ideas over in public without fear of misconstrual hampering the honest urge to enquire. I've just been reading some stuff by someone who hopes to "abolish suffering", comparing current scepticism about mood-altering technologies used to decrease (and, it is hoped, eliminate) emotional suffering to Victorian religious opposition to the use of anasthesia in surgery.

The main flaw I see in this analogy is that anasthesia is a temporary expedient. If we could tweak our neurology to permanently obliterate physical pain, we really wouldn't last very long. Likewise, I can see the value of tech that shuts down emotional pain, in order to do some "psychic surgery" (in the general sense). My objection is less in the "ye must suffer" monotheistic vein, more the "respect for millions of years of evolution" Taoist type. I'm keeping an open mind, but at the moment any project aiming to shut down our capacity for emotional darkness on a more permanent basis does seem like hubris, at best. I'm not sure this capacity is a now-superfluous adaptation to the African plains of a million years ago. Non-neurotic emotional suffering seems to me to be a highly evolved form of psychic waste-processing - something we really, really need at this stage of this culture.

I watched "Dark City" for the first time last night. Excellent film. It struck me how pagan it is. The Strangers were looking in the wrong place for our humanity, our soul - it isn't all inside our heads (a view that generated the self-consuming, isolating city), it is in our bond with the environment. I don't hold this as a permanent condition, but I think if we're ever to evolve past it, we need to really come to terms with it. To me this is the whole point of McKenna's "the way back is the way forward" Archaic Revival. We can't go into space until we've remembered why we're here on Earth, and embraced that connection before letting it go.

The most important thing, Paul, in your post, seemed to be the energy issue. I sense that part of our alienation from nature is some form of mass denial that intensified the more horribly dependent we've become on it. Our entire civilisation is predicated on what energy researchers term "cheap oil". And that's it. There's nothing else that can provide the energy our system needs to sustain itself. And it's running out very quickly. All kinds of people are admitting this. We get a heap of energy from the sun every day - but that's nothing compared to the compressed solar energy stored up in those dead plants we're burning all the time, and it took millions of years to form.

My optimism hopes that the crash when people realise we've become intimately dependent on nature's finite storehouses won't be too catastrophic in the physical sense, and it will act as a wake-up to shake us out of this arrogant, narcissistic alienation from the biosphere. Much of our hope seems to be with visionary engineers, who will hopefully evolve better and better alternative energy sources to ease our transition out of the Oil Age - so the Archaic Revival doesn't look like Mad Max II. I think pragmatic visionaries like Stewart Brand and Bruce Sterling have a big role to play here.

The transition has to be a technological project, but we'll have learned nothing if we take it as just technological. Anyone with positive insights into coping with drastic upheavals - and I would hope that includes all Psychedelic Futurists - has a crucial role to play. As someone said at a conference recently, if you feel like you've got even part of the puzzle, stand up and let us all know about it. That's what this blog - and every other forum for free exchange, large and small, on- and offline - is for.

Posted by: Gyrus at August 21, 2004 07:44 AM

Thanks so far for all the comments from everyone. Several of you have pointed out something that I know, but can forget sometimes, which is that everything is changing. That means if something is bad now, it will change, and it is through that change, no matter how minute that lies oppurtunity. I think part of where I am at right now, is I have faith that life will make it, but have doubted if anything I/we are doing is really making a difference. Of course I love to blog, and I have enjoyed thoroughly all the conversations and brilliants posts by Ming, LVX23 and now Phillip.. but is talking enough anymore. Are the seeds planted at Bman having any real effect? So far, in this country at least, in places that really matter, it appears they have not. You'd have to be a fool not to ask some hard questions about whats it all for, whats the purpose of blogging, etc. Can emergent democracy that Joi Ito is promoting really scale upwards to a large enough critical mass to make a difference, or is just a bunch of us techno-elite that are getting self-absorbed with our own brilliance and congratulatory communities?

The world is a big place and things are rapidly coming to a head, and I'm serious wondering if our efforts need to be focused somewhere else. Where I have NO idea. That lack of direction and deep questioning is what inspired this post.

Posted by: Paul at August 21, 2004 10:00 AM

LVX23,

re: Karl Rove's outing of CIA agent via Novak. I agree this is criminal, but to use another unrelated case to undo certain fundamental 1st ammendment protections to get at Rove is unacceptable. The constitution works both ways, for good or evil. I'd rather see a criminal get off on a technicality than the bill of rights eroded for the sake of catching more bad guys.

Posted by: Paul at August 21, 2004 10:48 AM

Hi Paul (et al),

I was indeed concerned that you were getting depressed and a bit overwhelmed, hence the pep talk. I'm glad your just having a long, hard look at things. I see a lot of the same realities that you do. We are in a new Cold Civil War, there is a mythic battle looming, a possible dark age, and the eschaton/apocalypse may not be far off. I consider these labor pains. :)

Worse still, there has been even less of a mobilization against it than in any time I have been alive. Perhaps I have a somewhat idealized view of the 60's, but I don't see that happening. Instead the opposition has become increasingly muted and marginalized.

On this point I disagree. The pre-war rallies were regulary in the hundreds of thousands (I was at a few) with wordlwide numbers well over 1 million. The WTO meeting in Italy had 500 to 700 thousand. England saw similar numbers. And you can bet the RNC will draw several hundred thousand. The difference is that the 60's was mostly college-age protesters. Now it's everybody. In the SF rallies last year before the year I saw elderly with canes & walkers plodding up market holding signs of protest.

To my mind the movement is much larger and universal now than in the 60's. The difference is there isn't any one cultural identity - hippiness - to make it seem as unified. But it is.

Again, I was mainly concerned that you were getting depressed. I don't want you to ever give up. Staying positive eneables us to fend of The Fear.

Posted by: lvx23 at August 21, 2004 11:40 AM

Re: what's the point?

Education. Carryiing the torch. Preserving the manuscripts, as it were. Even in the Dark Ages someone had to protect and evolve the mysteries.

Gyrus makes a great point about reconnecting with nature. This seems critical. though some of what McKenna talked about was sloughing off the husk of matter entirely. In this sense nature may be like a placentia for our own evolutionary leap into hyperspace. Personally, I really like matter and would like to think that the redwood forest I live in will be around many hundreds of thousands of years after I leave.

But for now it's critical that we act, not just pontificate. Everyone has to do something. Anything. Feeling helpless induces apathy. There best way to make change is to pay attention to where your money goes. Try to give less to the multinational corporate archons. And accept that real change takes time. Whatever it is that we're doing here, it's likely that we won't see the results for some time. Things will probably have to get worse before they get better.

But, to paraphrase Old Uncle Al, Oh but for the adventure!

Posted by: lvx23 at August 21, 2004 11:54 AM

LVX23: To my mind the movement is much larger and universal now than in the 60's.

Hakim Bey struck a chord for me in this recent interview when he said, "It can be like the biggest anti-war marches ever held, they were forgotten five minutes later." I've been on the biggest public protests this country (England) has ever seen, and they really didn't seem to have that much effect.

Then again, I think your point about there being no unifying identity (one might say fashion or lifestyle) is important. We all know on the personal level about processes that churn away in the unconscious at their own pace, without obvious "effects", only to manifest in an apparently sudden, spontaneous breakthrough - which was actually only possible because of the "behind the scenes" swell of energies. Hopefully this is what is happening in the world. (But we can't rely on such a hope.)

And: some of what McKenna talked about was sloughing off the husk of matter entirely.

I think he was always ambiguous. I'm fascinated by the mind/body issue, and when I interviewed him it was interesting to hear his opinion (at the time!):

"Is the body the defining quintessence of humanness, or is it the ball and chain that holds us from forever realizing what humanness is? That's an ideological cat-fight that I'd like to sit in the front row and watch, but I don't think I want to get down on the mat. It'll sort itself out."

And remember one of his visions for the Archaic Revival was everyone living a pastoral hunter-gatherer style life, only with the global digital brain hooked up to us via contact lenses.

But I know this all seems like pie-in-the-sky when you look around at the world today. It does seem like we're getting to the stage where hands-on engineering is going to play a crucial role, and comparatively woolly generalists (as I feel myself to be) whose main talent is in fostering ideas and cultural contexts for the nuts-and-bolts to thrive in will probably feel a bit impotent from time to time.

The cultural context is still important. I think it's part of whatever groundswell we might be pinning our hopes on. But yeah, maybe we need to be looking at some of the more nuts-and-bolts approaches more carefully.

Posted by: Gyrus at August 23, 2004 04:34 AM

Paul: Love the site. Just wanted to suggest that everyone check-out Tom Bearden's website (Google it). Bearden is in the process of perfecting and bringing to market a device which can completely replace oil and even solar power. His technology for tapping into the zero-point energy-flux field is pioneering, and is the proper next step for energy technology. See also Lynn McTaggart's book, THE FIELD.

Posted by: MCP2012 at August 24, 2004 02:22 PM

> Do you believe that we can form a Permanent >Autonomous Zone (PAZ)? People have talked about >it for years – offshore ocean communities, etc. >But none of them have ever materialized. If so, >where would we create this community? Various >local, state and federal laws would prohibit 90% >of the activity that takes place out there on >the playa. Don't deny it, for those who've been -> you know this to be true. so how exactly would >we do this?

I'll bite: A ground PAZ is unfesible as all useful land is long since claimed.
Space is technologically unfeasible for a long time, and then I rather suspect that any PAZ would be tied politically to its sponsor, whatsoever antion that happened to be.
Sea is more promising, but I worry about maintenance and mobility.
Which leaves Air.
Air is fairly international, abundant, and easily monitored by satellites.
Sometime ago, I read of an application of geodesic domes proposed by Bucky fuller that exploits the property of domes that as surface area (construction material needed) doubles, volume quadruples, so at a diameter somewherearound half a mile, you could carry a compact city on the domes lift alone. These 'Cloud Nines' would seem to be an excellent way to combine TAZs and PAZs.

Posted by: Maru at August 27, 2004 12:24 PM

Hey, Yazman here. I only found this site last night, but it's pretty damn good and this post in particular sums up my feelings as a whole.

I have really felt horrible lately as I hate this society I live in, representative democratic capitalism. It feels horrible to me and I can't stand it any longer, and what was worse was that I thought I was alone with such feelings, but I feel a lot better now that I know there's people like me out there.

Thanks guys.

Posted by: Yazman at September 7, 2004 12:02 AM