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Show TRADE MY STEREO FOR A CRYSTAL RADIO? Here we are in the middle of a hurricane, and all we have for shelter is an umbrella. The American Dream is a little number they whistled to us in grade and high school. It had a simple tune, whole notes in waltz time, and spare lyrics. Work Hard, Get Rich, Be Happy, God Bless America, Home Of The Brave, Land Of The Free. Aside from much recent debate over bravery and freedom, it might do well to point out that inherent fault of many very simple things, it's complete irrationality. Anyone who tries to think in those terms is going to have trouble relating to the reality he observes and lives in. Which is just what happened. Trying to live in dreams makes for nightmares, which are in turn repressed. Combine the Reality Switch with Obvious Falsehood, and you get an escapist; take an Egg Role and confront him with the Bureaucratic World; drop an Extreme Individual into TV Land; THERE IS ONLY ONE THING THAT'S REAL to him, and that's doing what he wants to. No matter if he doesn't know what it is, inconsequential if he can't decide and irrelevant if there is nothing-he wants to decide. Pressure will cause rebellion-beads, hair, beards, birds and thought-but no change in the basic attitude. A conforming nonconformist; negative conventions and positive assertions that result in paradox. So you have a searching protocul-ture scavenging experiences and ideas, virtually free from experience of actual need, but generally not oriented to wealth, a conditioned desire for high constant stimulus and an expansive individualism. What comes next? Social units. Units where the survival parameters are entirely cerebral and cultural. Not to say physical considerations are ignored-they are enjoyed for what they are-but to suggest that there is a preoccupation with searching. CREATING A STRAIGHTFORWARD DIVERSION Going to a football game is Good Clean Fun. You eat, cheer, maybe drink a little and watch a bunch of guys beat themselves to pieces just for you. At half you sing, wave the flag, figure out what the design a band makes on the field is, and watch curvaceous girls in brief costumes do military dances. Far out. But what do you see when you look closely at a game? First you see expense. Back when athletics were an intercollegiate rivalry, cost was lower; but now that contests take place between specially trained, highly organized teams from institutions so widely separated as to have no basis for rivalry, there is expensive protective equipment to purchase, transportation to furnish, training apparatus to finance, experienced coaching to fund and a huge back-up squad to maintain. Which means bread for the circuses must come from education's books. ON ESTABLISHING CONTEXTS AND ASSOCIATING IDEAS THAT HAVE FUN Kl^HllNO IN THE HEAD The most erploited human in history, a woman is conditioned from birth to have attitudes which make her a second-class citizen. She is exploited and treated as an object, underpaid and treated as a mental inferior. Not to say she has it all bad, though. She gets out of the draft, is considered legally helpless, and is kowtowed to in many ways by affection-hungry males. Why? Because she's conditioned to an outmoded set of survival traits, an economic/cultural system that limits her to household labor. It's singularly unfortunate, too, that she has been intellectually handicapped by a technology-oriented society which has off-set her role as a culture bearer. In many cultures, men learn their behavior-inducing symbols from women, who preserve tradition by passing it down along with the physical artifacts of the culture through each succeeding generation. In our culture, however, such an emphasis has been placed on material skills that the woman has been stripped of this function, leaving only simple chores to occupy an active mind. It's called slavery. 74 |