| OCR Text |
Show THE TENSPEED TREADMILL TO NOWHERE CITY So here we are. Constant stimulus addicts. Hooked on television. Suppose we become dissatisfied? Withdrawal is painful. Try it Cold Turkey-go to a cabin in the mountains with no electricity. Chances are good that when boredom sets in (about twenty minutes after you arrive), you'll decide to go hiking. Then you'll really discover what a shape your in. Got to keep moving, but too tired to do so. Alone with your thoughts. Not too much company. Must be something to do. Silence. Makes you appreciate human company. No cord attached. So how come you feel unplugged? Obviously, a person doesn't need to go to the mountains to feel the above sensations. Most of us are in the Pepsi Generation-keep moving, every action is a dance to lively background music playing through our minds, while caffein courses in our blood. IN PURSUIT OF ANTAGONISTIC DRAGONS So what happens when a cola-filled man decides the beach on the screen isn't where it's at? Where does he go? As he looks around, all he can see is laughing guys in stretch swim-trunks, running about this limitless shore in pursuit of laughing chics. Thousands of them, millions, billions, frolicking along this beach forever. All equally muscular, co-ordinated and charming. No distinction between individuals. He figures it only looks this way-moving down the beach will bring a different perspective-and walks off. Eight days later, he's still seeing the same guys flexing, the same chics laughing. He can't take it, looks around for a way out. He sees the water, sprints toward it. No one is swimming! He gathers into a spring and dives for the waves. Escape! Just about the time his head breaks water, he hears a gigantic roar as everyone on the beach decides it's time to go swimming, too. He tries to drown himself, but always floats back to the surface in the salty water. Tired, wet and disgusted, he wades back to shore and sits on a rock. As he watches the breakers roll in, he realizes that he is the only one who can appreciate them as he does, and sits back quietly contented forever after. End. An extremely extended metaphor, but necessary. I mean, here we've got all these stimulus hounds who are not satisfied with the current ad campaign as a life style. They're looking for something, something personal, something unassailable in a mass-produced society. So they figure it's over the hill, in the next city, in dressing or looking different from the norm. But all they can find is another hill, and maybe some small measure of comfort in a different conformity. So eventually they sit, and )ISTILLATION PROCESS THAT OFTEN OBSCURES the idea comes. It may be that psychedelic drugs are the first personal experience they've had-the first really inimitable sensation. So they buy drugs as it, the eucharist, and retreat into themselves that way. It might be something else, like fortune-telling, astrology or science-fiction-any area where there is no concrete standard, no real method for comparison of idea and imitation-it depends on the set of biases the person has to satisfy in order to involve himself in a personal and meaningful pursuit. All are methods of disguising escapism as something satisfactory to a status-and-rank oriented mind. By dealing with an open-ended and therefore purely personal "science" like astrology a man can think of himself as doing something worthwhile, as contending with something that is real. And, of course, there is always the possibility that there is something there to be stumbled upon. At the very worst, a man in pursuit of dragons will be continuously occupied by the search. 76 |
