When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro

I'm after a different sort of weirdness than what the good doctor himself seemed to chase, but as I may or may not have laid on just a little too thick, what I'm basically up to here is more or less trying to follow Hunter S. Thompson's lead.

This is simply because the things I've come to consider normal are all incredibly bad for me. To hell with my flaming liberalism and all of the outcomes I've argued for. Keep the change. It costs more to carry around than its even worth Mr. President, and I would know because I was already carrying it when nobody thought you had a prayer.

At this point, I don't think politics or violence is going to get us out of the mess that we let them make for us. It's important to realize, while some of us are talking about shooting legislators, that we are guilty by association- regardless of what animal or beverage you've sworn fealty to.

The only way I think we'll really "restore sanity", as opposed to restoring politics as usual for exactly one year until the next campaign begins, is to start by change the only thing we all still have regardless of how bad they hit us- our own lives. They do control us, but we're predictable. So weirdness just might be the answer- not just for the sake of weirdness mind you- I'm really not all that interested in the psychedelic side of it. I just want to do the things that make sense to me instead of the things that make sense to them, and I hope that puts me in good company.

I think we actually can confuse or at least outrun the owners of this country because we have them badly outnumbered, and each one of us can share and realize ideas faster than ever before with new technology that right now, the poor seem to understand better than the rich. If we get to work on our own problems, on our own terms, at the same time, they can't really stop us and we hold our destiny- no money, no politics, no signs, no shouting, and for the love of god NO GUNPLAY. Just people physically exercising power without asking permission.

I'm not here to organize you though, or mobilize you, or achieve any specific outcome. The project is to study the more unorthodox movements in society and try to understand what allows them to be weird and make waves, and make it available for whatever purpose people can find for it.

www.whysanity.net...

There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right. That we were winning. And that I think was the handle. That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense. We didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum. We were riding the crest, of a high and beautiful wave.

I'd really like to see that. Which I probably won't, because I just don't think the tide is right. But what the hell am I supposed to do instead?

Originally posted by ThomasNHunter
But what the hell am I supposed to do instead?

I hear Bat Country is lovely this time of year.

Maybe a nice camping trip to help clear the mind of the collective insanity?

Being in the thick of things can sometimes get a bit overwhelming, I agree.

Re weird

That is why a Sufi will sometimes play the fool

I have a pretty alternative life style, but I'm not sure if my weird is the same as your weird... I'm going to need clarification on the weirdness parameters before I can contribute.

I thought the whole San Francisco thing crested because they all ran out of good "Mind altering substances"

Not on long because I have to catch the Whitman Brown debate, but I can't clarify weirdness. Think of it as a code word for liberty, in that you wouldn't be that weird if you were doing as expected or directed. My whole focus is intended to be on discovering how truly free people pursue their lives liberty and happiness without allowing the institutions of our civilization to hinder them too much.

I can dig the change in society, you're right, I'm sure its the only thing that could "save us". Herbert Marcuse said it in the sixties (I'm paraphrasing here) that we can't react to something by old methods of protest, I.e; flag waving, marching, letter writing and the like. We need new methods. I will still go down to the protests, probably more for the culture than anything. I can't think of anything new though. What do we do?

I don't know what to DO either. That's the great problem: there is a lack of doing; a lack of physical control over what is happening to the world, which I have described at length as Doom. Like many Americans, I have all of these grandiose ideas, but I can't execute any of them. Sure I could toss out suggestions but who isn't doing that? Or more to the point, who is acting on these suggestions?

What I want to do is approach the problem from the other direction- what IS being done, and how does it go down. What is going to emerge out of everything happening in 2010 is the beta version of the "viral" campaign play book- the dos and donts of using social networking tools in conjunction with traditional media to steer the trends in thought and action. This play book is either going to be used to get us further under the thumb of the status quo, or to shake up the status quo, depending on who develops the best version of it in time.

I want to spy on the writing of that book in order to find out what we can do. In fact one of the big things on my plate this afternoon is plotting where I intend to start looking and how I'm going to do it despite being doomed.

So what you can expect from me is a series of stories where I somehow get to where I hear the action is, try to approach the people there and learn something about what they want, what they are doing, and the balance of power between them and the larger forces that are supporting and opposing their movements. Then if I get lucky or just really really good, eventually I hope to have a few examples of the grass roots successfully steering the media and the machinery, rather than the other way around. That is of course assuming that I am actually able to execute all of that. There is a certain level of doom to overcome for that, so I'd say the test is whether I manage to turn out a couple of small articles in the next month and then get to and come up with something meaningful from the Rally to Restore Sanity.

Well, technology for example has become our friend and our enemy. On one hand we are under constant survelance (the problem) but on the other, we can use social networking to organize (part of the solution). We the people have no problem organizing and ranting (what's being done) but nobody can take it to the next level. I think this is where fear plays in. Some of us (myself not included) are afraid of the consequences of mass demonstration and civil disobedience (which doesn't seem to work as well as in the past anyway). I don't think the "lead by example" thing works on a broad scale. Nobodys paying attention. The only people paying attention preach awareness and the only people listening are already aware, hence the turnout. You never see new faces at rallies in my experience. The last march I attended saw everybody walking silently holding signs down front street. Wow guys! Ill bet we really shook 'em up that time! How about a little spirit? One time we did a march on our congressmans office and made speeches through a megaphone so they could hear. Reaching a new audience, that's the sort of tactics that need to be implimented.

I understand where you're coming from but what are we supposed to yell through those megaphones and write on those signs? This is not the endgame. No movement is really in a position to march on Washington with the expectation of change because no movement has the mass or focus of energy to make a demonstration that is equal to that setting in scale.

A common understanding of the problem and the general direction of a solution is trying to develop right now but there remain several bitterly divided factions and a great number of people just waiting to see what happens. Furthermore there is a formidable status quo which has an interest in limiting how we define and address our problems.

It's a net positive that we have various movements going on and trying to exert political influence, because it builds an infrastructure upon which this process will later depend, however they won't gain enough mass or momentum using the traditional top-down partisan model, because none of these movements has the voice or the resources to beat the political establishment at its own game.

If the individual members of movements like the Tea Party, Coffee Party, Rally to Restore Sanity et al. want to win, they have to do more than just belong to their organizations and participate in the functions of their organization.
They need to establish their own lines of communication with local people from their movement and other movements so that they have an idea of what everybody needs and what compromises can be made to enlarge and unify this push for better government. This communication also allows helps members keep the leadership of their organizations in touch with the will of the people, so that corruption is less able to take root.

Next they will have to discover, from their pool of experience, the most effective ways for popular movements to influence mainstream media and mainstream politics and plan a campaign around their goals. Realistically such a campaign won't be ready for execution for at least a year even if all of these movements perform brilliantly. So I wouldn't get lost in the zeitgeist of the fall, because I think this plot continues to thicken on into 2012, which will probably be the climax one way or the other.

Edit: I'd like to add that for any real waves to get made- for the energy to come back to protests etc- requires the process I explained above. The fear will go away when the goal is as real as the problem- when the issue is in doubt. I don't think it's a mistake that immediately before saying, "I miss the smell of tear gas. I miss the fear of getting beaten." He said "The 60s were a time of extreme reality." It's gotta get more real than a few televised celebrities and a few maverick congressional candidates before people have that kind of confidence. Taking action and making a difference against these huge problems still seems mostly theoretical to the average joe- something that could start to happen down the road in the unlikely event that all of this craziness produced a 2012 equivalent of the Ross Perot campaign or made some other tremendous stride.

We're pretty much saying the same thing. Our current methods are not working. It doesn't matter ewhats being said through the megaphones and there's nothing we can write on those signs that is helpful. No group is ready to march on washington. The only reason I believe that worked is because you had million(s) of people who all knew why they were there and could sum it up in one sentance. I think most of these groups have too much on their plate. Divide and conquer napoleon style is one thing that might help. One thing at a time. Another problem like you said earlier in a post was the media coverage. They control our image. What they do is find the craziest person there, some guy all high on god knows what without a shirt and some crazy thing on his sign and make him the face of the movement. They take that footage back to the editor who cuts out the whole point that the guy is trying to make then beam it around the world and into my grandmas livingroom who tbhen says somethinglike "you were at this protest? You allign with lunatics like that?". Marsahal McLuhan said "the medium is the message" a tactic not used very often is to use the media against its self. Sometimes harder than it sounds (with all the Hearst papers and special interest groups manipulating news outlets with money). Fortunately, in my area, our protests generally have a good public image.

I've been trying to formulate some kind of reply to your OP for a while as you make a lot of sense and I want to reply with something that does it justice,

I guess I can say that I am part of an alternative movement, though not a political one, but I'm quite involved in the fetish scene it the UK on a level where I help run events and things. It's one of the few scenes left I think where you can find true libertines that will not only fight against moral and religious outrage for their own right to do whatever they want but will also fight for others in the scene even if there views on certain practices are polar opposites.

I think one of the main things that most fetishist share is a true sense of not giving a damn about what people think of them, and even reviling in peoples disgust and outrage, the more waves they can make the better, the more laws that are passed against the movement the deeper into the scene they become. They will never apologise for liking what they like or thinking what they think.

I think they truly share the thought that you put into the OP that what they are doing is just right.

Another thing I think that's important within the scene is a deep sense of community, nearly everyone knows everyone else, meetings and opinions are not so much shared over the internet but through meeting up with people in clubs and munches, If one of us has a problem then we all do.

I don't know if this is anything like what you were getting at but.. It's all I can think of

reply to post by davespanners


You're very much on to something. I can't speak intelligently about the social order of the UK, but from an American perspective society often seems to be viewed from the top down, even by those at the bottom. Grass roots is something of a misnomer in many cases because there are a lot of people who don't feel like part of a broad and copiously interconnected local community anymore. Our interests have become much narrower and extend to far-flung places where we have no presence or influence.

This is at least partially a consequence of the modern economy- Americans don't get their goods from places close to home- they don't even get most of their goods from other Americans. Many of them earn their livelihoods in the service industry, representing faceless corporate interests which mistreat the consumer, making American workers the target of animosity from American consumers- pitting neighbors against each other over the behavior of their common abuser, because both are ultimately dependent on those far away powers and must vie for a bigger share of its table scraps. Forgive me for ranting...

In short the traditional community is dying and suitable replacements are slow in the making. People are going to have to go outside of what is normal and build new social networks around themselves to fulfill the needs that are no longer being met. We can't go it alone with no help but what we can pay for, which is the great failing of the modern capitalist way, and we can't expect a far away government to really understand our unique situation, which is the truism that will always prevent America from embracing socialism on the level that the rest of the developed world has. We need groups close to ourselves who have the same priorities as we do and can be counted upon for mutual support. And as long as everyone's natural rights are respected, I really don't care what those communities rally around. If a slip-and-slide covered in jello is somehow important to bringing together a group of people who can make the world a happier place, I'll go see a movie and give them their space for that.

Our movement and the status quo are in the same boat when it comes to looking for replacements. It seems that an overwhelming part of my generation are way too busy worring about what happened on "dancing with the stars" than what's going on here in the real world (no, not that mtv real world either). Nobody is informed, evso many people are bought out by television. The next great minds are being stifled by poor education and the media that their perception of the world is so narrow.