“Hairstyles and attitudes, how do they relate?/How well do we use/ Our freedom to choose/ The illusions we create?/ Scientists, they done lots of research; it may be just hype/ But the latest findings cause me to tremble:/ ‘Categorize us into three basic types/ By which of the Three Stooges we most closely resemble.”
— Timbuk 3
“My original point was that lunatic fringe types should package themselves to fit their audience. Forward-thinking people dressed well and using good manners can sway mundanes more than filthy radicals suspected of inciting riots. You have to package the product to sell, especially if the product is new ideas. An LP (Libertarian Party) friend of mine found people more receptive to his ideas if he wore a three-piece suit with an American lag pin stuck in his lapel.” — Karl Sackett, FreFanZine #61
“Looking Good: A Zen abbot went dressed in rags to the door of a rich man and was turned away with an empty bowl. So he returned in his formal robe of office, and was invited in and served a sumptuous meal. Removing his robe and folding it, he placed it in front of the feast and departed with the words, ‘This meal is not for me; it is for the robe.’” — Ho Chi Zen “Zenarchy Stories,” Inside Joke #40, Box 1609 Madison Square Station, New York City 10159, $1.00
In a speech to the National Organization o Women (NOW) which appears in her book, Amazon Odyssey, Ti-Grace Atkinson argues that the function of revolutionaries is to make people think, not to worry about what people will think.
In 1967 the W.E.B. duBois Clubs more or less represented the official thinking of the American Communist Party, which was that revolutionaries must work within the culture of the Old Order, a principle which in practices was carried to masochistic extremes. Party members could not divorce their spouses. Young Communists were to wear suits and refrain from smoking marijuana. Group gropes were for deviationists. Meanwhile, the hippies were dressing in gaudy robes and beads, anointing themselves with scented oils and handing flowers to strangers for no reason. Who captured, the public imagination? Who is remembered and praised wistfully twenty years later?
Don’t be misled by the title. The Right to be Greedy ($6.95: Loompanics, Box 1197, Port Townsend, WA 98368) is not an exposition of the Objectivism of Ayn Rand. Instead, it reads more like situationist polemic for Communist Egoism. You don’t have to live in imitation of Oliver Cromwell to make revolution. Excellent!
Neckties, says Alan Watts in Does It Matter? were first worn in royal courts for the convenience of kings by their servants. The purpose: to facilitate instant strangulation of wrongdoers.
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Democracy has been defined as the principle that “one man is as good as another, if not a little better.” Anarchy may be defined as the principal that one government is as bad as another, if not a little worse. Liberty, May 12, 1883.
