The End of America 8 now available for pre-order

 

My new book, The End of America, Book 8, is now available for pre-order, on sale, from Bookshop.

Orders coming mid-January on Bookshop and on Amazon.

Conclusion: "Landscape as Activity in The End of America poems"

"Landscape as Activity in The End of America poems"

Part Three

(Part One can be found here.)

I’ve always been interested in altering the relation between form and content in specific poems or groups of poems, and The End of America is no exception. There’s no one formal structure, or content, or relation between structure and content, that can be said to be ultimately, or even most, realist, if by “realist” one means an attempt to describe life as it is lived and experienced. Literary description can never simply show readers the real; it always reshapes it, leaving some things out and highlighting others, exaggerating and understating, tweaking for effect. Literature inevitably intervenes in the world; it reshapes it and so changes it, always.

This fact leads some writers to give up entirely on description, to consider it irrelevant, or to treat it as no more than literary, a created language with no definite relation to anything beyond language, certainly not life as it is lived and experienced. But those seem two extremes: to say either that literature can give an accurate depiction of life or can give no depiction of it at all. Instead, life and literature might share a pattern similar to that of character and environment, a series of mutual interactions that converge and diverge in different ways at different times.

In the various books of The End of America, I conceive of the person as an activity. Thoughts and feelings (whatever distinctions there may or may not be between them) are as much part of that activity as more physically visible ones. In the poems, the social geographic environment is also an activity, one of multiple voices and landscapes, of money and politics and hands gripping fences. Landscape is inevitably not stable; it changes. The person is the focal point for a processing of social geographic stimuli, acted upon by that stimuli and acting upon it, although the limits of the person’s ability to act upon it become part of the process, and a struggle. The person doesn’t always process the noise and reshape it into a clearly articulated response. That can happen sometimes, but clearly articulated responses are hardly the only way that persons process environments. Ultimately the process is less one of final answers than of motion itself, person and environment acting and re-acting. Hardly symbiosis or an easy relation, but one that involves uncertainty and anguish and that’s destructive as well as constructive.

Despite all the poetics I might use to talk about various aspects of the approach, there’s an element of barely filtered survival instinct in The End of America. Here’s what’s happening, here’s what I’m seeing and hearing, and now how am I going to live with it, to make something of it in a way that will help me be part of it? The end of it all, or the making of the end of it, can’t be the goal, since the wearing out of any person is inevitable. It’s the making something of it now, in a succession of nows, that is the most any person or poem can do.

Part Two: "Landscape as Activity in The End of America Poems"

"Landscape as Activity in The End of America Poems"

Part Two

(Part One can be found here)

I can’t call it a “happy accident” that in my long multi-poem project The End of America, which I have been writing on and off since January 2006, the focal point of my exploration of how to work with description and character has been the San Diego area and the larger histories of U.S., Pacific Rim, and globalist culture and economics, a history which San Diego is neither clearly inside and dominated by or outside and controlling. Before taking a job at Cal State San Marcos in 2005, I had no intention of writing anything about the San Diego region, nor did I begin the project energetically or enthusiastically. The End of America is an attempt to process where I am geographically, and to process what I might do in relation to where I am, in a way that comes from finding myself in circumstances that didn’t result from any consciously literary goals.

The word “process” is crucial. I’m not attempting in The End of America to understand, in some clear way, materialist or otherwise, where I am, much less to explain where I am, and definitely not to formulate an argument based on using the place where I am as background data source for making the argument. Nor is this essay the place where I will explain how the interaction between environment and subject works throughout the poem, or what that interaction ultimately means.

Instead, in The End of America, the meaning of any given poem is the interaction, and can be traced only through the poem, whose insights already move ahead of, or at least differ from, any explanation I might make. I’m not saying that I make no arguments or claims in the poems, or take no positions, but rather that such possibilities are part of the interactions of the poem and not its goal. Nor am I saying that because arriving at a political statement is not the goal, the poem is not political. Instead, the political perspectives of the various poems are embedded in the interactions, are part of the mesh of experience which any given poem moves through. Politics appears as an essential and unavoidable part of life, but not as the reason for or the goal of living.

There are of course many precedents for my attempt to find different ways to write about the social geography of San Diego—“social geography” being the phrase that to me best includes issues of natural landscape, human-created landscapes (rural, urban, and suburban, and all other contexts in which humans shape the environment), and the political, cultural, environmental, and psychological goals and effects of human interaction with the physical world. Lisa Robertson’s work on soft architecture or her book “The Weather” are obvious examples, as are the social and linguistic landscapes in Ron Silliman’s poems. But I’m also motivated, perhaps surprisingly, by work like Flaubert’s, which shows human consciousness as always structured, and responding to, the social environment of which it is a part.

In none of these precedents do I find ideas about sociology, psychology, or natural environment operating in the same ways as in The End of America, since my interest lies in seeing how those ideas play out in particular poems, in a particular context (none of the above writers have anything detailed to say about San Diego), in a way that no prior work or set of theories could account for in advance. I think of literature as precisely the way to explore the ongoing interactions of all these possibilities, often on a momentary basis.

Instead of landscape as background, or as staged set of pre-determined human meaning, or even as character (when a conflict is about “man vs. the natural environment”), it seems to me that landscape, like character, is a shifting group of possibilities (some damaging, but not all) changed by its relationship to other groups of possibilities.

When thought of that way, one thing becomes clear: whatever partial perceptions I have of it, I don’t know all of what landscape is in any specific instance, any more than I can know all of what character is.

Natural landscapes, human landscapes, their interaction, intellectual and artistic insight floating through my brain in and around the shrill manipulative distortions of mass media mental bombardment, stories and counterstories of borders, nations, and cultures, a distant yell in the sunset, the padding of a dog, the shrill whistle of nearby juvenile hawks who haven’t yet learned the silence of their parents. All these, and many more, different at any moment, become part of the environment I find myself encountering.


End of Part Two

“Landscape as Activity in The End of America Poems”

 

Here, in several parts, is the talk I gave at the And Now Literary Festival at the University of California, San Diego, on October 13, 2011.

-----------------------------------------------

“Landscape as Activity in The End of America Poems”

Part One

 The conventional narrative assumption about landscape: events happen on it. Landscape, surroundings, environment, milieu–interactions and differences between these terms included—become both background to the foregrounded action and the frame inside which differences between characters play out. Fiction, and poetry with elements of narrative, differ little here: Description of landscape comes first, or at least early, and comes up again, at well-timed intervals, to fill in around the action. Description doesn’t merely set the stage on which the action will occur. Descriptive language is the stage itself.

Given the human ability to assign meaning (or, say, the human determination to impose meaning on whatever exists, human-created or otherwise), frequently it turns out that descriptions of landscape are not only frames on which meaning takes place, but meaningful frames that determine the significance of whatever happens on them.

In much of western culture’s pastoral literature, description creates a rural, natural, supposedly timeless source of virtue in which humans find solace and steadfast grounding among the flux and chaos of human societies with all their circulations and interactions and cage-like enclosures, a flux and chaos which becomes the essence of the urban landscape (the urban stage). While characters are supposedly the crux of the action, in fact in the pastoral and its permutations, the primary struggle often occurs between the rural and urban stages themselves, with the characters becoming examples (if sometimes nuanced ones) of those stages.

Or consider the post-apocalyptic landscape: that stage on which human life has come close to destroying itself because of its power, corruption and contradictions, a stage on which all social contracts have been demolished and people are attempting to re-create them or exploit their absence. Oddly enough, the post-apocalyptic is still pastoral in its implications, though post-social rather than pre-, with the natural world polluted by layers of human-created (urban-created) debris.

While pastoral narratives might seem to imply that landscape shapes character, it is not landscape in these narratives so much as human assumptions about the meaning of landscape that shapes character. The idea that nature brings virtue, or that urban life breeds corruption and immorality, doesn’t question and explore the effect that landscape might have on character, but assigns that value in advance, limiting itself to playing out the interaction of pre-determined values, though admittedly often with intriguing turns.

Whatever the power of landscape in pastoral narratives and the meaning assigned to it, the action focuses primarily on the characters and their interactions with each other. The landscape, often inert and passive, occasionally disrupting or impeding through thunderstorms or nuclear fallout, remains background to what the key characters do and realize about what they do.

I don’t feel the need to rehearse here a long history of cultural and literary theory, Marxist and much else, that questions the centrality of character and subjectivity over environment and history, and shows how history and cultural and the physical opportunities available in specific geographical environments (the focus for instance of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel) shape people’s behavior, possibilities, thoughts and feelings. Instead I want to ask, what might a work of literature look like if, instead of keeping landscape as background, or pre-determining its value, one thought of both landscape and character/subjectivity as questions and mutual interactions, person-in-flux and landscape-in-flux, that dynamically dissolve, or reassert, or otherwise unsettle distinctions so that there is no stable ground or clear center of action, but only multiple shifting points of contact?

End of Part One

Imperial Feelings of Warlike Victoryhood as the Example for All Minorities: Anarcho-Capitalist Commando Mythos Force, conclusion

 

 

Part One can be found here.

Part Two can be found here.

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Anarcho-Capitalist Mythological Action Force: A Drama in Multiple Voices

Part Three

Section Leader (wheels out an overstuffed filing cabinet): Here are the brief summaries for the Section, Sir. Shall I get the raw data?

Commandant: No need.. The principles we use define the raw data, because that’s what principles do. As you see, I have no need whatsoever for data, the, as it were, facts. The facts are simply, as you know, a function of the principles.

(He takes the first folder that the Section Leader hands to him) Beautiful Object? Which of you is Beautiful Object?

Beautiful Object (stepping forward): As if there could be any doubt. Here I am, Commandant Sir. What do you think? Do I have what it takes? Am I the principle of me?

Commandant: Well, uh, yes. Quite a looker. I may have to, uh, inspect this situation later. Eh? Doesn’t it seem that a little inspection is in order? That is, take a moment, in this instance, to examine the, how shall I say, raw data?

Beautiful Object: I can be as raw as you’d like me to be, Commandant Sir.

Commandant: Very good. Shall we say 7? Ahem. I have read your Personality Profile Survey. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is this. You will move about among the populace in a way that shall cause, how do I put this, I’m not becoming flustered, I’m not losing the point, desire. You must make people believe that there’s a chance, just a chance, that if they become an example of success in the marketplace, that is a principle of success, that you may, just may, belong to them. You will serve as a principle of what the market can get for those who succeed. Ownership, sex, the ability to show off are further subprinciples of the principle you are. And last but surely not least, you will serve as a principle of love, but love, of course, understood as the combined principles of ownership, sex, and the ability to show off. Love as the Beautiful Object of the Marketplace. Can you do it?

Beautiful Object: What do you think, Big Boy? We’ll talk about it at 7, won’t we, Sir? You do like to be called Sir, don’t you? I mean, even at special times?

Commandant: Ha ha ha. Well done, Beautiful Object. I think you are, uh, well-equipped to begin your mission. Now (taking another Survey from the Section Leader), which of you is Group of Dudes?

Group of Dudes: We’re him.

Commandant: Very good. This should be easy. Your mission: make it fast but spend it faster.

Group of Dudes: Shit, man. That’s a mission? That’s, like, what I do already.

Commandant: Indeed. The logic of the marketplace is beauteous. Your indifference about how you make your money must be well-matched to the indulgence with which you throw it away. Beach vacations, resort hotels, beer bashes. You are here to party. A total, good time willingness to break down any local barriers to international trade. Are you ready to buy and sell whole cultures, rip them out and replace them with Tiki Bars and $1 Friday Night Jello Shots? Can you put a kegger in that gas guzzling SUV? Do you thrill to the idea of Inland Waterways Demolition Derby Casino Cash Giveaways?

Group of Dudes: We thirst for what I do, no doubt about it. Will we each get, like, an eight-pack of seven ouncers in our own bucket of ice?

Commandant: The Skyy Vodka’s the limit, Group of Dudes. Now (taking another survey) which of you is Grammar?

Grammar: I am the one of whom you are speaking.

Commandant: Excellent, Grammar. The market will rely very heavily on your precision. Your principle, should you choose to act on it, will be this: The marketplace is self-correcting. Every time anyone does anything that imbalances the markets, it will be your job, as a principle of the self-correcting marketplace, to correct them.

Grammar: Will there be frequent exams?

Commandant (coughing). Well uh, yes, uh, you could see it that way. The marketplace imposes tests on all of its members, and the marketplace is always correct. Those who succeed in conforming to the laws of the marketplace will do well. Those who fail to learn those laws go to the bottom—although we must remember that they will be welcome there. And you will keep watch over all this, making sure that those who conform know that they will be rewarded, and that those who do not conform always have the option to conform at a later time or, if they do not wish to conform, will be welcome at the bottom. Well Grammar, what do you say? It’s important that you give everyone accurate marks. Marketplace marks, as it were.

Grammar: I can’t tell you how pleased I am, Sir. I feel like the Marketplace and Grammar are one.

Commandant: Excellent, Grammar. And you will be zealous in your duties? You will correct everyone? You will correct any and all errors which you may encounter?

Grammar: Without fail, Sir. And actually, Sir, now that you mention it, in your speech I noticed...

Commandant: Ha ha ha. That’s enough, Grammar. When I said it was your duty to correct everyone, I didn’t mean that you were supposed to correct those in charge. Just, you know, everyone.

Grammar: But as a category, everyone includes...

Commandant: Grammar, you’re talking too much. Don’t you have some correcting to do? So, who’s next? (Picking up another survey and reading). Ah, oh ah. Fascinating. Brilliant. Unexpected and original. And at the same time, so successful in the marketplace. An example of how one can find perfectly one’s own unique niche. Which of you is Judas Priest?

Judas Priest: There I was, completely wasted, out of work and down.

Commandant: Most excellent. And then you broke the law, eh? A shining example of a successful use of failure. Impressive vandalism. Extreme forms of sadomasochistic desire linked directly to imperial feelings of warlike Victoryhood. You pummel your victim, do you not? You let them get away with nothing? You are determined to triumph? You, as it were, deliver the goods?

Judas Priest: You give me evil fantasies. You want to get inside my mind.

Commandant: Then you will have no problem, I take it, whipping up fear and rage among the masses, encouraging them to believe that war is only the natural extension of their frustrations? That individual Victoryhood is the goal of all endeavor?

Judas Priest: Sin after Sin, I have enjoyed. But the wounds I bear are the wounds of love.

Commandant. Poetry, Judas Priest, poetry. Sadomasochistic war poetry, to be precise. There’s none like you, Judas Priest. Which brings me to an important point. You have a crucial role here. Our current Anarcho-Capitalist force is a little lacking in, what’s the word again? Diversity. By which I mean, window-dressing. You are an excellent, how shall I say it, token. There are not many minorities here on our force. Warlike sadomasochism is indeed under-represented in the culture at large. No doubt you have experienced, how shall I say it, prejudice. Everyone can succeed of course. The marketplace is never prejudiced. I mean, that is the theory. And the theory is the principle. And therefore the raw data results from the theory. At the moment, of course, there are so many, ahem, minorities, ahem, at the bottom. Of course that cannot be the fault of the market. If they are at the bottom, that can only be because they have failed to conform to the principles of the market. Eh? That’s what it means to be a minority, does it not? To have failed to conform to the principles of the market? But that can change. The market is, as we know, open to the proper functioning of the market. On our force here, Judas Priest, since you are currently the only minority, you can be an example of all those minorities not currently on the force. Eh? You have been abused. Left out. But only abused by your failure to conform to the principles of the marketplace, which is to say, you have abused yourself. It is a principle of the marketplace that the only person who can truly abuse you is yourself. That is, you have left yourself out. But that can change. You, Judas Priest, have held on to your anger, have kept your culture and everything that makes you unique. Yet you have also conformed to the marketplace, and you have been a success. Can you therefore play a role as the Example for All Minorities? The one that suggests that conforming makes success possible? Which of course it does.

Judas Priest: The truth is like a chain.

Commandant: Excellent, Judas Priest. Fascinating. Ah, the originality of Judas Priest, an Example for All Minorities Everywhere. Now (picking up another survey), where is Revolution?

Revolution: I despise you. I will devote my whole life to overthrowing you and all the principles you stand for.

Commandant: Excellent. Just the sort of revolutionary rage essential to your role.

Revolution (confused): What? I said I despise you. I won’t play any role in your system.

Commandant: Ah, Revolution. Your gumption is impressive. Your fervor. Your total commitment. Your willingness to break down all barriers in your own name. It’s just what we need.

Revolution: Are you hearing anything I’m saying?

Commandant: I can only hear you, Revolution. What else could I do? The marketplace exists to hear you. You, Revolution. Your role, should you choose to accept it, is to question, undermine, and change anything too settled. You must bring the old guard down, Revolution. You must usher in a new era. Nothing is more encouraging to the marketplace than a new era.

Revolution: I won’t participate, I tell you. I won’t do anything you say. I’m going to bring down you and the rest of the old guard.

Commandant: That’s the spirit of Revolution, Revolution. Cut the excess. Chop off the, as it were, fat. Be willing at any and all times to change everything it’s in your power to change. As you know, the marketplace has no role for the old verities. It needs the new, whoa baby. The total new.

Revolution (looking frustrated): I’m going to bring your marketplace crashing to its knees.

Commandant: Excellent, Revolution, excellent. The marketplace must be cleansed, so that it can function in the realm of the total new. And who better to do that than Revolution?

Revolution: I’ll tell you once more. I refuse to participate in any aspect of this circular logic.

Commandant: Revolution, of everyone gathered here, you feel your own role most deeply. You see limitation everywhere, you know no bounds in your desire and effort for change. You cannot pause for a single second in the restless pursuit of your path. I can only thank you.

Revolution: You’re a slave of all that’s indecent in men.

Commandant (blushing shyly): I love how you talk to me. It’s really hot. Don’t stop for a second. Right about now, the whole marketplace is turned on. Fired up by the fires of Revolution.

Revolution (looking more and more frustrated): I don’t intend to stop.

Commandant: That’s the spirit. Now (looking at Section Leader) have I missed anyone? Are there any folders left? Are we done here?

Reginald. What about me? What’s my role? How do I fit in?

Commandant (looking at him skeptically, taking the final survey from the Section Leader, looking at it skeptically): Oh. It’s you. To the extent, of course, that there is any you for you to be you of. Skills? Ah. Talents? Ah. Drives? Well yes, a few. Of a sort.

Reginald: You know I’ll do anything you ask.

Commandant (diffidently): I do see that. Well, I suppose we’ll find something. Your role, uh, how about this? Your role is to take initiative.

Reginald (crestfallen): Take initiative? Will you tell me how to do that?

Commandant: What, me? Tell you how to do something? No. Unheard of. Are you insulting me?

Reginald: Sir, of course not, Sir. All I wish to do is be like you.

Commandant: Exactly the problem. You cannot be like anyone. The marketplace demands your uniqueness. You can only be like yourself, and you can only tell yourself what to do. Your must pursue the path of yourself at all costs, even if it leads to the bottom. Can you do that?

Reginald: Are there instructions? I’d be happy to read the booklet. Even if it’s lengthy.

Commandant (sighing). Booklet? For market’s sake, he talks about a booklet. What are we coming to? Look. If you need a booklet, write it yourself. Spend all goddamned day reading it, if you want. Booklet, he says. Be like you, he says. Still (the Commandant brightens) I guess there’s room for us all in the marketplace. Even if it’s at the bottom. (Smiles, turns to Section Leader). Well, looks like I’m done here. Excellent organizational skills, Section Leader.

Section Leader: Thank you Sir, Commandant Sir.

Reginald: But Sir, you haven’t told me...

Commandant: Yes I have. You’ll have to take it from here. (Starts to walk away). Booklet, he says. See you later, Beautiful Object?

Beautiful Object: You can see anything you want.

Reginald (distraught): But wait, wait. You haven’t told me...

The Commandant: There shall be more of this masquerade (walks off stage).

"There's a lot of room at the bottom": Anarcho-Capitalist Commando Mythos Force, Part Two

Anarcho-Capitalist Commando Mythos Force: A Drama In Multiple Voices, Part Two

Part One can be found here

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Commandant (standing before the section):

The Long Arm of Discipline will come down to help you. Don’t think you can escape. But although it may chastise you at times, the Long Arm feels the pain it inflicts upon you. Remember that if I am forced to punish you, it hurts me more than it hurts you. Know that I weep, but only so that you all may become beauteous.

Grammar (leaning over towards rest of huddled section and whispering): Does he mean beautiful?

Revolution: I’ll show him the long arm.

Commandant (looking out at section dubiously): Is this it, Section Leader? The whole Section?

Section Leader: Attrition, Sir. Less resources for recruitment. We have all had to, as it were, tighten the belt. But never fear, Sir. We are, as one might say, doing more with less.

Commandant (coughs). Well yes, that’s all right then. In the future, as you know, my Section Leader, we shall no longer require a military to fight the axis of evil. We shall simply invade our enemies with Benevolence.

Group of Dudes: Party, man. The tacos will be spicy!

Section Leader (sharply): At ease everyone.

Everyone tightens up.

Section Leader: That’s better.

Commandant: Now, Section, as you know, you are training to become a crack group of Anarcho-Capitalist Commandos. If you do exactly as the organization commands, without fail, than it shall be Every Man For Himself. Is that clear?

Grammar: All but the words.

Reginald (raising hand): Oh oh Sir, Sir. I have a question, Sir. If it’s every man for himself, what happens to our benefits package?

Commandant (looking at Section Leader skeptically, then back at the Section): I’ll ask the questions here. If you have questions, I will let you know what they are. Now then, some of you may have questions. Some of you may have things on your mind. Some of you may be, frankly, wondering. You may even be asking yourself if. And these questions, I’m sure, seem to you reasonable. Therefore, let me answer them by saying no. They are not reasonable, and no one will be answering them. I can say this: if you have questions, you are not with the program. The program has answered your questions already. If you have a question, please remember that it has been answered already.

    (He goes on). You are a team of Anarcho-Capitalists. You must recognize that there is no difference between doing what you want and doing what we tell you. If you find that you are doing something you want and it is different from what we have told you, then you are not doing what you want. There is no doubt about it: doing what we tell you is what you want. Now, you may be asking yourself, what is Anarcho Capitalism? But don’t ask yourself. Don’t ask me. You aren’t asking questions.

    Since you have no questions, I can proceed to review what, as our crack Anarcho-Capitalist Commandos, you will doing. Of course, on some level I don’t have to review this. Anarcho-Capitalism is natural. Therefore, by doing what comes naturally, you are already our crack Anarcho-Capitalist commando machine. You have had to learn nothing; you are simply being yourselves. Therefore, in these remarks, when I am pointing out to you what you already are, you will find nothing surprising, and you will have no questions.

    What is Anarcho-Capitalism? Of course, you already know. Some of you, however, may feel uncertain on the details. But let me remind you that you are wrong about that. Again. You have no questions, and you are not uncertain. Nonetheless. I am the Commandant, representing the Long Arm of Discipline, aka the Anarcho-Capitalism you already understand. If it seems like I’m drifting from the subject here, let me assure you that I cannot drift from the subject. That’s because the subject comes naturally to me. I can be only on subject, since there is nothing else I could possibly be on. And I’m going to ride that subject until it hurts you, which, as you know, can only make you feel better.

    As we all already know, and couldn’t possibly forget, Anarcho-Capitalism simply tells us what we already know, which is: There is a marketplace for everything. And God looked down on the marketplace and called it good. And lo: everything resulted from the marketplace. People resulted from the marketplace. Water, food, animals. Without the marketplace, there are none of these things. Got it? Nothing. If you want an animal, buy it. If you want food, get hold of some. If you don’t get hold of food, then there is no food. If you can’t buy anything, then there’s nothing to buy. Am I making myself clear? Of course I am. There’s nothing to make clear except what was clear already. And that was already clear.

    You are, as you clearly know, for sale. There’s nothing else you are. Therefore, get your ass off the can and start selling. Make hay while the sun shines. The early bird catches the worm. Am I getting to the point here? Of course not. I don’t have to get to the point. The point is the only point there is. I don’t have to get to the point because I’m already at the point. There is nowhere else for me, or anyone, to be.

    The goal of the Anarcho-Capitalist commandos: everyone must work together so we can all be in it for ourselves. Do you not see that it is beauteous? Of course you see. Mankind, who is selfish (and womankind too, whoa baby) must work hand in hand so we can rip out each other’s throats. It is only by cooperating fully that each of us can really and truly be out to get each other. The best way to do this? Money. If you’re making it, you’re golden. If not, you’re out of here. And how do you make money? You take it from somebody. This is what it means to work with somebody; you rip them off. If you don’t rip them off, you’re not doing what either of you want. Do I have to ask again whether I’m making myself clear? I do not have to ask, since clear is the only way I could make myself.

    The market is not simply the best way, it’s the only way. It helps us decide who should be in charge of what. If you can buy it, it’s yours. If you can’t it’s somebody else’s. If you have nothing, and somebody else has it all, well, figure out how to get some from them. You can work for them, for instance. In fact you have the right to work for them if they will let you, and you have the right to be paid exactly what they feel like paying you. There are other methods however. You may manipulate the system. Fraud, graft, corruption, these are only some of the good things that will result. Remember, if you can cheat someone out of their hard-earned money or property, you’re only doing the right thing. After all, they were already trying to do it to you. We may therefore define cooperation in the following manner: a deadly struggle between two or more individuals for control of the marketplace. Nothing’s better than the feeling of working together with others in the attempt to dominate them utterly.

    Now that I have established the principles of the marketplace, which you can see that I have, because there was nothing else you could possibly see and nothing else I could do, you understand also that I have established the principles of you. Because, as you know, you are principles of the marketplace. That’s all you are, and since that’s all, it follows that you are nothing else. If you are all something, then there’s nothing left over for any part of you to be anything other than what all of you is. It would make no sense, to say that you are more than all you are. Eh? But you knew that already. What else is there to know? An individual may therefore be defined as a principle of the marketplace. An individual is an example of the proper functioning of the marketplace, which can, as you know, only function properly. Therefore the individual is an example that illustrates that the marketplace is functioning properly and can only function properly. Therefore the individual is an example that is therefore also a principle. It can be nothing else. Right? Of course it’s right. What else was there for it to be?

But ah, you might say, if I am an example of the proper functioning of the marketplace, and therefore, as an example, I am also a principle, well, what is the principle that I, as an individual, illustrate? What is the principle of me? And this would be a valid question, except that there are no questions. And the reason there are no questions is that all this comes naturally to you. You are the principle of what comes naturally to you, which is the proper functioning of the marketplace. Since that functioning is natural, obviously it comes naturally to you. And look, here it comes now. Incoming!

(Everyone falls to the floor but the Commandant)

Commandant: Ha ha ha. Just my little joke. Don’t be so gullible. My goodness. Obviously, the marketplace can’t be incoming. It’s already here. Where else could it be? Ha ha ha. What are you doing on the floor? Are you, on the floor, illustrating a principle of the marketplace? Of course you are. It will be the duty of many individuals, in their role as examples of the marketplace, which is to say principles of it, to end up on the floor. Many individuals will end up as the principle that many will be on the bottom. In the proper functioning of the marketplace, there is room for a lot of principle at the bottom. The principle is: there’s a lot of room at the bottom. Make room down there, because more of you are coming. But as you see, lying there on the floor, there’s no need to make room at the bottom. There’s always room at the bottom for as many people as end up at the bottom. The principle is that the bottom is big. Furthermore, you don’t need to do anything to get there. The principle is: do nothing, and you will end up at the bottom. It’s comforting. To know that the bottom is there, waiting for you, every time you do nothing. To know that a principle of the marketplace is that you are welcome to be at the bottom. Welcome to the bottom, where everyone is welcome. As you see, the marketplace has a role for everyone. That is one of its principles.

But up now, up.

(The Section gets up slowly.)

Very good. You are a crack section of Anarcho-Capitalists. You will not be at the bottom if you do something. That is, if you do the something that you should do to illustrate the principle of the marketplace that each of you as an individual is. Which you cannot help but do, of course. But what you can help is this. You have it in your power to become the principle of the marketplace you will illustrate, which is to say, be. You have the power to become what you will be. What specific principle of the marketplace are you? That is the question you will answer, because you cannot help but answer it. Because the answer to the question is the principle that you are, and that will come to you naturally as a function of who you are. The principle that you will illustrate is the principle of your own individual talent. Your talent for the marketplace, which is who you as an individual are, is the principle of the marketplace that you will illustrate. Understand? Of course you do, because there’s nothing else to understand. Therefore it is now time to define your individual missions, which are already defined for you because of the kind of talent you are. It is defined for you because it comes naturally. But it is up to you to use this natural talent. You do not have to use it. You are always welcome to end up at the bottom. But if you use your talent properly, then you will end up as the illustration of the principle that your talents illustrate. I must now, as Commandant of this Section, define for you your mission, which is a function of you, which is to say, a principle of the marketplace. Therefore I am not defining it. I am simply stating that which is already defined by the natural fact of who you are. Section Leader, do you have the Personality Profile Surveys?

End of Part Two

Anarcho-Capitalist Commando Mythos Force: A Drama in Multiple Voices

Part One

-----------------------

Reginald: All I ever wanted was to be a deployable resource.

Judas Priest: The engine roars between my thighs.

Grammar: Some things, however, are simply built into how the mind works. Toying with them is madness.

Beautiful Object: Oh, look at the pretty things!

Group of Dudes:
            We don’t care
            We don’t care
            All we wanna see
            Is your underwear

Section Leader: All right, section members. The Commandant is on his way. Prepare for inspection.

Reginald (lining up). I’ve always loved being inspected.

Judas Priest: We are the hell patrol. All guns, all guns blazing.

Grammar (grumbling): Once a subordinate clause, always a subordinate clause.

Beautiful Object: Cleaned and pressed and ready to go, Sir!

Group of Dudes: Fuck. Ouch. Shit.

Section Leader: I know how long you’ve all been waiting. Today’s code word: One for all and all for one.

Reginald (gratefully). I’m a cog. I’m finally a cog.

Judas Priest: The engine roars between my thighs.

Grammar: It’s true that all the parts, when taken together, must form a complete whole.

Beautiful Object (showing off): Don’t forget to admire the centerpiece.

Group of Dudes: Hey, can you repeat what you just said?

Everyone looks at them reproachfully.

Group of Dudes: What? My cell rang. Can I help it if my cell rang?

Grammar: That’s just great. Here I am, stuck with a bunch of run-on sentences.

Group of Dudes: Dude, what makes you think we care? We’re just marking time. Waiting for life to begin. Don’t harsh my buzz, getting all full of purpose and shit.

Reginald: Team Leader, Sir. Permission to report an infraction, Sir?

Section Leader: Granted.

Reginald (walking up to Team Leader). I have the impression, Sir, that some people aren’t getting with the program.

Section Leader (coughs): Well, uh, well. Well. We’ll see about that. The Commandant, as you know, is on his way.

Revolution walks in. Everyone turns in Revolution’s direction.

Revolution: The economies least damaged by globalism are the ones who refused economic restructuring.

Group of Dudes: Who’s the clown? Kick his fucking ass.

Reginald: You’re not the Commandant.

Section Leader (to Revolution): You’re late. Get in line. You’re this close—this close—to being guilty of breaking rank.

Revolution (sarcastically, getting in line): I sure wouldn’t want to do that.

Beautiful Object: You’re cute. Want to form a domestic partnership?

Reginald: You really do try that on everyone, don’t you?

Beautiful Object: It’s not my fault if some people say they can’t afford it. It’s not my fault if some people say, “Not until we have better benefits.”

Reginald (huffy): So I want an institutional framework. Is that so wrong?

Judas Priest. Change, change, all re-arrangin’. Look around, at the sit-u-a-tion.

Group of Dudes: Tequila shot, motherfuckers!

Reginald (still huffy): Better to buy in than be left out.

Revolution: Yet globalism has left more people than ever before without a stake in any system. What are you gonna do, build more prisons?

Reginald: Better to manage the money than to be managed by it.

Grammar: Language is not a prison house. Processing words is a basic biological function and it behaves according to certain laws. All of this is elucidated in Chomsky’s notion of deep grammar. Please don’t say anything more until you have absorbed the truths of that text.

Group of Dudes: Always some asshole trying to get nuanced. I don’t even know what nuanced means.

Beautiful Object: I need attention bad.

Judas Priest: No sign of life. No flicker on his face.

Grammar: Where’s a topic sentence when you need one?

Section Leader (shouting): Enough. Everyone in line.

Reginald: I’ll follow you anywhere, Sir. Even Tampa Bay if necessary. Nashville, Asheville, you name it. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to let the winds of capital blow me about. Think of the salary.

Judas Priest: I’m headed out to the highway. I’ve got nothing to lose at all.

Group of Dudes: Party on both coasts!

Beautiful Object: All she wanted was just to be free, and that’s the way it turned out to be. Flow, river, flow, down to the sea.

Revolution: Wait a second. Isn’t any of this open for discussion? If the goal is freedom, why can’t we even discuss what it means to be free? Oh, I get it. None of you are even you. You’re only the image of you that you wish to project. Meanwhile, people are dying, countries are falling apart. And all you do is sit around and watch TV like you’re on it.

Beautiful Object: Gross. Ewww. Imagine how fat they’ll get. It’s so horrible that all I want is not to think about it.

Group of Dudes: Hey, any girls out there? We got beer. Got cable.

Judas Priest: We are saints in hell.

Reginald: People, please. Can’t we work together on this? Follow the rubric?

Revolution (groaning): Where’s my politics of hope? I’m surrounded by people who just want a piece of the action.

Section Leader: Everybody at attention! The Commandant is here!


End of Part One