The Philosurfer Manifesto

The Philosurfer Mixtapes Volume 2011

2011-10-26T16:36:00.000-07:00

The Philosurfer Mixtapes Volume 2011 by Philosurfer

Sounds from the Cave:

2011-10-18T10:44:00.000-07:00

Personality Uploaded: by Philosurfer on Mixcloud

http://soundcloud.com/philosurfer

SYNC-BUTTON DEE-JAY

2011-06-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

"Its awesome. In some senses, it changes the 'sport'…whereas one of the GOALS used to be beatmatching, that is now pretty irrelevant. And its sad, if your sport was showing off how wonderfully you can beat match, because that has really become obsolete. Although i can beat match as instantaneously as the next DJ, i don’t give an at’s rasss about doing it and making people watch me do it. I’m rather much more interested in creating and collecting awesome sounds, and layering, combining and broadcasting them as a means to conjur up an energetically cathartic experience for other humans."

-->Lorin Ashton on Digital DJing vs. Vinyl.

Coming Clean

2010-11-26T13:01:00.000-08:00

Purity. There's something about it that makes my soul feel at ease. No worries. All is good.

Sometimes, in life, it is really hard to achieve this feeling. I'm talking about that feeling you get inside of you, where your smile lights up a room like a 1000 watt HPS light does ~~in my friend's garage, and den, and office, and extra bedroom.~~

One little lie, one little slight, one useless asshole remark; and none of them even had to happen.

The voice in my head says, "Fill yourself with the right things and not the wrong things, and the right things and not the wrong things will be what comes of you."

I'll try my best.

(Purity as seen through the eyes of a machine all while being in Wyoming.)

What Are You Listening To?

2010-09-03T14:43:00.000-07:00

We walk around our cities today with a sort of voluntary obliviousness that one cannot help but love. I'm talking about us and our ipods. On sidewalks, in coffee shops, in the gym, on the bus; all of us shutting out the noise of the world so we can live in our own little private paradises. The only question I have for my fellow zombies is, what are you listening to???

Does that sound like a rhetorical question? One that I've asked to be polite, even though I can guarantee that whatever you're listening to is nowhere near as fucking awesome as what I'm listening to? I think many of us think of it like that sometimes. After all, a person's choice in music (what type you prefer/how much variation you appreciate/how intense is your internal flame/etc.) says a lot about their identity. Wouldn't you agree?

Like that little blue-haired kid, who could be goth (but who knows with kids today?), wearing jeans so fucking tight it looks like he's gonna sterilize himself and essentially shoot blanks for the rest of his life; what is he listening to? Or that twenty-something female walking down State St. with arms full of bags, sassed out to the max with her fine self, looking like she just did the shopping version of a city-wide pub-crawl; what the fuck is she listening to? I'd really like to know...

In that way, I kind of envy people who read books a lot in public. A book is somewhat similar to a song/album in the sense that it is a snapshot of a person's artistic idiosyncrasies, perfectly packaged for individual consumer purchase. The major difference: you can't hold the idea of the song in your hand, but a book makes people aware of what you choose to fill your head with. To me, (although I love my ipod obsessively and could never imagine my life without its glorious presence providing me real instant happiness whenever I fucking please), we are cheating ourselves by imbibing such a publicly invisible art form.

What's that you've got there, 1984 by George Orwell? Well now, that is one of my favorite books of all time. How do you like it? Yeah, my sentiments exactly. Oh, me? I'm flicking through Bertrand Russel's The History of Western Philosophy. Yeah, its boring and a bit daunting, but I'm into that sort of weird shit. Sorry. Looks like you have the cooler book.

See how much fun that was????? So in the future, since none of us are likely to start picking up leisure reading any time soon (excluding all my nerd homies), and we're definitely going to insist on our little bubbles of personal auditory heaven, why not share what you're bumping? Don't worry, even if you listening to shitty techno or 80's pop, we won't judge you... promise. :)

(Here's what I've been listening to... how about you?)

Begging for Smiles

2010-09-01T14:11:00.000-07:00

So today I'm coming to the realization that intellectual prowess is just like any other activity you'll run into in life; practice makes perfect. Lately, I've been sucking really bad at this. I'm not sure why. It was as if recently, something in my head clicked, and everything I had done to build up my knowledge in this world had accidentally turned me into a giant dickhead. That just didn't fit the script as I felt that the only natural consequence of the examined life was tranquility. Yet here I was telling other people that their opinions and hopes and dreams were total bullshit because they were built on a fucking foundation of lies.

That is obviously no way to address a fellow human being in the modern world. To be frank, looking back and reading certain previous posts in this blog makes me laugh at the complete delusional supremacy that I was experiencing. Does that mean that I necessarily disagree now with all that I had previously felt so vehemently about? Hardly. However it does signify a moment of clarity in my life; we little humans are undoubtedly the permanent focal point of our own existences, and those existences are utterly pitiful in scale as compared to what we think of as "existence" generally.

That being said, good luck ENJOYING YOUR OWN LIFE WHILE AVOIDING BEING AN ASSHOLE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. That is essentially my new creed. Speaking for others who aren't asking to be spoken for is just fucking stupid, and I feel like myself and those of like-minded character have done that for a bit now. So if eyes ever are struck by a screen's light emissions, and the words of The Philosurfer Manifesto are carved into your oculars, know that I speak for not you but me. I can no longer carry the burden of trying to please any of you, because it is quite a difficult task with only residual benefits.

Is there a diamond in this rough? Some hope in this despair? Order in this chaos? If there is any sort of value into this experience between you (the reader) and I (the obsessive compulsive narcissistic author), I hope that it starts with a chuckle and ends with a smile. Do not take this shit at all serious, because that would be a humongous waste of time. And by "this shit," I mean to say yours and my life. Plus, please don't be upset for all the cursing that goes on in this little space; I know that it "makes you sound less intelligent," but fuck that fucking illogical horseshit.

Fuck, as we all are plenty aware by now, is not only one of the most versatile words in the English language, but it is also one of the most beautiful. We all know we love to say fuck. In fact, when George Carlin was asked what his favorite word in the English language was, he responded with "motherfucker." I have to agree that it does roll of the tongue quite nicely.

So please, smile for me motherfucker. :)

(Here is a picture of my kitty... hope it helps.)

To Quote At Length: Bertrand Russell

2010-07-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

"That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built."

A Poem for Monica:

2010-07-09T18:56:00.000-07:00

When did you become such an old soul?

It seems here, right before my eyes, the transformation has officially been completed.

In a world of frustration and emptiness, I found solace in your voice.

What did I do to be so lucky? Surely I’ve done nothing for the world to deserve such benevolence.

Yet, there you are. You’ve pulled me through the toughest of times.

All of a sudden, I feel as though you are the older one.

In reality, we scratch each other’s back. I remember the days we played and laughed and cried, together.

It will always be that way, because we’ve got one another to do the dirty work.

So when it’s your turn to cry, I’ll be there.

When it’s your turn to feel pain, as the human condition inevitably necessitates, you will not be alone.

And neither will I.

The world will crumble and implode before our eyes, but it won’t matter because we’ll have what matters most buried deep inside our hearts.

Bound to each other by the invisible benevolence of chance, I thank my lucky stars that my little sister is also my best friend.

Incalculably indebted in such an enigma; this is a thing that cannot come undone.

To Quote At Length: Howard Zinn

2010-07-05T16:40:00.000-07:00

"... We must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners."

- A People's History of the United States

Dollars and Sense

2010-06-18T15:54:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I've said something even remotely political on the BOOK, so here's my version of relapse...

Someone (actually a few people) recently told me that I'll be a Republican as soon as I start paying taxes. The clear implication of this statement essentially is this: "When you make money, something happens to your world-view. Suddenly, the notion that all of humanity possesses a dignified essence worth preserving goes right down the tubes in the face of graduating to a higher tax-bracket. Why the fuck do you want to pay for some illegal's education, health-care, and general safety? TO THAT I SAY HELL NO."

I remember being taught, as many little kids in school are, that happiness was something that could never be bought, and therefore had no price. Why are my dear Republican friends convinced that a few extra percentage points of income will make their lives so much better? To all of my compassionately conservative brethren out there, with all of your dollars and sense: are you really going to achieve any extra level of contentment if you could just get your hands on that extra thing? Have you no sense of desire to see your community be one of envy for its awesome distribution of general stoke?

Back to the brainwashing of our young people with lies that even the most admired community members dare not endorse behind the closed doors of high society: were they just feeding us a crock of shit when they told us that you COULD NOT buy your happiness? (My ignorance on this topic is so in need of addressing by someone that it is straight-up not even humorous.)

Maybe I've got it all wrong. Maybe I'm the shithead. Maybe all that jive about the "meek shall inherit the Earth" was just a random quote taken out of context. Maybe, what it's all about is cracking some cold ones with your folks in the most pristine setting one could attain, regardless of what went into attaining it. Maybe my reading of the American dream is a selective one; am I being foolish when I say that the relationship between the free individual and the free society exists by default?

Can you be a free person living under the chains of a perpetually recurring "sluggish economy," living in the shadows of the most opulent human existence ever witnessed? My guess is that your answer depends on who you are and what you have; show me the majority of losers in this rigged economy, who enjoy paying through the nose and getting nothing in return, whom profess to hold a deep-seeded love for the rich's ability to screw us all over again and again.

Someday, I'll be a person who makes a decent wage. Someday, it will be me shelling out the taxes. I'll be proud that I'm able to repay my debt to the society that fostered my development in all significant aspects. After all, I didn't build the roads, the schools, the sewers, the city halls, the courthouses; I didn't even write the Constitution, the pseudo-sacred document that effects our lives much more than any sacred text I know of. I didn't do a fucking thing to build up the society that I was born into. All that I am was essentially handed to me on a platter known as birthright. Given all that, would I be an ungrateful dickhead by asserting my right to contribute as little as possible to said birthright? Methinks yes...

Republicans: stop parading your right to selfishly horde a measly extra couple grand from the coffers of the country that gave you this wonderful existence because of all your "hard work." To my Republican friends out there- I dare you to respond. TELL ME WHY IT IS OK TO BE SELFISH. Notice that I'm not even asking you to justify it as a superior or even admirable ideological position. Just simply tell me why it's not reprehensible to demand that your money really is yours, and not the world's. Since we non-republicans are clearly so ignorant of the way, the light, and the truth- I am begging to be taught.

PS: This conversation has absolutely nothing to do with Barack Obama, and until now, he went completely unmentioned. This was done on purpose. Without addressing the current administration, tell me, ideologically, why it is OK to be selfish. (I say this because we cannot have a reasonable conversation based on fact and not immediately revert to the previous 30 years of conservative control in Washington that has provided the fucked up template that Barry currently is failing to fix. Moreover- while he's a big disappointment, he doesn't represent a whole mode of thought, just as GWB does not represent all of conservatism.)

So if anyone has the gall, please inform me as to why we should all keep to ourselves; please inform me why we should not share our money and resources with those in need; please inform me why it is OK to live in the richest third world country in the world; please inform me why tax day is something to fear and hate, rather than celebrate.

Anyone??? My ignorance pains me, and I need a lesson...

Deadmau5 Live @ Coachella 2010- Moar Ghosts 'N' Stuff

2010-06-08T14:10:00.000-07:00

(Highly recommended that you; watch this on 720HD; turn off all the lights; turn the volume way up; get naked.)

Ghosts n' Stuff: Ode to Douchebags
"At the present moment, I'm not recording, I'm not on tour, and I've never had a song go to #1 on Beatport. I've never been featured on JunoDownload or TrackitDown. I've never released vinyl. But what I do know is that I've been listening to ELECTRONICA for many years, and I have every right to speak my mind against the fab-ri-cated music that is being released on a daily basis; it's absolutely appalling! All these people think that, 'If you're on the Beatport Top-10 then you're making something of yourself.' Well- you're making a mockery out of electronic music! I'M A PRODUCER, AND I COME FROM THE UNDERGROUND. AND I'M, QUITE FRANKLY... I'M SICK AND TIRED! AND I'M HERE TO GO ON THESE RANTS ON MESSAGE BOARDS (because I know I will never amount to anything and I need to make myself feel better). SO WHEN I'M NOT HIGH ON COCAINE I WILL SIT IN FRONT OF THIS COMPUTER UNTIL THE COWS COME HOME AND CONTINUE RANTING AND RAVING ABOUT ARTISTS THAT ARE ACTUALLY LIVING OUT THEIR DREAMS ('cause I never will...)!"

- Joel

The Secret Histories of Our Enemies

2010-03-12T13:57:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it seems there is something in us that makes us love to hate. The slightest slights is often all it takes to set off monumental battles on varying scales of social interaction, from the widest of wars to the tiniest of tiffs. In the event that the dehumanizing barriers are lifted and we are able to see our enemies as fellow dignified beings, the fundamental delineation between us and them becomes imperceptible. When we look closely our foes, with all our their faults and shortcomings, we inevitably see ourselves. We're hesitant to admit that what we hate most about our enemies generally shares a strong resemblance to what we hate most about ourselves. In this way, our enemies are simply fulfilling a natural role in the formation of our in-groups. The victim results as an indirect beneficiary to the provocative action undertaken by their supposed enemy; the members consolidate their affinity towards the group as a defense mechanism, subsequently widening the gap between us and them. There is another option for conflict resolution that does not involve the classic form of demonizing one’s enemy. Instead of focusing on the 52 percent devil in our adversary, we ought to look at the other 48 percent fellow human. This presumes that within each adversary, we have a potential ally. Treating our adversaries as potential allies need not include a blind acceptance of their actions. The challenge is to evoke the humanity within our enemies, while preparing for the full range of possible responses they may offer. Striking a balance between distrust and naïvete is what makes us human.

For a student of power, the concept of enemy making in the political arena is of fundamental concern. In an environment of post-9/11 hysteria, George W. Bush launched the shamelessly titled “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign against the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Even amidst all the fear mongering that temporarily paralyzed our country’s critical thinking abilities, it seemed unnecessary to seek out and murder our enemies in such cold blood. Had the “conflict” really reached that point? In the process of hunting down the evildoers, we ended up resorting to their tactics, and subsequently relinquished the moral high ground. The attacks of 9/11 turned the American citizenry into a sack of potatoes, and the powers that be grabbed themselves a peeler and exploited the shit out of us. Pandering to the worst part of our nature, we were squeezed into the position of fearing our safety so intensely that we allowed the Executive to order the deliverance of a harsh first-strike. In the process, whether we contributed directly or passively, our nation essentially became terrorists to root out terrorism. Once the threshold of invasion was crossed, and American bombs flat-lined innocent after innocent, the line between good and evil seemed never to have existed.

This has been the example of enemy making for our generation of American youth. Years later, the examination of the process of creating an us and them viscerally tugs at our souls. The inevitable attempts of future leaders to politicize and polarize the relationships of humanity to the point of mutual destruction can only be stopped by a critical mass. We’ve got to create a collective consciousness, expand our moral community. We’ve got to take a cold hard look at the battle cry. If there’s to be any dehumanizing to be done, it ought to be towards those with a thirst for power and blood.

Enemy making is essentially a transportation of our own shadow onto others. We seek those who fit our images of the inferior. History's answer for the creation of enemies is often simplistic in its emphasis on the causality of social forces; it does not take into account the fact that human beings are involved at crucial decision making junctures. One may read that conflict such as wars are caused by nationalism, militarism, alliance systems, economic factors, or some other “fundamental” cause. Are these reasons solely responsible for such conflict?

To be sure, fundamental forces that individual people have no control over certainly exist. However, the fact remains that people are the penultimate facilitators; war is not ecological. War is not caused by a changing of the leaves or seas. War is caused by hatred and fear, which themselves are but pillars buttressed by a solid foundation of ignorance. War is caused by our capacity to understand morality; war is born out of our belief in the substantive existence of evil. This personality dimension of conflict is an important aspect of the creation of the shadow.

A misunderstanding of the motivations and desires of one’s enemy allows our shadow projection thrive. We fail to think of our enemies as people the same as ourselves, with the same fundamental circuitry guiding our interests. In the creation of an enemy, we grossly overestimate our differences, losing that common thread that is manifested in the dignity of each human being, a dignity that binds us all. Perhaps Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said it best this way, “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

In February of 2004, President George W. Bush announced support for an amendment to the United States Constitution that would prohibit the right of gays to be a legally recognized couple. The announcement was apart of a broader attack of homosexuality occurring within the drunken ranks of American traditionalism. People who live among us everyday with absolutely no harm to anyone are suddenly worthy of amending our most sacred political document in a discriminatory manner against them? That just straight-up makes no fucking sense.

In the process of assigning enemy status, those qualities that we cannot tolerate within ourselves we unconsciously and painlessly attribute to our enemies. Enemy making thus relies on ignorance and the subjugation of complexity in order to thrive within our minds. The Conservative Crusade against homosexuality created an excruciatingly simplistic narrative, spelled out as follows: The union of a man and a woman is the most time-honored institution, encouraged by every culture and religious faith. This tradition underlines the stability of society on the nuclear level. Extending this simpleton logic, marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society. Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all. The total undermining of our society and values will therefore commence if two people choosing to make a lifelong commitment do so in conjunction with the fact that they both have breasts or a penis. GWB and the American Traditionalist Movement is thus wary that the “degradation of society” follows from legalized gay love. Equating homosexuality with evil is their classic enemy-creating response, displacing the responsibility for their own fuck-ups on an easy target. Reality concerning our so-called "degrading" society is likely more clearly reflected in their inept leadership capabilities, rather than with monogamous homosexuals (mono-homo's). Lets not demonize our neighbors for the circumstances of their birth.

The notions of good and evil are just simplistic, arcane traditions of the old society that we all should gladly leave behind. At the heart of this issue is the sense of community inherent in man; particularly, how we choose, as individuals, to address the unavoidable reality that no man is an island upon himself. Aristotle famously dubbed man a social animal; we are all destined to live in this world together. We ought to exercise pragmatism, deal with our potential conflicts in a more productive manner. When it comes to extinguishing our natural inclinations towards enemy formation, we must derive it from the very best part of our nature. This potent reduction of our proclivities towards cooperation and compassion is a mean to the ultimate end of our human existence, the good life.

“Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.”
- John W. Gardner

A Letter to the World from Kryses Ambiryde

2010-03-08T15:57:00.000-08:00

Sitting on the sand with waves breaking in the distance, I found myself pondering the human mind and what shapes it to be as unique as it is. It seems to be one of the great natural phenomena that we can observe. Although it may not exist on the scale of a cosmic supernova, it surely reflects the same dynamism. We humans are a funny bunch, as far as we can see the only creature on this planet whose concerns include mortality, morality, and empathy. Thus in an attempt to analyze this kooky bunch we are, we ought to remain ever cognizant of the liberating reality that humans beings are animals. Although very advanced, our lives will fundamentally exist on a similar plane of worth as any other living being.

Out of this context emerges a modernized moral sense, manifested in the Golden Rule. This inescapable intellectual endpoint is firmly fashioned; its form following the sturdy construction of the tripod. The subconscious proclivity we possess in regards to our ecologically organic roots comprises the first pillar. The second is the lack of a Creator God and his subsequent monopoly on moral authority, at least as its been explained by other humans. The third and final pillar to this tripod is a firm belief in moral absolutism; there is only one set of right and wrong for all humans, and justice entails every human actually living to that standard that we all agree is just. These three ideological pillars equate to the Regla de Oro, otherwise known as treating other people the same as you would have them treat you. This powerful yet humble creed is what we ought to walk with on the reg': it serves the purpose of making our lives richer and more fulfilling.

Modern religion keeps our society more archaic and stifles the expansion of human rights. We see this manifestation most clearly by listening to the gears of the machine collectively discourage the questioning of the ultimate design. These bully pulpits are given megaphone status, thanks to the billions of untaxed dollars they shamelessly collect from their blind followers. Their messages often revert to prescribing faith as an alternative to carrying the burden of working towards human progress.

Living amongst the residents of academia, it feels as if we wish to believe that the spirits of the Greek acropolises are here today. The University of BS, and the essence it radiates, makes us better people by increasing our ability to be a critical thinkers in a world of permaflux. As a Science of Power major, my personal academic course load is primarily comprised of history and philosophy classes that camouflage their complexity under the guise of parsimonious theoretical frameworks. Nevertheless, these avenues of study have great impact on how we think today as they have been very explanatory about certain fundamental characteristics of human thought. We not only inquire about what we value, but also why we value it. Notice the use of the magic word. The Why? is just as important, if not infinitely more important, than the What? aspect of our fundamental nature.

The scientific worldview may seem rather benign to some, but there is just as much mysticism and beauty in the naturally occurring world as there could ever be in the created world. The uncovering of processes and patterns that nature exhibits has a tendency to bring one closer to the reality of the surrounding universe. While humbling, it is also exciting to feel apart of such a dynamic ebb and flow. Among the core scientific beliefs that are pertinent to our worldview is the reality of evolution. It makes a strong case in its assertion of being the truth, due to the fact that when asked Why? the theory responds with proof in the form of physical evidence. Very few areas in life are able to produce such strong foundations, and upon discovering the collective narrative of the most brilliant minds in science today, it is hard to deny. This of course presumes a lack of major ideological hurdles to jump.

Taking evolution into account, it helps us understand that we humans are simply advanced animals, subject to the same realities of life that our fellow wild creatures have to deal with. Obviously the major difference between animals and humans is that we are cognizant of our consciences. It often feels that we have a painfully small amount of lifetime with which we can enjoy the simplicity of existence. We are plagued on the daily by our distinct ability to miss the life we have come to love, as our minds are ever saturated with the juices our own mortality. Human existence is sort of akin to a fucked maze: we don’t really have a clue where we’re going; what we do have is the capability of recalling where we’ve been; hoping all the while that at some point we reach an end that we’re never sure will come, further exacerbated by the our ignorance of what the end actually is. The burden of daily life is therefore recapitulated into a desperate struggle to appreciate every last second spent alive on this Earth.

I’d like to preface this next section with thanks to a very special individual named Joe White, who has made an impact on many young people’s thought process throughout his career as a professor of ethical philosophy. One of the major lessons that Joe instills in the mutating minds of his pupils is the debate between moral and ethical relativism. The process begins by distinguishing the difference between morals and cultural norms or customs. What time of day a person eats dinner has not a fucking thing to do with “right” or “wrong.” A person’s willingness to turn their back on a suffering neighbor in need does. The former is a matter of taste, while the latter is a matter of ethics. There are certain aspects of the diversity of human lifestyles that are more about taste and circumstance than right or wrong. These things include language, social etiquette (table manners, etc.), and perhaps even laws in some cases. These are examples of things that are rationally indeterminate, in which equally rational agents, equally well informed, may reasonably disagree. This scenario represents the reality of cultural relativism and underpins the diversity of the human experience, but what we’re really interested in is the notion of morality. Are ethics relative? Can something be right in one culture and wrong in another, or are there a set of human rights that afford every one of us a reciprocal amount of respect for each other?

Consider Western liberal democracy versus Islamic theocracy. If moral relativism is true and there is no right or wrong, then we would not be able to criticize the harsh treatment of women or the lack of religious freedom characteristic of places such as Saudi Arabia. If there is to be one set of moral principles that should stand for all people, it should be the ones that most closely adhere to the universal value of reciprocal respect, our Golden Rule. Enter a thought experiment: a group of people are tasked to create a system of governance for a society they will all soon live in, only they do not know what type of person they will be once the world is actually put into action. The point of the experiment is to imagine the world’s rules from the perspective of someone other than you. Then ask, “Is this fair?” Would the powerful patriarchs in traditional Islamic societies choose to keep the current system, over which they dominate, considering the chance that they might have to come back as woman and be subjugated under the same type of unfair treatment? Highly fucking doubtful.

Um, pardon my intrusion, your Majesty, Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz, may we ask you a question? What are your thoughts on never being able to drive a car, never being able to own land without permission from your husband, or never being able to show your cheekbones public sunshine? You cool with that? No? Shocking. The redeeming utility of the experiment thus descends upon us: people would undoubtedly choose not to recreate a system that endogenously possesses inequality and oppression, even if they had an unlikely chance at being the oppressed within it. This is a testament to the assertion that all people deserve to live by the same standards of justice, no matter who we are. (That is unless you’re a fucking asshole, in which case you’ll probably say some pathetically idiotic thing like, “might makes right.”)

Construction of our modernized moral tripod therefore entails the following: a rabid disbelief in God as a creator/controller of the Earth and its inhabitants; a firm belief in humanity’s status as humble creatures of the Earth rather than divinely created masters of nature; and the perspective that all members of the human species are endowed with a dignified essence that cannot be taken away. This is all the justification a person would need in their life to subscribe to the principle of the Golden Rule. The only way the human world can live up to its potential is if each person chooses to treat every person they come into contact with the same respect they know they deserve themselves. Daily life would be much easier and more beautiful, so long as we can learn to implement this as a universal cultural practice. Don’t believe me? Why?

Hero to the Free Speech Movement: Mario Savio

2010-03-05T21:01:00.001-08:00

"There's a time when the OPERATION OF THE MACHINE becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon the all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all." - Mario Savio, December 2, 1964.

Mario Savio was born into a devout Catholic family in New York on December 8, 1942. This WWII baby harbored aspirations of becoming a priest during his days as a young altar boy. In 1963, the 20-year old Savio spent the summer working with a Catholic relief organization in Taxco, Mexico. There, he contributed in helping to improve the sanitary problems of the ghetto slums by building sanitation facilities. No doubt he saw Hell on Earth in the time he spent in Mexico, exemplified in all of the weeping and wailing and mashing of teeth that characterizes its prevalence.

After returning home from Mexico in 1963, Savio’s family had moved to California. There, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. One of the early incidents in which the agitator’s reputation evolved was during a 1964 demonstration against the San Francisco Hotel Association’s exclusion of blacks from non-menial jobs. While participating in the protest, Savio and 167 other demonstrators were arrested and charged with trespassing. During his imprisonment, Savio struck up a conversation with a fellow incarcerated protester who sparked his interest in heading to Mississippi during the summer of ’64 to assist the Civil Rights movement. Savio joined the Freedom Summer projects in Mississippi, helping register African Americans to vote. Additionally, the budding orator taught at a freedom school for black children, no doubt honing his public speaking skills.

Savio returned to Berkeley in the fall of 1964 intent on remaining politically active after all the injustice he had witnessed firsthand. The young Berkeley student attempted to raise money for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an important organization of the 1960’s Civil Rights movement that had played a role in the 1963 sit-ins and freedom rides across the American South. To his unpleasant surprise, Savio discovered the university had banned all political activity and fund-raising. A classic response from the agitator, Savio laid it out in black and white. “Are we on the side of the civil rights movement? Or have we gotten back to the comfort and security of Berkeley, California, and can we forget the sharecroppers whom we worked with just a few weeks back? Well, we couldn’t forget.”

The UC Regents had long prohibited on-campus political activity at Berkeley prior to 1964. As a result, all political activity occurred on the Bancroft Strip in front of the Telegraph Avenue entrance to the campus. Based on the valid assumption that the Bancroft Strip was public property, the politically active community had an established reliance on this space as one in which political speech was protected from government restriction. In 1964, the UC Regents flipped the script on the mothafuckas, asserting that they had the right to restrict political activity on the Bancroft Strip because they did in fact own the property.

A demonstration broke out due to this stonewalling of the Free Speech Movement by the bureaucrats of the educational system. Jack Weinberg, a 24-year old Berkeley student, had set up a leafleting table on the plaza on behalf of the civil rights group. This action violated the campus’ policy prohibiting on-campus political activity, and Weinberg was handcuffed and stuffed into the back of a police vehicle. Savio, at the sight of his friend being subjugated and silenced by the powers that be, climbed atop a police car and kicked off the Free Speech Movement with his electrifying oration. The philosophy student, in all his eloquence, made sure to take off his shoes before he ascended the blatant symbol of the machine's authority. Surrounded by thousands, straight-up in his fucking socks, Savio delivered the first blow to the establishment’s oppressive grasp of people’s right to assembly. For the next 32 hours, students surrounded the police car and held about 600 officers at bay. Savio would climb atop the police car one last time during that incident, telling the crowd that a short-term understanding had been reached with Clark Kerr, the UC President. Savio addressed the enraged multitude with sincerity, “I ask you to rise quietly and with dignity, and go home.” The crowd, mesmerized by the tenacious empathy this man possessed, did exactly as he requested. The event would solidify Savio as an admirable symbol of the youth protests of the 1960’s.

Protests continued that fall after the negotiations failed to alter the situation. The culmination of this series of demonstrations was the sit-in by thousands at Berkeley's Sproul Hall. On December 2, 1964, Mario Savio would deliver his legendary speech regarding the “operation of the machine.” He gave this impassioned sermon in front of 4,000 people, with every one of them feeding off his energy while simultaneously reciprocating it back. Savio, along with 782 others, was arrested once again when the machine gave its foot soldiers the green-light to clear the area. Eventually, the UC Board of Regents voted to drop the university restrictions on speech. Savio would comment on the outcome, “This free speech fight points up a fascinating aspect of contemporary campus life. Students are permitted to talk all they want, so long as their speech has no consequence.”

In true civil disobedient form, Savio served a four-month jail sentence for his part in the sit-in. He also received an additional two-day jail term for contempt of court, after the agitator called out a furious judge about the “shameless hypocrisy” of his trial.

Mario Savio quit the Free Speech Movement in 1965. What was his primary reason for leaving? The growing gap between the leadership of the FSM, and the students themselves; he was probably disappointed at the harsh realization that no one else gave a shit as much as he did.

Paranoid Android

2010-03-05T19:24:00.000-08:00

Please could you stop the noise, I'm trying to get some rest
From all the unborn chicken voices in my head
What's that...? (I may be paranoid, but not an android)
What's that...? (I may be paranoid, but not an android)

When I am king, you will be first against the wall
With your opinion which is of no consequence at all
What's that...? (I may be paranoid, but no android)
What's that...? (I may be paranoid, but no android)

Ambition makes you look pretty ugly
Kicking and squealing gucci little piggy
You don't remember
You don't remember
Why don't you remember my name?
Off with his head, man
Off with his head, man
Why don't you remember my name?
I guess he does....

Rain down, rain down
Come on rain down on me
From a great height
From a great height... height...
Rain down, rain down
Come on rain down on me
From a great height
From a great height... height...
Rain down, rain down
Come on rain down on me

That's it, sir
You're leaving
The crackle of pigskin
The dust and the screaming
The yuppies networking
The panic, the vomit
The panic, the vomit
God loves his children, God loves his children, yeah!

Is Your Conscience RED or BLUE?

2010-03-05T16:08:00.000-08:00

It’s morning in America, and Jane Doe awakes from her slumber to start the workday and go about her daily routine. While commencing in the obligatory 2 hour morning ritual of “getting ready,” she turns on the tube and flips through the channels to Fox News in hopes of acquiring a bit of intellectual stimulation for the day. Since Jane is obviously busy with her job, familial and residential responsibilities, she understandably lacks the opportunity on the average day to pay careful attention and critically judge the more salient issues bouncing around the contemporary political discourse. Proponents of Democratic Elitism, who broadly advocate that citizens do not directly involve themselves in governmental decision-making, have an answer for Jane. Although she may lack the political sophistication to navigate the plethora of complex issues raised within a true discourse on policy, she is more than able to choose political party allegiances. Democrat or Republican, each party in our beloved country is emphatic at the opportunity to direct her ideological posture towards any particular issue.

The theory of Issue Evolution asserts that as a new issue enters the political realm, party elites take sides and eventually define the issue along a partisan basis. It is from these party elites that average citizens get their cues; rather than being told what to think, they are essentially told how to think. According to the theory, length of time the issue has been salient within the political arena is also a factor. Issues that have been around longer are more clearly defined along partisan lines, implying that issue evolution is a gradual process. According to the issue evolution theory, we would expect the issues that are relatively new in the political realm of discussion to be thus less defined along partisan lines. Using this theory to analyze four key issues in contemporary political dialogue, we therefore expect the oldest issues to be clearly defined along partisan boundaries. Death penalty is ancient in scope, therefore that issue would be considered the oldest out of the four and thus must, according to the theory, show the most clear partisan divide. Next we have Social Security reform. While the proposal is a relatively new issue, the policy itself has been around for over 60 years and therefore can be considered to be an issue that certainly has been around for enough time for the theory’s machinations to occur. Both stem cell research and gay marriage are relatively new issues within the mainstream political arena, particularly compared to the other two. Thus, the theory would hold that the most clearly divided issues along partisan lines would be the death penalty and social security, while the two least partisan should be gay marriage and stem cell research.

(The data that follows was provided by a graduate student at University of California, Santa Barbara.)

Death Penalty:
Support: 81.4%(Rep) 57.1%(Dem) 68.2%(Total)
Not Support: 18.6%(Rep) 42.9%(Dem) 31.8%(Total)

The death penalty, according to our data, does not have a clear partisan divide. The aggregate support for the policy is high, with nearly 70% in favor of it. However, the extreme high levels of support are essentially skewed by the overwhelming amount of Republican support the issue receives. A whopping four out of five Republicans implied support for the policy of capital punishment in the case of murder. Although the Democratic response was also a majority, it was a much smaller majority with slightly more than 50% showing support. Given that that both groups showed majority support, we could not necessarily make the argument that there is a partisan divide. However, one can say that Republicans are much more likely to show high levels of support for it than Democrats. Also, the Gamma value for the data is .533, showing a relatively weak relationship between party identification and positions on the death penalty. This weak positive relationship between party identification and issue stance shows that this is a bi-partisan issue. Thus, the theory of Issue Evolution does not perfectly apply to this issue, as it is very old and there is not necessarily an overly clear partisan divide.

Social Security:

Support: 69.5%(Rep) 33.6%(Dem) 49.8%(Total)

Not Support: 30.5%(Rep) 66.4%(Dem) 50.2%(Total)

The issue of Social Security Reform shows the largest partisan divide thus far. Approximately 70% of Republicans showing support for the reforms aimed at privatization of social security, while only 34% of Democrats support it. The aggregate support for the issue was cleanly divided 50/50, however the majority of those who supported it were Republicans while the majority of those who opposed it were Democrats. The Gamma value for this data set breaches the strong threshold at .638, indicating a significant relationship between a respondent's party identification and the likelihood that they would be pro or con for the issue. Therefore, social security is a good issue for the Issue Evolution theory because it supports the notion that highly salient political issues that are well established should have clear partisan divides. This is exactly the case with social security, as most Republicans support the issue (as the reform was proposed by a Republican Presidential Administration) while most Democrats do not support it.

Gay Marriage

Pro Gay Marriage: 13.3%(Rep) 37.1%(Dem) 26.2%(Total)

Pro Civil Unions: 30.6%(Rep) 27.9%(Dem) 29.1%(Total)

No Support: 56.1%(Rep) 35%(Dem) 44.7%(Total)

The issue of gay marriage also seems to have a clear partisan divide. Although the data is stratified into three different possible answers, for our purposes we will initially treat the data as a “yes” or “no” answer. When done in this fashion, 56% of Republicans oppose the expansion of gay rights, while only 35% of Democrats oppose that same expansion. Therefore, initially the divide is clear in the fact that a majority of Republicans would give them no rights regardless of the options, while the Democrats have a majority opinion favoring legal recognition of gay rights. The divide becomes even clearer when taking the distinction between gay marriage and civil unions into account. When given the option to decide between allowing marriage or civil unions, those respondents who chose to expand rights also showed an interesting divide. For the issue of marriage, 37% of Democrats implied support, while only 13% of Republicans did similarly. When taking all three data stratum into account, this is actually the majority position among the Democrats, showing a much higher proclivity to gay marriage than their Republican counterparts, whom were the smallest minority within their own group. However, there was a surprising bit of agreement in the data on the notion of civil unions as opposed to out right marriage. In both groups, approximately 30% of respondents showed support for the policy. This helps in skewing the Gamma value to -.430, making the relationship seem weaker than it really may be. Therefore, since there is no explicitly clear partisan divide (although Democrats are obviously much more supportive) the Issue Evolution theory is sound.

Stem Cell:

Support: 58.3%(Rep) 76.2%(Dem) 68%(Total)

Not Support: 41.7%(Rep) 23.8%(Dem) 32%(Total)

Lastly, and without a doubt the newest issue of them all, is embryonic stem cell research. If the Issue Evolution theory were going to be correct on this front, we would expect a very fuzzy divide between Republicans and Democrats as neither party has had enough time to take their proper sides. As it turns out, this is generally the case. Although among Democrats there is a very strong level of support hovering around 75%, the Republicans also have a majority in favor of the policy, yet only by 58%. Thus, while both groups show support for the issue, the Democrats reveal a stronger level of support, possibly suggesting that the issue may come to lean more in their favor in years to come as the issue evolves in our political arena. The Gamma value for this data set is -.392, which is the weakest relationship between party identification and issue stance that we have seen in our analysis of these four issues. This last issue also shows support for our Issue Evolution Theory, as the newest issue is the least clearly defined along party lines.

This outlook for democratic realities is, at best, disheartening. Correlation does not show causation, meaning that it may not necessarily be true that we get our cues from these political elites before deciding our own stance. However, the correlation is clearly there. Some issues certainly show an ability to evolve much faster than others. For instance, the gay marriage issue is relatively new, yet it does show a clear partisan divide strictly when concerning the expansion of gay rights without the qualification question distinguishing those rights. Given the supercharged political atmosphere in which this particular issue was arguably abused (2004 re-election campaign of G.W.B.), in conjunction with the fact that politicians have made their positions on this issue based largely on religious convictions appealing to a deeply politically socialized aspect of our psychology, it is no surprise to see the issue so quickly contested vehemently by both sides.

John Zaller’s Receive-Accept-Sample model makes good use of this process of political communication between elites and average citizens. The term given to this process by Zaller is elite discourse, describing the process in which elites of varying types (politicians, candidates, news reporters, etc…) can provide political information to the citizenry via the mass media. This information, he argues, may come to influence the formation and change of public opinion. Therefore, in a sociopolitical atmosphere so highly inundated with corporate news media such as ours, it is safe to say that the current process of elite discourse may persist.

All is not lost. New media sources are steadily gaining those audiences eager for a break from all the petty bullshit and superficial broadcasts, like the kind that are meant for everyone yet apply to no one. A few of my personal favorites include nonprofit media corporations like NPR, shows like Democracy Now!. PBS always puts on a thoughtful discussion, with old Papa Moyers (one of the heros of the Progressive Movement) given a prominent bully-pulpit. Frontline is another excellent source. Furthermore, the Internet provides infinite possibilities for the citizenry to bypass corporate news sources and receive information from each other directly, rather than blindly looking to the same tired “authoritative” corporate sources. Check out Dan Carlin's FREE podcast Common Sense as the purest example of the new media doing its thing. The horizon thus looks less bleak when lit by the setting sun on the era of corporate monopoly over the flow of quality information within the circus that is our lives.

Urban Essences: Tradition, Character, and Place

2010-03-03T11:45:00.000-08:00

Is it possible for one to determine if a city inhabits a plane of existence that can be considered at or near a healthy equilibrium? Is there such a viable status for the entities that we call cities? The historical foundation that cities rest their existence as well as status upon is providing a benevolent platform for the pecuniary nexus. Therefore, is it fair to characterize a city based solely on this factor regarding its economic vibrancy (or lack thereof)? Or are there other elements, working in conjunction with the economic factors, that come to influence the composition of the city? In apparent reality there is a broad swath of significant characteristics pertinent to permanently evolving social settlements that provide them with a unique sense of place. The physical boundaries of a city determine its location, size, vicinity to natural resources and amenities, as well as other physical components. While these factors play a role in influencing the essence of a city’s sense of place, ultimately it is the social structures arising from human action that compose a city’s character and tradition. Working together in concerted fashion, the elements of character and tradition are juxtaposed to their geographical environment. Such factors, and their measure of fluidity, account for the seemingly paradoxical notion of urban continuity in an environment of constant flux.

Paul Peterson, in his piece The Interests of the Limited City, maintains that a city’s economic or market standing is such a central influencing factor in the health of that city that citizens should essentially desist any activity that would jeopardize its avenues for achieving economic success. Peterson also suggests that all the citizens of a city possess a similar interest in promoting growth, and therefore it is the job of city officials to adopt policies that create a local milieu that is conducive to business activity as well as one that caters to affluent residents. The core goals that localities must achieve for their cities to thrive in such a globally competitive environment are viable economic status, reputable social atmosphere, and political prestige. Although these goals are all equally important, Peterson states that the first goal must be paramount if the latter two are to be destined for ascent. This perspective on local politics prevails throughout cities in the United States, as most city government officials generally act accordingly to its principals. It makes sense for local governments to behave this way given that they find themselves within a system of U.S. intergovernmental competition in which cities are pinned against one another in desperate attempts at securing capital from investors.

Peterson briefly mentions the debate about the notion of “public interests.” While some advocate policies that attempt to redistribute wealth from businesses and affluent residents to those with fewer resources under the guise of fairness and equality, Peterson would contend that these policies would not be consistent with the imperative that city’s have to foster economic growth. He maintains that local governments have little choice in the direction of policy skewed towards economic vitality, and those social service policies should take a backseat to policies that stimulate economic growth. This analysis is contextual within the framework of a competitive economic environment among cities on the matter of attracting businesses as a means to the end of not only economic growth, but of attaining a high level of community vitality.

Land, labor, and capital each characterize the city in a fundamental way. Peterson points out that of the three, “Land is the one thing that cities can control.” Labor and capital conversely are much more difficult to control. Additionally, due to their obvious importance in terms of a city’s economic growth, the response to flows of capital and labor comprise of the bulk of the substance of urban policy. This intercity competitive ruthlessness is compounded by the reality that city governments, unlike their Federal counterpart, have fewer tools at their disposal to control the movement of labor and capital across their borders. Lacking the authority to implement policies that would directly intervene with matters of labor and capital such as immigration, prices, currency, wages, or the import/export of goods and services, city governments are given an ultimatum: compete for capital investment or endure the decline of the vitality of the local economy, and subsequently, the decline in not only the social order but also in the social prestige of the community.

Cities are tied to their geographic locations, whereas businesses are not. Herein lies the source of a major problem in urban politics; if a local environment is not amenable to businesses’ interests first and foremost, the companies and their investors (with all of their capital) may pick up shop and move elsewhere. According to this logic, we should see a pattern in which localities with heavy taxes on businesses and expensive regulatory measures are less likely to see new industry take root. Peterson aptly points out that this reality is largely due to today’s globally mobilized marketplace where actual location is a relatively small factor facing a company deciding where to erect or relocate. Thus, according to Peterson, how should public policy try to enhance the economic position of the city? He would argue that at the core of every great city is a thriving export industry. Although there is debate as to whether a city can become too dependent on any single industry for its economic health, Peterson straddles the fence by stating that governments must simultaneously maintain strong ties with the export industry’s vigor yet also make efforts to diversify the overall economic profile of the city. One major aspect of this dualism is the enhancement of infrastructure in the area that will allow other businesses to quickly plug-in to a city’s marketplace, such as commercial land zoning and the expansion of transportation projects. Businesses always appreciate low tax rates and minimal enforcement of regulations on economic practices. Such policies reflect a popular alternative route for city governments, especially when increasing local infrastructure is untimely, unaffordable, or inconvenient.

Peterson’s notion of a city possessing a “unitary interest” of economic growth is predicated on one major, controversial assumption. The theory presumes that the interests of the people in cities will essentially be served in a top-down fashion, fundamentally reflective of the Trickle-Down Economic Theory. Is it the case that if the economic position of the city is advanced, the job market and tax base will necessarily serve the population as a whole? In other words, is there a guarantee that an increase in economic status will reach the general population, or might it just end up back in the coffers of the various boosters of the city in order to attract more businesses? It will soon be shown that urban character is made up of more than economic sectors of a city, as we will see later. It also may be suggested that Peterson’s assertion that economic health precedes social and political prestige may be off. Many people would agree that living in a community that provides few social services, is lacking in labor law legislation and enforcement, decreases the prevalence of expensive yet vital environmental protections (and therefore their positive effects), and is flush with the banality of the color asphalt as far as the eye can see, hardly fits into the American Dream. A valid question thus arises: does anyone want to live in the city that defines its interests in such a way?

A second distinct criticism of Peterson’s theory is that it tends to ignore the complexities of local politics. While local economic prosperity will always be high on the agenda for local politicians, the reality of our liberal democratic political institutions remains; a politician must also mobilize sufficient political backing from those few who do vote if they wish to maintain their status as public officials. This balancing act causes local government officials to act in ways that sometimes may run counter to pure business interests, undercutting the power of Peterson’s argument that no citizen should interfere in any way with the economic growth of a city in order to ensure communal stability.

Clarence N. Stone is one such thinker who puts forth a challenge to Peterson’s definition of how a city effectively governs itself and balances its own interests. As mentioned above, city governments’ ability to create policy is much weaker than the Federal Government’s ability to do so. Therefore, in local settings informal agreements take on a special importance. Rather than conceding, as Peterson does, that the primary issues that should concern city officials are over matters of economic growth, Stone points to the prevalence of “urban regimes” in order to account for cooperative relationship that exists between political and business elites within the city. In Stone’s model, local regimes are not simply composed of business elites who demand low taxes and the gutting of social programs; they reflect a marriage between both economic and political actors who together negotiate agreements among the varying political groups and interests. This intimate relationship between the two powerful groups does, however, have the ability to result in a scenario in which the protection of privilege becomes as much of a concern of local governments as the welfare of the city in its entirety.

Stone uses the term “preemptive power” to describe the process by which powerful groups embed themselves into local political coalitions, and therefore shape the regime on their own terms. This cyclical power essentially enables the already powerful groups to protect the privileged position that gives rise to their control over the regime in the first place. Some examples to illustrate this preemptive power include business elites using their position in local government to secure lower taxes, lessen the effect of economic regulatory policies, and rezone desirable land for commercial and residential development. Moreover, the shielding of the urban regime from the consequences of its decisions on the community as a whole plays a significant role in its inability to comprehend, and therefore act with the city’s true interest at heart. According to Stone,

"…those who govern only have a limited comprehension of the consequences of their actions. Steps taken to correct one problem may create or aggravate another while leaving still others unaddressed. Those who govern can discover that only, it seems, through wide representation of the affected groups. Otherwise, choices are limited by an inability to understand the city’s full situation." (Pg 38)

Therefore, Stone is arguing that the type of urban regime a city possesses will determine the range of local perspectives it fosters. It follows then that a more diverse and open the urban regime is, the increase in the chance that democratic public policy will follow. Why this matters is reflected in new interpretations of what makes a city grow and maintain equilibrium: whereas economic factors seemed to previously dominate individual’s choice of residence, it is argued by some that American society is entering an era in which the way a city is perceived in terms of being hip is just as important of a factor in creating a flourishing urban environment.

This additional challenge to Peterson’s contention of economics as the sole driver of city growth and prosperity is embodied in Richard Florida’s notion of quality of place. Recently, many examples have shown how tourism, entertainment, culture and urban amenities have drastic influences when it comes to the revitalization of urban centers. Florida identifies a growing creative class that is made up of educated professionals, intellectuals, artists, eccentrics, etc, etc. The culture of the class dictates that when choosing a place to live, these people weigh in lightly on concerns about the job market; more important are concerns regarding which city has the better music or bar scene, or maybe the most aesthetic look and feel. A positive externality of this congregation of educated and creative minds is the expansion of innovative businesses within those areas. This innovation essentially draws on the experience and expertise of the creative class and uses its growing numbers to expand its professionally able labor market. Florida further asserts that this class of people represents a new political movement that calls for upscale urban amenities in the neighborhoods in which they live, work and play. This results with a revival of old downtown districts as well as inner-city neighborhoods, proving that sense of place plays a large factor in where individuals choose to take root and cultivate their lives, and that it reflects the fluidity of the movements of its people.

The fact that cities experience such varying levels of success and decline pays tribute to the complexity that urban political environment is situated in. From a sociological perspective, the lack of emphasis on urban character as an influential element on the urban political scene is apparent in the growth-centric positions of most urban political scholars. The social ecologist Louis Wirth, in his piece Urbanism As a Way of Life, makes one of the first comprehensive attempts at measuring urban character in a “scientific” manner. In his essay, Wirth develops a “minimum sociological definition of the city” as “a relatively large, dense and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals.” He saw these three elements creating two social consequences; crowding of diverse types of people leading to segregation of homogeneous neighborhoods, and increased contact between city dwellers due to lack of physical space, contributing to a break down of existing social and cultural patterns and essentially encouraging assimilation and acculturation. To Wirth the consequences of the growth of the city are essentially ambivalent. On the one hand it increased mobility and encouraged the exchange of good ideas and created a cultural Melting Pot Effect. On the other hand, he saw the urban dynamic perpetuate a system that exchanged traditional primary relationships for more impersonal secondary relationships. The latter associations were seen as “segmental, superficial, transitory, and often predatory in nature.” Thus the large and densely populated heterogeneous city, with its constant influx of newcomers, became segregated into homogeneous neighborhoods that would come to be known as the mosaic of social worlds. (Park)

Such a system created a new urbanite, due in large part to the explosion of mobility that city dwellers experienced, which was “anonymous, isolated, secular, relativistic, rational, and sophisticated.” Anomie, Wirth’s concept for the social phenomenon of the erosion of traditional social norms and subsequent subjugation of traditional moral order, is seen as the inevitable byproduct of this process. In order to function in urban society and avoid the pathology of anomie, the individual is structurally coerced into cooperation with others in matters such as business, representative government, and voluntary associations. A prime example of this phenomena is the division of labor found in all industrial cities; as one can only do a single specialized task, the individual has no ability to serve all of their needs, necessitating an intense level of interdependence between city inhabitants.

The sociological ecologist Ernest W. Burgess asked, how does one account for continuity in the face of change? Burgess states that flows of capital and labor will change the city until it reaches equilibrium and takes on a sort of stability, and compares this stability ecologically by dubbing it apart of a city’s metabolism. Wirth’s error was that he saw pathological alienation of the individual as the inevitable consequence of the growth of the city. Wirth was describing a snapshot of a chain of events; ironically missing the holistic aspect of the life of the city as viewed within ecological perspective.

The chain of events that arise out of this aspect of the ecological outlook are cyclical: it begins with a change in population; the change in population causes a disorganization within the city and among its inhabitants; this disorganization eventually becomes reorganized after a period of shuffling; stability occurs as a result of the reorganization. Therefore, Wirth’s notion of ecology was valid to Burgess, especially the notion that the stages of disorganization and reorganization affect the psychology of the individual urbanite.

In Urbanism and Suburbanism as Ways of Life: a Re-evaluation of Definitions, Herbert Gans argues that Wirth’s distinctions between urban and rural societies were in fact not that at all; rather they were distinctions between industrial societies and pre-industrial societies. Gans’ more complete distinction exists between the ways of life in the modern city and the modern suburb. Central to this newer distinction was the redefinition of the erosion of primary to secondary relationships. It sought instead to assert instead that suburban inhabitants reported large amounts of quasi-primary relationships. Quasi-primary is the term Gans uses to describe relationships between neighbors. He explains,

“Thus, it would appear that interactions in organizations, or between neighbors generally, do not fit the secondary-relationship model of urban life. As anyone who has lived in these neighborhoods knows, there is little anonymity, impersonality, or privacy. In fact, American cities have sometimes been described as collections of small towns.” (Gans 40)

In other words, the mosaic model of relatively homogeneous neighborhoods seems to encompass the outer living spaces like suburbs just as well as it does for urban ones. Therefore, it follows that the difference between city and suburb lifestyle is either generally non-existent or so minor a distinction that it is inconsequential in terms of determining behavior of the varying types of inhabitants. In fact, according to Gans, ecological concepts describing human adaptation to an environment severely lack sufficiency. Ecological systems, while good at describing the dynamics of the plant and animal world, do not adequately account for the element of human choice.

Individuals make choices. These choices generally reflect their characteristics as an individual within the social system of the city. Thus, an individual’s “characteristics can be used as indices to choices and demands made in the roles that constitute ways of life.” (Gans 45) Moreover, the two most telling characteristics of individuals that determine their lifestyle, if they do actually possess a choice, seem to involve class and life cycle stage. So that we may better understand cities and the behavior of its inhabitants, Gans maintains that one must look at characteristics of the individual, as they are hints to socially created and culturally defined roles, choices, and demands:

“A causal analysis must trace them to the larger social, economic, and political systems which determine the situations in which roles are played and the cultural content of choices and demands, as well as the opportunities for their achievement.”

Essentially then, the greater the choice available to the individual actor, the more compelling the concept of characteristics becomes in understanding their beliefs and actions.

As we see, at some point the non-ecological argument explaining urban character and behavior tends to take precedence over the city’s ecological status. Claude Fischer is a contemporary proponent of a somewhat ecological perspective, and in his piece Toward a Subcultural Theory of Urbanism, population density as a function of size plays a vital role in the creation of unconventional expressions of behavior. These expressions represent the vibrancy of subcultures that arise out of a densely populated mosaic that has steady access to mobility between the different neighborhoods. The process of cultural diffusion creates milieus that are conducive to the formation of various subcultures within the mainstream. However, even Fischer himself admits that the ecological elements are less equipped for determining behavior than are the non-ecological ones.

“The Subcultural Model does not, however, imply that such ecological factors have large, practical, or policy relevant effects. By far the more important influences on behavior are the non-ecological ones. The real implication is theoretical: a full understanding of life in cities requires incorporation of ecological factors, subcultural development, and diffusion in a dynamic model.” (Fischer 1337)

Thus, the implication of what makes a city legible is the combination of ecological and non-ecological factors.

Harvey Molotch provides a compelling response to this question regarding urban character: how does one account for continuity in the face of constant flux? People, through their actions, make structures. These structures in turn effect the actions of individuals, thus creating structuration process in which we create, and are created by, the social institutions that determine our organization. Character is made up of snapshots in time of actors and their creations; tradition is how that character surfaces in later conjunctures. Therefore, continuity in the face of change arises out of this process of the defining and redefining of a place, but doing so according to a sort of predestination dictated by first character of a place and then compounded as that character becomes an urban tradition. Thus while we are constantly changing, we seem to carry something fundamental with us throughout.

The legibility of a city as defined by interests has proven to be a difficult measure to say the least, and an unsustainable model for the behavior of cities when the established interest is the growth of all sectors of industry at all moments in time to say more. In contrast, the legibility of urban character is more tangible, yet highly complex. While the ecological and non-ecological approaches have had their respective moments in the sun, any description that espouses one or the other as wholly dominant in the course of urban character development cannot be entirely accurate. The ecological approach paints the scenario in which tangible variables such as size of settlement, density of population within the settlement, and diversity within the settlement all meld to from a fluid urban character with a real sense of place, and whose influences can ultimately be seen to set the terms of civic behavior. The non-ecological approach conversely contends that other factors such as age, ethnicity, social class, or position in the life cycle show a stronger correlation to lifestyle behaviors than does the distinction of whether or not one resides in a large dense city or small sparse settlement. Reality paints a more ambivalent picture of the theoretical contest, as both positions have very valid stakes on the nature of urban character.

The Force Behind the Bubble

2010-03-03T01:03:00.000-08:00

The city of Los Angeles has undergone significant changes in the last century. Much of the change revolves around the deindustrialization of the region that occurred during the post-war era, which paved a golden path for land speculators and house hunters alike. While many other urban powerhouses of the first half of the 20th century declined sharply due to the deindustrialization process, Los Angeles’ real estate industry allowed it to weather the storm. Aside from the obvious question of whether or not real estate speculation is a sustainable model of economic stability, this practice remains part in parcel with the Southern California business cycle of growth and contraction. Land speculation is intimately tied to the issue of scarcity in the market system, as the control of supply is what determines the flow of demand. The postwar white-flight perpetuated racial segregation in the United States that would eventually find its political traction in grass-roots conservatism indicative of Ronald Reagan. However, resembling a sack of potatoes, the silent majority of homeowners in the Southern California region has evolved the rationalization of its posture, always connected by a crucial thread; the transformed position in question, whether it be racial discrimination or environmental protection, was always central to serving the vested financial interest of the homeowners. This reflects the rollercoaster that reflects the shifting alliances bound loosely by the desire to satiate condominium coffers.

The demographic pillars characteristic of the Southern Californian conservative movement were white, home owning, gentile, and middle class people. Resurgent conservatism in Southern California was rooted in traditionalist White’s deeply ingrained socialized values as opposed to their individual assessment of changes in the proximal stimuli. In an analysis between ideological conservatism and personal unhappiness, Sears and Kinder assert that while indicators of personal discontent had virtually no impact, ideological and generalized versions of personal discontents did have significant social and political salience. Among four sets of racial attitudes, Whites in Southern California exhibited negative attitudes concerning the broad notions of symbolic racism. Issues of little personal relevance that nonetheless address one’s sense of how society should be organized are very powerful examples of symbolic racism; common instances of this abstraction of symbolic issues are conservative’s commonly held opinions that “Negroes are too pushy,” “that Negroes on welfare are lazy and do not need money,” and that “Negroes get undue attention from government when they make a request.” This in part helps explain white racism in the voting booth. (Sears)

The white suburban Californian often exhibits the following characteristics: racially liberal in terms of general principals of egalitarianism; unwilling to accept changes in the status quo that might interfere with their personal lives; possessing very scant interaction with Blacks; potentially hyper-sensitive to threatening racial content in the media. Thus, white racism in Southern California exists on a fantasy level because of black invisibility, reflecting a naïve response by inexperienced whites to symbolically threatening material in the media; all of this while the measuring of these notions of political socialization against their personal experiences goes overlooked. (Sears) The root components encompassing this phenomenon are in traditional religious value socialization of a secular culture known as American civil Protestantism, laissez-faire political conservatism, and unacknowledged negative feelings towards blacks. (Hough) The values derived from the secularized version of the Protestant ethic included hard work, individualism, sexual repression, delay of gratification, patriotism, and reverence for the past. Through this cultural lens conservative Whites thought Black demands for hiring, educational and housing quotas, recognition and respect, and end to all de facto segregation was immoral as their tactics were seen as militant and pushy. The more traditional and conservative these whites and the more negative were their feelings towards blacks, the more likely they were to express their outrage in symbolic opinions and symbolic behaviors.

We arrive at a definition of symbolic racism as an expression by suburban whites, in terms of abstract ideological symbols and symbolic behaviors, of the feeling that Blacks are violating cherished values and making illegitimate demands for changes in the racial status quo. Symbols that alienate White’s perceptions towards Blacks include welfare, black anger and militance, riots, black mayors, crime in the streets, affirmative actions programs, public officials sensitive to Black demands, and the devil-incarnate fair housing laws. These common symbols are the organelles of the cell that is white racism, and play a significant role in the increasing suburbanization of White Americans, which in turn directly contributes to the urbanization of Black Americans through Wilson’s concentration effects.

The increased militancy of the new urban black man, which is essentially is a response to the dismantling of the Black community’s resources, inevitably precipitates greater movement towards separatism among whites. Therefore, continued racial isolation creates template for the perpetuation of symbolic racism. (Sears) As Wilson describes, symbolic racism relates to the urbanization of Black Americans in that it has contributed, through the concentration effects of deindustrialization, to a social isolationism within the inner cities that has spurred the creation of a ghetto underclass. The growing perception of the city as a dangerous and dirty (read: black, brown, and poor) became a part of popular culture, as noir film and literature portrayed the disordered Black city as an urban wasteland and made strong connections between White deviance and Black identity. Deindustrialization and the flight of capital from traditional urban centers worked in confluence with the perception of the deteriorating socially isolated city in the creation of the bleached suburban paradise that Southern California would become. Thus, the Disneyfication of cultural, and perhaps more importantly spatial, composition of the population shift that occurs as a response comprises of the era of perpetual continuity known as white flight. (Avila) Demonstrating the linkage between how cities are imagined and how they are made, Disneyland introduced the cultural mythical model of suburban whiteness in that it provided vital spatial articulation of a new suburban culture. It appealed to the sensibility of the defense-industry that enveloped Southern Californian as it dictated a space for “quite family neighborhoods”, a euphemism for sanitized and regulated bastions of whiteness.

Television, suburban shopping malls, and freeways all served to remove suburban consumers from the public realm of decaying cities and allowed them to structure their suburban retreats on the ideals of a new cultural order of private homeowners. The Disneyfication of this new culture was perfectly personified in the political rise to power of Ronald Reagan; property rights, private enterprise, law and order, family values and small town government were positions that pandered to the sensibility as an emerging silent majority who retreated from the danger of the public sphere to the safety of their bleached communities. Popular culture in the age of white flight thus enabled the very realization of that new spatial order as it represented a very applicable model that fostered popular aspirations toward it.

WWII undermined the hegemony of urban industrial society and culture by diluting the density of public resources and private capital. During the New Deal, federal housing policy had discriminatory measures built into them, and subsequently acted as pillars in the construction of chocolate cities and vanilla suburbs that had become the archetype of race and space in the postwar period. Homeowner’s Associations first appeared on the scene in the 1920’s as instruments of white mobilization against attempts by blacks to buy homes outside the ghetto. (Davis) Due to deed and block racial restrictions (formed by “protective associations” in places where there was no restrictive covenant) 95% of the city’s housing stock in the 1920’s was effectively put off limits to Blacks and Asians. When a single black family moved into a house near USC in 1922, whites quickly formed the ‘Anti-African Housing Association” (later renamed the University District Property Owners Association) whose main purpose was the defense of white dominance in the region. Industrial conversion in the 1930’s consumed hundreds of Black homes, creating overcrowding. Their attempts to move into white suburbs were met with immediate wrath by the white homeowners. Until the US Supreme Court ruled against restrictive covenants in 1948, white homeowner groups in LA had ample sanction in the law.

Those wishing to establish new municipalities prior to the 1950’s were deterred by tax burdens involved in establishing municipal services; incorporation-minded homeowners and industrialists preferred to be free-riders in under taxed, unincorporated county areas in hopes of maximizing fiscal advantage even if it came at the expense of local control over zoning. When the LA County Supervisors agreed to let Lakewood contract its vital services at cut rate prices, it allowed suburbs control over zoning without the burden of public expenditures proportionate to older cities. In other words, the taxpayers in the county of LA were subsidizing the services for Lakewood while simultaneously allowing them to skip out on the bill. The Bradley-Burns Act of 1956 allowed local governments to collect a 1% sales tax for their own use, giving a strong advantage to fringe areas with new shopping centers or other commercial assets, allowing city government to finance itself without resorting to a property tax. This greatly contributed to the separatist movement as it allowed suburbs to pay for contracted county services with sales tax from the greater community rather than property tax from within their own private enclave, amounting to a “direct subsidy to suburban separatism at the expense of the weakened tax bases of primate cities.” This exit privilege, among other things, allowed suburbs to safeguard their property from potential utilization as a resource for government expansion or fiscal redistribution. “Needless to say, by providing such an attractive escape hatch from ordinary municipal citizenship, the Lakewood Plan fueled white flight from Los Angeles, while at the same time reducing the city’s capacity to deal with the needs of increasing low-income and renter populations.” (Davis)

The basis of most residential incorporations was the clear delineation between the home values of the inclusive community and the area intended for inclusion. One consequence of this ongoing process is the racial segregation of neighborhoods in Los Angeles County. According to the 1980 Census, LA County was nearly 13 percent Black, but 53 of its 82 cities had Black populations of less than one percent. While established Black and Chicano neighborhoods were being lost to freeway construction, non-Whites only purchased 3.3 percent of the new housing stock constructed during the 1950’s boom. Thus the concentration effects of Disneyfication created a racially checkered city with great disparities in economic and social stability.

Race has been used in Southern California politics in order to bring forth certain political regimes, particularly over matters of the availability and accessibility of social services as well as growth. The mayoral race in Los Angeles in 1969 was a battle in which a well-qualified liberal black candidate, Thomas Bradley, against the unpopular conservative incumbent Sam Yorty. The study generated by Sears and Kinder generated the conclusion that symbolic racism was the deciding factor that allowed Yorty to be victorious, as he received a boost in the electorate voting block by the independent inclusion of those who harbored symbolic racist views who may have voted for more liberal candidates in the past.

New development was seen as a threat to the detached culture of low-density residential life, and environmental critiques entered into prominence among homeowners as they realized that the nature surrounding their property raises the value in an increasingly concreting city. The greening of LA was widely seen as a hypocritical attempt by the rich to use ecology to detour Vietnam-era growth around their luxury enclaves, however it would be reinforced by populist outbursts in dozens of flatland white-collar communities. When apartment complex projects loomed in many suburbs, homeowners rallied to prevent the “contamination” (read racial connotations) of their lifestyles. (Davis) Planners and politicians accommodated the Viet-boom in high-density residential projects by rezoning single-family zones. Most homeowners were angered by the rate of infill, decreasing beauty of their physical neighborhoods, spikes in traffic congestion, increasing numbers of the poor and minorities, perceived tax costs, and the dilution of political clout. The result of the 1972-3 density revolt ironically was to reinforce pro-growth coalitions at city and county levels. The initial push for slow growth caused developers to organize their resources to install pro-growth candidates by simply outspending their opposition. Additionally, candidates who opposed apartment construction alienated renters and minorities and thus received an even smaller fraction of influence in the election. The lasting effect of the revolt against density was intense homeowner opposition to apartment construction, which largely contributes to the drastic shortage of affordable rental housing in California.

In the late 1970’s the purpose of owning a house began to be seen an as investment more than a dwelling given the rate of bubble-growth, and this led to a flurry of house trading and land speculation; the process enriched many homeowners, elevating a swath of the population from middle-class to the next rung of the pecuniary ladder. A proposed large hike in property taxes caused public outcry among these homeowners; Howard Jarvis hijacked traditional homeowner tax protest by the “upwardly redistributive, pro-business” posture of the United Taxpayers Organization in order to assure passage of Proposition 13. Tax protesters frequently resorted to the image of the suburban family taxed to death in order to fund social programs that only benefited the city’s have-not populations. Busing students for racial balance, implemented in Los Angeles County in 1978, serves as a good example of such a program. As it stood, escaping LA’s school system was often the primary reasons for families relocating to suburban enclaves of whiteness. (Davis)

The 1986 Election in Los Angeles saw one of the first major challenges to the city’s growth ethic in decades in Proposition U. It proposed to reduce developable commercial density in the city by half and imposed a ten-point growth management plan. The “green” slow-growth movement in Southern California is mainly derived from homeowners using populist rhetoric such as “community control” in order to position themselves as regulators of neighborhood quality. Anticipating that the slow-growth movement would further constrict the limited supply of land that could be developed, hordes of house-hungry buyers rushed into the market: a self-fulfilling prophecy that led to Tokyo-type escalations in median home values in Los Angeles and Orange County during 1987. The battle over Prop U’s passage once again galvanized developers, who engaged in a pro-growth blitzkrieg and edged out popular growth-control initiatives in Orange and San Diego Counties.

The emergent war of position between the “green” branches of government and the private sector is reshaping the language in which the politics of growth are articulated, and the terrain on which different interest contend. Developers attempt to lay claims to being “friends of the people”, denouncing “selfish, elitist homeowners” who prevent the “trickle down” of growth dividends and low-income housing to the lowest ranks of the urban population. Also employing the facade of populism is an alliance of developers, contractors, realtors, and banks- all of whom are vehemently opposed to growth controls. In reality, the debate between affluent homeowners and mega-developers centers the debate on issues of growth and neighborhood quality, while wholly ignoring the increasing social isolationism occurring within LA’s inner city areas. Non-affluent homeowners and renters have seen their interests, such as economic justice and environmental protection, drowned out by the discourse of these elites. Slow-growth is essentially a reassertion of the traditional homeowner political stance of social privilege; pro-growth reflects the desire to continue enlarging the land speculation bubble for wealth extraction, plotting under the guise of some sort of mutilated vanguardism for those losers of the previous safaris of the land-speculation-bubble hunt.

The most powerful social movement in Southern California consists of affluent homeowners engaged in defense of home values and neighborhood exclusivity. The contemporary battle between affluent homeowner and mega-developer plays a certain kind of politics. It is not the kind that we like to think of when we think of the word, such as a feeling of group solidarity or social togetherness, but rather in the definition of using the poor and minorities in particular as pawns in the political chess game. If symbolic racism and the segregation of the suburbs points to anything conclusive, it is that spatial realities matter. Land values, the traditional yardstick by which the measurement of the movement of people’s occurs, are intimately tied to the people who live on that land; that spatial distinction has been shown to be intimately tied to class and race, and it follows that it is intimately tied to specific policy recommendations for specific policy outcomes.

One of the ambivalent things about living in our capitalist society is that our system is tied to a market, and one fundamental aspect of the market system is scarcity. This scarcity results in poverty as an inevitability of such an economic system, and in the zero-sum environment of a country experiencing economic decline it comes at the cost of others cultivating wealth. A radical solution arises: this pattern could undergo modification, so long as wealthy Americans would allow themselves to become rich at a slower pace. How we get to that point from here is truly hard to fathom however; after all, inertia is one of the few fundamental physical laws governing the universe as we know it, so it is a stretch to presume it to be any different in the realm of human social action. It is the force behind the bubble.

A Humble History of Golden Growth

2010-03-02T13:17:00.000-08:00

The population of California has grown more rapidly than the rest of the United States at a truly stunning rate. There were many events that contributed to the prominence of California and its amazing growth of population. The San Francisco Gold Rush in 1849 is arguably the most significant single event attributable to the growth of the Golden State,. Hundreds of thousands of people began to flock to what seemed to be easy pickings for the dedicated, the new territory of the US. The First Transcontinental Railroad was another contributing factor in the growth of the state, essentially making the journey to obtain the gold, and the Golden State Dream, that much more efficient. This technological phenomenon led to the development of communication infrastructure in the form of sprawling trans-national rail systems. After the turn of the century, the discovery and development of the oil industry provided a large source of California’s economic production and growth capabilities, only to be further fueled by WWII and the development of the defense industry within the State. The growth of California and its rise to prominence on the international stage are rooted in individual’s personal desires to gain financially, often euphemized with “in search of a better life.” This is especially true for the first wave of migrants to the state for economic reasons primarily, a group that would famously become known as the “49ers.”

The Gold Rush began in 1848 when James W. Marshall at Sutter’s Mill discovered gold. Samuel Brannan was the first publicist of the Gold Rush in San Francisco, famously credited with walking around with gold in a jar exclaiming, “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!” The discoveries of gold in Northern California in Sacramento were soon thereafter sensationalized throughout the nation leading to a massive migration of peoples into California, particularly to the area mainly in Northern California where much of the gold was known to be. In between 1849 and 1855, that first initial migration over six years saw approximately 300,000 people migrate into California. Essentially, the Gold Rush is responsible for the first major spike in population the state experienced since being apart of the United States, yet it was also one single wave in a series to come.

The Gold Rush’s historical significance on the long term was fundamentally rooted in the notion of the “California Dream,” a place of new beginnings where hard work and good luck were rewarded with boundless riches. The Historian HW Brands described the Gold Rush’s influence on the supposed ideal of the nation, “The old American Dream . . . was the dream of the Puritans, of Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard . . . of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won in a twinkling by audacity and good luck. [This] golden dream . . . became a prominent part of the American psyche only after [Sutter's Mill]." In essence, California’s get-rich-quick potential was so alluring that an entire nation felt the wind of its spirits underneath their wings, propelling them to fly away from their cages and into the free sky of the California Dream. In addition to the impact on such an intangible aspect of history, the Gold Rush had concrete results in terms of helping settlements in the surrounding area grow to sizable populations. No place in California was more effected by this era than San Francisco, whose population rose from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 two years later, and by the year 1870 had exploded to 150,000. These settlements were a direct result of the Gold Rush; with the large influx of people to the state, along with them came both money, and a freakishly insatiable demand for goods and services.

The journey to California in search of the instant riches offered by the Gold Rush era initially was done two ways, by land or sea. Before a land route was produced that was easily accessible to the average person, the sea option was used. Sailors generally went one of two routes: down past the tip of South America and back up the West Coast to the port of San Francisco or through the Panama Canal. The California Trail allowed a future group of migrants the option of traveling westward by land, which soon became the preferred option for the large majority of the pioneers coming to the region. The California Trail holds a greater significance, however, as it would ultimately used as the route for the groundbreaking First Transcontinental Railroad.

The First Transcontinental Railroad (formerly known as the Pacific Railroad) was completed in 1869, stretching cross-country from Omaha to Sacramento and bringing California into the main fold of the United States. The road established a mechanized transportation system that would revolutionize the population and economy of the American West. As rail lines increased in proximity and in breadth, they opened up huge areas that would have otherwise gone uninhabited for a much longer time, primarily because the one of the principal commodities transported across transcontinental rail lines was people. The Railroad established an environment that made possible the creation of numerous towns and settlements, paved the way to abundant mineral deposits and fertile tracts of pastures and farmlands, and included the Western United States into the overall trade and consumption of American goods. In sum, it turned the lawless Wild West into an industrialized economic powerhouse.

In 1870 the two largest rail companies on the West Coast were Central Pacific and Southern Pacific. That year the two giants converged, granting Southern Pacific a near monopoly within the region of the Southwest. The Santa Fe Railroad Company entered into the Southern California rail scene, constructing the Surf Line along the coast from San Francisco to San Diego. This infusion of competition ignited a rate war with Southern Pacific. This rate war, compounded with the fact that these rail companies were interested in selling some of the land that was granted to them by the US government, led to the formation of many “boomtowns,” in which free rides were given to new settlements to eager investors looking to buy land at a good price. Major advertising campaigns by Southern Pacific, Santa Fe, Union Pacific, and other major carriers of the day helped transform Southern California into a major tourist attraction as well as generated intense interest in exploiting the area’s agricultural potential. One of the major reasons that folks migrated to California was its reputation as an agricultural powerhouse. Those who rode the trains west discovered when they arrived that if irrigated properly, California was extremely well suited to fruit cultivation and agriculture in general. This helped lead to the exodus of people from Midwestern states to Southern California and forever transformed the once sparsely populated landscape into a booming region of commerce.

The Twentieth Century would not be dominated by Gold and Railways, rather Black Gold and Highways. The oil industry in California experienced a serious boom, ultimately contributing to the California we all know and love today. Once discovered in Northern Los Angeles at New Haul, oil production quickly overtook mining and agriculture as the dominant aspect of the state’s economy. Annual output of barrels per year rose from 4.3 million in 1900 to 105 million in 1920, making California the largest oil producing state within the Union. Many of the largest and most powerful oil companies in the world began in Southern California. Unocal was the original Californian oil company who made the discovery at New Haul; Edward Doheny began an oil company with early site near La Brae Tar Pits that eventually turned into Arco Corporation. Ohio based Standard Oil Company eventually became Chevron, the company responsible for inception of offshore drilling, a trend shortly followed by competitors Texaco and Shell.

In 1896, offshore drilling emerged into infancy in the Summerland oil field in Santa Barbara County. The same field had at least 187 offshore oil wells drilled by the summer of 1902. The successes of these early drills caused an expansion of coastal drilling, extending from Santa Barbara County to Ventura County, Los Angeles County, as well as Orange County. This chapter in California history has yet to be concluded, as although there has indeed been much profit gained from these offshore wells, the Santa Barbara Oil Spill that occurred in 1969 is proof of the potential costs incurred by nearby coastal communities, as well as the general beach-loving public at large.

Intimately tied to the boom of oil related industries was Henry Ford’s fulfilled vow to create an automobile that every single American Family could afford. The realization of his dream is manifests itself in a simple symbol of achievement, the Ford Model T. Not only was Ford successful in designing a relatively efficient and costly vehicle that was accessible to the average American family, he also innovated the credit industry in his attempts to sell as many cars as possible. The eventual domination of the personal automobile as a means of everyday transportation in the US meant that the public rail systems built by Huntington in LA and OC, known as the Red Cars, would soon become obsolete thanks to the birth of the sprawling CA Highway system. The Highways would use the old Southern California rail tracks as blueprints, eventually leaving it a land of expansive roadways meant for personal auto use rather than public trains as a major source of transport.

This same period of the twentieth century saw the rise of the studio system. MGM, Universal, and Warner Bros all bought land in Hollywood, which in the early 20th century was just a small , sleepy subdivision on the outskirts of Los Angeles. By the 1930’s the show-biz population had extended its reach to television, hosting studios for major networks such as NBC and CBS. The first television introduced in 1948 essentially devastated the movie industry, and by 1960 90% of American homes possessed a television.

During the Great Depression, California was hit especially hard. The recent Dust Bowl migration patterns created the perfect economic storm; large surpluses of labor and flailing consumer demand. These two confluent forces created an economic environment in California that was ripe for reform by shifting domination away from the agricultural and mining sectors. This happened essentially as a response to the increasingly large demand for military expenditures which primarily included the manufacturing of airplanes and ships. The location on the western front of the war made the California Coastline strategically essential to the war effort, and th region consequently became a natural gathering place for American defense corporations. The Longhead Brothers made airplanes for WWI in Santa Barbara and eventually became defense giant Lockheed. Donald Douglas began building airplanes on Pico Blvd and eventually moved his operation to Santa Monica. His company would become the internationally recognized airplane manufacturing powerhouse Boeing. Henry Kaiser enters the ship building industry during WWII, successfully employing 300,000 people for his company alone. Kaiser’s legacy is ironically not for his killing machinery, but rather the health-care provider Kaiser Permanente. (The medical industry titan started as a program to ensure the health of his numerous workers, and is now the only surviving aspect of the California corporation.) During WWII, six out of ten contracts that came into California for military expenditures were for the purchase of aircrafts. The industry boomed within the region, creating a large support network of separate industries such as rubber, plastics, and electronics.

California owes its amazing growth to many factors. Starting with the Gold Rush in 1849, the new area was prime real estate for the Railroad industry. Those two forces together helped create the first wave westward, a California reflecting a seedling of its current self. Almost a century passes between the Gold Rush and the Great Depression, which was the second leading event (worsened by the Dust Bowl) to contribute to the population growth in the Golden State. WWII, as with most of the nation, helped bring California out of the Depression stronger than before. Oil, Highways, Airplanes, and Shipyards make up the bulk of the current Californian proverbial banana split. That makes Hollywood the cherry on top, selling the American Dream as if it were sno-cones on a Sunday.

Excerpt: A Brave New World

2010-03-02T13:09:00.000-08:00

“Our world is not the same as Othello’s world. You can’t make flivers without steel, and you can’t make tragedies without social instability. The world is stable now; people are happy. They get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get. They’re well off, they are safe, they are never ill, they are not afraid of death; they are blissfully ignorant of passion and old age. They are plagued with no Mothers or Fathers, they’ve got not wives or children or lovers to feel strongly about. They are so conditioned they practically can’t help but behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything goes wrong, there is SOMA (which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of Liberty, Mr. Savage). LIBERTY! (He laughed); expecting Deltas to know what liberty is, and now expecting them to understand Othello? Oh, my good boy…”

“All the same," he insisted obstinately, "Othello is good. Othello is better than those feelies."

"Of course it is," the Controller agreed. "But that’s the price we have to pay for stability. You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed the high art; we have the feelies and the scent organ instead."

"But they don’t mean anything."

"They mean only themselves. They mean a lot of agreeable sensations to the audience."

"But they’re, they’re told by an idiot!"

The controller laughed, "You’re not being very polite to your friend, Mr. Watson, one of our most distinguished emotional engineers."

"But, he’s right,’ said Helmholtz gloomily, "because it is idiotic. Writing when there is nothing to say."

"Precisely, but that requires the most enormous ingenuity. You are making flivers out of the absolute minimum of steel; works of art out of practically nothing but pure sensation."

The savage shook his head. "It all seems to me quite horrible."

"Of course it does. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison for the over-compensations for misery. And of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability, and being contented has none of the glamor of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."

A Message From George Carlin

2010-03-02T12:58:00.000-08:00

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...

Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever.

Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.

Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.

Remember to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.

Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again.

Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

The Epic Wave and the Epic Life-Cycle

2010-03-02T12:38:00.001-08:00

The Beginning is the scariest part, with the drop over the sucking-out ledge sublimating beyond steep to concave, giving it an essence of impossibility. At this point, you get out what you put in: the harder you paddle and stroke and the less you let fear inhibit you, the easier getting over that initial ridge is. Otherwise, it is as they say; hesitation is devastation.

Next comes the set-up, assuming you’ve survived the airdrop intact and poised. Here you’re eyeing what’s next with the most intense intent. Many take this first section after the success of the preceding psychoplunge and release the valve of the pressure-buildup right there on that first stacking aquatic vert-ramp. The more patient prepare for potential pittage that looms ahead, and if they’ve done their homework and found some proper bathymetry as a basis, then their kudos awaits.

For those who have not outrun the power and flow of the raw, enveloping energy that acts as a benevolent guiding force, this next stage is the first of a two-part climax. In rapid-flux motion the wave slows down, stands tall, doubles over, and converts from vertical to vortex. If one has executed the drop with determination and a lack of fear, and then implemented the set-up with poise and patience, the chips fall into place and we find ourselves slipping underneath a hollowed hydraulic avalanche complete with sunlit roof; it is in this space where you’re most likely to hear the sound of the universe.

Having made it this far and stayed this deep, the notion of not making it out alive begins to bubble to the surface of the predestined plan that we’ve tried so arduously to follow. Drawing on the successes of the first three stages, dropping-in, setting-up, and pulling-in, one can muster the temperance necessary to resist the temptation to scurry and flee, and instead continually clasp to that violent fluid force. In this stage, the safest way to avoid disaster is to position oneself spatially so that one may be able to follow an ever-evolving inclination, and essentially become close enough to the brutal energy to deliver a passionate kiss. Reward for hanging tough comes in the form of being OOOMPHED out of the pinching oval shack by the power of the spit, concluding the climax with the latter feeling representing the most paramount of satisfaction, comparable only to the ascension of Cloud 9.

The Epic Cycle is on the verge of completion, however the last step requires making that oh-so-graceful exit stage left. If one has properly embraced the insecurity of the chucking lips, then the speed gained by the spit-out gives the kick-out a level of style that is not attainable with a shoddy departure. In one seamless motion, the epic wave ends just as it began, with the rider positioned horizontal to the Earth.

If you died tomorrow, would this be your story?

Strolling on Slip-Streams

2010-02-10T11:37:00.000-08:00

DISPATCHES, ROCKETS, & SALTY AIR:

When Kryses Ambiryde received his letter of admission to the University of B.S., it was simultaneously the best and worst moment of his tragically short life. The kid had found the dispatch sitting on top of his unmade bed; the two hundred and ninety-nine square foot living cell was saturated with essences of a devastated post-hurricane scene. Twenty minutes prior to the reception of this so-called "golden ticket," Kryses had been doing his best in-coffin-impression while body-surfing the local shore-pound barrels of Head-Case Beach. Getting as deep as possible in the fluid cylinders was an obsession beyond all obsessions; Kryses Ambiryde lived, breathed, and slept with an intimate desire to be in the tube. Of all the “extreme” activities the aspiring alpha participated in, his most beloved was that violently poetic interaction with Mother Ocean. Slip-sliding down a fluid permaflux-surface only to end the whole experience by getting pile-driven into oblivion; this was an acceptable metaphor for the life that Kryses Ambiryde was interested pursuing.

As he strolled into the modest A-frame house located in the beachfront neighborhood nook known as Sepueday, his mother Tethys had alerted him to the impending news of his fate.

“Kry darling, you have a letter from the University on your bed, which I must say looks a trite thrashed. Looks like someone may have been accepted….” she said, in an optimistic tone that seemed to be on a continual ascent in pitch. Tethys was known for this manner of speech, which served the purpose of making any statement seem like a positive one, regardless of what content lie behind the high-pitched utterances. Kryses was reassured of his mother’s perpetual empathy once again in her attempt at nagging him in that maternal way. The fact was, Tethys was far too nice to ever really sound like a nag.

“I really don’t see how you sleep in that room of yours. I mean, really. Don’t you ever feel like when you live in a messy room it is bound to influence the state of your mind? How are you supposed to be organized and efficient in your college studies if you don’t live in a clean and organized room?”

“Save it-” he blurted out, which unfortunately came out much more sharply than he had intended, and to which he immediately regretted saying. It's not that Kryses didn’t love being criticized by his mother, because he actually more than loved it, he necessitated it. The boy had exhibited signs of instability since early childhood, so it helped to have an understanding mom that would help keep his head screwed on. Often, he thought of his mother as his saving grace, and expressed how much he owed her his life- that is if he owed anybody anything. But Kry never gave two shit's about cleaning his room. “Not two shit's,” he would tell Tethys proudly and defiantly. The boy was always speaking of some sort of social condition that was grown out of humanity’s need to be efficient, and cleaning one’s room was right in line with the methods that were out to control the would-be rebel. Kryses told himself that he didn’t believe in doing things like cleaning your room, ultimately because it served no purpose.

“Teachers, psychiatrists, judges, wardens, politicians- all telling you to clean your fucking room or else. Or else what?” he yelled back. This kind of poking and prodding of authority was one of the major sources of entertainment in Kryses’ life, manifesting itself in every aspect of his identity within the world he was brought up in.

Although he acted like he was uninterested in the contents of the letter from the University of B.S., Kryses could hardly hold himself back from running into his room in his hurried attempt to get to the core of the matter. The boy had grown up in the smallish enclave of Sepueday all of his life; coincidentally, this was the same site that was home to one of the most prestigious state-run public universities in the country. The University of B.S. demanded most of the economic attention of the neighborhood, carrying with it an almost God-like aura of pecuniary grace and benevolence. Most of the inhabitants of the City of Sepueday earned their daily bread in some way or another from the institution, Kryses’ parents included. Acceptance to the University for the local inhabitants had thus always been a dream, especially because it was viewed for those of the lower social classes as a means of upward social mobility (read: the sovereign good of one’s life purpose). The University of B.S. handed out certificates of increased societal status every June, and Kryses Ambiryde had dreamed of walking in their ranks since he was a young lad.

The envelope Kryses received was large; the eight by ten size that usually implies acceptance rather than the normal envelope size, which everyone knew implied denial. The smaller envelopes clearly had no space for acceptance forms, financial aid applications, and long congratulatory manuscripts bearing the electronic insignia of the Dean of the University. Observant as ever with his piercing blue eyes, Kryses already knew the context of the contents; no doubt he was to be accepted into the institution and would soon be on his ascent up the American Ladder. After letting out a sigh of relief, the boy picked up the glistening black packet and opened it- first cracking the official seal, and then pulling out the large stack of stapled leaflets, reading aloud the first sentence of the cover page to himself:

“Congratulations, Mr. Ambiryde. You are officially accepted into the University of B.S., which as you know is listed as one of the top five State-run Institutions on the West Coast, and shall thus be your launch pad to future opportunities of unimaginable proportions!”

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The University’s launch site had been hurling objects of varying intentions into space since 1969- right after the first man had set foot on the moon. The Cold War progeny known as the space-race, supposedly started by the Roosky’s and their 1957 launch of the satellite Sputnik, gave rise to the modern disaster that the University of BS would inevitably become. The United State’s new national-security-based demand for scientific innovation on the Final Frontier was the flagellum responsible for the penetration of the University’s fertile educational ovum. Shagging, coitus, intercourse, sex, boning, fucking- all perfect descriptions of the relationship between the Military and the University that would eventually produce the sinister zygote known as the Offensive Missile Defense Program. The Military acted as the evil stepfather of the innocent young promising University, and as it happened the subsequent rape of the latter by the former produced offspring that should have been aborted, flushed, murdered, slain. Unfortunately shit doesn’t happen that way under the orthodox tenets of Civil Protestantism. The inception of the OMD Program came with large federal grants, and with that money the University bought the coastal neighborhood of Sepueday in 1968. At that time, the town was the only land barrier between the institution’s southern boundary and the deep vast blue.

Tracy Holmes, the then Dean of the University, explained the prerogatives of the institution in purchasing the deteriorated neighborhood in his annual Status Power-Update Address,

“...Given the highly experimental and therefore hazardous nature of our ascension of objects out of this world, the University’s Advisers have acted to choose a launch site that would provide the function of a safety net, particularly in terms of the inevitable debris that will be falling from the sky due to our persistent testing. It seems that the best option is the residential area of Sepueday, for it straddles the zone between the ocean and our launch site and would be the perfect area for minimal public outcry in the tragic yet unlikely event that loss of life occurs among the local residents.

"MAKE NO MISTAKE,” Holmes suddenly bursted while pounding the podium with a clenched fist, his tone growing more seething with each breath, “it is a dangerous world out there filled with evildoers. In an environment of global anarchy, it is our job as the only benevolent hegemon in the historical record to provide an adequate safety-umbrella under which the whole of the free world may find solace and security. As we find ourselves in the precarious position of privilege in this so-called ‘Cold War’, education is of vital national importance. When I say this, I do NOT mean to endorse those barefoot pony-tailed freaks that write poetry about how wrong it is to eat meat. When the Russians or the Chinese come knocking your door down, the last thing you want as a defense is a nation whose elite population is saturated with pacifist sissies preaching values of peace, love and non-violence. No no… when I say education is of vital national importance, I am talking about the chemists and the physicists and the engineers and the geneticists and the atomists. Poetry never contributed a God-damned thing to our Security Umbrella, however someday in the near future these young scientists will.”

With a swift stroke of his red ballpoint pen, Dean Holmes used the OMD blood money to turn this fringe neighborhood into a government-controlled property, delegating to it the new responsibility of extending support to the burgeoning Military Industrial Complex.

Prior to the creation of the OMD Program, the UBS had been relegated to the middle tier of state-run educational institutions. This was primarily because it was viewed as a place where lazy pot-smoking deadhead surfer types spent their parent’s inflated home equity on what could easily be described as a Club Med academic experience. Accomplished scholars of the fun-hating variety scoffed at the early UBS, dubbing it less of a school and more of a resort. (We’ll disregard the simple fact that most of these serious scholars come from geographical areas where the weather, and the overall lifestyle in general, basically sucks balls.) Writers, artists, musicians, dramatists, and other economically unproductive forms of hippy academics dominated the sleepy beachside academy in its early days.

Situated atop a series of rolling green bluffs overlooking the ocean, the University site was peppered with a broad swath of surf breaks below the cliffs, varying from barnyard-beginner paradises to world-class shreddable points. A true geographic gem of the California coast, Sepueday provided a perfect environment for a blossoming socioartistic community. The town's air possessed a crisp saltiness that seduced the nostrils in the same way that a home cooked meal at mom’s house might. In fact, the smell would even come as a relief for those lucky to experience it enough to become accustomed to it. Anytime that Kryses would have to leave town for a family function, such as the obligatory familial celebrations of Jesus’ highly suspect birth and death, he would anxiously fiend the smell of the ocean on the drive West from the Central Valley, and would always be the first to roll his window down once the vast blue was within reach of his olfactory fingertips.

Technological and scientific advancement became the central goal of the institution in a gradual manner; it wasn’t exactly zero-to-sixty in five seconds. The purist ideals the old University harbored didn’t get brought to their knees over night. It wasn’t as if government henchmen showed up during hours of darkness gagging and bagging the liberal artsy professors who decried the increasingly scientifically managed University system. Rather, much of what caused the demise of the University- (specifically its ability to hand out a quality education)- had ironically been the subsequent result of its initial successes.

During the immediate period following World War II, a college education was still a rare and valuable asset. Upon their glorious victorious return, hundreds of thousands of GI Joe’s bought single-family homes for the first time. The White Middle Class pounced on the opportunity to create and sanitize their own bleached-white tract-house Levittowns. Behind closed doors in these Disney stencil communities, GI Joe fucked his dirty housewife non-stop like a rabbit, churning out new babies with new souls by the dozens. A little material prosperity and an abundance of privacy blazed the trail for an orgy of traditionalism and the creation of the suburban Baby Boomer generation. These newly prosperous patriarchs, embedded with all of their civil protestant values, saw to it that their kids attended the best educational system in the world (which happened to be in their own backyard). However, throughout this period the cost of a college education was drastically cheaper than in today's world. So while the usual elites gained entry onto the societal launch pad, those with more disadvantaged backgrounds who had showed merit and tenacity in the lower levels of the crooked public education system were allowed to attend the publicly provided circus as well.

If the entry rate for educational systems such as the University was at the pressure of the average household sink prior to WWII, then the Baby Boomers had the violent effect of Birmingham fire hose. The survival of the University thus necessitated a swift and innovative accommodation, and the old adage of so-and-so being blah-blah’s mom prevailed. Administrators of this sacred faceless educational entity were charged to draw on the principals of scientific management as a solution to the efficiency problem that their university was facing.

Efficiency is the holy grail of scientific managers everywhere, yet its methods carried ambivalent consequences for the actual substance of the education that the school handed out. It was true that many people who had previously not received a post-high school level of education (if that) were now afforded the opportunity to compete in the mythical meritocracy of the American economy. But shit also got real impersonal.

To see manifestations of this new form of academic authority, one need look no futher than the introduction of scantrons and clickers and perm numbers, transforming each student from the former status of a pupil to the current status as a customer. Worst of all, the introduction and rise to prominence of the academic philosophy known as "publish or perish" became an integral aspect of the University's faculty selection criterea. As it happened, the most prominent professors were no longer in such a position because they taught with passion and creativity or because they significantly facilitated the inspiration of students. They would become the best because they spent the most of their time locked away in their reclusive office-bubbles, blitzed as fuck off a myriad of stimulants, busily churning out contributions to the "body of knowledge" as if they were brownies for a bake sale at a Unitarian Transcendentalist Church.

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Kryses, along with his rat-pack grommet group of friends, illegally watched the launches with utter amazement since childhood. The rockets signified the boys' desires to do as the vessels did, climb upward, upward, upward- eventually climbing so high as to become out of sight. Although during every launch the local residents of Supueday were prohibited from being outdoors due to the threat of potential falling debris from malfunctioning shuttles, Kryses had consistently broken what he perceived as a silly law in order to absorb the awesome spectacle of human ingenuity that was manifested in those launches. He had never seen nor heard of any such catastrophe. The kid always thought it weird that there had never actually been a malfunctioning rocket from the University launch site near Sepueday, yet the Advisers had been insistent that the folks in the neighborhood not be outdoors while the launches occurred. What were they not to see? While he could not help but wonder this, in all his viewings Kryses was never able to extract one significant piece of profound evidence that would suggest some sort of overall negative intent on the side of the University, or the State for that matter. That certainly doens't imply that the young conpiracy-theorist in training wasn’t looking...

After receiving his acceptance letter to the University of BS, Kryses called his girlfriend Jules to see if she wanted to watch the sunset on the bluff. “If we’re lucky there may even be a launch tonight. What a better way to send me off than in the blazes of glory?” Jules needed a bit of convincing on this night- more than the other nights for sure. She was saddened at the prospect of Kryses using this opportunity to break the news of the end of their relationship to her.

The two had been together for a little less than a year, and they were just reaching the pinnacle of the much heralded "romance stage." Kryses loved that girl with all of the limited knowledge of love he possessed. The charming Kry had a relatively easy time convincing the reluctant Jules to meet him for a rendezvous at dusk. “I’ll swing by your place in 20, cool?” She agreed, and within seconds Kryses had fired up his blue-beater Toyota pick-up on his way to her house, which was in the suburbs of Sepueday about 25 minutes away from where Kryses lived.

Kryses swaggered up to 1492 Golden Bear Blvd wearing blue jeans, white skate-sneakers, and a black T-shirt with the words “DON’T BE A SHEEP- Fuck Commercial Radio!” printed on the front. He walked up the brick-lined walkway that stretched from the sidewalk to the pseudo-porch (it was never meant to be used in the traditional neighborly way; no one used porches like that anymore these days), noticing the ominous sign above the dark green door labeled “The Temple’s.” Next to the sign, or rather slightly hiding behind it, was a camera that feed into Jules’ father’s compound-control-center.

Mike Temple was a local police officer who had recently been promoted to Detective in Sepueday’s homicide department. Having only had the job for three months, Mike was quietly appalled at the large amounts of gruesome murders that occurred in the town. Mike Temple had grown up in Sepueday, and had never heard of such a steady stream of violence as what he was witnessing firsthand.

Years later, Mr. Temple, who was the son of a locally successful ophthalmologist, would come to discover that the City Council of Sepueday took great pains in restricting the flow of information regarding violent crime in their city. The local "authorities" did this in order to make it look much more safe on paper than it was in reality; this was just one of the many attempts the local government had undertaken in order to preserve the inflated land value of their city. Many of the inhabitants of Sepueday falsely believed the city to be free of the problems that most of its neighboring metropolitan competitors possessed, such as drive-by’s and prostitution and homeless drug-fiends walking the streets. On the contrary, Sepueday possessed them in per capita numbers that may have outdone their fellow Californians, yet the image of the city was one of safety and security. Many called it white-washed.

Kryses looked up at the camera as he stepped onto the mat that exclaimed in bright red letters, “Welcome.” (Wasn’t that a warm welcome- I see you too asshole!)

“Hey Kry, how ya doing buddy?” a voice came from the speaker next to the doorbell. It was the stern tone of Mike Temple, trying pathetically to sound as if he wasn’t sitting behind a screen extremely paranoid of his surroundings.

“Pretty good Mike, pretty good. Got some great news- I’ve been accepted into the University! I’m here to celebrate with Jules.”

“You did? That’s great son. I’m really happy for you. Now you’ll be able to do something about all of that bitching I constantly hear coming out of your trap…” Mike replied, chuckling jovially. “I’m kidding, slow down now. Jules is just in her room, let me buzz her and she’ll be right out.”

Before the buzzing sound came from the intercom-doorbell a small figure opened the door, her silhouetted outline illuminated by the lights of the family room from which she emerged. Jules Temple was an attractive girl, to say the very least. She was a classic Scandinavian beauty- blond hair, blue eyes, tight body, and a smile that consistently melted Kryses' normally overbearing linear thought-process. She wore faded jeans- they were ridiculously overpriced no doubt- and a pink spaghetti-strap tank top with a matching pink bra that was visible underneath the spaghetti straps.

Much smaller in stature than Kryses- who was himself about six foot tall with a thin medium build- the young girl shuffled up to her boyfriend and planted a passionate kiss directly on his half-open mouth before he could even tell her how gorgeous she was. With no words necessary, the two jumped into the rusting truck and sped off to their usual spot overlooking the cesspool of collegiate residency known as Diablo Vista.

When they arrived, Kryses had to get out and open the door for Jules because his P.O.S. vehicle had a broken passenger-side interior door handle, ensuring Kryses to act like a gentlemen and open the door for his lady whether she liked it or not. As with many aspects of his personality, Kry took the broken pieces he possessed and worked hard to see the silver-lining.

“When did you find out?” Jules asked.

“Today after I got home from Head Case. Babe, you should’ve seen these things that were rollin’ in today. I mean MY GOD…”

Kryses went on for a few minutes about the slabbyness of the surf that particular day, and relayed a story of how his buddy Don, “got guillotined by a lip about two feet thick!” Jules nodded and listened intently yet quietly, never bothering to interrupt him to talk about what was really on her mind, as she often did when Kryses rambled on for days on end. After a few more painful minutes of listening to the surf-jive went on, Jules interjected.

“Are you going to break up with me now that you’ve gotten into the University?” Halfway through her sentence Kryses could see her blue eyes begin to become damp, sublimate to wet, right before a single tear was blinked out and slowly rolled down her velvety cheek. Kryses immediately shut the fuck up at this sight. He knew, looking at her welling eyeballs, he would have to get straight with it. The truth was, Kryses did bring her here to break up with her. He knew it, and she knew it.

“No babe, why would you say that?" Kryses said, sighing deeply. "I love you- you know that. And besides, I’ll only be on the other side of town, not on the other side of the universe.” As the words dripped from his tongue, Kryses knew them to be lies. It was obvious to him that he was going to have to be single going into college. He heard the stories, saw the pictures, and had always imagined himself in the middle of it all.

As if reading his thoughts, Jules replied “Really? I know you love me Kry, but I honestly don’t think that you mean that stuff about us being able to be together after you leave and all.” The tears turned from a trickle to a flow. She looked up at the sky, took a deep breath, and shouted, “I HATE THIS!” at the top of her little lungs. Jules knew the deal. She knew Kryses. That was apart of the reason he found himself so infatuated with her, as she was an amazing reader of the soul. Before Kryses could say something to comfort his young lover, he was cut off by the loud wail of the Sepueday Sirens.

The sirens were the local authority’s way of alerting the population to an impending launch. Once the sirens sounded, all the local inhabitants of Sepueday were under a curfew of sorts, no longer allowed to be outdoors or even have their blinds drawn. The two watched the folks of Sepueday scurry inside at the piercing sound of the sirens, and Kryses let out a chuckle. Where they were, no police would find them. Kryses and Jules were safe from the bullshit below, and rather than continue their difficult yet necessary conversation the two just crumpled onto the moist grass of the bluff where they were situated and wrapped themselves up into each other, attempting to make a pretzel out of their horizontal posture.

Kryses lay on his back with his hands behind his head, and Jules lay on her side with her head propped on his shoulder and her leg draped over his stomach. A loud rumble sounded in the distance- so loud that the two could feel its rumble on their backsides through the ground. The two gazed into the horizon just as the spark was lit underneath the mysterious rocket, just as it began its heavenly ascent.

The noise was always deafening, and tonight was no different. The vessel slowly lifted off the launch pad as the thrusting propulsion below it gained inertia and force, and within seconds the ship was climbing upward, reaching for the stars. It was such a beautiful sight to witness, so beautiful in fact that each one drove Kryses a bit mad at the thought that the Administrators saw fit to keep such a divine spectacle from the population’s gaze. What were they hiding? Why would they not want the people to witness these awesome spectacles, particularly if they would come to appreciate and respect them in the same way that Kryses had come to? The answers to these questions went unresolved in Kryses’ mind while the reflection of the rocket’s burning tail illuminated the glassy surface of the boy’s indigo eyes.

(Bzz bzz bzz) The cellular phone in Kryses’ pocket tickled his star-crossed lover’s inner thigh as it rang. So she might enjoy the vibration a bit longer, he chose to let it ring instead of picking it up right away. Jules laughed and kissed Kry for ignoring his phone so she might get another second of the minimal yet sweet pleasure.

His phone vibrated once more; whoever had called found it an important enough matter to leave a message. Among his group of friends this was odd- no one ever left a voice message. If it was something that was really that important, no doubt a to-the-point text message would suffice. Texting notoriously did well at cutting through the small-talk bullshit that humans had grown so accustomed to. This generation didn't have time for that shit- they needed to get to the matter at hand without a second of time wasted. Kry dialed the voicemail number on his phone and waited for the message to being its transmission. To his surprise it was his father, Stavry Ambiryde.

“Hey son, its Dad. I’m just calling because I heard that you got accepted into the University. That’s great. I’m really proud of you. When you get a sec give your old man a call, ay? Alright, talk to you later.” Click.

Kryses’ heart sank a little at the sound of the message ringing through his brain. He was pleased to hear that his father actually cared about his acceptance; he was extremely confused as to how he found out in the first place. It had been almost a year since the two had spoken. Kry stopped calling the day his grave-digging father had accused him of ringing only when he needed something, such as money or clothes or advice or a fucking ride home.

“Who was that?” Jules asked as delicately as possible, for she saw the look on his face turn while the digital noise reverberated in his ear drums.

“Dad. It sounded as if he wanted to congratulate me for getting into UBS, although he sure did keep it short and not very sweet. Whatever, at least he actually called…” The rocket vanished into space as he spoke those last words, leaving only a thin trail of illuminated smoke as evidence of its expensive existence.

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(Beep beep beep) The alarm sounded in Kryses room the next morning, and when he looked at the clock the illuminated letters read, “5:30.” Jules had left only about four hours ago from the night before. Kryses had gotten only a couple hours of solid shut-eye, so he hit the snooze button with a bit of force. It felt as if the moment he closed his eyes, the beeping started again.

“God damn already, I’m fucking up,” he told the inanimate blinking clock, often talking to things that had no ability to listen to what he was saying. Kryses threw the blankets off and hopped out of bed as if it was noon and he was late for an important appointment. Another noise from an inorganic possession sounded. This time it was the buzzing of his cell phone.

The only people who ever called him this early were drug addicts or surf buddies; he knew which one it was this morning without even having to look at it. For this generation of youngsters, the cell phone saw the elevation in status to the level of an appendage to the living body. It now served a fundamental homeostatic function of the social life. No one could live without them these days it seemed, and Kryses was no exception to this new middle-class custom. It was his friend Jerry calling, no doubt to inform Kry that the surf was going off and there was a minimal crowd partaking in the cornucopia of watery ramps.

“What up?” Kry answered, trying to sound more tired than he really was.

“What up yo?” Jerry’s voice was high-pitched this morning, indicating to Kryses that he must be a bit excited for having gotten up at the ass-crack of dawn to play in the ocean.

“Nothing, chillin’. Whatchu doin?”

“Chillin’, chillin’. You surfin’ this morning?”

“Yup. Just got up. You check it?”

“Yeah, I’m actually standing on the bluff looking at Rockers right now. It’s a little hard to see it ‘cause the sun hasn’t come up yet, but I’d say we’re looking at peaky punchy five-footers rollin’ through pretty consistent. Plus the models are saying that it’s supposed to pick up throughout the day, and the tide is gonna be a negative point four at six o'clock this evening. So if things come together, maybe we can get a little sunset session at Illegals...”

A light went off in Kryses brain at the sound of the last word that came out his friend's mouth. Illegals was the boys’ favorite spot, and it was without a doubt a true sanctuary for the troubled souls that made up the local rat-packs. These children of the military industrial complex in paradise who came to age in this rugged beachy home-front guarded the sanctity of the spot with swift and ruthless violence. It was simply one of those spots on the globe that a person did not go to unless they knew they belonged (god help them if they found the place by accident, which had been the case in a few unfortunate scenarios the boy had witnessed in his early grommet days.) Kryses always felt ambivalent about that reality. However, he ultimately justified this cultural hostility towards outsiders by telling himself that although war is ugly, the aim of its arrow is essentially benevolent order; therefore, darkness can sometimes be a necessary evil to ensure the greater good of their community.

Government Bay was located just above the northern boundary of the Sepueday coastline, and the University used it as a testing facility for their newest anti-terrorist sub-destroyers. As the sight necessitated pool-like conditions for the classified experiments to run properly, a large titanium breakwater had been installed inside the bay to stop the constant barrage of breaking waves from interfering with the manufactured serenity of the bay. Facing southward out to see, the southeast corner of this man-made facility unnaturally captured sand that drifted down with the current. This was a pure example of the Military Industrial Complex extending its domineering influence over nature. As if it were God dealing out Good-Karma-Credit to the local surf population, the structure's primary positive externality was the creation of a world-class sandbar point.

As a swell bounced off the wall of the breakwater and was sent backwards towards the next incoming wave, the two would collide in grand fashion, resulting in a split-second opportunity for a paddling surfer to stand to his feet. A second after the backwash strikes the incoming swell the whole wall of water cataclysmically doubles over onto itself, sucking out to create the meanest cleanest deepest tube for a hundred miles. Every time the boys got to surf Illegals they considered themselves among the luckiest living inhabitants of this humble planet. The young rat-pack did not take for granted the divine experience they were being afforded by the invisible benevolence of chance; they didn’t choose to be born in this moment in space-time, however they were there and god damn fortunate to be- and knew it.

“That would be sick,” Kryses responded in a perked up tone, imaging himself locked into a deep cylindrical shack with 75 yards of a draining, sucking, spitting bowl in his immediate future. “Are you gonna paddle out at Rockers right now?” Kry said this while grabbing his wetsuit and turning it inside out, its cold damp sting making him slightly regret not buying that stupid hanger/heater thing he saw on TV the previous winter.

“Fuck yeah. I’m already suited up actually, just giving you the heads up. You cruising?"

“I’m getting ready now. See you in the lineup brotha.”

“Coo. Late dog.” Click.

This conversation happened exactly this way almost every day from the months of October through March. The daily dispatches' only level of variation existed regarding the linguistic details of that particular day’s surf. Literally every other sequence of words the two exchanged was virtually identical to the others, as if they were enigmatically bowing down to the power of predestination.
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ATRISTIC ART, DONE ATRISTICALLY BY ARTISANS

2009-07-04T11:00:00.000-07:00

Inspiration... (?)