Hello, My Name is Civilization, and I’m an Alcoholic

Hello, My Name is Civilization, and I’m an Alcoholic

 

OK, I’m going to squeeze an enormous idea into a short, not too boring essay. Try to hang with me on this. Civilization began with something called “the agricultural revolution”. That is, a fundamental shift from a hunting and gathering lifestyle, to a farming lifestyle. This farming lifestyle led to permanent settlements, which then grew into cities, and eventually, into the civilization we know today. The question is: Why did they do it?

 

To start, lets take a very long look at human history. According to fossil evidence, people just like us, have inhabited this planet for well over one million years. One million years ago, all humans lived in Africa, and all humans lived very much like the San Bushmen of the Calihari Desert live today.

 

The San are a “hunting and gathering” culture. They plant no crops. They tend no livestock. Instead, they hunt wild game and gather wild plants for food. They have no written language, but have a very rich oral tradition. Even though the San have been pushed into some of the most inhospitable land on the African continent, they only work about four hours a day to meet their daily needs. They rarely go hungry, and enjoy better nutrition and more food security than do the farming people who now surround them.

 

The San enjoy a lot of leisure time, which they spend telling stories, making music, dancing and playing games, among other things. They have a rich culture, and that culture contains over one million years of accumulated knowledge about how to live on planet Earth. That knowledge allows them to flourish in the middle of a desert, while the farming people around them, who have forcibly taken all of the good land, work long hours, suffer from poor nutrition, and often starve.

 

But one million years ago, there were no farming people. All humans lived a hunting and gathering lifestyle, not unlike the San. Over the course of the last one million years, hunting and gathering humans spread out over Asia and Europe, and eventually even Australia and the Americas. This spread of humanity happened at a glacial pace, but by about 40,000 years ago, damn near every place on Earth that would support human life, was, albeit sparsely, inhabited by humans. This slow spread of hunter-gatherer culture gave rise to the vast diversity of sustainable human cultures around the world, from the Inuit to the Yanomami.

 

40,000 years ago, humans lived all over the world, quite happily, as hunters and gatherers. I’m not saying that they didn’t have problems, or that they didn’t fight. They had problems, and they fought, but they didn’t destroy the planet. They didn’t overpopulate the planet. They didn’t overheat the planet, and they didn’t work 40-50 hours a week just to get by.

 

So, the question is: Why, among the thousands of indigenous cultures around the world, did just one particular culture in the Middle-East, reject the collective knowledge of a million years of culture, and begin farming?

 

Farming is a lot of work, and not much fun. Compared to hunting and picking berries, plowing a field with a rock tied to a stick must have seemed quite tedious. Why did they do it?

 

If you’ve got plenty of food, which fossil records tell us they did, why would you plant wheat and barley? Even more perplexing: Why would they sacrifice the habitat of the game animals and wild plants that had sustained them for eons, to clear fields for wheat and barley?

 

That is what happened, by the way. One particular culture in the Middle-East took up farming, even though they had plenty of food, and then proceeded to farm so aggressively and so passionately, that they completely destroyed their own habitat. They wiped out all of the game animals and wild plants that they had relied on since the beginning of time. What was their motivation? What madness possessed them? What did they get out of wheat and barley that was worth destroying the world for?

 

The answer of course is BEER. Think about it awhile. Many indigenous hunter-gatherer tribes drink fermented alcoholic beverages on occasion, usually following an abundant fruit harvest, but the founders of civilization, sought to make drunkenness a daily, rather than an annual event.

Addiction is a very powerful motivator.

Yes, all of civilization is a dysfunctional adjustment made to support an alcoholic lifestyle. Don’t you think its time that we faced the fact that we have a problem?

A Chance to Witness a Rare Live Performance

A Chance to Witness a Rare Live Performance

 

This Friday evening, June 1^st, at the Hemp Connection in Garberville, I’ll play electric didgeridoo and show off some of my tin can lanterns. I’ll set up in the patio and play by candlelight from 6-9pm, even though it barely gets dark before 9pm these days, as part of Garberville’s Arts Alive celebration in June.

I really don’t play out that much. The last time I played out was for Margriet Seinen’s opening reception last July, so these performances are rare. I play the didgeridoo almost every day, and I’m pretty good at it. Come out and see for yourself.  Here’s a sample of what you’ll hear:

 

CMKT4 to Lead Circuit-Bending Workshop/Concert in Garberville

This press release went out to all of our local papers last week:

CMKT4 to Lead Circuit-Bending Workshop/Concert in Garberville

On Monday, May 21, 2012, the Southern Humboldt Amateur Radio Club or SHARC, presents a circuit-bending workshop led by the Dekalb, Ill based circuit-bending band, CMKT4. The event begins at 5pm with a potluck dinner, and the workshop will start at 6pm. Circuit-bending, a term coined by Q Reed Ghazala in the 1980′s refers to the art of rewiring battery powered electronic devices to exploit their hidden potential. Since then, circuit-bending has grown into a musical movement.

The workshop teaches skills like soldering, wiring, and creative re-purposing, and encourages everyone to experiment, and have fun with electronics. Each participant will build a CMKT4 contact microphone that can be used as a high quality acoustic instrument pickup, or to turn nearly nearly any object into an electrified musical instrument.

The cost of the workshop is $15 and includes all of the parts, a comic book instruction manual, use of all necessary tools and supplies, and expert instruction. CMKT4 will also perform a set of original circuit-bent music to conclude the event.

Circuit-bending is a great way to learn about electronics while having fun. The Southern Humboldt Amateur Radio Club encourages everyone to explore and enjoy electronics safely. Ham radio is a great way to learn more about electronics, and to meet others who share that interest. Call Jack Foster at 923-3700 for more information about this event.

More Circuit Bending Stuff

More Circuit Bending Stuff

Alright, its only 12 days away from the CMKT4 Circuit Bending Workshop in Garberville, so I want to keep hyping it.  Here’s a video of circuit-bender, musician and instrument builder Tim Kaiser showing you how much fun you can have with a contact microphone, like the one you can build at the workshop.

Here Q Reed Ghazala, talks about circuit-bending, a term he coined.

Here Mike Patton of Mr Bungle talks about circuit-bending.

Here’s a demo of a circuit-bent Casio SA5.  I love the sound of this thing!

And some people get quite carried away with circuit-bending

Does this look like fun to you?  I hope I see you at the CMKT4 circuit-bending workshop on Monday, May 21 at the Veterans Hall in Garberville, potluck dinner at 5pm workshop starts at 6pm.  $15 workshop fee covers parts, supplies and instruction, and you will leave with a high quality contact microphone.

Finally, a circuit-bent Furby

On The Money, Why Can’t We All Just Get Along

On The Money

Financial Advice for the Working Class

Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

 

Of course we all know that capitalism only works because the coercive nature of capital, and that it only survives by destroying and enslaving everything in its path, but do you ever wonder why communism never works either?

 

Humans have a peculiar survival adaptation. We don’t survive in the world for very long as individuals. Instead, we rely on a cohesive group, with an inherited culture to survive. This is not unique in the animal world. Many creatures, from honeybees to prairie dogs share this trait. Like honeybees and prairie dogs themselves, honeybee and prairie dog culture, or group behavior, has evolved over millions of years, shaped by the physical needs and abilities of the creatures themselves, and the challenges of their environment. The fact that we see honeybees and prairie dogs alive today, testify to the time-tested success of honeybee and prairie dog culture.

 

So it goes with humans. We rely on our culture for survival at least as much as we rely on our large brains or dextrous fingers. Without a cohesive group, and an inherited culture, you have no humans, and that inherited culture makes humans possible. Much as we pride ourselves as “bold individualists” we’re much more like honeybees and prairie dogs in this regard, than say, tapeworms or mountain lions.

 

As human beings evolved and spread around the world, human culture evolved and adapted to the new environments in which they found themselves. This lead to the tremendous diversity of indigenous human cultures, and explain why the Inuit people, of the arctic north live very differently from !Kung Bushmen of the African Kalahari desert. This tremendous diversity of cultures has allowed humans to spread all over the world and adapt to nearly every ecosystem on the planet.

 

One characteristic of human beings, that we do not share with honeybees or prairie dogs, has driven all of this cultural diversity. That is, the fact that human beings really don’t get along with each other very well. While many thousands of honeybees share a hive, and many hundreds of prairie dogs share a colony, you generally (not always, but generally) find indigenous humans in groups of 15-40, with occasional large gatherings of several groups. When groups get larger than this, disagreements and fights become more common, leading groups to split up.

These separated groups tend to keep their distance. So, the newly split off group has an inherited culture, but will find a new territory, not that far away generally, and will adapt to the subtle differences of this new environment. In this way, our inability to get along with each other, fuels cultural diversity.

 

At the same time, as human children grow up, they tend to fall in love with people from other groups, because they get kind of sick of the people in their own group. Thus, humans produced a strong gene-pool of bright, healthy, disagreeable people, rich with cultural diversity, and continued to spread out and inhabit the world.

Yes, our natural tendency to be stubborn, petty, and to not speak to each other has made human beings successful as a species. Far from being a character flaw, our inability to get along with each other has been our saving grace.

While we need to get along with each other well enough to form the groups we need to survive, not getting along with each other has served us equally well, by keeping us strong, and teaching us to survive, and thrive, under all kinds of conditions. It testifies to the genius of evolution, that we have evolved to get along with each other just well enough, but not too well, and that this delicate balance has produced the thousands of distinct indigenous human cultures around the world.

 

As “civilized” humans, we don’t really value that rich cultural heritage. We should! We have an astounding indigenous heritage that we should be proud of, and fascinated with. In fact, we mostly seek to obliterate it, in favor of a mass culture of mass production, mass media, educational standards and a “standard of living”.

 

We “civilized people” either believe that everything beautiful, useful and good on the planet should be happily sacrificed for the completely unsustainable, hegemonic homogeneity of the “global economy”, or we believe that the only way to stop the completely unsustainable, hegemonic homogeneity of the “global economy” is with an equally hegemonic and homogeneous “global movement”. So, we “civilized people” are always asking this same silly question: Why can’t we all just get along?

 

The truth is, not getting along with each other made us who we are. Not getting along with each other made us successful as a species, and not getting along with each other makes us strong. That’s why we all can’t just get along, you idiot! And if you don’t agree with me, then just go fuck yourself!

Zine Review, The Black Lamp, Thong of the Thaumaturge etc, by Okra

Zine Review: The Black Lamp #1

SoHum has a new underground zine! The Black Lamp, A Spear Jabbed into the Eye of the Panopticon, a real underground, black n’ white, photocopied zine with no advertising, butchers and flame broils most of SoHum’s sacred cows. The Black Lamp rakes the muck over the coals with funny stories about the Sheriff’s Log, John Cassali’s Eel River Cleanup, and the huge toxic clown nose spill.

We meet a charming cast of characters who reside in Garberstan, an alternative universe where cops make ice cream in their hollow prosthetic limbs. Barnabus the Banana Slug tells us about his campaign to become Sheriff of Humboldt County. Stephen Horking, a crippled, trans-gendered chicken, looking for a good deal on a lot of land mines, tells us the recipe for his high-octane horkleberry wine. And, Area Man believes we should all copyright our assholes.

The Black Lamp investigative staff: Wide Mouth Mason, P-Trap, T-Post, Rig Atoni, Patchy Fog and DJ DifLok tackle the hard issues of the day with a critical eye and sharp wit. With collage graphics and anti-copyright notice, The Black Lamp stays true to punk zine principles, and excels at the form with this well written, entertaining read anyone would enjoy. Relevance, perspective and local focus make this a “must read” for SoHumers.

A local character named Okra puts out The Black Lamp, as well as numerous other punk-aesthetic publications, like The Thong of the Thaumaturge, Le Somnambulist and The Invisibles. I really like his perspective, his playful use of language and the artful layout of his zines. He’s always a good read. You will not find Ochre’s work online. He does not trust computers, and computers don’t trust him. If you want to read his zines (you do!) befriend him, and give him money. If you haven’t met Okra, or are frightened of large, bearded, tattooed men, put some money in an envelope and mail it to:

 

Okra’s Zines

P.O. Box 654

Redway, CA 95560

Word Power, Thaumaturge

Word Power

Building Your Vocabulary One Word at a Time

Thaumaturge

thau ma turge (‘thaw meh turj) n, working miracles

…as in the title of Okra’s recently reviewed zine The Thong of the Thaumaturge, or roughly translated from the proper English, the underwear works miracles. Here’s a brief (pun intended) excerpt:

 

“A miner had sex with a canary and got chirpies. It was untweetable. The Dr. looked at his watch,it winked back and blew smoky number zeros up his asshole. The voice of Marvin Gaye could be heard seeping out of the speakers of a quadilac across the red hills “Oh I twy and I twy and I twy.” lovers hold hands secwetly in wust with each other. The canary was related to a chicken who was a pullet and a scholar, had won a pulletzer for poultry, and lived in a coop in Canarsie. This chick knew to scoop when the poop flew, and she knewed that eggs is a lot older than chickens.” …and so on…

To get your own copy of The Thong of the Thaumaturge send money (as much as you can afford) to:

Thend Me The Thong of the Thaumaturge

P.O. Box 654

Redway, CA 95560

Andrew Goff, Romano Gabriel Win Me a Sundae

Andrew Goff, Romano Gabriel Win Me a Sundae

70Heaven Cartoonist Andrew Goff

I wrote the following letter to Andrew Goff in response to a 70Heaven comic strip he did a month or so ago, that made fun of Romano Gabriel.  In the strip, Will, the dumb one, disses a bunch of public art, then praises Romano Gabriel’s work as a low budget Disneyland. Pretty much everything Will says in 70Heaven is stupid and wrong, so this amounted to damning with faint praise, in my mind.

 

Romano deserves better than that. It pissed me off. So, I posted a message on Andrew Goff’s fb page that said something like, “Will’s right, that other art is shit compared to Romano Gabriel.” After a couple of hours I thought better of it, and deleted the post. I then wrote Andrew the following letter and sent it to him as a private message via fb. I asked him to keep it to himself, but when he saw that I sentenced him to death in this blog, he insisted on going public. An edited version of this letter appears in the current (6/16/11) edition of the North Coast Journal.

It won me a sundae! I owe it all to Andrew and Romano, but I’m not sharing.

Dear Andrew,

I’m very sorry about posting obscenity on your facebook page (last Thursday). My only excuse is that seeing you make fun of Romano Gabriel made me very emotional.

Are you Italian, Andrew? You look Italian. You have a Roman nose. If you’re Italian, be proud! If not, pretend. I know Italian-Americans get a bad rap, especially with liberals, because of Christopher Columbus and the Mafia. A lot of Italian guys try to pass themselves off as French, especially in a liberal college town like Arcata. Your last lame doesn’t end in an “o” or “i” so you could probably pull it off, especially hanging out with a guy named “Startaire.”

Your “Public Art” strip was very French. The French are snooty, critical and heady. They have tiny fluffy balls that they compensate for by putting on an air of superiority. Italians, on the other hand, have a glint in their eye, and gigantic balls to back it up. I think the guy who wrote Prodigal Arkley, is Italian.

I know you are an artist. As an Italian-American artist, you should take great pride in Romano Gabriel. Look at his work. Do you see any brush strokes that look like he’s trying to cover a mistake? Do you see any evidence that he is imitating anyone else? Do you see any evidence that he was motivated by money or fame? Doesn’t every brush stroke look like it was done joyfully, with authority, according to a unique vision with complete disregard for public opinion? Wouldn’t you like to live that way? Do you think you have the balls?

Romano Gabriel is a great Italian-American artist. There’s a reason he’s world famous and has his own museum. Count yourself fortunate to have seen his work. Take inspiration from him. Then check out Saman (or Sam or Simon) Rodia and the Watts Towers. These men didn’t need a college education, grants, or even commissions to make the world take note of their work. They just had a glint in their eye, and gigantic Italian balls. These are your people Andrew, be proud of them.

I fear you spend too much time around HSU. Universities tend to wussify people. It takes balls to be an artist. You don’t need balls to be a critic. You don’t need balls to be a historian, you don’t need balls to teach. That’s why Universities turn out so many critics, historians, and teachers, and so few artists.

There’s nothing stupid about Romano Gabriel’s artwork. What’s stupid is being impressed by the technique, sophistication, and professionalism of vain French pussy artists. Roman Gabriel’s work is not “tacky and embarrassing” or a “public service”. Duane Flatmo is a “public service”. Romano Gabriel was a public nuisance! Do you have the balls to be a nuisance, Andrew? Romano doesn’t care if you make fun of his work, plenty of idiots did so during his lifetime. It’s you I’m worried about.

Other than that, I love 70heaven. Keep up the good work!

Sincerely, John Hardin

P.S. Let’s keep this man to man. I have enough enemies without stirring up French people and feminists.

P.S.S. I’m only one-quarter Italian, and I’m also one-quarter French.