As Victor pedals towards the library he considers the state of humanity.

   The purpose of life is to survive and breed.  Other than that it is only
what you choose to make it.  If you don't survive long enough you can't 
breed or having bred, you can't nurture and protect your young to maturity.  
Survival is primal.  As a species we are indifferent as to which individuals 
survive or whether they continue to live after raising their brood.
   To live, we require food and shelter.  (Medicine, education, armaments,
etc. come under those two main headings.)  Group formation aids in securing
and maintaining food and shelter.
   Conquest of other groups secures additional land on which to carry
on the process of life.  It may allow growth of the group by increased
breeding activity and/or assimilation of the conquered population.
Peoples may be eliminated to free up land and resources.  The
vanquished may also be enslaved.  If your group already consists
of masters and slaves, conquest may result in an increase of wealth
for the masters.  More slaves equals more producers.
   Slaves are not directly provided with the means of survival.
They are instead provided with tokens which they exchange for the
necessities of life.  Slaves produce these things themselves but
the goods are gathered and held by the masters who claim they are
private property.  A claim that is backed up by police and armies
(when necessary); who are themselves slaves owned by the masters.
   The armies, among other uses, are required to expand or prevent being
expanded upon.  They always consist of trained slaves.  They are controlled
by specially trained overseers (corrupted to officers).  Officers, like
CEOs, politicians, judges and managers, are highly trained slaves who are
entrusted with the care of common slaves and rewarded with a comfortable
survival.  Another way to acheive comfort to start one's own business.
   The difficulty of starting a business is complicated by resistance from
existing masters.  Directly or indirectly, the use of slaves will be
required for your business to succeed.  Masters are jealous of their
slaves.
   Even though your business may not employ slave labor, you
(presumably) profit in the tokens which symbolically represent the
produce of slaves.  The masters, as a group, want all the tokens
returned to themselves.  They cultivated the system for their own
benefit and resent any upstarts use of their world!  It's not impossible
to become a master by starting your own business.  It's not impossible
to win the lottery or become a superstar.  Assign probabilities to those
possibilities and compare them.
   Perhaps you think the system is unfair?  Remember your training!
If everyone tried to jump off the bridge at the same time there would
be no where to stand on the bridge.  Besides, the pile of bodies would
soon make the jump inefficient.  Those merely crippled would be a
burden to society.  If we were all masters there would be no one to
produce anything and we'd all starve.  Granted, over the centuries the
number of masters has increased (and some have been replaced).
The number of rapists and murderers has also increased, like the
masters, in proportion to the size of the population.  But there must
be a ratio of maximum efficiency.
   Currently, there are about 5% masters and 95% slaves.  The one in
twenty ratio of excessively aggressive and manipulative to passive
and dependent personalities seems to work pretty well so don't
rock the boat! And, if you must assert yourself, certainly don't
attack the system!  Simply incorporate enough evil into your
existence to scare the masters (be careful not to get caught breaking
laws).  Then they will allow you to be like them.  You may turn on your
own and become a parasite.  Thus the system will be preserved
and the notion that everyone gets what they deserve will be reinforced.
A truly rebelious example could be disastrous.
   However, you needn't concern yourself too much about the possibility
of a successful rebellion against exploitation of the majority by the
minority.  The textbook example of how the system defends itself
occured 2000 years ago.  Jesus Christ suggested giving away all
property and emulating his way of life.  Apparently He was building
quite a power base and the authorities had to use force and guile to
suppress Him and His ideas.  Many of His followers were also
executed before the empire could corrupt His teachings, coopt the
surviving leaders and return to normal business.
   It's seldom necessary to go to such extremes today, though violent
repression always lurks in the background.  Threats to the system are
ordinarily dealt with by withholding rewards.  The system rarely
resorts to physical abuse even when large segments of a population
are involved.  If changing technology and growing numbers of people
make many of us unnecessary to profitable production for the masters,
the expendable slaves are starved to death or die of nutrition related
diseases, lack of medical attention or exposure.  Who needs crosses
and lions when we have joblessness and welfare reform?  And who threatens
the System anyway?  Education and television have dealt with the source
of such thoughts so thoroughly, they only rarely, if ever, come to the
surface of an enthralled mind.

   Victor's opinions are his own and don't necessarily reflect those of the
author, any remotely possible publisher or even you the reader of this book!

   "Victor, do you see what you made me write?  When are you going to learn
to not to be so negative?  You'll get us both in trouble!"
   "Yeah, I'll get my mind right, when I can see something positive about
society from my position.  I would delude myself if I saw it now!"

   As he came into the center of town he noticed a median at an intersection
that was empty of beggers or newspaper hawkers.  Not one to pass an opportunity
to make some money he parked his bike and dug out his orange safety vest.
donning the vest, mandated by a city ordinance last spring, he mounts the
divider to the drivers left of the left turn lane.  The orange plastic he's
wearing over his jacket is tight, one size really doesn't fit all, and reminds
him of the suite of ever more contricting regulations the city council is
designing and implementing to harass the homeless.  He wonders, not for the
first or last time, where we're supposed to go.  It's obvious we aren't wanted
in Tucson nor anyplace else of which he knows.  These thoughts inspire him to
get out a notebook and compose a letter to be emailed later.

				To the Citizens of Tucson and the Earth
   This epistle could be addressed to any mainstream politician or their
corporate controllers and not be misdirected.  Though I'll talk about
homelessness the theme of this preliminary diagnosis is the underlying economic
disease that causes poverty and is driving us all towards it.  I will also talk
a little about the attitudes and beliefs that allow such abuse to continue.  I
might have addressed it to Fred Ritstand, Tucson, AZ councilman, since he is
currently seeking media exposure by attacking the poorest and weakest of the
poor.  But though I won't overlook him, no matter how small he makes himself,
I want the reader to easily generalize the ideas to be expressed.  So, you see,
I won't be able to concentrate on a single scapegoat and will need to accept
my share of the blame as I hope each of the readers will accept their own.
   Several weeks ago it was reported that Fred wishes to ban newspaper sellers
and beggers from Tucson's medians.  He justified the proposed ordinance as a
safety measure, citing the deaths of several unpersons in the past year.  This
is similar to Councilman Ignora's bid for fame, in removing the shacks of a
couple of dozen refugees of the "booming" economy, in August of 1987.  [The
earlier official act of harrassment was that which cost Victor his camper.]
The similarity is that both actions would rely on pretexts.  Ignora's was the
supposed complaints of neighbors and dirtiness.  I find it hard to believe
Fred is genuinely interested in the safety of those of us rejected by the
glorious corporate culture.  The victims of downsizing and job exportation,
statistically condemned to a 3-5 year life span, can't be so important to Fred
that he wants to save our lives so we can die unnaturally by starvation (welfare
reform), exposure and diseases that are no threat to those with health
insurance.  Or does he just want the starvation to happen more quickly by
taking away what little income we have, guaranteeing he won't miss the
entertainment of our suffering due to an untimely accident?
   Please don't misunderstand, I have no desire to die quickly or at all until
old age takes me.  But I can't help thinking Fred's concern for us is
fraudulant.  If he were really interested in public safety why not ban the
police from issueing citations or investigating accidents in traffic.  I
wouldn't bother to look up the statistics but I would guess that more police
than unpeople are killed in the streets by motor vehicles each year.  However,
safety was, as I said, Fred's pretext of late November.  Since then (Tucson
Citizen, Dec. 15, 1998) he has shifted the issue to the land of the faithful, to
morality.
   Is this refocused attack a cover for personal gain?  That seems to be
the general rule: diversion and delusion in the employ of self enrichment.
Political "leaders" choose scapegoats for their lack of power to defend
themselves and for the potential diversion of attention from the real ends of
the attacker.  The homeless aren't unique in being exploited.  The produce,
the means and resources of survival, along with the land we live from, have been
stolen and hoarded by a small fraction of the population with the aid of their
wholly owned politicians.  We must be kept diverted and deluded that they may
continue to rip us off.  Is that why Fred draws attention to the supposed lack
of "accountability" and "free ride" by the homeless?
   What of the accountability of our corporations?  CEOs rake in hundreds of
millions in stock options by downsizing and exporting jobs or buying cheap
little politicians to legitimize their corporate welfare ripoffs of the
taxpayers and create antipeople legislation to distract them.  Is Fred, or
any of Tucson's politicians or citizenry, interested in the lack of
responsibilty these free marketeers show, along with a lack of respect, for the
people of our God fearing country.  Are you too busy trying to survive to
notice?  When the consumer economy can no longer be supported by it's floating
plastic base, who will buy the products our corporations are making in other
countries?  The slaves they pay a dollar an hour to?  Ha!
   How many politicians expect to be rewarded by their patrons for reinforcing
the delusion of prosperity (using calls for "accountability" among other ploys).
Will our nominal leaders be getting some insider dope before a stock market
crash wipes out the middle class?  That is, if they aren't themselves foolish
true believers, and if there still is a middle class after the downsizing
has minimized the population by attrition.  The CEO's are buying their way into
the brave new world with the payoff they get for betraying American employees.
Will the politician drones be able to put together  sufficient bankrolls, by
similar treachery, to follow thier handlers to the promised land?
   Meanwhile, as the elite and the wannabes look after their interests, what
happens to the rest of us?  For most Americans two parents must work to make 80%
of the buying power one could provide in 1970.  If the children graduate from
high school they are expected to be satisfied with a job in McDonald's.  If they
screw up due to lack of supervision (mandated by corporate culture and their
politician dupes), our "leaders" tell us we are responsible because we didn't
control our children.  This specious reasoning could only be born and thrive in
the television nurtured fatuousness of our post modern world.  To add injury to
insult, over one per cent of the population is in prison.  The cause of this
travesty of justice is directly associated with poverty.  Poverty that is, like
everything else including the privatization of the penal system and the service
economy in general, in the service of a relative handful of ultra-rich.  They
disappear a portion of the excess labor pool by incarcerating them and get paid
taxpayers money for the service.  And who will serve the master's when we're
all starved or in prison?
   I don't believe anyone has thought about that any more than the CEO overseers
have thought about what happens to the economy when consumers can no longer
buy their products; when the Fed can no longer loan our money to the banks to
reloan to us at a profit.  But who knows what anyone else is really thinking?
I know that people tell me all the time that they no longer have faith in the
economy or the leaders to provide for our common survival.  Survival, the
fundemental basis of societies and economies, is no longer as probable as it used
to be.  But people don't think they can do anything about it.  Teenage gangsters
react to the failure of society to provide a decent job by escaping to drugs
and shooting each other.  It doesn't seem to make sense but many of them end up
with a roof over their heads, three meals a day, medical and dental.  Of course
they are withdrawn from the gene pool and those traits must die out soon.  There
must be a better way.  And we need to think up one together before the real
leaders, the rich, think of one for us.  We only have to look around at what
we have, to see the direction things are going towards, to see what kind of
answer they will have for us.
   Corporate culture, team work, we called it "the system" in the sixties.  They
change the names of things more often than they used to but the things themselves
haven't changed in 6000 years.  Like hunter gatherers ten thousand years ago,
we still cooperate with one another to provide for our common survival.
Somewhere along the way, earlier in some cultures later in others but general
today, our work in the common interest has been diverted to the providence of
luxury for the few.  The rest of us face a more miserable existance every year.
   Even though some of us have more material wealth than our grandparents we
still have a smaller share of our cooperative produce than the average family had
had in 1970 America.  If the pattern of concentration of wealth ever changed
to one of more equitable sharing it has certainly changed back in the past
thirty years.  The resulting distribution has been sometimes more and sometimes
less top heavy but it has always rewarded best those who contribute the least
work.  We carry the load while we are kept off balance with a constant barage
of collateral ideologies that serve only the rich.  Like there's something new!
I wonder if I could get a job as a spin doctor for interests of ordinary folk?
   If you have read this far you may be tempted to dismiss all I've said as
demagoguery.  Is it?  Am I employing scurrilous, rabble rousing, inciteful rather
than insightful, rhetorical tactics to the end of impugning the good reputations
of poiticians and businessmen, in particular and in general, and stimulating
people to raise their heads and admit to themselves they've been lied to (a
fact most people are aware of)?  If you dump this, you risk throwing out the
baby with the bath water.  We need to be aware of the direction in which our
society and culture is moving.  We need to have a clear idea where it is.  You
don't want to end up where I am.  It's not fun being a piece of dirt on the
streets of Tucson and no amount of macho pride will make me tell you
differently.
   As I see it, Tucson seems to be in a hurry to sweep away the homeless.  Is
this because we aren't dying fast enough to serve unhumanity?  Does corporate
culture need the space for a new wave of downsizing?  When one is no longer
counted as unemployed, when the insurance runs out after 18 months, is it one's
duty to disappear from physical sight as one has been hidden from statistical
observation?  Is this how we have become unaccountable?  Are you laughing?  Will
you still be laughing if it happens to you?
   If this missive is successful it will make a dent in your armor of conditioned
responses.  Schools and media have been working for a long time, doing the will
of the ruling elite, to instill delusions.  I hope some of you have caught a
glimpse of the truth.  Many will reject all of this; being complacent in their
foolishness.  But if one person is inspired to nurture his or herself with a
personal vision of reality, rather than accepting politician supplied media
tripes, then this effort is a success.  It is time for people to begin progressing
again.  We can't restart in the right direction until the reversals of the last
thirty years are turned around.  I want to see a survivable future for my
children and all of humanity.  I want to help make it so.  I hope you will


  I don't really like flying a sign or selling newspapers but I doubt the
foregoing has much commercial value.  However, I would rather see it published
than hold it back for lack of compensation.  I'll continue doing whatever I must
to survive; and to think and to write.  It would greatly assist me if you
could send some money to me at the address below.
   Thank You very much and God bless you!

							  Victor
							  PO box 22935
							  agkaiser1@gmail,com

   See the Homeless Homepage! https://members.tripod.com/~agkaiser
   It pays to advertise!

   Victor doesn't feel homeless when he stays at his desert campsite 50 miles
from Tucson.  But now, on this corner surrounded by a city full of people, he
often feels lonely and hopelessly misplaced.  But his loneliness doesn't last.
Two fellow "campers" approach and confront him for flying a sign on "their
corner". He'd been there first.  He pointed out that since they had just sat at
the signpost and he was walking up and down the line of cars awaiting the
left turn signal, that "we wouldn't interfere with one another".
   He was countered with the accusation, "You're interfering with our
traffic".
   Boredom or perhaps lack of success, maybe growing crazy faster than expected
in this poisoned environment, he angrily retorted, "no one was here when I got
here and I'm staying"!
   Verbal abuse and a threat to, "flatten you're bicycle tires", to his back
as he was walking down the line.
   Half turning, without stopping, and putting on the most malevelant
squint eyed smile he has in stock, he thinks, "how absurd and foolish
this is to be competing with idiots for a 'corner' the police will
eventually drive us all from".  He returned to their attitude fortified
position with an oral flanking manuever, "This is ridiculous, we're
doing the same thing to each other that everyone else does.  It is
what causes us to be here in the first place".
   "You're ridiculous!  You don't know nothin'!  You're not one of us!
You're not a 'camper'.  You say the world's got problems but you got
the problem.  You're stupid!"
   Victor'd had enough.  It was bad enough to be rejected and unwanted by
all of society, but to be discarded by the unpeople as well?  It was more
than he was ready to accept.
   "Fuck you!!", as he walked back down the column of commuters. Some of
them hid their smiles.  He wondered if they'd be amused if they realized
that, though these apparently childish altercations are usually all puff and
bluff, they much too often consider them serious enough to maim or kill one
another in order to settle.  If they did know would they care?  Would they
laugh if they knew they were laughing at an unconscious mockery of themselves?
   The Sun was getting high and the library was waiting.  He'd been there ten
minutes longer than he planned.  He couldn't cave in or the rumor would
spread faster than the internet.  Then he'd have worse problems
wherever he went.  Isn't it ironic how capitalism reduces us all to the
lowest common denominator?  He walked back towards their reclining
post as the cars filed out of the lane.
   The male was ready for him.  "You're an asshole!"
   "Suck mine!"
   "You ain't got one!"
   Low and slow and looking hard into his adversary's eyes.  "You're mama
knows I do".
   "Well... well... that's ok", the last looking down and barely audible.
Victor's foe seemed at a loss.  Victor just laughed at his opponent's
failure to recognise the time to get up or shut up.  Then he said, as he
started down the string of new arrivals, "now that that's settled, I'd like to
leave but if you keep talking I'll be here until dark".  He'd provided a
face saving out for all of them, though none were oriental.  Actually
he prefered getting the last word to getting to his destination.
   The sedentary soldier's girlfriend spoke to him while the walker made
his tour. When he returned it was to averted eyes and silence. He retired
from the median to his bike on the corner and mounting he road on.  He wondered
if it would be the police or some other circumstance that would drive him
from the last refuge on the planet.  He wondered if he'd recognise the last
place when he got there.
   And he hadn't been given a dime on that "corner".  And he would
accept any reasonable offer of employment.  Sixty Minutes is full of shit!

   Hold it Victor!  What's all this about being driven from refuge?  "Do you
think the rest of humanity has no right to defend their property?"
   "I'm still part of the human race and this is the planet I was born on.
Humanity has the power to control the means and resources of survival,
including the land.  So, I can't stop them from kicking me off and letting
me die.  They can even murder or imprison me if they choose to actively seek
my end.
   "Is it right?  Apparently the power to do a thing makes it right!  If
there was such a thing as right and wrong, that anyone cared about, then
using the power to control life planet wide would imply the responsibility
to maintain it!  But our ruling elite care only for their personal comfort!
They make sure everyone else is pressed too hard, just trying to survive, to
take much notice of what happens to the rejects like me.  I wonder if they'll
notice when it happens to them?"
   That threw me a little and I wanted to respond but could only think of the
trite rejoinder we all learned by the time we were five, "It looks like you
think society owes you a living.  Everybody knows that's bullshit!"
   "Oh yeah, well my parents and grandsires, for at least 1500 years, and
myself for a good portion of my life so far, have cooperated and contributed
along with 95% of the human population of this planet to allow the 5% who
are parasites to live in luxury while the rest of us work miserably for
them.  I've given enough to the System and I damn well think they owe me
and everyone else plenty!"

   Oh well, the library will be therapeutic.  He'll work on his web pages,
tend to email and browse the net from the machines there .  He finds that
fighting the distracting desire to look at the pretty girls is a great way to
excercise mental discipline.

   "Well Victor, if you send that email to the city council today you'll have
alienated the Tucson hierarchy from top to bottom in record time!"
   In a voice dripping with sarcasm, Victor replied.  "I'm sure that will make
my position worse than it already is.  Anyway, that email is working within the
system!  Isn't that what you wanted?"