The first fifteen years of Carlos' career had been the last years that
Americans had a progressing standard of living.  The last twenty five, until
1995, had been considerably less than pleasant.  Declining buying power coupled with
deteriorating working conditions are the picture he painted.  As a Korean War
veteran he felt cheated by America.  Oh, he has the house and car, he's lived
the American Dream.  But the increasing humiliation of workers bothered him.
He perceived the rise of the corporate aristocracy as a member of the labor
movement which has been repressed to make the CEOs rich.
   He spoke without bitterness in his voice but no choice of words could have
disguised the tone of the ideas expressed.  He wasn't resigned like some idiot
stoic.  He was matter of fact, calm with an air of confidence for the long run.
He didn't know how or when the change would come; he didn't even mention it.
But you could tell he knew.  Maybe that's what wisdom is.  Or maybe that was
hope for the liberation of his children now that he no longer had to deal with
the day to day stresses that keep our minds distracted from our virtual
slavery.
   First they talked about the weather, like everyone does, then Victor
satisfied Carlos' curiosity about his living conditions.  That is also a topic
that, for Victor, is almost as ritual as the prime conversation starter.  Then
Carlos mentioned he had been a construction worker for forty years.  "I belonged
to the union for all but the last five years."
   Victor remembered the late sixties and early seventies.  "I was a Heat and
Frost Insulator in Cincinnati, local 8, for eight years.  Then I moved to
Washington in 1974."  Victor didn't go to college to become and engineer until
1983. "I made good money back in the early '70s.  Then things started
downhill"
   "I know what you mean", Carlos said with typical air of working class savvy.
A comparison between working and middle class people began to rise in Victor as
Carlos continued in his mellow way, not in the least upset by Victor's
nonverbal reading/reminicence, which accompanied the words.  "If we got a raise
they expected us to work harder.  And the conditions got worse.  I walked onto
one job where the forman told me I would have to carry my own water.  Not only
was there no water can but I couldn't refill mine until lunch time.  I picked up
my tools and walked off.  I was still in the union then and could get another
job.  The year after that the union was busted and I had to take whatever
they handed out.  And you can bet that wasn't raises."
   Victor heard every word as he was thinking: the middle class tends to
reinforce their extravagant self image by denegrating their presumed moral and
intellectual inferiors.  The truth is that many, if not most, workers are at
least as intelligent as their better educated managers.  In many cases they
have comparable vocabularies, gained by reading, but don't use them because of
social strictures enforced by "superiors" and peers alike.  Victor, who has a
college education and is very well read, suffers often from the arrogance of
clerks and welfare case workers who try to snub him if he is in the least
"uppish".  Many people consider the homeless to be beneath notice.  He seldom
let's anyone get away with such obnoxious and unconscienable rudeness.
   But Carlos is certainly not like that.  The ruthless cunning of managers
and wannabes indicates much less intelligence than the thoughtfulness
apparently underlying Carlos' comments.  He summed up what he had been saying.
"They don't care that the extra money they make by raising the prices puts us
further behind.  The raises are never enough to catch up."  Carlos' sense of amusement, irony and
smoldering anger was tangible in the cab of the little pickup.
   Victor encouraged him.  "Yeah, they say 'increased efficiency is required
to offset inflation' so the won't have to raise prices if they raise wages.
Then they raise the prices anyway.  What they mean is if they want more buying
power for themselves they need to extract it from the sweat of our brows!"
   "And they act so superior.  Only they deserve more money."  Carlos anger
was growing but still barely visible.  He didn't get excited but Vic could tell
he was glad for the chance to express it to a sympathetic ear.  "It gets meaner
for us, nicer for them and they think their greedy asses are better than us.
   "I tell my kids but hey, they don't listen.  Damn tv, it fills there head with
bullshit and they think they know more than their parents.  The schools are
just as bad.  When I was a kid we learned real stuff.  Now they just teach 'em to
be good slaves and take what they are given without complaining.  They fill
their heads with the idea that they can all get rich and if they don't it's
their own fault.  Hell, any fool can see that can't work.  Not one in a thousand
can be rich.  There's not enough money to go around that way."
   "Yeah", responded Victor, "it's bad and getting worse.  But people will wake
up some day.  I hope it's not too late."  Victor was thinking,  "here is a
person who thinks more on his own about the larger realities than do most.  He
may also be coming from a subdominate Social Thought Template to some degree.
Huxley seemed to think that all thought patterning was the result of 'downward
self-trancendence', effected by the exhortations of a demagogue, either in
support of or opposed to the existing institutions of church and state.  People
in a crowd, even a group extended by radio, tv or movies, achieve a state of
mind that is characteristic of the group and led by the ideas presented to
them.  Huxley further noted, that the demagogues taking advantage of the
instinct of people to get beyond their own identities and be part of something
larger, are themselves victims, or addicts of 'mob hysteria' or 'mob
intoxication'.  (You must forgive him for overlooking corporate culture and
the propagation of that psuedo-religion through advertising.  It wasn't so
apparent in 1952 as it is today.  Hitler and Stalin were still large figures
in that time and Joe McCarthy was just getting a start.  The corporations
weren't recognized, by many, to have taken over the predominate role until
after Ronnie Ray Gun taught us what selling out really means.)  As I see it,
some people are completly dominated by the thought and suggestions of others
but not as many as have some measure of their own, mixed with, perhaps, several
Social Thought Templates or parts thereof, gathered eclectically.  Is that
mixture, with all its potential for conflict, the basis of some kind of group
schizophrenia?  If so, it would be difficult to demonstrate, especially so
because schizophrenics are so hard to cure!"  But he didn't notice any conflict
in Carlos' thinking nor did he comment further.

   When Carlos dropped Victor off near his Post Office in Tucson, the retiree
invited Vic to visit him at his home in Arivaca.  Victor promised he would.  As
he walked away he was thinking about the economy and what it means to real
people.  He wasn't pondering the abstract ecomomy that the brainless yuppies
think can be made to produce by manipulating the symbols they use to represent
it.  Victor was thinking of the real economy; the one that produces the food,
clothing and shelter of the people who depend on it.
   Fifty thousand dollars a year for forty years is two million.  The average
American worker is about a million short of a decent life by the end of his
working days.  If one has a billion that's 25,000 each from a thousand people
who will only have half of what they need.  Money circulates if it is spent
and not hoarded.  A billion dollars in the hands of consumers can place much
more than a billion dollars worth of goods in the hands of many who need the
substance.
   But dollars aren't the way to count.  They are the symbols we assign to
goods to facilitate distribution.  Is there enough decent food, clothing and
shelter to go around?  There are empty houses all over and millions of people
who are capable of building more are long term unemployed.  Clothing is abundant.
The supermarkets throw away tons of food each day.  I know it's enough to feed
the homeless in America.  It already does... plus a hell of a lot of pigs and
chickens.  Hell, we turn food into alcohol and burn it in our cars.  (Probably
more to support the price of grain so the Chicago commodities mob can stay
rich than to help clean the air we breath.  I know the farmers aren't getting
anything but stripped of their land by the corporations.  You want proof?  Stick
your head out the window and take a deep breath.  Open your eyes if you can.
If you don't see any corruption or smell the dirty money, go back inside and
teach your self to think!)  We need a better way to get the goods to the people
who need them.
   To begin to look for a solution we must ask the questions: where is our
economy and how did it get here?  To answer those questions we need to know
where it started from.  What is its purpose?  If you've payed attention to
reality or read the beginning chapters you know the answers to these questions.
This is a test.  No one will grade it but you.  How did you do?

   If you would like Victor to grade your comments, email him at:
		    mailto://vpanover@netscape.net

   If you wish to be assured of a good grade, contact me:

	 Greg Kaiser
	 PO box 22935
	 agkaiser1@gmail,com
				   I have Victor hynotized and I know everything he is
				   going to do.  Right now he's going to answer some
				   questions of mine.
   "Victor, what about Social Thought Template, group think, "mob intoxication"
or whatever you want to call it: isn't it normal, natural and hasn't it been
around forever?"
   "It seems to be part of every culture of which I'm aware.  Since most people
are affected by it, and continue to be even when alone, (Huxley talked of a
kind of post hypnotic suggestion) it is by definition normal.  But natural?
Is it primodial nature or that which nature has become after 200 to 300
generations of hypnotic training that we are talking about?  If my hypothesis
is correct, the natural group instinct to allign thinking along consensual
lines was perverted to the employ of a small part of the group in making slaves
of the rest, probably after the concept of slavery had been developed by
coercive means.  Then the abstractions were created to help preserve that
institution and shift the power within it, once it had become the status quo.
But what was the nature of thought before it was perverted by those
abstractions?
   "We can only guess but I'll tell you what I think is a plausable course that
may have brought us to where we are.  Keep in mind that where we are is more
important than how we got here.  Here goes.
   "Thought is tool that human animals have developed to aid in our survival.
Awareness of the external, sense perception, is the ground, the basic input.
Memory allows the growth of knowledge, a data base which may be fed back into
the input streams and used to modify reactions to stimulus thus helping to
assure survival by reacting appropriatley to danger or need.  That is, blending
current sensory input with data in memory to predict the outcome of events and
situations, so we may modify our actions accordingly.  What I've described so
far, we have in common with many animals.  What may be unique about people is
self awareness and, almost certainly, the inventions of symbols to represent
things and thoughts.  The tokens we've created, whether spoken or written, are
the primary abstraction and allow a more systematic organization of and
externalization of memory.
   "Self awareness is contained in memory.  It is a record of our acts that we
may read through internal feedback.  How exactly it works, where is the place
I stand as I watch, who is I that watches, is a mystery to me and I'm content
to leave it as such.  Many people have tried to account for it in various,
usually religious, ways.  I've never heard of one that didn't compound the
question instead of actually answering it.  Nothing is gained by inventing
bigger mysteries to solve the original mystery.  It is like robbing Peter to
pay Paul.  I simply accept self awareness as a fact of my existence and,
unlike Des'Carte, I'll let go at that and not try to infer or induce what is
not known.  That niether affirms nor denies other self awareness.  If I can't
conceive of my own I, or understand why or how it exists then I certainly shall
not attempt to go beyond it.  It begs a question.  I can and do know, from
personal observation, what everyone else should know: that Life is greater, in
a quantitative sense at least, than humanity; just as the Earth is larger than
Life.  The notion is extensible by degrees to the entire Universe, the single
song, which is the greatest of all.  If you care to extrapolate consciousness
in a similar manner you are free to do so.  But that says nothing of causes and
less about communication with extra human consciousness.  While I choose to
ignore the cause of self awareness, still it obviously exists.  I feel more
certain about my ability to explain identity or personality.
   "Identity is the taking of feedback from memory and projecting it outward
while monitoring it from within.  It is usually a virtue in that it is an idea
we hold before our mind and attempt to live up to it.  It is also affected by
sensory input (that is actually feedback) from others and from our environment.
To the extent that we try to modify the way we appear to others, in order to
maintain a self image that is not necessarily consistent with the facts.
Personality is virtual and delusional.  It is largely a fantasy but it connects
with others through mutually supportive [of the consensual fiction] interaction.
   "There I've talked a little about basic reflective thought and self
imaging but what about creative thought, aside from identity that is.  The
creation of material tools, the means and resources that aid survival, and art,
comes of the perception of need or desire to create a more comfortable life or
to give purpose to ones own existence; coupled with memory then extropolated
into the material world by the realization of the idea.
   "The creation of symbols to represent simple thoughts or ideas or the use
of symbols to make more complex abstractions also speaks of inventiveness.
That kind of inventiveness, for many people, implies attributing more credence
to the symbol than to the underlying reality.  Exploration of our abstract
inventions, to the extent that we lose sight of the physical world or come to
believe that our creation takes precedence over reality and, in fact,
determines reality, is a grave and 'human, all to human' error.  But what of
the idea to get others to do the work and you to take the profits?
   "That idea is original sin.  It is, most probably, the first perversion of
the thought process.  And it isn't even creative.  It makes nothing.  It merely
notices something that someone else has done and cravenly desires to have that
thing for oneself.  Political, religious or economic tyranny, whether or not
it involves profit, is a fall from grace and Cain and Able rolled together.
It is based on the envy of some thing and the power to take it.  It is the
manipulation of people through their beliefs or through coercion.  It is
unconscienably selfish, unhuman and it is indifferent to the suffering it
causes.  The beliefs, more often than not, are created by the leaders who
work for the masters; or by spiritual/intellectual upstarts who supplant an
equally onerous coercive elite.  Yes there is some creativity within the
system, which has developed since the original ripoff.  But it is useless
creativity.  It provides us with nothing of value and it is certainly not
pretty.
   "Does that answer your question?"
   "But, Victor, are you saying that all of human development, starting with
the invention of language, has been corrupt.?"
   "Not quite, I didn't say 'starting with the invention of language' and I
didn't say all development.  I said, starting when the thought or plan was
invented, by some individual or subgroup, to enslave the majority of people,
using coercion or the corruption of the natural social instinct.  But that is
an abstraction.  I personally doubt that it started all at once in a single
place.  It is safe to infer, though, that after at least one person had
enslaved at least one other, by whatever means that person chose, the idea
took off.  That 'take off' can be inferred from the current state of humanity,
in which the good people are thoroughly dominated by an evil minority made up
of original sin originators.
   "By the way, we are not required to trace a thing to its source in order
to speak to its existence!  The sources of ideas and the development of
thought itself happens to be personally interesting to me.  Like the eleventh
century Chinese scholar and philosopher, Ch'eng I, said, '...follow the stream
and seek the source'.  I consider such things because they amuse me."
   "You know, Victor, you aren't the first to realize these things.  Why do you
think others have either kept it to themselves or stated it more cryptically?"
   "Because they feared for their well being?"
   "Then why aren't you afraid?"
   "Perhaps I am but I'm simply too indignant to show it.  Also, I have very
little to lose.  If any one noticed or took me seriously enough, I guess I
could lose my life.  But, the way things are in corporate culture, I'll lose it
anyway.  I would rather die with dignity than live at their option, humiliated
by vain and conceited yuppie wannabes.  In my judgement and by my evaluation,
the only real chance of survival I have is doing what I'm doing.  Besides,
since I am beneath the notice of these vastly superior beings, I may be able to
get away with saying, if not doing, anything I like."

   An email from Art Reeching had beat Victor to the library by two hours.  He
urgently desired to have Victor call him concerning teaching at the community
college.  Victor logged out and went straight to a pay phone.
   "Hey Art, Victor Panover, what's up?"
   Art had sounded anxious when he picked up the phone.  Victor was to learn
that Art was usually feeling stressed and hustled.  But he covered it quickly,
with an air of non-chalance, while at the same time affecting a contradictory
and momentary non-recognition of Victor.  "Oh, a, yeah", then with some politely
feigned excitement to cover the real thing, "yeah I'm glad you called.  I have
a course you might be interested in teaching, maybe two.  Micro-Computer
Assembly and Testing and Client Server Networking.  You think you can handle
them?"
   "A, well, a... we talked about digital logic and introductory computer
programming last fall.  I'd be much more comfortable doing that but I have
built my own PCs and ran a VAX cluster and integrated it into a larger
network... a ... a few years ago."  Victor didn't really want to teach the
courses offered him but he didn't want to blow the chance to get a foot in
the door either.  What he wasn't willing to do is lie to get the position.
   "Well, the Digital Logic and Programming courses are covered.  Are you
familiar with Windows NT?"  Art was beginning to sound as if he was having
second thoughts already.  Victor wondered what was really going on but
answered the question equivocally.
   "As a workstation user but I guess the management techniques I learned with
VAX all have GUI counterparts, or at least most of them do.  It simply isn't
my area of concentration or most recent experience and I've never taught
before.  I imagine, though, that I can stay ahead of the students."
   Now Art began to sound genuinely exited as he said, "Oh, there will be
plenty of support!  Actually I have to teach a course that compares network
operating systems and I have to learn them all.  So will you do it?"
   Victor has nothing to lose, "Sure, when can I see course outlines and the
textbooks?  Classes start in five days and I'd like to get started right
away."
   Art told him to come by tomorrow afternoon and he would show him around.
   "Allright, see you tomorrow."
   Victor really wanted to try this.  He thought maybe academia was less
infected by corporate culture, therefore less sinful, than most employment.
He would have a certain amount of autonomy, to be sure, and teaching might be
fun.  It wouldn't be much money but he would have some time for his own projects
and access to labs, computers and the network that would otherwise not be
available to him.  At least not to the extent they would be available as
a faculty member.  There would also be library priveleges that most homeless
people don't enjoy.  But there is a lot to do before tomorrow.