Getting back into the system is not easy for any unperson but Victor has
made up his mind to try to do it.  Clean, appropriate clothing and regular
bathing, which are taken for granted by most people, are not readily available
to the homeless.  Vic knows people won't make allowances for his difficulties
in any circumstances and will shun him if he fails to conform to the standards
of his workplace.  If he voices his economic and political opinions he will
invite further opprobrium.
   Doubtless, his perspective is affected by his homelessness.  He is necessarily
eccentric because he is so far from the center he has little contact with the
more positive aspects of the culture.  But that negativity is not delusional
from his frame of reference.  He cannot see the positive part of human
existence from his position and if he could it would delude him with
respect to his reality to do so.  On the other hand, the bouyant positivity
typical of the middle class rests on a refusal to see the misery of those
beneath them, even though they have the vantage.  They delude themselves
because they can see and don't wish to see.  They not only won't see the
suffering of others, they fail to recognize their own thralldom, through which
means they are deluded as to the nature of our culture and their true place in
it.  The desire to be deluded is eagerly satisfied by the corporate rulers on
behalf of their masters.
   Victor will try to play the game but will not let himself fall back into
delusion in order to rise in society.  He's tried that before and it didn't
work.  But he won't let that fact detract from his effort; even knowing he is
doomed to failure by his refusal to subscribe to the required thought template.
   Victor should be glad he lives in America, where he is free to chose to say
what he pleases as long as he accepts the consequence of that choice.  The
fact that the consequence of that choice is probably starvation has always
made the system seem a bit tyranical and coercive to Victor but he has problems
with abstract concepts like liberty; particularly with the incompatability of
liberty and corporate controlled psuedo-democracy.  That is not to say there
are no good people.  It says that no-good people rise to the top like scum.
   Some people, like John, want to help but don't really understand the
requirements of getting back into "civilization" for the homeless person or
the level of commitment that is required of the helper.  Just creating the
superficiality required for success in any acceptable endeavor is difficult
for a homeless person: ie. clothes, showers the appearance of being "middle
class".  Even though most teachers don't qualify by income, these surface masks
are required for acceptance and credability in the system.  The irony is the
deception involved so that people will believe in you.  But John sincerely
believes Victor is a victim of his own attitude.  The real help John extended
was the introduction to the department heads.  He seems to feel this gives him
the right and responsibility to reorder Vic's perception of society without
entailing any need to help him secure the material necessities needed for
success as a part time teacher.  In short, words, in the form of good advice,
is all that is required to turn Victor's life around and solve all of his, if
not all the world's problems.  Victor guesses that John has spent to much time
in the abstract world of theoretical physics to be genuinely in touch.  His
obscession with acceptance, approval and the superficial concommitants of
academic identity give his ordinary officiousness a pretentiously arrogant
overtone that is particularly offensive to Victor.  But Vic does want to
succeed at teaching and John is the only one offering any help of any kind;
even if the price is more than Victor is willing to pay.
   "Victor, you know, John is one of the few friends you almost have.  Do you
really want to trash him like you have everyone else?"
   "I don't want to trash anyone.  But what I see is what I see.  We are all
caught up in it to variing degrees and the only way out is to admit the truth
about ourselves, both individually and collectively.  Ignoring things won't
make them go away anymore than giving up and becoming like everyone else.
Allowing business as usual is no longer viable.  It no longer gives a higher
probablility of survival.  We need to change!  I know that starts with each of
us.  I need to first change myself.  But that's not enough to have an effect
and so I have to convince others it is in their best interest, in societies
best interest, for all of us to seek a better way."
   "OK, so say I agree with you that the people are being led to destruction.
That doesn't mean you can force them to see it when they don't want to see it.
All of your intellectual bludgeoning has resulted in elliciting defensive
responses that are built in to the contemporary Social Thought Templates.  The
templates themselves pander to the worst qualities common to all of us: greed
and selfishness.  What are you offering them that they will want to change?"
   "A serious self assessment discloses that we are being baited.  We will
never reach the carrot on the stick.  We will only kill ourselves trying.  You
know, the 'stress of modern life', yeecchh!  The lies they tell us are
motivation enough for me to want to change things.  But, there's more.
   "I don't think any conspiracy is underway but the wealthy and powerful have
always considered themselves to be superior to the rest of us.  They even
convince most of us that their ascendance is based on natural, biological fact.
They hid in the closet for a while with the rise of democracy.  However, they
were never far from sight and their attitude has not gone away, only proved to
be contagious.  People with that belief, whether descended from aristocracy or
arisen to plutacracy (or even wannabes), must in their arrogance and
pretentiousness, ultimately come to the conclusion that slaves are no longer
necessary to provide them lives of luxury.  What will those airheads we follow
do with us when that happens?"
   "Victor, we're going in circles here but what about John?  You can't convince
him or anyone by main force.  How are you going to do it?"
   "I wish I knew!  I only know our culture is out of hand.  We have the
technological ability to be more inhuman than we have ever been and it is
controlled by the most unscrupulous among us.  We've set the fox to guard the
chickens.  If John is not to far gone maybe I can talk to him without sounding
hostile and iconoclastic.  I have to do something and, of course you're right,
I can't beat the truth into people.  I've got to start somewhere but it may be
that John is too coopted to listen.  He doesn't have much more in the way of
material resources than I do.  His connection is really tenuous so you would
think he would be receptive.  But then I think of Paul and his situation and
realize how strong the Social Thought Templates are..."
   Victor wants to start a revolution.  Maybe not a violent one.  Maybe no change
in the form of government is necessary.  But, at least, individuals must
revolutionize their minds.  His problems are with ethics and confidence.  His
own ethics aren't at issue.  He has confidence in his perception and moral
ground, so this probably won't do any good, but... "do you think things are
really so bad?"
   "People are dying in the streets while the corporations send jobs and wealth
out of the country.  The standard of living has been falling for thirty years.
This corporate treachery has been covered with plastic credit to hide the
increasing misery from those still hanging on to the American dream.  Even
though more and more people are waking up every day, we need to spread the
alarm faster to achieve the level of awareness required for change before the
elite catch on and find a new way to put everyone back to sleep."

   Victor went to Art's office and picked up the text books.  Then they toured
the Tech department and he was reintroduced to Milton and Hamm.  The equipment
counter and store room is Bill's territory.  Milton, Hamm and Bill were
discussing the distribution of the classload when Victor trailed Art into Bill's
office.
   Milton spoke up, "We were just talking about you.  What are the classes you
have?"  He picked up a print out of the schedule with the assigned instructors
names pencilled in.  "You and Hamm are both teaching sections of 132 but yours
is Tuesday and Thursday evening and Hamm's is Monday and Wednesday morning.
Your other class is...?"
   "234 on Monday and Wednesday morning but I don't have 132, it's 130", Victor
volunteered to try to straighten things out.  His grasp of the situation felt
tenuous enough without confusing the numbers.
   "Yeah, 130", said Milton with slight irritation, "If you swap sections with
Hamm all your classes would be on the same day", he finished brightly.
   Victor knew that the other section was almost empty and likely to cancel but
he didn't want to start by being impolitic.  He said, to buy time to think,
"Well, I guess, may I see the schedule"?  He looked it over as they spoke of
another matter.  It occured to him that if they put this over he would be
classified a fool and then nothing he could do or say would ever be taken
seriously.  He was better off to offend and take those consequences than to
allow the class to be taken from him and never get wholehearted cooperation
from anyone in the department.  "No, I think I'll stick with the section
assigned".
   Milton, distracted from the other discussion, nodded curtly then continued
with what he was saying.  Art took Victor by the arm and led him out to the
lab area where he was directed to go see about the contract and paper work.
   Victor walked out the door wandering if his tour had been well timed.
   "Victor, what section of 130, or is it 132, are you teaching?"
   "None!  I don't know why they bothered to offer it in the first place.  Only
one section will go and Hamm will teach it.  I was taken to that meeting so I
could be impressed with the difficulties of management and the superiority of
those who handle that position.  And to be confused.  A person who is confused
and forced to make a hasty decision has been, in street-talk, 'hustled' and is
much easier to control.  That's what management all about.  Control!"
   "Victor, you're paranoid!"
   "Paranoid my ass!  I don't fear irrationally or at all; and I haven't
enough delusion of granduer to pretend that I am making an important and
rational decision based on superior judgement when what I'm really doing is
showing off the power of my position, which I delude myself into believing is
personal power, and kicking down money to my friends."
   "You think that's what Milton is doing?"
   "You mean besides the insult of hustling me to make it possible?  I'm going
to take care of business then go down to the Adjunct Faculty Service Center
and check out the facilties.  Why don't you count any people you might see
who act confused and lost and don't look like new students.  Then guess what
they are doing here and why they all look the way they do."
   "OK, so what if you're right.  If you don't play along it won't work out.
You need the money!"
   "That's what everybody says.  That's why things are as they are.  I'll
try to do a good job and stick it out but if they want more it's too bad.  I
would rather starve with dignity than starve without it.  And with the way they
pay we'll all starve anyway.  It's intolerable to me to let them have their way
in everything.  I don't understand how everyone pretends it's OK.  Or are most
of them just too scared to acknowledge the truth.  But, no matter, I just don't
have that much to lose.  And in the long run they'll see they haven't much to
lose either."
   "Victor, don't you see, no matter how well you teach you won't be seen as
making a serious effort unless your attitude conforms to the norm?"
   "No shit!  And what I wonder about is how it came to be that niether the
Digital Logic nor the Programming course was offered to me.  Did my resistance
to John's effort to intruct me in how to approach teaching those subjects have
anything to do with it?"
   "Now you're really being paranoid!"
   "Yeah, no one would ever try to teach me a lesson and if they did it would
be 'for his own good'.  And it wouldn't be about wounded vanity, it would be
about Truth, Justice and the American Way".

   Victor checked his e-mail at one of the six computers in the fifteen by
twenty five foot combination office, lounge and message center for the three
hundred members of the Adjunct Faculty.  In thirty minutes time he had endured
three hints that these were shared facilities and he was expected to be polite.
No one complained about the college management's exploitation of unemployed
professionals' desparation or the sparcity of amenities for them.  Then he
grabbed his things and left.  He would work at "home", preparing for his first
class.
   As he rode his bicycle the four miles to his camp, he thought about how it
is in world.
   With all the false posturing [is there any other kind?] going on it's a
wonder things continue to be created and system continues to "work". It is
probably only through inertia that it keeps going.  And the growing number of
homeless is a measure of the decline of our systematized ecomomy.  No doubt the
solution is not to change the system but to eliminate the homeless by whatever
means will work to make them go away; making more room for the latest crop of
downsizees, like the part time faculty at the college.  Whether they know it or
not they've already been marke and are in the process of being gradually culled.
But there are other, less easily masked symptoms of society's disease.
   Not one in a thousand actually does or creates anything useful.  And not
one in a hundred knows how to distinguish between useful and useless creations.
Maybe one in a hundred is intelligent enough to steal ideas from others and
implement them competantly.  The rest are either managers, sycophants or out
and out thieves (like the rich).
   Left out of the count is the working class that actually makes the things
we need to survive.  They work on the farms and in the mines and factories.
They build the architect's fantasies and transport the goods to the retail
outlets where they are the front line of distribution.  They fight in the
other front lines, those of the periodic wars that defend the abstract economy
and its manipulators.  One of the perpipheral benifits of war is downsizing
the working class.  If the excess, from the viewpoint of the wealthy, can be
culled by a popular means, so much the better.  All's well that serves
wealth.

   Victor rode down South Sixth avenue and drew no more notice than any other
tramp.  He was wearing half way decent, clean clothes but the whores could
see right through them.  They won't even wave if you're broke.  Victor did
notice John Demsecon heading for a slumlord's lot of broken down travel
trailers and corrugated sheet metal sheds that are known as Bossi's Court.
Vic caught up with him and asked, "whats up Doc"?
   The anthropologist turned to him with a sardonic smile, "Follow me to my
apartment, I have something to show you."
   The inside of the ten by twelve shack was divided by a wall with an opening
were a door might be hung.  On one side was a small electric stove, a sink,
two chairs and a table.  The stove and sink were encrusted with gunk and littered
with the dirtiest dishes and tableware Victor had ever seen.  One of the chairs
was empty the other plus the floor and the bed and floor in the other room,
where the filthy shower was located, were all covered with hundreds of heavy
hard bound books from the University Library.  The place stank.
   Victor decided to get it over with fast.  "John, I changed my mind, I don't
care to be a deceiver.  Lies and diversion are the reason the world of humanity
is what it is.  I don't care to be part of that bullshit.  I didn't hack any
computer.  I had planned to fake the whole thing in order to try to get your
support in bringing about change.  I think we agree on the need to do something
and that should be enough."
   John just looked at Victor cooly for a moment.  Victor had expected him to
lash out before he was finished speaking but John wasn't playing the right
wing zealot role in the ordinary way today.  Ironically, whether a posture or
not in John's case, the right wing accurately depicts downsizing as treachery.
They just fail to see that the government is owned by the sacred icons of the
free market economy, the corporations.  Many of them go beyond government
bashing to find more esoteric villians like extra-terrestials or the devil.
Their heads are so screwed up by nationalism, religion and cult of causal
relationship that they can't accept the simple answer.  The system sucks.  But
they do know something is wrong before they jump to their rediculous
conclusions; which are long on fixing blame and short on fixing problems.
   Even if John really had para-military connections Victor is not too worried.
He's met many of that type and can hardly imagine that, unlike the Black and
Mexican gang bangers in this neighborhood, they would fire unless fired upon
first or goaded into it by some equally stupid government agency.  Besides,
Victor used to drive a cab at night in this neighborhood and he does know a
lot of the gangsters.  There are a lot more angry Hispanics and Blacks in this
country than serious white supremecists.  Unfortunately the former social clubs
only seem to know how to pull the triggers not where to point the guns.  Maybe
Victor will take up teaching in the streets if the college doesn't work out.
   John responded finally, "So what are you really up to"?  He seemed
uncomittally amused.  Victor wondered if his air was a pretention but didn't
dwell on the thought.  He responded to the literal question.
   "Well I've been reading a lot.  I just finished 'Devils of Loudon' by
Aldous Huxley.  Have you read it?"
   "No, what's it about?"
   "The trial, torture and burning of a 'sorcerer' priest in the Richelieu era.
But he talks a lot about what he calls 'mob hysteria' or 'mob intoxication'.
There is an appendix on the subject.  In the body of the text he mentions the
'unthinkable thoughts' in any given era.  I found that interesting because I've
been thinking a lot about what I've been calling 'Social Thought Templates'.
They are very similar to Huxley's notions.  It was nice to read a confirmation
of my thinking.  Not identical but, though electronic media was starting to
be used at the time that book was written, and though he noted it, Huxley was
more interested in demagogues like Hitler, Stalin and Joe MacArthy."
   "I'll give you another name for it and another confirmation.  Lasing!"
   "Lasing?... Oh, I get it the stimulation with energy of a population of
atoms or molecules that are bounded in such a way that they re-emit the energy
simultaneously and in phase.  That's a good analogy!  Did you create it?"
   John was pleased and read to Victor from the Sci-Fi book he was writing. It
was pretty good and stylistically unique.  In it he used a comparison of
"lasing" to describe the apparent result of the phenomena of thought control
of the population.  Elaborating on the metaphore "Social Thought Templates"
could be seen as the precondition for "lasing".   Victor gained more favor and
an invitation to return by praising his work just before he left.

  Vic was just getting comfortable when Paul came staggering into the camp,
crying, "I need a beer".
   Victor said, "You look like you've had enough".
   "I'll die if I don't get a beer, it's my medicine."  Several of the local
folk had spoken to Victor of the terrors of DTs.  They were trying to gain his
sympthy for the "victims" by pointing out that a person might die if the were
forced to uit drinking abruptly.  They claimed that even the Doctors prescribed
a gradual withdrawal from alcohol for those in detox programs.  Victor was
skeptical.
   "I'm no doctor and I don't dispense medicine.  Anyway it looks like beer is
about to kill you and I'm not Jack Kavorkian either.  Go away!"
   Victor had just violated a serious social stricture and Paul, drunk as he
was, would remember and use the violation to undermine Victor's moral
credability in the neighborhood.  It's as if he had failed to pay obescience
to the God of free enterprise capitalism while teaching a history class.  His
career as a bum was as good as gone.  "Oh shit!  Where'll I live now.  I'll
be shunned and driven from the riverbank and my new class isn't ready to accept
me yet.  May never accept me because I used to live here.  Oh well, at least
I have my desert hideaway, if the State doesn't kick me out."
   He didn't pack up and leave right then but he knew Paul would keep working
on the others to get them to present a solid front of disapprobation towards
himself.  But he was too far from the college anyway and he knows of some
desert hills, covered with Palo Verde and Saguaros, very close to the school.
He would wait until he had settled into the class then move.  The games he
could already see developing at his new workplace, while no less childish or
stupid than Paul's, were more necessary to play for what he wanted to
accomplish.  He didn't need any of the bullshit and wouldn't deal with it from
both sources if he didn't need to.  Fuck it!