The first class would be on the Tuesday after Martin Luther King's birthday.
Victor spent the weekend reading the texts and making notes at camp and in the
libraries.  He also spent some time with his closest neighbors.  Jack Mallory
and Manny Gomez were an interesting duo.
   Manny, a sixty-seven year old retired mining engineer, was knowledgable and
fond of birds.  He kept a feeder well stocked.  He liked to cook and was good
at it.  The pension covered decent food as long as he didn't have to pay rent.
The one room "hooch" made from odds and ends and scraps of wood and sheet metal
that are often deposited at the doorstep when the rains wash them down the
river bed.  A hundred year flood would be terminal.
   Jack sold newspapers on the street corner and built the homemade wood stove
and counter and shelves in the outdoor kitchen.  He'd set up a Rube Goldberg
plumbing system with a rope and pulley to set the five gallon bucket of water
in one of the Tamarisk trees that surrounded the camp.  He complained often of
the frequent City harrassment like a year ago when they bulldozed the shack that
was nearby on higher, safer, ground.  That was councilman Ignora's coup.  This
month the discussion frequently centered on Ritstand's desire to "protect" the
sellers and beggers by banning them from corners and medians.
   "They say they're gonna compromise.  We have to take a $30 safety course and
be registered.  The newspaper company worked out the deal and they're paying
for the sellers to take the one day course."
   Victor smiled inwardly at the thought of licensed beggers and hawkers.  His
amusement didn't last long as he realized that the official regognition of the
homeless would tend to institutionalize the problem instead of improving
conditions.  His comment was blatant sensationalist propaganda.  "Great, that
gets rid of the beggars flying signs, they'll never get the money together,
but the newspaper's profits aren't endangered.  What a brilliant solution!
Are they going to pay you to take the course?  Your time off from selling is
worth a days profits."  Victor, of course, knew the answer to his question as
well as he knew the sellers were considered retailers not employees.  The
newspaper was too cheap to pay minimum wage or any kind of benefits; they
certainly would not even think of offering compensation for required safety
training.
   Jack just gave him a look and said, "Yeah, right!  I've been doin' this for
seven years and I'm tired of it.  I think I'll start huntin' cans.  I can
probably make enough to get cigarettes and a few beers.  I can get food stamps
too.  I'll get by...I guess."
   Victor was angry with the city council and the newspaper's corporate culture
attitude but managed to contain the rage while still expressing the nature of
his feeling through sarcasm.  "The politicians and the corporations don't care
how much misery they create as long as they keep themselves fat.  The standard
defense of their status quo is to stick a knife in your back with one hand
while stealing your wallet with the other and all the while explaining that
the justice of their act is shown by the sure knowledge that it is all your
fault for attempting to live in their world, over which they have God given
dominion.  The thought of those oh so superior jackasses makes me want to
puke!"
   Manny asked resignedly but still sympathetically, "what are you going to do
about it"?
   "Let me tell you about it!"  Victor continued without pause, "I can imagine
a simple culture of hunter gatherers without a systematic hierarchy.  It is
naturally progressive.  It readily takes to new ideas that make life easier.
It knows intuitively that the history of progress is generally the history of
technical advancement.  It can be inferred from where we are at, that attitudes
must at times have been like that.
   "Anyway, in this simple community tasks and produce are shared.  Like the
way the tramps around here give each other what they need and all pitch in to
do whatever work needs done, like digging a shitter for several camps to use.
Of course something special, like your kitchen, is your own responsibility.
But how does that primitive culture evolve to today's society?
   "As technology improves an excess of goods comes into being.  Eventually it
grows into a stockpile that is more than needs to be stored against bad years.
This surplus might be used for various things, asumming of course, the consent
of the group.  The consensus might be reached that all should work less and
produce only what is needed for immediate use plus a reasonable backup.  Or,
while continuing to apply enough work-hours to create some excess, excuse some
individuals from some or all of their share of the common load to pursue other
activities like art, spiritual study, trade with other communities or the
further advancement of technology or other knowledge..." Manny interupted with
great skepticism.
   "It would never work!  There's no possible utopia."
   "What I'm trying to show, Manny, is how our system developed from prehistoric
times.  Modern studies of primitive cultures that still existed a few years ago
show that what I just described is pretty much how they lived.  And that type
of cooperative culture was successful for tens of thousands of years before the
6000 or so years we know anything about.  As far as cooperation goes, it's a
matter of how you are compensated.  The fact of cooperation is the same for any
culture.  The system of today depends on our cooperation just like any system
at any time must have cooperation in order to continue.  But let me continue
with what I was saying if you don't think that much cooperation would be too
sinful."
   Manny grimaced playfully and shook his fist as Victor continued.  "So, the
distribution of excess wealth might be dealt with in many ways.  I think the
way our ancestors dealt with it changed the nature of the culture and brought
about today's state of existence.
   "I think, as the society developed, the unscrupulous among us devised means
to gain power and control the excess produce.  They were motivated by the
selfish desire to provide luxury and liesure for themselves even at the expense
of creating misery for the rest of us.   Their object was the excess but they
have long since overdrawn the account.  In time the greedy all but exterminated
the unselfish because they were willing to use any means to achieve their
selfish ends.  They defined their unscrupulous greed as strength and objections
to their amorality as weakness.  With the good relagated to powerlessness we
have achieved a state of moral degeneration that can be identified as the rule
of greed and selfishness.  There may be the same percentage of egalitarianism
in people as ever but that part of us has no power.  The ratio may actually be
declining as rational fear of starvation forces us to lower our standards to
the least common denominator of unscrupulousness!
   "Our society has pretty well reached a minimum of egalitarianism today.  That
corresponds to a maximum of greed and selfishness.  At this low point the misery
has increased so much for so many that pressure must be building to overthrow
the corruption.  What is certain is that periods of social progress are
followed by periods of degeneration and have done so in some sort of cycle for
thousands of years.  It doesn't really matter if we started with a cooperative
culture or an exploitative one.  It doesn't matter if things were always as
they are now and the cycle is only in my imagination.  What matters is many
people are starting to see through the bullshit and when they reach a critical
number all hell will break loose.  And then it will matter whose side your on.
   "But in fact we can see, if we open our eyes that things have been much
better than they are right now and have been so in our own lifetimes.  The
standard of living was higher thirty years ago than it is today.  We can't
predict a cycle based on a single downward slope but then it is not evidence
against one either.  It's simply all the data we have.  There is enough data
to show that many are miserable and a few are fat and that the former are
growing in number while the latter shrink.  Look at all the part time jobs,
temporary contracts, people without health coverage.  See the continuum
between that and homelessness.  See the inflated stock market, not as a sign
of a healthy economy, but as an abstract invention that is used to delude the
middle class by obscuring growing poverty and ultimately to scoop up their
savings in monstrous crashing swoop."
   Paul had walked in and taken a seat as Victor was giving his speech.  His
hostility was not hard to measure as he said, "Jesus said, 'the poor will
always be with us'."
   Victor responded, "He also said, 'What you do unto the least of these you
do unto Me'".
   With growing anger Paul corrected him, "He said 'ye' not 'you'".
   "Well, that's the way it's written in the 1610 translation into English
commanded by King James.  Who knows what the original said?"
   "Are you saying the Bible ain't right?"
   "I'm saying it makes no difference whether it's you or ye.  It is the thought
of the Man that counts."
   "Man, did you say Man?  Jesus was God."
   Victor saw the futility of continuing along this line.  Religion and
nationalism are the stalwart delusions that allowed self regulating slavery
to be instituted in the first place.  Eventually he would need to find a good
way to deal with this bullshit but today he could only change the subject
or walk away before more damage was done.  Paul, as noted earlier, is a liar
and a thief.  He is also more interested in correct appearance, status and
power in the community than in the literal righteousness he expounds.  To
continue on this subject would only lead to a precipitate digression to
argument ad hominum.  "I was talking about the fact that the economy isn't as
good for most of us as it is for a few."
   Paul didn't have to change his tack in the least.  It wasn't the subject
under discussion that interested him.  "I fought for this country and I don't
need to listen to no commie son-of-a-bitch who thinks he's better than
everyone else!"
   Victor, at six foot and 175 is about twice the size of Paul.  "Only a puny
drunken fool would insult someone twice their size..."
   Manny had heard enough.  "Calm down Vic, what do you expect when you 'cast
pearls before swine'.  Paul you should read that Bible of yours and you might
learn something.  But I don't want no fighting here and if you can't behave
you can both leave!"
   Victor felt no need to prove anything to Paul about physical superiority.
But he did think the notion of superior and inferior people was one of the
most basic rationaliztions for the status quo.  It appears in some form in
even the most superstitious of social thought templates.  Even though he has
seen thousands of times and knows its strength today is due to electronic
media, he still can't really grasp the reason that people are willing to
accept human thought inventions, abstractions, in place of a decent life.
That may be understandable in a totalitarian state which limits the expression
of alternative ideas: there would appear to be no alternatives because people
would fear to speak of them openly.  But how is this accomplished in a democracy.
He did grasp Paul's desire to feel personally superior to himself (Victor).
And he understood Paul's emotional use of religious and nationalistic concepts
to attain his ends.  Victor had seen that many times too.  It looks pretty much
the same at all levels of society.  Trying another tack, "We're all in this
together.  We should be on the same side.  All we do is play into their hands
if we let ourselves be divided by religion or nationalism or anything else.  We
need to stick together to try to get a better deal for all of us."
   Paul wasn't about to be put off by anything Victor might say.  "Why can't you
just accept that there are rich and poor?   That's the way it's always been and
that's the way it'll aways be!"
   "Why should I accept anything I don't like.  It offends me and that is enough
reason to try to change it."
   "You can't change the way people are!"
   "Paul, your family were farmers a hundred and fifty years ago, just like mine.
Most people then were either farmers, tradesmen or shopkeepers and such.  There
wasn't much big business and in America there weren't so many big land owners.
People were kinder to one another and cooperated more and for their own good.
They raised barns together and often had common wells and such.  The primary
motivation wasn't greed and selfishness unti the corporations sold us on the
idea that that is what we are.  They did it to rationalize there rape of our
economy.  That is, after they had already tricked us into changing over from
an agrarian to an industrial economy and monopolized the land, and so farming,
in the process."
   But Paul was interested in power; appearance of correctness was the way
to have it.  Actually being right on some point had nothing to do with it.
"There you go again with that commie stuff.  Don't you guys see that he's
the Devil?", he said in an aside to Manny and Jack, deliberately withholding
from Victor, the devil's due.

   In Paul's simple statement, Victor saw all in a flash, a great and horrible
complexity of thought and emotion that spanned generations, back beyond
Joe Macarthy's, Cotton Mather's, Oliver Cromwell's, Elizebeth I's and even
Saint Dominic's witch hunts to the beginning of history.  He saw predudice,
bigotry and self interest colored and recolored time and again by the Social
Thought Templates of the day.  All combined, as they easily do, (the
institutions that steer thought always seem coordinated even when there is some
competition between brands of the common products.  And petty players, like
individual corporations, just tag their message on to one or more of the
current carriers) to bring forth the apex of Paul's wisdom in his terse and
emotionally charged statement.  Note that there is a difference beween wisdom
and intelligence and that wisdom is probably not what you have been taught to
believe.
   Victor's sudden insight had a basis in prior reflections on the mixture of
remembered rationalism and emotional gratification that most people believe to
be methodical thought.  Aristotle was probably correct to the extent that
loyalty to the state and religion was due to the extension of family loyalty.
Of course the father of plutocracy didn't say so directly but rather as part
of a rationalization for the status qou in Greece twenty four hundred years
ago.  Victor doesn't give the old fascist much credence in general but allows
that he did, perhaps inadvertantly, point out how emotion gets blended with
ideology.  Family and community are formed about a social instinct that may be
classified an emotion which aids survival of the individual and the species.
When an idea is coupled with a complex of emotions, including especially fear,
anger and group loyalty (derived from social instinct), it is more easily
instilled in people.  That's basic Behavioral Psychology.
   And then it really hit: the cultural sources of of present misery might be
interesting to study and useful to convince but what is happening right now,
in the world at large and in any given situation, is what is important.  How
the attitudes that guide behavior were formed is ultimately irrelevant.  Their
existance determines how we treat one another moment to moment.  Add all of
everyones moments together and the sum is our world.  It doesn't matter where
it came from.  It doesn't matter if nothing better has ever existed or can
ever exist.  It doesn't matter what anyone intended.  All that matters is are
you content with your existance or do you wish to add your power to the forces
that want change?  When the level of misery rises high enough there will be
sufficient numbers to apply the necessary power and there will be change.  It
won't matter if it is for the better or the worse because those who force that
change will be too bad off to care.  In fact, Victor is already convinced
that his position can get no worse.  He doesn't want prison or death but he
doesn't fear them either.  He can see nothing that looks more intolerable to
him than things as they are.
   In that instant Victor also remembered an evening spent at Paul's camp.
Vic had gone to a food bank in a Black neighborhood that day and brought back
staples which he tried to share with Paul and his partner.  They had invited
him to dinner and he felt obliged to offer them something in return.  They were
happy to accept, at first, then Vic told them where it came from and they
changed their minds and refused the gift.  To start, Victor thought it was
because the food came from the hated government though he knew they used food
stamps.  Then came the racial slurs and Victor earned a sudden chill by
commenting that bigotry was encouraged to keep poor people divided.  Knowing
that Manny and Jack opposed racial bigotry Victor asked Paul, "Why wouldn't
you eat the food I brought to your camp from the food bank at Park and
Silverlake?"
   Paul looked around furtively, like the cornered rat he was shown to be. He
squeeled angrily to Manny and Jack, "he's just like slick Willy, he hides his
devilry with words!"  He looked to Manny for approval but Manny just snorted.
Paul showed his displeasure by stalking off angrily.
   Victor knew he had won a skirmish but that Paul would not concede the war.
Whatever chip had been knocked out of the bulwark of his credability before
Manny and Jack would be repaired with the common cement of social thought
template.  Paul, as warrior or artisan, worked best behind the lines with no
adversary in sight.  Victor didn't stay in any one place long enough to maintain
an initiative like the one he had just taken.  And he didn't have the access
to media that is required to create clones like Paul to hold his advances when
he's not present.  Besides, that requires careful culturing for generations and
Victor is looking for an instant victory.  He's afraid the traditional methods
are not fast enough to prevent unacceptable losses in the form of misery and
death for the growing number of poor.
   Later, back at his tent, I said, "Victor, your tactics were better today.
You seem to be growing a little more skillful.  But can you convince enough
people fast enough and where are you going with this even if you do?"
   "Those are a good questions.  Up until now, even though I knew how difficult
it is to wake anyone to reality, I've still clung to some kind of naive belief
that exposing the truth is all that is required to bring about a change in
people's dysfunctional habits of thought.  And that in turn is all that is
necessary to change the world.  But it will take a lot more.  I used to joke
that we should all vote for conservative politicians if we wanted to bring
about change.  That they would eventually make conditions so intolerable that
the people would rise in arms.  Well the conditions are intolerable as far as
I'm concerned but the people seem to be willing to be led to slaughter like
lambs.  Are we all degenerated to cowardly stupidity or am I over reacting?
Are things not as bad as I think they are?"
   Hearing Victor say that, worried me.  I didn't expect his minor triumph
to raise him to foolish optimism but I also didn't expect it to depress him.
For all his negativity I've never thought of him as depressed.  Maybe a little
Quixotic, even manic.  But not depressed.  But then maybe I'm over reacting
because his mood is not what I anticipated.  "Well Vic, I guess intolerable is
like beauty... in the eye of the beholder.  Manny is retired and Jack is like
an old soldier or prisoner, institutionalized.  Paul is an alcoholic and
however he got to be that way is now beside the point that he is no longer fit
to judge even his own life's conditions.  But why the growing number of people
with part time jobs and no benefits can't see what's in store for them isn't
clear to me either.  I don't think you are over reacting to your situation but
your expectation that the middle class, even those just barely making minimum
payments on their credit cards, will see the handwriting on the wall may be
overly optimistic.  Maybe we need a few more years of conservative domination
in America before people will wake up."
   "Yeah, but if they don't wake up before the house is consumed by the fire
they never will.  There must be a way to spread the alarm that will cut through
the shit those arsonists use to silence it.  But there must be many besides
myself that are already alarmed.
   "You know, it's occured to me that the gang bangers shooting one another
is a subliminal expression of discontent with the system?"
   Oh God, where is he going with this one?  I'm afraid to ask but, "Ok Victor,
I'll bite, what is the connection between crazy kids with guns and corporate
culture?" Actually the connection is pretty obvious and you probably have
already heard it but it won't hurt to reinforce the idea and Victor needs to
say this to lift his spirits.
   "I thought you'd never ask.  It's like this:  kids in poor neighborhoods,
which include most Black and Hispanic kids but some white too,  don't have
much in the way of real opportunities.  A small percentage of them can go to
college or become superstar atheletes and musicians and such but these don't
satisfy the needs of the larger group.  Neither does a lifetime as a McD's
burger flipper.  The service economy really sucks for everyone but mostly for
these kids who seem to bear the brunt of it.  So how do the more spirited
among them react to their dismal prospects?  And don't think they aren't aware
of them.  That mistake, due mostly to pretentions of superiority among the
middle and upper classes (they would be delusions of granduer for lower class
people like me) could be costly in the long run.
   "But I'm digressing.  The reaction to being culled from the American
Dreamers is to seek other ways of gaining material goods.  The conservatives
would like them to accept their rewards in the next world, anywhere but their
world, but, instead, the kids sell drugs and shoot one another over them (and
thier women).  So I guess they need to have their discontent explained to them
so they can direct it in more positive ways.  Anyway, shooting prominent
business men and politicians would likely bring more attention to their
plight than shooting each other.  Either way, if they get caught they go to
prison and their economic problems are over."
   "A very slick solution Victor but tomorrow you teach Client Server
Networking and I don't think that is how you will reach out to the poor and
huddled masses."