Is a "Peaceful Revolution" Possible?

People are losing faith and patience in the ability of their politicians, their government, to effect change--the kind of real, meaningful, We, The People-serving change we all know is so desperately needed. More and more people are convinced that a real revolution--the kind of revolution in which people risk their reputations, their property, freedoms, and rights, the kind of revolution in which people willingly risk their very lives--has become necessary for us to ever see real change. Many believe that such a revolution is imminent--that the mishandling of economic, environmental, and political issues is causing people to wake up, to get angry, to want to "take matters into their own hands."

My 16-year old step-daughter is one of these so convicted. She keeps asking me whether or not revolution can occur without violence or bloodshed. In his book Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken talks about change coming from small, often local, "grassroots" movements and organizations which, multiplied by the thousands, and connected around the planet via the Internet, he believes could be the (inevitable) means to such a "peaceful revolution." What do you think?

Come on, People! N1H1 is a Small Thing!

Come on, people! Let’s put some perspective on this over-blown, super-hyped N1H1 thing! Just look at some of these statistics I’ve come across recently and you may get my point.

• One in three Americans will contract cancer—a disease (under any name) that was almost unheard of at the time of this country’s founding.
• One in two children in this country are at all kinds of health risks (heart disease, diabetes, immune system compromise, etc.) because of obesity.
• One in three children in Michigan have type 2 diabetes—a far greater and costlier health risk than a couple weeks of aches and pains.
• One in eight children in Michigan will depend on food stamps this year.
• The vast majority of the food being pushed upon us is neither tested for health safety nor considered for true nutritive value.
• Monocrop cultures and petroleum-based soil and plant treatments have depleted the health of our soil to such a degree that the USDA says that the nutritive values (inherent vitamin and mineral content) of today’s fresh produce has one third of the value that they had in the 1950s.
• The majority of Americans experiencing overwhelming debt, home foreclosures, or who are filing for bankruptcy, do so because of insurmountable health care bills.
• One in 11 Americans will serve jail time!
• The average American will be involved in a lawsuit four times during his/her lifespan.
• 70% of the world’s lawyers are in the United States (which has 5% of the world’s population)!
• From 1979 to present the average household income of Americans has risen only 10% while the cost of a college education has gone up 230%!

When I graduated from Kalamazoo College in 1980 it was the most expensive school in Michigan at $7,200 per year. (It began at $4,200 in my freshman year in 1976.) (Thank you, Dad!) Now you can pay $40,419 per year (a 516% increase) so that you can (hopefully) secure an entry-level job at a salary of (hopefully) 10% more than thirty years ago. Great! Get into debt early so you are forever beholden to financial institutions and forever motivated by the fear of being foreclosed upon or of losing one’s job. Work 70 to 80 hours a week for a job for which you are salaried for 40 hours because if you don’t, “someone else will”—or because, if you sacrifice your job, you’ll risk financial disaster. Or, better yet, forego the “higher education” route, enter the workforce at age 16 or 18, only to find yourself held captive by a modern system of servitude which provides the lowest wages and worst benefits in the “developed” world.

Corporations have usurped the rights intended for We, the People; with their enormously deep pockets they have been able to elbow their way through the court and legislative systems to acquire the same “personhood” status that you and I share. Yet, corporations aren’t born, they don’t die (check the obituaries!), they aren’t citizens, they can’t vote or serve prison time or serve in the military, they don’t have to comply with compulsory school laws, they can’t get sick or suffer mental or physical trauma and disability, you can’t call one up and have a conversation with s/he/it; they aren’t human! And yet, corporations have obtained legal access to all of the rights and benefits entitled to us living, breathing humans under the Constitution and Bill of Rights. In fact, at present, they own and run our government, this country. (Just ask the well-intentioned, people-oriented Barack Obama.) Corporate lobbyists write and pay for the laws made in this country, their full-time staffs of lawyers and unlimited funds can and will bankrupt any individual (“competitor”) by dragging them through the legal system before any justice can ever be meted, and the executive branch is staffed with former (or current??) corporate executives who create, institute and execute policies that benefit who? Corporations! And notice how our presidents have enjoyed creating a state of perpetual war because it allows them the “right” to trump human rights, civil liberties, and individual constitutional rights, so that they can make a ton of money for themselves and their friends! Our country is messed up! This is not the country our Founding Fathers envisioned!

Corporations refuse to take responsibility for the health risks their polluting habits are presenting to our planet—to all life on this beautiful little planet—but they’ll whip up any and every advertising or scare campaign to get us to buy, buy, buy their useless, senseless, untested, and often (though debatably) harmful products and/or services. And they’ve learned this amazing trick: If they help write the laws in this country, they can create an officially authorized framework that supports and protects their “freedoms” while at the same time manages to allow them to be free from liability, blame, and responsibility for any harm that their products, policies, or services might cause—whether intentionally or unintentionally. A vaccination may kill or drastically alter your child’s life but it is illegal to sue a pharmaceutical company for damages or criminal charges. A corporation can go bankrupt, its executives go untouched and actually make money from the action, and yet the employee that retired after 35 years of dedicated labor can be left high and dry without pension or other contractually-promised retirement benefits.

The gap between the rich and the poor has been widening rapidly since 1980; the middle class is disappearing as more and more workers are falling below poverty lines. The average CEO in America makes more than 411 times as much as the average worker. Does this mean that the average CEO is 411 times smarter than the average worker? Does s/he work 411 times as hard as the average worker? Of course not! So, then, what makes the average CEO 411 times as valuable as the hourly-wage earning employee?

Over and over again our Founding Fathers saw the future pitfalls our country could take and, indeed, has taken: The dangers of having a standing army, the evils of a National Banking system, the dangers to democratic freedoms of overly rich, overly propertied families (an aristocracy), the dangers of allowing religions to infiltrate and/or mix with government, and, their number one fear: the power and influence of corporations and their monopolies.

My point is: N1H1 is such a small thing—a mosquito bite compared to the cancers eating away at industrialized “civilization.” So, get a grip and put your energy into the real issues: the causes underlying our disease-ridden society need our attention.

The Accepted Practices of Capitalism

(There can be no question or argument as to whether or not the following practices are in fact “accepted” because: 1) they occur every single day, 2) we allow them to go unquestioned, unchallenged, and unopposed, and 3) we pass them on—we teach them to our children.)

Murder

Rape

Pillage

Plunder

Piracy

Conquest

Slavery and enslavement

Genocide

Imperialism

Greed

Avarice

Hoarding

Force

Coercion

Domination

Lying

Deceit and deception

Withholding and concealment

Dishonesty

Misinformation

Inconsistent, pragmatic morality (amorality)

Self-serving morality

Selfishness

Ruthlessness

Denial

Dissociation

Callousness

Arrogance

Prejudice

Bias

Competitiveness/competition

Jingoism

Separation

Elitism

(Please feel free to add any that I have forgotten)

Michael Moore Is Getting Closer to the Truth

Michael Moore's latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story, is his best effort to date. He continues to zero in on the core issues affecting America's decay and demise. I feel that Michael is doing a much better job at flowing back and forth from factual to anecdotal information. I am also always impressed by the before-unknown information he manages to bring to light. For example: corporations' "dead peasants" life insurance policies taken out on low level workers, without the knowledge of the insured, with benefits going solely, and quietly, to the corporations; the number (and names) of corporate banking executives (especially from Goldman Sachs) shuttling back and forth in and out of high level policy-affecting government offices; the friendly, modern, and open Cuban health care system willing to see and treat American heros that have been rejected by our own health care system; the bin Laden family members being whisked away--the only planes/passengers allowed to fly out of the U.S.--after the events of September 11, 2001; the 2001 Bush inaugural motorcade riot that was so effectively covered-up; the U.S.-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-world crime and prison statistics; etc. I am impressed with this film most of all for its willingness to take on and expose the abuses and corruption of the most powerful corporations and institution in the world: the banking financial center of Wall Street. That governments now serve as mere puppets to corporate interests is well established in the film but more time could certainly be devoted to it. Perhaps in his next film.

My admiration, enthusiasm, and inspiration, however, were dashed in the last scene of the film. In it, Michael is bravely wrapping a yellow and black "crime scene" ribbon around a building (assumedly on Wall Street). Over the scene his narration is waxing about his dream of a return to democracy. Then he asks for our help. I was crushed to realized that he will probably never get that help because the vast majority of Americans are stifled by the fear that comes with their own enslavement to the capitalist system. Their debt, job insecurity, health care expenses, retirement worries, and diminishing constitutional rights will prevent them from rising to the occasion (to help fight for a return to democracy). Plus, our exceedingly effective education system and corporate media mill has masterfully succeeded in numbing, dumbing, and distracting us from truth and reality. Sorry, Michael! Too many robot sheep out here to help you on your crusade. BUT: We wish you luck!

Presenting Douglas Rushkoff's "Life, Inc."

Please find the article from Douglas Rushkoff's book, Life, Inc., below.

Your Money or Your Life: A Lesson on the Front Stoop

I got mugged on Christmas Eve.

I was in front of my Brooklyn apartment house taking out the trash when a man pulled a gun and told me to empty my pockets. I gave him my money, wallet, and cell phone. But then--remembering something I'd seen in a movie about a hostage negotiator--I begged him to let me keep my medical insurance card. If I could humanize myself in his perception, I figured, he'd be less likely to kill me.

He accepted my argument about how hard it would be for me to get "care" without it, and handed me back the card. Now it was us two against the establishment, and we made something of a deal: in exchange for his mercy, I wasn't to report him--even though I had plainly seen his face. I agreed, and he ran off down the street. I foolishly but steadfastly stood by my side of the bargain, however coerced it may have been, for a few hours. As if I could have actually entered into a binding contract at gunpoint.

In the meantime, I posted a note about my strange and frightening experience to the Park Slope Parents list--a rather crunchy Internet community of moms, food co-op members, and other leftie types ded- icated to the health and well- being of their families and their decidedly progressive, gentrifying neighborhood. It seemed the responsible thing to do, and I suppose I also expected some expression of sympathy and support.

Amazingly, the very first two emails I received were from people angry that I had posted the name of the street on which the crime had occurred. Didn't I realize that this publicity could adversely affect all of our property values? The "sellers' market" was already difficult enough! With a famous actor reportedly leaving the area for Manhattan, does Brooklyn's real estate market need more bad press? And this was beforethe real estate crash.

I was stunned. Had it really come to this? Did people care more about the market value of their neighborhood than what was actually taking place within it? Besides, it didn't even make good business sense to bury the issue. In the long run, an open and honest conversation about crime and how to prevent it should make the neighborhood safer. Property values would go up in the end, not down. So these homeowners were more concerned about the immediate liquidity of their town houses than their long-term asset value -- not to mention the actual experience of living in them. And these were among the wealthiest people in New York, who shouldn't have to be worrying about such things. What had happened to make them behave this way?

(...post continues after the jump)

It stopped me cold, and forced me to reassess my own long-held desire to elevate myself from renter to owner. I stopped to think-- which, in the midst of an irrational real-estate craze, may not have been the safest thing to do. Why, I wondered aloud on my blog, was I struggling to make $4,500-per-month rent on a two- bedroom, fourth- floor walk-up in this supposedly "hip" section of Brooklyn, when I could just as easily get mugged somewhere else for a lot less per month? Was my willingness to participate in this runaway market part of the problem?

The detectives who took my report drove the point home. One of them drew a circle on a map of Brooklyn. "Inside this circle is where the rich white people from Manhattan are moving. That's the target area. Hunting ground. Think about it from your mugger's point of view: quiet, tree-lined streets of row houses, each worth a million or two, and inhabited by the rich people who displaced your family. Now, you live in or around the projects just outside the circle. Where would you go to mug someone?"

Back on the World Wide Web, a friend of mine--another Park Slope writer--made an open appeal for my family to stay in Brooklyn. He saw "the Slope" as a mixed-use neighborhood now reaching the "peak of livability" that the legendary urban anthropologist Jane Jacobs idealized. He explained how all great neighborhoods go through the same basic process: Some artists move into the only area they can afford--a poor area with nothing to speak of. Eventually, there are enough of them to open a gallery. People start coming to the gallery in the evenings, creating demand for a coffeehouse nearby, and so on. Slowly but surely, an artsy store or two and a clique of hipsters "pioneer" the neighborhood until there's significant sidewalk activity late into the night, making it safer for successive waves of incoming businesses and residents.

Of course, after the city's newspaper "discovers" the new trendy neighborhood, the artists are joined and eventually replaced by increasingly wealthy but decidedly less hip young professionals, lawyers, and businesspeople--but hopefully not so many that the district completely loses its "flavor." Investment increases, the district grows bigger, and everyone is happier and wealthier.

Still, what happens to the people who lived there from the beginning--the ones whom the police detective was talking about? The "natives"? This process of gentrification does not occur ex nihilo.

No, when property values go up, so do the rents, displacing anyone whose monthly living charges aren't regulated by the government. The residents of the neighborhood do not actually participate in the renaissance, because they are not owners. They move to outlying areas. Sure, their kids still go to John Jay High School in the middle of Park Slope. But none of Park Slope's own wealthy residents send their kids there.

Our online conversation was picked up by New York magazine in a column entitled "Are the Writers Leaving Brooklyn?" The article fo- cused entirely on the way a crime against an author could threaten the Brooklyn real- estate bubble. National Public Radio called to interview me about the story--not the mugging itself, but whether I would leave Brooklyn over it, and if doing so publicly might not be irresponsibly hurting other people's property values. A week or two of blog insanity later, a second New York piece asked why we should even care about whether the writers are leaving Brooklyn--seemingly oblivious of the fact that this was the very same column space that told us to care in the first place.

It was an interesting fifteen minutes. What was going on had less to do with crime or authors, though, than it did with a market in its final, most vaporous phase. I simply couldn't afford to buy in--and getting mugged freed me from the hype treadmill for long enough to accept it.

Or, more accurately, it's not that I couldn't afford it so much as that I wouldn't afford it. There were mortgage brokers willing to lend me the other 90 percent of the money I'd need to purchase a home on the block where I was renting. "We can get you in," they'd say. And at that moment in real estate history, putting even 10 percent down would have made me a very qualified buyer. "What about when the mortgage readjusts?" I remember asking. "Then you refinance at a better rate," they assured me. Of course, that would be happening just about the same time Park Slope's artificially low property- tax rate (an exemption secured by real- estate developers) would be raised to the levels of the poorer areas of the borough. "Don't worry. Everyone with your financials is doing it," one broker explained with a wink. "And the banks aren't going to just let everyone lose their homes, now, are they?"

As long as people refused to look at the real social and financial costs, the market could keep going up--buoyed in part by the bonuses paid to investment bankers whose job it was to promote all this asset inflation in the first place. Heck, we were restoring a historic borough to its former glory. All we had to do was avoid the uncomfortable truth that we were busy converting what were being used as multifamily dwellings by poor black and Hispanic people back into stately town houses for use by rich white ones. And we had to overlook that this frenzy of real- estate activity was operating on borrowed time and, more significantly, borrowed money.

In such a climate, calling attention to any of this was the real crime, and the reason that the first reaction of those participating in a speculative bubble was to silence the messenger. It's just business. The reality was that we were pushing an increasingly hostile population from their homes, colonizing their neighborhoods, and then justifying it all with metrics such as increased business activity, reduced (reported) crime rates, and--most important--higher real- estate prices. How can one argue against making a neighborhood, well, better?

As my writer friend eloquently explained on his blog, the neighborhood was now, by most measures, safer. It was once again possible to sit on one's stoop with the kids and eat frozen Italian ices on a balmy summer night. One could walk through Prospect Park on any Sunday afternoon and see a black family barbecuing here, a Puerto Rican group there, and an Irish group over there. Compared with most parts of the world, that's pretty civil, no?

Romantic as it sounds, that's not integration at all, but co-location. Epcot- style détente. The Brooklyn being described here has almost nothing to do with the one our grandparents might have inhabited. It is rather an expensive and painstakingly re-created simulation of a "brownstone Brooklyn" that never actually existed. If people once sat on their stoops eating ices on summer nights it was because they had no other choice--there was no air- conditioning and no TV. Everyone could afford to sit around, so everyone did. And the fact that the denizens of neighboring communities complete the illusion of multiculturalism by using the same park only means that these folks are willing to barbecue next to each other--not with each other. They all still go home to different corners of the borough. My writer friend's kids go off the next morning to their private school, those other kids to public. Not exactly neighbors.

Besides, the rows of brownstones in the Slope aren't really made of brown stone. They've been covered with a substance more akin to stucco--a thick paint used to create the illusion of brown stones set atop one another. A façade's façade. As any brownstone owner soon learns, the underlying cinder blocks can be hidden for only so long be- fore a costly "renovation" must be undertaken to cover them up again.

Likewise, wealth, media, and metrics can insulate colonizers from the reality of their situation for only so long. Eventually, parents who push their toddlers around in thousand- dollar strollers, whose lifestyles and values have been reinforced by a multibillion-dollar industry dedicated to hip child- rearing, get pelted with stones by kids from the "projects." (Rest assured--the person who reported this recurring episode at a gentrified Brooklyn playground met with his share of on- line derision, as well.)

Like Californians surprised when a wildfire or coyote disrupts the "natural" lifestyle they imagined they'd enjoy out in the country, we "pioneer," "colonize," and "gentrify" at our peril, utterly oblivious to the social costs of our expansion until one comes back to bite us in the ass--or mug us on the stoop. And while it's easy to blame the larger institutions and social trends leading us into these traps, our own choices and behaviors--however influenced--are ultimately responsible for whatever befalls us.

Park Slope, Brooklyn, is just a microcosm of the slippery slope upon which so many of us are finding ourselves these days. We live in a landscape tilted toward a set of behaviors and a way of making choices that go against our own better judgment, as well as our collective self- interest. Instead of collaborating with each other to ensure the best prospects for us all, we pursue short- term advantages over seemingly fixed resources through which we can compete more effectively against one another. In short, instead of acting like people, we act like corporations. When faced with a local mugging, the community of Park Slope first thought to protect its brand instead of its people.

The financial meltdown may not be punishment for our sins, but it is at least in part the result of our widespread obsession with financial value over values of any other sort. We disconnected ourselves from what matters to us, and grew dependent on a business scheme that was never intended to serve us as people. But by adopting the ethos of this speculative, abstract economic model as our own, we have disabled the mechanisms through which we might address and correct the collapse of the real economy operating alongside it.

Even now, as we attempt to dig ourselves out of a financial mess caused in large part by this very mentality and behavior, we turn to the corporate sphere, its central banks, and shortsighted metrics to gauge our progress back to health. It's as if we believe we'll find the answer in the stream of trades and futures on one of the cable- TV finance channels instead of out in the physical world. Our real investment in the fabric of our neighborhoods and our quality of life takes a backseat to asking prices for houses like our own in the newspaper's misnamed "real estate" section. We look to the Dow Jones average as if it were the one true vital sign of our society's health, and the exchange rate of our currency as a measure of our wealth as a nation or worth as a people.

This, in turn, only distracts us further from the real- world ideas and activities through which we might actually re-create some value ourselves. Instead of fixing the problem, and reclaiming our ability to generate wealth directly with one another, we seek to prop up institutions whose very purpose remains to usurp this ability from us. We try to repair our economy by bolstering the same institutions that sapped it. In the very best years, corporatism worked by extracting value from the periphery and redirecting it to the center--away from people and toward corporate monopolies. Now, even though that wellspring of prosperity has run dry, we continue to dig deeper into the ground for resources to keep the errant system running.

So as our corporations crumble, taking our jobs with them, we bail them out to preserve our prospects for employment--knowing full well that their business models are unsustainable. As banks' credit schemes fail, we authorize our treasuries to print more money on their behalf, at our own expense and that of our children. We then get to borrow this money back from them, at interest. We know of no other way. Having for too long outsourced our own savings and investing to Wall Street, we are clueless about how to invest in the real world of people and things. We identify with the plight of abstract corporations more than that of flesh-and-blood human beings. We engage with corporations as role models and saviors, while we engage with our fellow humans as competitors to be beaten or resources to be exploited.

Indeed, the now- stalled gentrification of Brooklyn had a good deal in common with colonial exploitation. Of course, the whole thing was done with more circumspection, with more tact. The borough's gentrifiers steered away from explicitly racist justifications for their actions, but nevertheless demonstrated the colonizer's underlying agenda: instead of "chartered corporations" pioneering and subjugating an uncharted region of the world, it was hipsters, entrepreneurs, and real- estate speculators subjugating an undesirable neighborhood.

The local economy--at least as measured in gross product--boomed, but the indigenous population simply became servants (grocery cashiers and nannies) to the new residents.

And like the expansion of colonial empires, this pursuit of home ownership was perpetuated by a pioneer spirit of progress and personal freedom. The ideal of home ownership was the fruit of a public- relations strategy crafted after World War II--corporate and government leaders alike believed that home owners would have more of a stake in an expanding economy and greater allegiance to free- market values than renters. Functionally, though, it led to a self- perpetuating cycle: The more that wealthier white people retreated to the enclaves prepared for them, the poorer the areas they were leaving became, and the more justified they felt in leaving. While the first real wave of "white flight" was from the cities to the suburbs, the more recent, camouflaged version has been from the suburbs back into the expensive cities.

Of course, these upper- middle- class migrants were themselves the targets of the mortgage industry, whose clever lending instruments mirror World Bank policies for their exploitative potential. The World Bank's loans come with "open markets" policies attached that ultimately surrender indebted nations and their resources to the con- trol of distant corporations. The mortgage banker, likewise, kindly provides instruments that get a person into a home, then disappears when the rates rise through the roof, having packaged and sold off the borrower's ballooning obligation to the highest bidder.

The benefits to society are pure mythology. Whether it's Brooklynites convinced they are promoting multiculturalism or corporations intent on extending the benefits of the free market to all the world's souls, neither activity leads to broader participation in the expansion of wealth--even when they're working as they're supposed to. Contrary to most economists' expectations, both local and global speculation only exacerbate wealth divisions. Wealthy parents send their kids to private schools and let the public ones decay, while wealthy nations export their environmental waste to the Third World or, better, simply keep their factories there to begin with--and keep their image at home as green as AstroTurf.

People I respect--my own mentors and teachers--tell me that this is just the way things are. This is the real world of adults--not so very far removed, we must remember, from the days when a neighboring tribe might just wipe you out--killing your men with clubs and taking your women. Be thankful for the civility we've got, keep your head down, and try not to think too much about it. These cycles are built into the economy; eventually, the markets will recover and things will get back to normal--and normal isn't so bad, really, if you look around the world at the way other people are living. And you shouldn't even feel so guilty about that--after all, Google is doing some good things and Bill Gates is giving a lot of money to kids in Africa.

Somehow, though, for many of us, that's not enough. We are fast approaching a societal norm where we--as nations, organizations, and individuals--engage in behaviors that are destructive to our own and everyone else's welfare. The only corporate violations worth punish- ing anymore are those against the shareholders. The "criminal mind" is now defined as anyone who breaks laws for a reason other than money. The status quo is selfishness, and the toxically wealthy are our new heroes because only they seem capable of fully insulating them- selves from the effects of their own actions.

Every day, we negotiate the slope to the best of our ability. Still, we fail to measure up to the people we'd like to be, and succumb to the tilt of the landscape.

Jennifer has lived in the same town in central Minnesota her whole life. This year, diagnosed with a form of lupus, she began purchasing medication through Wal-Mart instead of through Marcus, her local druggist--who also happens to be her neighbor. Prescription drugs aren't on her health plan, and this is just an economic necessity.

Why can't the druggist cut his neighbor a break? He's trying, but he's selling at a mere hair above cost as it is. He just took out a loan against the business to make expenses and his increased rent. The downtown area he's located in has been slated for redevelopment, and only corporate chain stores appear to have deep enough pockets to pay for storefront leases. It sounded like a good idea when Marcus supported it at the public hearing--but the description in the pamphlet prepared by the real estate developer (complete with a section on how to compete more effectively with "big box" stores like Wal- Mart) hasn't conformed to reality.

Marcus's landlord doesn't really have any choice in the matter. He underwent costly renovations to conform to the new downtown building code, and needs to pass those on to the businesses renting from him. He took out a mortgage, too, which is slated to reset in just a couple of months. If he doesn't collect higher rents, he won't make payments.

Jennifer stopped going to PTA meetings because she's embarrassed to look Marcus in the face. As their friendship declines, so does her guilt about helping put him out of business.

Across the country in New Jersey, Carla, a telephone associate for one of the top three HMO plans in the United States, talks to people like Jennifer every day. Carla is paid a salary as well as a monthly bonus based on the number of claims she can "retire" without payment. Without resorting to fraud, Carla is supposed to discourage false claims by making all claims harder to register, in general. That's how Carla's supervisor explained it to her when she asked, point- blank, if she was supposed to mislead customers. She feels bad about it, but Carla is now the principal breadwinner in her family, her husband having lost a lot of his contracting work to the stalled market for new homes. And, in the end, she is preventing fraud. How does Carla sleep at night, knowing that she has spent her day persuading people to pay for services for which they are actually covered? After seeing a commercial on TV, she switched from Ambien to Lunesta.

One of the guys working on that very ad campaign, an old co-worker of mine, ended up specializing in health- care advertising because nobody was hiring in the environmental area back in the '90s. Besides, he told me, only half kidding, "at least medical advertising puts the consumer in charge of her own health care." He's conflicted about pushing drugs on TV because he knows full well that these ads encourage patients to pressure doctors to write prescriptions that go against their better judgment. Still, Tom makes up for any compromise of his values at work with a staunch advocacy of good values at home. He recycles paper, glass, and metal, brought his kids to see An Inconvenient Truth, and even uses a compost heap in the backyard for household waste. Last year, though, he finally broke down and bought an SUV. Why? "Everybody else on the highway is driving them," he explained. "It's an automotive arms race." If he stayed in his Civic, he'd be putting them all at risk. "You see the way those people drive? I'm scared for my family." As penance, at least until gas prices went up, he began purchasing a few "carbon offsets"--a way of donating money to environmental companies in compensation for one's own excess carbon emissions.

In a similar balancing act, a self- described "holistic" parent in Manhattan spares her son the risks she associates with vaccinations for childhood diseases. "We still don't know what's in them," she says, "and if everyone else is vaccinated he won't catch these things, any- way." She understands that the vaccines required for incoming school pupils are really meant to quell epidemics; they are more for the health of the "herd" than for any individual child. She also believes that mandatory vaccinations are more a result of pharmaceutical in- dustry lobbying than any comprehensive medical studies. In order to meet the "philosophical exemption" requirements demanded by the state, she managed to extract a letter from her rabbi. Meanwhile, in an unacknowledged quid pro quo, she installed a phone line in the rabbi's name in the basement of her town house; he uses the bill to falsify res- idence records and send his sons to the well- rated public elementary school in her high- rent district instead of the 90 percent minority school in his own. At least he can say he's kept them in "the public system."

Incapable of securing a legal or illegal zoning variance of this sort, a college friend of mine, now a state school administrator in Brighton, En gland, just made what he calls "the hardest decision of my life," to send his own kids to a private Catholic day school. He doesn't even particularly want his kids to be indoctrinated into Catholicism, but it's the only alternative to the eroding government school he can af- ford. He knows his withdrawal from public education only removes three more "good kids" and one potentially active parent from the system, but doesn't want his children to be "sacrificed on the altar" of his good intentions.

So it's not just a case of hip, hypergentrified Brooklynites succumb- ing to market psychology, but people of all social classes making choices that go against their better judgment because they believe it's really the only sensible way to act under the circumstances. It's as if the world itself were tilted, pushing us toward self- interested, short- term decisions, made more in the manner of corporate share- holders than members of a society. The more decisions we make in this way, the more we contribute to the very conditions leading to this awfully sloped landscape. In a dehumanizing and self-denying cycle, we make too many choices that--all things being equal--we'd prefer not to make.

But all things are not equal. These choices are not even occur- ring in the real world. They are the false choices of an artificial landscape--one in which our decision-making is as coerced as that of a person getting mugged. Only we've forgotten that our choices are being made under painstakingly manufactured duress. We think this is just the way things are. The price of doing business. Since when is life determined by that axiom?

Unquestionably but seemingly inexplicably, we have come to oper- ate in a world where the market and its logic have insinuated them- selves into every area of our lives. From erection to conception, school admission to finding a spouse, there are products and professionals to fill in where family and community have failed us. Commercials en- treat us to think and care for ourselves, but to do so by choosing a corporation through which to exercise all this autonomy. Sometimes it feels as if there's just not enough air in the room--as if there were a corporate agenda guiding all human activity. At a moment's notice, any dinner party can slide invisibly into a stock pro- motion, a networking event, or an impromptu consultation--let me pick your brain. Is this why I was invited in the first place? Through sponsored word- of-mouth known as "buzz marketing," our personal social interactions become the promotional opportunities through which brands strive to be cults and religions strive to become brands.

It goes deeper than that second Starbucks opening on the same town's Main Street or the radio ads for McDonald's playing through what used to be emergency speakers in our public school buses. It's not a matter of how early Christmas ads start each year, how many people get trampled at Black Friday sales, or even the news report blaming the fate of the entire economy on consumers' slow holiday spending. It's more a matter of not being able to tell the difference between the ads and the content at all. It's as if both were designed to be that way. The line between fiction and reality, friend and marketer, community and shopping center, has gotten blurred. Was that a news report, reality TV, or a sponsored segment?

This fundamental blurring of real life with its commercial counterpart is not a mere question of aesthetics, however much we may dislike mini- malls and superstores. It's more of a nagging sense that something has gone awry--something even more fundamentally wrong than the credit crisis and its aftermath--yet we're too immersed in its effects to do anything about it, or even to see it. We are deep in the thrall of a system that no one really likes, no one remembers asking for, yet no one can escape. It just is. And as it begins to collapse around us, we work to prop it up by any means necessary, so incapable are we of imagining an alternative. The minute it seems as if we can put our finger on what's happening to us or how it came to be this way, the insight disappears, drowned out by the more immediately pressing demands by everyone and everything on our attention.

What did they just say? What does that mean for my retirement account? Wait--my phone is vibrating.

Can the hermetically sealed food court in which we now subsist even be beheld from within? Perhaps not in its totality--but its development can be chronicled, and its effects can be parsed and understood. Just as we once evolved from subjects into citizens, we have now devolved from citizens into consumers. Our communities have been reduced to affinity groups, and any vestige of civic engagement or neighborly goodwill has been replaced by self- interested goals manufactured for us by our corporations and their PR firms. We've surrendered true participation for the myth of consumer choice or, even more pathetically, that of shareholder rights.

That's why it has become fashionable, cathartic, and to some extent useful for the defenders of civil society to rail against the corporations that seem to have conquered our civilization. As searing new books and documentaries about the crimes of corporations show us, the corporation is itself a sociopathic entity, created for the purpose of generating wealth and expanding its reach by any means necessary. A corporation has no use for ethics, except for their potential impact on public relations and brand image. In fact, as many on the side of the environment, labor, and the Left like to point out, corporate managers can be sued for taking any action, however ethical, if it compromises their ultimate fiduciary responsibility to share price.

As corporations gain ever more control over our economy, government, and culture, it is only natural for us to blame them for the helplessness we now feel over the direction of our personal and collective destinies. But it is both too easy and utterly futile to point the finger of blame at corporations or the robber barons at their helms--not even those handcuffed CEOs gracing the cover of the business section. Not even mortgage brokers, credit- card executives, or the Fed. This state of affairs isn't being entirely orchestrated from the top of a glass building by an élite group of bankers and businessmen, however much everyone would like to think so--themselves included. And while the growth of corporations and a preponderance of corporate activity have allowed them to permeate most every aspect of our awareness and activity, these entities are not solely responsible for the predicament in which we have found ourselves.

Rather, it is corporatism itself: a logic we have internalized into our very being, a lens through which we view the world around us, and an ethos with which we justify our behaviors. Making matters worse, we accept its dominance over us as preexisting--as a given circumstance of the human condition. It just is.

But it isn't.

Corporatism didn't evolve naturally. The landscape on which we are living--the operating system on which we are now running our social software--was invented by people, sold to us as a better way of life, supported by myths, and ultimately allowed to develop into a self- sustaining reality. It is a map that has replaced the territory.

Its basic laws were set in motion as far back as the Renaissance; it was accelerated by the Industrial Age; and it was sold to us as a better way of life by a determined generation of corporate leaders who believed they had our best interests at heart and who ultimately succeeded in their dream of controlling the masses from above.

We have succumbed to an ideology that has the same intellectual underpinnings and assumptions about human nature as--dare we say it--mid- twentieth-century fascism. Given how the word has been misapplied to everyone from police officers to communists, we might best refrain from resorting to what has become a feature of cheap polemic. But in this case it's accurate, and that we're forced to dance around this "F word" today would certainly have pleased Goebbels greatly.

The current situation resembles the managed capitalism of Mussolini's Italy, in particular. It shares a common intellectual heritage (in disappointed progressives who wanted to order society on a scientific understanding of human nature), the same political alliance (the collaboration of the state and the corporate sector), and some of the same techniques for securing consent (through public relations and propaganda). Above all, it shares with fascism the same deep suspicion of free humans.

And, as with any absolutist narrative, calling attention to the inherent injustice and destructiveness of the system is understood as an attempt to undermine our collective welfare. The whistleblower is worse than just a spoilsport; he is an enemy of the people.

Unlike Europe's fascist dictatorships, this state of affairs came about rather bloodlessly--at least on the domestic front. Indeed, the real lesson of the twentieth century is that the battle for total social control would be waged and won not through war and overt repression, but through culture and commerce. Instead of depending on a paternal dictator or nationalist ideology, today's system of control depends on a society fastidiously cultivated to see the corporation and its logic as central to its welfare, value, and very identity.

That's why it's no longer Big Brother who should frighten us-- however much corporate lobbies still seek to vilify anything to do with government beyond their own bailouts. Sure, democracy may be the quaint artifact of an earlier era, but what has taken its place? Suspension of habeas corpus, surveillance of citizens, and the occasional repression of voting notwithstanding, this mess is not the fault of a particular administration or political party, but of a culture, economy, and belief system that places market priorities above life itself. It's not the fault of a government or a corporation, the news media or the entertainment industry, but the merging of all these entities into a single, highly centralized authority with the ability to write laws, issue money, and promote its expansion into our world.

Then, in a last cynical surrender to the logic of corporatism, we assume the posture and behaviors of corporations in the hope of restoring our lost agency and security. But the vehicles to which we gain access in this way are always just retail facsimiles of the real ones. Instead of becoming true landowners we become mortgage holders. Instead of guiding corporate activity we become shareholders. Instead of directing the shape of public discourse we pay to blog. We can't compete against corporations on a playing field that was created for their benefit alone.

This is the landscape of corporatism: a world not merely dominated by corporations, but one inhabited by people who have internalized corporate values as our own. And even now that corporations appear to be waning in their power, they are dragging us down with them; we seem utterly incapable of lifting ourselves out of their de- pression.

We need to understand how this happened--how we came to live for and through a business scheme. We must recount the story of how life itself became corporatized, and figure out what --if anything-- we are to do about it.

While we will find characters to blame for one thing or another, most of corporatism's architects have long since left the building-- and even they were usually acting with only their immediate, short-term profits in mind. Our object instead should be to understand the process by which we were disconnected from the real world and why we remain disconnected from it. This is our best hope of regaining some relationship with terra firma again. Like recovering cult victims, we have less to gain from blaming our seducers than from understanding our own participation in building and maintaining a corporatist society. Only then can we begin dismantling and replacing it with something more livable and sustainable.

AN AWARENESS TEST: So You Think You're Not a Robot?

WARNING: This blog entry may be difficult to digest. If you choose to read it, it could shake your world a little. Be sure to keep in mind that I am not sharing anything that, at some level, you do not already know. My intention is but to re-mind you that you have a choice. At all times. In every moment. The lessons is:  We are all robots.

 

We are all robots. That is, we are, none of us, behaving with the natural, God-given rights and freedoms with which we were born. We have all been conditioned to think, act, and believe in “norms” which are not natural to our human beingness. We are all the products of a prescribed, programmed “curriculum” which tries to create submissive, self-alienated, externally-motivated automatons.

            The most dehumanizing part of our robotic condition is the ignorance:  we are programmed to be unaware of our circumstances, of our choices, numbed by constant and unrelenting pressures into accepting our situation. If you wish to test this position, please take the following test.

 

 

SO YOU THINK YOU’RE NOT A ROBOT?

An Test of Awareness and Perception

 

Were you born speaking a language? No, you learned it in order to be able to communicate and interact with others, but you also learned it in order to fit in.

Do you own or drive a car? Is this the result of a biological survival need or is it a learned behavior?

Do you own a computer?

Do you live in a house or apartment?

Do you have a television?

Do you subscribe to cable?

Do you own an iPod?

Do you own a cell phone?

Do you use the Internet?

Do you own/use a dishwasher?

Do you own/use a dryer?

Do you own/use a microwave?

 

Do you use money?

Did you pay taxes last year?

Do you use banks?

Do you own any credit cards?

Do you wear clothes?

Do you buy new clothes?

Do you buy clothes seasonally?

Do you own/use more than one pair of shoes?

Do you take more than one shower per week?

Do you shampoo your hair more than once per week?

Do your clothes get laundered after one wearing?

Do you wear makeup?

Do you color your hair?

Do you shave your legs or armpits?

 

Do you visit a doctor annually?

Do you visit a dentist every six to nine months?

Do you believe a doctor necessary for the safe delivery of a baby?

Did you have your children immunized?

Do you use fluoridated toothpaste?

Do you subscribe to a trash pickup service?

Have you ever eaten at a “fast food” restaurant?

Have you ever eaten at a sit down restaurant?

Do you know the source and trail of your daily food?

Do you eat popcorn when you watch movies?

Have you watched more than one Super Bowl in your lifetime?

 

Do you call yourself “American”? Is this the result of a biological survival need or is it a learned behavior?

Do you believe you live in a democracy? Is this the result of a biological survival need or is it a learned behavior?

Did you vote in the last election? Is this the result of a biological survival need or is it a learned behavior?

Did you vote for either the Democratic or Republican parties?

Do you revere the American flag? Is this the result of a biological survival need or is it a learned behavior?

Do you believe that some wars are necessary? Is this the result of a biological survival need or is it a learned behavior?

Do you believe happiness is related to income? Is this the result of a biological survival need or is it a learned behavior?

Do you believe going to college is necessary to get a good job/big income?

Did you attend school/Do you send your children to school? Is this the result of a biological survival need or is it a learned behavior?

Do you feel as if someone or something else is in control of your life?

Do you have any compulsive, addictive, anxiety-based behaviors? Is this the result of a biological survival need or is it a learned behavior?

 

 If you have answered “yes” to any of the above questions, and “learned behavior” more often than “biological survival need,” then your conditioning has been successful:  your thoughts and behaviors have been shaped and modified; you are not fully living according to the freedoms and rights with which you were born. You are a product of a programming service called “acculturation,” “socialization,” and/or “western civilization.”

Who Is Teaching Our Kids?!

 A teacher who began the year, we thought, as an elementary substitute teacher in the K-12 charter school my daughters attend, was then brought in as a long-term sub for the algebra teacher during her pregnancy leave, and has now, mysteriously, moved into a more 'permanent' role, even with the return of the post-partum mom. Stories emanating from our daughters and their friends who have been or still are in this teacher's classes come in causing more and more alarm. We hear repeatedly about Mrs. M's proud boasting of her drug using younger days, about her choice to play rock and roll music ("Queen") during class, her hands off "let the book do the teaching" approach to teaching, and her hard-headed arrogance and unwillingness to work cooperatively or collaberatively with either her peers or her students.  

"I feel awful today but I can't miss school because Mrs. M won't let me turn in work late," announces our near-hysterical 15-year old Algebra One student, a normally all-A's student bent on getting the best grades possible so that she can get in to the best college possible. "I failed today's test and Mrs. M won't let me take it over, do a make up, or do any corrections for extra credit." And then, a few days later a 'progress report' comes home announcing her current grade: F. Then there are the numerous accounts of the copious amounts of junk food Mrs. M brings in for the kids--to win favor--which one teacher, Mrs. M's 'partner' in middle school math, claimed was undermining her own popularity among and enjoyment of her students. 

"My two friends, who are math wizzes and never get anything less than A's, now have Mrs. M for Algebra One and they were just informed that their third quarter grades are C's." And now the kicker: It turns out that Mrs. M 1) is a volunteer (working "out of the goodness of her heart"), 2) was, during the previous summer, the math tudor to the son of the school board president(who has already been accused of trying to micromanage the school, of strong-arming teachers, and of masterminding the Board's recent policies of distance, deceit, and deception), and 3) is the landlord to the school's current "interim" executive director. So what are her credentials? Is it legal for an unpaid volunteer to submit student grades? Shouldn't we parents get some kind of input or at least be informed on the kind of nutritional input our school and school representatives are offering our children? Volunteers are supposedly screened with a very thorough background check. Shouldn't we parents be alarmed about the daily presence and influence of a proud and boastful "former" drug user in the lives of our children? The most telling question I may ask of our school administrator is whether he and Mrs. M are sleeping together. Otherwise, I cannot for the life of me figure out why she is acting as a classroom teacher in a public school.  

The Mysterious Effect of Antonin Maniqui

Here follows an excerpt from the manuscript of Drew Fisher’s soon-to-be published novel, The Mysterious Effect of Antonin Maniqui. These ‘media reprints’ makeup the novel’s Prologue.

THE

MYSTERIOUS EFFECT

OF 

ANTONIN MANIQUI

A Novel

By Drew Fisher

PROLOGUE

(Reprinted from The New York Times Book Review, Sunday April 23, 2004.)

Rip Van Winkle Returns
Antonin Urlov Maniqui publishes his second novel after a 35-year absence.

MATURITY quells the emotional fires of youth while nurturing its corollary: resignation. Daily and yearly confrontation with reality causes idealism to give way to pragmatism, even cynicism. This is nowhere as evident as in the new novel by Antonin Urlov Maniqui, Ideas as Opiates, being released this month by Hestia Press. Known for his 1969 cult classic, Inc. (Charles Scrivener & Sons), Maniqui has returned to the narrative stage after an unexplained, Salinger-like, 35-year absence.
Leaping into the limelight with a best seller at age 34, Maniqui gave voice to the insecurities and dreams of the youth of the Sixties. He accomplished this with such insight and empathy that Inc. helped to spawn a generation of hip-talking, utopian-walking pop-fiction writers. Indeed, due to its historicity and universal appeal, the generations that have grown up since the Sixties have likely found Inc. on their teacher-assigned or friend-recommended reading lists.
The arrival of Ideas as Opiates comes with no little mystery and intrigue. One of the surprises is the fact that this is only Maniqui’s second publication. The sensitive novelist disappeared after a rather dynamic and well-publicized exit from the set of a television talk show in 1969. No one seems to have a clue as to what this talented wordsmith has been doing for the past 35 years. Immigration records show that Maniqui left the United States in 1969 and has never returned. Reliable sources maintain that he has assumed permanent residency in some Western European country, possibly Ireland. However, his exact whereabouts remain unknown.
In yet another curious twist in the Maniqui dossier, Ideas as Opiates is a sequel to Inc. Trever and Inc, the two hippie idealists who tread heavily in the eye of the hurricane that raged around them in 1969, are back to entertain us in 2001—or so we are lulled into believing. While all but the last chapter of Ideas appears to take place in the year 2001, the truth is—or so the author would have us believe—that the dynamic duo are traveling through space and time, choosing from a variety of time-locations in which to insert themselves for the sake of collecting experiences. With each entry into earth reality, the two are apparently subjected to a kind of amnesia, which is supposed to better enable them to more fully engage in the events of their immediate surroundings.
It seems that, according to Maniqui, life is like stepping into a movie role with each and every moment offering the actor-cum-student a multitude of choices as to ‘how to play the role.’ Each choice, then, presents any number of lessons, while at the same time setting into motion myriad consequences, each with its own particular chain reaction of linear repercussions.
Maniqui’s gift-wrapping of New Age ontology proves totally superfluous, which is disappointing, for his presentation of life in 2001 stands well enough on its own. As with Inc., Ideas presents a fast-paced, wonderfully witty yet thought provoking collection of social satire. If Maniqui’s intent with the final chapter is more to open the door for future installments of the travels and travails of his heroes, then he is forgiven. Maniqui’s style is so fresh and up-tempo that any contribution of the adventures of Inc and Trever—even in pulp form— is welcomed.
The experiences of this episode of Inc and Trever’s participation in the game of the human experience are derived from their ‘waking up’ to find themselves bombarded by the myriad stressors and stimuli demanded of East Coast suburban life. Maniqui makes no apologies for his blatant indictment of 21st Century Western koyanaquatsi. A veritable feast of vignettes exposing the dysfunctional dynamics of American family, work, and society are served with humor and wit, yet often leave a rather acerbic after-taste. Americans, the ultimate masters of denial and escape, will find it often uncomfortable and even embarrassing to be confronted with some of their own foibles—especially the likes of avarice, arrogance, extravagance and xenocentricity.
Though Ideas as Opiates is considered a sequel to 1969’s Inc., there exists a most noticeable divergence from the emotional tone of the original. The playful rivalry that existed between ridicule and hope in Inc. is totally absent from Ideas. Actually, aside from the feeble spiritual escape clause in Chapter 50, Ideas is starkly void of hope; one has the foreboding sense that Inc and Trever are up against insurmountable forces, that the tide of darkness has triumphed. Whereas the social commentary in Inc. was transparent and often shamelessly derogatory, its bite was offset by a strong strain of optimism. It is, in fact, Inc.’s optimism that makes it such a popular favorite. Is it Maniqui’s age or his isolation—or a combination of both— that has borne this new cynicism? Does the author truly believe Western civilization has tipped the scales beyond any hope for recovery? Inc! Trever! Dudes! Say it ain’t so!
Despite the new despondent tone, Maniqui remains eminently readable. A master of capturing the voice of the times while confronting his audience with its enslavement to absurdly contradictory behaviors, Maniqui’s snappy dialogue is alive, entertaining, and often poetic. One can only wonder —with no little wistfulness—what Maniqui-isms we’ve missed due to his long silence. Let us hope we won’t have to wait another 35 years for the next printed effort from the now 68-year old author.

(Obituary reprinted from The New York Times, July 2, 2004.)

Author Antonin Maniqui Found Dead

Antonin Urlov Maniqui, reclusive author of bestselling novels Inc. (Charles Scrivener & Sons, 1969) and Ideas as Opiates (Hestia Press, 2004) was found dead yesterday in his home outside Donegal, Ireland. Cause of death appears to be heart failure. Maniqui was 69 years old.

* * * * * *





(Reprinted from the Petoskey News-Review, July 5 2004.)

Petoskey Author Maniqui Dead

Antonin Urlov Maniqui, formerly of Petoskey, was found dead in his country home outside of Donegal, Ireland, Wednesday. Irish authorities say he died of heart failure. He was 69 years old.
Born June 1, 1935, in Detroit, Michigan, to French-Russian immigrants, Victor and Katerina (Myshenskyeva) Maniqui, Antonin grew up an only child in Detroit and later Petoskey, where he graduated from high school in 1952. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan, and Masters Degrees in linguistics, philosophy, and fine arts from Columbia University, New York. Never married, Antonin leaves no living relations.
Author of two bestselling novels: Inc., published in 1969 by Charles Scrivener & Sons, and Ideas as Opiates, published in 2004 by Hestia Press. Ideas currently sits on bestseller lists in 43 countries.

(Reprinted from TIME magazine, July 12, 2004, page 26+.)

Life Imitating Art?
Reclusive author Antonin Maniqui wrote two very popular, critically acclaimed, yet controversial novels. Could he have been the author of more than just fiction?..................26

Massachusetts Senator John Quincy Moran. Corporate giant-killer James N. Audley. Surgeon General Kathleen Phillips-Rees. Patrick ‘Father Joe’ Gavenucci. Composer/filmmaker Robert Francis Stahrender. Name six things that these five high-profile public figures have in common. Answer: 1) All forty-somethings. 2) All American-born. 3) All innovators in their fields. 4) All very driven to break old social patterns with new, human potential- realizing reforms. 5) All named as beneficiaries of recently deceased author Antonin Maniqui’s estate. 6) All stumbled upon the reclusive author’s home in Ireland during the fall of 1985.
Separately.
Accidentally.
On consecutive days.
Totally oblivious of one another.
“It’s all rather surreal to me,” says Senator Moran. “I spent one day with the man when I was 25. That’s it! And suddenly I’m in his book’s dedication, I’m at his funeral, I’m in his will!”
The ‘dedication’ from Maniqui’s recent novel, Ideas as Opiates, refers to five ‘visitors’ from the autumn of 1985, naming ‘James, Frank, Kathleen, Patrick and John’ as his ‘Children.’ The fervor of interest spurred on by the publication of Maniqui’s critically acclaimed international bestseller sparked a worldwide manhunt that only just ended with notice of the reclusive author’s death last Tuesday.
Mystery solved. On Sunday, ‘James’ Audley, Robert Francis ‘Frank’ Stahrender, ‘Kathleen’ Phillips-Rees, ‘Patrick’ Joseph Gavenucci, and ‘John’ Moran served as pallbearers at Maniqui’s funeral in Donegal, Ireland. Adding to the bizarre mystery of this story is the claim the five make that none of them had any contact with Maniqui before or since their 1985 serendipitous visits. Yet, the heirless author named these five Americans as equal beneficiaries to his estate---which is estimated to be worth about $10 million not including ongoing royalties.
“I can’t believe he even remembered me!” exclaimed Phillips-Rees. “His book, that night, changed my life, but to think that I’d done anything worthy of his remembrance or praise is beyond my comprehension.”
The five American reformers also claim that before Sunday they had never met one another. “Of course I know of Senator Moran, Dr. Phillips-Rees, Father Joe, and James Audley,” said Stahrender. “But, no, I’ve never met any of them before.”
When asked why they were in Ireland during the fall of 1985 the responses are strikingly similar. “Soul searching,” declared Moran. “Getting away from it all for a bit,” said Audley. “Needing time to think,” claimed Gavenucci. “Wanting to do something for myself, for once in my life,” admitted Phillips-Rees. “Escape, introspection, and planning,” from Stahrender.
Not one of the five lost souls had a clue they would be meeting Antonin Urlov Maniqui---a writer whose first novel, Inc., all five admit to having held in high esteem. “It changed my life,” said Stahrender. “My wake up call,” said Audley. “Inc. helped me to believe in my self,” said Phillips-Rees, “to really see that I had choices.” “It was the first book I’d ever read that made me think, ‘this guy knows me! He’s talking about me!’ said Gavenucci. “A great book,” acclaims Moran. “A kind of ‘declaration of independence’ for the 20th Century.”
“I picked up Ideas as soon as it came out,” said Audley, whose personal legacy includes being lead attorney for 1999’s People v. Mall-Mart Supreme Court decision which formerly stripped corporations of their previously assumed ‘personhood’ status. “I must admit, the dedication kind of through me for a loop. I knew it was probably me. But, why?”
“Ideas brought back to mind the debt I owe him (Maniqui),” said Patrick ‘Father Joe’ Gavenucci, whose efforts have led to securing local and govern-ment funding for his urban and ‘com-munity learning center’ project, the nation’s fastest growing educational reform movement. “I would never have come to where I am were it not for my night with Antonin Maniqui. I’d either be a bitter, mechanical Catholic priest, or I’d have quit religion, married, and be doing the 9-to-5 routine.”
“I had never met the other four, but I was dying to find out if the ‘John’ reference in Ideas was me,” said John Quincy Moran, Senator from Massa-chusetts and founding member of the growing Constitutional Party for Reform (CPR).
“I’ll never forget that day in Ireland,” said Dr. Kathleen Phillips-Rees. “I got caught in an unexpected rainstorm,” recalls the champion of people-oriented health care. “Rain was pouring down. The first house I came to was Maniqui’s. We talked by the fire. Or rather, I talked. He mostly listened. Next morning I left rejuvenated, my will focused, new goals forming.”
If the careers of these five shakers and movers are any indication, it would seem that a visit with Antonin Maniqui has life-changing repercussions. Would that we all could have been so lucky.





(Reprinted from TIME magazine, July 12, 2004, page 31.)

T H E   M A N I Q U I   L E G A C Y

The 5 Children of Reform:
Saviors or Satans?

James N. Audley. Corporate lawyer turned corporate giant-killer. Lead attorney in the landmark case, People v. Mall-Mart, in which the Supreme Court struck down the ‘personhood’ status of corporations. With the claim that the writers of the Constitution had never intended for corporations to be eligible for the same rights as natural persons, that our Founding Fathers had in fact worked expressly toward the eradication of all forms of tyranny---including that of ‘faceless corporations’---all rights and privileges assumed by corporations since the 1880s were summarily stripped. Though the world continues to recover from the ensuing economic collapse and Y2K Depres-sion, the decision is viewed as a landmark victory in the human rights movement---a turning point in the ‘Return to Democratic Principles’ movement---as it brought fully to the public eye an understanding of the divergent goals of democracy and capitalism.
John Quincy Moran. Nuclear physicist turned politician and political reformist. Founder of the Constitutional Party for Reform and first third party candidate to be elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Massachusetts in 30 years, Moran has worked tirelessly for recognition and acceptance of the ‘quantum oneness’ of all things via a return to principles of ‘probable democracy’. Vaulting to national prominence in the 1990s with his book, Reinventing the Constitution, and cable TV miniseries, Revisiting the Founding Fathers, Moran’s efforts have resulted in new legislation for campaign finance reform, the rewriting of the 14th Amendment, and ballot access reform in order to unlock the Republican-Democrat two-party stranglehold on the nation’s political system.
Kathleen Phillips-Rees. The nation’s second female Surgeon General creates bold, paradigm-changing policies in the health care field. Building a medical practice and bestselling books on the premise and catchphrase that ‘health care is about health and caring’, Phillips-Rees has dedicated her career to ‘returning the power of health care back to the people.’ An avid proponent of patient education and ‘team approach’ health care, Phillips-Rees’ work has opened doors for the public acceptance and legal licensure of many ‘nontraditional’, ‘alternative and complementary’, and ‘naturopathic’ health care and healing traditions.
Patrick Joseph ‘Father Joe’ Gavenucci. Former priest and teacher turned social activist. Founder of the ‘community learning center’ movement which has found funding, facilities, and local interest in over 17 major cities and countless smaller towns and municipalities. ‘CLCs’ are a combination public library and school offering community support 24-hours a day. They offer state-of-the art technological services and grass roots learning resources for all kinds of formal and informal educational, vocational and social activities. Some key Gavenucci maxims: 1) “Everyone is learning all the time;” 2) “Everybody---in every community---has something of value to teach or share;” 3) “Everybody has something they would like to learn;” 4) “Everybody---of all ages---needs a safe place to go where they feel welcome, where they can experience community, where they can feel free to learn whatever they wish to learn;” and, 5) “Schools and schooling are antithetical to freedom and individual rights.”
Robert Frances ‘Frank’ Stahrender. Award-winning musician and filmmaker, pioneer of DVD and music video production technologies. Stahrender’s frustration with barriers between performer and audience led to the creation of Opus Humanae, an audience participatory concert experience in which musicians plug in and play, dancers move among the crowd, live microphones are available for anyone, video and sound are mani-pulated by ‘computer jocks.’ The result is spontaneous, unrehearsed, live performance art at its most raw---out of which have come the indie cult favorite Opus Humanae Live films. Permanent Opus Humanae venues have been established in over 50 cities in 13 countries around the world. Proponents love it for its encouragement of the artistry in everyman, while opponents condemn it for promoting ‘paganism’ and ‘debauchery’---citing several acts of violence related to Opus Humanae events. Though reaction to Stahrender’s ideas from critics and fellow artists was at first rather cool, acceptance of Opus ‘bacchanals’ is now virtually universal.





(Reprinted from TIME magazine, July 12, 2004, page 28.)

M A N I Q U I   IN  P R I N T
Inc. and Ideas in Review
Ideas as Opiates (Hestia Press), Antonin Maniqui’s time-twisting novel set loosely in a ‘self-created singularity’ sequels his 1969 cult classic, Inc., by tracing the ‘evolution, devolution, and involution’ of the two protagonists from Inc., Inc and Trever. The book opens with the two rule-bending, reality-testing, morality-challenging, politically active hippies ‘suddenly’ finding themselves in a strange new world.
“Hey, man. What happened to the Sixties?” laments Trever.
“Big Brother won, man,” Inc tells his buddy as they look at each other’s short hair and business suits. “Can’t you feel it?”
Reminded of Brendan Frazer and Alicia Silverstone in 1999’s Blast from the Past, the duo soon figures out that they’ve somehow leaped forward 30 years (it’s 2001). Hypothesizing that they’ve been passing the years in a kind of somnambulant trance, a horrified Trever proclaims, “Zombies, man, we’re zombies!”
In their new reality---one that holds true for most of the remainder of this 532-page novel---the two have not only aged 30 years but they’ve conformed. They each have the standard three-car suburban houses, the 50-hour corporate desk job, the dysfunctional first and second marriages, and of course the requisite chaos that comes with having kids and step kids, wives and ex-wives.
Dark comedy runs rampant throughout the pages of Ideas, but it is the fresh new characters with their wise-beyond-their-years banter that allows Maniqui’s brilliance to shine.
Inc’s bright, confident, empathetic 18-year old son, Jah-man, and Trever’s bring-on-the-world 19-year old daughter, Nasty (Anastasia), happen to push every paternal button their respective fathers never knew they had (and vowed in Inc. that they wouldn’t have). With their casual on-again, off-again romance and more relaxed (Maniqui would say, ‘evolved’) attitudes toward relationships---and especially sex---Jah-man and Nasty provide plenty of push to their fathers’ comfort zones. The mirrors Trever and Inc are forced to look into are at once frustrating, horrifying, and laughable. To the reader they are discomforting and often quite embarrassing.
The dysfunctional dynamics between Inc and his first wife, the paranoid, emotionally-dependent, Freaky (Frances), and his cool-as-ice, corporate-climbing second, Amanda, and Trever and his first and second wives, Alex (“Good-sex”) and Tiffany (“Can’t-get-any”), respectively, are conveyed humorously but, again, prove painfully real. Maniqui is presenting us with a rather grim reflection of our times.
The Maniqui genius, as it was in Inc., is with dialogue. Fast moving, each character highly idiosyncratic—the conversation is always very real yet peppered with occasional questions or observations so candid, so brutally direct and honest, that they never fail to catch us off-guard. Maniqui has once again made satire of our day and age while at the same time offering inspiration and hope for a healthier, more optimistic future.
In the most delightful twist of Ideas as Opiates, the last chapter (titled ‘Yep: a log’) has Inc and Trever ‘wake up’ to find that their adventures in the 21st Century were all an illusion. They are in fact traveling through time, searching for ‘interesting’ experiences. The per-sonalities and situations they take on during their travels are a result of their own choosing. Everything, every moment is dependent on choice---conscious or unconscious (the latter due to familiar or comfortable patterns, called ‘habits’). In the end, Maniqui’s message is that we are all free to wake up to choice—free to recognize the myriad choices we have available to us in every moment—if only we humans would just wake up and take back control of our lives. Or, as Inc would say in his cheerfully naïve way, “Volez!”






(Reprinted from TIME magazine, July 12, 2004, page 29.)

T H E  M A N I Q U I  I D E O L O G Y

Just before a frustrated Antonin Maniqui fled from his last live interview he was heard to say, “No. That’s not what I mean. You just don’t get it. How can I get you to understand?” That was in 1969. His first novel, Inc., had just reached the New York Times bestseller list. Thirty-five years later, with his new novel, Ideas as Opiates, Maniqui may have figured out just how to get us to understand.
With Inc., Maniqui was able to capture the zeitgeist of the youth of the time. The eponymous protagonist of Inc. is burdened with the pull of polar forces of his near-paranoid concern for the Orwellian direction of his world while at the same time able to tap into his youth for the highs of living in the moment. Fear and hope are the novel’s true lead characters/agonists.
In Ideas as Opiates Maniqui also adroitly captures the spirit of these new times---our post-911, debt-ridden, Prozac-popping, technology-obsessed culture---with his display of “barely controlled chaos”---the overwhelm of daily American life. But what is disturbingly absent from Ideas is the hope so strongly ascendant in Inc. While choice is a constant theme in Ideas---“You are always, at every moment, in every second of every day, in choice,” parrots Inc’s daughter, Anastasia or “Nasty,” right in the face of her father---these characters are living under such megastress that there is no time for introspection---barely time to breathe. The priority is on escape. “It’s the American way,” justifies Inc’s second wife, Amanda. “We know how to escape better than anyone else in history.” Drugs, alcohol, food, television, shopping, travel, sports, fitness, dieting, even mental illness all provide a many-layered failsafe network for escape from the pain and suffering of the human experience.
Maniqui’s satirical farce illuminates and criticizes the evils in this system while using lucid dream sequences to allow his reader to ‘feel’ and ‘enjoy’ the full scope of emotions presented in the human experience. Inc’s comment to Amanda’s inquiry as to how it felt during one of his dreams seems to encapsulate Maniqui’s solution to the mind-numbing choices of waking life: “It felt great. I felt alive!”
The final chapter of Ideas is well cited for it’s comical escape from the “horrors of the 21st Century” and hollow but uplifting end. However, overlooked is the likelihood that it may contain the real belief system of Antonin Maniqui: that we are really just traveling in and out of human form on a kind of Buddhist reincarnation rollercoaster---all for the simple purpose of seeking interesting experiences; becoming human for the sake of the unique experiences presented in the panoply of human emotion. Life for life’s sake, being present for the fullness of the emotional experience.
The last lines of Ideas as Opiates contain a rather curious and cryptic reference.
“Hey, look,” Inc points to a robed figure on a nearby cloud. “There’s that Vinoba dude again!”
“He’s cool,” responds Trever. ”Let’s hang with him for a while.”
“Volez!”
Vinoba Bhave was a twentieth century Indian ‘saint.’ (d. 1985) A contemporary of Mohandas Gandhi, known mostly for his commitment to non-violent anarchist principles, Vinoba believed that small community life presented the healthiest dynamics for the fullest realization of human potential--which is to love. This may in fact present Maniqui’s deepest hope: that the world can return to a state of simplicity through small communal life. He certainly held no affection for the dehumanizing effect of Western society’s frenetic pace, impersonal urbanization and suburban sprawl or the robotic effect of our throwaway society’s rampant consumerism and profit-driven materialism. Volez!

ENTRE-LOGUE:

Ireland and Antonin Maniqui in 1985.

AMONG the undulating grey and emerald green landscapes of the ancient island called “Eire” by the Celtic peoples who have inhabited it for hundreds of generations, sits a craggy, battered-looking bulge in the extreme northwest known as County Donegal. Named Dhún na nGall or “land” or “fort” “of foreigners” for its many Viking raiders and settlers, but known locally as Tír Choniall for the Tyrconnell family that once lorded over this ancient feudal earldom, Donegal’s topography is quite different from other regions of the fair land that is called Ireland. Though luminous green mosses blanket much of these rugged, rocky landscapes, Donegal stands out for its startling absence of trees and for its far more rocky presentation. The rocky terrain we speak of often sports a rainbow variation of colors—particularly in unusual shades of “brown.” Observe, striated next one another like layers from a petrified log: deep purple-browns with sandstone yellow-browns next to rusty reddish-browns sidled between green-blacks.
The rugged countryside is sparsely populated with few examples of human society except for a sporadic scattering of seaside fishing villages occupying safe harbor inlets. Indeed, once one has traveled west of the town of Donegal, the occasion of towns, villages, or even crossroads, diminish noticeably. Though factories can be found to the north, the west has little to indicate any interactivity among the family of man. It is said that the non-fishing people who have come to live in rural Donegal are probably looking to hide, that they are looking for a place to be left alone, to be anonymous. But there are the rare souls who are purposely looking for a place in which to commune with Nature and her elements in some of her rawest, bleakest forms. Such was the attraction for Antonin Urlov Maniqui when he stumbled upon the area late in 1969.
Two miles north of Donegal town lies Banagher Hill. Unofficially the southern most peak of the Blue Stack Mountains, it is really just an oblong ridge running north-south between the wind- and water-carved Sruell River Valley to the west, and Lough Eske to the east. Still, Banagher Hill’s 1288-foot peak offers impressive panoramic views, weather permitting, of both valleys as well as the mountains to the north and Donegal Bay to the south. Small homes and cottages dot the countryside south of the Blue Stack Mountains, around Lough Eske, Banagher Hill and the Sruell River valley, sometimes sparsely, sometimes in a more neighborly fashion.
A most curious sight is presented by the well packed and, therefore, seemingly well traveled, grey-graveled, fairly level, two-track road that circumnavigates Banagher Hill. The road appears to be traveled well enough yet leads to nowhere in particular, connects to very few, much less traveled, off-roads, and offers access to a sparse number of homesteads.
It is upon this rather odd, desolate, and circuitous path that one such cottage, a small bungalow built of flat grey stones with a grey slate roof, occupies a rather solitary yet sociable-looking spot on Banagher Hill’s western slopes. Sitting just next to the small stone cottage, also on the east side of the Donegal return road, is the rather bizarre spectacle of what appears to be a grove of overgrown, under-groomed Christmas trees (perhaps the abandoned project of a previous owner). A few grazing sheep dot the hillside above the cottage while below the road, into the Sruell River valley, lay fallow pastures down to the river’s edge where more cottages and an occasional tree are sprinkled.
Antonin Maniqui purchased his small stone cottage, along with its 240 acres west of the road on the slopes of Banagher Hill, in 1970—paid for in full, for the whopping price of £3,000 Irish. The bank, which had acquired the property after the death of its last owner (the last of the previous owner’s family, a Surrey, England resident, had neither the interest nor the money with which to settle her distant cousin’s debts, so therefore, chose to give it up to estate auction and bank ownership), had been so excited at the site of Antonin’s green U.S. dollars, that it actually raised its asking price with Maniqui sitting there, in the bank, holding the advert from the most recent edition of the local newspaper in his hand. In a gesture of good faith—and in hopes of earning the future good graces of the town’s primary moneylender—Ant counter-offered at an even higher price. This maneuver did, in fact, prove invaluable during the successive home-improvement projects to which he subjected the cottage—including repairs to the roof and walls in 1970 and again in 1984, installation of a washing machine in 1973 (replaced in 1991), the addition of a solar powered hot water heater and outdoor hot tub in 1977, and an interior re-insulation project in 1994. Antonin remained living there in his isolated spot in the Donegal countryside, sans companion, until his death in 2004.
Weather-wise, the autumn of 1985 was remarkable for its irregularity. The usual daily battle of wind and weather currents rising up the Sruell River valley from Donegal Bay and down from Banagher Hill and the rest of the Bluestack mountain range were accentuated by sudden and unexpected appearances of heavy fog and/or brief unpredictable outbursts of heavy rainfall. The usually misted landscapes and peoples found themselves unusually mystified.
The week of All Hallow’s Eve and All Saints Day was no exception to this freakishness. On Tuesday, October 29, 1985, Antonin had just returned from his Tuesday trip into town when his first visitor arrived. A round trip of approximately seven kilometers, Antonin was rarely seen to step out of this routine. Arriving to post bill payments and collect his mail at the Post Office/Tobacconist shop around half past ten, Ant then crossed the street to visit the bank (to deposit royalties and investment income checks, etc.), followed by a stop in at the corner grocer for a week’s supply of victuals, (seasonal vegetables, breads, cheese and condiments, occasional canned goods and/or personal hygienics), and finally ending with a seat at the Brannagh Pub for the Tuesday lunch special (usually some kind of shepherd’s pie) and pint of “half-and-half” (equal portions of Harp’s Lager and Guinness Stout) and some chatter with the usual group of ‘pub grubbers.’ It took some time, but eventually Ant became an accepted and welcomed member of the afternoon pub house gossip. Preferring to join in on discussions of the local weather and agricultural topics—and occasionally in the issues pertaining to local politics and commerce—Ant’s contributions were respected and often sought after. “What’s the Yank  think?” and “Will the renowned recluse author please speak!” were two of the favorite goads of the good-hearted regulars.
Depending on his payload and the portents of weather, Maniqui was known to make his return walk home circumnavigate Banagher Hill: for a sight of the blue waters of Lough Eske. Though in the habit of daily walks, rare was the occasion in which he would travel south toward town—other than Tuesdays, of course. Most often his perambulations were directed to an inspection of his acreage, but Antonin was, from time to time, known to hike among the Blue Stacks north of Banagher Hill—again, depending on weather, and much more likely during the summer months.
All in all, Antonin Maniqui was considered a rather reclusive, stay-at-home kind of man. Nobody seemed to begrudge him the least for it. Which is probably one reason he felt so at home here. And why he stayed.