In a @ 1970 album by Jefferson Starship, "Blows Against the Empire," Gracie Slick starts out with the repetitive phrase, "Waitin' to die, waitin' to die, waitin' to die..." before the band goes into the ecstatic acid-era riff that characterizes the album. It was one of my favorites back then, although I haven't heard it now for 40 years and may no longer think it so great. Still, the theme is ambling around my mind as much as, and parallel to, the movie seen recently, "On the Road." In the latter, the key to the film - and to the book and to the Beats in general - was the need to break out of the monotony of daily life and LIVE. They did not really know how to do that - drugs and sex and amoral adventures only somewhat appeased their need to break away and find something, anything, that would make them feel alive. But what the did know was that the life prepared for them in America was not living. It lacked life's essence, and they would seek it "on the road." This led some to wander the planet in search of deeper meaning in other cultures. Some found it, most notably in Indian mysticism. Many did not, and floundered in the opium dens of Morocco or Thailand.
They were followed by the much larger Hippie movement, which found an essence in the new (or newly discovered) psychedelics, but that high could not be maintained with any degree of sanity. The hippies then hit the Beat trail, repeating the journey in greater numbers and, in many cases, with deeper results. In the end, though, most found themselves in life, once again 'waiting to die' - that is, without an overriding feeling of Being, of feeling the meaning of being in a miraculous and indescribable reality. Instead, they again felt the dead-ness of ordinary life.
In the album, the Empire might be seen as 'Amerika' or the corporate structure, or the dominance of a power elite, but that would be a fatal oversimplification. The Empire is not an entity or a particular political or economic system. If that were the case, it would be easy to identify and remove. Political activists do this, and there really is no end in sight for them. In fact, they are playing within the rules of the Empire. Rather, the Empire is our system of thought, one that is not only dominant in the West, but throughout the world. People high on the ladder of power are not even aware of it - and are trapped themselves. This is the limiting factor in the philosophies of deconstruction that are so popular on college campuses, and even in the corridors of the elite. The reality is, our deadened reality lies beyond human structures of power. It is cast as inscrutably as Original Sin - a wrong move made somewhere in a lost past that has sent us along a road that has us seek but seldom find, for the road to life is beyond the standards of the seeker. The Beats and the Hippies generally came home with glints of wisdom, but still found themselves stuck within the system that they intuitively felt had chained them. Gracie slick, last I read, has more problems now with alcohol than The Empire.
Thus the need for the Quiet Voice - that is, everyone's quiet voice. This voice has to come from somewhere outside the system of thought that has been constructed for us and that keeps us prisoners of the Empire. This necessitates the belief that there IS another self to find within oneself, but I find no philosophical conundrum with that necessity. This existence of this voice is not based on the material of our current system, but is rather (and can only be, at present) experiential. When you find it, you know it, and it cannot be readily translated in the language of one's society. Mystics and shamans across time and space have always known this, just as the hippies came to understand it in the ephemeral flashes of the Real in their altered states. This Real self can be felt through music and the arts, which is the real purpose of art (other such efforts are called craft or entertainment), but most permanently in some form of meditation. Which is a shame because, as one person put it, most would rather suffer a broken leg than have half an hour of true silence of the mind. Of course, that is the way of the Empire - it enslaves by capturing our primate interests. The hard truth is that to rise above the primates, we have to raise our awareness above the primates. The monkey within not only is bored with that, but frightened. It would rather have its bananas and fleas than something new to deal with. It would rather have its cage than an unknown wilderness.
Blows against the Empire - they are in the wisdom of all the true religions, and seldom no more explicit than in Christianity. The nature of Christ's paradoxes were exactly that - blows against the empire. Think out of that box. Through a certain controlled behavior, one could get beyond being controlled by the Empire. But for that, one needs a discipline of steel, just as one needs it also for regular and deep forms of meditation. But these are the only ways to freedom - as the hippies and Beats could not, or would not grasp. But their sense of lack, of imprisonment, was real. It is incredibly corny to say this, but the first and last steps of the journey on the road simply have to be within the self. Otherwise, you will find that you have been on the Empire's treadmill all along the way. FK
They were followed by the much larger Hippie movement, which found an essence in the new (or newly discovered) psychedelics, but that high could not be maintained with any degree of sanity. The hippies then hit the Beat trail, repeating the journey in greater numbers and, in many cases, with deeper results. In the end, though, most found themselves in life, once again 'waiting to die' - that is, without an overriding feeling of Being, of feeling the meaning of being in a miraculous and indescribable reality. Instead, they again felt the dead-ness of ordinary life.
In the album, the Empire might be seen as 'Amerika' or the corporate structure, or the dominance of a power elite, but that would be a fatal oversimplification. The Empire is not an entity or a particular political or economic system. If that were the case, it would be easy to identify and remove. Political activists do this, and there really is no end in sight for them. In fact, they are playing within the rules of the Empire. Rather, the Empire is our system of thought, one that is not only dominant in the West, but throughout the world. People high on the ladder of power are not even aware of it - and are trapped themselves. This is the limiting factor in the philosophies of deconstruction that are so popular on college campuses, and even in the corridors of the elite. The reality is, our deadened reality lies beyond human structures of power. It is cast as inscrutably as Original Sin - a wrong move made somewhere in a lost past that has sent us along a road that has us seek but seldom find, for the road to life is beyond the standards of the seeker. The Beats and the Hippies generally came home with glints of wisdom, but still found themselves stuck within the system that they intuitively felt had chained them. Gracie slick, last I read, has more problems now with alcohol than The Empire.
Thus the need for the Quiet Voice - that is, everyone's quiet voice. This voice has to come from somewhere outside the system of thought that has been constructed for us and that keeps us prisoners of the Empire. This necessitates the belief that there IS another self to find within oneself, but I find no philosophical conundrum with that necessity. This existence of this voice is not based on the material of our current system, but is rather (and can only be, at present) experiential. When you find it, you know it, and it cannot be readily translated in the language of one's society. Mystics and shamans across time and space have always known this, just as the hippies came to understand it in the ephemeral flashes of the Real in their altered states. This Real self can be felt through music and the arts, which is the real purpose of art (other such efforts are called craft or entertainment), but most permanently in some form of meditation. Which is a shame because, as one person put it, most would rather suffer a broken leg than have half an hour of true silence of the mind. Of course, that is the way of the Empire - it enslaves by capturing our primate interests. The hard truth is that to rise above the primates, we have to raise our awareness above the primates. The monkey within not only is bored with that, but frightened. It would rather have its bananas and fleas than something new to deal with. It would rather have its cage than an unknown wilderness.
Blows against the Empire - they are in the wisdom of all the true religions, and seldom no more explicit than in Christianity. The nature of Christ's paradoxes were exactly that - blows against the empire. Think out of that box. Through a certain controlled behavior, one could get beyond being controlled by the Empire. But for that, one needs a discipline of steel, just as one needs it also for regular and deep forms of meditation. But these are the only ways to freedom - as the hippies and Beats could not, or would not grasp. But their sense of lack, of imprisonment, was real. It is incredibly corny to say this, but the first and last steps of the journey on the road simply have to be within the self. Otherwise, you will find that you have been on the Empire's treadmill all along the way. FK
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