John Singleton with Bob Howard, Rip Van Australia (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1977), pp. 110-13, under the heading “Guerrilla Warfare”.
Occasionally, a book comes along that puts its finger on the pulse of the times, that touches the right nerve. It is invariably a best seller. Not everything in the book need be right, but if you read it long enough and don’t nit-pick, you can isolate the chords that evoke the same positive response in so many people.
In this regard, 1970 was a vintage year. It saw the publication of Robert Townsend’s Up The Organisation; Charles A. Reich’s The Greening of America; and Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock. All were best sellers, and all, in their own way, addressed themselves to the same problem: the artificiality, the sterility and the deadening effect of modern life.
Reich lists a number of aspects of this modern problem: disorder, corruption, hypocrisy, war, poverty, distorted priorities, law-making by private power, uncontrolled technology, destruction of the environment, decline of democracy and liberty, powerlessness, the artificiality of work and culture, the absence of community and the loss of self. None of these are new to us. We know them from our day to day experience.
To quote Reich:
Work and living have become more and more pointless and empty … for most Americans, work is mindless, exhausting, boring, servile and something to be endured while “life” is confined to “time off” … The great organisations to which most people give their working day, and the apartments and suburbs to which they return at night, are equally places of loneliness and alienation … Friendship has been coated over with a layer of impenetrable artificiality as men strive to live roles designed for them.1
Today in Australia most people live lives of quiet desperation. We know these things, but we don’t understand them. If we did we would know that motivates the alternative society people, the counter-culture, the rebellious, the hippies, the radical Left — call them what you will. More than anything else this is what they see, and what they reject. And while in many cases we may profoundly disagree with the directions their rejection takes, we cannot disagree with their motivating reasons.
Says Reich:
Beginning with school if not before, an individual is stripped of his imagination, his creativity, his heritage, his dreams and his personal uniqueness, in order to style him into a productive unit for a mass technological society. Instinct, feeling and spontaneity are suppressed by overwhelming forces.2
Think about it: in the privacy of your own mind, ask yourself some questions about your own life. How often do you do what you really want to do? How many people do you really relate to? How many know you, understand you? How rich is your life? Or how sterile is it? Put aside for a moment your social front, your defences, and just for yourself, and to yourself, ask how much are you enjoying being alive? Or even are you alive?
The fundamental mistake being made today is just about every attempt to improve our society and help people, is to consider the problems as fundamentally material ones instead of organic ones. That is, we make the mistake of thinking problems can be solved through material changes: spending more money, providing more benefits, generally recognising our societal furniture. In the house that hasn’t been built yet. That this has not worked reflects the fundamental misunderstanding of the true nature of the problem. The problems are inside us, not outside us. They are human, psychological, even spiritual. They are organic.
Because of the scientific and industrial revolutions that have taken place, we now have the capacity to satisfy our material needs, and, by and large, we are doing so. But in building up our technological and industrial society, we have neglected to care for our spiritual or psychological needs. So, increasingly, we are being reduced to numbers, to be ordered and shuffled around in a Orwellian 1984 world. And, increasingly, we see the inevitable psychological results — mass neurosis, dissatisfaction and unrest, and a general decline in standards of ethics (particularly in business) and workmanship. People are ceasing to care as they feel more helpless and insignificant.
What we need to introduce into our daily lives is more variety, more richness, more purpose, more opportunity, more diversity, more challenge, more point. We need less regimentation, less bureaucracy, less standardisation, less domination, less alienation, less control, less exploitation. In two words, what we need are (1) freedom, and (2) time.
Freedom won’t fix everything immediately. But given time, with freedom, people will work out their own solutions, and our own solution will work far better (for us) than any imposed solution could ever hope to. Again, we know these things, but we don’t understand them. Why is an old steam engine more interesting than a modern diesel locomotive? Why is Hong Kong more interesting than Canberra? What is the attraction of Paddy’s Markets, the Flea Markets, or for that matter, Kings Cross? What is so fascinating about eccentrics? Variety. Diversity. Life. Needless to say, appreciation of the importance of these last three things involves a total reversal of the dominant trends in our society, where all the momentum is being directed towards centralisation, standardisation and general sterility.
What, then, can we do to change things? For a start we can all take part in enjoyable, moral, non-violent guerilla warfare: dismantling our organisations where we are serving them leaving only the parts where they are serving us.3 It will take millions of such subversives to make much difference. But it can be done. And it has already started.
Each and every one of us, at work, at play, at home — in every conceivable facet of our personal lives — has numerous opportunities to question, to prod, to provoke, to change. To stop existing and start living. Look around the faces you see tomorrow morning. It would seem that the hardest thing in the world to do is to do what we really want to do.
But, for any change to be effective it is essential that we should resist the temptation to call on the State to help change our lives because the State will hear and take our call, and twist it to serve its own ends. Instead, our activity should be directed towards dismantling the State and building up alternatives outside it, alternatives based on co-operation rather than domination, and trade rather than expropriation.
We only have one go at life. At least your one go should be worth some kind of fight. Otherwise you’re already dead and no one even noticed you come. Or go.
