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Show Headline The church got busted and I decided to laugh BY HD ROBERSON The other night I was sitting out on my porch watching the Alameda Church get busted, and I decided to laugh. Not to seem hysterical, you understand,, since I believe the general circumstances circum-stances of mankind to be somewhat more comedic than a W. C. Fields movie (since laughter is a method of relieving extreme tension, ten-sion, it's a workable way of relating to the modern world), but just to laugh. It seemed somehow funny. Whereupon, - having nothing better to do, I wondered exactly why, and the following emerged. Consider a madman, a person so into his own thing that his thoughts and resultant actions are incomprehensible to anyone else. The basis for deviation must ultimately rest on the ability to communicate, com-municate, I think. Now drug-fried crazies like many of the more extreme freaks you meet (and like dare I say it some of the people in the church), are often unable to explain or account for their actions, some of which are decidedly strange. They have packed up their Edgar Rice burros and journeyed so far into fantasy that return is unthinkable. Why is this? OK, now we all know the standard explanations for dropping out: The World Is An Intolerable Place; Parents Have Got Me Down; I Am Questing Into The Unknown; etc. And condemnation of hypoc-rasy hypoc-rasy the most important, I feel. Awright, now see this, hypocracy in the present world is a result of intolerable circumstances. A man under pressure, because of war, family, the bomb, infringed territoriality, terri-toriality, bills, smog and so on, must retreat from these problems or risk what little sanity was passed to him. An average businessman did or does not have the escape mechanisms mech-anisms available to the young (except for booze, an end so low most people would rather go mad than live it) such as drugs, protest, free love, frisbees and dropping out. So he goes mildly schizoid, dividing his life between the Working Role and the Personal Role. As reality becomes be-comes more and more unsane, he retreats into the soothing patterns pat-terns of personal thought, sitting in his own head, playing roles only as the need arises. He ceases to communicate directly, maybe even looses touch with reality. I think I can draw good support from television-type cheap escapism, escap-ism, and other cultural phenomenon like the cocktail party, pass-all education or Playboy. Status-seeking is part of the Working Role, as are being a parent, having fun (golf tennisbridge) and going to church (though this last is borderline). Almost all our contemporary art forms stress the value of personal expression, the individual artist's viewpoint. Art for art's sake. Improvised dances in modern dance are another good example, I think. All stress being into your own thing. Now observe that this is a feature common to both the Youth and the Midamerikan cultures, a low common denominator as it were. Besides mundane pressures, there is this quiet but persistent social undercurrent. One (this one, at any rate) can only guess at most of its sources and history. What it all amounts to is this: we are becoming madmen in our spare time. Perfectly coherent, orderly cogs during the day, totally incomprehendable at night (in the ultimate extreme, of course). Why are crime rates rising? Why are many shoplifters well-to-do persons who can't explain their own actions? Why is there insane over -reaction to certain types i of protest? Because there is less and less rational guidance behind the great smooth machine we are all cogging for! How long until the Lem-' Lem-' ming? They march, perfectly organized, into the sea, you know. Of course, I am subject to this drive too. Paranoia perhaps? Really, 1 think the modern world is a plot by mad psychiatrists to mass-Produce mass-Produce insanity. I shall ever think of Suburbia as a Shrink Ranch technological outgrowth of the good old Funny Farm. See ya. |