The Hacker's Encyclopedia 1998/hackers_encyclopedia.iso/zines/a_m/indica70.doc

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The Orlando INDICATOR
excerpts from the 70th edition, summer 1988

in this issue: "HITS"
a replay of our most popular articles
from the early 1980's

---
The Orlando Indicator
(the official newspaper of the Great Conspiracy)
June, 1982 edition

        Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This
        explains why God is doing such a lousy job.

SECRET SERVICE VISITS INDICATOR

        May 17 - I was minding my own business, as a matter of fact I
        was sleeping, when there came a knock at the door of my
        miserable little apartment. I fell off my bunk, crawled to the
        door and yelled, "Who Goes There?" "Secret Service," came the
        reply. "Secret Service?" I echoed. "Yes." I thought this was one
        of my biker buddies playing a deranged joke, but when I opened
        the door, there was a dude wearing a Suit and Tie. The real
        thing. "Are you R K Harrison?" "Yes," I confessed. "I need to
        have a talk with you." I invited him in, told him to have the
        seat and looked at his identification. He asked me if I was the
        editor of the Indicator, and again I confessed. I didn't want to
        confess, but he was torturing me. (Sleep deprivation is a
        well-known torture technique.) The SS man produced a copy of the
        April Indicator and read aloud some of my anti-Reagan comments.
        He said such swill is protected by the First Amendment, but he
        expressed concern that my writing will become more and more
        vitriolic until it reaches the point of illegally threatening
        people. I tried to convince him that I'm not an assassin, but I
        don't think he believed me. He asked, "Have you ever been busted
        for anything?" "No," I said cheerfully. My clean police record
        annoys a lot of my persecutors. The SS man told me, "You don't
        want to do anything to bring yourself to the attention of the
        police, who might not have such a liberal attitude, because they
        can give you a real hard time if they want to. You know, they
        can nickel-and-dime you to death." Noticing a reference to the
        Hell's Angels in the Indicator, and the FTW sticker on my door,
        he said, "I see you have a little Fuck the World emblem here.
        When I was a cop, we used to chase the Hell's Angels all over
        the state. Are you a rider? I didn't see any big machine
        outside." I laughed, because this was ridiculous. "I'm not a
        biker trainee, if that's what you're asking. That's my big
        ten-speed parked in the driveway." The SS man apologized for
        waking me up and then departed. I wondered what he was really up
        to, and I'm sure he wondered the same about me. Later, a friend
        of mine told me he'd been questioned by the SS after leading an
        anti-Reagan rally. Evidently the Secret Service routinely tried
        to intimidate Reagan's opponents. However, we are not afraid,
        because Good always triumphs over Evil (sooner or later).


---
WORK
from a 1984 edition

        DEARBORN, Mich. - The noise, monotony and pressure of the
          assembly line is a natural breeding ground for headaches, but
          workers say the recent recession brought with it a new source
          of pain - bosses who tell them to "be thankful you have a
          job." -newspaper clipping

        For starters, nothing is more social than the endless work - pay
- rest - work cycle which the vast majority of us are forced to engage
in. Our very need to earn money to buy necessities, the boring,
demeaning, treadmill nature of most jobs, the spiritual poverty of
shopping, the channelling of pleasure impulses into conspicuous
consumption or into organized leisure which we pay for (movies,
ballgames) - all these are features of a particular social system. Not
only is this system not eternal, it ha en been around very long. Just
another signpost in history. -The Daily Battle

        I no longer doubt that every ideal and institution in the United
        States is subordinated to the right of a small minority among us
        to make profits. The resulting desecration of our values and
        lives (is) only more blatant and undeniable in our workplaces.
        The undeniable and generally accepted truth about work in the
        United States today is that, on the whole, it is extremely
        confining, dehumanized, and meaningless for those who perform
        it. To explain this, some say work is a necessary evil. Others
        say, no work in our system is more inhumane than it needs to be;
        therefore we can and should carry out reforms to make work more
        satisfying. Taken together, these prevailing views mean th at
        the quality of work... at best can only be improved somewhat and
        wit system. Their common, silent message is that no other form
        of social organization can offer hope of radical improvement in
        work. With these nearly unchallenged views I strongly disagree.
        I support meaningful reform, but I do not believe the work
        process can be radically improved through reforms within the
        American system. -Richard Pfeffer

        People are beginning to doubt the dogma that superseding work
means living in caves and eating small furry insects. Most work serves
the predatory purposes of commerce and coercion and can be abolished
outright. The rest can be automated away and/or transformed into
creative, play-like pastimes whose variety and conviviality will make
extrinsic inducements like the capitalist carrot and the "Communist"
stick equally obsolete. In the impending meta-industrial revolution,
libertarian communists revolt inst work will settle accounts with
"Libertarians" and "Communists" working against revolt. And then we can
go for the gusto! -Bob Black

        Who is the spray-can artiste who has been writing "Work stinks"
          on walls all over Orlando? Methinks it is the same malcontent
          who sprays all those circle-A anarchy symbols. Whoever he is,
          he has a genius slogan. Graffitist, identify yourself so we
          can join your Work Stinks movement. -a columnist in The
          Orlando Sentinel

        "Because they know Monday morning is coming, workers say they
          become tense 12 hours before they have to be on the job," the
          researcher said. "Sunday evening should be a time to relax,
          and we recommend they try to find other things to think about
          so they aren't dreading a return to work before it actually
          happens." -newspaper clipping


--- Editorial columnist Charley Reese published the following article in
The Orlando Sentinel on March 15, 1985.

DEAR ORLANDO ANARCHISTS: PEOPLE EITHER WORK OR ARE PARASITES

        There are people in the area - a small group - who call
        themselves the Orlando Anarchists. Among other things, they are
        against work. I have felt that way myself at times. But unlike
        an anarchist, I know reality when I see it. These folks seem to
        think that work is a curse put on mankind by the capitalistic
        system and that if the system were destroyed, people would be
        free, in the words of one of their pamphlets, to be "fully human
        - generous, playful, spontaneous, venturesome and
        unpredictable." The mind boggles at the depth of ignorance
        necessary to sustain that belief. ...People must work, not
        because of the dictates of any political or economic system, but
        to survive. Every day the human body requires water and food. In
        most climates, people require shelter of some sort. And mankind,
        being a weakling by animal standards, also requires tools. There
        is absolutely no way that food, potable water, shelter and tools
        can be obtained without work. If you do not do the work, then
        someone else must and make you a gift of a portion of their
        labor. In this universe, you are either a worker or a parasite
        living off other workers. This is the true, natural state of man
        - to work - as ordained by biology, not by Adam Smith or Karl
        Marx. There are a number of ways that labor can be divided and
        organized, but there are no ways to dispense with labor. No
        work, no eat; no eat, no live is a scientific statement, not a
        moral rule... Urban life seems to have fostered in some people
        an ignorance more profound than any found in the outback, the
        bush or the boondocks. It is ignorance of how wealth is created.
        Hamburger does not appear in the supermarket by magic. It begins
        with a cow and somebody who labors to feed, shelter and doctor
        it. Then the cow is moved to the slaughterhouse where someone
        else must slay it, skin it, butcher it, refrigerate it and
        transport it. There is a long chain of hard, dirty work l eading
        up to the humbl rger patty we so casually chew on while musing
        over the latest political nonsense. Our local anarchists aren't
        rebelling against capitalism; they are rebelling against life
        and reality. They are looking for the Garden of Eden. They think
        it is concealed behind the facade of modern society. They think
        the garden will reappear if they destroy society. They are
        doomed by their illusion to waste their lives in frustration.
        There is no Garden of Eden this side of the grave, nor can one
        be created. For as long as people exist on this planet, they
        will spend the bulk of their lives at hard labor.


This reply ran in the Sentinel's letters column a few days later:

    Inadequate analysis

        When Charley Reese wrote a column attacking the anarchists'
        anti-work literature, he chose a processed and nutritionally
        worthless product - hamburger - as an example of food
        production. He didn't mention that anyone can grow vegetables,
        and there are easy, organic ways of keeping bugs from eating the
        crops. Apologists for the status quo rely heavily on the myth
        that there is "a long chain of hard, dirty work" involved in
        producing necessities. Work that produces useless or hazardous
        products such as Rolls-Royces and chemical insecticides need not
        be done at all. The labor that is necessary should be made into
        a playful part of everyday life. Gardening, weaving and
        carpentry could be enjoyable hobbies instead of daily drudgery.
        I think Reese failed to give an adequate analysis of our view of
        a decentralized, non-profit world. Rick Harrison ORLANDO


Bob Black sent the following rebuttal to the Orlando Sentinel and the
Orlando Indicator; the Sentinel declined to print it.

        To the editor: If columnist Charley Reese isnt careful he just
        might enlarge that "small group" the Orlando Anarchists into a
        big one with his transparently specious arguments that work is
        inevitable. I have noticed that nobody believes in work as
        fervently as those who don't have to do any. He who intones
        "there is no free lunch" usually has an expense account. Reese
        says that anybody who doesn't work is a parasite, but the real
        parasites are the hordes of bureaucrats, politicians, bankers,
        priests, soldiers, lawyers, and columnists whose mouths outrun
        their minds. Reese, who has never done so, asserts that anyone
        going off into the wilderness to live off the land would "find
        himself doing the most dreadful drudge work under the harshest
        of disciplinarians: hunger and thirst." But the question is how
        co-operating groups (not solitary individuals) might live, and
        here the anthropological evidence which Reese ignores is quite
        clear. As anthropologist Marshall Sahlins demonstrated in his
        book "Stone Age Economics," contemporary hunter-gathere rs -
        despite having b ced into the most inhospitable environments on
        the planet by the expansion of state and market systems - "work"
        only about four hours a day, in healthy open-air surroundings,
        with no bosses, time-clocks and production quotas, and produce
        abundantly for their needs. They make no distinction between
        work and play because for them there is none, and indeed their
        "work" - hunting, fishing, gardening - is what _we_ do to relax
        and forget about work! Since only 4 percent of Americans produce
        far more than enough food for all the rest, it is obvious that
        most work serves other than useful purposes. In fact, what it
        does is sustain parasitic governmental and business elites and
        habituate the masses to hierarchy, obedience and deferred (that
        is, denied) gratification. No one can say for sure that work can
        be eliminated, that is, if its small useful core can be
        transformed into a variety of diverse, creative activities which
        would by their intrinsic enjoyment attract enough people to
        produce as much as is truly needed or desired. But there are
        reasons to think it might be done, and columnists might apply
        themselves to this constructive task rather than re-hash
        platitudes. Does Reese know what kind of company he's keeping
        when he dogmatizes "no work, no eat"? Almost exactly the same
        expression appears in the Soviet Constitution. All authorities
        and authoritarians, East and West, religious and secular, left
        and right agree on this axiom, and this is why the real movement
        toward real freedom is ignored, opposed or oppressed by all of
        them. I will leave off by issuing a challenge to Charley Reese.
        I've been hard on him because he arrogantly insults a group of
        his neighbors whose ideas he doesn't even try to understand. But
        I will take it all back if he will publish a confession that he
        writes for the Sentinel solely "to survive" as he passes "the
        bulk of (his) life at hard labor"; that he just churns out copy
        to earn his paycheck. Why should anyone take seriously a guy who
        writes for such a reason? I too write a column, for a small San
        Francisco newspaper called Open City, and I don't get paid; and
        yet it's one of my most fulfilling activities. Why shouldn't
        everyone be able to live this way? -Bob Black

***
        NOTE: The Orlando Indicator first appeared in late 1976 and
eventually became one of many obscure radical publications with a
thinly-scattered readership across the continent. Some of the
Indicator's observations seem worth preserving, so Tangerine Network has
made them available in this electronic format. The Indicator was edited
by R. K. "Rick" Harrison and ceased publication in July of 1988. The
70th and final edition, presented here, was a compilation of significant
articles from the Indicator's ul career. The hardcopy version contains
three more articles and a cover collage and is still available (as of
early 1989) for $2 (cash or unused postage stamps) from Tangerine
Network, Box 547014, Orlando FL 32854. This material is in the public
domain and should be given freely to anyone who might benefit from it.

[EOF]