Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly masochistic, I sit and watch history being unmade.

How many times do we need to be told that, not only are the '60s over, but they never should have happened in the first place? Society is reverting to its pre-revolutionary form, and the Young Leaders of Tomorrow have already donned their tailored suits, picked up their briefcases, and are toddling along the yellow brick road to Power, Achievement, and a Happy, Productive Life. The older generation grow more reactionary, as the older generation are wont to do, and their tie-wearing spawn "rebel" against the percieved "liberal" mores of "wishy-washy" society, secretly pleased that their parents approve. Their future selves already run the world, full of self-righteousness and camera smiles. And they have bombs, and riot police, and dress codes, and the hearts and minds of the young.

They don't want you to think.

Education has been reduced to rote-learning, reality television is a mental trap, freeing viewers from the travails of having to use their imaginations to predict an outcome. Evangelists wipe the minds of the weak and credulous, who sport their acronymic wristbands and smug celibacy-before-marriage like dogs proudly displaying thier collars. It's as if thought has become unfashionable: those who question are refuted by platitudes disguised as certainties:

"But everyone knows Communism can never work!"
"Don't be stupid; Winston Churchill was a great man."

I have vowed to violently masturbate into the hastily-removed spleen of the next person to mention the words "family values" or "unnatural" in my hearing.
There's no doubt about it: the State as Corporation and its crony Evangelical Religion are winning. After all, they have the money and the guns and the government and God what have we got to challenge that?

I'll tell you what we've got.

We have Art and Beauty and Love and Truth. We have a flourishing counterculture that's more alive than anything the mainstream has produced in the last twenty years. We have semiotic sorcerers and guerilla literary theorists. We have Chaos Majick. We have sexual deviancy. WE have the talent and the information-delivery media to reprogramme the minds of Young Corporate Leaders and drive them, frothing, into the sea. We have memetic attacks and the vote. Most importantly, we have much better hair.

I don't think they can ultimately limit the human psyche to any meaningful extent. Anyone can be made to think. And once they've started, it becomes harder to stop. We're not a cohesive political group. We have no parliamentary agenda. There's no threat to your children here.

This isn't about politics, or globalisation, or even plain nostalgia. This is about reclaiming the human mind.

Worth a try?


~Withiel