Date: Thu, 05 Aug 1999 14:21:52 -0700
From: "J. Foster" <borealis-AT-mail.wellsgray.net>
Subject: Re: silence



Isis:
>Could you guys write a few lines defining the body without organs for me.
>Ill avoid prompting.

The body without organs is the machine. The machine feeds on the worlds'
blood [Baudelaire]. It has no organs, nor vestigal entities remotely related
organs of the flesh. Therefore the body without organs cannot feel. It has
some of the same properties of the flesh such as purpose, function, and it
can do work. The modern machine does not require a human to use it, but it
uses humans to operate, whereas the neolithic tool, the obsidian knife
cannot function with the hand, and neither can the spinning wheel, or the
maddock. The "hills shall be planted with maddocks" [Old Testament]. The
modern body without organs [machine] can make other machines. There is a
ecomomy of the machine that operates like a nervous system. It is the ebb
and flow of capital or token capital in the markets of New York, and Toyko.
It operates symbolical as a pulse of economic activity that represents the
activity of machines around the world that confer an entitlement to the
owners in the form of the surplus of future returns from existing machines
and new patents and market opportunities. 

The obsidian knife could be fabricated only by one person who had the time
and training to take a piece of volcanic glass into their hands and survey
it for its utility. The organs in this case inform the brute matter with
purpose and design. Modern machines cannot do this except if they are
programmed and what is programmed into them is an artefact of the calculus
on noble intentions, but sometimes unethical intentions. The safety of many
machine products is unknown and often is in question. Uranium mines and
nuclear reactors disperse minute amounts of radio-isotopes that damage for
millenia the very DNA of all that lives, affecting the thyroids of children
in Hiroshima, and in Chernobyl, forfeiting their future to children of their
own, and to live a long and healthy life. In fact prior to the construction
of all the reactors in the world which number about 500 there was no
understanding about the effects and concentrations of radio-isotopes on
children who were exposed. The reactor in Chernobyl has been declared "an
experiment" in which the effects of radioactive iodine can be determined in
the population of children that where exposed [cf. Weinberg, New York]. 

The machine as a body without organs does not forgive. It is not the
representation in art of the "mickey mouse" machine gun, and it is not the
'ultimate time machine' [cross symbolized by the bicycle which requires a
human to command it. The bicycle can never ride by itself.

If someone were to leave all the lights on at night and we to leave all the
air conditioners on at night, one day the world would suffer a uncontrolled
nuclear reaction. It will only take one person to cause an accident. The
heat wave that is caused by the combustion of millions of machines such as
cars and air conditioners and water pumps to irrigate cotton in the deserts,
would not be turned off voluntarily, but would run even during a brown out.
The coal fired electric plants will have poisoned each wetland with mecury,
with uranium, with lead.  The nuclear reactors would not have a backup power
system to control a runaway loss of coolant accident eventually since the
backup systems would have to operate to supply power to the state, the
armies, the factories, the entertainment businesses. The machine that feeds
on the blood of the world cannot be turned off. It has to run out of energy
first. Someone has to ride a bicycle and park their car first. The body
without organs does not feel any pain when the rainforest falls and is
converted to grass, but the birds, beasts and flowers do. Humans, their
ancient neolithic cultures, and are being manipulated and machined into
consumers of the products of the body without organs. They will one day lose
all their humanity and the savanna ways. "Cling to Dreamtime...walking works
of art, boys wear clan design during their ten-day circumsion rites. Soon
they will share full membership in Arnheim Land's ancient culture."
[National Geographic article on the oldest peoples on the earth, living in
Australia for 40,000 years]  

>From Command Post Andromeda
John Foster

Clearwater, B.C. 
Canada

"When I see a person riding a bicycle my faith in humanity is restored" 

H.G.Wells