Order.

Who needs it?

Now some order is a good thing. I don’t like guns. They should be taken away. But I do not wish to quarrel with the systems of law, although there is much quarreling to be done. Canada seems to be pretty good about laws, especially in British Columbia.

And now I must attack that which I came here to attack. Order. Orderliness. Cleanliness. Emptiness. Controlledness. You could watch THX 1138, read The Glass Bead Game, or simply go look outside at the weather and the animals and the chaos of life to contemplate the importance of order in the world. But what kinds of order?

I have been struck by the orderliness of Japan. Some say it’s nice. I mean, hell, I didn’t have to wait in any lines in the airport when I flew. It was as easy as pie. And despite the amazing amount of paperwork in the government here, things are fast and civil. Anyone who has been to an L.A. D.M.V. knows that life is different in my fatherland.

But what sacrifices are made for order? A certain, large amount of uniformity and crazed amount of individual self-restraint that only alcohol can cure for most people I know, if they drink. There is also something to say about how orderly (self and societal) control can nix the ability to feel life, to feel free, to take chances, and to be a wild human animal.

Now of course there will be and would be (if given the chance) many who disagree with me, but my good literary friends Walt Whitman, Edward Abbey, Hermann Hesse, and Franz Kafka certainly wouldn’t. Of course each would offer very different points of view, but I think each would be against the kind of order I speak of here.

Now there are people in this world that do as they are told, as they are supposed to do. Then there are some people, namely the authors above, that can’t quite fit into the clothes they’ve been handed. They rebel in their own way, sometimes failing, but sometimes developing a strong stance that fights against that which laid down its control on them.

I think the most heroic of all people are those that fight against the grain. For the grain is usually something to fight against, not with. The grain defines that which humans seem to naturally fall into, a kind of order that does not by itself attack the bad qualities within itself. The dominance of huge corporations around the world is a good example. The governments and people don’t naturally fight against them; quite the contrary, they naturally go with them and accept the kind of minor brainwashing that goes with it.

Which brings us to education, dear friends. For education can, at its best, make people question things like giant corporations and their power in society. But education, at its worst, can do no such thing and can actively educate people to conform.

There was a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times about education, Japan, and America. It was number one on the most-emailed list when I saw it. The writer Brent Staples claimed that in America “Faced with lagging test scores and pressure from the federal government, some school officials have embraced the dangerous but all-too-common view that millions of children are incapable of high-level learning. This would be seen as heresy in Japan.” (Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/opinion/21mon4.html) This statement is absurdly false. Not only is that not seen a heretical thing in Japan, it’s actually built into the education system here where students are separated (by test scores) for high school. The slower kids here get placed in high schools that prepare them for non-intellectual, low-powered lives. It is a rigid hierarchy for these students here much like the caste systems of long ago.

But it is true that Japan puts a higher premium on their educational system than America does, but this certainly doesn’t mean that the system is entirely superior. Also, contrary to Staples’s opinion, the fact that Japan is a very different culture than the U.S. does mean that different policies will work here that would not work in America. I do very much agree with Staples that the No Child Left Behind Act was a serious mistake and another depressing blunder on the part of Bush and his ever-so-orderly, and ever-so-effective administration. Don’t blame me, I voted for the other guy.

To conclude this and to spell out the last few words about my frustration with all-too-orderly and controlling social systems, I must say a few things about what I mean on a human level. I like to live free and I demand a high level of personal freedom. I don’t like to be told I cannot wear certain things or that I must conform with everyone else even if they are not being nice to the world. That’s why I support Diva Cups and solar power. But on an even more personal level, I don’t think that I can be truly happy if my life becomes too orderly. I must always be breaking through the norms of the act of living. At times that is hard being so isolated. It’s best when there are people to go and be crazy with, otherwise I would just be a monk. And after I shaved my head to the skin I have been telling all the people of my town that I am a monk when they ask me if there was a tragedy in my life that made me shave my head. Life is not always easy when you refuse to conform to the standards of your society, but I think it beats the alternative.


"Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul." –Edward Abbey