Chapter 20: Changing the World in Mendocino
© 1987 by Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research Labs
Point Arena, California (1,363 miles)
January 15, 1987
Nowhere is the infinite interconnectedness of human relationships so
clear as in a succession of small coastal towns, isolated from the rest
of the world—towns small enough to be interdependent, yet large enough
to be vigorous; places rugged enough to discourage the lazy, yet
beautiful enough to attract the intelligent. Such a zone is the western
edge of Mendocino County: a sort of meta-community spread along the
cliffs of northern California. We’ve been traipsing through a sparse
network of linked relationships like a couple of hundred-dollar bills
in Miami.
This coastal culture differs dramatically from the rest of the country.
To some extent, it can be attributed to the scenic character of the
land, something that can have sweeping effects on natives. Beauty
sells, you know: Highway 1 winds along the coast like a varicose vein,
offering the seasonal torrent of tourists an optimum view as they bring
economic hemoglobin into these areas of marginal industry. A
long-established love-hate relationship is in force here, a reluctant
symbiosis between hawker and gawker.
There’s something about low-bandwidth communication between
non-miscible cultures that affects everybody. I’ve seen it in other
tourist areas: each group, locals and visitors, begins to generalize
about the other—to lump them together into a single stereotype. The
brash tourist. The uppity local. Those stupid RV’ers. Those weird
hippies. Residents look the other way as they draw their livelihood
from the people who prompted their flight from the city in the first
place.
But there’s more, though, quite a lot more. Success in these parts
isn’t on the same economic scale as it is in mainstream America. Trade
work abounds. The land provides. Friends support each other. And it
works well because the economic bottom line is simply not the point;
quality of life is. And the deeper you look, the more interesting it
becomes...
These little towns harbor a remarkable population of creative
people—the kind you would normally expect to find in high-tech node
cities blanketed in stimulating vapors of silicon. Boat designers who
combined the dimensions of Noah’s ark with computer analysis to yield a
high-performance open-ocean kayak. Networkers who have eschewed systems
with a corporate substrate in lieu of electronic anarchy (FIDO and
packet). A guy who turns Cadillacs into bizarre artworks. Another who
hand-assembles high-performance audio cassettes. Monkeywrenchers
dedicated to the battle against despoilers of the wilderness,
practicing “ecotage” on an increasing scale. A fabricator of custom
dental equipment. A man who makes computerized biofeedback systems that
sell for nearly $50,000. And everywhere, literally everywhere, a degree
of awareness that fulfills the oft-lamented promise of the 60’s. Even
the bookstores, small though they be, are dizzying.
And encounters can be funny. Phoenix introduced herself as having
“seven fire signs, and two air signs to fan the flames.” A Mendocino
radio pirate got busted for his innovative auto-answer “you’re on the
air” machine, bought into a public-access cable TV channel, and now
broadcasts whatever people send him. Reagan is profoundly unpopular
around here, to the point that I was recently presented with an
interpretation of ancient biblical prophesy predicting his demise on
August 17, 1987. And a friend in Elk explained the lingering personal
effect of the World Instant of
Cooperation: less cynicism. This is the land of rural
counterculture.
The thing that’s pleasing about it all, despite frequent overdoses of
HMB (hip metaphysical bullshit), is an intellectual liveliness that has
at its roots a lot of the right motives: protection of mother earth for
reasons beyond her continuing usefulness to Man, prevention of human
self-destruction over matters of ideological nonsense, revision of our
self-poisoning habits, and the general objective of peace on all
levels. A lot of us, um, sorta forgot about those things as we “grew
up” from the Age of Enhanced Consciousness into the Epoch of Bottom
Lines—a dubious maturation indeed.
But isn’t it hard to change the world when you’re eking out a
small-town living as a part-time pump repairman, part-time gatherer of
sea urchin eggs, and part-time poet of the revolution? So what if one
of your poems ran in the Mendocino
Review last summer, and so what if you successfully planted a
tire-spiker in a fording spot up Elk Creek to discourage the mob of
littering, noisy off-roaders? It’s a big world. How ya gonna change it
from here?
Well, my wanderings have suggested an optimistic comment on that.
Contrary to popular news stories of the day, social change does not
hinge on government overthrow. Those are just the warrings of competing
ideologues, not incremental steps in the evolution of consciousness.
Growth—the recognition and elimination of ignorance—happens on a human
level, slowly, building over time like the gradual conversion of a
successful anomaly into a whole new species. Governments and
eco-trashers simply apply selection pressure, insuring their eventual
deterioration.
The essence is communication, one of my main motives for becoming a
writer in the first place. Freelancing is actually a maddening
business, as the frustrated ramblings of Chapter 18 may have
suggested—not many people make a full-time living at it. I barely
manage. But amassing private riches is not nearly as important as
protecting public ones; a larder full of stocks and bonds is but a
hollow trophy without good food, air, water, communication, recreation,
security, and personal freedom. Whatever one person can do to raise the
awareness of another is the best social contribution of all—one small
step at a time until we all realize which of our systems are healthy...
and which ones should be replaced.
This coast is an area that enforces understanding of whole systems. You
can’t pick your way among the tidepools, marveling at geometric chitons
and subtly-hued anemones, bending to touch massive starfish and strange
whiplike growths 20 feet long, without sensing something of the
planet’s complexity and deep interconnectedness. Everything is part of
the food chain—we’ve just grown cocky because we happen to be on top.
All we need now is a few healthy predators to remind us that we’re all
in this together: one species, one planet, one whole.