The discovery of fire by early Man could have been caused by his penchant for breaking rocks for tools. In support of my opinion, the nature of fire making implements before the invention of matches should be considered. The flint and steel that was used to fire flintlock weapons must have antedated the use of gunpowder. With all of the movies and dime-novels about the old American West, no one has considered how the mountain men and the early cowboys built their campfires. As late as 1940 I personally lit many a cigarette from a sack of Bull Durham or Dukes mixture by using my pocket lighter. It was a small salve tin, a flint rock, and a small piece of broken file. A good cigarette roller could roll a smoke with one hand while riding a bucking horse. The open salve tin contained the ashes from a burnt Bull Durham sack. It was held in a pocket formed between the index finger and the thumb of the left hand. The tips of the index finger and the thumb held the flint rock with the sharp edge pointing up. A sharp blow with the piece of file in the right hand would make sparks go into the salve tin and start the ashes to glow. You lit your cigarette and put the cap back on the tin and the other two implements in your shirt pocket with the bag of tobacco. With much practice it was almost as easy as flicking your bic.
Nicotine is an addictive narcotic and tobacco growers still get government subsidies. To me it is like subsidizing the Medelin cartel. A subsdidy that the Noriega case indicates took place as our cold-warriors in the C.I.A. scratched the dope kings backs for help against the rebels. Tobacco can be chewed or sniffed as cocaine is. They are both smoked. Tobacco as cigarettes, pipes, and cigars, and cocaine in a crack pipe are inhaled. One of the funniest comedians of the fifties made a party record about Walter Raleigh calling his superiors in London long-distance on the phone to explain tobacco. His bosses had sent Walter to America because he was a company bumbler. They were laughingly patronizing poor Walter as he was trying to sell them the idea of marketing tobacco. When he told them that "you smoke it" they cracked up. Their hilarity was understandable. Why would anyone go to all this trouble and use all this complicated equipment to suck a foul oily smoke into their lungs?
It is a question that deserves an answer. I think it is because fire was early Man's greatest protection against large predators. The fire at the entrance to the cave meant security and the smoke from the fire meant that one was safe. Do not we light up when some tense situation causes fear? Do not we sometimes wave our burning cigarette in front of us like an earlier ancestor would wave a burning torch in front of a sabre toothed tiger? How we enjoy sitting in front of a fireplace or burning steaks on the back yard barbecue. Is not modern life full of fear provoking situations. I can imagine a ride on a modern freeway throwing one of our ancestors into a paralytic terror. How he would long to fill his lungs with the comfort of smoke? Why breathe smoke when a little snuff under your lip will satisfy the addiction? The answer is that the smoke is part of the attraction.
My lifelong penchant for asking myself . . . why? turned me into
a theorist.
I never became a scientist but a cursory investigation of anthropology
made it clear that this particular "science" unlike most others, did not
want to have anything to do with theory. Scientists, quite correctly, take
a dim view of anecdotal evidence. Most of my anecdotes can not easily be
investigated. The question of how the simple and universal colloquialism
O.K. entered the language was answered to my satisfaction by an old painter
I worked with, who at the age of seventy eight was dancing on his end of
a thirty-two foot plank and urging me to "hurry up." He reminisced during
lunch break about his first job with the famous, (in Holyoke Massachusetts)
Mister O'Keef. He said O"Keefe was a perfectionist. A contractor that personally
stuck little pieces of paper on jobs that had been completed to his satisfaction.
They contained the simple approbation(O.K.) . . . his initials. When you
consider that this expression has become even more universal than English,(the
new lingua franca) and that it has entered the vocabulary of NASA for space
flight, this bit of etymology is worth considering.
In one of my incarcerations I talked with a career criminal who told me where "motherfucker" originated. He said he was brought up in "The Valley," a notorious red-light district in East St.Louis Illinois. The whores children played together and called their mothers clients "motherfuckers." They hated these motherfuckers so bad that when they grew up as members of the criminal tribe, they continued to wage war on the "motherfuckers"
I never thought I would hear this epithet in my home. Like many another reformed sociopath I have reverted to the ways of my Catholic and Presbyterian ancestors. The other day I heard the epithet coined by East St.Louis children booming from the V.C.R. "Boys in the Hood" rented by my nineteen year old son. It has even been deemed acceptable by the F.C.C. because I had heard it previously on "Geraldo". I heroically faced down a room full of teen-agers with puritanical indignation. This only halted the corruption for a short time. Corruption flows around you like sewage and soon you find yourself breathing it. I watched a few of these flics, by this time numbed to the word, and only got up and walked out because they were bad art.
This morning, reading the Sunday paper, I halted at an ad for perfume.
"Introducing Tendre Poison by Christian Dior with a special gift."
The culture continues its interesting progress. Poison has a certain flair.
Perhaps some competitor will come up with an "eau de motherfucker." A cologne
for men.
It would seem that an anthropology so emersed in theories of culture
would be interested in this phenomenon. Whither are we going and what is
impelling us there? It seems to me that the root reason is overpopulation
and our culture has become diseased as were the Canadian rats. Perhaps
we have cultural AIDS and finding a cure for it will only make room for
some other disaster. I would hate to think that this book is only a "gripe"
book by an old man. I would hope that it might possibly stir some intellectual
ferment.
Technology is zealously making people healthier, producing more
food, and enabling us to live longer . . . I hope! The problem of overpopulation
and social disorganization will have to be addressed. The science of Human
Ecology is the only one that seems interested in these problems. It provides
data that is studiously ignored. There has to be an intellectual renaissance
and a rebirth of activism. There has to be a vision of the future. Can
we relate Man to this beautiful planet? Can we continue to promote life
without considering the necessity of death.
One of the newer additions to the modern lexicon is "homophobia". It is to be avoided like hydrophobia. Ordinary common-sense would indicate that this fear is well grounded in an era when AIDs is sweeping the world. As an old fighter for civil rights the present "liberal" attitude seems irrational. I was brought up before penicillin when ordinary childhood diseases, some of which have practically disappeared, were taken quite seriously indeed. I had a four year old brother die in one night from pneumonia. I believe that the liberal attitude is conditioned to a great extent by our modern immunities and the availability of a wide spectrum of anti-biotic medicines.
In the thirties there was no defense but isolation through quarantine for many diseases. If your kid got the mumps, your house was posted by the health-department and you were put under virtual house-arrest. No one considered this a violation of your civil rights. In those days there were people called "typhoid Marys". They were carriers of typhoid fever who for some genetic reason never came down with the disease. If "typhoid Mary" got a job in a restaraunt washing dishes, a whole epidemic could be started that would only end when she or he was identified and summarily encarcerated. "Lungers" or victims of tuberculoses were similarly packed away to "sanitoriums". Not to cure them, but so they could die without infecting anyone else. The arguments that are given protecting homosexuality . . .even extolling it, under the present doomesday march of AIDs, sound insane in the ears of anyone from my generation. The prohibitions (on the grounds of civil right) of testing for AIDS, is not even rational. There is no penicillin for this killer.
Castro' Cuba is dying on the vine from economic sanctions but it is not dying of AIDS. Fidel Castro built sanitoriums where people with h.i.v. were cared for, but in isolation from society. As a dictator this was not a hard accomplishment. All Cubans were tested and retested. If they had AIDS they were quarantined. Cuba is probably the only country in the world where AIDS has been stopped in its tracks. Granted . . . we are a free people, but our definition of freedom is that one is free so long as he does not threaten the freedom of his fellows. A homosexual with AIDS does not fit this category. If I am homophobic it is not because I feel threatened in my own sexuality. My sexuality is history. My homophobia is caused by a realization that a simple mutation in the h.i.v. virus could cause it to be transmitted by other means. It is not far-fetched to presume that an h.i.v. virus could mutate that could be spread like the common cold.
Politicians are sensitive to politically incorrect opinions. The ordinary American who is leery of homosexuality is outgunned by a public relations drive organized by a minority that is well organized. Common sense is bombarded with charges of "ignorance," "sexual fascism" and "homophobia." If you wish to continue to be thought of as a liberal modern you had better go along with these "civil libertarians". If you do not, your own liberties might be in danger. Hardly anyone, even Republicans, want to be thought of now-a-days as socially conservative. Economically conservative . . .certainly! But individual freedom from government interference in our lives is obviously more important than watching your children die from AIDS.
This planet has gigantic problems. Whole oceans, and land masses have become polluted with modern toxins and radioactivity. Rainforests are being burned to the ground. The very atmosphere has become poisoned and the ozone layer at its outer limit is disappearing. The social problems of whole populations in flight accompanied by mass starvation and disease are a present day fact. The problems of the inner cities is acerbating. In this scenario individual liberties pale before the immanence of death to the very young. From a drive-by shooting to atomic experimentation on unwitting citizens by a mad government agency, some individuals liberties are going to have to be curtailed until these problems are permanently solved. This has to be done because their liberty is destroying our liberty. This is the just authoritarianism of the majority. Any intellectual who would deny this is not worthy of the name.
More and more people are becoming convinced that the death penalty is a necessary evil. As time moves on you will see the death penalty becoming summary. When I was in the old territorial prison at Santa Fe as a youngster, the inmates were very concerned about what they called "The Bitch". It was the habitual criminal law. Today it is called "Three strikes and you are out". It will not be long before a free America will say "three strikes and you will be shot behind the ear". I remember the old electric chair in this small, brick factory, prison. When someone was "fried" the lights dimmed as they did in the old Cagney movies. You can only imagine the sober faces when this chilling event took place. Today the Melendez brothers can get away with crying that they were molested on T.V. and earning the sympathy of some "intellectuals". These are confessed patricides who have committed a crime that has been abominated above all others. Conversly, poor Whites and many Blacks get the death penalty because they did not have wealthy parents to murder. The intellectual vacuity that allows these things to take place with little protest is the real danger here. It is the reason for this book. The educational establishment that turns out these panglosts is guilty. Stupidity is bad enough in the stupid, but when it dominates our intelligentsia it becomes criminal. The jungle is not famous for brilliant minds. The jungle is insisting that it mandate the future for our tribe. We hope that rebellion in the ranks of the young will again rise up against professors who are playing it safe. Time servers and writers of books to keep from perishing and fishers for jungle grants must be exposed and chased from our temples of learning. I am not calling for a Chinese "Red Gaurds" attack. I am calling on the young to speak out with all the power of young lungs. You have a long road ahead The wheel that squeaks gets the grease. Do not let them make malleable careerists out of you. Your individual future is wrapped up in the future of youth itself.