. I I Page 10 RAIN November 1980 KARL ,HESS on persona ist poitics Without a doubt, Karl Hess is one of the most personable-and provocative characters in the appropriate technology movement, of which he is widely considered a founder. Known for.basement fishfarming and perhaps a dozen books, he lives in Kearneysville, West Virginia, in a house he built with his wife a11;d two sons. Karl's life history is as varied as his ideas. For example, he ghosted Barry·Goldwater's newspaper column, and during th~ 1964 Presidential can:,.paign wrote Goldwater's spe'eches. Eight years lqter he was arrested in Washington, DC, f9r protesting the war in Vietnam. . Several months ago Karl visited the Rainhouse and we engaged him in the following discussion. • -MR Hess: I met'a fellow this rnoTing~cJ. man of about eighty-who pointed out that if the Trojan nuclear plant doesn't come back on line, he'll be very worried, because that's where his power has been corning from. All he knows is that he's got a plug that ~lectricity · comes out of, and at the other end of that plug is the Trojan plant. Now, you can't very well start out by telling him he's poisoning .people all over the country to get his electricity: He can.,t hear that. He's got to hear first that you care whether he free~es to death. That's so important! There's that line of Brecht's: "We who would change the w.orld could not to ourselves be kind." I think that's a first step. You've·got to be nice to people. Suppose you project a • vision of the future in which ~verybody is hungry, dispirited, miserable, cold: that's po vision! And yet many people say that all thefve heard from th~ counter cuitµre are proposals that would do that: lead to famine. Rain: President Carter, with his whole·emphasis on sacrifice, too. · Hess: Exactly. And you know, a lot of people-particularly people who have been liberals and get int~rested in appropriate technology-take that line immediately·. What they want is for working class people to stop driving. They hate pickup trucks and they hate all my neighbors ~Consequently, all my neighbors hate them. So · you talk to a lot of people where I live about appropriate technology, and you've got to explain-what you mean or they get very.upset. They think you mean Robert Redford and an Aspen ski lodge, and it's very easy for the utilities to make their attacks along those lines. Ra.in: The intriguing part, too, is-that organizations like the utilities have a better sense of how to communicate their message than - we have. The utilities are the ones who are making the connection· between n'ot having power corning out of your plug and a nuclear plant shutdown. • , . Hess: That's right. And they also make that wondei:ful equation . that you can eithe·r have a job or clean air. If that's the popular choice, then you can't immediately come out for clean air. You've got to sort of slide into it by coming out for the jobs and then explain _the clean air. It tries your patience, ·and a lot of people, I've found, become very interested in appropriate-technology when they're very young, and sort of leap into it with no patience at all. It's either got to happen tom_orrow or it's all over with. Doom, doqm, doom. Of course it really doesn't work that way. Everything takes more time than you think, and patience is.indispensible. • . Rain: It's harp, tho4gh; because there1s a real sense of urgency in the air. Especially coming into the '80s with all that connotes about running out of time. • ! Hess: But every time you lose patience I thi~k you also lose listeners. You appear to be just running around flapping your wings. Rain: Still, the movement has room for the impatience of you'th as well as the patience of a little bit·rnore wisdom. The advantage of people who are younger and impatient is the .incredible wealth of energy.They don't believe in any of the obstacles, so they just go "gung ho" and they get a lot accomplished. Maybe we have to patch up a few o'f the things that they don't do quite right, but t,hey do move things along. Hess: And of course there's no way to stop it. I think things are actually moving along wonderfully well. Rai,n: For whom? Hess: Oh, for us. And'l think it's significant that people are falling out of the political system, not voting. It's a very impressive sign. .It's not a movement, but it's a symptom. Maybe the most important symptom today is the decline of television viewing, qut I have· yet to figure out how to get hold of any information on that except from very personal observation. Around the community where I live people are watching less. Rain: Maybe we can figure·out a way to use the television so that it is the teacher, the medium that people respond to. It may be that the only way to have a revolution is through the television. Hess: Is there a paradox there? I think there is, in that the major feature of that medium is passivity. So, no matter what messages you get, y.ou'v-e got it in a passive way, and it occurs to me there is no way for it to be an inciting medium. At least I don't understand how. The inciting mediums still have to be advanced. The thing that really gets to people is one too many bureaucrats. We'll never be as effective in our wildest dreams as the bureaucrats are. Every ' interaction with one results in the expulsion of somebody from ' faith in t})~ system. Then there's the whole underground economy, that's an astonishingly substantial thing! _ . . Rain: You're referring to co-ops? "The ~hing that reaJ/y gets to people·is one too many· bureaucrats ... every interac.tion withone exp~ls somebody from faith in the system." Hess~ Barter and all unreported transactions. If I were sitting in the White House ~nd looked out, I wouldn't be worried abou mobs in the street because my mobs could handle their mobs. Wh t would really worry me would be the direct competition, the voluntary • social organization at a non-governmental level. These things should be scary to the government but I don't know if they are. Rain: The government isn't very astute. • Hess: Tha(s something we can count on, and it's a good and happy 1 point. .It's in the nature _of a large i~stitution that it will not fear ' anything destructive to its long-term purposes. It simply cannot hear it. You see, Reagan was right a long time ago: you remember he said "if there's gotta be some shooting, let's do it now and get it over with." He would have had Kent State episodes all over the place years before.that happened. He's a proper authoritarian, he's a czar, _he's a Communist, and he's right: if you're going to run an
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