Page 16 RAIN June/July 1983 Computers, Cooperations, and Making Lots of Money While Avoiding the Dumb Death of the Species as We Know Us by Anne Herbert In 1959 and 1964 and such times, they were saying, "Fat and Flabbiness abound. Americans only exercise by changing channels—will legs disappear through devolution?" What they were saying between their breaths without knowing was, "What we need for species survival is running shoes—more of and many, on many more feet—running shoes." Marketing for species survival is a large way to harvest. The species wants to survive and will do the next thing needed to live on. Planning what the next survival thing will be and making the objects to help that next thing happen is good karma and big money. The next big "thing" is cooperation. Your ears are bored at the word, but they used to yawn when they heard running. "You mean like bored forced panting in high school?" No, it turned out we meant like early morning sun on your eyelashes and not dying of gut fat. Give us the things that help us work together and play together and be funny and wise together. And we'll make you rich. Cooperation means not dying of bigger and bigger sticks making a smaller and scareder world. Cooperation means highs you can't suspect till you're further than you ever thought you'd go. Say you're dreaming a tree. You know about trunks and bark and tree tubing and she knows about leaf magic, and he's heard reliable rumors about roots, so you talk and breathe together in the same room, and you learn secrets undreamed about root capillaries and she suspects the bark could be a giant leaf and all your worlds get larger. Stick making competition—all you can think about is sticks and dodging. In a species clever but not wise, the best you can hope is not escaping the stick bash but taking the other guy with you as you die. The moment that your mind touches another mind that is cooperating with yours, you are free and jolted. A world of fresh air and electricity becomes where you live. You can finally turn off the reruns. It's a great feeling—the feeling that will replace war. Computer games that need two or three people to solve the puzzle. A computerized rubic cube that is almost impossible for one, rough but enchanting for two, if one is good at this and the other is good at that. Get us hooked at that cooperative feeling (without you. I'm bored), and we'll figure out how to do it all over life. Cooperate with yourself. Your selves. Stop the ignorant war between conscious and unconscious. Get them together laughing. Program a sentence or two, an image, from last night's dream to pop up randomly in the midst of your routine and see how it surprises you. Co-operate. Operate at the same time for the same ends. The creative potentials of fighting have been explored to their logical ends and several illogical ones. Cooperation is what the species needs now and will know it needs in five years. Give us the things that help us work together and play together and be funny and wise together. And we'll make you rich. Play with them yourself and you might even get happy.□□ Anne Herbert worked with Co-Evolution Quarterly for several years and is publisher of the Rising Sun Newsletter in San Francisco.
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