UC05 Winter 1973 by Christopher Squire

UNDERCURRENTS Winter 1973 CONTENTS Transfiguration among .3 the Windmills The Sunship: Towards a 5 Peoples' Airship.. Big Dams Cast Dark .9 Shadows 14 Class War Comix.. Velikovsky : State of .I6 the Debate Letters. .2 1 Three Ways t o Work up Wind Watts 23 ~ e c h n o l for o~~ Decentralisation 25 Lyle's Golden Gasmask.. 33 Paolo So1eri:Interview .36 Canned Heat: Steve Baer's Solar House. 39 Hic! Cups .40 -.-. The Plastic's Not for Burning - 41 Why The Pentagon .43 Loves P u r e Research.. Methane- Fuel of the Future 44 Inner Space Scientific Expedition 1973.. ......... . 4 5 Car Batteries and , Enthusiasm 46 47. S S and Broadcasting.. Can You Repeat Your Gessage please ? .48 Self -Sufficiency. 49 Snap Judgemehts 50 --. Double Vision? Second View. 51 Subscriptions 52

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I t is UNDERCURRENTS policy not t o c a r r y display advertising, but we do include small ads a s a service to readers. Small Ads cost I p per word, up to a maximum of 150 words (bigger ads by arrangement), and must b e pre-paid. Small Ad Copy Date for the next issue i s January 26, 1974. Coov date for feature material for the next issue is Saturday, January 19th. F o r news in the EDDIES section, the deadline is Saturday, February 2nd.

Our Phase 3 Policy WHEN UNDERCURRENTS f i r s t started, back in January 1972, our aim was to produce a quarterly magazine consisting of articles on radical scientific and technological s u b j e ~ t s ~ p r i n t e d , where possible, by the people writing them and collated into the "common c a r r i e r 1 ' of a plastic bag. In May 1972, we experimented with a cellophane bag, but found it wasn't strong enough and anyway was non-reusable, s o we went back to muchmaligned polythene. Meanwhile, in the Autumn of 1972, we decided to print our news section, EDDIES, separately, and mail a copy each month to our ^ subscribers.It seemed like a good idea at the time- a s indeed it was, But, perhaps predictably, we found that EDDIES was taking up a disproportionate amount of our very limited time, with the result that both EDDIES and UNDERCURRENTS have suffered from chronic production delays. And when you consider that EDDIES still has to be collated, folded, stuffed into envelopes and addressed entirely by hand, for reasons of economy, it isn't too surprising that our all-volunteer workers haven't always been able to deliver the goods. As for the polythene bag, well, people seem to have loved it o r hated it in almost exactly equal numbers. And although we still think it's a good idea, we feel that UNDERCURRENTS would have to turn itself into an entirely different kind of glossy, expensive magazine to b e able to pay contributors the cost of producing inserts. What we've found up to now is that while many people a r e keen to send us "paste-ups" of their articles for us to print in the magazine, almost no-one has come along and spontaneously offered ready-printed material for inclusion. Those inserts that we have carried in the past have all, without exception, been requested by us. The reason for peoples' lack of enthusiasm for the insert idea i s fairly obvious: inserts cost money to print, and contributors, understandably, would rather we did the paying. SO, TO CUT A LONG STORY SHORT, we've recently been going through what's commonly known a s an "agonising re-appraisalf1. We sincerely apologise to our long-suffering r e a d e r s and subscribe r s who must have thought we'd decided t o fold without telling them. F i r s t of all, we 've decided to abandon the polythene bag format thought we're still toying with the idea of occasional, special Secondly, we've resolved to publications in "bag" f o r m . cut the number of mailings down from a ( theoretical) 16 a year t o six, re-incorporate EDDIES into UNDERCURRENTS, and produce the thing a s a conventional magazine Incidentally, this should mean that a lot of bookshops will s t a r t stocking the magazine: quite a few -- Collett's of London, for example -have refused to take it in its polythene bag incarnation. It'll take us a while to get geared up to bimonthly publication, s o the first issue of UNDERCURRENTS-Phase 3 won't b e out until the end of February , 1974. ABOUT THAT COVdR PRICE INCREASE. Let's talk about the financial state of the magazine first.As of the end of October, the magazine as a whole had run up a deficit of around Â£70 We owe the bank about Â£80 and Â£5 o r s o in ( t o inside back covei

UNDERCURRENTS Winter 1973 WHEN MUGGERIDGE went over to the side of God and the Angels, there was great rejoicing, no doubt, among the Lord Longfords and the Mary Whitehouses that this inveterate cynic had rejected his evil ways and begun to believe in all the things he'd been so successfully knocking for all those years.

I CAN HARDLY bring myself to say it. It feels like lacking my grandmother. But.. .pass the word friends. .I think .AT IS DEAD. It was a wonderful dream, and we, the children of Hamlin, followed i t dancing through the streets. I'm glad we did. On the walls of Paris in 68 they wrote "The revolution which is beginning will call into question not only capitalist society but industrial society.. .We a r e inventing a new and original world. Imagination is seizing power." Imagination i s seizing power. I always find such romantic bullshit irresistible, a s do many of us. Combine that weakness with our faith in what, for all our protestations, we all believe to be the real god of the Universe -science -and you have an idea whose appeal i s irresistible. Well, it's led me a merry dance for three years, and now it's time to move on. Just to get i t out of my system, I am going to recount my own experience of the idea a s it developed up to the conference of Alternative Technology at Laurieston Hall in Scotland, October 1973. I was then going to outline what we should do, and to show that in reality AT is not dead but transformed into something else. But UNDERCURRENTS i s only so big, and that will have to wait for another time.

Likewise, when Peter Harper starts claiming that "Alternative Technology is Dead", there a r e likely to be knowing smiles in Establishment circles. But before they start offering him Shell directorships, maybe they'd better read this article. For it's not so much that AT is dead: it's more a question of tactical withdrawal and re-grouping in preparation for an even more powerful attack on the technocracy. Watch this space for further details..

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Remember the beginnings of the ecology movement? In the 60's it became fashionable to worry loudly about population growth, pollution and depletion of natural resources. By the 70's this had grown to quite a substantial middle-class movement in which apocalyptic rhetoric seemed quite appropriate. I for one was convinced that Armageddon was not far away; advanced industrial society was leading the world to ruin, whether bangtype o r whimper-type I wasn't quite sure, but anyhow it looked pretty nasty. In 1970 there was a conference at Imperial College called "Threats and Promises of Science", which somehow never got round to the promises. That doughty old Stalinist Eric Burhop valiantly defended the gods of science, but i t all fell on deaf ears. Ted Roszak was the hero of the hour, and we sat there chilled and enthralled a s he quietly anathematised the whole technical culture. We were all set for a pathetically joyous return to the Stone Age. Later that year a band of Luddite desperadoes, including Robin Clarke, Jerry Bavetz, Kit Pedler, Gustav Metzger, David Dickson and Piers Corbyn met to discuss the matter. Robin Clarke wrote a little paper called "The Third Alternativew. Yes, he said, the future of industrial society was

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catastrophic, but negotiating a transition to the stone age seemed a bit tricky. What was needed was indeed a "Third Alternative" that would give us the best of both worlds. And Science and Technology? Well, yes, but a science and a technology; a new worldview which would integrate objective knowledge with subjective experience, reflect o u r real dependency on the natural world and incorporate the canons of the new eco-socialist morality; and a new array of tools and techniques that would: operate on low amounts of energy; not irreversibly disperse nonrenewable resources; use local and easily accessible materia1s;recycle materials locally; not produce waste products a t a greater rate than they could be absorbed by the natural cycling processes; not liberate novel chemical compounds in more than trace amounts; fit in with existing culture patterns; satisfy those who operate it; lend itself to control by those who operate it; have safeguards against misuse. F a r out! At this point we had also coined the term "soft technology", copied with ironic intent from the then current wave of detergent adverts for "New'. Soft! DAZ" etc. Evidently a lot of other people had a similar idea because the name i s now very widely used and I can hardly believe i t diffused from that / group. Then I went to the States and met various groups like the New Alchemists who were into the same sort of thing, but in a more practical way. That looked real enough. The rumour machine was working overtime. Anecdotes and snappy statistics about the collapse of American society and the world ecosystem circulated endlessly, along with heady . stories about the massive yields on this o r that organic farmstead o r the willing megawatts that could be magicked from backyard windmills a t the flick of a screwdriver. I t all seemed so right. When I got back I managed to wring some money out of UNESCO to do a report on Soft Technology in which I tried to systematise the case for AT research. I argued that the potential problems of industrial societies (resources, environment, "alienation" etc .) were insoluble with big-scale technology and needed small-scale stuff. At the same time I argued that development in the Third World could not succeed with the current type of capital-intensive technology and also needed small-scale stuff intermediate technology a l a Schumacher, in fact. What a beautiful picture! a universally valid land of

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technology applicable to all regions of the world which solved physical (resources, environment) and social (alienation in all its forms, capital accumulation etc .) problems with equal ease. The philosophers1 stone had nothing on this. There was, of course, a problem in distinguishing "soft" from other technology. I s there a clear test for softness? Compare i t with intermediate technology. You can look at an equipped workplace, ask "is i t intermediate?" and answer yourself by determining the capital cost. If it's less than say Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ300 then you could say clearly, according to that criterion, i t was. With soft technology it was all done by an intuitive sense of appropriateness, roughly gauged by the standard benchmarks of wind, sun, methane, rammed earth, waterwheels, compost heaps, free- range hens and a partridge in a pear tree. As soon a s I say this you note the ecological influence. Environmental impact was one area in which you could possibly measure "softness", and I was considerably influenced by Nick Holliman's unpublished paper "Towards an .Ecologically-Based Technology", in which he argued that once the criteria of ecological stability were satisfied then everything else followed (including "liberation from drudgeryw,"independence from large production units", "political self- sufficiency", "freedom from manipulation by elites" etc.) Even I couldn't go that far, and felt you had to wire in all the desirable political aspects separately, but I couldn't help being attracted by the tangibility of ecological criteria. This ecological bias was reinforced by meeting Andy MacKillop, who used the term " b i o t e c h n i c ~to ~~ describe the kind of groovy all-purpose technology he wanted. Andy and I organised a meeting in February 1972 at University College called "Alternative Technologies". I think that was the first time the term had been used publically. I can't remember why we chose it, but probably it was something to do with the associations that the word "alternative" had picked up during the 60's (is that right Andy?) The meeting was a shambles, but a lot of eager people were there and some prophetic things happened in the general discussion. I particularly remember the plaintive cry, "what's all this about revolution? I came here to talk about windmills." No comment. The papers later printed up in the "proceedings" gave a nice overview of where alternative technologies were a t in the fields of economic development, food, medicine, bits of politics, and in theory. Robin Clarke's

UNDERCURRENTS Winter 1973 paper "The Soft Technology Research Community" (later reprinted in UNDERCURRENTS No. 2) was particularly significant and influential. It put forward a plan for AT research based in a community specially set up for the purpose, guided by the principle "Technology valid for all men for all time" (Parenthetical note from Lyn Gambles, proofreader: "and women?"). Perhaps the most valuable part of the paper was a table contrasting features of "hard technology society" with ideal features of "soft technology society". It was outrageously partial, but unrivalled a s a kicking-off for discussion UNDERCURRENTS, too, started that month, and I think STREET FARMER around that time a s well. In the States, ALTERNATIVE SOURCES OF ENERGY was getting off the ground, and WHOLE EARTH CATALOG, MOTHER EARTH NEWS and NEW ALCHEMY INSTITUTE ; 1 BULLETIN had been around for some time. Many of us had read Bookchints I famous "Towards a Liberatory Technology", but judged i t not sufficientlj , neo-primitive. Later that year, there was a meeting at the Poly of Central London but nothing came of it; then there was the UN conference in Stockholm and an exhibition of "People's Technology" and nothing came of that either, except to 1 earn what incredible effort i s required to get such things together. One spinoff from that was an attempt to further define the scope of AT which 1 became the Undercurrents "Guide to Sources and Contacts in Alternative Technology", published in No. 3 : "not only the relations of production, but the means themselves must be changed". Alph Moorcraft did his special issue of ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN on "Designing for Survival" and the RIBA had its conference on the same topic. The first SURVIVAL SCRAPBOOK was published. The Street Farmers a t last found a patch of turf and started to build Street Farm House (nee Eco House), and a group in Sheffield started Rad-Tech-inPact (nee Communal Factories). There was an inconsequential meeting in Leatherhead, and another in Richmond.

It was good to see the brethren together, and to hear about all the plans and projects, but i t was difficult t o d o anything collectively. There was no organisation except when anyone felt like inviting everyone else to be somewhere a t some time. Terminology was important: there was no "group"; there were no "meetingst'; simply "gatherings of enthusiasts". Suddenly paranoia gripped the a i r . Things got so bad that whoever convened a meeting would feel obliged to stay away, lest the:

UNDERCURRENTS Winter 1973

DEAR UNDERCURRENTS, Sorry to see you wasting your space on Velikovsky. Velikovsky is a good test for literacy in science. It takes rather better than 6th form science to see thru* Velikovsky. Which is why reaction i s able to use him as a vehicle for yet another irrationalism to confuse and divert the public. Frank Quelon 190 York Road, Stevenage, Herts SG1 4HH

abroad? DEAR UNDERCURRENTS I didn't exactly regard myself as swept away by your reply to my points of disagreement with i Velikovsky's theories. The records we hold of BC astronomical happenings are rather numerous and come from Europe, the Middle East, the Far East and Central America amongst other areas. All of these are and have been studied from a conventional background since the middle of the last century. in direct contrast to the impression created in Worlds in Collision. And in direct contrast to Velikovsky's approach, the "straight" investigators have never crassly selected their evidence with great care to suggest an unusual event in the past, or seen any need to postulate one. The triumphs of palaeography in astronomical thought are too familiar to need elucidation, but include the identification of the Crab nebula with the 1054 Supernova and two minor nova/nebula identifications also from Chinese records. A recent paper in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society by F R Stephenson discusses the possibilities of this field. So the point that other scientists, some of them of the reputation of Lockyer, have paid attention to the value of these records, i s not a rebuttal of Velikovsky but must stand against him to some degree. The value of these investigations in the study, in particular,

The few oils which lack such ingredients are known, and I mean to be of algal origin and are, as usual, too well sealed in to have been affected even by such an object as Velikovsky proposes. The next point i s the horns of Venus. The planet Venus, to cut a long story short, is easily seen to anyone with moderate eyesight to he homed while gibbous in phase, so that there i s no need for a horned comet to be invoken to account for the planet's portrayal a s horned by (eg) Egyptian artists. Later on this year this appearance will be plain to anyone with a little patience and clear skies and should be able to be tested by seeing which way the cusps point and checking with binoculars. To return to Geology Lesson One, there are two sorts of animals; extinct and still living. Lingula, a brachiopod, has been going from 600 million years ago and shows no sign of becoming extinct. of the orbit decay of Comet P/Halley, for In African fossil hominid sites various which every opposition back to several m e s of and Australopithecus handred year; B C is recorded, is unquest- commonly coexist with present species ionably immense. such a s monkeys and extinct ones such as But Velikovsky's writings, which have the Oryx spindex so, a big-homed oryx. The atmosphere of the innocent abroad in case of the Siberian mammoths, too. needs practically every field he touches, little amplification. And in modern times cannot he so well received. The terms animal extinction both man-made and used (to speak of an area I know a little natural are familiar. I see no reason for about) in the Oriental records are rather man and now extinct animals coexisting in Florida a few thousand years ago to be precise. "Lances" and a few other terms describe meteors, 'brooms" and a few evidence of anything in particular, except others comets, "guest stars" almost possibly that the site i s older than once exclusively covers novae and snpernovae, thought. and so forth, with the terms "fixed" and There is however, something in the "wandering" stars covering precisely what current (September) issue of Skv and we mean by stars and planets. Telescope which I think should be in The upshot of this as I see it i s that If any good Velikovsky file. the object Velikovsky proposes appearThis issue contains a letter from ed in the sky 3500 years ago a precise S S Vsekhsvyatsky of the Astronomical term for it would have been found, and Observatory, 252053 Kiev-53 USSR. 'comet' would not have been it. He talks about proceedings at the 1970 Another more serious point i s that the International Astronomical Union term comet in the context of this object Symposium on Comets, held in Leningrad. i s of necessity, not the ancient astronomers It is of course the accepted wisdom that comets, mostly long-period ones like term but Velikovsky's. While this might Halley, disintegrate to give meteoroids he a foolish error on the part of an ancient and general dust. Earth-based observatastronomer who knew nothing about the ions of meteor showers give elements of disposition of the material of the Solar their orbits which compare closely with System or of masses of celestial objects, cometary ones and all the best meteor it i s ridiculous on that of a person of the showers have a fairly likely parent comet. twentieth century 'AD who should. This And in recent years it has become obvious cannot really be regarded as anything but that fainter comets can be captured by a piece of obscurantism on Velikovsky's Jupiter and end up with asteroidal type part, since apart from a lot of gas and an amount of rock it has nothing in common orbits. At the sort of distance this involves they display very little tail, if with what we call a comet. any, and if the few definite cases of this A particularly sad misunderstanding i s the effect had not been noticed until a little one in your item on geohydrocarbons, an later they would certainly have been expression, by the way, that I made up. accepted as standard rocky asteroids. It is the first rule of Geology that whatever But Vsekhsvyatsky also says that he and we can see happening now can be found in trace form in geological structures. Thus a few colleagues have shown that "mighty" processes of eruptive evolution" are we can see fossil meteorite craters, taking place in the Solar System, mainly current bedding, delta deposits, glacial of non-gravitational origin, and that the deposits, marine deposits, fluviatile and orbital peculiarities of short period lacustrine deposits, lava flows, etc. etc. comets "convincingly demonstrate" that The point of this should be obvious; they have formed from "ejections from hydrocarbons are formed under quite the giant planets. " and that this eruption well known geochemical conditions wheretheory (due to Lagrange and not, as he ever plant or sometimes animal material claims, Velikovsky) i s "not simply a i s rotted under wet rather reducing working hypothesis but a result of a conditions, and such items a s pH, well-rounded interpretation of many data temperature and the like, collectively the about the Solar System and it's past." facies, tell us the deposit, whether lignite or North Sea Gas, formed. I am sure Although Comrade V would almost that P V Smith wouldagree that hydrocertainly have an apoplexy at the very carbons at present being deposited in the idea, this is certainly the best proGulf of Mexico are being formed in the Velikovsky piece I have ever seen in same way as those we are at the moment print. But the idea that comets come s o profligately ripping through and which from these planets is however, a far cry are sealed in rocks of far greater age. from saying that they can perform the Oil bears quite large 'amounts of dextral tricks that Velikovsky requires of them in optically active compounds of undoubted proximity of the Earth - the more so biological origin, as well as organic since the conclusions have been reached pigments typical of plants, while even by rigorous celestial mechanics and not coal i s too full of plant fossils for a its precise opposite, as by Velikovsky. supraterrestial origin-to be proposed. Maybe its good that Velikovsky should have

a hearing, although I c a n t understand why it should be so e n t h u s ~ t i cand u n a n i m w after s o long. Certainly it compares unfavourably with that given to UFO people who, if one sorts out the lunatics, a r e a far more worthwhile class of investigators altogether, and whose case can scarcely be doubted. Martin Ince 47 The Wiend, Rock Ferry, Birkenhead. L42 6RY (We hope to get round t o UFO's soon!- Ed)

Methane! for the love of Allah ! Dear Undercurrents, We a r e a newly formed company involved in express collection and delivery and courier services, using at present 1 ton petrol driven vans. Our aim i s to provide a high quality, honest but competetively priced service dedicated in and to the worship of Almighty Allah. In this respect our name for the company has been received and given to us, in Sanskrit, to embody the word-essence of 'perfect* with further connotations of 'completeness', 'fulfillment' and fulness'. We are telling you this, not a s an egoic statement, but only for an understanding for alternative worldngs within the present system. Our financial status i s precarious, as we are so newly formed, and for this reason and more obvious environmental considerations we are looking at methane a s a means and source of power. We would he very pleased if you could send any available literature or information on alternative fuels, and suggestions that you have of your own. We would also like to say that. God willing, if and when'we are able to make a profit (nett), up to 25% of this will be donated to charities of the Subud Spiritual Brotherhood. Yours in faith, Charles M. Thorn Raphael A. J. Wise sempuma Transport, 94, High Street, Sbepperton. Middx. TWIT 9BL

A bit of appreciation Dear Undercurrents, Just a note of appreciation for your magazine (?), which we have found extremely useful as well as fun to read! We have come to worry over long silences, fear that Undercurrents will burn itself out in the pattern of alternative mags don't let it happen! Attaching a copy of a "profile" we sent to the Sheffield people (Dave, Robin, Mavis). If you list more people interested in the technology/economics of alternative group living, could you include us? We would like to hear from those with familia; concerns or practical experience, and

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UNDERCURRENTS Winter 197: will share any Information we have (although your alternative technology guide was so comprehensive that it would be the first thing we'd refer people to!). Communally, David and Elena French.

But one recipient at least seemed mortally offended at what he regarded as an example of "inertia selling"!

Inertia

David and Elena French (Box A-46, Johnson State College, Johnson, Vermont 05656, U.S.A.) Age: 33 and 31. Daughter, Tana born May 1973. David i s American, Elena i s Balo-Russian, raised in Ethiopia. Trained as economist (David) and interpreter-translator (6 languages) and Africanist (Elena). Special experience: work on feasability studies of industrial projects, done while adviser to Nigerian government (David). Currently writing a book together on communal work, covering graup action in U.S., China, Yugoslavia, Israel, and Europe: intermediate technologies suitable to small groups; value transformations necessary for successful communalism; economic cooperation among communal groups; etc. Hope to find/ create an economically-productive, spiritually-questing, "extended familyw group to live with, preferably in rural area, not necessarily in U.S.

A month or so ago, we sent out the letter reproduced below to some 175 people who had previously expressed an interest in UNDERCURRENTS -people who'd asked for sample copies, or who'd written to us for one reason or another, or had expressed an interest in alternative technologies and related fields. Our hope was simply to remind them that UNDERCURRENTS was still in existence, and to suggest that they might like to subscribe. A fairly innocuous bit of sales promotion, you might think. ..

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Dear Undercurrents, Please find enclosed a 30p. postal order in payment for the copy of Undercurrents 4 which was mailed to m e without my consent. As a concession to your position as a platform for the proponents of alternative technology i am prepared to pay for this copy. However should i receive any further attemps at inertia selling i shall keep the material the statutory 6 months and then destroy it. lncidently i find your justification for using a polythene bag in place of a biodegradable one some-what hypocritical in view of your avowed policy of conservation. Furthermore i suspect you where motivated by financial rather than ideological reasons. Your most humble savant J. Wood,

68 'Nverton Road, Selly Oak, Birmingham B29 6BP

Pettyminded Dear Mr. Wood, I assume that the reason you have adopted the graphically-peculiar habit of using a small "1" a s the personal pronoun, instead of a capital "I",i s that your UMBHiaUIMIWTI 276, Finchlay Rood, London MW3,

England. (tat01 794 2760)

GREETINGS:

We're seading you the enclosed soeclmen copies became you're one of a number of people who've expressed an Interest la what we've been doing over the past year or 80. And to put it bluntly, we believe a browse through the pages of a recent indue of UNDERCURRENTS and EDDIES ought to tempt you into taking out a subscription. UNDERCURRENTS , we think, h a s come a long way since it started early in 1972 with a dozen wildly optimistic subscribers and a circulation of about a thousand. We've notched up around 350 subscribers now, doubled the circulation, and launched EDDIES as a monthly eubscribers-only news bulletin, whir,'' we think isn't too bad for a magazine that's written, edited, designed, mailed and distribute ' entirely on a voluntary basis. Especially since, apart from one paid advertisement, we've s p a absolutely nothing on publicity until now, that la. No one apart perhaps from our printers who work hard for their money makes a penny out of UNDERCURRENTS. Which la why a year's subscriotion will set you hack only the unazingly-reasonable sum of Â£1.8 ( If you live in the UK: it's Â£2.0 otherwise). for which you'll get four issues of UNDERCURRENTS and 12 issues of EDDIES. As a matter of fact, our latest calculations show that due to postal rate increases and Ã§ OB, it'a now costing us a hit more than Â £ 1 . 8 to service each subscription, so from the next issue of UNDERCURRENTS 0nwf.d~ our subscription rates will have to 30 up. But we're offering you a subscription at the old rate of Â£1.8 If you send us hack the form below before October 31, 1973 We make this unbelievable offer not, we hasten to add, became we like losing money, hut because Â £ 1 . 8 in worth more to a cash-starved magazine in these inflationary times than Â£2.0 next year or maybe never.( and because we cunningly hwe that you'll get so hooked on UNDERCURRENTS and SDDIES that you'll go on renewing your subscriotion for year after year, and we'll get our money's worth that way Anyhow, who cares about economiem?) So why not give in to your Impulse-buylng instincts, reach for your cheque book and treat yourself to an orgy of UNDERCURRENTS and an excess of EDDIES? Our hank manager will love you, and we don't think you'll regret it.

Godfrk Boyle for UNDERCURRENTS BY THE W6Y. If you decide you don't want the enclosed coriies, we'd be extremely grateful if you'd just write 'return to sendarmon the envelope and ooo it in a wst box. And If you'd like to keep the enclosed cooies hat don't want to subscribe, it would help us a lot if you could send us 3On for the cooy of UNDTRCURRENTS. And if you & subscribe, it would be nice if you could itart your sub with the issue we've just sent you (No 4). We want to keen the cost of this mailing to an absolute minimum. BUT OF COURSE, there io absolutely no obligation uwn you to do any of these things. Page 22

mentality i s of a proportionately-diminutive stature. I am returning at once your thirty pieces of copper in what i s probably a futile attempt t o allay your suspicion that we "where (sic) motivated by financial rather than ideological reasons" in sending you a free copy of UNDERCURRENTS with the politely-phrased request that if you liked it you might care to pay for it, but with the emphatic assurance that there was "absolutely no obligation" on you to respond in any way. Of course i t waa an emmple of "Inertia selling" if you choose to regard our action In such a petty-minded way. Your Implied criticism that someone i s making money out of UNDERCURRENTS can only be the result of the paranoia that i s evident through out your miserable letter. If you had taken even the slightest est trouble t o ascertain the facts, you would have found that far from benefitting in any way fromtheir involvement with the magazine, most UNDERCURRENTS pmple have actually small - though not insignificant sums of money a s a result. People help in writing and producing UNDERCURRENTS because they want to, and because they feel that what we're doing i s in a small way worthwhile and for no other reasons. As for our use of Polythene bags, Mr. Wood, you might, perhaps, be forgiven for considering us misguided -we have argued the pros and cons repeatedly both inside UNDERCURRENTS and elsewhere -but I take the greatest possible exception to your label "hypocritical". The original decision to use polythene was taken for what seemed at the time to be very sound reasons, but the debate continues. The next issue of UNDERCURRENTS will. in fact, be produced experimentally in conventional magazine format so people can make a more accurate assessment of the arguments involved. Positive criticism from people like yourself would be welcome: but not the mindless opposition so offensively expressed in your letter. Were it not for the fact that we Intend to publish that letter, and this reply, in the next issue of UNDERCURRENTS, I would be strongly tempted to destroy your nasty little note on the spot instead of keeping it for "the statutory six months", a s the law apparently requires me do with unsolicited material that arrives through the post. But perhaps publicity for your narrow views in the letter pages of our magazine will be a more effective way of anathematising them than mere destruction could ever be. Yours indignantly, Godfrey Boyle.

Hon refered purely to your reason for adopting Polythene bags. However 1 would say if an effort to increase your circulation i s not motivated at least partly by reasons of finance, you a r e r u m h g a most pecul- magazine. Further If you think it petty t o be concerned about a technique which apart from being legally and morally dubious is also a gross invasion of privacy. Then 1can only say that i am glad 1 am petty minded. I have never implied by word or deed that anyone is making excessive profits from Undercurrents: but now that 1 know the truth i would not dream of keeping my 'thirty pieces of copper". You must use it to help relieve the poverty of those who have.run into debt for such a noble cause. I have no wish t o denigrate the efforts of those who contribute to an otherwise excellent magazine: but debt argues either inadequate cost control o r to small a market to sustain your publication. As to your use of Polythene bags the assumption which i made and which i f e d is strengthened by your admitted financiaJ inadequaces that you were motivated by financial rather than ideological reasons. seems reasonable, in view of the world plastic shortage, which would affect specialist suppliers first and price the material out of your reach. As t o the term hypocrit i s not the meaning of the t e r h one who professes one thing and does the direct opposite. Spurious arguementa about recycling do not conceal the fact, that in one issue you decry the waste of non-renewable resources, and then, utilise an artifact, which is profligate with them. As to your reference to only welcomhg constructive criticism. i fall to see why a comment on the ethical standard of your marketing effort should need to be constructive. With reference to your intension t o publish my previous letter, 1 have no objection to this: though i would remind you that publicity i s a sword with two edges, one of which i s blunt. Yours, J. Wood.

CANCER CLUE Dear Undercurrents,

Geof Watts' article on Cancer Research in ~ndercurrents/3missed an important point:Why, in some people, do normal cells run wild and eventually Mil the whole organism? I think the answer is that cells run wild when they aren't fulfilling their proper function, thus women get breast cancer through not suckling and ovarian cysts by not conceiving, whilst men get cancer in their balls from insufficient fucking (last victim I knew i s a sailor) and everyone gets lung cancer by trying to metabolize smoke. I also think that although there is a direct link between, say, abstinence and Dear Undercurrents, cancer of the balls that there would be no incidence of cancer if citizens could I find it some-what difficult to answer release this blocked energy in harmonious a letter couched in such terms, that uses and creative ways, but it i s a feature of emotionalism in place of logic and invective twentieth century mankind to live in a in place of reason. However i will attempt completely repressive universe. to reply point-by-point. Even reactionary psycholcgists like Why do I use a small letter "1" inEysenck are researching the links stead of a capital "I" for the personal between Cancer and "Stress." pronoun. There i s no reason anymore Scientists seem to be searching for than there i s a reason for the typing some philosphers stone to cure all our errors which infect your epistle. I would ills. Change our civilization and its say though that your attempt to assess ills will disappear, as Chairman Mao my intellect from a minor idiosycrasy once observed:"Let a thousand cancers bloom." shows a belief in Freudian analysis which David Redon i s refreshingly old-fashioned in our modern age. Snacksland Clovelly Court Nr Bideford North Devon My allusion to your finacial motiva-

UNREPENTANT CRiTiC

s e e 'Suburban Sunsharing'

General-purpose Windmill Tower, m d e from materials already acquired (commercial s l o t t e d angle) and Car Dynamo, Swivelling Platform. Gears tec.

6 f t . diameter windmill A . C . Generator, made from Bicycle Hub-Dynamo, 8 Bamboo P o l e s , Cloth S a i l s ,

h-*

Aluminium Sheet, String e t c .

CD -3

UNDERCURRENTS Winter 1973

"defoliant" in Vietnam.

his is de

oughout the years since filtered out from varion ..

developed I The use of mustard gas during the Abyssinian campaign and r f a r e by the Japanese, a r e exam

OBJECT of this article i s not to

1 the

subject. course the major development th iggered this interest was the nervi

the channel and a short distance up the East coast. By ultra-violet tracer teclmiques they were able to show that the dyes reached some 75% of the British Isles within 48 hours under normal weather conditions. The amount and level of concentration of the agents that might be disseminated by this method was too small for chemical warfare piirposes if the aim had been to produce 100% mortal ity, but with biological warfare %puts this is usually not the case. Since 1957, defensive research has been redoubled to a previously unknown level for peacetime. and Her Majesty's Government has reassured us on several occasions that this country is well equipped to deal with The position as far a s Biolcgioal warfare agents a r e concerned is not so clear, and the decree of protection available at present i s probably not as great as we might be led to believe. At the present time, I believe that we can only rely on hope that the spirit of the recent agree-

warfare is banned if it involves the direct killing of persons. But various

THE TIMES THLTISDAY OCTOBER It

1973

.~. .

never all been published, much of it is

The growing enerTy crisis has military implication as well as being a threat to national economie

fact since 1915, although proposals for

Oil famine could change wa

Ă&#x201A;ÂĽw the world's

forces of

Tabun and its sister agent both extremely toxic (less of Sarin being enough to ki for an adult) but modern agents a r e about a thousand times more potent.

irritant. Being a gas it was easily dispersed, and had little tendency to remain in one place, so it was classed as being NON-PERSISTENT The second agent also used initially by

and reddening of the skin (a VESICANT). Mustard gas remained" in droplet from where i t lay, vapomising slowly, therefore being classed as a PERSISTENT gas.

. and SMOKES. classify all the chemical warfare of the gas type into these groups,

Their experiment was simple b sophisticated in that they took a spraying aircraft loaded with a f dvfi. and flew it a short distance o side British territorial waters, al

small nation, or be prepared by anyinvolved in urban warfare, e tear smokes,CS and the more ecent CR, are too well known in eir effects to need further elaboration Page 33

UNDERCURRENTS

Winter 1973

a of development untii i t bears fruit'and so on,

full ideas because you persistently try to separate things without being able to put them together again. So I would say that theanalytical mind s r e problems than the synthetic mind i

whatever suchan approach was seeking. The danger of efficiency is that it's take independent branch of life. It isvery da

sensors in your mouth t o taste it,and weemthe two thew is thedifferenm i f m i n and live information. i f to createan appleout oi the formula o computer withe>uthaving any experience of the mvir0"me"t. he would probably come up woth a plasticapple. I t might look like an apple, but it's not anappie.

sidered to pi an. So I think your q u c i o n

t i t y i s n o exception to this imprative.

JP /So our soda1 institution$ must selves t o the limitsof the city container

things. S o k i 1 Undoubtedly companion and a kmw of environmental congruence show us that t animal (the city) must be seli-contained.

JP /Yes. but if you have aworking environment which is so distasteful that you want to put as

JP /So en 8-,I S o k i 1 Yes, it's

and have the idea remain only Utopian. Where that leaves us I don't know. Hxahedron /Po "lation 170000.

"...*.the .doors, .- ."" or paaela. --m

"p zn

wr-

are low(See Drawing 6.1 Thin a l l o w t t o e n t e r the window. The sun hi lxckened drama o f water, which thus baorba the heat. Simple! On very

F i l l Your d n n with water t o of the top. Thia allowa rocm f

quart foot over a i d above that.

supply. A generous supp mainly kitchen wastes. I drink in just over a moat

gallon bucket in ve the liquid and

the wine. A warm 01 cupboard, a mantle-piece over the fir< or just a shelf in a warm room.

srnight, always keep the collecting 2ket covered hv a lid or a sheet of s t i c . Washing the utensils i n camde .ution also helps cut down t h e risk o

Page 4 0

UNDERCURRENTS Winter 197

, once used, can be r and sent out again this

ucts made from that products can then b e

,vans states that: iroducts of

ad water

esources but cou ontaminated wast

olves beating a colle atmosphere of inert

PVC will degr cid products.

Aliphatic acids could be produc ntaminating water supplies. RE-USE AND

e effect of plastics on the moment i s e harmful PVC

Page 42

UNDERCUBBENTS Winter 1978

ch a mechanism would

that can be re-used over 20 DIRECT RECYCLING invol

md water b) PVC will degrade

ith domestic waste and

icid products.

RE-USE AND RE-CYCLIN

Raging, wherepaper was e effect of plastics on

Page 42

iCUBBENTS Winter 1973 sell m 2.Veq ecolcg a i the 3.DCg1

destro! paving 4.Recy iuterea materi widesp greatly or if pi 5. Ener plastics 6.Desigp i s an important factor design iaf a produc t can lead t o easy ig, another may mak

8.If plastics recyc an efficient system willhave to be devi $.Plastics can be bo ecologically than other mate

loves Pure Research

ydrochloric acid tumes or orod ause corrosit3n. It would , therefore !ntly from other plastic; nu .Plastics con,*,,mn+<,," <" "b?,"i"?,.,,^

.. ...

...-

ume i r r e ~ l a c e a b i it may be possible tc them from biologics

n million mean. You don't find rs that big anywhere else in

immune to the effects of cheap r tape and noisy radio links. The i s "the concerned, says

Page 43

UNDERCURRENTS Winter 1973

but frankly , methane is not suitabl

few "cs,%, ,be ma, <*L b"c-*"b "st! m b " S kc* d ~ . c ~ d ~ ~ d ad" a d nsiiig levels o i batkpoiuid nd-0 or ,racw

where trips a r e short and near metb sources (=.on farm vehicles or factory FOSSIL FUELS like coal, oil gas a r e all the result of solar

~ u what t happens when we come to the of these natural fuel resources? The energy contained within the

gas from organic materials, this book* claims to be no more than a starting

ous future for methane

fuel generated for use in the farmhouse about the dangers ft-om nuclear oow accidents and about the long-term environmental effects of this form

when we write the second edition we

his i s particularly true of the secon generation fast breeder reactors now

unable to meet even present needs. Wind energy represen

Who's to say which

e most hopeful technique Maybe they all have a part to play. thing i s clear, though. The techno1 for all these "unlimited reserve" fue

Pace 44

isham, Cambridgeshire, A paperback edition will

UNDERCURRENTS Winter 1973 John Clark is a senior lect Psychology at Manchester He draws lotus-flower maps of 'inner space', and flow-diagrams of Patanjali's yoga.. John Lilly used to he one of the world's leading researchers on dolphins. Trvioe - to come to erios - . with their awesome, alien intelligence he decided the biggest obstacles were in his ow mind. The scientifically correct th to do was forget the dolphins for the being and start exploring his which Lilly did with the help hvonosis. encounter erouos exercises. You'll find Clark's ollection "Six approaches to the pe y's log of the voyage to heaven a 1 is "The Centre of the Cyclon h men write like scientists. B in his own way, taken his science where angels fear to tread: into the realm of mystical states, satori, samadhi, bliss, the Void. scientists doing here where, faith is the rule, not empiric Attemps at scientific introspe an unhappy history. In any branc science, t&eact of observation pert the experimental situation, however m~nutely. The worst possible cas presumably, is when the observer the experimental situation. Then the problem, beyond poets even, communicating a subjective exp to others in precise terms. And what the hell. in this context. is a reoeatable experiment? No wonder the study everyday consciousness, thoughts desires, by introspection still see tricky as picking up ball-bearings w oin. Why should non-everyday consci ness he in this respect, any different Scientific study of the mystical states consciousness presupposes, I think, that those states have structures or laws of some kind. Most of the literature woul confirm this. Carlos Castaneda calls it a 'separate reality', self-consistent and only strange when it contradicts the laws of everyday reality. Aldous Hitx The metaphor of 'space'which Cla Lilly both use, regards each menta state as a 'place' which you reach by well-defined routes; its essential f e are the same on each visit, though o course you'll always find something different happening there. The fact every day something new happens i Parsons Green doesn't stop you d r a Tube map. What's more, given a Tube

they'll all find it looking Both Clark and Lilly a r e Christian, Sufi, Zen, a r e in fact talk!

about the same set of eight o r nine different states of consciousness. Clar terminology, which is all his own, and Lilly's, which i s borrowed from Gurd look different. But I have seen a map hand drawn by Clark, which shows wh Lilly/Gurdjieff's states

a scientist, the the discovery that

surprise, then, that only certain ways ripping are wesible, too. because that how we're all wired up. That gives a certain repeatability experiments with the mystical sta The broad features of the Map can checked, in principle by anyone. Anyone, that it, who devotes th time and energy to acquiring th skille. And I think the opport a human to acquire these skills a r e at least a s good a s the opportunities t acquire the skills of nuclear physi molecular biology

still bothered me. There is a lingering feeline that when we exnlore the 'real world' we come up against "truths" which we have to accept because they a r e part oi the structure of that world, while it is easy to suspect that the "truths8* encountered i n "inner soace" don't have the same absolute value. Perhaps the "inner truths" a r e merely fulfilments of our, or our guru's, expectations. Perhaps mystical experiences a r e similar, ause each man's experience i s elled, unconsciously, on that of his cher, and his teacher's teacher, and o n Lilly encourages this suspicion en he says 'What one believes to he e either is true or becomes true in mind. within limits to he determined imentally and experientially. " e r I don't think there's necessarily ing unscientific about "what one ieves becomes true". That, surely, s the experience of Copernicus, wton, and Einstein! Surely "truths" the "real world" a r e just as rmanent a s "inner truths". Newton's belief became newton's truth; but Einstein's truth transcended it. Lilly and Clark a r s s t i l l only at the beeinnine of the scientific investie'ation: the stage biology was at before ~ i n n a e u s . Too soon perhaps to call it a Science. But as anyone who's read a little of the Mystical literature must admit, for centuries already it has been a mighty fine technology. Tony Durham.

Lilly. Paladin Sop.

Six Approaches to the Person, ed Ralph Ruddock. Routledge and Kegan Paul Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ Special reference i s made to the essay 'A Map of Inner Space' by John H.Clar

UNDERCURRENTS Winter 1973 disappointing for one reason o r anothe and quickly run into problems which would be unable t o deal with and beco very discouraged. Considerable sophistication would be needed t o get flesh-and-blood transmitter going f r the circuits as presented - withou indulging in too much nit-picking found them f a r from easy t o read suspect that others would share my difficulty. This leaves us with the book lists and addresses, which have been

batteries i s admirable. He has Successfully conveyed in very little space (for this is a short book) the excitement and captivating charm of the whole business of running a radio station, which is heightened when the odds against success a r e greatest. Pirate radio still has the sweet tang of sin, and sin which does not injure anyone or anything either, and I believe that this comes across more than a little in the boo Where the book is

the construction of a successful stat' after a little while, provided he r had the inclination to get there. I wondering, however, if there mig be an easier and better way Everyone concedes that the Amateurs' Handbooks and the amate radio course offered in technical col give a very thorough grounding in art, and the usual reply t o anyone asks how to get started is to tell h go and read the books o r better ati , anything up t o two year's work, and en the best American texts on radi h their liberal use of colour and hter style, a r e pretty stiff going.

passages lifted almost direct1 suffers from the same limitat When writing about radio as a

arefully prepared volume, t o answer not the question "how do I build a boat.

In the f i r s t edi

technical section, which in the s space available could amount than a list of book-titles and informatio sources on the topic of radio C0mmWi atious. This book by Nigel Turner brea into roughly the same division; a f a i r amount of space given of what has already been done in noukommercial free radio field, here and in the United States, an much shorter practical section details of how to set up a work* As a crude indication of the we t o each aspect, 17 of the hook's could be said t o be given to c matters, including the appendices, addresses and booklists Dealing f i r s t with what strong point, we must author on his handling technical aspects of ccmmuni is choice of topics - the Americ listener-sponsored stations typified

reasonably be achieved in the word available. It is rather like setting to tell someone how to build a boat. There a r e many, many different types of boat with greatly differing potentialities. ular craft, even in great detail, may be worse than telling his nothing at all. It will ndt make a sailor of him, it will not tell him how to navigate or read a chart deal with any of the thousands of things that a r e likely to go wrong on a voyage. It may be better t o direct him to a school f sailing or nautical science, O r give m an extensive reading list. However,

f how to build a boat. the same way radio

cannot in a few thousand words equip a newcomer with the necessary skills to build a transmitter (bearing in mind the huge choice and diversity that even this presents) and, more important, t o set it up correctly and keep it on the a i r dealing with all the faults, large and small, to which radio equipment is prone. I feel, perhaps too pessimistically, that even if a newcomer were to succeed in getting one of the circuits in Nigel's hook t o operate, he would find results

e foot fibreglass row-b 1 lake?" In othe6 words, repare a course of practi mple station, which would practical success without scaring to th

RCUBBENTS Winter 1973 d temptations to most

ore? The aim of this

rage overhead. "No: it's just that I really wanted you to buy this book, and my Great Aunt Beulah convinced me that a book with the word

for additional information and o buy parts. Perhaps

rimer as a joint venture. IS any re

Yes, I understand. It's hecaus bout radio and you know how ould be if only , and you fo lowed yourself to entertain naive

....

nny. Very funny. Its humour is of thc c , black variety that will strike a

good idea across that deadly minefield,

The Least Worst Broadcasting Service

to smithereens by the first grat

to making the damned thing '

Nigel's book has started the

pseudo-working class voice, by t ders, by the frightful banal'

hem to question the political and economic syste]

richly-deserved irrelevanc

ma1 for US Community Radio freaks want to know how to tackle the zzard of paperwork needed to persuade that absolutely maddening will-o-the-wisp, the FCC" to let them loose on the air with a 10 watt, nos-profit P M broadcast

FCC. In this country, your

nity station a r e about as

ot that Sdx and Broadca , either. As the author ex

r i n s after all

Page

UNDERCURRENTS Winter 1973

eat

". ....the two systems a r e complementary. Diale account for historical I the framework of a con evolution; cybernetics continuity of events within framework of a discontinuou revolution." Van Duyn's insistence on retaining the "aggressive instinct" a s a necessary noncomitant of social stability seems to lead him into some odd contradictio which Kropotldn, Malatesta, Bakunin and the other classical theorists avoi simply by making fewer generalisatio about the nature of man. This i s a fau to which van Duyn seems particular! haracterlatics i s hi

Duckworth 75

activities of these -m u n s reached a very high level dunng the middle six when - their disruotive activities led the resignation of Amsterdam's Mayor and Chief of Police, and on the side to the founding of the Oran Freestate, an anarchic republi i t s own anh-authontarian scho kindergartens and creches, pureshops, housing (squatting) projeCtS. non-profit small industries, free transport system, and even a tonguein-cheek assembly of "shadow m i m s t n e ~ ' ' such a s the "Department of Sabotage of Fixed Roles and the Habit of Obedience amid the stale smell of cabbages i politics", but the existence of the Freestate did not become very wide13 known outside Holland, even amongst

biographical picture of Kro description of his views. This s e a s I have indicated, i s admirably In an elegant couple of lines, he sums u the teaching of the 19th centu philosopher/scientist "The revolution must avoid not only exchanging one authority for another, but also removing one form of oppression in favour of anothe Kmptkin would have freedom, and indivisible, for everyone A very succinct statement o

put forward in Kmpotkin's "Ethics", one of the finest texts available. Kmpotkin spent a great deal of his time collecting evidence f o r the imw*nc. of co-operation in nature, a s a factor in evolution and survival; whether it is found between members the same species o r between the spec themselves. Van Duyn's theory rests an attempt to extend this into a pnncip volving an equilibrium between the c operative tendency and "aggression", which he seems to mean slightly diffe things in different contexts. P a n elusiveness of his ideas may oriel the translation from the Dutch, bu suspects that the unsatisfactoriness i-s . - riepner --- -- than ...-..t..h.-

a l.i.t.t..l e

I must say right away that van Duyn has a fine gift of summary, and the most penetrating paragraphs a r e almost always the ones tha of other anarchist t his chosen mentor, Pete When he begins to speak voice, and to apply his C such things a s cyhe social science to the classical theorie i s where be i s at his weakest in my Vie

It i s Kropotkin's message which has inspired van Duyn, and i t is he whom he

[is theory of the "altem hat swings successively egression and co-operation (or C.V-"tit,I*, ."

....,

-"A -.A

himself in the dark. This i m t i o fear, with which we a r e all Elmil sets up a need for some fixed au only i s this a total contradiction ropotkin's beliefs, i t goes against good anthropological evidence and leads van Duvn into the comoletelv inconsistent call for a society ". .in which the n for hierarchy will be satisfied. The would still be a rudimentary hierarc this society, but i t would be adap etc.

There i s something disturbingly about much of the reasomng that leads his theory of the "single continuo discontinuous metabolic process living." It has about it the same rather than rigorous flavour (hat in the political theories of. say, Bernard Shaw. The conclusions seem precede the chains of reasoning on whi they hang; and rhetoric and "imagery" figure in the argument a s much as logic and deduction:sperm i s dependent o the ovum on the spe

tun?, in h e r representational. ative power, wanted to hold s e up to us a s symh ual dependence and

"-".--" "-,--"

r i ~ ~ + " , , . + : ~ , o , . .h, ~ ~ ~

f-. t ~. hw in. it of.A r t h u r Koeqtler's .f.

"janus-faced holona" which combine self-assertive quality of "wholes" w i the co-operative , dependent propert parts; but I. for one, find Koestler's model a great deal easier to grasp. Like Koestler (and more recently Stafford Beer), he refers to cybernetic cone to account f o r events in the social political spheres, and attempts to this to an older dialectic view of social change. His conclusion i s that:

s like this, a s well y faulty examples c a l sciences, may URRENTS readem d yet the man has got his heart in ght place and obviously a great wel f thought and reading behind what be i g to say. Would i t 1ae very ite for u s to requetit tbat he try

d, by John & Sally Seymour (Fab 1s i s a book t o bring the sharp r ountry living slap into the midd murky urban pipe dreams of st a rural community. 8 a How-to-do-it book to skim r e now while you plan and debate, a book to devour word by word later when you're ready to sow, hoe and milk your f i r s t cow, kill your first pig, make bread and butter, cheese wine, nugar and preserve your own v But Self Sufficiency is much more do-it-yourself handbook- it's rich i istrmgent anecdotes, robust philo For John and Sally Se they're at and where though they don't tell w Thev began with next to their family of four children fo years on five acres of very poo nearly all their fuel before mo n bigger farm. John brought n mo from the System as a writer, Sally as a potter. They've always worked hard b i t they've always lived well. "We ha I'ved extremely well on a very small noney income, and the tax eaters ha not done very well out of us", he wri 'We have not contributed very much the atom bomb, nor t o the building o Concorde. When the latter brea sound barrier over our heads, a

e satisfaction of knowing th ven't & for it. !s ey reckon that a family wit ' dren can live very well on f i ocd land, buying very little f ide, but only if they manage r s very carefully. None of you vmours. Not only do thev e n ~ o v and take slaughter in their stride, bu they put forward a vigorous ecologic

the land and despite their lack of qualms on killing a transcending lo

(battery houses or broiler houses

plenty Of straw and they get confused and smother the piglets. So you give them no straw. They then loose their natural chain of instinctual actions nest-making and all the r e s t of it - s o they lay on or eat their piglets. They a r e mixed up. So you confine them in a farrowing c r a t e where they can't move a t all and attract the o i d e t s awav from them wsth a warm ~F i r e d light. And the piglets get s pneumonia. So you go in

ge scale in America and more and . more i n i'.ngland. Pigs a r e now being kept all their lives, in total darkness except when they a r e fed, and in tiny cages like battery hens. Where do yc from there?"

these things, is revoltingly cruel and I cannot bring myself to talk to anybody ... who does it, condition, house". An, on which straight society depend this way: "Once you start t o interfere w' nature, with sows, you've got to int

have to confine them even more, on concrete. Keeo them on concrete they can't get iron, s o you have to inject

esh air and good food a r e the ernative to the ills of urban make their point they quote

v..n., ...W...-.,U-

ses,

all fall down! book also has delightful illustrations

Patrick Rivers.

Page 49

UNDERCURRENTS Winter 1%

You have to pay for anything g these days, even publicity ma Catalogue-poster costs 15p (si or lop (10 o r more) including pos from Low Impact Technology L 73 Molesworth Street, Wadebri Cornwall. Lots of ideas for how unhook your energy inputs, and shit output, from city networks

of iltecture, . .-Am1 -- -.

i ethods. Government too poor (ass odox priorities) to build piped sewe

July 1973. 45pp. 6 0 ~

Read tku s if you think a Clivus in the basement will save you money, or tna methane equals riches from shit. Re ifyou never worried about how to r e you drinking water without recycling germs; if you never realized your f r i anaerobic digester was an explosion Read it f o r 1001 commercially availab e alternatives to mains water and sewage Read it if you want to know why none o them in average UK population densitie i s an economic vronosition. Read it if

'Intermediate' technology to th escue? Alas, Scan Plan scans ran

Gerry Smith (see review on this Counties. Now transpose it t o an African

xisting 'non-network' methods (inciner r, algae tank etc.) and finds all wanting. c good ones a r e too wildly suggest a hand-operated, ox pit emptier' which would be ui , but don't say how t o build it. ope they've had some ideas sine tudy was published. Tony Durham.

ennronmen two versions, winted and on compute ape. ('Fraid we haven't seen it and an way the Undercurrents computer is broken down.) Main merit of Fil Review i s the sheer number of f i t s . Utility in UK i s limited, though, ince only US distributors a r e listed. ut people making or distributing nment films in Britain might find it useful. Same r o e s for anyone research

124 East 39th St.. New York. NY 10 Published annually, about $20. Page 50

nd agencies. Example: Atomic Ener . Commission's film "Return t o Bikini". where the palm t r e e s wave again over the radioactive sands. Tony Durham.

UNDERCURRENTSWinter 1973

Sommer. Peter thought the book wa bit insubstantial. MIKE GREY think missed the point of the book Since this i s no m e r e quibhl

those of us in the rut of everyday consci ness, i s totally inadequate. Roszak's language i s not that of treatise, hut how could it be? I difficult to attack the very basis scientific culture, using a langu The result is therefore sometimes

tie our feelings, thoughts and action the ultimate goals of that culture. ( symbols, Roszak labels a s 'resonan , e.g. the Cross for Christians). We must take the clues further; wha ature and origin of these reson hols. at what levels of our mind d r register and how do they effect our ons individually and collectively?

ennsylvania Amish ump water from our hand-dug well reciprocating wire transmits the ergy from a crank below the wind 11 to a lever above the well. Each rizontal wire stroke i s converted t o a vertical pump stroke. Using the Brace plans, an optimum pump stroke can he calculated from the average windspeed, pump diameter, and the height of By choosing various ratios of the e r , we can set the windmill for ferent windspeeds. perience has shown that a large crank ith a long wire stroke will produce erious wire vibration fast reciprocating freq e geared the windmill 2 : l ratio, and settled o i r e stroke. The wire-supporting l e s are 15ft apart. e have our pumping sy a r t in an eight mph w windspepds between 6 and 30 mph. id at a

just in theory, but in our experienc e arc well on the way out of one wa d. But I emphasise that we shoul ect neat, logical behavioural model ing u s what to do. We need new oncepts (qualitative rather than quantitative), new means of commu ing -not just ideas but ideas interwove with feelings and intuition - and new

ystical contemporaries, often shows nge of aristocratic condescension in s attitude to the masses and the Third 'orld. I think he is wrong in thinking tha revolution of consciousness can only for action. 4uswers that a r c just dished up are the product of analytical thought will only drive us deeper into the alienati of objective consciousness. The question which Roszak only begins to answer is, what i s the nature of reality, mind (conscious and unconscious) and culture, and the relation between these Re seeks to build from such an underst ing, a revolutiona~ymysticism, to heal the split between the 'political' and the 'mystical' factions of the counter-culture.

--..

What i s needed i s something which will 3 ---. . L .--. ..xL. 3 . .+L.UIVV~ ~ a ~ agc e a~u ~ r ~ z c r gwet c n u u ~u e p r ~ v ug People and small communities of their right t o self determination and psychologi 1 wholeness. Only an und the reality of people achieve this. I belie more than just hehavioural mechanis lust individual consciousnesses; they of a culture, an end expresses a certain world-view and subordinates all i t s facets, scienc feUgion, language. technology, eco tc., t o that expression. Hat which binds the individ dture i s myth-patterns of

an then raised consciousness and ightened experience must be availabl everyone lust a s much as alternativ technology, political self-determination

you apace the centera of your upright* 2W apart. y o u ' l l have roan between m e for aiucone putty, wit-hout h w in8 to tills ?OUT 8 1 ~ ~ .

de-schooled networks, meaningful work, basic security, and s o on. I believe tha L .eLL. 3 . ~ ~ . n u E L mgiiiige ana ceciiniqucs 01 mystics is alien to those of a working class culture (to use Roszak's terms their s m b o l i c hnse ~q not rewwcit . i. working-class environment). Only when the mass of people begin to experience a breaking up of the old ~

hope.

fore, you must make sure they m e r r c s open when you don't expe i t - w c i a l l y be careful-of chll-

always run a

parallel

o l a r house: coed luck

movement i s only the prelude

l i n e or winch

UNDERCURRENTS Winter 1973 THE SUNDAY TIMES, OCTOBER 1 1972

The chances of a nuclear hijacking MORE THAN 200 d ~ f i n g t b i s l i ~ ~ l scientists at the P w h Confer,ence on World Affairs in Oxford + last month raised the alarm obolt 1 the possibilrty o atomic bombs !being used l y tomorrom~s terrorists. T h e conference's concern coincided with the publication in London o f an underfaround leaflet which claimed t o 1 describe in details hm11to make a peopie~' bomb PAUL EDDY1 land BRYAN SILCOCK invest%-

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THE COMMENTS above a r e just some of the reactions t o UNDERCURRENTS and EDDIES that have appeared in both the straight and underground p r e s s over the -past - y e a r o r so. As you can see, most of the comment h a s been pretty favourable. -. But we're not getting complacent. -. ---. -Until now. UNDERCURRENTS and EDDIES have had t o leave untouched many a r e a s of science and technology that obviously need coveraee from a radical viewooint. . , u mainly because of limitations of t i m e , money and energy. Now, with t h e reorganisation that's under way, w e ' r e confident that we can soon orovide an even better coveraee than -.- -- - - - Qou've liked what youtve been r e a d L g in this issue, and you'd 1 i k ~ K h e l pusexpand-and improve the magazine, the most useful thing you can do is take out a subscription If a t any stage you're dissatisfied with t h e "value for money" you're getting, we undertake t o refund the-outstanding balance of your subscription. Can't say f a i r e r than that, can we?

UNDERCURRENTS Winter 1973 be suspected of powestripping. A final meeting at the half-finished Eco-House in pouring rain during a tube strike finally depress* the enthusiasts enough to close things down f o r the winter. Shortly after that, I was invited a s a token hai ry-freak-and-angry-young-man to a rather poncy conference in P a r i s on "Appropriate Technology f o r Development". Trying to explain to very straight development economists and international civil servants just why we should be doing it here and not out there in the ThirdWorld-which-doesn't-know-any-better was not easy, because they didn't s h a r e any of my assumptions. I t became perfectly clear that I didn't know what my assumptions were either: I just took them for granted. So I wrote a paper in which I tried to set down the assumptions of the "AT movement". A very cathartic process. If you look a t a l i s t of typical o a t s of AT a s s e t out in the "Guide" (UC No. 3), you can s e e that there's no particular reason why favouring one goal should oblige favouring another. Neither is there any reason to think that a technology compatible with one goal would also help achieve another. At least I found I couldn't think of any reasons except that I liked them all. Actually, they tend to conflict, e. g. for a given output an ecologically "clean" technology will often require more resources, b e m o r e complex, and more expensive. More anon about this. That means we a r e either split into many groups having conflicting aims, o r else we attempt to devise a set of priority rules which will resolve conflicts among the various goals. I ask you, a r e we e v e r likely to agree on such a s e t of rules? Furthermore, we a r e also divided along ipany other lines, such a s political assumptions ("Ididn't come h e r e to talk about revolution"), various moral standpoints (e.g. small communities s e t up for their own sakes, o r those with wider social intentions), cultural styles (straights and freaks) and s o on. The ideal of a unified movement seemed hopeless. The impression had anyway only been created by the belief that all the goals were compatible, and technical systems could be found to serve them all. I tried to salvage some of the idea by defining "soft technology" as the common a r e a of a number of different "alternative technologies", but I had no grounds f o r believing that this common a r e a really existed.

I ended up thinking i t was still worth having a go. Good things were happening in China, I was reading lots of nice anarchist stuff, and C much, Church and Vale produced their massive 2-volume thesis on "The Autonomous

Servicing of Dwellings". Spring came. BSSRS ran a conference on "Community Science" (see SCIENCE FOR PEOPLE No. 20), but some stray Leninists got the boot in f i r s t and everyone went away thinking Nothing Could Be Done. Andy MacKillop started Low Impact Technology Ltd.; BRADfolk moved onto their site in Wales. An encouraging meeting on "Science Collectives" was held in Sheffield (see EDDIES No. 7), and some real progress was made in discussing problems of self-managed enterprises. At that time also the Sheffield group started IN THE MAKING, which i s probably the most constructive act since the whole thing began. Shortly after, Andrew Singer convened a meeting in Cambridge (see EDDIES No. 8), and the enthusiasts were subjected to an icy douche from some members of the Technical Research Division of the Cambridge Department of Architecture. They were certainly sympathisers, but their research had turned up some unwelcome data: AT, o r a t l e a s t i t s biotechnic branch, is v x expensive, a t l e a s t in its present state of development. Some details of costs a r e given i n the important paper "Economics of Solar Collectors, Heat Pumps and Wind Generators" by Gerry Smith (April 1973). You can't get out of i t by saying "I'll do all the work myself", because these things take a lot of time and while you're making windmills o r milking the cow, you're neglecting the c a r r o t s o r unable to teach the kids how to mend heat-pumps. Time must be counted if we a r e to generalise these costs. And another holy cow to the slaughter: costs of most services tend to increase with decreasing scale, reaching their highest point a t the village scale, beloved of many AT freaks, and dropping slightly f o r the single dwelling where i o distribution system i s required. "Autonomous houses" remain expensive. Not much help f o r the citizens of Dagenham here. Meanwhile, AT articles were appearing everywhere. ALTERNATIVE SOURCES O F ENERGY got better and better and fatter and fatter. EDDIES became a monthly (well, e r . . .) gossip sheet and Went Litho. If you're reading this, UNDERCURRENTS reached i t s 5th number. General Books came out (SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL, SELF-SUFFICIENCY) Special Books came out: Steve Boulter's Methane Book, published by Andrew Singer. Street Farmhouse was finished, and was so efficient that the cabbage got heat-stroke (but you should have seen the tobacco crop: ). BRAD was well on i t s way to finishing i t s Jacob to Street Farm's Esau. The ECOLOGIST crowd were well

established a s gentlemen organic f a n n e r s in Cornwall. Rad-Tech-in- Pact got Â£50 from the BIT ideas pool, and the Manchester food coop got Â£300 Â£80 for AT out of Â£1,250 Fame at last. Plans for projects proliferated. Everyone was talking about AT. Some people were actually making a living out of it (writing about it, that i s ; surely .) you didn't think

. ..

Then came the AT meeting at Laurieston Hall. Like all AT meetings it was pretty shambolic, but there were some good discussions in which some of the disillusioned came in with their hatchets swinging. Mike Reid, one of the menagerie at Laurieston, proposed a discussion on ''the politics of AT", but when discussion time came he had, significantly, changed it t o "The Technology of Alternative Politics". Some innocent questions: What a r e the political implications of the 1001 strands of AT? How could, would, should technology b e organised after the revolution? What role does it play in bringing about social change? NONE, says Mike -- o r at least none that we would approve. Capitalism can absorb any AT hardware and turn it into a profitable commodity. GM can make windmills a t popular prices. Playboy can advertise jock straps made from soya beans. Chairs of Biotechnics will b e endowed in all the best universities. Knighthoods will b e awarded to designers of ecooffice blocks. Without politics, AT becomes nothing m o r e than a s e t of trendy technical fixes. It's expensive, difficult for ordinary people, inefficient, unreliable; and monopoly capitalism goes rolling on. Against this, the'biotechnicians' argued that the environmental situation was s o bad that 'biotechnics' ( defined a s living within your physical and biological means) was an absolute necessity. The sceptics didn't feel environmental problems were that desperate. Neither did they find the idea of simple, folksy technology particularly appealing in itself. Why not have computers, power stations, TV, hi-fi sets, and laboursaving devices? What exactly is the c a s e against them? Why not distribute d e c tricity through a grid-? When were you last oppressed by the local electricity board? Hew much of what you need can you get in a community of 10 ?I00 ?I000 ? 10,000? Make a list of all the things you have in your home. Hew many could you do without? How many could you make yourself? How many a r e made on a massive scale and would cost five times m o r e made in any other way? Page 53

UNDERCURRENTS Winter 1973 To defend AT, all these questions and many others have to b e answered very carefully, and if we a r e honest I don't think many of u s could fully live out the answers.

even might not b e greater: there would b e l e s s a i r pollution, but there would b e dangers from breakdowns of big wind generators. Perhaps it would b e better to spend the extra money on chimney-scrubbers? As time goes on, fuel prices will certainly g o up; windmill designs may b e improved; people may become willing to put up with these creatures (monsters?) in the countryside, o r even to pay for the construction of beautiful old slow-speed mills of farcical efficiency. But to afford that kind. of inefficiency we would have to b e f a r more than usually efficient elsewhere. Which means: no AT. I expect biotechnic research to continue,

I think we have to recognise that the old, "unified" conception of AT is dead. What is biotechnic is not necessarily non-exploitative o r cheap; what conserves resources is not necessarily fulfilling o r interesting to work with; cooperative production is not necessarily efficient enough to avoid hassles over distribution; what is simple to manufacture may require great expertise to maintain and b e deadly to use, o r vice versa. Our dreams of a magic technology -- the distillation of all our hopes, without any compromises -- m u s t b e over. We rejoin the human r a c e , and with it the unavoidable conflicts and tradeoffs of economics and technology. We have t o decide what we want, then decide what we a r e prepared t o sacrafice for it in t e r m s of things we want less. It's my guess that, faced with the r e a l choices and the real costs, nearly everybody would opt to stay in the straight society a s things a r e at the moment. Apparent successes of cheap AT have on the whole been acheived through hidden subsidies of time o r resources which could not be generalised throughout society. At the moment, only those with very unusual tastes (such a s for Spartan living), o r those who place an extremely & {Sy high value on environmental purity, o r those who think that the relative positions of "straight and "alternative economics will change markedly, would find it rational t o pay the full cost of ATs. if only because there's bound to be at This last point indicates why least a Sunday Colour-supp market for it "biotechnics" (or low impact technology) in the coming decades. I expect has been the strongest branch of AT: "autonomous housing" research to because there has been a widespread continue, partly for the same reasons, theory about the long-term incompatibility partly to meet genuine needs in remote of industrial hyper-development and areas, and partly a s a hedge against physical and biological constraints. rising fossil fuel costs. Many people Research now can be justified in will attempt to build "eco-houses" t o preparation for something expected demonstrate a principle of independence later. But it's not a s easy a s that, even o r to avoid exploiting anyone else, but I within biotechnics doubt if these aims will be realised without Replace a 20 Meggawatt coal-burning hidden subsidies. power station with 1000x20 Kilowatt I pray that someone can prove m e wrong. windmills, o r 20000x1 kW mills. Is it I expect "appropriate technology" to any environmental improvement? spread a s a concept because it can mean They would look like pylons with knobs anything; and I expect Intermediate on , need transmission lines anyway t o Technology to gain in credibility a s a c a r r y the electricity generated, and continuous spectrum of technologies would make a fearful noise. (I am which a r e often appropriate t o reminded that in Israel, rooftop solar situations in both developed and water heaters a r e considered an eyesore). undeveloped countries. As f a r a s resources a r e concerned, a large number of small windmills will As t o "Soft Technology" and "Alternative need f a r m o r e copper for windings and Technology", which a r e the t e r m s I have wiring ( and m o r e lead for batteries tended t o use myself, I think their perhaps). meanings have got hopelessly out of The cost would b e higher Safety control and should b e abandoned.

Maybe "ST" should b e used as a synonym for biotechnics (Robin Clarke's article in UNDERCURRENTS 2 was later reprinted in Futures a s "The Biotechnic Research Community") "Alternative Technology" is an annoying t e r m because it is s o vague. Anything not orthodox could b e AT -- Glaserts orbiting solar microwave collector, for example. "No, no, we meant , well, little things, decentralised.. " Then why not call it small-scale technology, o r decentralised technology, if that's what you mean ? The Stone Age? I ' Well, no-- more sophisticated than that, taking advantage of modern knowledge". Then do you mean Intermediate Technology, o r perhaps Liber atory Technology a l a Bookchin ? Now ask: where a r e the components made? Waht training and equipment is needed? What a r e the working conditions? Do you have any control over t h e m ? The point of the s1ogan:"The Technology of Alternative Politics" is: first talk about your pol'itics, your social goals, your priorities. Then s e e how they may b e achieved by selecting from the many alternative possibilities the most appropriate ones for your purposes. Much of this selection will b e "soft" in that it will involve organisaticm rather than hardware, again involving politics and relationships and conflicts.

Page 54

Maybe we should call it "AEf7, Alternative Economics. (Uncle Karl, don't laugh). Another name I have been toying with is "freconomics" (the a r t of putting poetry into work and still having enough time t o go fishing?) A lot of this has already been said in H D Coster's article "After Soft Technology: an Attempt t o Approach a Soft Economy", in De Kleine Aarde No 3 ( in Dutch). Nearly finished. Does all this mean it's been a waste of time? A lot of people would say so, but I think it has been an extremely valuable exploration. Our thoughts on AT have oriented u s properly for an effective approach t o a different (but related) s e t of problems, which I intend to pass on to, but there's no m o r e space in this UNDERCURRENTS s o I'll have to leave them f o r the next issue. The main point in writing all this has been t o provoke some stinging replies; t o call forth irrefutable proof that AT is everything we ever dreamed it was; and that if we would only have faith in the ultimate defeat of the Big by the Small, aided by the holy trinity of Sun, Wind and Shit, the f i r s t r a y s of the millenium would burst over the horizon before you could say "self sufficiency". AMEN

gratefully

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RENTS was designed and edited by Sails and Godfrey Boyle. The reviews editor was Tony Durham. Joy

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