The Nomadic Alternative – Page 218

Utopia is a contradiction in terms. By denying the value of movement, the closed society either dies of boredom or assumes mutual flattery to be inexhaustible. What begins as an idiosyncratic revolt against the values of the outside world, ends in believing the outside world to have no values at all. The guardianship of the superior way then concentrates in the hands of one forceful personality, dominating a hierarchy of passive followers who positively enjoy being told what to do. To maintain cohesion and his own authority, the leader imposes a state of siege within, and concocts an artificial enemy without.

In one American city I visited a commune, lorded over by a petty tyrant - a failed guitarist of messianic pretensions - who demanded free access to all women - for himself - and reduced the members of his 'family' to passive nonentities. His method was to manipulate them through a 'bad trip' on L.S.D. and reappear as a Saviour at the end. The inmates were Anglo-Saxons - and Anglo-Saxons only - and had deluded themselves - God knows how - that they were the reincarnation of the Pilgrim Fathers, the very embodiment of America, beset by savages. For this reason they had settled in the Black Section of the city on the principle, "Hate your neighbour - Love yourself."

The hermetically sealed society is a reservoir of grief, and the psychological consequences of voyages to the otherworld of consciousness weigh heavy on undisciplined minds. Restless geographers again look over the horizons of this world to far-flung Bermudas and Fields of Gold. For centuries the culture of the West thrived on the myth of the Wonder Voyage. Young men answered the call of adventure, crossed oceans to exotic lands, fought savages, ignorance, disease and wild animals or discovered some mineral paradise - a Potosi or the Rand Mines. Then they returned to wife, position and the applause of the Motherland.

"We came here to serve God and the King and get rich." Bernal Diaz neatly paraphrases the attitude of the colonial adventurer. And before Columbus sighted a new Garden of the Hesperides in the