Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.2.20031130230502.00a12100@209.238.255.5>
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 23:07:31 +0100
To: John Zube <jzube@acenet.com.au>
From: Christian Butterbach <cb@butterbach.net>
Subject: something to meditate
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>If you note an insurrectionary undercurrent running through these pages, 
>you're right on target. My feeling is that when the enemy is an army of 
>deadening algorithms, committing buffoonery is tantamount to revolution:
>
>``Everybody understands Mickey Mouse. Few understand Herman Hesse. Hardly 
>anyone understands Albert Einstein. And nobody understands Emperor Norton.''...
>
>Joshua Norton, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico... He 
>lived in the [19th] century and got to be emperor by proclaiming himself 
>as such. For some mysterious reason, the newspapers decided to humor him 
>and printed his proclamations. When he started issuing his own money, the 
>local banks went along with the joke and accepted it on par with U.S. 
>currency. When the vigilantes got into a lynching mood one night and 
>decided to go down to Chinatown and kill some Chinese, Emperor Norton 
>stopped them just by standing in the street with his eyes closed reciting 
>the Lord's Prayer....
>
>Well, chew on this for a while, friend: there were two very sane and 
>rational  anarchists who lived about the same time as Emperor Norton 
>across the country in Massachusetts: William Green and Lysander Spooner. 
>They also realized the value of having competing currencies instead of one 
>uniform State currency, and they tried logical arguments, empirical 
>demonstrations and legal suits to get this idea accepted. They 
>accomplished nothing. The government broke its own laws to find ways to 
>suppress Green's Mutual Bank and Spooner's People's Bank. That's because 
>they were obviously sane, and their currency did pose a real threat... But 
>Emperor Norton was so crazy that people humored him and his currency was 
>allowed to circulate.
>
>from The Eye in the Pyramid
>Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson

[from sniggle.net]