Searching for Ken Kesey

...I hate to say it, but it's true that I am not a really good academic. For me, intellectual work is related to what you could call "aestheticism," meaning transforming yourself...I am not interested in the academic status of what I am doing because my problem is my own transformation. That's the reason also why, when people say, "Well, you thought this a few years ago and now you say something else," my answer is..."Well, do you think I have worked like that all those years to say the same thing and not to be changed?" This transformation of one's self by one's own knowledge is, I think, something rather close to the aesthetic experience. Why should a painter work if he is not transformed by his own painting? - Michel Foucault, from an interview by Stephen Riggins

Some "tortured self-examination" by Ryan reminds me that I am always more interested in the process than the product. Always. "Stuff" just doesn't mean that much to me, unless I have WAY too little of it and it becomes the oppression of poverty (which I have also experienced and was glad to leave behind).

Graduate school was just another way of imposing self-discipline, and when I was done with it, I had no desire to be an academic. It was over. This is something that is very hard for most people, at least ones I am around, to understand. Most people are chasing a career, money, fame or the latest "trophy" for fulfillment.

I value those among us who are living creative lives. Some are well-known, but most are hidden. Yes, our culture is seeming very homogenized, isn't it? And uncreative. And rough. I scan the horizon for difference. The Bushites lead the charge against difference, against kindness, cloaking their violence in "Christian principles". We force life on Terri Shiavo while we kill tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens.

This morning, while searching for an interview I once read with Ken Kesey, who talked about his neighbor, an unknown farmer that he considered living a life at least equally important to his, I found another interview with Kesey by David Loftus, which contained some great quotes that brought me hope this morning.

First, Kesey on Iraq (1990):

Kesey says that as the personnel and machinery sit in the desert running up a tab, President Bush is forced to talk tougher and tougher because too many Americans are growing bored and want some action. "You go to a porno flick, you want to see a come. We want to see some kind of orgasm in the sand. We paid for it."

The political climate...

Kesey doesn't even dwell on the setbacks of Reaganism, or whether things will get better in the 1990s.

"The truth is that we are losers. You make enough fuss that you attract the real forces down on you. And then you have to hide. We're always gonna be in the minority, and we're always gonna lose. We've always lost, all through history. We're the divine losers. And I keep inviting all these young, smart people: 'Come with us. Lose with us. Lose beautifully. We are not meant to win.

If we had triumphed like we thought we were going to in the '60s, we would have become assholes like the rest of them. There's something about winning that makes you an asshole. When you're a loser, you have to scuffle and you have to keep your head down. The meek ain't gonna inherit shit."

And this:

"The democratic majority has never come up with one good scientific theorem in their life. It always comes from one person who everybody thinks of as wrong, and then they burn him. But 20 years later everybody says, 'Hey, you know, that guy was right that we burned.

There are always gonna be more dumb people than smart people. That's the bane of a democracy. I wouldn't change it -- I don't want a communist government. But the smart person is always going to end up last. The smarter he is, the laster he is gonna end up. But it only takes one. It only takes one Pythagoras. It only takes one Galileo. It only takes one Hoffman, who comes up with the acid. It spreads out from him.

Here's the quote I always use. You can count the number of seeds in an apple, but you can't count the number of apples in the seed. It only takes that one seed. And then the thing sprouts and lives."

And finally:

"If our government had its wishes, it would have Baptists coast to coast, all the same. Our job is to keep alive Buddhists, and satanists, and witches, and Hell's Angels, and scorpions and rattlesnakes and the blues -- and all that stuff government would like to do away with because they're an irritant."

But what does all this have to do with self-transformation? Let's keep our heads, kids. Go against the tide. Let's become compassionate human beings. Let's develop the courage to be irritants.

Shall we?