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 The Up-Rising: Hit and Run "An uprising is like a 'peak experience' as opposed to the standard of 'ordinary' consciousness and experience... such moments of intensity give shape and meaning to the entirety of a life." They have us surrounded. To fight Them by Their rules is futile: the best you can hope for is a Bonnie and Clyde scenario--one last romp before the bullets fly; the worst that you can hope for is success--all too soon the new Revolutionaries become the old Regime. The Discourse has been steeped for too long in the empty phrases of Power Politics. The Cycle is already broken; give Hegel back his conflicts and put on your dancing shoes. It's time to take back the words and re-arrange them in a way that the Machine cannot compute... Why settle for Terrorism when Joy is much more fun? The most "politically" lucid act of the 20th Century came when protesters put flowers into the barrels of the guns of the forces of Control. The flash of satori can undo a lifetime of submission to the impersonal force of History. To fight fire with fire would only feed the Power Virus; better to laugh at the dark than fire a single bullet. The TAZ practices "poetic terrorism and ontological anarchy". Let Them have Their Simulation; we'll stake our claim to the neglected territory beneath the scraps of the dayglo map. Forget the paradigm of Total Victory; we'll take the momentary ecstasy of experience, savored without guilt and remembered forever. Why use the empty words of past dictators and martyrs when we can write our own dictionaries? In short, The Up-Rising is based on awakening rather than conflict. The inner change may very well promote an outer blossoming of anarchic activity; this is not, however, the "purpose" of the TAZ. Indeed, the very idea of purpose is foreign to the TAZ which would rather be caught stoned and contemplating its navel than dictating a New Dogma.
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