And infected he was. The real-life PKD went so far as to denounce some critics and fellow writers to the FBI.

Crystal methamphetamine abuse might have had something to do with this too.

Also: the premise of PKD’s refusal to put coded messages into his fiction… isn’t that the same (or at least similar) premise as Vonnegut’s “Mother Night”? I’ve often wondered if Vonnegut just made up that story or if it was based loosely upon true events.

And infected he was. The real-life PKD went so far as to denounce some critics and fellow writers to the FBI.

Burroughs’ parable seems to delineate a way out. A quick, clean shot to the head to those who are fucking it up for the rest of us. But most of us feel an instinctive revulsion to this act, a revulsion which is well-founded.

How do we resist those who wish to exercise power over us without becoming mired in eternal struggle, or worse yet, taking on the attributes of those whom we fight?

And slowly the Shits are ignored into a dull celluloid sunset.

I think I understand this… sort of. “Ignore the Empire and it will go away.” Stop feeding it with your attention. Work on yourself first. Like Gandhi said, “you must be the change you wish to see in others.” Is that really the solution?

I like to think that time is not only real, but that it is a circular spiral. Like a vinyl record spinning– if you were to put a scratch in the vinyl, you would revisit that scratch in the form of an audio “pop” every 4 seconds or so, even though the music/audio is seemingly “moving forward” in straight linear time.

Occasionally, the scratch is so deep into the groove that the music/audio loops, repeating a section over and over. This is akin to a time warp.

We all came from Eden, we all visited Golgotha - in some plane of reality that is invisible to the 5 senses yet coterminous with this one.

In Burroughs’ mythology, the world is one of conflict between the Johnsons and the Shits. A Shit is one who is obsessively sure of his own position at the cost of all other vantages. Burroughs describes Shits as incapable of minding “their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a small pox virus has.”(4) This is more than a offhanded analogy. For Burroughs, Shits are, in actuality, virus occupied hosts—chronically infected by what he terms the Right virus. “The mark of a basic Shit,” Burroughs reminds us, “is that he has to be right.”(5)

The war between the Johnsons and the Shits is an epic one that runs throughout Burroughs writing. Though of immense proportions, like the Gnostic battle between good and evil, the cosmic war is not figured across eternity. It has an end and, for Burroughs, that end is imaginable. It does not come without immense conflict, however. Burroughs tells his reader, “The people in power will not disappear voluntarily.”(6) There is no turning back, once the battle is met. “Once you take up arms against a bunch of shits there is no way back. Lay down your arms and they will kill you.”(7) “Hell hath no more vociferous fury than an endangered parasite.”(8) And remember: “The wild boys take no prisoners.”(9)

In discussing his mythology, Burroughs describes a classic Catch-22: “He who opposes force with counterforce alone forms that which he opposes and is formed by it… On the other hand he who does not resist force that enslaves and exterminate will be enslaved and exterminated.”(10) Burroughs’ work begs the question, how does one resist the forces rallied against one without taking on the virally-tainted of the opposing force. To imagine a permanent solution proves an easy flirtation. In his essay “My Own Business,” Burroughs writes that “one is tempted to seek a total solution to the problem: Mass Assassination Day.”(11)

In The Place of Dead Roads Burroughs imagines a scenario where the Johnson Family organizes into armed squads who fan out to hunt the virally infected. Some Johnsons are assigned as “Shit Spotters” whose task it is to move out into cities and small towns across the country recording those who exhibit virus occupied behaviors. Acting upon the intelligence thus gathered, sharp shooters follow-up eliminating the detected Shits.(12) Ultimately Burroughs tempers his fantasy. He observes, “Probably the most effective tactic is to alter the conditions on which the virus subsists.”(13)

In truth, indifference will prove the end of the Shit problem. “Conditions change, and the virus guise is ignored and forgotten.”(14) Burroughs envisions the Shit position obsoleted by changes in normative culture:

This trend toward sanity has brought the last-ditch dedicated shits out into the open, screaming with rage. Victimless crime, the assumption that what a citizen does in the privacy of his own dwelling is nonetheless someone else’s business and therefore subject to denunciation and punishment is the very lifeline of the right virus. Cutting off this air line would have the same action as interferon, which blocks the oxygen from certain virus strains.(15)

And slowly the Shits are ignored into a dull celluloid sunset.

Have you read his essay on The Book of Changes? I believe it ties it nicely with a lot of the points brought up above.

The last time I read your page you were discussing reading PKD on the bus and finding that old greeting used for Early Christians. I believe you just have to look into these parallels and find that they do in their own minute ways run parallel to what you’re trying to piece together with the bigger picture…

Oh, I just moved to Seattle and stopped by the Theosophy Library and found they have many, many old books relating to Gnosticism. You might want to check that place out if you haven’t yet.

there are is a whole mythic system involving her among homeless children in Miami.

holy wow, that is one of the wildest articles i’ve ever read!

RE: Bloody Mary, there are is a whole mythic system involving her among homeless children in Miami. Only the “Bloody Mary” part reached me in the midwest as a child.

I think this really has a lot of truth to it, particularly if you take into consideration the adage that “to secure peace is to prepare for war.” There’s a constant give and take, and though power shifts across space and time, there is ALWAYS an Empire (Roman, British, American, Chinese, Persian, whatever) somewhere seeking to exert its influence, and always a resistance against that. When the resistance wins… it’s very possible that it soon evolves into the Empire, seeking to protect itself against an Empire resurgent. It’s never realized, until it’s too late, that by destroying the Empire, you become it. It’s the Nature of the Beast to constantly change form to survive…