A lifeguard blows her whistle and shouts “Pool break!” Better that than a trumpet. Families return to their seats. Some pack their things and leave for lunch, never to be seen again. A boy-child trails behind one such family mewling a bit, shouting “I want pizza!” Others arrive thereafter and take their place. My dissertation reckoned with these and other visions of the future, from the utopian to the apocalyptic. “How do such visions fare,” asks the one to the other across time, “in light of the consciousness revolution, the Revolution of the Eternal Now? How many or how few present what Esalen psychologist William C. Schutz calls ‘thoughts and methods for attaining more joy’ (Schutz, Joy, p. 10)? Must the Eternal Now be an eternal capitalist present, as per neoliberal ideology — as in books like The End of Ideology and The End of History? Or can we use the present to figure forth the Commune, beloved ones all living together in common, as per the slogan ‘Full Communism Now’?”
Tag: William C. Schutz
Saturday December 14, 2019
House brought back up to fire code and documents prepared for an impending job application, we’re ready. Any hour now, baby, any minute. A cardinal sang to me this morning, moments before the rubber-suited knights of the local fire department trooped through the home. A kindly bunch. They identified the problem and we thanked them. Time to read William C. Schutz’s Joy — those first pages especially, where he describes the birth of his son.
Trance-Scripts 