[ these notes have been extrapolated and expanded upon, the source is Hakim Bey's writings on the the subject of Ontological Anarchism and Immediatism ]

“The practice of immediatism will release within us vast storehouses of forgotten power, which will not only transform our lives through the secret realization of unmediated play, but will also inescapably well up & burst out & permeate the other art we create, the more public & mediated art.” [ ... ]

ONTOLOGICAL ANARCHY IN A NUTSHELL (notes)

Out of nothing we will imagine our values and by this act of invention we shall live.

Of course, illusions can kill. Images of punishment haunt the sleep of Order. Ontological Anarchy proposes that we wake up, and create our own day — even in the shadow of the State, that pustulant giant who sleeps, and whose dreams of Order metastasize as spasms of spectacular violence

Chaos Linguistics?

All forms of communicativeness should be angelic — language itself should be angelic — a kind of divine chaos.

Self and Other complement and complete one another. (They are not opposing polarities but a system of expressions.)

“Freedom is a psycho-kinetic skill” – not an abstract noun. A process (praxis), not a “state” — a movement, not a form of governance. A kind of critical theory which no mere practical politics nor systematic philosophy can hope to evolve.

The greater the portion of my life that can be wrenched from the Work/Consume/Die cycle, and (re)turned over to the economy of the “bee”, the greater my chance for pleasure. One runs a certain risk in thus thwarting the vampiric energies of institutions.

IMMEDIATISM (notes)

And we should like to remember a certain psychic martial art which stresses the realization that the body itself is the least mediated of all media.

Publicly we’ll continue our work in publishing, radio, printing, music, etc. but privately we will create something else, something to be shared freely but never consumed passively, something which can be discussed openly but never understood by the agents of alienation, something with no commercial potential yet valuable beyond price, something occult yet woven completely into the fabric of our everyday lives

Game:

Rule: All spectators must also be performers.

[our games] will tend toward immediate techniques involving physical presence, direct communication and the senses.

An obvious matrix for Immediatism is the party… [ or dinner party ]

Awareness of the practice of immediatism as a response to the sorrows of alienation.

We wish to take the motives and discoveries of these earlier movements to their logical conclusion in an art which banishes all meditation and alienation, at least to the extent that the human condition allows.

Immediatism is not condemned to powerlessness in the world, simply because it avoids the publicity of the marketplace. “Poetic Terrorism” & “Art Sabotage” are quite logical manifestations of immediatism.

The practice of immediatism will release within us vast storehouses of forgotten power, which will not only transform our lives through the secret realization of unmediated play, but will also inescapably well up & burst out & permeate the other art we create, the more public & mediated art.

AN IMMEDIATIST POTLACH

[ see Game details http://www.left-bank.org/bey/imm_potl.htm ]

THE TONGS (notes)

The mandarins draw their power from the law;
the people, from the secret societies.
(Chinese saying)

I argued that secret societies are once again a valid possibility for groups seeking autonomy & individual realization.

He proposed instead that the establishment of multi-purpose neighborhood centers, with expenses to be shared by various special-interest groups & small-entrepeneurial concerns.

Most modern people seem unable to believe in the reality of something they never see on television — therefore to escape being televisualized is already to be quasi-invisible.

There’s no reason [an immediatist secret society] can’t be choosy. Many non-authoritarian organizations have foundered on the dubious principle of open membership, which frequently leads to a preponderance of assholes, yahoos, spoilers, whining neurotics and police agents.

The “secret” purpose of conviviality in the secret society then becomes the self-structuring & auto-valorization of free time.

The principle of the thing: secrets should be respected. Not everyone needs to know everything!

We are not interested in a return to the primitive but in a return OF the primitive, inasmuch as the primitive is the ‘repressed’.

In our times people are usually not kept apart by law but by mediation and alienation.

Simply to meet together face-to-face is already an action against the forces which oppress us by isolation, by loneliness, by the trance of media.

There are some people who do not need fifteen seconds on the Evening News to validate their existence.An

Elitist Attitude: a small group which exercises power over non-insiders for its own aggrandizement.

Immedtiatism does not concern itself with power-relations;– it desires neither to be ruled nor to rule.

It is a free association of individuals who have chosen each other as the subjects of the group’s generosity, its “expansiveness”… if this amounts to some kind of ‘elitism’ then so be it.

If immediatism begins with groups of friends trying not just to overcome isolation but also to enhance each other’s lives, soon it will want to take a more complex shape:– nuclei of mutually-self-chosen allies, working (playing) to occupy more & more time & space outside all mediated structure & control. Then it will want to become a horizontal network of such autonomous groups — then, a ‘tendency’ — then, a ‘movement’ — & then, a kinetic web of “temporary autonomous zones.” At last it will strive to become the kernel of a new society, giving birth to itself within the corrupt shell of the old.

For all these purposes the secret society promises to provide a useful framework of protective clandestinity — a cloak of invisibility that will have to be dropped only in the event of some final showdown with the Babylon of Mediation…

IMMEDIATISM vs CAPITALISM (notes)

Immediatism means to enhance individuals by providing a matrix of friendship, not to belittle them by sacrificing their ‘ownness’ to group-think, leftist self-abnegation, or New Age clone-values. What must be overcome is not individuality per se, but rather the addiction to bitter loneliness which characterizes consciousness in 20th century.

The first & most innocent-seeming obstacle to any immedatist project will be the ‘busyness’ or ‘need to make a living’ faced by each of its associates.

At the most mundane-seeming level, the group will fail to agree on a day of the week for meetings because everyone is ‘busy.’ But this is not mundane. It is sheer cosmic evil.

This monster called WORK remains the precise & exact target of our rebellious wrath, the one single most oppressive reality we face (& we must learn also to recognize Work when it’s disguised as “leisure” as would be described in The Hacker Ethic).

To be ‘too busy’ for the immedatist project is to miss the very essence of immediatism.

Succeed in actually physically meeting face-to-face with a group which is not your spouse & kids, or the ‘guys from my job,’ or your 12-Step Program –& you have already achieved virtually everything immedatism yearns for. An actual project will arise almost spontaneously out of this successful slap-in-the-face of the social norm of alienated boredom.

We’re not kidding or indulging in hyperbole when we insist that meeting face-to-face is already “the revolution.”

Fight them– by meeting with friends, not to consume or produce, but to enjoy friendship– & you will have triumphed (at least for the moment) over the most pernicious conspiracy in Euro-American society today.

If you are seen, you will be perceived as wrong, illegal, immortal — different.

And of course the chances are good that your immediatist group is engaged in something illegal (ie. these days, piracy of information and entertainment from the internet is common) — since almost everything enjoyable is in fact illegal.

Immediatism is the most natural path for free humans imaginable — & therefore the most unnatural abomination in the eyes of Capital, Control, Order, Simulation. Immediatism will triumph, but only through vigilance, self-organization of power, of clandestinity & of insurrection. Immediatism is our delight, immediatism is dangerous.

INVOLUTION (notes)

Consciousness in itself, as Nietzsche pointed out, plays a less significant role in life than power.

Immediatism remains for us more a game than “movement”.

Rule: It is produced for a group of friends; it is not produced for sale, nor is it sold, nor (ideally) is it allowed to slip out of the control of its producers in any way, shape or form. It is sacred and secret.

The best immediatist agitprop will leave no trace at all, except in the souls of those who are changed by it.

This is a game, not a movement; it has rules of play, but no laws. Immediatism would love it if everyone were an artist, but our goal is not mass conversion.

For the sake of argument, let us assume that suicide is not a ’solution’.

The Totality isolates individuals & renders them powerless by offering only illusory modes of social expression, modes which seem to promise liberation or self-fulfillment but in fact end by producing yet more mediation & alienation.

Simulation cannot reproduce the faint reflection of ‘aura’ which is allowed even to commodity-trash, its ‘utopian trace.’ Simulation cannot in fact reproduce or produce anything except desolation and misery. But since the Totality thrives on our misery, Simulation suits its purpose quite admirably.

People made to feel isolated, alienated, weird, queer, wrong, finally non-existent; people without voices; people without power.

America is full to overflowing with people who feel that no matter what they say or do, no difference will be made; that no one is listening; that there is no one to listen.

Each group of artists or peace activists or whatever is also made to feel that no contact with other groups is possible.

The concept of ‘networking‘ began as a revolutionary strategy to bypass & overcome the Totality by setting up horizontal connections.

Communication technology may still prove to offer useful tools in this struggle, but by now it has become just as powerful a force for Simulation.