Gaia Community: esaruoho's Blog

Wilhelm Reich on the radium industry in 1937 (excerpt from letter

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Fri, 29 May 2009 04:48:28 GMT

...A short while ago, my friend Sigurd Hoel drew my attention to the enormous danger that looms from the various trusts set up to manufacture and sell radium for the treatment of cancer. I do not know to what extent you are aware of the practices and the brutal determination of the representatives of these trusts and of the people who profit from them. After vigorous and detailed discussions of this matter with our friends here, we realize that if my method of cancer prognosis and possibly also my method of cancer treatment were to succeed, it would completely pull the rug out from under the cancer radium industry. Everyone who lives off that industry, and there are tens of thousands of people all around the world who do, would turn against me. Not because they are bad people but simply because they would fight quite unconsciously for their existence and against the need to undergo difficult retraining. The most dangerous reaction of all would come from those people whose vast earnings would be jeopardized. (That was not my idea, it came from a very smart and foresighted person.) In addition, I learned yesterday that some years ago a journal article critical of the Belgian Radium Trust appeared. The article claimed that prices for radium were kept extremely high by the trusts and that profits of up to 1,000 percent were being earned. I cannot check these matters, but to the extent that I know "business," they are probably correct. Unfortunately, I did not have an opportunity to discuss this side of our work while you were here -- namely, how much scientific research is hampered by the profits derived from its incompleteness. Think, for example, merely of Davos (Reich refers to the tuberculosis sanitarium in Davos, Switzerland), which exists only because tuberculosis cannot be cured. It would make me happy if you fully understood what I am trying to say. It is not an ideological anticapitalist or ex-communist speaking in me but a physician who, under all circumstances, clings to his function and does not wish to be destroyed in the process. Because I am unusually very naive and these facts had to be pointed out to me, it would be wrong to claim that my behaviour is paranoid. To put it briefly, I ask that you observe the utmost caution in whatever reports you make to anybody about my ongoing cancer work. You got to know Sigurd Hoel here and I am sure you were persuaded of his absolute intellectual honesty. He believes that the simultaneous existence in Belgium of a league against cancaer and of a radium trust cannot be a mere coincidence. Only recently have I understood the reaction of local radium therapists to the initial rumors about my cancer work, although they were unaware of their own motives. My friends here and I still do not see how we will cope with this problem. I would appreciate it very much indeed if you could write and let me know your opinion, without making me wait too long for a reply. In the deep conviction that you will not misunderstadn this letter and that you will assist me with your advice, I remain, Yours most sincerely. excerpt from Beyond Psychology, page 130

Tags: wilhelm reich, cancer, radium

Alexander Lowen on Wilhelm Reich (from bioenergetics)

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 11:47:42 GMT

Here's some excerpts from Alexander Lowen's book Bioenergetics. I think you (and I) would do very well if we just read the whole book, but just for the purpose of introducing something online that isn't yet online, have a look:

I began my personal therapy with Reich in the spring of 1942. During the preceding year I had been a fairly frequent visitor at Reich's laboratory. He showed me some of the work he was doing with bio preparations and cancerous tissue. Then, one day, he said to me, "Lowen, if you are interested in this work, there is only one way to get into it, and that is by going into therapy." His statement startled me, for I had not contemplated this move. I told him, "I am interested, but what I want is to become famous." Reich took this remark seriously, for he replied, "I will make you famous." Over the years I have regarded Reich's statement as a prophecy. It was the push I needed to overcome my resistance and to launch me into my lifework.

My first therapeutic session with Reich was an experience I will never forget. I went with the naive assumption that there was nothing wrong with me. It was to be purely a training analysis. I lay down on the bed wearing a pair of bathing trunks. Reich did not use a couch since this was a body-oriented therapy. I was told to bend my knees, relax and breathe with my mouth open and my jaw relaxed. I followed these instructions and waited to see what would happen. After some time Reich said, "Lowen, you're not breathing." I answered, "Of course I'm breathing; otherwise I'd be dead. He then remarked, "Your chest isn't moving. Feel my chest." I placed my hand on his chest and noticed that it was rising and falling with each breath. Mine clearly was not.

I lay back again and resumed breathing, this time with my chest moving outward on inspiration and inward on expiration. Nothing happened. My breathing proceeded easily and deeply. After a while Reich said, "Lowen, drop your head back and open your eyes wide." I did as I was told and . . . a scream burst from my throat.
It was a beautiful day in early spring, and the windows of the room opened onto the street. To avoid any embarrassment with his neighbors, Dr. Reich asked me to straighten my head, which stopped the scream. I resumed my deep breathing. Strangely, the scream had not disturbed me. I was not connected to it emotionally. I did not feel any fear. After I had breathed again for a while, Dr. Reich asked me to repeat the procedure: Put my head back and open my eyes wide. Again the scream came out. I hesitate to say that I screamed because I did not seem to do it. The scream happened to me. Again I was detached from it, but I left the session with the feeling that I was not as all right as I thought. There were "things" (images, emotions) in my personality that were hidden from consciousness, and I knew then that they would have to come out.

At that time Reich called his therapy Character Analytic Vegetotherapy. Character analysis had been his great contribution to psychoanalytic theory, one for which he was highly regarded by all analysts. Vegetotherapy referred to the mobilization of feeling through breathing and other body techniques that activated the vegetative centers (the ganglia of the autonomic nervous system) and liberated "vegetative" energies.

... and so on. this is from "Bioenergetics" by Alexander Lowen, from the chapter "From Reich to Bioenergetics".

... He observed: "There is no neurotic individual who does not show a tension in the abdomen." He noted the common tendency of patients to hold their breath and inhibit exhalation as a means of controlling their feelings. He concluded that holding the breath served to diminish the organism's energy by reducing its metabolic activities, which in turn decreased the production of anxiety.

For Reich, then, the first step in the therapeutic procedure was to get the patient to breathe easily and deeply. The second was to mobilize whatever emotional expression was most evident in the patient's face or manner. In my case this expression was fear. We have seen what a powerful effect this procedure had on me.

Succeeding sessions followed the same general pattern. I would lie on the bed and breathe as freely as I could, trying to allow a deep expiration to occur. I was directed to give in to my body and not control any expression or impulse that emerged. A number of things happened that gradually brought me into contact with early memories and experiences. At first the deeper breathing to which I was not accustomed produced strong, tingling sensations in my hands which, on two occasions, developed into a severe carpopedal spasm, severely cramping the hands. This reaction disappeared as my body accommodated to the increased energy the deeper breathing produced. Tremors developed in my legs when I moved my knees gently together and apart and in my lips when i followed an impulse to reach out with them.

--
Alexander Lowen little interview segments chopped up and combined.-
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8170454887142008583&hl=en

Tags: respiration, breathing, wilhelm reich, bioenergetics, energy, life, living, body, mind, psychotherapy

Wilhelm Reich in Hell - Act I

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:26:24 GMT

Wilhelm Reich In Hell
excerpt from Act I

By Robert Anton Wilson

(The scene: Wilhelm Reich is on trial in Hell. The trial looks in all respects like a 3-ring circus, complete with jugglers, acrobats, bearded ladies, etc. The prosecuting attorneys are the Marquis de Sade and Count von Sacher-Masoch, both of whom are dressed as clowns. The Ringmaster (Satan) presides as judge.
Early on in the trial, Dr. Reich introduced as evidence a Computer which continually monitors the growth of terrorism. The Computer emits an ear-splitting whistle every time ten terrorists are created.

SADE: Why did you rebel against Freud?

REICH: (slowly) I rebelled against Freud because he was a coward.

The Computer whistles.

SADE: A coward? The man who challenged all the taboos of his age?

REICH: He back-tracked, he evaded, he weaseled. He would not say flatly what his theories all implied.

The Computer whistles again.

SADE: (shouting over whistle) You mean he did not share your Utopian fantasies.

REICH: Look at the photos of him; look at that jaw.

The Computer whistles again.

REICH: Look at his expression, those clenched teeth. He was holding back -- and I tell you, all of you, that is why he got cancer of the jaw finally. He wouldn't speak what he knew. He held it in, behind those clenched teeth, until it killed him.

SADE: And what is the truth Freud dared not speak?

REICH: Everybody knows it by now. Look at the crime news on TV --

Computer whistles again.

REICH: or go into the emergency clinics and talk to the rape victims. Talk to the battered wives and the abused children. Our whole species is mad, emotionally plagued. We have been mad so long that every attempt to break out of the Trap just unleashes unconscious rage and increases the violence.

Computer whistles again.

REICH: We all know we're in the Trap, but nobody knows how to get out of it. We attack each other thinking that's the way out.

SADE: What? That is the truth Freud dared not speak? I thought he said all that in Civilization and its Discontents.

REICH: He would not say there was a way out of the Trap -- one way only --

SADE: Your way, of course.

REICH: The way I discovered, gradually, after many mistakes.

SADE: Which is?

REICH: Work on the breathing and the muscle tensions. And tell people frankly that there is no metaphysical Good and Evil in the human world any more than there is in the animal world or the chemical world or the physical world of gravity and mass.

SADE: Hedonistic materialism, in short. The permissive society.

REICH: Not permissiveness. Sanity. If a child is a nuisance, tell him so. Tell him his behavior is annoying. But never, never make a metaphysical moral issue out of it. Never, never say anything is sinful or wrong in a cosmic sense. Never pass on the lunacey, the Emotional Plague, that has come down to us from ages of superstition and barbarism.

SADE: A world without morals. Anarchy. That is what you mean?

REICH: It is not anarchy. It is what every person with an ounce of sanity knows. Nobody is to blame for anything. We are all in the mess together because our ancestors were mad and a mad society has passed on their repression from generation to generation.

SADE: And the things I did before I was brought here and cured? They were not Evil?

REICH: You enjoyed feeling Evil because it made you seem heroic. The humiliating truth, Marquis, is that you were merely ill.

SADE: And Hitler was merely ill?

REICH: That is the horror of the situation. We all know it by now, but we cannot remember. We repress it and go on blaming one another -- we forget what we know, because remembering it means remembering that we are robots, too -- that we have all been crippled in different ways by trying to live in the imaginary world of morals instead of the real world of nature.

SADE: So we just teach people how to breathe properly and relax their muscles and we will have Utopia?

REICH: No. I never said it was that easy. I said it was almost impossible, but we had to try, if there was to be any chance of survival at all. Removing the Emotional Plague is just like removing bubonic plague. It will take decades of work all over the world by thousands of specialists. But if we don't try --

Computer whistles again.

REICH: We must understand that every moral idea is strictly a hallucination. It creates guilt which creates muscular tension, which creates rage. That leads to further armoring, to hold the rage in. That leads to all the psychosomatic illnesses that orthodox medicine can't cure and to all the social pathologies around us. Rape. Child-beating. War.

Computer whistles again.

REICH: (excited, beginning to harangue) You compared me to Rousseau. Yes, in the Age of Reason, he had to recreate the myth of Eden again; he called it the Noble Savage. A hundred years later, Marx had to recreate it: he called it the primitive matriarchy, before private property. Eden is always recreated, because we know there is a natural grace and a natural way of life we have lost. We lost it through the invention of Good and Evil. As soon as we believed we were sinners, the Trap closed on us. We accepted the sin and punished ourselves. Or we projected the sin outward and punished scapegoats.

Computer whistles again.

REICH: (rage bursting through) Masochism or sadism -- those were the only choices once we believed in Good and Evil, once we believed in Sin. We are animals. We are no more guilty than a dog, a cat, a horse, a chipmunk. Everybody has known it since Darwin. But we are still in the Trap.

SADE: You really hate the Morality that caused you to kill your parents.

REICH: It is causing the whole human race to kill its children! We cannot see what we are doing. We have been robbed blind by our damned Morality.

SADE turns away sharply.

SADE: Your Almightiness, the prosecution rests. We believe it is obvious, out of his own mouth, that the defendant is a menace to civilization as we know it.

REICH: Wait! Do you know why that moment in nature is so precious, that moment of peace and oneness?

RINGMASTER: The defendant will not speak at this time.

REICH: It is a moment beyond Good and Evil!

RINGMASTER: You can argue that later. Fifteen minute recess. Then we will hear the case for the defense. (He rises)

The Computer whistles three times rapidly.

MASOCH: All rise!

Houselights up. As audience starts to leave, REICH begins addressing them.

REICH: Listen to me a moment! That moment of peace, that moment in Nature, beyond Good and Evil -- that is the essence of us. Our core. Our true selves. We normally never feel it because --

RINGMASTER: Clear the Court!

REICH: because our muscles hold it down. Our muscles are chronically tense, it is so chronic that we never notice it. We only notice the peace when on a rare moment the tension relaxes. What do you think the Drug Culture is all about? Relaxing the muscular armor, getting rid of that tension for a few hours, or a few moments.

ACROBATS go down into the audience and persuade people to leave. They are very polite, like well-trained policemen, and become very threatening (in a polite way) with those unwilling to leave while REICH is still talking.

REICH: We are diseased -- dis-eased. We have lost touch with natural feeling. When the Life Force tries to break through the muscular armor, it gets deflected, I say, and comes out dis-eased and violent. That's why all political revolutions fail. That's why there are no political solutions. That's why

RINGMASTER: Silence the defendant.

MASOCH and SADE "beat" REICH with bladders again and drag him offstage right.

REICH: (as he goes) You can't feel naturally. You can't see what you are doing, or what is being done around you. You are robots. Robots. All of you. All of you.

Curtain.

Tags: wilhelm reich, emotional plague, emotion, feeling, orgone, energy, society, structure, robert anton wilson, raw

Fascist Irrationalism - written by Wilhelm Reich

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:08:05 GMT

‘Fascist Irrationalism’ - Wilhelm Reich

Fascist Irrationalism

by Wilhelm Reich

from his book The Function of the Orgasm

The unsophisticated person will ask whether science upon its heights has nothing better to do than to ask such stupid questions as to whether the earthly happiness of human beings is ‘desirable’ or ‘practicable’. That, he might say, is a matter of course. Nevertheless, things are not as simple as they might appear to the buoyant, enthusiastic adolescent or the cheerful happy-go-lucky individual. In the centers that had a decisive influence upon public opinion in Europe around 1930, the demand of the masses of people for happiness was neither considered a matter of course, nor was its absence regarded as a matter for question. There was at that time literally no political organisation which would have considered it important enough to concern itself with such ‘banal’, ‘personal’, ‘unscientific’ or ‘unpolitical’ questions.

However, the social events around 1930 raised just this question in all its significance. It was the tide of Fascism which swept across Germany like a hurricane and made people ask in utter bewilderment how such a thing was possible. Economists, sociologists, cultural reformers, diplomats and statesmen alike, tried to find an answer in old books. The answer.could not be found in old books. There was not a single political pattern that would have fitted this eruption of irrational human emotions which Fascism represented. Never before had politics itself been questioned as an irrational thing.

In this volume, I shall discuss only those social events which threw into sharp focus the clash of opinions as it had taken place in Freud’s study. I have to neglect here the broad social-economic background.

Freud’s discovery of infantile sexuality and of the process of sexual repression was, sociologically speaking, the first beginning of an awareness of the denial of sex which had been existing for thousands of years. This awareness was still clothed in highly academic forms and did not trust its own ability to walk. Human sexuality claimed the right to be moved from the backstairs of social life, where for thousands of years it had been leading a filthy, unhealthy, purulent existence, to the front of the shiny edifice which was so grandly called ‘culture’ and ‘civilisation’. Sex murders, criminal abortions, sexual agony of adolescents, killing of the vital forces in children, perversions galore, pornography and the vice squad, exploitation of human longing for love by greedy and vulgar business enterprises and advertising, millions of diseases, psychic and somatic, loneliness and crippling everywhere, and on top of all this, the neurotic swash-buckling of the would-be saviors of humanityóall these things couldhardly be considered as ornaments of civilisation. The moral and social evaluation of the most important biological human function was in the hands of sexually frustrated ladies and vegetatively dead professors. There was, after all, no objection to the societies of sexually frustrated ladies and vegetative mummies; but one had to protest against the fact that it was exactly these mummies who not only tried to foist their attitudes upon healthy and flourishing organisms, but were actually able to do so. The disappointed and the mummies appealed to the general sexual guilt feeling and called to witness the sexual chaos and the ‘decline of civilisation and culture’. The masses of human beings knew, indeed, what was going on, but they kept silent because they were not quite sure whether their natural vital feelings might not be criminal after all. They had never heard anything different. Thus, the findings of Malinowski’s research in the South Sea islands had an extraordinarily fruitful effect. Their effect was not that of arousing the lascivious curiosity with which sexually disturbed traders reacted to the South Sea girls or raved about Hawaiian hula dances; it was serious.

As early as 1926, Malinowski, in one of his publications, rejected the concept of the biological nature of the sexual child-parent conflict discovered by Freud (i.e., the Oedipus conflict). He pointed out, correctly, that the child-parent relationship changes with social processes; that, in other words, it is of a sociological and not of a biological nature. Specifically, the family in which a child grows up is itself the result of sociological development. With the Trobriand islanders, for example, not the father, but the mother’s brother determines the upbringing of the children. This is an important characteristic of the matriarchate. The father plays only the role of a friend to his children. The Oedipus complex of the European does not exist among the Trobriand islanders. Of course, the child in the Trobriand islands also develops a family conflict with its taboos and precepts, but the laws governing behaviour are fundamentally different from those of the Europeans. Apart from an incest taboo for brother and sister, they contain no sexual restrictions. The English psychoanalyst Jones raised a sharp protest against this contention, with the counter assertion that the Oedipus complex, as found in the European, was the ‘foni et origo’ of all culture; and that, therefore, the family of today was an unalterable biological institution. In this controversy, it was simply a matter of the decisive question as to whether sexual repression is biologically determined and unalterable, or sociologically determined and alterable.

In 1929, Malinowski’s main work, ‘The Sexual Life of Savages’ appeared. It contains a wealth of material which confronted the world with the fact that sexual repression is of sociological and not of biological origin. Malinowski himself did not discuss this question in his book. All the more telling was the language of his material. In my book, ‘Der Einbruch der Sexualmoral’ I attempted to show the sociological origin of sex denial on the basis of the available ethnological material. I shall summarise the points which are relevant here:

‘Children in the Trobriand islands know no sex repression and no sexual secrecy. Their sex life is allowed to develop naturally, freely and unhampered through every stage of life, with full satisfaction. The children engage freely in the sexual activities which correspond to their age. Nonetheless, or rather, just for this reason, the society of the Trobrianders knew, in the third decade of our century, no sexual perversions, no functional psychoses, no psychoneuroses, no sex murder; they have no word for theft; homosexuality and masturbation, to them, mean nothing but an unnatural and imperfect means of sexual gratification, a sign of a disturbed capacity to reach normal satisfaction. To the children of the Trobrianders, the strict, obsessional training for excremental control which undermines the civilisation of the white race, is unknown. The Trobrianders, therefore, are spontaneously clean, orderly, social without compulsion, intelligent and industrious. The socially accepted form of sexual life is spontaneous monogamy without compulsion, a relationship which can be dissolved without difficulties; thus, there is no promiscuity.’

At the time when Malinowski made his studies of the Trobriand islanders, there was living a few miles away, on the Amphlett Islands, a tribe with patriarchal authoritarian family organisation. The people inhabiting these islands were already showing all the traits of the European neurotic, such as distrust, anxiety, neuroses, perversion, suicide, etc.

Our science, permeated by sex-negation as it is, has thus far succeeded in reducing the significance of decisive facts to zero by the simple method of presenting side by side the important and unimportant, the banal and the great, in neat coordination. The difference just mentioned, between the matriarchal, free organisation of the Trobriand islanders, and the patriarchal, authoritarian one on the Amphlett Islands, has more weight from a mental hygiene point of view than the most intricate and seemingly exact graphs of our academic world. This difference signifies: The determining factor of the mental health of a population is the condition of its natural love life.

Freud had contended that the sexual latency period of our children, between the ages of about six to twelve, was a biological phenomenon. My observations of adolescents from diverse strata of the population had shown that, given a natural development of sexuality, a latency period did not exist. Where a latency period occurs, it is an unnatural product of culture. For this statement I had been attacked by the psychoanalysts. Now it was confirmed by Malinowski: the sexual activities of the children in the Trobriand islands take place without interruption according to their respective age, without a latency period. Sexual intercourse is taken up when puberty demands it. The sexual life of the adolescents is monogamous; a change of partners takes place quietly and in an orderly manner, without violent jealousy. In strict contradistinction to our civilization, the society of the Trobrianders bestows care upon and facilitates adolescent sex life, particularly with regard to huts where they can be by themselves, and in other respects to the extent of their knowledge of natural processes.

There is only one group of children that is excluded from this natural course of events. These are the children who are predestined for a certain type of economically advantageous marriage. This kind of marriage brings economic advantages to the chief, and is the nucleus from which a patriarchal social order develops. This cross-cousin marriage is found wherever ethnological research has revealed actual or historical matriarchy (cf. e.g., Morgan, Bachofen, Engels). The children destined for this kind of marriage are, just like ours, brought up in sexual abstinence; they show neuroses and those character traits with which we are familiar in our character-neurotics. Their sexual abstinence has the function of making them submissive. Sexual suppression is an essential instrument in the production of economic enslavement.

Thus, sexual suppression in the infant and the adolescent is not, as psycho an alysis-in agreement with traditional and erroneous concepts of education-contends, the prerequisite of cultural development, sociality, diligence and cleanliness; it is the exact opposite. The Trobriand islanders, with full freedom of natural sexuality, have not only attained a high degree of agriculture, but, due to the absence of secondary drives, they have maintained a general state of affairs which to any European nation of 1930 or 1940 must appear like a dream.

Healthy children show a natural spontaneous sexuality. Sick children show an unnatural, that is, perverse sexuality. The alternative with which we are confronted in the matter of sexual education is thus not: sexuality or abstinence; but: natural and healthy, or perverse and neurotic sexual life.

Sexual repression is of social-economic and not of biological origin. Its function is that of laying the foundation for authoritarian patriarchal culture and economic slavery, as we see it most clearly in Japan, China, India, etc. In the early beginnings, human sex life followed natural laws which laid the basis for a natural sociality. Since then, the period of the authoritarian patriarchy of the last four to six thousand yeam has, with the energy of the suppressed natural sexuality, created the secondary, perverse sexuality of the human of today.

It would not be too much to say that the cultural revolutions of our century are determined by the struggle of humanity for a re-establishment of the natural laws of love life. This struggle for naturalness, for unity of nature and culture, reveals itself in the diverse forms of mystical longing, cosmic phantasies, ‘oceanic’ feelings, religious ecstasis, and particularly in the progressive development of sexual freedom; it is unconscious, full of neurotic conflicts and anxiety and is apt to take the forms which characterise the secondary, perverse drives. A humanity which has been forced for millennia to act contrary to its fundamental biological law and has, therefore, acquired a second nature which is actually a counter-nature, must needs get into an irrational frenzy when it tries to restore the fundamental biological function and at the same time is afraid of it.

The patriarchal, authoritarian era in human history has attempted to keep the secondary antisocial drives in cheek with the aid of compulsive moral restrictions. Thus, what is called the cultured human came to be a living structure composed of three layers. On the surface he carries the artificial mask of self-control, of compulsive, insincere politeness and of artificial sociality. With this layer, he covers up the second one, the Freudian ‘unconscious’, in which sadism, greediness, lasciviousness, envy, perversions of all kinds, etc., are kept in check, without however, having in the least lost any of their power. This second layer is the artifact of a sex-negating culture, consciously, it is mostly experienced only as a gaping inner emptiness. Behind it, in the depths, live and work natural sociality and sexuality, spontaneous enjoyment of work, capacity for love. This third and deepest layer, representing the biological nucleus of the human structure, is unconscious and dreaded. It is at variance with every aspect of authoritarian education and regime. It is, at the same time, manís only real hope of ever mastering social misery.

All discussions of the question whether man is good or bad, a social or antisocial being, are philosophical pastimes. Whether man is a social being or an irrationally reacting mass of protoplasm, depends on whether his fundamental biological needs are in harmony or in conflict with the institutions which he has created. For this reason, it is impossible to relieve the working individual from his responsibility for the order or disorder, that is, for the economy, individual and social, of the biological energy. Passing this responsibility enthusiastically from himself to some Fžhrer or politician has become one of his essential characteristics, since he is no longer able to understand either himself or his institutions, of which he is only afraid. Fundamentally, he is helpless, incapable of freedom, and craving for authority, for he cannot react spontaneously; he is armored and expects commands, for he is full of contradictions and cannot rely on himself.
The cultivated European bourgeoisie of the 19th and early 20th century had taken over the compulsive moral forms of behavior of feudalism and made them the ideal of human behavior. Since the age of rationalism, people had begun to search for the truth and to clamor for freedom. As long as the compulsive moral institutions were in forceóoutside the individual as compulsive law and public opinion, inside him a compulsive conscienceóthere was a kind of surface calm, with occasional eruptions from the volcanic underworld of the secondary drives. So long as that was so, the secondary drives remained nothing but curiosities, of interest only to the psychiatrist. They manifested themselves as symptom neuroses, neurotic criminal acts, or as perversions. But when the social upheavals began to arouse in the Europeans the longing for freedom, independence, equality and self-determination, they were naturally impelled towards liberation of the vital forces within them. Social enlightenment and legislation, pioneer work in the social sciences, and liberal organisations, they all attempted to put ‘freedom’ into this world. After the first world war had destroyed many of the compulsive authoritarian institutions, the European democracies tried to ìlead mankind toward freedom.

But this European world, in its striving for freedom, made a grave miscalculation. It overlooked what the destruction of the living function in the human over thousands of years had cultivated into a monstrosity; it overlooked the deep-seated, general defect of the character-neurosis. And then, the great catastrophe of the psychic plague, that is, the catastrophe of the irrational human character, broke out in the form of the victory of the dictatorships. The forces which had been kept in check for so long by the superficial veneer of good breeding and artificial self-control, now, borne by the very multitudes that were striving for freedom, broke through into action:

In the concentration camps; in the persecution of the Jews; in the destruction of all human decency; in the mowing down of civilian populations by sadistic monsters to whom machine-gunning civilians is a delightful sport and who get a feeling of life only when parading in goose-step; in the gigantic mass deceit in which the state claims to be representing the interest of the people; in the engulfment of tens of thousands of young people who, helplessly and loyally, believed that they were serving an idea; in the destruction of billions’ worth of human work, a fraction of which would suffice to do away with poverty all over the world; in brief, in a St. Vitus dance which will continue to recur as long as the bearers of knowledge and work do not succeed in eradicating, within themselves and outside of themselves, that mass neurosis which calls itself ‘politics’ and which thrives on the characterological helplessness of human beings.

Between 1928 and 1930, at the time of the controversies with Freud above described, I had little idea of Fascism, about as little as the average Norwegian in 1939 or the average American in 1940. Only between 1930 and 1933 did I become acquainted with it in Germany. I felt perplexed when I was confronted with it and when I recognized in it, bit by bit, the subject of the controversy with Freud. Gradually I began to understand the logic in this. The controversies had dealt with an evaluation of human structure, with the role played by the human longing for happiness, and with the irrationalism in social life. In Fascism, the psychic mass disease revealed itself in an undisguised form.

The enemies of Fascism, liberal democrats, socialists, communists, Marxist and non-Marxist economists, etc., looked for an answer to the problem either in the personality of Hitler or in formal political blunders on the part of Germany’s diverse democratic parties. The one as well as the other meant to trace the psychic plague back to individual shortsighted ness or to the brutality of one single man. In reality, Hitler was only the expression of a tragic conflict in the human masses, the conflict between longing for freedom and actual fear of freedom.

German Fascism said in so many words that it was operating not with the thinking and the knowledge of people, but with their infantile emotional reactions. Mat carried Fascism to power and subsequently secured its place, was neither its political program nor any of its innumerable and confused economic promises; it was essentially its appeal to an obscure mystical feeling, to an undefined, nebulous but nevertheless extremely powerful longing. Not to understand this, means not to understand Fascism, which is an international phenomenon.

The irrationality in the political strivings of the German masses can be illustrated in terms of the following contradictions.

The German masses wanted ‘freedom’. Hitler promised them absolute, authoritarian leadership with the explicit exclusion of any expression of opinion. Out of thirty-one million voters, seventeen million jubilantly carried Hitler to power in March, 1933. Those who looked at things with open eyes knew: The masses of people felt helpless and incapable of taking the responsibility for the solution of the chaotic social problems within the old political system and frame of thinking. The Fžhrer should and would do it for them.

Hitler promised the abolition of democratic discussion of opinion. The masses of people came running to him. They had long since grown tired of these discussions, because they had always evaded their personal everyday concerns, that is, that which was subjectively important. They did not want discussions of ‘the budget’ or of ‘high diplomacy’; they wanted actual, true knowledge about their own lives. When they did not get that, they gave themselves over to authoritarian leadership and the illusionary protection which was promised to them.

Hitler promised the abolition of the freedom of the individual and the establishment of the ‘freedom of the nation’. Enthusiastically, the masses of people exchanged their potentialities for individual freedom for illusionary freedom, that is, freedom through identification with an idea; they did so because this illusionarv freedom relieved them of any individual responsibility. They craved a ‘freedom’ which the Ahrer should conquer for them and guarantee to them: the freedom to howl, to escape from the truth into a fundamental falsehood, to be sadistic, to bragóthough one was in actuality a cipheróabout one’s superior race, to impress girls with uniforms instead of strong human qualities, to sacrifice oneself for imperialistic goals instead of the actual struggles of everyday life, etc., etc.

The previous education of the masses of people towards the recognition of a formal, political authority instead of an authority based on factual knowledge formed the soil in which the Fascist demand for authority could readily strike roots. Fascism, therefore, was not a new kind of philosophy, as its friends and many of its enemies wanted us to believe; much less even does it have anything to do with a rational revolution against intolerable social conditions; Fascism is nothing but the extreme reacttonary consequence of all undemocratic types of leadership of the past. Neither is the race theory anything new; it is nothing but the consistently and brutally applied continuation of the old theories of heredity and degeneration. It is for this reason that the psychiatrists of the hereditarian school and the eugenicists of the old school were particularly accessible to Fascism.

What is new in the Fascist movement is the fact that the extreme political reaction succeeded in making use of the deep longings of the masses of people for freedom. Intense longing for freedom plus fear of the responsibility of freedoin results in Fascist mentality, no matter whether it is found in a Fascist or a Democrat.

What is new in Fascism is that the masses of people themselves assented to their own subjugation and actively brought it about. The craving for authority proved stronger than the wish for independence.

Hitler promised the subjugation of woman to man, the abolition of her economic indenendence, her exclusion from the process of determining social life, and her relegation to the home and hearth. The women, whose individual freedom had been suppressed for centuries and who had developed the fear of an independent way of living in a particularly high degree, were the first to hail him.

Hitler promised the abolition of socialist and democratic organisations. The socialist and democratic masses hastened to him because their organisations, though they had done a great deal of talking about freedom, had not as much as mentioned the difficult problem of human craving for authority and their helplessness in matters of practical politics. The masses of people were disillusioned by the irresolute attitude of the old democratic institutions. Disillusionment in the liberal organisations plus economic crisis plus tremendous urge for freedom result in Fascist mentality, that is, in the willingness of the people to surrender to an authoritarian father figure.

Hitler promised the sharpest measures against contraception and the sexual reform movement. In the Germany ol 1932, there were about 500,000 people in organisations which struggled for a rational sex reform. Yet, these organizations never dared to touch upon the core of the problem, namely, the longing for sexual happiness. I know from many yearsí work among the masses that this is exactly what they were looking for. They were disappointed when one gave them learned talks about eugenics, instead of telling them how they could bring up their children to be lively and uninhibited, how adolescents could cope with their sexual and economic problems, and how married people could deal with their typical conflicts. The masses of people seemed to feel that the advice about the ‘technique of love-making’, such as given by Van de Velde, might be profitable to the publisher, but that it did not really touch their problems, nor did they feel that it was in any way a response to their problems. Thus it happened that the disappointed masses hastened to Hitler who, though in a mystical way, appealed to deeply vital forces. Sermonizing about freedom, without the constant, resolute struggle to set the responsibility involved in freedom into operation in the occurrences of everyday life, together with the social prerequisites of such freedom, leads to Fascism.

For decades, German science had been struggling to achieve the separation of the concept of sexuality from that of procreation. Of this struggle, the working masses of people knew nothing, for it was stored away in academic volumes and therefore had no social effect. Now Hitler promised to make procreation, and not happiness in love, the basic principle of his cultural program. Brought up not to call a spade a spade and to say ìeugenic improvement of the racial stock when they meant ‘happiness in love’, the masses of people hastened to Hitler, because he attached to the old concept a strong, though irrational, emotion. Reactionary concepts plus revolutionary emotion result in Fascist mentality.

The church had preached ‘happiness in the hereafter’ and had, with the aid of the concept of sin, deeply implanted in the human structure the helpless dependence on an omnipotent supernatural figure. But the economic crisis of 1929 to 1933 had confronted the masses of people with the most acute earthly want. They were unable to master this want themselves, either socially or individually. Hitler came along, declaring himself a God-sent earthly Fžhrer, omnipotent and omniscient, who would be able to eradicate the earthly misery. The stage was prepared for new masses of people to acclaim him, people who were hemmed in between their own individual helplessness and the small gratification provided by the idea of happiness in the hereafter. An earthly God who made them shout ‘Heil’ at the top of their lungs meant more to them emotionally than a God whom they never could see and who no longer helped them even emotionally. Sadistic brutality plus mysticism results in Fascist mentality.
Germany, in its schools and universities, had been struggling for decades for the principle of the ‘freie Schulgemeinde’, for modern spontaneous achievement and self-government of the student. The democratic authorities responsible for education were unable to outgrow those authoritarian principles which instilled in the student a fear of authority and at the same time a rebelliousness which took on every possible irrational form. Liberal educational organizations not only lacked the protection of society, but they were, instead, constantly threatened in their existence by all kinds of reactionary bodies, and were dependent on private subsidies. So it was not surprising that these beginnings in the direction of a new structural formation of the mass of people remained nothing but a drop in the bucket. Youth ran to Hitler in masses. He did not impose any responsibility on them, but he built upon their structure as it had been evolved by means of the authoritarian family. Hitler obtained a firm grip on the youth movement because democratic society had failed to do everything in its power to educate youth towards a way of living in which they took responsibility for their freedom.

In the place of voluntary achievement, Hitler promised the principle of compulsive discipline and work as duty. Several millions of German workers and employees cast their vote for Hitler. The democratic institutions had not only failed to cope with unemployment; they had shown themselves definitely afraid of actually leading the working masses of people towards actual responsibility for their achievement in work. They had been brought up not to understand anything of the process of work or the totality of the process of production, and simply to receive their pay envelopes. Thus, these millions of workers and employees did not find it difficult to submit to Hitler’s principle; it was nothing but the old principle in an accentuated form. Now they were able to identify themselves with ‘the state’ or ‘the nation’ which was ‘in their place’ ‘great and strong’. Hitler, in his writings and speeches, declared openly that the masses of people only give back what is being poured into them, because they are, basically, infantile and feminine. The masses of people hailed him; for here was one who was going to protect them.

Hitler decreed the subordination of all science under the concept of ‘race’. Major sections of German science submitted, for the theory of race had its roots in the metaphysical theory of heredity; a theory which, with the aid of the concepts of ‘inherited substances’ and ‘Anlagen’ had again and again enabled science to evade the duty of trying to understand the development of living functions and of comprehending in its actuality the social origin of human behavior. There used to be a general belief that when one stated that cancer, or neuroses or psychoses, were of hereditary origin, one had really said something. The Fascist theory of race is only a continuation of the convenient theories of heredity.

There is hardly any other slogan of German Fascism that fired the masses of people as much as the slogan of the ‘throbbing of German blood’ and its ‘purity’. The purity of the German blood means freedom from syphilis, from ‘Jewish contamination’. The fear of venereal disease, as a continuation of infantile genital anxiety, is deeply rooted in every single mortal. Thus it is understandable that the masses of people acclaimed Hitler, for he promised them ‘purity of blood’. Every human being feels in himself what is called ‘cosmic’ or ‘oceanic’ feelings. Dry academic science felt itself too superior to concern itself with such ‘mysticisms’. But, this cosmic or oceanic yearning in people is nothing but the expression of their orgastic longing for life. Hitler appealed to this longing. Therefore, the masses acclaimed him and not the dry rationalists who tried to stifle these obscure feelings for life with economic statistics.

In Europe, the ‘preservation of the family’ had always been an abstract slogan behind which were hidden the most reactionary mentality and behavior. He who dared to distinguish between authoritarian compulsive family and natural love relationship between children and parents, was considered an ‘enemy of the fatherland’, a ‘destroyer of the sacred institution of the family’, an outlaw. There was no official agency which would have dared to point out what was pathological in the family, or would have dared to do something about the suppression of the children through the parents, about family hatreds, etc. The typical authoritarian German family, particularly in the country and small town, bred Fascist mentality by the million. This family created in the children a structure characterized by compulsive duty, renunciation and absolute obedience to authority which Hitler knew so splendidly how to exploit. By advocating the ‘preservation of the family’ and at the same time taking youth out of the family and putting them in its own youth groups, Fascism took into account the fixation to the family as well as the rebellion against the family. Because Fascism emphatically impressed on the people the emotional identity of ‘family’, ’state’, and ‘nation’, the familial structure of the people could easily he continued in the Fascist, national one. True, this did not solve one single problem of the actual family or the actual needs of the nation, but it made it possible for the masses of people to transfer their family ties from the compulsive family to the larger ‘family’ called ‘nation’. ‘Mother Germany’ and ‘Father-God-Hitler’ became the symbols of deeply rooted infantile emotions. Now, in his identification with the ’strong and unique German nation’, every ordinary mortal, with all his misery and inferiority feelings, could be ’something big’, even if it was in an illusionary manner. Finally, the ideology of the ‘race’ succeeded in harnessing the sexual energies and in diverting them. The adolescents were now able to have sexual intercourse, if they believedóor pretended to believeóthat they were begetting children in the interest of improving the race.

The natural vital forces not only continued to be kept from developing, but, in addition, to the extent to which they could manifest themselves, had to do so now in much more disguised forms than ever before. As a result of this ‘revolution of the irrational’, there were in Germany more suicides and more social misery than ever before. The mass death in the war for the glory of the German race is the apotheosis of this witches’ dance.

Hand in hand with the longing for ‘purity of blood’, i.e., liberation from sin, goes the persecution of the Jews. The Jews tried to explain or to prove that they too were moral, that they too belonged to the nation, or that they too were ‘German’. Anti-Fascist anthropologists attempted by way of skull measurements to prove that the Jews were not an inferior race. Christians and historians tried to point out that Jesus was of Jewish origin. But-it was not a matter of rational problems at all; that is, it was not a question of whether the Jews too were decent people, whether they were not Inferior or whether they had proper skull sizes. The problem lay somewhere else entirely. It was just at this point that the consistency and correctness of sex-economic thinking proved itself.

When the Fascist says ‘Jew’ he means a certain irrational feeling. As one can convince oneself in every treatment, of Jews and Non-Jews, which penetrates deeply enough, the ‘Jew’ has the irrational significance of the ‘money-maker’, the ‘usurer’, the ‘capitalist’. On a deeper level, ‘Jew’ means ‘filthy’, ’sensual’, ‘brutally lustful’, but also ‘Shylock’, ‘castrator’, ’slaughterer’. The fear of natural sexuality is as deeply rooted in all humans as is the horror of perverse sexuality. Thus we can easily understand that the persecution of the Jews, so cleverly executed, stirred up the deepest antisexual defense functions of the antisexually brought up individual. Thus, the ideology of the ‘Jews’ made it possible to harness the anticapitalist as well as the antisexual attitudes of the masses and put them completely at the service of the Fascist machinery.

Unconscious longing for sexual happiness and sexual purity, plus simultaneous fear of normal sexuality and abhorrence of perverse sexuality, results in Fascist sadistic anti-semitism. ‘The Frenchman’ has the same meaning to the German as ‘the Jew’ and ‘the negro’ to the unconsciously Fascist Englishman. ‘Jew’, ‘Frenchman’, ‘negro’ have the meaning of ’sexually sensual’.

And so it happened that the modern ’sex reformer’ sexual psychopath and criminal pervert Julius Streicher was able to put his paper, ‘Der Sturmer’, into the hands of millions of German adolescents and adults. Nothing could demonstrate more clearly than the ‘Sturmer’ the fact that sexual hygiene has long ceased to be a problem restricted to medical circles; that, rather, it has become a problem of decisive social significance. The following samples of Streicher’s imagination, quoted from the ‘Stiirmer’, may illustrate the above:

‘Helmut Daube, 20, had just graduated from college. He went home around 2 AM, and at 5 AM his parents found his dead body in front of the house. The throat was cut straight through to the spinal column, the genitals were removed. There was no blood. The hands were cut up. The lower abdomen showed several knife blows’.

‘One day, the old Jew attacked the unsuspecting Non-Jewess, raped and desecrated her. As time went on, he would sneak into her room whenever he pleased; the door could not be locked’.

‘A young couple, taking a walk outside of Paderborn, came upon a hunk of flesh right in the middle of the road. On closer examination, they found to their horror that it was a female genital which had been anatomically dissected from the body.’

‘The Jew had cut up the woman into pieces weighing about a pound. Together with his father, he had scattered the pieces all over the neighborhood. They were found in a little woods, in the meadows, on tree stumps, in a pool, in a brook, in a sewer, and in the cesspool. The cut-off breasts were lying in the hay loft.’

‘While Moses throttled with a handkerchief the child which Samuel put on his knees, the latter took a knife and cut a piece off the child’s jaw. The others collected the blood in a bowl, at the same time stabbing the naked victim with pins’.

‘The woman’s resisting did not check his lust, on the contrary. He tried to shut the window so that the neighbors could not look in. But then he touched the woman again in a vile, typically Jewish manner. . . . He talked to her urgently, saying she should not be so prudish. He locked windows and doors. His words and his behavior became more and more shameless. More and more he cornered his victim. When she threatened to cry for help, he only laughed, and more and more he pushed her toward the couch. From his mouth came the lewdest and vilest expressions. Then, like a tiger, he leaped upon the female body, to finish his devilish work’.

Up to this point in this book, many readers undoubtedly thought that I was exaggerating when I spoke of the psychic plague. I can only assure them that I did not introduce this term frivolously nor as a neat figure of speech. I mean it very seriously. In millions and millions of people, German and otherwise, the ‘Sturmer’, during the past seven years, has not only confirmed their genital castration anxiety, but, in addition, has stimulated to a tremendous degree the perverse phantasies which lie dormant in everybody. After the downfall of the principal standard bearers of the psychic plague in Europe, it will remain to be seen how one can cope with this problem. It is not a German but an international problem, because genital anxiety and longing for love are international facts. Fascist youths, who had maintained a bit of natural feeling for life, came to see me in Scandinavia and asked me what attitude they should take toward Streicher, the theory of race and all the other outcroppings of the time. There was something wrong there, they said. I summarised the most necessary measures in the following outline:

‘What is to be done?

‘Generally: This reactionary obscenity must be counteracted by a well organised and factually correct enlightenment concerning the difference between healthy and pathological sexuality. Every average individual will understand the difference, because he has felt it in himself. Every average individual is ashamed of his perverse, pathological ideas of sex and longs for clarity, help and natural sexual gratification.

‘Specifically: We must enlighten and help. This can be done in the following ways:

‘1. Collection of all the material which makes the pornographic character of Streicherism self-evident to any thinking person. Distribution of it in hand-bills. The healthy sexual interest of the masses of people must be aroused, made conscious and be supported.

‘2. Collection and distribution of all the material that will show the population that Streicher and his accomplices are psychopaths themselves, and are jeopardising the health of the people. There are Streichers everywhere in the world.

‘3. Uncovering of the secret of Streicher’s influence on the people: he stimulates their pathological phantasies. The population will be grateful for good explanatory material and will read it.

‘4. The only way of combatting that pathological sexuality which forms the fertile soil for Hitler’s theory of race and for Streicher’s criminal activity is to contrast it to the natural sexual processes and attitudes. The people will immediately grasp the difference and will show burning interest in it, once they are shown what it is that they really want and only do not dare to express. For example:

‘a. An absolute prerequisite for a healthy, satisfactory sex life is the possibility of being alone with one’s partner, without being disturbed. That means: adequate housing for all those who are in need of it, including youth.

‘b. Sexual gratification is not identical with procreation. The healthy individual has sexual intercourse some three to four thousand times during his life, but an average of only two or three children. Contraceptives are an absolute necessity for sexual health.

‘c. The vast majority of men as well as women are sexually disturbed as a result of a training which inhibits their sexuality; that is, they are not satisfied in sexual intercourse. What is necessary, therefore, is the establishment of a sufficient number of clinics for the treatment of sexual disturbances. What is necessary, is a rational sex education which will affirm the validity of love.

‘d. Youth is made ill by its conflicts about masturbation. Masturbation is harmless to health only when it is not accompanied by guilt feelings. Youth has a right to a happy sex life under the best of conditions. Chronic sexual abstinence is definitely harmful. Pathological phantasies disappear only with a satisfactory sex life. Fight for this right!’

I know that hand-bills and enlightenment alone will not do. What is necessary is work on the human structure, on a broad basis and with the protection Of society; work on this structure which produces the psychic plague, which makes it possible for psychopaths to function as dictators and modem ’sex reformers’. In one word, what is necessary is the liberation of natural sexuality in the masses of people and its underwriting by society.

In 1930, human sexuality was a Cinderella of society, no more than an object of dubious reform bodies. By 1940, it has become a cornerstone of social problems. If it is correct that Fascism, in an irrational manner but successfully, utilised the sexual longings of the masses of people and thus created chaos, then it must be correct that the perversions which it allowed to erupt can be banished by a universal rational solution of the problem of sexuality.

The events in Europe between 1930 and 1940 in all their profusion of mental hygiene problems confirmed my point of view in the controversy with Freud. The painful thing about this confirmation is the feeling of powerlessness, and the knowledge that natural science is still far from comprehending what in this book 1 termed the ‘biological nucleus’ of character structure.

By and large, we, as humans as well as physicians and teachers, are as helpless in the face of the biological aberrations of life, as, say, the humans of the middle ages were in the face of infectious diseases. At the same time we feel in ourselves that the experiencing of the Fascist plague will mobilize those forces in the world which are needed to solve this problem of civilisation.

The Fascists make the claim of carrying out the ‘biological revolution’. What is correct is that Fascism has put before us in unmistakable form the fact that the vital functions of the human have become thoroughly neurotic. In Fascism there operates, at least from the point of view of the masses of its adherents, a tremendous will to life. However, the forms in which this will to life has manifested itself has shown only too clearly the results of an ancient psychic enslavement. For the time being, only the perverse drives have broken through. The post-Fascist world will carry out the biological revolution which Fascism did not create but which it made necessary.

The ensuing chapters of this volume discuss the functions of the ‘biological nucleus’. Its scientific comprehension and the social mastery of the problem presented by it, will be an achievement of rational work, militant science and natural love function, of truly democratic, courageous and collective efforts. Their goal is the earthly happiness, material and sexual, of the masses of people.

Tags: wilhelm reich, emotional plague, emotion, feeling, orgone, energy, society, structure

The Emotional Plague of mankind - written by Wilhelm Reich

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 14:00:03 GMT

‘The Emotional Plague - Wilhelm Reich

The Emotional Plague

by Wilhelm Reich

Originally appeared as Chapter 16

of Reich’s book ‘Character Analysis’

The term “emotional plague” is not a derogatory phrase. It does not connote conscious malevolence, moral or biological degeneracy, immorality, etc. An organism whose natural mobility has been continually thwarted from birth develops artificial forms of movement. It limps or walks on crutches. In the same way, a man goes through life on the crutches of the emotional plague when the natural self-regulating life expressions are suppressed from birth. The person afflicted with the emotional plague limps characterologically. The emotional plague is a chronic biopathy of the organism. It made an inroad into human society with the first mass suppression of genital sexuality; it became an endemic disease which has been tormenting people the world over for thousands of years. There are no grounds for assuming that the emotional plague is passed on from mother to child in a hereditary way. According to our knowledge, it is implanted in the child from the first days of life. It is an endemic illness, like schizophrenia or cancer, with one notable difference, i.e., it is essentially manifested in social life. Schizophrenia and cancer are biopathies which we can look upon as the results of the ravages of the emotional plague in social life. The effects of the emotional plague can be seen in the human organism as well as in the life of society. Every so often, the emotional plague develops into an epidemic just like any other contagious disease, such as the bubonic plague or cholera. Epidemic outbreaks of the emotional plague become manifest in widespread and violent breakthroughs of sadism and criminality, on a small and large scale. One such epidemic outbreak was the Catholic Inquisition of the Middle Ages; the international fascism of the twentieth century is another.

If we did not look upon the emotional plague as an illness in the strict sense of the word, we would run the risk of mobilizing the police against it, instead of medicine and education. The nature of the emotional plague necessitates police force, and this is how it spreads. The emotional plague does indeed represent a grave threat to life, but not one that will ever be eliminated by police force.

No one will take it as an insult if he is told that he is suffering from a cardiac disease or that he is nervous. No one should take it as an insult if he is told that he is suffering from an “acute attack of the emotional plague.” We sometimes hear it said among orgonomists: “No sense wasting your time with me today, I’m pesty.” In our circle, when someone is afflicted with a minor case of the emotional plague, he deals with it by isolating himself and waiting until the attack of irrationalism passes. In acute cases, where rational thinking and friendly advice are of no avail, orgone therapy is used to remove the infection. It can be seen again and again that such acute attacks of the emotional plague are always produced by a disturbance in the person’s love life. They disappear upon the elimination of the disturbance. The acute attack of the plague is such a familiar phenomenon to me and to my circle of coworkers that we accept it as a matter of course and deal with it objectively. It is extremely important for students of orgone therapy to learn to perceive acute attacks of the plague in themselves before such attacks go too far, to know how to keep such attacks from getting the best of them, to prevent them from spreading into the social environment and causing damage there, and, by means of intellectual detachment, to wait until they pass. In this way, we succeed in keeping harmful effects in our cooperative work at a minimum. Sometimes such an attack cannot be dealt with and the afflicted person causes a certain amount of harm or even resigns. We take such misfortunes in the same way one would take the acute physical ailment or demise of a beloved colleague.

The emotional plague is more closely related to character neurosis than to organic heart disease, for example, but it can lead to cancer or heart disease in the long run. Just like the character neurosis, it is sustained by secondary drives. It differs from physical defects inasmuch as it is a function of the character and, as such, is strongly defended. As opposed to a hysterical attack, an attack of the emotional plague is not sensed as a symptom and as ego-alien. True enough, character-neurotic behavior is usually highly rationalized, but this is true of the emotional plague reaction to a far greater extent. One is hardly aware of it at all. How do we recognize a plague reaction and how do we distinguish it from a rational reaction, the reader will want to know. The answer is that we distinguish it in the same way that we distinguish a rational reaction from the reaction of a neurotic character: as soon as the roots or motives of the plague-afflicted reaction are touched, the result is invariably anxiety or anger. Let us go into this in more detail.

A man who is essentially free of the emotional plague and is orgastically potent is not overcome by fear when a physician discusses the dynamics of natural life processes. On the contrary, he develops a lively interest in such a discussion. The man afflicted with the emotional plague will become restless or angry when the mechanisms of the emotional plague are discussed. Orgastic impotence does not always lead to the emotional plague, but every person afflicted with the emotional plague is either lastingly orgastically impotent or becomes impotent shortly before the attack. This makes it easy to distinguish the plague reaction from rational reactions.

Furthermore, a natural and healthy behavior cannot be disturbed or eliminated by any genuine medical treatment. For example, there is no rational means of “curing,” i.e., disturbing, a happy love relationship. But a neurotic symptom can always be eliminated. A plague reaction is accessible to and can be eliminated by the genuine character-analytic art of healing. This is how we recognize it. Thus, avarice, a typical character trait of the emotional plague, can be cured, but pecuniary generosity cannot be cured. Insidious cunning can be cured; characterological openness cannot be cured. Clinically, the emotional plague reaction is comparable to impotence; it can be eliminated, i.e., cured. Genital potency, on the other hand, is “incurable.”

An essential and basic characteristic of the emotional plague reaction is that action and the motive of the action never coincide. The real motive is concealed and a sham motive is given as the reason for the action. In the reaction of the natural and healthy individual, motive, action, and goal form an organic unity. Nothing is concealed. This unity is immediately evident. For example: the healthy individual has no other motive for his sexual acts than his natural need for love, and no other goal than its gratification. The ascetic, plague-ridden individual, on the other hand, uses ethical codes to justify his sexual debility. This justification has nothing to do with the manner in which he lives, which is there before the justification. The healthy person will not want to impose his way of life on anyone, but he will cure and he will help others when he is asked and when he is capable. In no case will a healthy individual legislate that everyone “has to be healthy.” First, such a demand would be irrational, for a person cannot be ordered to be healthy. Second, the healthy individual has no urge to force his way of life upon others, for the motives of conduct are related specifically to his own life and not to anybody else’s. The person afflicted with the emotional plague is distinguished from the healthy individual by the fact that he makes his demands of life not only on himself but, above all, on his environment. In situations in which the healthy individual makes suggestions and helps, in which he uses his experiences as an example to others, leaving it up to them whether they want to follow, the person afflicted with the emotional plague imposes his mode of life upon others by force. Individuals afflicted with the emotional plague do not tolerate views which threaten their armor or unmask their irrational motives. The healthy person is happy to be given an insight into his motives. The plague-afflicted individual is seized by frenzy. When views contrary to his own disrupt his life and work, the healthy individual puts up a strong rational fight for the preservation of his way of life. The plague-afflicted person fights against other modes of life even when they don’t concern him in any way whatever. He is impelled to fight because he senses the very existence of other ways of life as a provocation.

The energy which sustains the emotional plague reaction always derives from genital frustration, whether it is a matter of sadistic deeds of war or the defamation of friends. Stasis of sexual energy is what the plague-afflicted individual has in common with all other biopathies. I shall have a word to say about the differences shortly. The basic biopathic nature of the emotional plague is revealed in the fact that, like every other biopathy, it can be cured by establishing the natural capacity for love.

Susceptibility to the emotional plague is universal. There is no clear-cut line of distinction between those afflicted with and those uncontaminated by the plague. Just as every man somewhere in the depths is susceptible to cancer, schizophrenia, or alcoholism, so even the healthiest and most life-affirming among us is susceptible to irrational plague reactions.

It is easier to distinguish the emotional plague from the structure of the genital character than to distinguish it from the structure of the neurotic character. While the emotional plague is indeed a character neurosis or character biopathy in the strict sense of the word, it is also more than that, and this “more” distinguishes it from biopathies and character neuroses. We can de[ne the emotional plague as human behavior that, on the basis of a biopathic character structure, operates in an organized or typical way in interpersonal, i.e., social, relations and in social institutions. The emotional plague is just as widespread as the character biopathy. In other words, wherever there are character biopathies, there is also at least the possibility of a chronic effect or an acute epidemic outbreak of the emotional plague. Let us briefly outline a few typical areas in which the emotional plague is either chronically rampant or capable of breaking out in an acute way. We shall see immediately that it is precisely the most important spheres of life in which the emotional plague is active: mysticism in its most destructive form; passive and active thirst for authority; moralism; biopathies of the autonomic nervous system; party politicking; familial plague, which I have designated as “familitis”; sadistic methods of education; masochistic toleration of such methods or criminal rebellion against them; gossip and defamation; authoritarian bureaucracy; imperialistic war ideologies; everything that falls under the American concept of “racket”; antisocial criminality; pornography; profiteering; racial hatred.

We see that the compass of the emotional plague coincides approximately with the broad compass of social abuse, which has always been and still is combatted by every social freedom movement. With some qualifications, it can be said that the sphere of the emotional plague coincides with that of “political reaction” and perhaps even with the principle of politics in general. This would hold true, however, only if the basic principle of all politics, namely thirst for power and special prerogatives, were carried over into those spheres of life which we do not think of as political in the usual sense of the word. For example, a mother who resorts to political methods to alienate her child from her husband would come under this extended concept of the political emotional plague. The same would apply to an ambitious scientist who works himself up to a higher social position not by concrete accomplishments but by intrigue.

We have already stated that biological sexual stasis is the common biophysiological core of all forms of the emotional plague. On the basis of our present experiences, we can say that a genital character is incapable of using the methods of the emotional plague. This constitutes a great disadvantage in a society ruled to such a large extent by plague-ridden institutions. There is another common denominator in all forms of the emotional plague: the lack of the capacity for natural sexual gratification leads to the development of secondary impulses, particularly sadistic impulses. There is abundant clinical evidence in support of this statement. Hence, it does not surprise us to find that the biopsychic energy which sustains the emotional plague reactions always derives from secondary drives. In pronounced cases, specific human sadism is never missing.

Thus, it is not surprising that truthfulness and straightforwardness, though highly extolled modes of behavior, are rarely encountered in human intercourse; they are so rare, indeed, that most people are amazed when they occasionally prevail. To judge from our “cultural” ideals, one would expect truthfulness and straightforwardness to be everyday, self-understood attitudes. The fact that they are not, that they are looked upon with astonishment, that truthful and straightforward men and women are considered freaks, a bit “touched in the head”, that, indeed, being truthful and sincere often entails severe social dangers– all this cannot be explained on the basis of the ruling cultural ideology. To arrive at an understanding of these contradictions, we must turn to our knowledge of the organized emotional plague. This knowledge alone is capable of providing an insight into the reasons why objectivity and truthfulness, the driving forces of all strivings for freedom, have been frustrated again and again over the centuries. It cannot be assumed that any freedom movement will have any chance of achieving its goals if it does not sharply and clearly confront the organized emotional plague with truthfulness.

The fact that the emotional plague was not previously recognized was its surest protection. An exact investigation of its nature and its dynamics will demolish this protection. The champions of the emotional plague will be right in interpreting this declaration as a mortal threat to their existence. This will be clearly brought out in the way the champions and perpetuators of the emotional plague react to the following objective representations. On the basis of these reactions, we shall be able to and shall have to distinguish those who want to help in the fight against the emotional plague from those who want to preserve its institutions. We have seen again and again that the irrational nature of the emotional plague unwittingly reveals itself as soon as one attempts to go to the root of it. This is understandable because the emotional plague can only react irrationally. It is doomed to extinction when it is sharply and clearly opposed by rational thinking and the natural feeling for life. It does not have to be attacked or fought directly. The plague will automatically and inevitably work itself into a rage when the natural functions of the living organism are objectively and truthfully described. There is nothing it hates more than this.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE GENITAL CHARACTER, THE NEUROTIC CHARACTER, AND EMOTIONAL PLAGUE REACTIONS

a) In thinking

The genital character’s thinking orients itself on objective facts and processes. The genital character distinguishes the essential from the non-essential or less essential; ne attempts to think out and eliminate irrational emotional disturbances; he is, in terms of his nature, functional, i.e., capable of adapting himself; he is not mechanistic and he is not mystical. His judgments are the result of a thought process. Rational thinking is open to objective arguments, for it has difficulty functioning without objective counterarguments.

To be sure, the neurotic character also attempts to orient himself in objective facts and processes. In the neurotic character, however, rational thinking is interfused with and affected by chronic sexual stasis, as a result of which he also to some extent orients himself on the principle of the avoidance of unpleasure. So the neurotic character will use various means of avoiding processes and events which, if he examined them, would produce unpleasure or would be at variance, for example, with a compulsive character’s system of thinking; or he will probe these processes and events in such a way, i.e., irrationally, that the rational goal becomes unattainable. Let us cite an example. Peace and freedom are universally desired. However, since the average character structure is neurotic in its thinking, fear of freedom and fear of responsibility (pleasure anxiety) become intertwined with ideas of peace and freedom, and these goals are therefore discussed in a formalistic rather than objective manner. It is almost as if the simplest and most immediate facts of life, i.e., those facts which obviously represent the natural building material of peace and freedom, are intentionally avoided. Important relations and connections are overlooked. For example, it is certainly no secret that politics is ruinous and that humanity is sick in the psychiatric sense of the word. Yet no one seems to see the connection between these facts and the demand for a viable democratic order. Thus, two or three well-known and generally valid facts exist side by side, without any connection. Showing how these facts are related to one another would immediately necessitate radical changes in the practical affairs of everyday life. Ideologically, the neurotic character would be prepared to affirm these changes. However, he fears their practical realization. His character armor forbids a change in the life pattern that has become rigid. Thus, he will, for example, agree with the critique of irrationalism in society and in science. In a practical and objective way, however, he will refashion neither himself nor his surroundings in keeping with this critique. He will not create a model social center reflective of the ideology he affirms. It often happens, indeed, that the same individual who says yes when it is a question of ideology becomes a vehement opponent in practice when someone else brings about actual changes. At this point, the boundaries between the neurotic character and the individual afflicted with the emotional plague become blurred.

The individual afflicted with the emotional plague is not content to take a passive attitude–he is distinguished from the neurotic character by a more or less life-destructive social activity. His thinking is completely muddled by irrational concepts and governed almost exclusively by irrational emotions. In the neurotic character, thinking and acting do not coincide. This is not true of the plague-afflicted character. As in the genital character, his thinking is in complete agreement with his actions, but there is a significant difference, i.e., his conclusions are not the result of his thinking. They are always predetermined by his emotional affliction. In the person afflicted with the emotional plague, thinking does not, as in the rational individual, serve to help him arrive at a correct conclusion; on the contrary, it serves to confirm and rationalize a predetermined irrational conclusion. This is generally known as “prejudice,” but one fails to see that this prejudice has detrimental social effects on a large scale. It is universally disseminated and characterizes just about everything that is called “tradition.” It is intolerant, i.e., it does not countenance the rational thinking which could pull the ground out from under it. Hence, plague-afflicted thinking is not accessible to arguments. It has its own technique in its own sphere, its own “coherence,” so to speak, which impresses one as “logical.” In this way, it creates the impression of rationality, without in reality being rational.

For instance, a strict authoritarian educator will tell you that children are difficult to teach and that is why his methods are necessary. In this narrow framework, his conclusion seems to be correct. If a rational thinker comes along and points out that the intractableness of children which the strict authoritarian cites to justify his methods is itself a social consequence of precisely this irrational thinking in education, he will find himself face to face with a mental block. Precisely at this point the irrational nature of plague-afflicted thinking emerges.

Let us give another example. Moralistic sexual repression produces secondary drives, and secondary drives make moralistic suppression necessary. Any number of logical conclusions can be drawn on the basis of this relation. But if the clear thinker points out that the secondary drives can be eliminated by making possible the natural gratification of needs, the plague-afflicted individual, though his frame of reference has been shattered, will react not with insight and correction but with irrational arguments, silence, or even hatred. In short, it is emotionally important for him that both repression and secondary drives continue to exist. He is afraid of the natural impulses. This fear operates as an irrational motive for his entire, in itself logical, frame of reference and drives him to commit dangerous actions when his social system is seriously threatened.

b) In acting

In the genital character, motive, goal, and action are in harmony with one another. The goals and motives are rational, i.e., socially oriented. In accordance with the natural character of his motives and goals, i.e., on the basis of their primary biological foundation, the genital character strives for an improvement in his own conditions of life and in the conditions of life of others. This is what we call “social accomplishment.”

In the neurotic character, the capacity for action is always limited, because the motives are devoid of affect or are contradictory. Since the neurotic character has usually deeply repressed his irrationality, he is constantly forced to keep it under control. And this very repression constitutes the limitation of his capacity for action. He is afraid to become fully involved in any activity, for he is never sure whether sadistic or other impulses might break through. He usually suffers because he is aware that he is inhibiting his own life, but he is not envious of healthy people. He can be characterized by the attitude: “I was unfortunate in life; our children should have it better than I did.” This attitude makes him a sympathetic, though sterile spectator of progress. He is not detrimental to progress.

In the individual afflicted with the emotional plague, the motives of the action are always counterfeit. The ostensible motive never tallies with the real motive, whether the latter is conscious or unconscious. Nor does the ostensible goal tally with the real goal. In German fascism, for example, “salvation and pacification of the German nation” was given as the goal, whereas the real goal–grounded in the character structure–was imperialistic war, the subjugation of the world, and nothing but that. It is a basic characteristic of the plague-afflicted individual that he seriously and honestly believes in the ostensible goal and motive. I should like to stress that the character structure of a person afflicted with the emotional plague can be comprehended only if it is taken seriously. The plague-afflicted person acts under a structural compulsion. No matter how good his intentions may be, he can act only in the manner of the plague. His action is in keeping with his nature just as much as the need for love or truth is in keeping with the nature of the genital character.

But the plague-afflicted individual, protected by his subjective conviction, does not suffer from insight into the harmfulness of his act. A father who, out of hatred for his wife (who, let us say, was unfaithful to him), demands custody of their child is seriously convinced that he is acting “in the best interest of the child.” But if the child suffers under the separation from the mother or even begins to go to pieces, such a father will prove to be totally impervious to any form of remedy. The plague-afflicted father will find all kinds of superficial arguments in support of his conviction that he “means well” by the child in keeping him away from his mother. It will be out of the question to convince him that the real motive is sadistic punishment of the mother.

The person afflicted with the emotional plague, in contrast to the neurotic character, always develops as a part of his structure an envy coupled with a deadly hatred of everything healthy. A character-neurotic spinster lives a resigned life and does not interfere in the love life of young girls; a plague-afflicted spinster, on the other hand, cannot endure the sexual happiness of young girls. If such a spinster is a teacher, she will be sure to make the girls entrusted to her care incapable of experiencing sexual happiness. This holds true for every life situation. The character afflicted with the emotional plague will attempt, under all circumstances and with every available means, to change his environment so that his way of life and his way of seeing things are not jeopardized. He senses everything that is at variance with his way of life as a provocation and, therefore, persecutes it with bitter hatred. The ascetic is a good illustration. Under one guise or another, the ascetic’s basic attitude is: “Why should others have it any better than I had it? Let them suffer as I suffer.” In every case, this basic attitude is so well concealed in a logical, well-thought-out ideology or theory of life that only someone having wide practical experience and capable of incisive thinking can unmask it. It is distressing but necessary to record here that, as recently as the beginning of this century, the greater part of official European education was modeled along these lines.

c) In sexuality

The sexuality of the genital character is essentially determined by the basic natural laws of biological energy. He is so constituted that he naturally takes pleasure in the sexual happiness of others. In the same way, he is indifferent to perversions and has an aversion to pornography. The genital character is easily recognized by the good contact he has with healthy children. He considers it quite natural that children and adolescents are essentially sexually oriented. In the same way, he fulfills or at least strives to fulfill the (often socially restricted) demands which result from these biological facts. This attitude exists spontaneously, whether a corresponding knowledge has been acquired or not. In our society, these very mothers and fathers, unless they happen to live in a milieu which supports their views, are exposed to the serious danger of being looked upon and treated as criminals by authoritarian institutions. They deserve the exact antithesis–the greatest possible social protection. They constitute centers of society from which rationally acting educators and physicians will one day proceed. The basis of their life and actions is the sexual happiness which they themselves have experienced. Parents, for example, who would allow their children to experience sex in keeping with completely healthy, natural laws, would be in danger of being accused of immorality (or “moral turpitude”) and of being deprived of their children by any ascetic who happened to have power.

The neurotic character lives a sexually resigned life or engages in secret perverse activities. His orgastic impotence is accompanied by a yearning for sexual happiness–he is indifferent to the sexual happiness of others. He is more likely to be ruled by anxiety than by hate whenever he comes into contact with the sexual problem. His armor relates solely to his own sexuality and not to the sexuality of others. His orgastic longing is very often incorporated into cultural or religious ideals, which are neither very useful nor very detrimental to the welfare of the community. The neurotic character is usually active in circles and groups which do not have any great social influence. There can be no doubt about the cultural value of some of these groups. But the neurotic character is not capable of making any significant contribution to creating healthier structures on a mass scale, for the broad masses are far more intimate with the question of natural sexuality than he is.

This basic attitude on the part of the sexually innocuous, neurotic character is capable, at any time and under corresponding external conditions, of changing into a plague-ridden attitude. The process is usually as follows: the secondary drives held in check by the cultural and religious ideals break through. The sexuality of the character afflicted with the emotional plague is usually sadistic and pornographic. It is characterized by the parallel existence of sexual lasciviousness (owing to the incapacity to achieve gratification) and sadistic moralism. This dualism is a part of his structure; the plague-afflicted individual could not change it even if he had insight and knowledge. In terms of his structure, he cannot be anything but pornographically lascivious and sadistically moralistic at the same time.

This is the core of the character structure of the plague-afflicted person. This structure develops bitter hatred against every process which provokes its own orgastic yearning and, hence, orgasm anxiety. The demand for asceticism is directed not only against oneself but, above all and in a sadistic way, against the natural sexuality of others. Persons afflicted with the emotional plague have a strong tendency to form social circles. These circles become centers for the molding of public opinion. Their most outstanding characteristic is their strong intolerance in questions of natural sexuality. They are widespread and well known. Under the banner of “culture” and “morality,” they persecute to the extreme every expression of natural sexuality. Over the years they have developed a special technique of defamation. We shall speak of this later.

Clinical investigations leave no room for doubt that sexual gossip and defamation afford these emotionally plagued individuals a kind of perverse sexual gratification; they can thus attain sexual pleasure without the natural genital function. It is precisely in such circles that we often find homosexuality, sexual intercourse with animals, and other forms of perversion. These Vehmic courts direct their sadistic attacks against the natural sexuality of others, not against perverse sexuality. They take an especially sharp stand against the natural sexuality of children and adolescents, whereas, strangely enough, they are purblind to every form of perverse sexual activity. They have many human lives on their consciences.

d) In work

The genital character takes an active interest in the development of a work process which is allowed to take its own course. His interest is focused essentially on the process itself. The result of the work is achieved without special effort, for it ensues spontaneously from the work process. The shaping of the product through the course of the work process is an essential feature of the biological pleasure of work. This leads to a sharp criticism of all methods of educating children through toys which spell out the child’s activity. The predetermination of how the toy is to function and the rigid prescription of how the toy is to be put together stifle the child’s imagination and productivity. Compulsive moralism tolerates only mystical ecstasy; it has no patience with genuine enthusiasm, and this is the reason why enthusiasm with regard to work is always lacking. A child who has to put together a preplanned house with preplanned building blocks in a preplanned way cannot apply his imagination and cannot develop any enthusiasm. We can easily understand that this basic characteristic of authoritarian education is part of the pleasure anxiety of adults. It has a stultifying effect upon the child’s pleasure in work. The genital character influences the work performance of others by setting an example and not by prescribing the product and the method of work. That requires the ability to tolerate vegetative streaming and to be able to let himself go.

The neurotic character is more or less restricted in his work. His biological energy is essentially consumed in the warding off of perverse fantasies. The neurotic disturbance of work can always be traced back to a misuse of biological energy. For the very same reason, the work of the neurotic character, no matter how rich in potential it may be, is perfunctory and joyless. Since the neurotic character is incapable of genuine enthusiasm, he will look upon the child’s capacity for enthusiasm as “unseemly” (if, for instance, he happens to be a teacher). In a compulsive neurotic way, nonetheless, he insists on determining the work of others.

The individual afflicted with the emotional plague hates work, for he senses it as a burden. Hence, he runs away from any responsibility and especially from small jobs which require patience. He may dream of writing an important book, of painting an outstanding work of art, of running a farm, etc.; however, since he is incapable of work, he shuns the necessary step-by-step, persistent organic development inherent in every work process. This predisposes him to becoming an ideologue, mystic, or politician, i.e., to engage in activities which do not require any patience and organic development. He is just as likely to become an idle vagrant as the dictator of this or that sphere of life. He has created a picture of life made up of neurotic fantasies and, since he himself is incapable of doing things, he wants to force others to work toward the realization of this sick picture of life. The American’s negative concept of the word “boss” is a product of such a constellation. A genital character who is in control of a collective work process will spontaneously lead the way by his good example: he will work more than the others. On the other hand, the character afflicted with the emotional plague will typically want to work less than the others. The smaller his capacity for work and, consequently, the lower his self-esteem, the greater is his insistence on being a labor leader.

This comparison necessarily took the form of clear-cut distinctions. In reality, every genital character also has his neurotic inhibitions and his plague reactions. By the same token, every plague-afflicted individual bears in himself the possibilities of the genital character. Experiences in orgone therapy leave no doubt that persons afflicted with the emotional plague, those who come under the psychiatric concept of “moral insanity,” are not only curable in principle but are capable of developing exceptional capacities for work, sexuality, and intellectual activity. This again gives us the opportunity to stress that the concept “emotional plague” does not imply a disparagement. In the course of almost thirty years of biopsychiatric work, I have come to realize that a predisposition to the emotional plague is indicative of very high quantities of biological energy. Indeed, the high tension of the individual’s biological energy makes him sick with the emotional plague if, because of a rigid character and muscular armor, he cannot realize himself in a natural way. The person so afflicted is a product of authoritarian compulsive education. Because of the frustration of his unrealized talent, he wreaks revenge on compulsive education far more successfully than the quiet and resigned neurotic character. He differs from the genital character inasmuch as his rebellion is not socially oriented and is therefore incapable of effecting any rational changes for the better. He differs from the neurotic character inasmuch as he does not become resigned.

The genital character controls his emotional plague reactions in two ways: (1) Since the structure of his character is of an essentially rational nature, he senses his own plague reaction as alien and senseless. (2) He is so immersed in rational processes that he is immediately aware of the danger to his life process which could ensue from his irrational tendencies. This awareness enables him to keep himself in control. The person afflicted with the emotional plague, on the other hand, derives so much secondary, sadistic pleasure from his own behavior that he is inaccessible to any correction. The acts of the healthy individual flow directly from the reservoir of biological energy; the acts of the plague-afflicted individual stem from the same source, but they have to break through the character and muscular armor each time and in the process the best motives become antisocial and irrational actions. In its passage through the character armor, the original goal of the act changes its function: the impulse begins with a rational intention; the armor thwarts a smooth and organic unfolding of the impulse; the plagueafilicted character senses this obstruction as an intolerable inhibition; the impulse must first break through the armor in order to become at all manifest; in this process the original intention and the rational goal are lost. When finally realized, the act contains little of the original rational intention; it is an exact reflection of the destructiveness which had to be brought into play in the process of breaking through the armor. The brutality of the plague-afflicted individual is a result of the failure on the part of the original impulse to get through the muscular and character armor. A loosening of the armor is impossible, for the plague-ridden act neither discharges energy orgastically nor produces rational self-confidence. This “failure” enables us to comprehend some of the contradictions in the structure of the individual affiicted with the emotional plague. He has a strong desire for love; he finds a woman whom he believes he can love; he proves himself incapable of the experience. This drives him into a sadistic rage against himself or against the desired woman, a rage which not infrequently ends in murder.

Basically, therefore, the individual afflicted with the emotional plague is characterized by the contradiction between an intense desire for life and the inability (because of the armor) to achieve a corresponding fulfillment of life. To the careful observer, Europe’s political irrationalism was clearly characterized by this contradiction. With the logic of a compulsion, the best intentions led to destructive ends.

It is my opinion that the gangster type constitutes a simple demonstration of the mechanism of the emotional plague, if the result of the gangster act is taken into account along with the inhibition of the rational impulse which turns it into a plague-ridden act.

Now let us endeavor to examine these differentiations in simple examples from everyday life.

Let us take as our first example the fight for the child which usually occurs when parents sue for divorce. There are three possible reactions: the rational, the inhibited reaction of the neurotic character, and the emotional plague reaction.

a) Rational

Father and mother fight for the healthy development of the child with rational arguments and means. It is possible that they agree in principle–then it is easy; but it is also possible that they will have very different ideas about the matter. Nonetheless, in the interest of the child, they will shun underhanded methods. They will speak openly with the child and allow him to make his own decision. They will not allow themselves to be governed by selfish interests; they will, instead, be guided by the child’s inclinations. When one or the other parent is an alcoholic or is mentally ill, this information will be communicated to the child as a misfortune that has to be borne bravely, taking the greatest possible care to spare his feelings. The motive will always be to prevent the child from being damaged. The attitude is dictated by the sacrifice of one’s personal interest.

b) Character-neurotic

The fight for the child is inhibited by all kinds of considerations, essentially fear of public opinion. Conformity to public opinion takes precedence over the child’s best interest. In such things, character-neurotic parents abide by the prevailing practice: the child remains with the mother under all circumstances, or they submit the case to legal authorities. When one of the parents is a drinker or is mentally ill, then the tendency exists to sacrifice oneself, to conceal the fact, with the result that the child as well as the older parent suffer and are endangered. Divorce is avoided. The motive of their behavior is epitomized in the sentence, “We don’t want to make a stir.” Their attitude is determined by resignation.

c) The individual afflicted with the emotional plague

The welfare of the child is always a spurious and, as the results show, unfulfilled motive. The real motive is to wreak revenge on the partner by depriving him or her of the pleasure of the child. Hence, in the fight for the child, one partner resorts to defamation of the other, whether he or she is healthy or sick. The absence of any consideration for the child is brought out by the fact that his love for the other parent is not taken into account. As a means of alienating the child from one or the other parent, he is told that his mother or his father is an alcoholic or is mentally ill, a statement which usually does not correspond to the facts of the case. The result is that the child is the one who suffers most; the motive is revenge on the partner and domination of the child. Genuine love for the child is not at issue.

There are any number of variations on this example, but its basic features are the same and they are of general social importance. In making decisions, a rational jurisprudence would have to give priority to such differentiations. It can be assumed that there will be a significant increase in the number of divorces; and it is my opinion that only a correctly trained psychiatrist and educator is capable of measuring the extent of the damage caused solely by emotional plague reactions in cases of divorce.

Let us cite another example from the sphere of private life in which the emotional plague rages far and wide: the infidelity of a love partner.

a) Rational

In cases in which one of the partners in a love relationship wants to be or is unfaithful, the healthy individual reacts principally in one of three ways: factual separation from the partner; competition and the attempt to regain the partner’s love; or toleration when the other relationship is not too serious and is of a temporary nature. In such cases, the healthy person does not take flight into neurosis, does not make any legal claims, and becomes angry only if the affair is carried out indecently.

b) Character-neurotic

The infidelity is either suffered masochistically or the armor shuts off its cognizance. There is acute fear of separation. Resignation, flight into a neurotic illness or alcoholism, and hysterical attacks are typical reactions.

c) Individual afflicted with the emotional plague

As a rule, infidelity occurs not for reasons of love for another person but because one has become weary of one’s partner. The injured party attempts to hold the partner in the house, to wear him or her out with hysterical attacks, dominate him or her with scenes of the lowest sort, or even have him or her watched by a detective. Flight into alcoholism often occurs as a means of facilitating the brutalizing of the partner. The motive is not love for the partner but thirst for power and possessiveness.

Reactions of emotional plague are quite prevalent in tragedies of jealousy. At the present time, there are neither medical nor social nor legal views and measures which take this vast and desolate sphere of life into account.

Now let us turn our attention to an especially striking and typical mode of reaction of the emotional plague which we shall designate as ‘’specific plague reaction.”

The specific plague reaction has a special preference for the use of sexual, i.e., moralistic, defamation. It functions in a way similar to the projection mechanism in delusions of persecution; i.e., a perverse impulse which has broken through the armor is transferred to persons or objects in the outer world. What in reality is an inner impulse is misinterpreted as an external threat. The same applies to the sensations which originate in the orgonotic plasma currents. The healthy individual experiences these currents as something joyful and pleasurable. The schizophrenic on the other hand, because of the contradictions which result from his character armor, perceives these currents as the secret workings of an evil fiend intent upon destroying his body with electrical currents. These insane projection mechanisms are well known. However, psychiatry makes the error of limiting such projection mechanisms to the mentally ill. It fails to see that precisely the same mechanism is rampant in social life in the form of the specific plague reactions of ostensibly normal people. This is our next topic of discussion.

The biopsychic mechanism is the following: compulsive moralism in upbringing and in life produces sexual lasciviousness, which has nothing to do with the natural need for love, and constitutes a real secondary drive like, for example, sadism or masochism. Since orgonotic aliveness in the natural experience of pleasure has atrophied, lasciviousness and the thirst for sexual gossip become unbridled secondary needs. Just. as the mental patient projects his orgonotic currents and his perverse impulses onto other persons and experiences them as a threat issuing from them, the plague-afflicted individual projects his own lasciviousness and perversions onto other persons. In contrast to the mental patient, he does not masochistically experience as a threat the impulses which he projects onto the other person; rather, he makes use of gossip in a sadistic way as a defensive mechanism, i.e., he imputes to others what he cannot take cognizance of in himself. This applies to natural genitality as well as to the secondary perverse impulse. The mode of life of the genitally healthy person painfully reminds him of his own genital weakness and, as such, constitutes a threat to his neurotic balance. Thus, in conformity with the principle, “What I can’t have, you can’t have,” he is forced to cast a slur upon the natural genitality of others. Moreover, since he is not capable of wholly concealing his own perverse lasciviousness behind a fac,ade of ethical moralism, he imputes it to the victim of his gossip. In every case of this form of plague reaction, one comes to realize that the healthy individual is reputed to have precisely those characteristics against which the plague-ridden individual struggles in vain or indulges in with a bad conscience.

The mechanism of the specific plague reaction is easily carried over from the sexual to the non-sexual sphere. It is characteristic that something one does oneself, would like to do, or is on the verge of doing is attributed to someone else. We shall use a few typical, everyday occurrences to illustrate the specific plague reaction.

There are young intellectuals who were once known as “cultural snobs” among the serious intellectual circles of Europe. They are clever, but their intelligence is devoted to a kind of sterile artistic activity. Their acquaintance with the magnitude and seriousness of the problems probed by a Goethe or a Nietzsche is less than superficial, but they take great pleasure in quoting classical literature. At the same time, they are full of cynicism. They regard themselves as modern, liberal, free of any conventions. Incapable of serious experience, they look upon sexual love as a kind of child’s play. They spend their summer vacations in communes, little boys and little girls living together. At nights, there are amusing diversions, i.e., the “child’s play.” At the breakfast table, the child’s play is joked about in a carefree and very clever manner. Possibly, the “sinful woman” will be made to blush by ambiguous allusions. All this is very much part of today’s “liberal” and “unconventional” way of living. One is “jolly”; one is “hip.” One intimates how often one has engaged in the “play” the night before; and one lets it be known, everything described in the “choicest” figures of speech, that it was “very nice,” that she was “delightful,” etc. The serious listener, who is all too familiar with the abysmal sexual misery of masses of people and the destructiveness of sexual triviality, comes away with the impression that the lasciviousness of these “bright” young men and women is the result of sexual hunger due to orgastic impotence. Such cultivated “Bohemians” typically look upon the serious efforts of sex-economy to fight the emotional plague in masses of people as the fabric of a sick mind. But then these young “geniuses” are well versed in the art of “high politics.” Forever prattling about the cultural “values” that have to be upheld, they become furious as soon as one begins to translate their talk into social action among masses of people.

One such Bohemian met a woman who wanted to come to me to study. Naturally, the conversation turned to my work. He gave her fair warning, saying that he would send neither his best friend nor his worst enemy to me, for I was, so he said, the “owner of a public brothel, without license.” To conceal the flagrant plague-ridden nature of this statement, he immediately added that I was a very able clinician. This defamation, patterned along the lines of the specific plague reaction, made the rounds. Notwithstanding, the woman came to me to study sex-economic pedagogy and soon grasped what we call the emotional plague.

It is difficult to maintain an objective and correct attitude in such situations. One cannot give into the impulse, which arises spontaneously and for which there is good reason, to give such a plague-ridden individual a good thrashing so that he will not go around defaming people any more, for one wants to keep one’s hands clean. To ignore the incident in a noble way is to do precisely what the plague-afflicted individual counts on so that he can continue to perpetrate his social mischief with impunity. There remains the possibility of a libel suit against him. However, this would be to fight the emotional plague on its own level and not in a medical way. Thus, one allows the matter to take its own course. In so doing, however, one runs the risk that another such plague-afflicted person, perhaps a “scientific historian,” will take up the matter and pass one on to posterity with the “objective historian’s authority” as the owner of a secret hrothel.[1]

The matter is important because the emotional plague has succeeded again and again, by means of such rumors, in crushing honest and important accomplishments. The fight against the emotional plague is socially necessary, for it causes more damage in this world than “ten thousands canons.” Read, for example, Friedrich Lange’s account of the defamations to which the pioneer natural scientist of the seventeenth century, de la Mettrie, was subjected by the emotional plague. In his great work Histoire Naturelle de l’Ame, de la Mettrie clearly grasped the essential relations between perception and physiological stimuli and correctly divined and described the connection between the body-soul problem and the biological sexual process. This was too much for the Philistines, who far outnumber bold and honest scientists; they circulated the rumor that de la Mettrie was able to arrive at such views only because he was a “libertine.” And thus the rumor was passed on to posterity that de la Mettrie died from a pastry which, in true voluptuary fashion, he had consumed too voraciously.

This of course is medical nonsense. More than that, it is a typical example of plague-afflicted rumor-mongering which, when seized upon by human organisms incapable of pleasure, becomes a specific plague reaction and is passed on to posterity, defiling, without rhyme or reason, a decent name. We readily recognize the catastrophic role played by such plague reactions in social life.

I should like to cite another example in which the projection mechanism of the emotional plague, in the form of defamation, is even more clearly manifested. In Norway, I heard that a rumor was being circulated that I had become schizophrenic and had spent some time in a mental institution. With some effort we succeeded in tracing the source of the rumor. When I came to the United States in 1939, I ascertained that this rumor was very widespread, much more so than in Europe, where my work was better known. In America, the source of the rumor was even more obscure than it had been in Europe, but certain signs clearly indicated that it stemmed from the same European source. [2]

The situation was not devoid of humour. Shortly after my expulsion from the International Psychoanalytic Association, the person who had originally started this rumor suffered a nervous breakdown and was forced to spend several weeks in a mental institution. This fact was directly communicated to me by a university professor who was well informed on the situation. Evidently, the nervous breakdown gave this slanderer a terrible fright. He found himself at that time in a difficult situation: on the one hand, he recognized the correctness of my development; on the other, he could not detach himself from an organization that was sharply opposed to that development. As is usual in such cases, he took advantage of the circumstances to divert attention from himself and focus it on me when I was in the center of a critical controversy. He thought that I was finished, and the opportunity to give me another kick was too tempting. His reaction was a specific plague-afflicted projection.

I have never been mentally ill, nor have I ever been confined to a mental institution. I have borne until the present day one of the heaviest burdens ever imposed upon a man, without any disturbance to my capacity for work and love. To become mentally ill is no disgrace. I, like every self-respecting psychiatrist, have deep sympathy for mental patients and often admiration for their conflicts. As I have stressed elsewhere, a mental patient appears to me far more serious, far closer to what is alive than a Philistine or a socially dangerous individual afflicted with the emotional plague. This defamation was intended to ruin me and my work and it did result in a number of serious situations that were not easy to master. With some students, for example, I had the additional difficulty of persuading them that I was not mentally ill. In certain phases of orgone therapy, a specific mechanism of the emotional plague inevitably appears. As soon as the patient or pupil comes into contact with his plasmatic currents, severe orgasm anxiety appears. What happens is that the orgone therapist is looked upon as either a “dirty” sexual pig or an “insane” man. I want to emphasize that this reaction appears regularly. Most of my students had indeed heard about the rumor. Some aspects of the theory of sex-economy are so revolutionary that it is extremely easy to regard the theory itself as insane. I must state that, as a result of this rumor, certain complicated situations became mortally dangerous. There should be clear-cut legal possibilities for precluding such consequences of a plague-afflicted reaction. I have only my clinical experience to thank for my being able to weather–in addition to the already existing difficulties of my work–the dangers which derived from the rumor about my mental illness.

The affair was not without comic after-effects. When it was realized some years later that my scientific work clearly indicated that I was not schizophrenic, a new rumor was circulated and again from the same source. Now it was said that, happily, I had “recovered” from my schizophrenic illness.

Specific plague reactions are encountered particularly in the sphere of politics. Again and again during the last few years we have seen that, with every fresh conquest, dictatorial-imperialistic governments attribute to the victim precisely the intention they themselves have carried out. For instance, it was said that Poland had been secretly planning an attack on the German empire, that this had to be anticipated, and therefore Germany was justified in attacking Poland. The attack on the Soviet Union was “justified” in the same way.

Also illustrative of this specific plague reaction are the now famous “Moscow trials” of Lenin’s early co-workers. At these trials, the charge of high treason was lodged against functionaries hostile to the Russian Communist Party; the defendants were accused of having maintained direct contact with the German fascists and, together with them, of having planned the overthrow of the government. To those who knew the backgrounds of those accused, it was clear that the charges against them had been trumped up. But in 1936 no one could explain the purpose of such an obviously spurious accusation. The Russian government was strong enough to eliminate any troublesome opposition with less transparent arguments. It wasn’t until 1939 that the mystery was cleared up, at least for those who were already familar with the specific plague mechanism. In 1936 the accused were said to have committed precisely that crime against the state which the government itself actually did commit in 1939. It signed a pact with Hitler that precipitated the war with Poland and divided Poland with the German fascists. Only then was it understood that, by defaming others, the state had succeeded in clearing itself of the pact with Hitler, so well, indeed, that the implications of its action remained unknown to the public. This case was yet another confirmation of the fact that the public acts as if it had no memory. Such political plague reactions in fact count on this very irrationality in mass thinking. It makes no difference that this pact did not help, that eventually the German dictatorship became engaged in a war with the Russian dictatorship. Nor could the subsequent rationalization change the fact that a pact had been signed.

Let us cite another example from the sphere of the emotional plague. Leon Trotsky had to defend himself against the accusation that he was involved in a plot against the life of his rival. This was incomprehensible, for the murder of Stalin would have only damaged the Trotskyites. It became comprehensible when Trotsky was murdered in 1941. (These facts have nothing to do with political points of view for or against the Trotskyites.)

If we go back only a few decades in the history of politics, we find the famous Dreyfus case. High-ranking military men of the French general staff had sold plans to the Germans; to cover themselves, they accused the unsuspecting and respectable Captain Dreyfus of the very crime they were guilty of. They succeeded in having their victim convicted, and he languished in jail for more than five years on a faraway island. Without Zola’s courageous intervention, this specific plague reaction would never have been combatted. That Dreyfus was subsequently honored does not erase in any way the atrocity committed against him. If policies of state were not ruled to such a large extent by the laws of the emotional plague, it would be a self-understood principle that such catastrophes should never happen in the first place. However, since the emotional plague governs the molding of public opinion, it always succeeds in passing off its atrocities as regrettable errors of justice, only to be able to continue its mischief with impunity.

In the case of a government figure, his personal character has enormous importance for the social life as a whole. If, for instance, the girl friend of a king is French, one can be assured that in a world war during this king’s reign, his country will be on the side of France against the German “arch enemy.” If that same king should forfeit his throne shortly before or at the beginning of the second world war, and if his successor had a personal relationship with a German woman, the same country would fight the war on the side of its former arch enemy, Germany, against France, its former ally.

Whoever takes pains to scrutinize the workings of the emotional plague in the sphere of politics will become more and more immersed in a condition akin to acute confusion. Is it possible, one will ask oneself, that the clericalism of a political dictator or the love affair of a king can determine the weal and woe of several generations? Does irrationalism in social life go that deep? Is it really possible. that millions of industrious adults are not aware of this, indeed refuse to be aware of it?

These questions seem peculiar only because the effects of the emotional plague are too fantastic to be perceived as something tangible. Human intelligence evidently refuses to admit that such absurdity can predominate on such a massive scale. It is this stupendous illogicality of such social conditions that represents their strongest protection. We must realize just how enormous the effects of the emotional plague are and understand that this enormity makes them appear incredible. I firmly believe that not one social evil of any magnitude can ever be eliminated so long as the public refuses to recognize that this absurdity does exist and is so enormous that it is not seen. Compared with the enormity of social irrationality, which is constantly nourished by the deeply rooted emotional plague, the basic social functions of love, work, and knowledge, which govern the life process, appear infinitesimal; indeed, they appear socially ridiculous. We can easily convince ourselves of this.

On the basis of long and extensive medical practice, we know that, unresolved as it is, the problem of adolescent sexuality plays an incomparably greater part in the molding of our social and moral ideologies than some tariff law or other. Let us imagine that a parliamentarian, who happened to be a physician, approached his government and demanded the opportunity to give a thorough presentation of the problem of puberty at a parliamentary session and to have it debated as a tariff bill is debated. Let us further imagine that this same outstanding person resorted to a filibuster because his request was denied. In a simple way, I believe this example shows the basic contradiction between everyday life and the administrative form which rules it. If we consider the matter calmly and objectively, we shall find that there is nothing very special about a legislative debate on the problems of puberty. Everybody, every member of parliament included, has gone through the hell of the adolescent neurosis brought on by sexual frustration. No other conflict compares with this one in magnitude and importance. It is a problem of general social interest. A rational solution to the difficulties of puberty would eliminate at one blow a multitude of social evils, such as juvenile delinquency, public care of mental patients, the misery of divorce, the misery of child rearing, etc.–thousands of formal bills on budgets and tariff systems could never even approach the problem.

So we regard the demand of our medically oriented parliamentarian as unequivocally rational, progressive, and useful. At the same time, however, we ourselves shy away from it. Something in us is opposed to the possibility of a public, parliamentary debate on this topic. This “something” is precisely the effect and intention of the social emotional plague, which is constantly striving to preserve itself and its institutions. It has drawn a sharp distinction between official and private life, and the latter has been denied access to the public platform. Official life is asexual on the surface and pornographic or perverse beneath the surface. If this dichotomy did not exist, official life would immediately coincide with private life and correctly mirror everyday life in large social forms. This unification of everyday living and social institutions would be simple and uncomplicated. Then, however, that sector in the social framework would automatically perish which not only does not contribute to the preservation of social life but, rather, periodically brings it to the brink of the abyss. We can place this sector under the heading of “high politics.”

The continuation of the gap between the real life of the community and its official facade is one of the emotional plague’s bitterly defended intentions. There is no other way to explain the fact that the emotional plague always resorts to force of arms when an effort is made to touch upon this gap in an objective and rational way. Representatives of high politics, whether personally affected or not, always attempted to thwart the dissemination of the sex-economic recognition of the relationship between man’s biological organism and the state. In their mildest form, their attacks were somewhat as follows: “These ’sex philosophies’ are immoral abscesses on the social body which break open from time to time. It is true that the human animal has a sexuality, but this is only to be regretted. After all, sexuality is not everything in life. There are other, far more important problems, i.e., economics and politics. Sex-economy exaggerates. We would get along far better without it.”

This is a typical argument, some variation of which is regularly encountered in curing a person of a biopathy and even in training a student. We are convinced that this argument springs from orgasm anxiety and that its aim is to prevent a disturbance of the person’s resigned attitude. Faced with the same argument at a public meeting on mental hygiene, one cannot disarm the advocate of cultural and other “values” by pointing to his personal armor and pleasure anxiety. A sex-economist who used such an approach would have the meeting against him, for the opponent of sex-economy shares this character trait and the irrational argument that springs from it with the others. Many a physician and teacher has floundered here. There is an incontestable, purely logical counter-argument which, on the basis of our experience, is successful.

We concur with the opponent: sexuality is not everything in life. We even add that, in healthy people, sexuality is not a topic of conversation or the center of their thinking. But how do we explain that sexuality, which is not everything in life, actually assumes the most prominent place in man’s life and thinking? This fact cannot be gainsaid. Let us cite another example to illustrate this.

The circulation of steam in the steampipes of a factory is an unquestioned precondition of the factory’s operation. However, the workers in a factory hardly give a moment’s thought to the circulation of the steam. Their attention is completely concentrated on their work. The energy engendered by the steam is “not everything” in the factory. There are other important interests, e.g., the manufacture of machines and similar things. Let us imagine that all of a sudden one or more steam valves became clogged. The flow of energy engendered by the steam would cease immediately. The pistons would stop; the wheels would no longer turn; work would be out of the question. All the workers would have to direct their attention with dispatch to the obstructed flow of steam in the pipes. All thinking would be centered on one question: how a regulated circulation of steam could be reestablished in the quickest way. Let us further imagine that some workers began to argue about this situation as follows: “This confounded theory of heat exaggerates the role of steam. Sure, it’s true that steam is necessary, but it’s far from being everything in this factory. Don’t you see that there are other things to worry about? What about the economy?” In a breakdown like the one described, these “brainstorms” would merely be laughed at, and one would quickly attempt to eliminate the basic disturbance in the circulation of the steam before turning one’s thoughts to “other things.” It would serve no purpose to consider the interests of economy when the steam valves are clogged.

This example illustrates the nature of the sexual problem in our society. The flow of biological energy, i.e., sexual energy, is disturbed in most people. The biosocial mechanism of society therefore functions poorly and sometimes not at all, and we have irrational politics, irresponsibility on the part of masses of people, biopathies, homicide–in short, the emotional plague. If all people fulfilled their natural sexual needs in a natural way, there would be little talk of the sexual problem; there would be no sexual problem. Then one would be justified in contending that there are “also other things.”

Because sex-economy is interested in seeing these so-called other things come into their own, it spends much time and effort trying to eliminate the basic problem. The fact that today everything revolves around sex is the surest indication that there is a severe disturbance not only in the human animal’s flow of sexual energy but, as a consequence of this disturbance, in his biosocial functioning. Sex-economy is striving to open the valves blocking the flow of biological energy in the human animal so that other important things, such as clear thinking, natural decency, and pleasurable work, can function and pornographic sexuality will no longer occupy all of one’s thinking, as is the case today.

This disturbance of the flow o{ energy has a profound effect on the basis of biosocial functioning and thus governs both limited and higher functions of the human animal. I believe that the fundamental biological character of this disturbance has not been comprehended in its full scope and depth, even by some orgonomists. Once again let us cite an example to illustrate this depth and the relationship of orgonomy to other sciences.

Let us compare the natural sciences, which disregard this basic biological disturbance, to a group of railroad engineers. Let us imagine that these engineers write thousands of highly technical books describing the construction of trains, their size and the material of the doors and windows, the seats and sleeping accommodations, the specific chemical composition of the iron and wood, the strength of the brakes, the speeds at which these trains are to travel and the time schedules, the stations, every detail of every single track. In every book, however, these engineers regularly omit one detail–they make no mention of the dynamics of steam. The natural sciences are not familiar with the study of life processes from a functional point of view; they are therefore comparable to these engineers. The orgonomist cannot perform his work unless he has fully realized that he is the engineer of the living apparatus. It is not our fault that, as engineers of the living apparatus, we are first and foremost concerned with biosexual energy. We have not the slightest reason to feel demeaned because of this. Quite the contrary: we have every reason to be proud of our difficult task.

One will ask in amazement how it was possible to have so completely overlooked a disease that has so ravaged mankind for such a long time. He who has gone to the very core of the emotional plague knows that concealment is part of its nature. It owes its success to the impossibility of getting at it, seeing through it, comprehending it–all part of its intent. I stressed earlier that the disease was too obvious to attract attention. (Hitler: “The bigger the lie, the more readily it is believed.”) Before character analysis, there was no scientific method for the discovering and unmasking of the emotional plague. Politics and the expression of political opinion appeared to have a special kind of reason; one was miles away from an intuition of the irrational character of the political plague. And the emotional plague itself was in control of the most important social institutions and was, therefore, in a position to prevent the recognition of its nature.

We have to deal with the emotional plague every time we cure biopathies and every time we have to restructure a teacher or physician. So, even in the fulfillment of this training program, the emotional plague obstructs our efforts in the form of resistance reactions on the part of the character. This is how we learn to know it clinically, and upon these experiences we base our contention that it has left no human being unscathed.

We also learn about its nature through the typical reactions to the scientific discoveries of orgonomy. Even if those afflicted with the emotional plague are not directly affected by the results of our scientific work; even if they are far removed from or unfamiliar with the subject; they have somehow divined and feel threatened by the unmasking of the emotional plague as it takes place in the quiet offices of character analysts and orgone therapists. In spite of the fact that they were not directly affected, they reacted with defamation and the specific plague reaction long before a single orgonomist had any idea that he was on the verge of engaging in the most difficult struggle that physicians and educators had ever undertaken. We shall go into this matter in detail when we discuss the training of physicians and educators. Here it is merely important to give a very thorough description of the emotional plague’s general characteristics, so that everyone will be capable of recognizing them in himself and in others.

The emotional plague has known how to anticipate possible disclosures by well-concealed and rationalized actions. It acted like a nobly dressed murderer whose mask has been torn off. The emotional plague was successful for more than a decade; it had almost succeeded in securing its existence for centuries to come. It would have indeed triumphed had it not become so destructively and blatantly manifest as dictatorships and mass infection. It stirred up a war of unimaginable dimensions and added to chronic, everyday murder. It endeavored to conceal itself behind high-sounding “political ideals” and “new orders,” behind “ancient empires” and “racial claims.” For years it was given credence by a psychiatrically sick world. But its acts of betrayal were too blatant. It insulted the natural feelings for life of all men and women, leaving no family and no profession untouched. The phenomena which character analysts and orgone therapists had learned to study and to fight so well over a long period of time in the stillness of their offices suddenly became one with the phenomena of the world catastrophe. Both on a small and on a large scale, the basic characteristics were the same. Thus, the emotional plague itself came to the aid of natural science, and the work of a few psychiatrists and educators. The world began to ask about its nature and to demand an answer. This answer shall be given according to our best knowledge and conscience. Every conscientious person will discover the emotional plague in himself and, in this way, better comprehend what plunges the world into tragedy again and again. The “new order” always begins in one’s own house.

The unmasking of these hidden activities and mechanisms of a decadent life has two goals: first, the fulfillment of an obligation to society. If, in the case of a fire, the water supply fails and someone knows the source of the failure, it is his duty to name it. Second, the future of sex-economy and orgone biophysics has to be protected from the emotional plague. In Austria in 1930; in Germany in 1932 and 1933; in Denmark in 1933; in Lucerne in 1934; in Denmark and Sweden in 1934 and 1935; and in Norway in 1937 and 1938, my honest work on the human structure was subjected to attacks. In retrospect, I am almost inclined to feel grateful for these unjustified attacks, for they did away with my good-natured guilelessness and opened my eyes to a generally dangerous, though pathological, system of defamation and persecution. When a thief goes too far and throws caution to the wind, he runs a greater risk of being caught and rendered harmless. Until about ten years ago, those who were afflicted with and spread the emotional plague felt secure. They were too sure of their victory. For many years, indeed, victory did appear to be on their side. Great perseverance, deep involvement in experimental and natural scientific work, and an independence from public opinion–an independence for which one can only be grateful–rendered their victory impossible The emotional plague never lets up or rests until it has invalidated great deeds, until it has poisoned the fruits of human diligence, research, and the attainment of truth. I do not think that it has succeeded this time or that it will succeed. It is the first time that the emotional plague is confronted not only by honest attitudes but by the necessary knowledge of life processes, which always make up in clarity what they lack in strength. The strength and consistent application of orgonomic natural science enabled me to recover from the heavy and dangerous blows I received from the emotional plague. If that was possible, it seems to me that the most difficult part has been accomplished.

As far as I and my work are concerned, I should like to state one simple fact for the reader’s consideration. Neurotic psychoanalysts declared that I was mentally ill; fascist communists denounced me as a Trotskyite; sexually frivolous people accused me of being the unlicensed owner of a brothel; the Gestapo persecuted me on the grounds that I was a Bolshevik (the FBI did the same on the grounds that I was a German spy); domineering mothers wanted to pass me on to posterity as a seducer of children; charlatans in the field of psychiatry called me a charlatan; would-be saviors of mankind called me a new Jesus or Lenin. However flattering or unfiattering these diverse appellations may have been, this much should be clear: it is not likely that I, being but one person, could have been brothel owner, spy, Trotskyite, schizophrenic, and savior all at the same time. Each of these activities would have taken up a whole life. But I cannot have been all these things for the simple reason that my interests and efforts lie elsewhere, namely in work on the irrational human structure and in the extremely demanding work of comprehending the recently discovered cosmic life energy; they lie, in short, in the field of sex economy and orgone biophysics. Perhaps this logical consideration will help to remove a misunderstanding about me.

Those who have read and really understood the works of great women and men know the sphere we characterize as emotional plague. Unfortunately, these great accomplishments have remained without any essential social effect. They were neither organized nor made the basis of life-affirming institutions. If that had happened, it would be difficult to believe that the emotional plague could have reached the extent it did in the catastrophes of 1934-45. True, monuments have been erected in honor of the great masters of literature, but all too often, we see that the emotional plague knows how to build huge museums in which these great accomplishments can be locked up and made innocuous through false admiration. Any one of these accomplishments would have been enough to build a rational world if it had been taken seriously as a practical possibility. I am not the first person to make an effort to grasp and fight the emotional plague. I merely believe that I am the first natural scientist who, by the discovery of the orgone, has provided a solid foundation on the basis of which the emotional plague can be understood and vanquished.

Today, five, eight, ten, fourteen years after various unexpected and incomprehensible catastrophes, this is my standpoint: just as a bacteriologist devotes all his efforts and energies to the total elimination of infectious diseases, the medical orgonomist devotes all his ejorts and energies to the unmasking and combatting of the emotional plague as a rampant disease of the people of the world. The world will gradually get accustomed to this new form of medical activity. One will learn to comprehend the emotional plague in oneself and in others and to go to scientific centers and not to the police, the district attorney, or the party leader. There are police, district attorneys, and even saviors who are interested in mastering the emotional plague in themselves and in others. For the police and the district attorney have to deal with biopathic criminality, and the human savior is concerned with the helplessness and mass biopathies of man. We want from now on to draw a sharp distinction between those who run to the police or use political persecution to settle a controversy and those who use scientific reasoning. Thus we will be in a position to distinguish who is afflicted with the emotional plague and who is not. At this point I should like to stress that we do not enter into discussions of politics and police. On the other hand, we welcome every form of scientific discussion; indeed, we wait for it.

I believe that the time has come when helplessness toward the emotional plague is beginning to disappear. Until now, one sensed its attacks as something comparable to a tree crashing to the ground or a stone falling from the roof. Such things simply happened, and one was either lucky and got out alive or one was unlucky and was struck down dead. From this point on, we know that the tree does not tumble by accident and the stone does not fall of its own volition from the roof. We know now in both cases that well-concealed, mentally disturbed human animals cause the tree to topple and the stone to roll off the roof. Once this much has been grasped, the rest follows of itself.

Hence, when some physician or another files suit against an orgonomist because of some “illegal activity”; when a politician accuses an orgonomist of “tax fraud,” “child seduction,” “espionage,” or “Trotskyite opposition”; when we hear rumors that some orgonomist or another is mentally ill, seduces his patients, operates an illegal brothel, etc., then we know that we are dealing with police or political tactics and not with scientific argumentation. The training requirements of the Orgone Institute and the demands of everyday work are a public guarantee that we are doing our utmost to combat the basic characteristics of the emotional plague.

We do not conceal, nor have we ever concealed, that we cannot believe in the fulfillment of human existence as long as biology, psychiatry, and educational science have not come to grips with the universal emotional plague, and fought it as ruthlessly as one fights plague-ridden rats. Nor do we conceal the fact that extensive, careful, and painstaking clinical investigations have led us to this conclusion: it is solely the reestablishment of the natural love-life of children, adolescents, and adults which can rid the world of character neuroses and, with the character neuroses, the emotional plague in its various forms.

Footnotes

1. I should like to point out that, to me, a woman of easy virtue having a decent character is socially and humanly preferable to such a plague-afflicted person. Women of easy virtue have no pretenses; social conditions, material necessity, and the prevailing social chaos lead them into a profession which requires them to gratify the sexual needs of sailors and soldiers, i.e., men who risk their lives. Countless princes and priests have had to visit houses of prostitution to satisfy their needs or to escape their misery. This is neither reproach nor praise but merely an establishment of fact.

2. Footnote, 1945: One of our prominent physicians returned from Oslo to the U.S.A. in 1939. He spent a few days in Zurich, where he told a former psychiatric colleague that he had been working with me. Much surprised. he said: “But So-and-So said Reich had become schizophrenic.” “So-and-So” was the person in question. Soon after his return to the States, he learned from an acquaintance that his analyst had told him the same thing: “So-and-So [again the same person] told me Reich was schizophrenic.’ This rumor-monger died a few years later from heart failure. I had known for a long time that he suffered from impotence.

Tags: wilhelm reich, emotional plague, emotion, feeling, orgone, energy, society, structure

Shoppinglist for the winning lottery ticket

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:32:57 GMT

Lottery win shoppinglist:
Every once in a while I buy a lottery ticket. There's so much that could be accomplished and done by simply winning in the lottery. Many people could benefit from putting the money towards "best for everyone". It does not make one whit of a difference to anyone else on this planet if I buy myself luxury toys or build a house - put the money forward and a lot more will benefit, and that way everyone benefits. Over the years, the shoppinglist has changed quite a few times, but here is it's current incarnation:

- Donate 35,000$ to David Pantone, in order to assist in Freeing Paul Pantone
-- If required, pay the less than 200,000$ that Paul Pantone has been sued for - to get him out of the mental hospital / prison where he is incarcerated now.
=== Result: Paul Pantone(MERLib.org link to paul pantone articles) gets free and can resume his research and development of gasoline saving devices. Best for everyone on this planet, and best for Paul Pantone.

- Donate 280,000$ to Earthship Biotecture, in order to assist in building an earthship in New Orleans.
-- If required, help monetarily towards obtaining permits and land for the Earthship.
=== Result, 18 months of Earthship Biotecture crew educating the officials and others in New Orleans about building Earthships, and building a demonstration Earthship house and donating it to a hurricane Katrina survivor family. Results in more widespread attention towards New Orleans, Earthships in general - and a family get their own completely sustainable completely off the grid house. In the end, the message of Michael Reynolds will become more widespread, and many in various countries will benefit. Best for everyone on this planet.

- Donate over 350,000$ to Wilhelm Reich Museum
for the purpose of 1) renovating the roof of the museum 2) funding for the project of Mary Higgins to gather, translate and publish Wilhelm Reich's 1947-1957 scientific diaries 3) funding for the two film projects that WRM/Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Foundation already have
-- Result, the museum is kept safe and renovated, housing Wilhelm Reich's lab equipment etc - a true historical relic. One, possibly two documentaries are released, with much better explanations and details of Wilhelm Reich's life, and the 1947-1957 journals are finally released, for those who wish to study them. Eventually, these actions will be for the best of everyone on this planet.

- Donate the mentioned 3,000,000$ to Timothy Thrapp / WITTS
for the purpose of creating a manufacturing factory for the components required to produce free energy devices in masse. It would be interesting to see how much these people could accomplish if they got the funding they wanted. If they come up with the goods, it is for the best of everyone on this planet.

- Donate, say, 100,000$ to Energy From The Vacuum
for the purpose of covering some of the costs of production. The page says: "We invite contributions to help defray editing and post-production costs of future DVDs in the Energy from the Vacuum documentary series, which has already been filmed. All contributions are enormously appreciated, and will accelerate the pace at which future segments can be released!" Also, the front page says: "Sponsors are also wanted for our educational outreach program".
-- This would be to see, how many episodes in the series will be released, and how quickly they can be released if they suddenly have "a lot of money". Also, it would be interesting to see thier proposal as for the educational outreach program - would these scientific DVD's be sent to universities or what?
The increasing knowledge worldwide and experimentation with these devices and ideas, would be for the best of everyone on this planet.

So.. there's way more, like donating to Hector Perez Torres or John Searl, or actually purchasing tickets and traveling to free energy conferences, etc, but that would be it for now, after doing those, one could go through the list of people and organizations and decide where the rest of the millions go.

- Donate 1,000,000$ to Sport Solar Ovens
-- They build solar ovens and you can actually purchase a solar oven and have one donated to countries where the women have to hack tons of wood every day to be able to heat water and cook. This way less trees are chopped down, and it is for the best of everyone on this planet. It makes sense to see what they can do.

- Invest 3,000,000$ in Vanguard Sciences Lab Project
-- a trust fund of 3 million dollars for their projects, with projected payback and interest. Vanguard Sciences is related to Jerry Decker's KeelyNET, and it would be interesting to see exactly how ready Mr. Decker is to use the money and build stuff. This is again in the gamble-department, just like Timothy Thrapp/WITTS.

- Fly Rick Simpson over to Netherlands to lecture about his THC Hemp Oil discovery
-- This would result in widespread interest, hopefully, and contacts, in Netherlands for the manufacturing of THC Hemp Oil, for free, and for it to be given to those in need in Netherlands. It would also make it possible to organize a center in the Netherlands to prescribe this medicine to those in need.
-- Again, would be for the benefit of everyone on this planet, since THC Hemp Oil should be way more widespread and more known than it is right now.

- Donate 35,000$ to OverUnity Power Research
- for building a Workshop. Again, what this planet needs is more research and development of alternative and progressive energy production technologies. Any research, be it Timothy Thrapp's, Tom Bearden's, Jerry Decker's, Hector Perez Torres's, John Searl's, Paul Pantone's and so forth, is for the best of everyone.

- Donate 12 million dollars to Bearden's MEG project
- this is in the "500 million dollar lottery win" department. also, it'd be nice to run Bearden through a raw food diet and thc hemp oil treatment to see if he'd come out the other side in a better physical condition.

Tags: lottery, shopping, donation, bestforeveryone

post this New Orleans/Earthshipbanner on your site or tell others

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 11:25:36 GMT

the url is http://www.scene.org/~esa/merlib/es_orleans.gif (from earthship.net)
the url that this picture can link to is http://www.earthship.net/modules.php?name=Donations&op=make

to see it in action, it looks like this:

Tags: earthship, new orleans, katrina, hurricane, donation

Michael Riversong interviews people

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 11:11:38 GMT

this is nice, Michael Riversong goes out of his way to interview specific people. here's a list of a few that might be of interest:
Len Horowitz, Dale Pond, Moshe Daniel, Dan Davidson..
http://teslaacademy.info/pc1.html

Tags: interview, ether, aether, ki, chi, alternative energy

Volunteers gather 19.40$ for Wilhelm Reich Museum's roof costs

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:55:35 GMT

The Wilhelm Reich Museum are currently raising funds to renovate the roof of the Orgonon Museum in Rangeley, Maine. You can assist by using GoodSearch as your main search. Just go to the website and type in "Wilhelm Reich" to "who do you GoodSearch for". You can also GoodShop for any charity of your choice, including use eBay. A large percentage (25%-37%) of your purchase on eBay can go towards your favourite charity. Amazon, Barnes&Nobles, Nike, Walmart and others feature on the GoodShop page.

Please let everyone you know hear about GoodSearch/GoodShop, encourage them to use these for their charity of choice - and if you are interested in supporting the research / legacy of Wilhelm Reich, do join us in gathering money towards the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Foundation.

Not only are they gathering money to renovate the Orgone museum's roof, they are also in production, research and translation of the scientific journals + diaries of Wilhelm Reich's work from 1947 to 1957 - which cover his scientific progress in weather modification, cancer biopathy and orgone accumulator studies, orgone vacuum tubes and the orgone motor and other such progressive themes, the Wilhelm Reich Museum are also gathering money to produce two full-length documentaries, to fill out the themes started on "Man's Right to Know" (the previous, 32 minute documentary on the life and works of Wilhelm Reich) more fully. These two films would also advance the worldwide knowledge of Wilhelm Reich a great deal more and thus, at least in my mind, are definitely worth supporting.

If you tell everyone to use GoodSearch/GoodShop for this, we will quickly be able to amass enough interest and use of GoodSearch/GoodShop to gather at least a few hundred dollars for the wilhelm reich infant trust foundation, and that will be extremely helpful for them.
Please look into the Wilhelm Reich Museum's website and the studies of Wilhelm Reich to see why it would be worth supporting them.

yours, Esa Juhani Ruoho a.k.a. Lackluster, friend of the Wilhelm Reich Museum

Tags: charity, donation, funding, money, goodsearch, goodshop, orgone, wilhelm reich

Finance Wilhelm Reich Museum via searching on goodsearch

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:12:31 GMT

Hi. please go on www.goodsearch.com/ and input "Wilhelm Reich" into which organization the donations via your searching should go for. Out will pop up "The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Foundation",

Thus, everytime you use GoodSearch (it can be put on your searchtoolbar) to search, a cent will go towards the Wilhelm Reich Museum, a non-profit organization managing the Wilhelm Reich Archives and which is in charge of keeping the Orgonon Museum alive.

Why should this be done? First of all, this is the ONLY such foundation/NPO currently on GoodSearch. Secondly, they are gathering financing to do followups for their 32 minute "Man's Right to Know" brief Wilhelm Reich -biography. Two films are in planning. "Sparks of Life", and a full-feature-length biography on Wilhelm Reich and his life. They are now fundraising for a ceiling to be re-fitted of the Museum, to keep the legacy of Wilhelm Reich's material safe, such as his lab-equipment, paintings, sculptures, scientific papers and so forth. At the same time that all this is going on, Mary Higgins, who has put together "Beyond Psychology", "American Odyssey", two collections of Wilhelm Reich's letters and journals from his archives, of which, American Odyssey focuses on 1940-1947. Mary Higgins is now, in 2008, working on a follow-up to American Odyssey, which will be 1947 till 1957! This is a landmark research and publication being done, because there are never enough words published, written by Wilhelm Reich and then translated into English. 1940-1947 dealt much with his meeting of Albert Einstein, his discovery and study of the Orgone Energy Accumulator Box, and his other studies in the field of Orgonomy. By the 1950s, Wilhelm Reich would be studying the Cloudbuster device he created to form to dissipate clouds, by 1957 Wilhelm Reich was dead.

So, instead of using www.searchkindly.org and so forth to support, well, useful, but somewhat random charities, why not us here at Gaia support the study, research, publication of materials more dealing with Orgone Energy, which Wilhelm Reich also spent a lot of time measuring and utilizing. His is a research for the future, something which we can now assist in its more locked-down form. If everyone on Gaia donated 10$ towards the Wilhelm Reich Foundation, we would very quickly see progress in the release of these films and the book. Surely it would be worth our while since Wilhelm Reich is one of those people, much like water-science currently, who is considered to be a hoax and a pseudoscientist. Unfortunately, even after him being dead for 51 years, his research is no less world-changing.

Let's help this research by installing the GoodSearch toolbar onto our machines, searching through it, and setting "Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Foundation" as the receiving end.

Tags: wilhelm reich, orgone, energy, body, electricity, ether, Einstein, chi, prana, ki

The ExtraOrdinary Technology Conference Is Only 3 Weeks Away!!!

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:46:09 GMT

The ExtraOrdinary Technology Conference Is Only 3 Weeks Away!!!

Vendors welcome? contact (520) 463-1994 for details!!!

Over 15 speakers ?. Topics range from energy saving ideas for today, to developing new
sources of energy for tomorrow and beyond! Tesla technology, zero point, hydrogen, GEET,
Y-bias, solar, Moe-Joe Cell and even antigravity is covered. Every evening, you will
have a chance to sit down and talk with researchers who share your interests. Exchange
notes, share ideas, meet new friends. The ExtraOrdinary Technology Conference is THE
forum of the future... and its here today! Preregister today and save!!!

TWO Hands On Workshops will be conducted as Pre and Post Conference events

THUR Jul 31 - 1PM

Moe-Joe Cell Workshop - $49.95

Workshop will cover component fabrication, assembly and installation in one (maybe two)
vehicles. Components will be available for purchase.

SUN Aug 3 - 1PM

GEET Workshop - $49.95

Workshop will cover component fabrication, assembly and installation. Small engine GEET will be on hand. FAQ session planned. Plans will be available for purchase.

Check http://www.teslatech.info[1[1]

] for current program! 10%
Discount ends on July
15!
Register today. CALL (520) 463-1994

SAVE an additional 5% with our Companion Special!!

Simply preregister TWO people at once to qualify. It can be yourself and your spouse,
family member or a just a friend. Instead of a 10% discount,

you will receive a 15% discount!

In addition to the great speakers, we will have a lot of hardware available!

Bring the family as well! It is a great time to share your ideas with those you love.
who knows, you may be opening a door into their lives you never

knew existed! Even if the Conference is not their cup of tea, Albuquerque itself is an
interesting place to visit. Old Town is just down the street from the conference and
gives you the flavor of the Old West. There's the famous tramway up Sandia Mountain, and
other attractions nearby. You can stay a few extra days and make Albuquerque your hub to
explore New Mexico.

It's a great opportunity to expand your personal horizons. just beware of aliens if you
travel to Roswell!

Finally, insure your hotel room by making your hotel reservations today. Be sure to
mention the Teslatech ExtraOrdinary Technology Conference to get the
conference rate!

See you in Albuquerque!

Steve Elswick -- steve@teslatech.info
Publisher/Editor - ExtraOrdinary Technology
520-463-1904 - http://www.teslatech.info[2[2]]

ATTEND the 2008 ExtraOrdinary Technology Conference!!!
In Albuquerque New Mexico? July 31-August 3!!!!
See Complete conference information here:
http://www.teslatech.info/ttevents/2008conf/prgframe.htm[3[3]]
Members PRE-Registration Discount now 10% until July 15, 2008

Links:
------
[1] http://www.teslatech.info/[4]
[2] http://www.teslatech.info/[5]
[3] http://www.teslatech.info/ttevents/2008conf/prgframe.htm[6]

Links:
------
[1] http://www.teslatech.info[1/
[2] http://www.teslatech.info[2/
[3] http://www.teslatech.info/ttevents/2008conf/prgframe.htm[3
[4] http://www.teslatech.info/
[5] http://www.teslatech.info/
[6] http://www.teslatech.info/ttevents/2008conf/prgframe.htm

Tags: technology, hydrogen, tesla, @merlib.org, free energy

your donation towards building an earthship in new orleans. neede

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:14:47 GMT

hi. the earthship biotecture people are trying to get together donations from anyone who believes in 1) earthships 2) rebuilding the new orleans condition 3) supporting your fellow human beings 4) all of the above.

go, and donate.
http://www.earthship.net/modules.php?name=Donations&op=make

for those that arent already aware of this, check this PDF

http://www.earthship.net/earthship_neworleans.pdf

Earthship Biotecture for New Orleans
The mission:

Build a fully sustainable / off grid 3 bedroom demonstration earthship home in six weeks
Function as a learning center for 18 months
Teach local political & building officials how to build earthships in New Orleans
Give the earthship home to a local family who lost their home to Hurricane Katrina"

"It is our belief that people who can help have the greatest responsibility to help, this is our obligation to humanity. We hope you can contribute to this project."

Tags: earthship, new orleans, neworleans, katrina, hurricane, donation, donate, charity, help, assist, rebuild

What do you find mysterious?

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 07:55:32 GMT

that somehow the whole united states of america finds it impossible to get together 280,000USD to build an earthship in new orleans and educate the people there to build earthships and thus solve their unemployment + housing crisii.
i just cant understand it.
http://neworleans.earthship.net/
http://www.earthship.net/modules.php?name=Donations&op=make

Tags: QaR, mystery, mysterious, experiences, wonder, earthship, money, donation, 3rd world, usa, united states of america

Universal Appeal for Support for New Energy Science & Technology

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 15:35:03 GMT

Open Letter from Dr. Eugene Mallove (RIP)

New Energy Foundation, Inc.
(A nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation)
P.O. Box 2816, Concord, NH 03302-2816
Phone: 603-485-4700 Fax: 603-485-4710
www.infinite-energy.com

Universal Appeal for Support
for New Energy Science and Technology

by Dr. Eugene F. Mallove
President, New Energy Foundation, Inc.
Editor-in-Chief, Infinite Energy Magazine

TO ALL PEOPLE OF THE WORLD who have open-minded curiosity, good will, good judgment, and imagination. To Scientists and Engineers, Philanthropists, Environmentalists, Energy Developers, High Technology Investors, Healthcare Professionals, Journalists, Artists, Writers, Business People, Entertainers, and Political Leaders. Whether you are Conservative, Liberal, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or Anarchist, and whether you may be Agnostic, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Atheist, or some other category of spirituality, this message is directed to all people of good will like you …

Dear Friend:

Here are some thoughts by wise thinkers—background for this urgent appeal for your consideration and support of research and development of radically new forms of energy. These are energy sources that have the potential to turn the present world order upside down and bring about a bright new day for civilization:

“The exception tests the rule.” Or, put another way. “The exception proves that the rule is wrong.” That is the principle of science. If there is an exception to any rule, and if it can be proved by observation, that rule is wrong.

Richard P. Feynman (1963), Nobel Laureate in Physics (1965)

The progress of physics is unsystematic…The result is that physics sometimes passes on to new territory before sufficiently consolidating territory already entered; it assumes sometimes too easily that results are secure and bases further advance on them, thereby laying itself open to further possible retreat. This is easy to understand in a subject in which development of the great fundamental concepts is often slow; a new generation appears before the concept has been really salted down, and assumes in the uncritical enthusiasm of youth that everything taught in school is gospel truth and forgets the doubts and tentative gropings of the great founders in its eagerness to make applications of the concepts and pass on to the next triumph…But each new young physicist…is in danger of forgetting all the past rumination and present uncertainty, and of starting with an uncritical acceptance of the concepts in the stage of development in which he finds them.

Percy W. Bridgman (1961), Nobel Laureate in Physics (1946)

American Nobel Laureate in Physics (1988) Leon M. Lederman is no proponent of research into radical forms of new energy; one might accurately call him a “pathological skeptic” based on at least one opinion he has voiced (see The God Particle, 1993, p.122). Nonetheless, he somehow senses that a physics revolution may be upon us. He said recently, “You can smell discovery in the air…The sense of imminent revolution is very strong.” (New York Times, November 11, 2003, p.D12). He is much more accurate than he can imagine, but not at all for reasons that he would readily accept! Perhaps he may be thinking of esoteric academic physics subjects such “string theory” or “cosmic dark energy,” but certainly not practical technologies based on radical new physics. Having the intellectual problems identified by physics Nobel Laureate P. W. Bridgman in the quotation above, Lederman has not been looking at a large body of research that will indeed revolutionize the foundations of physics and give us command of fantastic new forms of energy. Too bad for Lederman; and too bad for us all that he has not been paying attention. We could use the support of people like Lederman…if they would only come to their senses, that is, examine open-mindedly the validity of experimental data that challenges their cherished theories.

In an article in Science, November 1, 2002, eighteen experts reported that they examined all the conventionally understood alternatives to fossil fuels and found them all to have “severe deficiencies” in their ability to deal with environmental problems while also being adequate to growing planetary energy needs. Physics Professor Martin Hoffert, leader of that research group, told the press that the United States would have to undertake an urgent energy research crash program, like the Manhattan atomic bomb project or the Apollo lunar missions. According to the New York Times (November 4, 2003, D1), Hoffert stated that we would need “Maybe six or seven of them [massive projects] operating simultaneously…We should be prepared to invest several hundred billion dollars in the next 10 to 15 years.” Well, I have news for these experts: The solutions to our energy problems are very close at hand, and they do require initial research and funding, but not the billions of dollars that such Establishment “experts” are accustomed to from government largesse. Rather, all that is needed perhaps are only several tens of millions of dollars to create robust prototype electric power generators based on new energy physics discoveries that have already been made. That is what this Appeal for Support is all about: to raise consciousness and funding for these radical alternative new energy sources.

Question: Do you believe that it is possible that modern science has overlooked or ignored major scientific discoveries, which—if developed into technologies— would revolutionize almost every aspect of civilization? It has!

I will not catalogue the many horrors and troubles of this world that could be reduced or eliminated with an abundant, safe, and clean, radically new form of energy, if it were to be embodied in widely used technologies. You know these troubles already. But I do want to tell you about a significant path toward solving many of these problems, which we can all begin to take now, but about which you may have heard very little. You may have thought that no such path could exist. Let me assure you that it does and that thousands of researchers are already on it. They have traveled this unbeaten path to a new era for far too long without adequate support. I should know, I happen to be one of them. Yes, we have not reached our goals, but thanks to meticulous scientific research, huge sacrifices, and tireless work against great opposition, these objectives are now much closer to being realized. The basic scientific direction of the path forward has already been mapped out. We need your support to go further on the path and reach our common destination: A world of abundant, clean, and safe energy from sources that have no centralized geopolitical control.

Please attend to this appeal. I am most certainly not asking you to accept my claims at face value. But you must read, consider, study or review the compendious referenced material, investigate it, and then, I hope, you will be moved to take action. If you still have questions about these claims that need answering, I and my colleagues are available to answer them with facts, not hand-waving.

Who am I to ask anything of you on behalf of others, whether your attention for these brief moments, or for your financial and moral support? I am a scientist and an engineer with two engineering degrees from MIT (1969, 1970) and a doctorate from the Harvard University School of Public Health (1975). I have worked all my adult life as a dedicated scientist, despite my engineer’s stripes. I have always sought to learn how the cosmos really works, and I find this process to be an exciting, difficult, and unending adventure, despite those who so erroneously claim that we are approaching “The End of Science” or a “Final Theory of Everything.” Apart from my work in government-funded research at MIT and Harvard and later in corporate settings, I have also broadened my horizons by writing about science as an author and a journalist. Articles by me and about me have appeared in such venues as MIT Technology Review, The Washington Post Sunday “Outlook” section, the New York Times, Popular Science, Analog, TWA Ambassador in-flight magazine, Wired, and New Hampshire Magazine. I have appeared on many national radio programs, and for a time in the mid-1980s I was proud to have been a regular science and technology broadcaster for The Voice of America.

I am telling you something about me, not to elevate myself, but to convey to you something of my experience, sincerity, and integrity. I have written three acclaimed science books for the general public: The Quickening Universe: Cosmic Evolution and Human Destiny (1987, St. Martin’s Press), The Starflight Handbook: A Pioneer’s Guide to Interstellar Travel (1989, John Wiley & Sons, with co-author Dr. Gregory Matloff), and Fire from Ice: Searching for the Truth Behind the Cold Fusion Furor (1991, John Wiley & Sons). The late Nobel Laureate in physics (1965) Julian Schwinger endorsed my book Fire from Ice with these words: “Eugene Mallove has produced a sorely needed, accessible overview of the cold fusion muddle. By sweeping away stubbornly held preconceptions, he bares the truth implicit in a provocative variety of experiments.” (He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize with Richard P. Feynman and Sin Itiro Tomanaga.) I am most proud of this latter book, because it began a jarring quest that led to finding out not only dramatic new truths about new accessible forms of energy in nature, but more important for me and you, the following most astonishing truth about modern “official” science: Official science is not really intent on truly expanding scientific knowledge, in particular when some very, very fundamental scientific dogmas and theories are put at risk.

Here is how one famous nuclear science professor at my alma mater MIT reacted to my request to him in 1991 to study the summary reports from two pioneering Ph.D. scientists, who had compiled seminal reviews about frontier experiments in low-energy nuclear reactions (a.k.a. “cold fusion”). One of the reviewing scientists was 34-year veteran researcher at our Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the other was a leader of research at India’s Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC):

“I have had fifty years of experience in nuclear physics and I know what’s possible and what’s not!…I will not look at any more evidence! It’s all junk!” —MIT Prof. Herman Feshbach, May 1991, on the telephone to Dr. Mallove

I hope you recognize that the late Professor Feshbach’s most unfortunate and ill-considered reaction was fundamentally unscientific. It reminds me of the Church leaders at the time of Galileo, who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope at the Moon or at Jupiter, because they “knew” that nothing new could be seen! Yes, many modern scientists are filled with catastrophic hubris; they have become in many ways mere “technicians of science,” and guardians of what amounts to a pernicious “Holy Writ.” Don’t bother me with the experimental evidence, my theory can tell me what is possible and what is not!

If by chance you are one of those who believe that “all is well in the house of science” and that “official science” can be counted on to behave itself and always seek the truth—even in matters of central, overarching importance to the well-being of humankind—you are sorely mistaken, and I could prove that to you with compendious documentation. (If you want to read what happened at just one institution, MIT, when a paradigm shift threatened established hot fusion research programs and “vested intellectual interests” such as those Prof. Feshbach so vehemently defended, read my 55-page report about this monumental tragedy at www.infinite-energy.com.) But as a first step, you should reflect on the broader history of science, which is so fraught with revolutionary leaps and paradigm shifts. These have often been made against great opposition—with revolutionary data staring an older, unaccepting generation of scientists right in the face! Read this Appeal carefully and then reconsider your opinion about who is telling the truth and who is defending falsehood about revolutionary new prospects for science and civilization.

For almost nine years I have been the editor of Infinite Energy, the magazine of new energy science and technology. Though it is now small in circulation, Infinite Energy is received worldwide in some forty countries. And, Infinite Energy is distributed to newsstands across the United States and Canada. My friend and colleague, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, has supported with words and resources some of our efforts on behalf of new energy. The research that Infinite Energy covers suggests that there are at least three major categories of radically new sources of energy that civilization is on the verge of being able to tap and reduce to practical technologies. These are the completely new forms of energy for which this Appeal for Support is being issued. New Energy is the term that we apply to new sources of energy that are currently not recognized as feasible by the “scientific establishment,” but for which overwhelming and compelling evidence exists, we suggest, in at least these major categories:

Category 1. New hydrogen physics (a.k.a. “cold fusion,” more generally Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions or LENR, “hydrino” physics, and other water-based energy sources. Copious technical and other information about this research may be found on these two diverse websites: www.lenr-canr.org and www.blacklightpower.com as well as our own site, www.infinite-energy.com. The upshot of this energy-from-water field is that within ordinary water there is a heretofore unimaginably large energy reservoir that may be as great as 300 gallons of gasoline energy equivalent within each gallon of plain water! This energy would be non-polluting, would have no hazardous radiation, and would, in effect, have a zero fuel cost. Only one cubic kilometer of ocean water would provide energy equivalent to all the known oil reserves on Earth. In responding to a special plea by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the White House requested from me a technically-based Memorandum on this topic in February 2000. This 8,500-word Memorandum, “The Strange Birth of the Water Fuel Age,” was submitted to the Clinton Administration and later to the Bush Administration. It is now posted on www.infinite-energy.com. It asks for a review of the substantial evidence—in particular the copious evidence developed over the past 14 years in U.S. Federal laboratories—for this category of anomalous new physics energy. Unfortunately, apart from polite “Thank You” notes, no discernable action has been taken by either administration. The 10^th International Conference on Cold Fusion (ICCF10) was held near and at MIT in August 2003. Actual public demonstrations of excess energy production in electrolytic cells occurred at MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Wall Street Journal science journalist Sharon Begley attended ICCF10 and wrote a fine column in the September 5, 2003 issue of WSJ, “Cold Fusion Isn’t Dead, It’s Withering From Scientific Neglect.” Among other surprising technical developments at ICCF10 was the presentation by a well-funded Israeli corporation, Energetics Technologies, which appears to have made enormous strides in overcoming some of the problems with the low-energy nuclear reactions phenomenon. Isn’t it time that the experimental data from this significant field of scientific work is reviewed by an unbiased panel, unlike the rush-to-judgment hostile group in 1989, which inexcusably botched that investigation? Why aren’t the many politicians who have been informed about this taking action? Are they perhaps fearful of the all-to-common “sneer review” from the Scientific Establishment?

Category 2. Vacuum energy, Zero Point Energy or “ZPE” for short, aether energy, or space energy. These are descriptions of vast energy sources from the vacuum state. Information about this most radical and paradigm-shattering physics and technology research can be found on websites: www.aetherometry.com, www.energyscience.co.uk, and www.aethera.org. In the mid-1990s, Dr. Paulo and Alexandra Correa in the Toronto area obtained three US patents on an astonishing technological device, the so-called Pulsed Abnormal Glow Discharge (PAGD^TM) reactor. In its several embodiments, it already produces kilowatt-level electrical, thermal, and mechanical output power. A Quicktime video of one such device, working in 2003, may be viewed at www.aetherometry.com/cat-abrimedia.html. Successful testing of the PAGD by outside parties, including Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) and Ontario Hydro, regrettably did not lead to commercial arrangements to further the development of this scientific wonder, which has been meticulously documented in the three United States-granted Correa patents. (Uri Soudak, former Chief Technology Officer of IAI, is still involved with the project here in the U.S.) The Correas and Dr. Harold Aspden, IBM’s former chief of patent operations in Europe (from 1963 to 1983), have provided convincing theoretical explanations, based on concrete experiments with a variety of fundamental phenomena, all of which illuminate how this unsuspected vacuum state energy can be extracted by the PAGD reactor. The advent (possibly in only 2-3 years) of self-sustaining electrical power-generating units in the multi-kilowatt power range appears to be only a matter of gathering a relatively small amount of engineering/scientific development funding, in the low several tens of million dollars range.

Category 3. Environmental energy, i.e. energy from sensible thermal energy (in particular, energy of molecular motion), through significant extensions to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Proceedings of an important scientific conference dealing with this subject gives great insight into this work: Quantum Limits to the Second Law: First International Conference on Quantum Limits to the Second Law (San Diego, CA, July 28-31, 2002), Professor Daniel P. Sheehan, Editor, American Institute of Physics, Conference Proceedings, #643, 2002. A strong consensus of a significant number of the scientist attendees, as reported by the author, is that it will be possible to make utilitarian machines that convert the thermal energy in the environment to useful work, without a lower temperature reservoir to dump waste heat. This would be in direct contravention of the supposedly sacrosanct Second Law of Thermodynamics. These devices would be nearly perfect “free energy” machines. Accurate simulations of such devices have been carried out and the results published in peer-reviewed journals. Some of the authors predict that such prototype devices could be reduced to small prototype units within five years.

The foregoing brief descriptions of the three categories of New Energy identified so far is only the tip of the iceberg of the verifiable and testable information that is available on these energy sources. It is amenable to critical and precise scientific review. Of course, if the Scientific Establishment trusts only in its textbook theories and if disbelieving people of good will who have the means to move this work forward choose “not to look through the telescope,” the consequences will be that these wondrous technologies will not be developed as rapidly as they could have been otherwise—or they may not be developed at all! This has been and will be a monumental tragedy for virtually every category of human experience, all of which would be transformed by these now apparently “unwanted” discoveries.

I could write much more in this memorandum about the corrupt machinations within the supposedly well-ordered and ethical house of science, actions that have kept the information that Infinite Energy publishes from where it should be: prominently considered in such publications as Science and Nature. Don’t worry, many, many peer-reviewed technical publications have indeed courageously published pioneering technical papers about new energy, but the prominent mainstream publications that set the boundaries of the public scientific discourse—journals such as Science and Nature—reject without review any and all papers that challenge the foundational paradigms of physics, chemistry, and biology. You may find that difficult to believe, as I would have a mere fifteen years ago when I wrote Fire from Ice, but it is a sad and demonstrable truth. Let us not dwell on that, however, but rather move forward together with an end-run around this grotesque, anti-scientific obstruction.

Infinite Energy Magazine has been published bi-monthly since March 1995 and I have been its Editor-in-Chief and Publisher since that time. It is a technical magazine with editorial outreach to the general public as well. Many of its articles are very accessible to laypeople and non-specialists. You may download for free some 117 pages of representative sample articles, which we have gathered together for you at www.infinite-energy.com. Other key articles are posted for free downloading on our website on a continuing basis. To maintain the highest editorial standards, Infinite Energy is written and edited by scientists, engineers, and expert journalists. It is aimed at pioneering scientists, engineers, business people, environmentalists, philanthropists, and investors who are concerned about an exciting R&D area that we believe will change the world dramatically.

New Energy Foundation, Inc. (NEF) is an IRS-approved 501(c)(3) public charity corporation, based in New Hampshire; it has a five-member board of respected citizens. (Prior to July 2003, Infinite Energy had operated under a for-profit corporation.) NEF also has a research grant-awarding function, which was initiated in 2003. NEF dispenses to outside researchers and developers carefully targeted research and development funding grants from its reserves of charitable contributions. These funds are beginning to grow, but are nowhere near the level they need to be.

The current subscription price and newsstand price of Infinite Energy provides less than 30% of what it costs to carry on a publication of this quality at the frontiers of knowledge—and for which no significant advertising base yet exists. And this frontier knowledge is neglected (and not infrequently mocked) by most of the scientific and media establishments. Therefore, charitable contributions are needed to carry on this important information networking function. Here is the other basic motivation for NEF: It has been far too difficult (so far) to persuade venture capital to invest in new energy technology that is not quite ready yet for “prime time,” so the vicious Catch 22 (“We won't invest because it is not successful already.”) must be broken. We appeal to the humanitarian and charitable instincts of those in a position to invest charitably in and/or to spread the word about the most fundamental aspect of our future: The triumph of truth over falsehood on the frontiers of science—in which the new energy field, in our view, will be the first paradigm-shattering example.

What we have today in the fiery menace of hydrocarbon fuels and its associated geopolitical nightmare is very ugly indeed. There is almost no area of human activity that would not be dramatically affected by the advent of new energy technology—especially matters of war or peace and health and the environment. Therefore, if your review of the referenced material convinces you that this is a reality and not “pathological science,” as the unrepentant critics—who have not studied the scientific findings objectively or at all—would have you believe, we hope that you will view your tax-deductible support of the New Energy Foundation as a significant investment in your future, for your loved ones and for civilization at large. Just try to imagine our world twenty or fifty years hence without the advent of a dramatic source of new energy such as low-energy nuclear reactions, aether energy (or Zero Point Energy/space energy/vacuum energy, if you prefer), or some other very powerful new physics energy source. It is not a pleasant picture.

What about solar power, wind power, or hydrogen fuel cells, you ask? Those are fine, and Infinite Energy devotes some smaller space to writing about these. But a future of abundant, clean energy has almost no chance of emerging from the well-intentioned, beneficial, but extremely limited world of wind-power, photovoltaics, hydropower, and other conventional renewables. And the so-called controlled hot fusion tokamak reactor program, which is lavishly funded with billions of dollars by governments to the exclusion of workable new energy science and technology, will never bring about an era of clean abundant energy from the heavy hydrogen in water. Conventional hydrogen fuel cells, which are widely discussed by the news media today, rely on the conventionally understood energy from hydrogen when it combines with oxygen to form water. This is thousands to millions of times less powerful per gram of hydrogen than already demonstrated new energy sources! Furthermore, the hydrogen for conventional fuel cells must come from some other energy source that must be used to break down abundant water to get hydrogen fuel (if we reject the other hydrogen source: hydrocarbon fuel). But in all conventional hydrogen fuel processes using water as the starting material, this requires more energy than one gets back when the hydrogen is consumed. So ordinary “hydrogen power” is a misnomer at best—it is no solution at all to the world’s real energy needs. Hydrogen, conventionally employed, is an energy storage medium period. New Energy Foundation supports radically new forms of energy, not the relatively weak examples of alternative energy within conventional renewables. We acknowledge, of course, that there are now no robust new energy devices on the market—not yet. But when adequate, well-targeted research funding is applied, a revolution in energy technology will occur that will dwarf the personal computer revolution in intensity. It will have much in common with that revolution too, since power sources will be highly distributed. The very troublesome and erratic power grid is doomed to obsolescence.

At this time, New Energy Foundation is in need of financial support from a broader community than heretofore. NEF disseminates information about potentially world-changing technologies—about the science, technology, patents, investment, and politics thereof; we measure and investigate new claims about new energy devices to determine whether they are sound. This latter can be tough, because there is no question that there is much bogus “free energy noise” that obscures the good research. Most important, we are now processing grant applications by scientists and inventors from around the world, so that the most promising work—now highly under-funded, due to the very heretical nature of this work—gets the financial support that it so much deserves. We are very demanding about these grants; we insist that the research must be headed in the direction of developing publishable scientific results and/or actual commercially useful technologies that operate on new scientific energy principles

Please help us today, either with your financial contribution—of any size—or by passing along this letter and our message to those who may be better able to help NEF. Whatever you or they can afford, no matter how small an amount, will be deeply appreciated—and will be acknowledged in the pages of Infinite Energy (unless you or others tell us that anonymity is requested). Some day we will live in a world in which the discoveries of New Energy science will be taken for granted. No one will be able to deny the devices, processes, and science, whose validation we are struggling so hard to achieve. In some sense, we will then have succeeded in our mission and thus will have “put ourselves out of business.” Those scientific publications and general media, which should have been dealing fairly with this topic all along, will then be forced to write about it and recant past inexcusable excessive skepticism. Billions of dollars in R&D money will then flow from corporations and individuals, as should have been happening already based on what scientists have already discovered! The huge funding for infrastructure conversion to New Energy will flow naturally from private sources, as it has in the rise of the personal computer and Internet industry. Nothing would make me happier than to have that day come. But until then, we very much need increased financial support.

We would like to reach soon our target of at least $500,000 per year in approved research funding for New Energy. That may not seem like a lot of money to do significant research, but let me assure you that even this amount—wisely distributed to the best researchers—could soon begin to have a dramatic catalytic effect. New energy researchers are accustomed to low budgets and are fantastically creative, unlike the wasteful government energy research programs that have demonstrably failed already. It will not be easy to obtain even this level of modest research funding—and, of course, several millions of dollars per year would accomplish much more, but the sooner well-targeted funding reaches under-funded researchers, the more likely we are to accelerate the inevitable New Energy Revolution. Yes, we understand that there is room in parallel for corporate start-ups, and we definitely encourage that to take place. But some of the charitable grant money can help the struggling inventors and scientists to do sufficient research, so that their work can be of greater interest to corporate start-up models.

I think you would agree with me that in these often very dark times the world would benefit immensely from a realistic hope—followed by on-market technology—that a new era of abundant, clean energy resources will be dawning. Please do your best to help us make that happen. Study the hard-won information that we have brought to your attention, if you do not yet accept what I have tried to convey to you. When you have become convinced, if you are not already, please act! You may donate charitably to the efforts of New Energy researchers at www.infinite-energy.com. Please also help us to bring this critical issue to others who may be able to help. Why not satisfy your curiosity and also help New Energy Foundation by subscribing to Infinite Energy. Thank you in advance for joining with us now or in the very near future.

Sincerely,

Dr. Eugene F. Mallove
President, New Energy Foundation, Inc.
Editor-in-Chief, Infinite Energy Magazine

_(from http://www.pureenergysystems.com/obituaries/2004/EugeneMallove/LastMessage040513/ )

Tags: cold fusion, hydropower, energy, electricity, fusion, science, second law of thermodynamics, physics, thermodynamics, feynman, tesla

Comprehending and Copying Nature, non-ViktorSchauberger style

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:52:25 GMT

The Pax Principle and Energy Efficiency

its a dirty rotten shame that Jay Harman has never heard of Viktor Schauberger. It upsets me greatly. They do not respond to any suggestion of checking out Viktor Schauberger's devices, they simply don't care.

yet we salute them for their job well done. it is just that if Jay Harman and Callum Coats were to lecture about biomimicry, copying + comprehending nature, etc, together, and Schauberger was accepted to the biomimicry / bioneers scene, i think things would quickly start moving much faster.

Tags: water, h2o, @merlib.org, paxscientific, jay harman, bioneers, biomimicry, biomimetic, nature, health, healing

only green-tech can save u.s. economy, uber-investor says

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:29:17 GMT

from http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/05/only-greentech.html

Only Greentech Can Save U.S. Economy, Says Über-Investor

By Brandon Keim May 09, 2008 | 1:50:49 PMCategories: Climate, Energy, Stories from the Near Future, Sustainability

"The U.S. financial system is in a mess. The global marketplace is in the same disarray ... What the hell is going on? Can we get out of this mess, and how? And will our children be living in caves?"

New Yorker staff writer Nick Paumgarten posed those distressingly pertinent questions to Michael Novogratz, president of the Fortress Investment Group and the 317th-richest person in America, yesterday at the New Yorker Stories From the Near Future conference.

Much to the relief of everybody who doesn't want to spend their retirement fending off water bandits, Novogratz was optimistic. Our current economic woes, he said, are analogous to the dot-com bubble burst.

The internet's turn-of-the-millennium troubles were solved by the rise of second-generation web services. Globalization 1.0, as Novogratz called it, stalled after an initial purchasing power burst among the developing world's newly-arrived middle classes, but will be saved by globalization 2.0. All will be well.

There's only one catch: We need another wealth-generating economic bubble. And that, said Novogratz, must come -- can only come -- from new energy sources and green technology.

"As the price of oil goes up, there's got to be a green revolution. I think of what will be the next driver of the American economy, and it's green energy. That's a huge growth opportunity. It's not about the pollution. It's about the energy. Gas will go to $10 a gallon," he said.

I tracked Novogratz down after his speech. He was surrounded by a cluster of $2,000-a-head conference attendees wondering what will happen to the U.S. dollar and what to invest in. (The answer to their first concern was over my head -- but as for the latter, Novogratz is excited about the Brazilian economy.) Curious about his distinction between economic self-interest and the effects of pollution, I asked for his take on the economic impacts of climate change.

He seemed quite sanguine. It's a wild card, he said, but probably won't have an impact within the next ten years. "In 30, 40, 50 years, maybe you get an event that scares people. But unless you get an out-of-the-box event that you can tie into climate change," he continued, it wasn't going to be an economic factor.

Now, there's a reason why Novogratz is a full-blown member of the plutocracy and I'm a science journalist -- but that said, this seemed a bit cavalier to me. He's betting that worst-case scenarios won't come true, and even the short-term possibilities are scary. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in their last report [.pdf] that even small increases in global temperature could cause water shortages for hundreds of millions of people, crop-threatening droughts, increased flood and storm damage, localized "negative impacts" on subsistence farmers and fishers, and potentially troubling disease shifts.

(Or, to think of it another way, the current food crisis is taking place without an actual food shortage. Add a season of widespread droughts or floods to the mix, and things get bad. Quickly.)

That's just the short term. The long-term is much scarier -- and part of the reason why wealthy people are so wealthy is the ability to think several decades into the future. Seeing green technology in terms of maximizing profits rather than reducing greenhouse gas pollution creates a false dichotomy: pollution and profits are intertwined -- if not now, then certainly in the future. And the future may arrive sooner than expected.

Note: "The politicians' response should be, 'Get used to it,'" said Novogratz of the emerging energy crisis now fuelled by rising oil costs. He was particularly scathing of Hillary Clinton's gas tax holiday, which he called "the stupidest idea I ever heard."

Note #2: For more in this vein, read Alexis Madrigal's interview with angel investor Eric Janszen. Janszen also believes that only greentech can save the U.S. economy.

Image courtesy Tracy Olson

Tags: greentech, sustainability, sustainable, nature, electricity, energy, hydrogen, water, h2o, love, balance

old interview of Robert Plarr / Worldsnest/Angelsnest fame

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:37:51 GMT

found on http://lonestaricon.com/AbsoluteNM/anmviewer.asp?a=571

short chop fgrom middle of article....."we actually do something. The rest of the — what I call psychobabble, the environmental movement, has basically failed in the last 40 years because they dance in circles and they don’t produce anything.

I believe in building things and working can actually change the world instead of just talking about it. Having grants, dropping theories, and getting paid for the rest of one’s life does nothing. One of the things we do is have a research building that does the things we talk about. A lot of it is on the 99 yard line.

We actually have to build these things in the tens of millions, very inexpensively, to save this planet because this planet is finished. We’re not sustainable. We’re poisoning every well and stream in the country. Our country s collapsing under the weight of pollution and global warming, and we have a solution. We’re not a flavor of the day environmentalist. We actually live it and actually do it, as you can see."

Home Sweet, Homeland Security
Monday, October 02, 2006
By Nathan Diebenow, Associate Editor

Interview with
Robert Plarr,
Green Home Builder

TAOS, N.M. — Robert Plarr is a doer.

Over the last 30-plus years, he has taken it upon himself to find ways in which humans can live in their environment without doing more damage to it.

His experiments in home design led him to build a passive solar underground home. At the time in 1976, the home featured the world’s largest privately-owned wind turbine, a 45 kW Mehrkam design.

"We’ve been talking about this stuff for 40 years, and when you join our group, we actually make a change," Plarr told the Iconoclast. "The young people don’t have time to wait around for another 40 years for some environmental movement. Change is now. They can join forces with us now, and we can start implementing it now."

As a response to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Plarr said he poured his energy into the Angel’s Nest Retreat in Taos, New Mexico.

Billed as a model for sustainable-energy homes of the future, the 8,000-square-foot retreat is designed to be entirely self-sustaining with integrated solar and wind energy production systems, an internal sewage water recycling system complete with its own "rainforest," and an air-to-water system for fresh drinking-water.

"I started building a structure because I wanted to build truly a Homeland Security home," said Plarr. "When you have a home like this, you aren’t held hostage by anyone or anything.

"I’d like to say to President Bush, ‘Sir, I’m an ex-Marine — always a Marine. I reported for duty and did what you asked and we have a Homeland Security home now."

The Iconoclast’s Nathan Diebenow spoke with Plarr recently about his successes and failures early on in his career, the design of his new home concepts, and the untapped opportunity and growing necessity to manufacture these concepts worldwide.

.........

ICONOCLAST: What is your critique of the environmental movement?

ROBERT PLARR: I don’t know if you saw the website.

ICONOCLAST: Yeah, it’s pretty indepth.

PLARR: Yeah, it is indepth. It’s one of the unusual things because we actually do something. The rest of the — what I call psychobabble, the environmental movement, has basically failed in the last 40 years because they dance in circles and they don’t produce anything.

ICONOCLAST: How did you get the title of "father of sustainable energy’?

PLARR: I don’t know why they call me that stuff. I don’t know why somebody called me that. But I started building my first one in 1975 — a 6,000-sq.-foot earth shelter home and the world’s largest wind generator. I’ve been doing this physically since 1975. There’s probably nobody in the country that has made more mistakes than I have, I’m sure. There’s a lot of stuff that you think is going to work, but until you actually build it, it doesn’t.

The reason the new building works so well is because I actually lived in an earth shelter building since 1976. I did a lot of experimenting to see what would work past the solar greenhouse generational things through trial and error. Obviously, it wasn’t very popular back then even though during the Carter administration when all the gas lines were long, gas became cheap again, so people forgot about it.

We’re at a point now in our world where we have a building that is — well, I call every other home in the world "Katrina candy" meaning that once your electric goes out, you have a useless home. Our buildings are water resistant, fire resistant, hurricane resistant with these new materials, and if something happens like a power-outage, when you have a sustainable home you’re not held hostage by terrorist attacks or natural disasters.

If every home is its own infrastructure where it has its own water plant, sewage plant, and energy plant, then you don’t need to build these huge infrastructure systems that cost in the United States trillions of dollars that has failed over the last couple of hundred of years. We have the oil plants and the nuclear plants where you have to run lines thousands of miles. You have to run sewage lines, so if there is a disaster, you lose 100,000 people or a million people or five million people.

When everyone has their own individual system, no matter what happens out there, no one is going to go down in a crisis. You don’t have to build all this infrastructure. One of the things that is happening overseas that is great in China and Third World countries is that they don’t really have the infrastructure and they can’t afford the infrastructure. They can actually build these buildings now. The phone systems in China are terrific because they’re using satellites. They didn’t have the money to buy these phone lines like we had over the last 100 years.

ICONOCLAST: How cost effective are these individual dwellings?

PLARR: They are very cost effective. Obviously for me, doing it for 31 years, it wasn’t cost effective because I’m in a research and development situation.

They are very cost effective because you’re eliminating materials and labor, and, more importantly, you’re not using the things that cost a lot of money; wood has tripled, steel has tripled, and concrete has tripled. They’re unaffordable. They’re junky. Anytime something happens, they fail, and you saw what happened to Katrina. All those homes fell down because they were built improperly with junk materials that can’t withstand a Category 1 or a Category 2 hurricane.

We’re using waste stream materials like volcanic ash, foam cups, and those kinds of things that are considered waste are really gold. When you put in little percentage points of concrete in mixing these products, they are very strong. They last forever. With the new materials, we can actually get a home up in a day — the shell, the roof, the walls — and we’re looking at a seven- to 10-day home with putting in the prefab black-and-grey water system and the energy pod.

ICONOCLAST: So there are no plastics involved in the construction of these homes?

PLARR: Depending on the location and what your waste stream materials are, there could be foam cups; it could be one of the ingredients that you would use, like fly ash, volcanic ash, or anything like that. It’s a blend. It’s sort of like a concrete mix where you’re blending all these materials together, and depending on your region — like in Scotland, they have a lot of granite, they call them crusher finds, available, and if you’re in China or if you’re in Arabia, there’s a lot of sand, so it depends on your regional material. It’s different mixes for different sites.

ICONOCLAST: Inside these homes are little rainforests. Are they totally organic, pesticide-free?

PLARR: Of course. When you have your own rainforest in your house, and every building we have a rainforest of some size, it’s your black-and-grey water system. It is your sewage system.

Basically, your building catches water. It recycles it six times, and at the end of the cycle, we use an air-to-water machine to take the water out of the air. There’s nothing leaving the building for septic or sewage, so it’s harvested, and if everyone did that, we wouldn’t have the biggest problem in the world. Ninety-nine percent of the world’s water is unpotable. In Mexico City, right now, they’re telling you that you can’t drink the water or shower in it. Most of the wells in the United States are poisoned with MTBE, and it’s just getting worse by the day because seven billion people are dumping their sewage and chemicals and everything back in the ground water.

It’s getting the point that even the water companies can’t meet the federal mandates, so the point of it is that you’re obviously going to have to take the water out of the air. There’s three quadrillion gallons of water in the air because that’s the cleanest form of water because you can just use an air filter and a few other things to clean that water before you turn it into drinking water.

All of our ground water systems worldwide wreak havoc. Everybody dumps their stuff on somebody’s neighbor, some river, or some sewage plant that dumps it in the ocean, so basically, once we flush the toilet, we don’t want to know where it goes, and we’re trying to push it on to someone else.

In each one of these buildings you don’t do that. You’re self-contained. Each structure cleans it. There’s nothing to harm the planet. Our goal is for zero impact buildings. We’re very close to that. We’re very close to building them in mass. We know we can do them inexpensively. What our research center up there did was to prove systems for 30 years. Now our group is gearing up to implement this in mass.

One thing great about our building is that our products are on the 99-yard line, meaning that they’re up, they function. Now we get them to a manufacturing plant, and we start marketing and implementing them. That’s where we’re at now. We have working prototypes, and now it’s just a matter of getting them to the next level, which is very advanced. We’re very excited about it.

ICONOCLAST: One of the interesting things I noticed was your use of the polonia tree. They’re used to cut greenhouse gas emissions and also to use as a cash crop. What type of tree is it? Is it the princess tree?

PLARR: It’s a hybrid. It depends on where you get them from, but the nice thing about the polonia tree, especially with our situation is that it’s all indoors, so if we build you an 800 sq.-foot guest house or house for you and someone else, probably a 100 sq. foot of that would be a nice little rainforest, so on the black water side we put polonia trees in which have big beautiful leaves and because of the climate control situation in your building, it’s not going to get below 40 degrees in that room.

There’s something that’s always going to grow. You don’t have to deal with being outside in 20-below zero or something like that in the winter time. When you have a rainforest in your structure connected to the house, it’s a great medium for those to function very well, and grow and produce green sewage and a lot of oxygen.

So what happens is that you can’t do anything about the outside. The world is chopping down the rainforests, but with every home we build, we replant a rainforest, an ecosystem, so you get oxygen, medicine, and food from your little rainforest. There’s a tremendous amount of clean air. The banana leaf or polonia leaf is so powerful it takes carbon fibers out of the air so you really have clean room no matter if you’re in L.A. — the most polluted city in the country — as long as you’re in your house, you have clean air and water.

My partner Victoria (Peters) made sure that it was acceptable to the general public instead of idealists — maybe one percent of the people who would stay in a caveman house, but we made them acceptable to the general masses.

ICONOCLAST: You mean the layout and design?

PLARR: Yeah, the layout and design has to be like a regular home. It has to function like a regular home. When you walk in, you have to flip the switches on. It has to do everything a typical home does, but the difference is you’re off-grid and you’re basically walking into a beautiful rainforest that gives you all this great sleeping because when you sleep in our place, you have a great environment because plants clean.

Right now most people live in a rug apartment. Indoors is 10 times more polluted than outdoors with all the glues and the dry walls and all the chemicals and the plastics and all these mixed materials, so people are living in toxic soups. When you have plants that are a part of your living space , they clean the air. They provide you with tremendous oxygen. You want things that are in the building that actually clean things for you.

ICONOCLAST: So this specific tree is a hybrid, but what I’ve read is that these trees can become like weeds if you don’t take care of them.

PLARR: They can to some extent. You can groom them. If you’re using them to clean sewage and toxic waste dumps and stuff, you don’t really care. If you’re using them for lumber, what you do is you plant 1,200 trees an acre, and then what they do is strip the leaves off every year.

The other things they’re used for is cattle feed or to put in a gas fire to make hydrogen. But they groom them; they let the center root become a straight tree so every four to five years they can clip it off and sell it for lumber and it grows back up.

My understanding is that they have six to eight cuttings over its lifetime, so yeah, if you’re using them for lumber, then you groom them in one way. If you’re using them to just clean up toxic chemical areas, you can let them grow like weeds depending on what you’re need is.

ICONOCLAST: I see, I see. The other component to this is the hydrogen component, and this is where the Texas connection comes in. Can you explain to me how that process works?

PLARR: Hydrogen to us is going to be very critical because what is now coming into play is very inexpensive fuel cells that would run on methane and hydrogen. They are 50 to 60 percent efficient compared to batteries which are about 12 or 15 percent.

We have electrolyzers. I imagine we’ll have 100 things operating in that building, but what we’re looking at is that when you take electricity and you split water, you produce hydrogen.

You store that in a low volume under 200 psi like in a propane tank if you want to and you can store that as an energy source and then you can run that through a fuel cell that will run your electricity and hot water. It becomes 65 to 75 percent efficient. It’s very inexpensive to run buildings like that. We’re showing a different way.

The way they do it now is that they use solar, and I have that up there, too. I have the new and old ways where you have a solar bank and there are storage batteries which are very inefficient and expensive. Now, we are going to run our hydrogen through a plastic fuel cell which we are beginning in the next month or so.

We’re going to work with a whole lot of fuel cell companies. As long as you have hydrogen to run it through these fuel cells it is very cheap and efficient. And you can store it in a propane tank like in a back yard and low psi, so it’s very safe. This will be very common in the next few years.

ICONOCLAST: How do you create the hydrogen?

PLARR: What you have is excess electricity from wind or solar or high diesel which would be hydrogen mixed with diesel — all these kinds of things. You have this energy, and you run it in a electrolyzer, and the electrolyzer splits the water, so you use two or three kilowatts to split water to make this hydrogen. And you store it in a low volume tank.

ICONOCLAST: You’re not going to need to transport any kind of fuel across state lines then, right?

PLARR: You make it onsite.

ICONOCLAST: But excess energy, are you going to pipe it?

PLARR: What’s nice about this hydrogen is that you’re storing excess energy. You can store a month’s worth if you want depending on how many tanks you put in the ground. If you want three months worth of storage, you could store that excess energy that you’re producing onsite.

ICONOCLAST: One of my concerns is — and this is from what I understand through reading about the work of your partner Chris Sanders — how to use microbes to extract more natural gas from the Burnet shale.

PLARR: This is exciting because, evidently, this has been out for a few years. I don’t know technically how it works, but I understand there’s a microbe under the ground, and that if you stimulate it with carbon dioxide, it makes natural gas and oxygen, so you can pump the oxygen into the air and replenish the atmosphere and also make sustainable natural gas.

This is exciting because you’ve got a double bonus here. You’re solving two huge problems. Of course, that’s one of the great solutions.

The cheapest form right now of making hydrogen is splitting natural gas products. They spend a couple of billion dollars a year making hydrogen from it and then they use it in the refineries to make fuel, which to me is a waste. And they use it to launch the space shuttle. But the nice thing is, we’re going to come into the hydrogen era. It’s very clean. The exhaust of hydrogen is water. We’re going to move away from the old ways of doing things.

We’re finding better and inexpensive ways of doing things. As gas goes up which it is — it’s probably going to go up $100 a barrel pretty soon — China and India are going to be more like America, using more fuel, so this is critical because we’re running out of fuel from the standpoint where we can’t make it in the U.S. Something like 60 to 70 percent of the fuel comes from overseas, so we are held hostage.

If we do energy through agriculture, if we do these energy pods and the way we are producing energy onsite, and then the oil companies combine with Chris on these energy ranches where there are big land tracks making gas and oil and then they can put (polonia farms) out there; we can build the air-to-water plants and produce a 100,000 bottles of fresh water a day or you can water the cattle with it.

You’ve got solar farms, so what happens is that you’re forming a fully sustainable oil ranch platform, and if the oil runs out, then it doesn’t matter. You’ve still got solar, wind, and water plants, and polonia tree farms. This is a very logical way to make money in five or six or seven different ways instead of just oil and gas. It just makes sense.

I know he’s doing leases with farmers and ranchers that include solar and wind which is the same law as doing oil and gas and minerals. Now we’re doing water and polonia trees, so it’s terrific. It makes our world sustainable when you do things like that and it helps clean the planet up at the same time.

This is exciting. It’s something I think all the oil companies will jump right into because if they can make money in oil now and they can make money in gas and in polonia trees and in making fresh water ... and you put all these products on there that are cleaning the air and making the freshest water in the world — oil companies are going to love it because they’re making money in all these other pieces, too.. It cleans the planet, makes them heros, and phases out all the oil and gas in 15 to 20 years.

I’m really pumped up about this the most because there’s no doubt every oil company will jump on this. It’s a money maker for them and it’s not a threat to them. It’s a terrific win-win-win. Nobody is going to be against us because everybody is making money. You’re not putting somebody out of business.

This is seeding the greed. I’m an idealist. One of our homes is going to be 20 to 30 percent cheaper than any existing home and you live for free for the rest of your life, not worrying about natural disasters, what are you going to do? You’re going to build it, so all we’re doing with the oil companies is saying, "You’re going to make twice as much money. You’re going to clean the planet. And you’re going to have great PR. What do you care? You’re making twice as much money." And that’s what they’re in it for. It’s great PR, too. It really is. They need this stuff, and they have the infrastructure and manpower to do it.

ICONOCLAST: Just recently we saw BP’s oil line break and now we understand that they’re not reinvesting in their infrastructure, so how do you get the oil companys’ attention to at least fix their own stuff?

PLARR: Well, that one is pretty expensive. That’s about 2,000 miles of stuff that they — and I’m sure BP wasn’t the first guy to have that place. It probably went through four or five company changes, but one of the problems was they knew about this 10 to 15 years ago, that the lines were deteriorating. It’s an old story. Nobody puts the stop sign to the accident until it happens.

Do you know how much the Alaskan pipeline would cost if they built it today? Nobody would ever do it. What I’m saying is that this is very inexpensive what we’re asking them to do on their rigs, and it would be sustainable. That’s the key. When you run those pipelines, they’re not sustainable. Everything they’re doing up there, they need massive amounts of infrastructure and massive amounts of energy to run all these things and pump the oil through there.

What we’d do is basically when we build one of these sustainable ranches is ... we’re going to make maximum use of the oil fields which you’re probably aware is where most of the natural gas in the world get flared off. If you look at the Mideast and all these places, we could put bottling plants on Saudi Arabia next to the oceans in the humidity.

ICONOCLAST: Have your guys gone to Saudi Arabia to pick this idea?

PLARR: Yeah, in fact, they are very excited. In fact, I’ve been meeting with some people in L.A. that are involved with that and they are very excited because the biggest problem they have over there is that people are using desalinization which is very expensive and it’s nasty water. They use RO water which for every clean gallon of water you have to throw away four gallons.

In our case, we take it out of the air very inexpensively, and like I said, there’s three quadrillion gallons of water in the air. Obviously, you want a place that has relative humidity when you do that, but boy, you’ll be making more water than you can dream of.

Let me tell you what’s happening. There’s a revolution with air-to-water. Everybody in the world is going air-to-water because of one reason: the well water is poison. This is what everybody is interested in — can we provide you with a cheaper home that withstands earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters and terrorist attacks? Yeah. And the fact of the matter is, everyone wants what we just talked about. We’re about to be able to deliver them.

ICONOCLAST: Where? I thought I saw something where you were in Michigan.

PLARR: There are a lot of places right now. Mexico, China, and Singapore — the Third World countries are much easier because they don’t have infrastructure. It’s easy. They just say, "We’re going to do this."

In America, you have all this infrastructure. It’s a problem. You’ve got zoning boards where three people come in and say, "I don’t like clean water. I don’t like clean air." They could pull it up, but in the Third World countries, they have to have it, so they are implementing it.

Right now, we’re just putting it out to the zoning boards, and they’re very interested. All of them say, "We’re out of water." In fact, up in Taos, they’re not letting new developments go up because there is no water, and you have to provide the water.

We have a way now to build these buildings in the middle of nowhere with no electric and no water and produce the stuff right out of the air, so it’s going to be very inexpensive to do. You don’t have to buy a $25 billion sewage plant and road system and sewage lines and all that. You don’t need that when you build these type of homes.

There’s a lot of places in Texas and all over the country — I’m getting thousands of calls saying, "We can do it here." And the other thing that can happen is you can connect to the utility, but that means you’ll be selling your excess power and you can connect to your sewage. The sewage line won’t be used, but if you’re in the city, you can still build one of these and not use the systems even though you’re inner-connected. That means you make extra money selling your excess power to the power company, so you don’t have to build these huge coal fire plants.

We’re saying you can do it in any home. You can retro-fit or use one of our new designs. We’ve got a guy who is building a 12-acre facility out here in Malibu, Calif. There are going to be about 14 buildings in it. It’ll have the latest technology. It should start in about eight months, but this is going to take hold around the world because if you were staying in one of our places right now, you’d be going, "Oh, my God!" You’ll feel secure. You’re growing your food. You can fill your vehicles. If you want your own hydrogen fueling station, we’re building one so you can fill it up overnight.

The young people today are very scared because they don’t think there’s a future. We call our buildings Homeland Security, Social Security, insurance, and wellness because all those things are your generation. You’re never going to see health care or social security because 76 million Baby Boomers are going to wipe that out the first day they start collecting. There’s just not enough young people to support one older person very well.

So the only way you can do it is to build a system of sustainable homes. I call it "currency" because that’s the only currency in the world that will be worth anything. With the world filled with natural disasters, global warming, and terrorism, if you have a sustainable home, that is more precious than gold itself because you can actually live there no matter what happens and not be effected by the outside world because nothing can shut you down and that home will function.

ICONOCLAST: How many people must live in these houses in order for them to function?

PLARR: We’re looking at building 750 sq.-foot homes starting with. That’s the average Japanese size home. That’s a great guest house and a house for a family of four and on up. Those will be very quickly and easily built, a pre-fab sustainable home. We’re really pumped up about it. Once we get these going en mass — I can build one or two of them, but so what? We need tens of millions — hundreds of millions of these buildings.

ICONOCLAST: Are you working with organizations like green builders?

PLARR: Yeah, we’d love to. They’re just finding out about us, and what we’ll do is share what we do. We want to teach them all because our job is obviously to teach. We want to have a million contractors come out and learn this worldwide, so they can implement it.

That’s the only way they can be built. It’s not brain surgery. This is not some sort of secret to build these homes. It’s general contracting practices. It’s a better, cheap, faster way of building, and once they learn how to do it, it’s a no brainer.

All the contractors I talk to go, "Robert, steel has tripled, wood’s tripled, and concrete you can’t get it. There’s a moratorium on a lot of it, so we don’t want to build this way. This is all we have. This is all we know. It’s just killing us." By the time they put a house out, their costs have gone up, so if they can do something like this, they’re just thrilled.

ICONOCLAST: So you see the slowing down of the housing market as an opportunity?

PLARR: It’s a great opportunity because obviously ours will be cheaper. And think about it. You can get a house, but can you afford to live in it with all the costs of air conditioning, of heating, and everything that goes with it? People get in a house, and they find that it’s a deep black hole. Costs, costs, costs, costs. Repairs and this and that. We try to design a home that is virtually zero impact on the planet and virtually maintenance free. We want something that lasts the test of time.

INFO
www.worldsnest.com/
www.angels-nest.org/

ROBERT PLARR co-founded Angel’s Nest Retreat as a model for sustainable-energy homes in response to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

AN INDOOR RAINFOREST (pictured below) is a part of the water recycling system at Angel’s Nest Retreat in Taos, N.M.

BUILDING MATERIALS used in the creation of Angel’s Nest Retreat include adobe, but sustainable home designs can also incorporate waste materials such as foam cups and volcanic ash, according to co-founder Robert Plarr.

SPACEOUS LIVING QUARTERS are another main design feature of Angel’s Nest Retreat in Taos, N.M.

Tags: sustainable, sustainability, worldsnest, angelsnest, worlds nest, robert plarr, earthship, water, nature, off the grid, system

Lackluster now Friend of Wilhelm Reich Museum

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 20:48:08 GMT

hi. as of today, Lackluster / Esa Ruoho is a Friend of the Wilhelm Reich Museum. i had a few dollars on my paypal account and became an Individual Supporter. My aim is to get together 1000$ and become a lifetime friend of the wilhelm reich museum, thus supporting them in their publication of wilhelm reich's material.
i find this to be one of the most important things to do on this planet as of right now. if you don't, go and do a few proper searches and reads of the material on wilhelm reich, and material by wilhelm reich. maybe these will assist you in starting (i found them online by google video search)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1795533907135129413

Kate Bush Cloudbusting

Tags: wilhelm reich, orgone, orgonomy, bioenergy, psychoanalyst, health, mind, consciousness, emotion, feelings, wilhelm reich museum

Worldsnest/Angelsnest on gaia!! SUPPORT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Sat, 31 May 2008 22:37:01 GMT

i am SO glad to note that WorldsNest
are now on GAIA. They are at
http://worldsnest.gaia.com/

go and find out more about this stuff. its WONDERFUL. i cant but give mad props for this stuff. this stuff is the FUTURE.

from TvGuestPert ( http://www.tvguestpert.com/guestpert_details.asp?lost=password&guestpert=126 )

WorldsNest

World’s Nest is our future. Worlds nest supplies affordable Eco-Architectural communities for middle income families across the world. This includes

- 3-4 bedroom homes for $150,000K - $250,000, including ALL self supporting and sustainable systems
- Alternative fuel vehicles
- Waste Management Systems
- Waste Water Recycling
- Plant to Plate Programs for communities
- Solar and Wind Power Systems
- Advanced Recycled Composite Material for Construction
- Low cost radiant cooling and heating
Founder, Robert Plarr is unparalleled in his passion and knowledge for Sustainable Solutions in energy and environmental communities. As the co-author, of The Secret of Sustainability: Stories and Solutions from People who Invent – Build –Live It, Robert has dedicated his life focused on achieving the epitome of change in the future of green – now!

"I grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania and my family owned an amusement park. I have always been taken by out of the box 'sustainable' ways of building before it was ever fashionable."

Robert has assembled the best and the brightest to make this happen, including renowned scientist, Michael Fulton. Michael Fulton, former research and development scientist for NASA and the International Space Station who created the first solar-powered observatory, now brings his expertise to making solar homes and solar energy solutions a reality of today!

Co-Founder, Victoria Peters, walks her talk. She lives in the co-creation of a sustainable home and a sustainable life. In between work in the entertainment industry, Victoria champions all things ecological, including children and animals.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9386486@N02/2395532551/sizes/o/

GET ON THIS BOAT. NOW.

Worlds Nest/Angels Nest Sustainable Trailer

Worlds Nest/Angels Nest Promo Video

MUCH LOVE TO THIS. UTILIZE EVERY SINGLE THING YOU CAN DO TO MAKE THIS MORE WIDESPREAD. LAWS OF ATTRACTION, TELLING PEOPLE ABOUT IT, EVERYTHING.

Tags: worldsnest, worlds nest, angels nest, hydrogen, solar, wind, nature, vortex, water, h2o, sustainability

Lackluster is now a lifetime member of The Solar Village

http://lackluster.gaia.com — Fri, 30 May 2008 21:49:20 GMT

2008.05.28 Lackluster is now a lifetime member of The Solar Village world Community

Tags: solar village, lackluster, electronic music, ambient, chillout, music, mp3