Wilhelm Reich and the Orgonomy of Anarchism

Arbor
June 2007

"Love, work, and knowledge are the wellsprings of our life.
They should also govern it."
-Wilhelm Reich

Increasingly each week and month I seem to become more sick at the culture I find myself to be a member of. Such as the atrocities of the invasion and continued occupation of Iraq, and the apathy and ignorance of my neighbors and fellow citizens regarding even the most basic of facts of that war-crime. Or the fact that, despite our ostensible wealth as a country, a precious few of us taxpayers can afford health care, education, or even rent. Or that events like the arrest of Paris Hilton or the ethnicity of Angelina Jolie's new baby retain so much public attention. Hollywood, television and the music industry, not to mention sports, create so many temporary celebrities of zero value, keeping my neighbor's heads flipping violently through the channels late into the night. Or, the disgusting, prevailing ideas of false morality which ensure that swine like Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist, and most amusingly Ralph Reed can bilk Indians out of millions, while parading as the country's shining, white teethed moralists. Or that a guy like Ted Haggard, one of the most famous and vocal of Christian pastors in the country and the most intimate to president Bush, was recently found to be buying methamphetamines from a male prostitute, the relationship evidently lasting several years. As he had spent his public life as an outspoken, vitriolic homophobe, he had the audacity to assure us all that they never plooked. I'm sure, Haggard. I'm sure you never plooked him.

But, still, the "culture of life," as the president is fond of calling it, which murders tens of thousand Iraqis and Afghans per year for many years now, that false morality which issues from fear and hatred, still warms the hearts and minds of desultory, processed Americans. This "culture of life" is responsible for the very evils it condemns; such as abortion, by denying safe contraception to women, healthy (i.e. not from the media) sex information to all, while assuming we won't surrender to our desire for the sexual embrace because pastor Richard Pumpiloaf barks the supposed 'evil' of the spontaneous, life-affirming delicacies of love-making with one's monogamous yet unwedded lover. It is this false morality which brands as taboo the words "fuck," or "shit," or ingesting psilocybin mushrooms, while mass slaughter, pornography, and governmental/corporate extortion spell the actual ethical code of our national culture.
Well, fuck those people. Fuck George W. Bush, fuck Grover Norquist, fuck Ralph Reed especially, fuck Ted Haggard, and fuck the Rev. Dr. Richard Pumpiloaf. There are other worldviews, psychologies, and even political systems which cry out for a desperately-needed, novel kind of culture. It is up to us; the brave, the few, and the righteous, to bring this false morality on its head. The primary focus of this paper is on a particular brand of this same kind of disparaged and malcontented crew of freedom fighters.

This paper is about the work and ideas of Wilhelm Reich, such as the "function of the orgasm," Orgone energy, and the "mass psychology of Fascism." It is also about basic anarchist thought and philosophy, and how these two systems of thought inform each other very nicely, specifically in how it might be possible that an Anarchist society or culture could actually exist, grow, and thrive on our Earth somewhere, at this point. The "orgonomy of anarchism" refers to the necessity of the harmonious relationships between all the organs of the organism, and of the proper, natural, healthy circulation throughout that organism of the life energy, Orgone, which almost mirrors the necessity of harmonious relationships between individuals and groups in a hypothetical anarchist society. But if "we all have a policeman inside our heads," or a wannabe patriarch or dictator lurking behind the shadows of our psyches, the anarcho-syndicate or commune won't last long. We shall look at Reich now.

There are few minds of the twentieth century who have contributed as much to our understanding of our selves, facing so much opposition while alive and posthumously, as Wilhelm Reich. Reich was a German doctor and psychologist, who worked, for a time, alongside Sigmund Freud. In fact, he was thought by many to be the future successor to Freud as leader of the psychoanalytic movement in Europe. He indeed revolutionized the field, although at its growing intransigence, through his work with the character, the body, and the orgasm, or the orgasmic process. One of his most important discoveries, if not the most important, was that the universe is filled, non-locally, with a kind of life-energy, the life energy, which he called Orgone.

This "primordial cosmic energy" expressed itself most immediately to us in the body, and the natural, interior freedom or blocking up of that energy. By studying people's body movements and characters, their method of articulation down to their posture and way of speaking, Reich proposed that this "character armor" and its different blockages was a key into people's deep, semi- and unconscious problems.

Reich distinguished several different character types, such as the hysterical, the compulsive, the phallic-narcissistic, and the masochistic characters. Orgone energy, according to Reich, flows through the body, and it either circulates in a manner healthy to the organism, or in a damned-up, rigidified manner, quite unhealthy to the person. In the process of orgasm, for instance, one can tell much about one's Orgone blockage, as well as where and how rigid or loose people's bodies are. A person's ability to relax to their bodies and experience pleasure, or whether they have regular, free bowel movements, are keys to the blockages and bound-up neuroses in one's character and self. These ideas are concisely explained in The Function of the Orgasm (1952), as well as Character Analysis (1945) and The Sexual Revolution (1945).
Freud had proposed that our bodily and sexual instincts, in order for "culture" to exist, needed to be repressed and thereby somehow sublimated. It was the presence of the dark and mysterious unconscious contents which were the problem. However, for Reich, it was these very prohibitions, imposed externally or internally, of the free, natural expression of these instincts which occasionally make weak, socio-pathic monsters out of people. The idea was that we are compelled from birth to slowly construct what Reich called the 'character-armor,' in order to protect the parts of our character we are ashamed of or cut off from, usually out of deep, un-conscious anxiety that the banished contents might be spotted. Until the root point of stasis, originating in the psyche yet also contorting the actual body in some way, is reached and freed, the neuroses will continue in their harmful, unnecessary wrangling of the character.

His system of character analysis was based on thousands of hours with patients and years of intensive study of the human organism. Freud and Jung focused on the depths of the unconscious and discovered much there, but they limited themselves to the symbols of the unconscious, and not the way the patient would actually speak about them. For Reich, "the manner in which the patient talks, in which he greets the analyst or looks at him, the way he lies on the couch, the inflection of the voice, the degree of conventional politeness, all these things are valuable criteria (Character Analysis, p. 45)." He criticized his colleagues who would complain of 'not having any material' to work with in a patient, i.e. they are not giving up anything which allows the analyst to analyze them. He said that "the how of saying things is as important 'material' for interpretation as is what the patient says . . . but the manner in which the patient, say, keeps quiet, or his sterile repetitions, are also 'material' which can and must be put to use (ibid)." This logic turns every social experience into a chance to understand the mechanism of psyche or Self, and its relationship to visible character traits, as well as the physical organism itself, amongst individuals or groups of individuals.

Reich was courageous enough to state that unless people were experiencing orgasm naturally, in a healthy and consistent fashion, then certain physical issues arise, the most obvious being constipation. He would touch his patients' chests and legs, and sometimes have them sitting in their underwear through the session. He proposed the "emotional plague," an "epidemic disease, like schizophrenia or cancer, with this important difference; it manifests itself essentially in social living (CA, p. 248)." The effects of the emotional plague are what we suffer through, psychologically and physically. It gives rise to the sadism, deceit, destructive nature of our species at present, and for about as far back in time as we have record of. The emotional plague manifests as wars, domestic violence; indeed, any kind of domination or violence that can occur between two people. We sometimes derive some kind of pleasure out of hurting others, with words or fists, because we are infected with this plague, which operates on fear, guilt, and shame. The instincts, in an 'armored' person, meet the armor and wish to go out past it to the outside world, however crashing into that barrier are mangled and twisted, thus barring an 'armored' person to experience love and pleasure to the extent that we need and desire.

Where do the blockages come from? Usually from the control mechanisms of those who were around us during our most formidable years; our parents. The hierarchical structure of the home can be just as fascistic or dictatorial as that of any state or government. Punishing a child for masturbating, for instance, is found to be highly damaging to the child's development, as it quickly affiliates the sexual impulse, natural, healthy and necessary on its own, with fear and punishment. Thus the child finds it must hide or suppress its natural tendency to experience its own sexuality, and a whole host of problems result; pornographic fantasies, sadistic impulses, premature ejaculation, impotence, frigidity, etc. From this shame, the young adult either succumbs to the fear and rigidifies itself into an unfeeling, unemotional stiffneck with no connection to its body, or it tries to counterattack the shame by immersing itself compulsively in the activities which now cause it, thus enflaming the wounds even more. We see this in the reaction of, for instance, some of those who were raised in a very puritanical and sheltered, fire and brimstone type of environment, when first encountering red light districts and pornographic magazines.

As an antidote to this 'plague,' Reich developed the "self-governing character," whose inner drives are enabled to naturally actuate themselves, without the need for repression or rules. The "self-governing character" is un-armored, and therefore in a position to understand the universe, or the whole world of the senses, functionally. Thinking and speaking functionally was a field in itself for Reich- Orgonomy rests upon the basis of functionalism, a "method of thinking and working" which

becomes a dynamically progressive force of social
development only by observing, criticizing, and changing
mechanistic-mystical civilization from the standpoint of
the natural laws of life, and not from the narrow perspective
of state, church, economy, culture, etc. . .
The living human animal acts like any other animal,
i.e., functionally; armored man acts mechanistically and
mystically. Orgonomic functionalism is the vital expression
of the unarmored human animal, his tool for comprehending
nature (EGD, p. 11)."

It is important to here note that Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian of Jewish descent, who was growing up, living and working in WWI and post WWI Germany, during the massive rise in public support for National Socialism which elected Hitler Chancellor in January of 1933. This was the same year which saw the first edition of Reich's juggernaut The Mass Psychology of Fascism; an exegetical combing-through of the social, cultural, sexual, and nationalistic trends existent then in Germany which provided such a massive powder keg for a spark like the Fuhrer. As a psychotherapist throughout the period from the Treaty of Versailles to World War II, Reich was in a particularly candid position to see the behind-the-scenes, inner life of this culture's individuals.

Obviously, he never attempted to steer clear of political critique and activism. He was kicked out of the Communist, then the Socialist parties of Austria, both times for publishing on his Orgasm theory. After having been labeled a "pornographic Jew" by the Nazis, he narrowly made it out of Germany, disguised as a tourist going skiing in Switzerland. He was pursued with even more fervor by the United States government, although the charges which finally put him in jail were for practicing with an expired license. He refused to even attend the trial. His heart attack in the New York prison occurred, amazingly, the day before he was to go up for parole.

There are countless other amazing discoveries of Reich, in the social sphere as well as the hard sciences, such as his "cloudbuster," a machine using Orgone energy which successfully brought rain to a rural town in Maine which had been in the middle of a drought. But, I think this has been enough of an introduction of Reich's work and ideas. Now it is time to look at the "orgonomy of anarchism."

To start to crack the nut of the matter, it is the political implications of Reich's "self-governing character" model, specifically as it relates to Anarchism and Anarchist political theory, which it is the purpose of this paper to present. Deliberately or unwittingly, Reich developed a healthy psychological, physical and sexual model for the individual which has a remarkable affinity with the obvious prerequisites for an Anarchist culture. The self-governing character model could, to me, potentially preclude or make unnecessary the problems of how to establish and even maintain communities without governments and hierarchies.

Anarchism is a system of ideas, theories, and much historical experience, dedicated to establishing communities and societies without hierarchical structures or institutional coercion of any sort. It originated in western Europe, as a result largely of the tide of problems caused by the Industrial Revolution, amongst the same turmoil which saw the rising of communism and socialism. It has many faces, facets, and convictions; namely, opposition to any authority which prohibits us from ordering and maintaining our own culture freely. The many anarchists remembered most by history were the Christian Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who first used the term "anarchism" in his Property Is Theft; the Russian Peter Kropotkin who responded to Darwin's theory of evolution with the book Mutual Aid: A Primary Factor in Evolution, in which he advocated that cooperation, just as often as competition, was a primary function of God's kingdom; Emma Goldman, the Russian emigrant to the U.S. who lived with and advocated the justice owing American prostitutes and women everywhere, calling marriage "legal prostitution."
Anarchism necessitates, in a sense, that each individual be self-governing- if they are not, they will need a government to keep them in line. Its really very simple. If I wish to live in a society without the infrastructure and beaurocracy, the lumbering hypocrisy of government, I must be prepared to choose not to steal, or do anything else harmful or coercive to my fellow human. I must also be willing to mediate and deal with the issues which affect my community in a sane, rational, and constructive way. I must, in short, care about my neighbor as much as myself.
Goldman, in her essay "Anarchism," wrote that it is
the teacher of the unity of life; not merely in nature, but in man.
There is no conflict between the individual and the social
instincts, any more than there is between the heart and the lungs (Goldman, 52).

This statement is true, according to my convictions, however, without doing the kind of work which Reich proposed, or becoming a 'self-governing' character, there will exist conflicts between the "individual and the social instincts." This is an example of how Orgonomy informs anarchism, in that the former is the prerequisite to the latter. Many early and contemporary anarchists and other pioneers of freedom idealized a social system, righteously, wherein didn't exist police batons or criminality. There were many practical models offered, such as Rudolph Rocker's "anarcho-syndicalism," however none touched on the fundamental germs within individual human beings which give rise to fascism and authoritarianism. Reich, a doctor and psychoanalyst, found that germ and offered highly practical means of eliminating it in the organism.

In an essay explaining Anarchism in his newspaper The Blast, American anarchist Alexander Berkman says that
Anarchists hold life as the most sacred thing. That's why they want to
change the present order of things where everyone's hand is against his
brother, and where war, wholesale slaughter in the pursuit of the dollar,
bloodshed in the field, factory and workshop is the order of the day. The
poverty, misery and bitter industrial warfare, the crimes, suicides and
murder committed everyday of the year in this country will convince any
man of intelligence that in present society we have plenty of Law, but
mighty little order or peace (Berkman, p. 134).

And who could be found in disagreement with that idea? And what is our problem? Where did we go wrong? The machines which were supposed to take hours out of our work weeks have only added more hours worked; we are still, most of us, just as poor. The democratic institutions which were supposed to eliminate unjustified power and the brutalities of that power, domestic or abroad, have only made it more convenient to curtail people's rights and murder those that don't agree with it. We have no more monarchies by divine-right; we have several global plutocracies by financial might.

The inherent, practical problem which anarchism and other libertarian, egalitarian political systems have always faced is; when people are forced to live in authoritarian or fascistic cultures, be it in the home, nation, or both, they will, nine times out of ten, become infected with the germ of the emotional plague, which grows into a vicious, petty little tyrant within us. If we let loose the guard on these monsters, we get riots, looting, carnage. We've seen it before. The reason might be this: we revere the authority figures which have some kind of control over us, or who symbolize the structures which control us. These types have always been generals, heads of states, emperors, warriors, action movie heroes, etc., because, as is obvious to anyone without their head buried in the ground, we live in a deeply patriarchal, control-worshipping culture, where the strong win and the weak lose, period.

Well, what is considered strong? The ability to be a soldier, to fight against the enemy (whom you never met and know nothing of), to kill that enemy, to have "resolve" and "stay the course," to "shoot from the hip," replacing critical analysis and the intellect for "gut instincts." To be weak is to cry, to recoil at the horror, to feel sympathy for those getting stomped on. To be weak is to turn the other cheek. To be weak is to think, and not fight. To be weak is to be "against us" and therefore with "the terrorists." To be strong is to destroy, maim, kill, torture, and loot for one's god, one's economic system, one's nation (the accidental locale of your birth), or whatever else you need.

To an entire culture imbued with these themes, through their own history, or the movies, television programs, or magazines which issue from the public relations giants on Madison Avenue and Hollywood, selling an image, a way of life, a way of 'thinking the world,' as anthropologists say, a foul type of redemption from the death-evil problem. The saturated children of the eighties and nineties, especially, have been marinated in a matrix of supreme falsehood and folly, of imperial ignorance of their own history and their own selves. The problem of "crystallizing public opinion," as Edward Bernays called it a hundred years ago, has been solved, thanks to the messianic media creations of those huddled in board rooms in New York and Los Angeles.

What kind of liberty does the anarchist speak of, then? To most, the absence of laws would imply either terror and total chaos, or the opportunity to finally eat for free. The Russian anarchist Mikael Bakunin answers
I am a fanatic lover of liberty, considering it as the unique condition under
which intelligence, dignity, and human happiness can develop and grow;
not the purely formal liberty conceded, measured out and regulated by the
state, an eternal lie which represents nothing more than the privilege of some
founded on the slavery of the rest . . . No, I mean the only kind of liberty that
is worthy of the name, liberty that consists in the full development of all of
the material, intellectual and moral powers that are latent in each person;
liberty that recognizes no restrictions other than those determined by the laws
of our own individual nature, which cannot properly be regarded as restrictions
since these laws are not imposed by any outside legislator outside or above
us, but are imminent and inherent, forming the very basis of our material,
intellectual and moral being- they do not limit us but are the real and
immediate conditions of our freedom (Chomsky, p. 121-122).

As we can see from this quote alone, anarchism is not the political theory for the weak, the ignorant, the lazy, the apathetic, the criminal. It is not for those who need to be told how to think, act, live, talk, or work. It is for those of us who are self-governing, and those of us who truly aspire to be self-governing, who wish to organize our own communities the way we want them to be, who will to shatter and reconstruct from the ashes of this august civilization a novel, life-affirming, spontaneous, creative, compassionate, natural order.

We have now covered a psycho-physical model of cognition and being, Orgonomy, which places importance on the balanced flow of Orgone energy throughout the different organs and glands of the body, the most detrimental of them being the genitals. The 'self-governing' character is one whose organs and glands are working harmoniously in her organism, who is aware of and capable of attaining healthily her needs, psychological, physical, and therefore socially, creatively, and spiritually. One who is self-governed, in Reich's sense, is most importantly he who holds sacred the spontaneous, violent surrender of orgasm experienced with his lover. If this one condition were achieved nightly in the homes across the west, to speak of my own hemisphere, I think international relations might be quite different.

Why? The thirst and hunger for war and domination, of a 'foreign' people (symbolic, on an individual level, as meaning anyone other than yourself), issues from, plainly speaking, the stasis of Orgone energy in different parts of the body. This creates rigidity, which barriers us from true, vulnerable feelings and experiences, desensitizing us to basic human emotions and activities, becoming roboticized, internally frustrated, and increasingly in search of jingoistic or violent distractions.

The outcome of our true intentions become thwarted by the character armor, through which they must pass in order to reach the 'outside world.' They become disfigured, perhaps criminal, often nasty. Only an armored person can steal and lie to others- they are immune, in a sense, to these things themselves through their own defensive enginery, the armor. If one is unarmored, this kind of turmoil, just in reaching out to the world around one, is unnecessary, strange, and foolish-looking. In a passage which resembles anarchist thinking through and through, Reich writes that the armored person
perceives the self as consisting of isolated parts. Every impulse must
penetrate the armor. From this, the feeling of "you should" and "you
must" arises, as well as the idea that the organism has a higher center
that gives "orders" to the executive organs. In addition, there is the
sensation of heaviness, inertia, or even paralysis in the limbs and the
torso, which gives credence to the idea that an organ must act and be
moved by an order (EGD, 118).

In other words the organs are self-directing, in a sense, and exist on their own, ideally harmoniously, because they all have their own unique job and mode of expression in the body. The body is dynamic- it is an interdependent, holistic system which hangs onto little which it has no use for. The liver, the heart, lungs and genitals, all have a presence and, in their manifold working parts, have an interiority and a purpose. It is allowing them to expand and contract according to natural processes, without the stern tasking of the character armor, which makes a self-governing character.

In The Function of the Orgasm, Reich notes that a person "brought up in an atmosphere which negates life and sex acquires a pleasure-anxiety," finding its way through the organism in the form of "chronic muscular spasms" and other psycho-somatic afflictions. This "pleasure-anxiety" then is the "soil on which the individual recreates the life-negating ideologies which are the basis of dictatorships (FO, p. xix)." In the same essay, he says that
the character structure of man today- who is perpetuating a patriarchal,
authoritarian culture some four to six thousand years old- is characterized
by an armoring against nature within himself and against social misery
outside himself. This armoring of the character is the basis of loneliness,
helplessness, craving for authority, fear of responsibility, mystical longing,
sexual misery, of impotent rebelliousness as well as of resignation...Human
beings have taken a hostile attitude toward that in themselves which is living,
and have alienated themselves from it (ibid. xx).

Again, it is these words and ideas which have been curiously absent from the corpus of anarchist literature, that I have seen. We cannot have a healthy collective, syndicate, commune, or info-shop made up of unhealthy, power-seeking individuals. We know what is wrong in the outside world- the bombs tearing apart innocents, economic strangulation, militaristic control of most of our species- we could go on forever with these issues. And we should. But we should also recognize and realize the individual, as the primum foci of all social endeavor, and strive to engender good humanity, and freedom from internal warfare and neuroses, before we expect everyone to automatically act as if they haven't grown up in an image-obsessed, authoritarian, conformist, mass-mind culture.

It is this armor which slowly builds and puffs itself up, like a dictator with extended arm over the masses, over those whom we try to control or fantasize of controlling, either overtly or with the most polished delicacy. There was a saying affiliated with some renegade psychoanalytic movements from the sixties such as were found at Esalen and Millbrook which said "There is a policeman inside all our heads; and he must be destroyed" which provides another angle of Reich's work. It was this profound, chain-shattering idea of individual freedom, of mind, body, emotions and spirit which he gave inspired voice to.

Another similarity of principle between Orgonomy and anarchism is the idea that women must not be economically dependent upon men, that the exploitation of women's sexuality for the selling of vices or commercial products is abhorrent, that marriage should never occur as a means of securing a necessary and convenient, traditional, financial relationship for those involved and their families. That the sexuality of women could be subjugated to the needs of the social sphere is an age-old leitmotif; Levi Strauss covered this extensively with his theories of the origin of the "trading of women" and the origin of bride-price and dowry among "un-civilized" peoples. However, in our "civilized" culture, the practice merely demands the auspice of approval from judge and priest, and it is officially safe, clean, and sanctified by the ostensibly most sacred authorities in the land. Reich realized after decades of therapy with thousands of patients, that this sort of dependence, wherein women (of his time) were forced by the agreement to endure years of unfulfilled, sexual stasis, and as many more bringing children to the family, leads to major psychological problems. Again, Reich was living and working in Austria and Germany when he was gathering this data from thousands of hours of therapy with the middle and upper classes. The culture and time in which he was working out The Function of the Orgasm and The Mass Psyhology of Fascism was during the same time, almost exactly, that the Nazis garnered enough popularity to come to take power over Germany, and later Poland, Czekoslovakia, France, and half of Scandinavia. The family structure in this culture, according to Reich, was fascist itself. Women had, especially in the upper classes of society, very little influence over local or national politics, their vocation or education, or their bodies. He describes the findings of his therapy, with women who had lived for years with an "unloved man, who had suffered the sexual act as a 'marital duty,'" who were finally unable to do so (FO, 151)."
They went on strike, would have no more of it. What could I say against
it? It was at variance with all the accepted views, such as the one that a
wife, as a matter of course, has to grant her husband sexual satisfaction
as long as the marriage lasts; whether she wants to or not, whether she
loves him or not, whether she is aroused or not. The ocean of lies in this
world is deep (ibid)!

Quite naturally, the generally-Anarchistic view on this issue is that women must be able to choose their own work, their own knowledge, their own experiences, their own sexuality and romances. These decisions should not be made on the grounds of satisfying tradition or the desires of family and friends, nor on economic convenience and security. A woman should never be forced into a position where she is subservient to or dependent on a man financially, any more than a man should be on a woman. If women and men had the absolute freedom to choose their own work, art, craft, or skill, regardless of finances at all, we would not have the phenomenon of the cubical-drone commuters, Marcuse's "one dimensional man," briefcase in hand and finances bearing heavily on the loins.
In her essay "The Traffic in Women," Emma Goldman wrote
Of course, marriage is the goal of every girl, but as thousands of
girls cannot marry, our stupid social customs condemn them either to a
life of celibacy or prostitution. Human nature asserts itself regar-
dless of all laws, nor is there any plausible reason why nature
should adapt itself to a perverted conception of morality.
Society considers the sex experiences of a man as attributes of
his general development, while similar experiences in the life of
a woman are looked upon as a terrible calamity, a loss of honor
and of all that is good and noble in a human being. This double
standard of morality has played no little part in the creation and
and perpetuation of prostitution. It involves the keeping of the
young in absolute ignorance on sex matters, which alleged
"innocence," together with an overwrought and stifled sex nature,
helps to bring about a state of affairs that our Puritans are so
anxious to avoid or prevent (Goldman, p. 186, italics mine)."

The italicized sentence reflects Reich's work, such as his The Sexual Revolution, and The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality, which were concerned primarily with these problems. It was this work which found squeamishness and repulsion in the many echelons of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society as well as the Nazi party.

As the quote at the beginning of this paper states, "love, work, and knowledge are the well-springs of our life," that "they should also govern it," so does the global desperation for individual freedom and real liberty. A novel, free, creative, healthy, natural morality should also govern our characters, and the actions we will and carry out.

There is a force in the universe which directs the manner of the injection of novelty, creativity, spontaneity, cooperation, and goodness into our world and individual consciousness, which we call "good." There is also a force in the universe which directs the injection of entropy, blind habit, ignorance, greed, Typhonian destruction, and evil, which we call "bad." All the Reichs, Learys, Chomskys, Socrates', Christs, and Goldmans (to name a precious few) have been the promulgators of the former, murdered at the slimy behest of the latter. This I see as the greatest tragedy of the world, as well as a contemporary, stronger-than-ever phenomenon. I am not simply "ok" with this.

I have but one stake in this world- to fight. To fight for real knowledge, real wisdom, real love, real freedom. So why do I feel like an alien in this world? Why have I always felt like an exile in this home of the brave and land of the free? Perhaps the only comfort might be found by studying the lives of people like Wilhelm Reich, which show me that I am not alone, that there are others who have seen that "the ocean of lies in this world is deep!"

I have an inexplicable, unquenched lust for justice and freedom. I zealously think that people should have the freedom to eat psilocybin mushrooms, LSD, and mescaline, to smoke marijuana and opium. I think it sacred to lust for the body of my lover and soul-mate, morning after morning and night after night, as opposed to the fake bodies of Hollywood mannequins. These are some of my values. And, I didn't spend years of self-education and relentless self-reflection merely to come out an enlightenment-seeking student of a New Age messiah-guru-wannabe. I didn't spend my childhood as a fat kid in a midwestern public school to be able to better cheer on the bullying of other "weirdos." My aim, my only ideal, is the defense of the deeply personal liberties of wisdom and truth, of spiritual exploration and psychological health, of sexual and physical pleasure, and above all, the pursuit and understanding of happiness and unhappiness.

Sources
Berkman, Alexander. The Alexander Berkman Reader. ed. Zinn, Howard. (New York, Seven Stories: 1992).
Chomsky, Noam. Chomsky On Anarchism. (Oakland, AK Press: 2005).
Goldman, Emma. Anarchism and Other Essays. (New York, Dover: 1999).
Reich, Wilhelm. Ether, God and Devil. (New York, Farrar Straus and Giroux: 1949).
Reich, Wilhelm. Cosmic Superimposition. (New York, Farrar Straus and Giroux: 1949).
Reich, Wilhelm. The Function of the Orgasm. (New York, Farrar Straus and Giroux: 1979).
Reich, Wilhelm. Character-Analysis. (New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 1949).