I've been hearing much about the D.I.Y. philosophy, which stands for Do It Yourself. Apparently the punk movement began as an attempt to be independent of corporate influences, to set up an independent self-sustaining subculture. I'm told that punk records are not copyrighted for this reason. Tony has a vision of a separate society that doesn't interact with "Babylon" at all -- it serves its own food, records its own music on its own record labels, and survives without money.

Even though most self-proclaimed "anarchists" spend their days crouched on sidewalks sipping 40 ouncers, the actual anarchism movement doesn't value that sort of thing: it values work and accomplishment just like mainstream society, only they don't measure it with money. They're trying to live without The System inside society. They're trying to create a little choice, an alternative to the mainstream.

The philosophy of the whole anarchist scene/ movement can be encapsulated as follows: European feudalism became modern capitalism and didn't change much. Through the continued enforcement of private property laws, the non-rich are forced to rent property from the rich. To do so they have to come up with lots of money each month, which means they have to work. Which wouldn't be so bad if it ended there, but it doesn't. The system is designed to get everyone caught up in the whole consumerism thing, making sure everyone covets this or that, or else paying off debts -- credit card, college loans, mortgage, car payments -- in a modern version of the Company Store. Where once supply met demand, now supply creates its own demand through advertising and generally fucking with people's heads. As Noam Chomsky put it, today's producers are more "engineers of consent" than useful suppliers.

Sure, it's technically possible to save money and live within the system without getting hooked, but for the last 30 or so years the rate at which Americans save their money never fluctuates from 3% of what they earn (I read that somewhere. Try to keep bearing with me. This part is almost over.) Most people, of course, save nothing; all their labor goes towards supporting their consumption. Furthermore, there's this whole cultural pressure mechanism where we're taught that only Money is good, and that work and people that don't produce Money are near useless. And, most repugnant of all to the anarchist philosophy, built into capitalism are little institutionalized hierarchies where one individual is routinely forced to bow before another.

The People's Kitchen folk are pretty unforgiving with this philosophy; any manifestation of government-connected society is dismissed out of hand. For instance, when we drove to a town called Bolinas, which is just north of San Francisco and clearly a place where hippies and post-hippies dominate, with dogs unleashed everywhere, all sorts of bikes, a surreal proportion of VW busses, and lots of people with that long-term vegetarian look. The crunchies weren't a contingent, not even just a majority, but the totality. I imagine even the sheriff patrols in a VW bus. But still the place was deemed infested with "yuppie hippies" and "sell outs".

Another example: if we see a fire at the beach, and someone asks what kind of people they are to see if we'd want to join them, anyone other than gutterpunks is dismissed as "just a bunch of yuppies." And they're right, as compared to themselves most people have upwardly mobile ambitions. As they've divorced themselves from society, they obviously have no ambition within it. Their ambitions are more along the lines of starting other anarchist kitchens or planting the seed for the much-discussed "anarchist community center."

The result of this Us vs. Them philosophy is that they feel endlessly pursued. When the camper broke down on the hiway, conversation stopped each time a car drove by until we could be sure it wasn't a cop. And this even though none of them have warrants, they don't keep drugs on board (they bury them in Golden Gate Park), and the camper is totally legal. I think it's just the result of living for so many years as an outsider. It's understandable, as this living outside the money system is tough. Cops start to seem like the jackbooted, brainwashed and armed enforcers of the ruling class, and anywhere you park they can and often do come knocking in the night to inspect the "suspicious vehicle," and they sometimes throw their cop weight around. It starts to feel like you're given a choice between participating in the economy -- on however menial a level, as the world still needs people to clean up pumpkins -- or being hunted down.

Okay, we're done with the religion/philosophy thing. Promise.