The viral impact of hideous ideas...

Barely 100 students attend classes at Harrold, a tiny town in north-central Texas. But the school board's decision to allow teachers to carry concealed weapons has drawn national attention. By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. Published: August 28, 2008

I remember this decision quite well, and also recall wondering why Texas hadn't climbed all over this idea earlier. Given the mindset of the state, it seemed like a natural. I also recalled that in late '81, I was working for a mega-electronics firm, doing R&D at a site way out in the boonies. There were row after row of pick 'em up trucks, all fitted with gun racks, holding shiny rifle and shotguns. When I asked about this, an obvious nervous quaver in my voice, I was told, simply, It's causa the varmints. And sure enough, I would later spot engineers with coyote skins stretched on their bulletin boards.

But teachers packing guns in 2008, also reminded me that way back, when I was a high school teacher in Greenfield, Massachusetts, word came to the faculty that the teachers in Springfield had been cleared to carry concealed. At the time, Greenfield was a near twin to that Pennsylvania town in The Deer Hunter: all smokey factories, packed-together asbestos shingled houses, a Savonarola-esque version of Catholicism rampant, lots of drugs, and yes, deer hunters. I remember enthusiastic gun talk in the teacher's lounge that I tried to ignore, and quit that year, although not because of guns. At the time I could see a tidal wave of awful ideas gathering force: state testing, schools functioning as a holding-pen, putting retarded kids into regular classes, religion snaking its way into the public system etc. Awful ideas I tried not to think about. Of course, most of these have since come to a stunted fruition with predictably godawful results.

So now, gazing upon the pillaged mess that remains of Wall Street, I'm wondering about the spread of crap ideas. I know very little about the stockmarket, except to note its nervous-nellyism: how it can plunge precipitously because of either rumors or facts. Commentators mumble about our 24/7 news cycle, and the vast array of technology that spreads every little whisper. But my observation is that notions zoom through the culture without any of that. Witness the half-million hippies who showed up for Woodstock when, believe me, there wasn't much publicity about a groovy concert. Also, because my loner instincts have led me to making art in un-artful places, I've explored what seemed like peculiar ideas, without knowing why or where they came from. Much later I'd find out my work was like many other artists', artists who lived a thousand miles away.

As the years have rolled by, I've noticed that when a bad idea is loose in the land, there's not much you can do, except to point out its probable failure, then steel yourself for ridicule and sneering. Happily though, the same is true of good ideas. Some of them can't be ignored either, no matter how impossible they seem given the times. Check out: Civil Rights, the Women' Movement, nuclear disarmament, anti-war activism etc.

William Burroughs came up with what he called a viral theory of information, which I never fully understood. I'm clearer on it now, although I wouldn't call it that. I think, rather than being viral, the phenomenon is closer to flocking. Flocking is a shared but fragmentary consciousness that leads, say, to a thousand crows sitting on neighboring telephone wires. Somehow, a shared scrap of information gets transmitted among a thousand tiny brains. To me, flocking explains the heedless rush towards ruin these past eight years, all based on rotten but widespread ideas.

But maybe this fragmentary consciousness functions for our adaptive good. Maybe someday, we'll be able to tell the difference between wild honey and sheep shit, so the flock only shares good ideas.

Personally I don't think so but then, I don't want to be a bird on a wire. Haven't liked it when I was.