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Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Vol. 32. No. 25. October 9, 1969

What is Para-Politics?

What is Para-Politics?

Anyone who has a sincerely motivated desire to understand what Timothy Leary is about in his campaign for the governorship of California must make a thoughtful effort to understand what is meant by parapolitical social activism. It is a new kind of politics on the American scene and requires a bit of thought. In a previous issue of this column I defined parapolitical action as the kind of action that acts parallel to political action but with means and aims of its own choosing, and quoted Leary's Declaration of Evolution from his book. The Politics Of Ecstasy. In the July 11 issue of the Living Arts supplement of the Freep. under the heading of What Is Parapolitical Action (p. 45) I defined five aspects of it and suggested a few practical examples of it. But a concept as new as parapolitics evidently requires further definition and repetition, as witness Jerry Applebaum's article, "Lcary Campaign has its drawbacks." in the last (July 18) issue of the Freep. As we shall see. Applebaum's "drawbacks" belong to the sphere of the obsolete (Leary would say "menopausal") power politics of the Old Man, not to the new parapolitics. The Leary campaign is Not Just Another Ploy In The Game Of Power Politics.

Parapolitical action envisages the introduction into human society of the life styles of the New People, of expanded transcendental awareness and the sense of holiness. It is a nonviolent politics of love.

It is opposed to power politics, a system in which publicity elected servants become corrupted into bureacrats who exhibit the same symptoms of deterioration whether they are elected by the one-party system of the USSR or the "democratic" electoral system of the USA.

Parapolitics aims Not at what it can Get AwayWith in the game of power politics without incurring the hostility of the military-industrial complex, but what makes sense in the interests of man's human rights, human needs and his spiritual health.

Parapolitics strives to replace the labels of power politics with a new terminology that symbolises the moral and spiritual values of the newly emerging life styles as well as the concepts of a just sharing of the fruits of the new technology with a view to wiping out poverty and inequality, but Without Creating A New Bureaucracy With Authoritarian Powers.

Parapolitics is Activist, but its thrust is not against buffers and decoys, deployed by the power structure against all dissent, but against the decision-making powers who create and support the present death-oriented society.

Against these powers it poses a life-enhancing, joy-giving, love-oriented, mind-expanding society of the sort that is now taking shape within the matrix of the old society.

Parapolitics is a politics of the soul.

The success or failure of parapolitical social actions does not depend on winning points in political debates or in outbidding your opponents in the number of blandishments and promises you make to the electorate. Like the soul singer or the "high" musician or poet, the object is to bring out the best in the voter and transform his vision so that he will respond to the transcendent and the holy rather than to the trick machinery of power politicians.

(See Timothy Leary's essay, What Kind Of Party Do You Want elsewhere in this issue of the Freep.)

The Fingers Of A Hand Joined At The Wrist

The parapolitical concept does not preclude the parallel actions of any line of social change which is designed to promote a joyful, life-enhancing society and is, like itself, against the game of power politics. This includes all social actions of the Left which are not merely schemes to replace one bureaucracy with another and one power structure with another power structure. Since it is not limited to the page 11old labels, it is prepared to accept help from the Middle and the Right if such help fits in with the aims and means of parapolitics. As such it envisages a United Front against fascism, and is able to make common cause with any other attempt at a united front against fascism. without necessarily seeing eye to eve with it on strategy and tactics. It is the idea of everyone doing his thing, as long as it means and ends are not anti-social. To repeat a slogan I have repeated many times in this column: the fingers of a hand united at the wrist.

Mythopoeia and Intellection

Mythopoeia has been defined as an independent and autonomous faculty of the mind which may operate at any time and in any age, along side of intellection and speculation.

It is in this sense that poets have been called the unrecognised legislators of the world. In the same sense a singer like Phil Ochs, in one genre, and Jimmy Morrison in another, are unrecognised legislators. Not that they lack recognition in the sense of public exposure, but that it is not generally recognised that the "legislate to Transform The Audience. To Turn On The Audience.

It is in this sense that Andrew Fletcher of Altoun (1655-1716) meant to be understood, I think, when he wrote:

"Give me the making of the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws."

Mythopoeia and intellection are not opposed to each other, they are complementary, again like the lingers of a hand. Parapolitics is the only politics that gives equal recognition to both, and bases its strategy and its tactics on both. Like Confucianism it envisages the emergence on the political and governmental scene of the concept of Excellence, of the many-facted man entrusted with public office. Confucius defined what he called The Five Virtues of the Superior Man:

(1)jen. which is love, compassion in human relationships.
(2)yi. which is justice tempered by jen. which we call righteousness.
(3)Ii. which has been literarally translated as the ritual-observing disposition or fondness for ceremonies through which we show respect for our fellow creatures. (Like love-ins and be-ins.)
(4)chih. which is the self-conscious perception of the implanted Will of Heaven, and may be rendered as wisdom, and

(5) ch'i, which means sincerity in the sense of a wholehearted, disinterested self-surrender to the Will of Heaven, and precludes all hypocrisy and hidden cruelty.

Cartoon of eldery hippies by R. Cobb