“As civilization has advanced, the pack-bond (the tribe, the extended family) has been broken. This is the root of the widely diagnosed “anomie” or “alienation” or “existential anguish” about which so many social critics have written so eloquently. What has happened is that the conditioning of the bio-survival bond to the gene-pool has been replaced by a conditioning of bio-survival drives to hook onto the peculiar tickets which we call “money.” Concretely, a modern man or woman doesn’t look for bio-survival security in the gene-pool, the pack, the extended family. Bio-survival depends on getting the tickets. ‘You can’t live without money!’ as the Living Theatre troop used to cry out in anguish. If the tickets are withdrawn, acute bio-survival anxiety appears at once. Imagine, as vividly as possible, what you would feel, and what you would do, if all your sources to bio-survival tickets (money) were cut off tomorrow. This is precisely what tribal men and women feel if cut off from the tribe; it is why exile, or even ostracism, were sufficient punishments to enforce tribal conformity throughout most of human history. As recently as Shakespeare’s day, the threat of exile was an acute terror signal (‘Banished!’ cries Romeo, ‘the damned use that word in Hell!’). In traditional society, belonging to the tribe was bio-security; exile was terror, and real threat of death. In modern society, having the tickets (money) is bio-security; having the tickets withdrawn is terror.” ~ Robert Anton Wilson; Prometheus Rising, p. 52; 1983
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“As civilization has advanced, the pack-bond (the tribe, the extended family) has been broken. This is the root of the widely diagnosed “anomie” or “alienation” or “existential anguish” about which so many social critics have written so eloquently. What has happened is that the conditioning of the bio-survival bond to the gene-pool has been replaced by a conditioning of bio-survival drives to hook onto the peculiar tickets which we call “money.” Concretely, a modern man or woman doesn’t look for bio-survival security in the gene-pool, the pack, the extended family. Bio-survival depends on getting the tickets. ‘You can’t live without money!’ as the Living Theatre troop used to cry out in anguish. If the tickets are withdrawn, acute bio-survival anxiety appears at once. Imagine, as vividly as possible, what you would feel, and what you would do, if all your sources to bio-survival tickets (money) were cut off tomorrow. This is precisely what tribal men and women feel if cut off from the tribe; it is why exile, or even ostracism, were sufficient punishments to enforce tribal conformity throughout most of human history. As recently as Shakespeare’s day, the threat of exile was an acute terror signal (‘Banished!’ cries Romeo, ‘the damned use that word in Hell!’). In traditional society, belonging to the tribe was bio-security; exile was terror, and real threat of death. In modern society, having the tickets (money) is bio-security; having the tickets withdrawn is terror.” ~ Robert Anton Wilson; Prometheus Rising, p. 52; 1983