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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 26, 1998)
Oregon daily emerald worldwide www.uoregon.edu/~ode Int'l Student |Planning a trip to Europe? | ID Cards. Eurail Passes 8 ‘S TD Travel < <T> (JO o < sossbj pjsoH qjno^ S tuapnts 3ur{Vu3A3 E-mail: awrajluv2travel.com JJUJJU CHINESE RESTAURANT Mandarin and llong Kong Cuisine s5'*>ho Pad Thai S5 95 ^'Student Discount on regular dinner menu items with ID 343-2828 • 1525 Franklin Blvd. Free parking with purchase of a lunch order. 485-2090 for Delivery This Summer Do Something Different... Work /a/ Br/taw Bunat Offers Full Time U.S. Students/Graduating Seniors: • Government approved student work permits * London & Edinburgh resource centers for advice support, accommodation & Job Listings • Active social program • A resume to stand out from the crowd Call f-SOO-GO-Bl/NAC JyUNAC FOR MORE INFO po box: 49. south Britain, ct 0648? nEUIYEML nsuivou. BETTER BODIES is celebrating the new year by making it easier and more fun to achieve that new you. GATEWAY COED 4 WOMENS ONLY OPEN 11 HRS. 11)0 GATEWAY ST, SPRINGFIELD 726-5220 WEST EUGENE COED i WOMENS ONLY CAMPUS/FRANKLIN BLVD. COTTAGE GROVE FOR WOMEN U70W.II8i*YE,EUCNE I47S FRANIUJN BLVD. 171 GATEWAY PLA2A,COTTAGE GROVE 686-2633 344-1028 942-7427 SANTA CLARA COED i WOMENS ONLY THURSTON COED 1 WOMENS ONLY VALLEY RIVER PLAZA FOR WOMEN 101) DIVER ROAD, EUGENE S«U TRAIN 5T, SnUNCFIELD 1101 VAllfT RIVER DA, NO. 100, EUGENE 461-7834 746-3533 344-4200 Zerzan: Challenge political system m Continued from Page 1 very far, of course, but it was an in toxicating time." He developed anti-technology views when he studied the indus trialization of England and came across the Luddites, a group of ma chine breakers who opposed in dustry’s technological advance ment and increasing social control. Zerzan’s studies opened him up to an avalanche of new questions. "Maybe this technology isn’t neutral,” Zerzan said. “Maybe it never was neutral in terms of in dustrial society, to have people obey the clock and give up a more free way of making a living which was more family oriented.” Zerzan views the domestication and the division of labor as turn ing points in the beginning of tech nology and the urge to control. His view — that technology is damag ing and disconnects people from one another — is based on a differ ent view of anthropology in the past 20 to 30 years that has a more positive view of prehistoric life and primitive communities. “I was really inspired to dig into these findings [because] not all of them are new. There has been a big reorientation or appreciation of the way people did live in small groups,” Zerzan said. “A lot of these things that we are contend ing with now didn’t even exist be fore civilization — like organized violence and disease.” The Unabomber’s manifesto mentions Zerzan’s belief that small, decentralized communities and a more direct mode of social existence without bureaucracy and mass society should be the di rection of our future. “We went for these things and we slowly got more meshed in it and held hostage by it,” Zerzan said. “At some point you break that off. I mean, that’s primitivism.” Primitivism draws on the record of humanity before tech nology. Zerzan believes society needs to look further back than the Unabomber’s manifesto, which Excerpts from Zerzan’s writings m ABOUT SOCIETY: “Computerization, with its congealed tedium and con cealed poisons, expresses the trajectory of society, engineered sleekly away from sensuous existence and finding its current apotheosis in Virtual Reality." ■ ABOUT PROGRESS: “The pinnacle of progress is today’s Information Age, which embodies a progression in division of labor, from an earlier time of the greater possibility of unmediated understanding, to the stage where knowl edge becomes merely an instrument of the repressive totality, to the current cybernetic era where data is all that's really left. Progress has put meaning it self to flight.” ■ ABOUT COMMUNITY: ‘The refusal of community might be termed a self defeating isolation but it appears preferable, healthier, than declaring our alle giance to the daily fabric of an increasingly self-destructive world. Magnified alienation is not a condition chosen by those who insist on the truly social over the falsely communal.” ■ ABOUT TECHNOLOGY: ‘Today we experienced that control as a steady re duction of our contact with the living world, a speeded-up Information Age emptiness drained by computerization and poisoned by the dead, domesti cating imperialism of high-tech method.” SOURCE: Zerzan’s essays on the Internet deals with industrial society, and into primitive prehistoric culture. “It has really big implications with the kind of presumptions we have — well, it has to be this way, we had to go that way — now it seems that there has been more and more work that shows that it was a bad idea,” he said. “It still sounds crazy to say that, but it raises some more basic questions about the way society is organized.” Zerzan believes discourse is one of the first steps. Ironically, much of Zerzan’s writings and essays can be found on the Internet. But he be lieves this same technology also divides people. He cites virtual re ality as a classic example of the me diations that disconnect individu als from each other and reality. Yet Zerzan admits he is only hu man and has his own weaknesses and dependencies. "I watch TV. I’ve worked on these themes for a long time, and it’s the same for me as everyone else,” he said. "I need these diver sions; now virtually everyone needs some kind of drug to get through the day.” Zerzan’s views seem to point to dropping out of the societal struc ture. Individuals need to be “un plugged,” he explained. Voting and participating in politics through the normal channels of discourse isn’t worth it to Zerzan; he said people need to de-legit imize the system. “It’s an act of faith in the system to cast that ballot. It is really say ing that I still believe it is worth in vesting in.” Zerzan said. “If peo ple just stop doing it, that’s a real big thing right there. ” Zerzan’s lecture is expected to fill Gerlinger Lounge. Seating is limited and students are encour aged to come early. Zerzan hopes to challenge the audience with difficult questions about the basic structure of soci ety. He hopes people will leave with introspective questions about how they live their lives. “It’s got to be deeper, it has to in volve so much more and it’s more difficult,” Zerzan said. “The ques tions are harder but the promise is bigger too. The promise is saving the individual from complete de humanization and the biosphere from extinction.” Kitzhaber: Shift higher ed focus to individual m Continued from Pagel mitment in prevention that is at least as serious as the investment we are making in punishment. And the most effective way to do that will be to target at-risk kids to keep them from becoming en-* trapped in the criminal justice system in the first place.” Kitzhaber noted three propos als he has made to keep youth from using drugs and dropping out of school. The initial proposal is to create a coordinated state and county approach to find a solution to the problem and reach the children in need. “Today, tragically, even though we know [at-risk chil dren] are on the edge of becom ing involved in crime, we ad dress them only in a patchwork way,” he said. “Instead, we must focus our efforts where we know they will do the most good." The second of Kitzhaber’s pro posals is to involve numerous state agencies in providing tech nical assistance for communities that want to address problems with youth. “There is not a one-size-fits-all response to this problem,” he said. “Each community is differ ent, and reducing juvenile crime is more effective when a commu nity has made it a priority than when the state has made it a mandate.” On the state’s next budget, Kitzhaber said he plans to focus attention on the resources of the state government and how those resources help to plan and fund “proven community-based strate gies to help keep kids out of crime.” The governor’s final proposal is to provide better patrol cover age on the state’s highways. Kitzhaber said more people are traveling more miles on state highways at higher speeds that at any other time, but that there are fewer state patrol officers than there were 20 years ago. There were 530 patrollers in 1979. Today, that number is only 355. “More troopers means better law enforcement and a strong tool for identifying and interven ing with the kids who are on the edge,” he said. "To do that, 1 am working with both local law en forcement and with the Oregon State Police to build a proposal for the 1999-2001 budget that will fill the gaps we know exist in our law enforcement system.” Kitzhaber said rapid changes in the world today require adjust ments in the higher education system. He said the first change is to shift the focus of higher educa tion s agenda from the require ments of the system and the insti tutions to the requirements of individual students. The second change is to reroute the focus of the budget. The final proposal for change is to "shift the manage ment focus from the needs of the institutions and presidents to the needs of the students in Oregon and the economic marketplace.” The governor outlined what he believes are the issues Oregoni ans need to address. “Meeting the high standards of the Education Act, tending to our system of post-secondary educa tion, reducing juvenile crime: These are among the greatest challenges facing Oregon in 1998,” Kitzhaber said. “And to meet them, we cannot afford to simply look at our present pros perity and reckon that the future doesn’t need tending because that simply isn’t the case.” The governor pointed to times in Oregon’s past when he said people did not assume the future would create itself. He also re ferred to a time when he felt peo ple who had strong ideas and commitment could change the future. “I refuse to believe that those people no longer exist," he said. “1 refuse to believe that Oregoni ans today are unwilling to help children learn, unwilling to keep children from turning to lives of crime. “Let each of us do our part to en sure that the state of Oregon and the community of Oregon remain, for us and our children, the best place in the world to live," he said.
