Every time I venture to Georgetown (daygame, shopping, peeping in millionaires’ windows) I see these two characters loitering on the corner of M and Wisconsin in front of the Douche Republic selling black T-shirts printed with the words “Stop Bitching. Start a Revolution”.
A few passersby slow down to hear their sales pitch. Mostly, people ignore them as if they were road pylons to steer around, which isn’t hard to do as they aren’t in-your-face obtrusive with their schtick. I’ve always been curious what revolution they are selling so this time I stop and talk to the blond pony-tailed guy.
Me: What kind of revolution do you want to start?
Him: A new way of living… saying no to society’s rat race. Hey, it’s really busy right now, you want a T-shirt?
A reluctant capitalist.
stop showering seek an institution.
I didn’t tell him that starting a revolution is the biggest bitching a person can do.
When I got home I dogpiled (I despise google’s owners) their T-shirt slogan and found this story.
They call themselves the Zendiks and live in a small group of 30 on a commune in West Virginia, subsistence farming and selling T-shirts, CDs, and bumper stickers in the city. A woman who escaped from the social experiment is writing a memoir about her imprisonment time there. She said it had the hallmarks of a cult and was run by authoritarian leaders.
Translation: A David Koresh-style guy at the top horded all the young pussy for himself while brainwashing the rest into believing they were participating in a beautiful rainbow of non-competitive, non-status seeking cooperation.
Nearly all ostensibly egalitarian cooperative communes eventually fail. You can only bottle up innate human drives for so long. A famous example is the Oneida Commune. Jockeying for status among the top leaders (who were, of course, men) and sexual tensions helped undo the commune’s mission. What’s hilarious is that the leaders encouraged the young men to refrain from ejaculating during sex because “wasting” semen was bad. As a result, the women enjoyed many hours of prolonged sex from betas who sacrificed their own pleasure by not cumming, while the alpha males got to impregnate women whenever they wanted.
I have a theory about anti-establishment anti-social dropouts. It’s not society they hate; it’s themselves. They hate their own natures. The world around them is their mirror, reflecting everything that frightens them about their own bestial id essence. They try to escape their evolutionary heritage by retreating to the woods to resurrect the ghost of Karl Marx. I suspect most of the members are of Northern European ancestry.
People like this are starting a revolution against human nature. It is a battle they are doomed to lose.
Nearly all ostensibly egalitarian cooperative communes eventually fail
The early Christians did pretty well. I mean, they did fail, but they have a whole religion named after them and everything.
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Also, it sounds like the Zendiks, although they are indeed a cult, are completely the opposite of your Koresh-inspired stereotypical image. No alpha male leader, no hoarding sex for people at the top (instead, there was a female leader, with free love and constant egalitarian pickup for everybody). The power of the leadership was maintained by other, non-sexual means:
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2006/05/helen_newmans_a.html
I wonder if your easy assumption about the nature of the Zendiks is driven by the sex obsession so much in evidence on this blog.
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I just want to point out that the woman in the above blog who joined the cult is a Harvard grad. What does that say?
Start the fun, peeps.
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how are you so black+white at your age?
are you my father?
growing up all i heard in my house is how much socialism sucks. yeah, i get it, it’s like people who were raised ultra-catholic and then got molested by a priest telling me that god doesn’t exist. one extreme to another
my point is that yes, status and competition are innate and more natural, in some respects, than a purely communist system. but there is a middle ground between hippie kibbutzim and new york city circa 1699.
besides, status is a man’s game. 50% of the world’s population is female. if we weren’t so selective about the men we sexed, you’d be sitting pretty in a commune in west virginia instead of writing your blog at your soulsucking job.
men. can’t see anything in grey. jeebus. ❤ misandry
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Who goes to G town for day game when the freaks come out at night? Just saying
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Female harvard grads are a bitter bunch, especially after having spent 4 years with boys that kept overlooking them for the Wellesley chicks coming into cambridge on the fuck truck.
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were you a loveline fan, roissy? the cult-leader-as-pussy-monopolist idea sounds like the interpretation adam and drew always brought to cults. i buy it to a first approximation.
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The Post also did a story on them a while back, most notable was how the commune shops at Wal-Mart. Yeah, real revolutionary.
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Why do you hate the google guys?
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When I went to school in Austin (TX) in the mid 1990s the Zendik folks were all over the main drag on campus. They also dominated the public access channels with Wulf Zendik blathering on and on about his philosophy on life. Look him up on YouTube he is more of a Gandalf looking dude.
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Irina, I’m fat, ugly, short, unemployed, and live with my parents. Wanna fuck?
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Ah yes, the Zendiks of G-town. Clearly, the irony of being anti-establishment while at the same time depending on donations from the occasional idiot within normal capitalist society is lost on many.
The City Paper took a much more in-depth look at them in 2005, along with the appropriate criticism.
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/cover/2005/cover1104.html
While I despise the Z-peeps and their annoying habit of being directly in my narrow walking path down M street, I still prefer them over the brainwashed LaRouche backers that occasionally berate me while I’m trying to enjoy my Starbuck’s.
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Ironically enough, if it wasn’t for those “anti-establishment” Zen hippies spearheading the sexual revolution in the 1960s, there would be no Roissy in DC writing about his supposed sexual escapades.
I have a strong suspicious that in 10 years, Roissy will be a born-again Christian.
And no, I’m not “anti-establishment”. just the opposite, in fact.
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The hippies didn’t spearhead the sexual revolution — most of the stuff the ’60s is famous for was already underway by the ’40s, and they “rode the wave” to popularity. Civil rights is the most obvious example, and the trend toward informality another.
Anyway, the cult leader as pussy monopolist is well-attested in the anthropological lit — there are lots of places where there’s a fear of women. The powerful men convince the inferiors that women will steal their soul, that ejaculating deprives you of strength, etc. Leaves the powerful ones to fuck all the women.
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Some wars you know you can’t win from day one but still you fight them. You know, like life.
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