Immediatism Excerpt
Pirated from Hakim Bey

Immediatism means to enhance individuals by providing a matrix of friendship, not to belittle them by sacrificing their `ownness` to group-thinkÖ What must be overcome is not individuality per se, but rather the addiction to bitter loneliness which characterizes consciousness in the 20th [and 21st] century.

Capitalism only supports certain kinds of groups, the nuclear family for example, or `the people I know at my job,` because such groups are already self-alienated and hooked into the Work/Consume/Die structure. Other kinds of groups may be allowed, but will lack all support from societal structure, and thus find themselves facing grotesque challenges & difficulties which appear under the guise of `bad luck`.

The first & most innocent-seeming obstacle to any Immediatist project will be the `busyness` or `need to make a living` faced by each of its associates. However there is no real innocence here- only our profound ignorance of the ways in which Capitalism itself is organized to prevent all genuine conviviality.

No sooner have a group of friends begun to visualize immediate goals realizable only thru solidarity & cooperation, when suddenly one of them will be offered a `good` job in Cincinnati or teaching English in Taiwan [or Japan!]óor else they`ll lose the `good` job they already have and be reduced to a state of misery which precludes their very enjoyment of the group`s project or goals (ie. They`ll become `depressed`). At the most mundane-seeming level, the group will fail to agree on a day of the week for meetings because everyone is `busy`. But this is not mundane. It`s sheer cosmic evil. We whip ourselves into froths of indignation over `oppression` & `unjust laws` when in fact these abstractions have little impact on our daily livesówhile that which really makes us miserable goes unnoticed, written off to `busyness` or `distraction` or even to the nature of reality itself (`Well, I can`t live without a job`).

Yes, perhaps it`s true we can`t `live` without a jobóalthough I hope we`re grown-up enough to know the difference between LIFE & the accumulation of a bunch of fucking GADGETS. Still, we must constantly remind ourselves (since our culture won`t do it for us) that this monster called WORK remains the precise & exact target of our rebellious wrath, the one single most oppressive reality we face.