Rivers - Volume 1: Old Akin Agnosticism

One of the honors of my life will be having the Russell Foundation approve the quotations found in this book. Bertrand Russell and I disagree on many social issues, such as marriage, but there are three areas where he speaks with the Universal Voice, and those are God, War, and Free Speech. In the overall scheme of things what else is there? But that he was an absolute genius has never been doubted, and no one has been more instrumental in forming my thought. I do not want to try and imitate Bertrand Russell, and certainly could not, he was a cool English Aristocrat and I a farm boy from Missouri. I love his few pages "How I Write," in which he outlines his early attempts to copy the style of other writers and then concludes, logically as always, "All imitation is dangerous." I am closer to Lincoln's voice, certainly background, but still that is high ground and I have taken the low. I wanted, or was born with, the Voice of the Mississippian Man, farmer, fisherman, diesel submariner, ass-humping working man, and have labeled my Archetype "Satyr," nothing of the devil or hooves although muscles and corms are always possible. But regardless, "A Hirsute, Universal Man That Can See Through The Myths Of Civilization," and speaks from the Existential Depths, of woods and rivers and on into the mires of civilization. We certainly need such a voice, your world is being converted from the Natural to the Artificial with the power of an Atomic Reactor, and more and more you are expected to fit the corporate blueprint! I believe in the natural gift, however imperfect, and I'm not saying I have it, but I'm telling you that most professionals, and especially professors, have been "educated" for 40 years of their lives on "how to do it," and usually that leads to a politically correct, "Canned" product. As I have said of a rare student, "He is too smart for canned sardines, he needs to fish!" And nude, in the rain, on Mississippian Streams, in isolated camps would be the Animal converter, Life Raw to get your mind and your voice! Ah, as Carlyle says, Society has you by the ass, by cloth! Strip! I make a number of proclamations of war in Rivers, 700 pages of them. Like Russell, I am only generally a pacifist. But I believe them all. Civilization is the last place you can go for ultimate truth. Civilizations consist of economic truths, forever changing, race, women, socialism, on a flipped plane from where they were a hundred years ago, do you think the magnetic fields are done reversing themselves? Ultimately, you've got to go to the Universal Scale, use Logic, Rationality, and Common Sense, to find out whatever truth there is. Isn't that philosophy? A Writer is the Scribe for such things, but it must be realistic! "That I, a funny little gesticulating animal on two legs, should stand beneath the stars and declaim in a passion about my rights - it seems so laughable ... " Bertrand Russell. Truer words were never spoken! Old Satyr Akins