Digger Time

Unscheduled
 

Now that I am retired, I find myself surrounded by busy people who are always busy. Busy people have schedules. They always have to be someplace else. That goes along with making a ton of money, which is what busy people do.
 

I've always been a bum, disinclined to be very busy. I especially dislike schedules, as they seem confining. Because of my preferences, I have never made much money. I regret not having the money, now that I am retired, but I cannot think of anything I would do differently just to get the money. I guess more than enough money is just not worth the trouble to me.
 

Unlike most busy people, I've given freely of my time to others when they needed me. When I was self-employed, I spent hours and hours, sometimes days, on other people's projects and didn't charge for all of it (unless they could afford it). The truth is, most people seem unable to afford the services they need, not to mention what they want. So, somewhere, something has to give. That's why there is a huge underclass of ill-paid people in every First World country: someone has to do the work. Without them, there would be no First World.
 

This suggests to my anti-capitalist mind that the Third World can end gringo dominance simply by not going to the First World. Don't believe those famous lines, '... give me your poor ... your huddled masses ...', because they don't mean it. The United States and continental Europe, for example, are at the beginning of a serious demographic problem: too many old people and not enough workers to support them. This is a particularly big problem in the United States, because young Americans don't want to pay for their elders. One way to solve the problem is to import "teeming masses" of underpaid labor. This is a logical extension of the capitalist system of exploitation, since it avoids any moral responsibilities the rich, the young or society generally may have.
 

Un-Free
 

Things need not always be like this. There have been a few rare times when they actually were otherwise. I lived in the midst of one of those times and places: the Summer of Love, which emanated from San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district.
 

The Silent Majority, later the Moral Majority, never approved what happened there. To the contrary, they condemned it. Today's market-oriented conservatives look askance at some of communal practices worked out there. Most Americans disdain the Hippies, Free Love and the 1960s generally. (That doesn't keep them from coming in droves by tourist bus, expecting titillation.) But, I do not disdain the people or the place because I lived there - in San Francisco, in the Haight-Ashbury, at that time. I was never as completely liberated as others became, but I learned a lot that summer.
 

I was almost newly divorced, and working for San Francisco Social Services - the welfare department. I was assigned to work with the old folks receiving "Old Age Security," a program now replaced by Federal SSI (Supplemental Security Income). Our offices were located in the old, refurbished San Francisco jail, on Otis Street, and my desk was at the top of that building, on the 9th floor. We had a great view of the freeway from there.
 

The Department's management, like most of official and corporate San Francisco, was utterly appalled by whatever was happening out there in the Haight. They hated the drugs, the sex, the lifestyle. Most of all, they hated the challenge to the established order, because Officialdom could actually deal with any of it as long as they controlled it. For example, in those years just a few blocks west of City Hall were the whore houses frequented by those in Officialdom. If you kept going westward from City Hall on those streets, you ended up in the Haight.
 

One day, unexpectedly, the Department decided to sponsor a mid-day discussion - supposedly a training session. This session was intended to enlighten us workers on social services in the Haight. I admit, for once, I was permanently enlightened, which is why I am writing this piece 37 years later.
 

A Rare Community
 

There was a group called "The Diggers," who had organized a lot of the "infrastructure" of the revolutionary Haight-Ashbury. Hippies weren't just rabble, as conservatives would like to pretend. They were a highly organized society based on different principles than the American "mainstream." One of their most striking differences was the belief in communal effort, roughly based on Marxist ideas about 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.' The Diggers were one of several spontaneous, self-organizing groups that allowed Haight-Ashbury Hippies to exist.
 

What I learned in their presentation was that the Diggers had set up bakeries, and maybe other food outlets, where anyone could get free bread and free meals. There were other groups that had set up places to get low cost or free clothes, and the other necessities of life. There was an active barter system going on in the Haight that supplied those who manned the various operations with what they needed. Of course, San Francisco is not an agrarian paradise, so the people relied on "imported" grain, vegetables, cloth, etc - raw materials - to be made into the necessities of life. Those imports were purchased from the valuable contributions people made, or received as gifts.
 

So, what's different? Every society has to have workers, resources, factories, trade, etc which provide the means of living. So, all that those communes - most of the Haight-Ashbury groups were communes - did was what the outside world downtown did: work for a living. No difference, except that people did what they did without regard to pay, benefits, etc. Why? Because there was the feeling that others cared about them; that they were part of a family - the commune. Downtown, they paid more, but cared less or not at all. Downtown, you were just another robot. That was the difference, and still is the difference.
 

Eternity
 

I learned something in that meeting with the Diggers, something I have never been able to explain logically. It is just a way of living. I learned it in a few hours, and lived that way the rest of my life.

The leading Digger man went into a spiel about time, clocks, schedules and such. He pointed out that we were led around by clocks. He had a large vest pocket watch on a chain, which he swung in front of us, and repeatedly told us it was ticking. He said something like when the clock ticked, or the hands pointed a certain way, people did something - just like machines. To follow the commands of the clock was to become a machine.
 

In the "real" world, things happen when they happen. Events are not arranged by a clock's ticking. How long it takes to do something, or feel something, or think something, cannot be measured. A thing is done when it is done. So, living by the clock is a misuse of one's life.
 

Following that exposition, I took off my watch and never wore one again. Generally, since then, I have relied on my inner sense of time, not external reminders, in determining what to do when. This practice was reinforced on many occasions, when I realized how long it really took to resolve emotional turmoil, settle an intellectual problem, or finish a task. All of those things take what time they require, never any less. Because of that heuristic, I eventually realized that time never begins or ends for anyone, because we never know our birth or our death.
 

Epilogue

The San Francisco Hippies, tired of being gawked at and beaten up, and not interested in the political movements of the time, left the City. Large numbers of them went north to the Mendocino Mountains and the Lost Coast, where they still live. They now live in a co-operative fashion, if not communally, on their own farms. They don't live as long or as well as the city slickers, but they lead the lives they have chosen at their own pace. Many of their children left the rural life, because they wanted the excitement the City offers. But, in recent times, wealthy Northern Californians seeking vacation and retirement homes have been moving north, moving in on Hippie Land. While these new rural residents are attracted by the inner peace of Hippie communities, they have never lived that sort of life. As the Hippies are bought out, their storied lives evaporate, leaving only a timeless dream.