Leonard James Harrison, 63, passed away at San Francisco General Hospital on April 6, 2009 after a short battle with cancer. Born on Aug. 18, 1945, Len grew up in Walnut Creek and lived around the Bay Area throughout his life. His numerous careers included working as an instructional designer, a web developer, a filmmaker, and an author, among others. He led a life that brought him on countless adventures and allowed him to help many people along the way. A practicing Buddhist, he said shortly before death that he hoped to be reincarnated somewhere in South America so that he could join in the next revolution. Len will be sorely missed by his mother Mae, his brother Harland, his son Josh, and Liz, the mother of his son. And of course, the thousands of friends he made throughout this lifetime. A memorial service will be held in San Francisco during Memorial Day Weekend.

Viva la revolucion!

A memorial service for Len has been tentatively scheduled for May 23, 2009 in Delores Park. This site will be updated with more details shortly.

I also plan to post some of Len’s writings and media work here as a sort of archive of a small slice of the many contributions my father made in his 63 years on the planet.

You will be missed, but it was time for you take the journey to the next incarnation.

I love you dad,

Josh

By the time I was twenty, I had internalized these values and seen the men who’d come to stand for many of them, at least for me, killed, one after the other. Martin, Malcolm, John, and Bobby, all gunned down. Then the war amped up and the Beatles crossed the pond with “I want to hold your hand” and the whole world changed, for both better and worse. At that point I had been drafted for the sake of a war whose duplicities were known to me. I chose not to go. I chose not to make an issue of it with the US government. In spite of my idealism, I could never grant them that legitimacy. Even then I knew the difference between system and society.

But I wrestled for years with the ideals “my” country had given me and the actions it took everywhere. It talked one talk but walked another walk, then as now, and even before. Nevertheless some piece of me wanted to embrace the irrational conviction that we, the US, were the good guys. We wore the white hats in some cosmic fantasy of nationalism even as we nalpalmed children. It was a cognitive dissonance whose echoes still linger, but at least I now know up from down, wrong from right, and don’t need to pretend or defend the rewriting of history.

At some point it became obvious that I had a choice: either to keep the values given me, which I cherished, live by them, and dump the deceptive rhetoric that the selfish and self-centered use to justify the abrogation of our collective wealth and power; or trash the values and join in the hypocrisy. The latter course was where the smart money was, but I never gave a damn about money so I chose to keep my values, time after time, year after year. I have never regretted that, though it has made for a bumpy road through life. This country I live in has taken the other course. It has opted for wealth and an obsession with wealth. It has opted to elevate the few to fame and power and is obsessed with these few . It has created a mass culture based upon mass media whose hypnotic allure allows the manipulation of millions. It is the greatest propaganda machine in history. It is used to sell soap. It is used to sell wars. It is used to shape how people think. It speaks with lies.

We live on a small planet of incredible design. All around us in the natural world are uncountable numbers of self-organizing, self-sustaining systems whose various functions are precise metaphors for what the imprecise, dysfunctional systems we construct are supposed to accomplish. The problems we face are not those of genuine scarcities or even realistic disagreements between peoples. Our problems are the systems we create, what they do, and how.

These systems are political and economic. They serve to concentrate wealth and aggregate power through violence and coercion. Violence and coercion can be economic, physical, or both; these are two sides of the same coin as are wealth and power or corporation and state. Violence and the threat of violence is the basis of governance and the root of the principle of ownership as entitlement, which is how we understand it.

Violence is not the basis of community, which, unlike govenment or corporation, is an organic process involving human beings in self-defining interrelationships. Violence is antithetical to our common values and to the health of our friendships and families. Free association in equality between cooperating individuals for their common good works best, and most human communities that are not viciously oppressed or composed of vicious oppressors work this way most all the time, even within constructs that are inherently unequal, even in times of devastation and disaster.

Equality is more than abstract “civil” rights, especially when some have more than they use and others less than they need. This situation is considered normative, but it is wholly dysfunctional because it mandates violence. The man who is starving can only be restrained by violence or the threat of violence from taking food from the tables of the well-fed. The same is true for the landless person who sees the acreage of the gentry.

In the “American” psyche this issue convulates with the Horatio Alger’s myths, themselves a concoction of national memes including rugged individualism, self-reliance, manifest destiny, Social Darwinism, and the Protestant Ethic, going all the way back to the Puritans and old John Calvin from Switzerland. Back when I was a kid, most people thought “God helps those who help themselves” was scripture. It isn’t. Toss in the reality that if you aren’t black or indigenous, your ancestors probably came here for some degree of freedom from economic violence, along with the profoundly shallow materialism that has become “American” culture, and it becomes difficult for many people to conceive or to want to conceive of economic equality as a primary social value, though it obviously must be if we wish to live harmoniously with each other and eschew violence, which we were taught was wrong as early as kindergarten, about the same time we learned the value of sharing.

Sharing is simple. What I have but am not using can be used by others. What I have, but neither use nor need should be made available to someone who does need it. This is common sense and a virtue in families, friendships, and communities. If I profit in some way from doing something and you help me accomplish this, then you should profit along with me, not like some commodity I purchase and consume as cheaply as possible, but as a co-owner of a common project. All other things being equal, we should profit equally. That’s simply fairness. Just as it is possible to build economies on violence and the entitlement of ownership which create and preserve inequities, it is equally possible to build economies on the principles of sharing and equality of effort and reward. These work through free agreement, do not depend on violence and coercion, and ensure sufficiency for all.

However “radical,” all this is obvious upon reflection and has been demonstrated to us throughout our lives, at least as early as kindergarten. In fact, these patterns and principles of social behavior are the grease and glue that keeps even state and capital operational in spite of their root dysfunction. They are what makes family, friendships, and communities work. They should properly define all of human society, not the violence which presently rules the world and this country in which I live.

I would like to say and to believe that things were getting better. They are not. Until the growing understanding within people in their day to day lives itself recreates the systems which control and attempt to mold them, things will continue to go from bad to worse. Worse yet, far too many feel much too small and helpless to even contemplate what we all must do together. And every evening most all of these and many more slip into a comfortable trance in front of a television and dream away the few hours they have each day to make things different, resolving unconsciously to buy some product they think might make themselves richer, more popular, happier, or more successful, whether its body gel, the latest i-pod, or world war III. They learn how to think and argue stupidly from idiot pundits with personal problems, who froth at the mouth and mouth the party line of whatever party they align with. Along with that they learn to be rude, abrasive, dismissive, self-centered, and boorish, a lesson that continues through hous of sitcoms on out to the late-night shows, however urbane and clever their facade.

Can such a people, fat, slack-minded, and post-literate be awakened by anything short of total destruction and devastation? I don’t know. I know they taught some of us too well. I know some of us still care. I know we can make a difference if we dare. I know it’s time to wake up people!