Excerpts from the Complete Writings of Jerome Sanders Dickey *
(by permission of the Jerome Sanders Dickey website (link lost))
From Emergence of the Body Snatchers:
1.13
Evolutionary theory and genetic research now realize that vast stores of variation potential lurk in the genetic code of all life. Proteins "switch on and switch off" under complex chemical interactions. The desire to obtain knowledgeable descriptions of these interactions- the triggering mechanisms, the exogenous variables, etc.- are driving research for the next hundreds of years.
2.39
Was T.D. Lysenko on the right track? Can spring wheat be forced by Marxist science, an ideologically-based agriculture on a mass scale without any evidence of efficacy, into winter wheat? No. The history of wishful thinking abounds in such premature errors. The imagination works ahead of our knowledge of reality; many mistakes are made, many mistakes are forced.
3.17
Let us gaze deeply to see at once the adaptation of individuals within all species to the exigencies of Earthly existence. Look at the wide range of interaction individuals have with their cohorts... From this focus on the diversity of social structures, we glean the variability of response to life, and then wonder whether we gain anything from looking across kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus to study the commonality of responses.
3.83
It then becomes obvious a certain simplification of the ideas of response strategies applied across all life at least provides suggestive insight for comparative biology and sociobiology.
6.46
Code-switching then becomes the Pandora's box of the dystopiasts, who well imagine extreme changes clicking into place in near simultaneity, giving great shock to those who are left unchanged.
6.82
Much like an army of transformer toys- here the Heraclitean aphorism discovers a congenial product! - an incredible cascade of change takes place in the individuals, all in a structured progression, rendering the old appearance into nonexistence, with such chrysalis taking place among individuals on a mass scale, but leaving some behind in total shock.
8.34
..the rationale given for such changes gives rise to new concepts and precepts woven from the whole cloth of the new appearance, to provide culture to that appearance, to that new life form.
8.96
..So we see how quickly new ideas, modes of thinking and behaving, wave onto youth, by the slightest nuance in the outer reality, often indeed in simple reaction to the movements and waves that preceded them.
9.45
..To speculate further in this direction, we don't need to oogle at Justin Timberlake to see a meaning suggested in scrawny, feminized, metrosexual boy-toys: the elimination of danger, the removal of risk. And the trend toward sameness. The actors of danger and risk are losing much of their audience, because the "flock" perceives value in alternative strategies in the dense "herd" environment. Whether Justin is cloned directly or becomes the ideal in sexual preference, such a wave could surge through quickly- unless countervailing waves emerge from outside risks. That might only mean the sweep works its way in series and takes longer to overcome remaining obstacles, pockets of resistence, eddies of wild freedom and violence, niches of suicidal religious zealotry, cabals for worship or aesthetic manifestations of individual power or brutality, etc. **
[Discussion
Critic:
That's ridiculous, you just made that up! What about the Playboy fantasy in males? Hasn't that led to the widespread change in sexual preferences by males? What about the increase in inter-ethnic sex, you know: the Irish and the Italians, etc. Doesn't that show females are attracted to new things, to variation and against "sameness?" Attraction to "danger?" What makes you think you know all the variability of what's sexy? The fact is you don't even know what you're talking about. You've considered one aspect of something through your particular bias, and turned it into a huge wave of the future. You don't show any proficiency in your subject, ignore all other possibilities, and just keep running with the tiny little bit you got. All you generalizing theorists do is sweep away the details and lose the truth. But the truth is what is up close, and your waves are indeterminable!
Professor:
Hey! Stay away from my web page, you're always interrupting my formidable genius with your trite wiseacre remarks. Generalizing, abstracting, simplifying, modeling- these are ways of working in the world and moving forward! Waves are real, mass change is real- unified motion, aggregation, cohesion have advantages.]***
9.52
..The "flocking" strategy is not nihilism. It is a different form of life. Is it a lesser life? Some believe it is! But some might seek to lose themselves in it to create a monstrous unified ultra-life. Not super-man, but supra-Life. Seeking of "God" may seem to become sinking into God, but instead becomes leaping unto God, indeed, creating God!
Octavio Campo's poster of Cesar Chavez: the whole as the sum of the parts; the flesh behind his spirit, the spirit beyond the flesh..
12.91
..We are experiencing a dense transformation at all levels that will obliterate an understanding of all prior history, since the life form will have been interrupted- indeed innerrupted- and all prior context will have become too remote to understand.
13.01
The interior colonization of the human species proceeds at an accelerating pace.
13.45
..The transformation of the human species into a human colony of planetary scope may elicit a further rejection of the self toward a conjoined, indeed solipsistic, planetary entity. Not just a global village! But we digress..
13.77
Of course, the great effort at designer-fashion genetic manipulation will in end wave back into the rationalization that takes place without such extreme, "id-provoked", mutations. Indeed, a reaction away from such individual mutations will hasten the overwhelming wave toward association as attachment. That wave will obliterate the idiosyncrasies, clean up this detritus of the transformation, build antibodies to these foreign individuals whose existence appears to threaten the organism and distracts from its cohesive functioning. Swat the flies.
13.85
The change was initiated in subtle ways, in the patterns of activity, in the culture, in the mental framework of the individuals. A genetic response is inevitable, despite the creative adaptation taking place without it. Perhaps by then, the intervening pattern of boutique individuals will have accustomed us to extreme changes. In the meantime, the patterns have emerged, the behaviors to support the triggering of change are taking place. We now await the emergence within ourselves of the body snatchers.
Web site Editor's notes: * Actually, folks, all we have are excerpts, since all the inventory of this self-published book was taken by Professor Dickey's wife when she embarked on that trip to that comet as a member of a very confused study group (who misinterpreted some of the information conveyed in Professor Dickey's writings). The federal Department of Homeland Security and Comet Cult Suppression is reported to have removed the Dickey web site's vast ebook library.
In fact, the above material has been gleaned from discussions with several of his students who took erratic notes, the famous "Pilsner & Pale Books", and from the Professor himself in late night phone calls on rare occasions of lucidity.
If you the reader have more fragments to help fill the gaps, we would be happy to include them on this page. Email your collaborative material to jb at sfangels (our web name) dot com. We may, of course, need to make any contribution readable by grammatical corrections and interpretive adjustments.
** This excerpt was obtained from suggestions made by S. Joy of San Leandro, and so may be of no consequence.
*** We decided to insert some critical remarks so the reader doesn't end up believing this bullshit and getting carried off to some comet.