LESSONS FROM THE MARKOFF BIOGRAPHY OF STEWART BRAND

 Whole Earth : The Many Lives of Stewart Brand, by John Markoff

Ambition guides my reading interests.  Thus, my fascination with the history of Whole Earth Catalog. I miss the days when I could use a physical book and thumb ahead to see where I'm going.  But only at one fourth through the ebook, I appreciate something this biography of Brand shows about creative momentum.  The first few pages are about how his family's  heritage of  mind and industriousness influenced this general attitude and character.  Within the first 40 pages we see the Beat scene and characters like Ginsburg and Kesey.  The Beat scene was beginning to fade a bit while cosmic folks like Michael Murphy and the Esalen Institute were just being founded.

What I'm learning about the early Stewart Brand is the Power of Paradox.  Brand's anti-communist agenda meant he was a training leader in the ROTC until the conflict with authority and centralization meant he saw the military regime of bureaucracy as a fulfillment of centralized authority.  How is it that a man who talked with the early beat generation and Ken Kesey Leary and Alpert Hoffman was active in ROTC?  

As my hipster comrades gathered around the Whole Earth Catalog, I was correct in my assessment of the Whole Earth Catalog being an antidote to Maoist controls but I also recognized the anti-centilization theme that continued to influence Brand’s version of a Libertarian future.  Tools to build your world.  

Early lessons learned in the Markoff biography :
1. Appreciate seeming contradictory social contacts as providing a grand resource for learning
2. Don't ever give up on your fascination with life.

Brand took one rejection after another in his goal to become a photojournalist. Projects with Kesey about Leary and Alpert were submitted to Esquire magazine but the authorities of Mexico had already kicked the commune out of the country.  Brand consulted the I-Ching and got a changing line hexagram about ”The town may change but the Well cannot be changed. Patience.  Be of good cheer."

The Baynes/Wilhelm translation of I-Ching with an introduction by C.G. Jung hit the scene through being featured in Whole Earth Catalog.

I did not keep up with the Brand related projects like the WEC conferences that created the internet.  Co-Evolution Quarterly and later catalogs went without my attention.  I had abandoned the world of ideas and thoughts to concentrate on the practical tools of becoming a hod-carrier and stone mason.  Really in keeping with Brand’s vision if you think about it.    

A good review by Michael Dolan.  While writing my own review (from having been there) my chops abandoned me.  Much to say about how we got here and our future. This is the excellent Michael Dolan review. https://www.historynet.com/stewart-brands-inventive-life-a-new-biography/  

Watch for seemingly disconnected associations that life brings to you while you pursue your sense of mission.  In the Big Picture it will lead you to creative influence.

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