The Dinner Party

T. A. Z.
The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism
Hakim Bey

http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/taz.htm

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THE DINNER PARTY

The highest type of human society in the existing social order is found in
the parlor. In the elegant and refined reunions of the aristocratic classes
there is none of the impertinent interference of legislation. The
Individuality of each is fully admitted. Intercourse, therefore, is
perfectly free. Conversation is continuous, brilliant, and varied. Groups
are formed according to attraction. They are continuously broken up, and
re-formed through the operation of the same subtile and all-pervading
influence. Mutual deference pervades all classes, and the most perfect
harmony, ever yet attained, in complex human relations, prevails under
precisely those circumstances which Legislators and Statesmen dread as the
conditions of inevitable anarchy and confusion. If there are laws of
etiquette at all, they are mere suggestions of principles admitted into and
judged of for himself or herself, by each individual mind.

Is it conceivable that in all the future progress of humanity, with all the
innumerable elements of development which the present age is unfolding,
society generally, and in all its relations, will not attain as high a grade
of perfection as certain portions of society, in certain special relations,
have already attained?

Suppose the intercourse of the parlor to be regulated by specific
legislation. Let the time which each gentleman shall be allowed to speak to
each lady be fixed by law; the position in which they should sit or stand be
precisely regulated; the subjects which they shall be allowed to speak of,
and the tone of voice and accompanying gestures with which each may be
treated, carefully defined, all under pretext of preventing disorder and
encroachment upon each other's privileges and rights, then can any thing be
conceived better calculated or more certain to convert social intercourse
into intolerable slavery and hopeless confusion?

–S. Pearl Andrews The Science of Society