From https://archive.org/details/LiveWildOrDie/

WHY I DID IT,

WHY I’LL NEVER

DO IT AGAIN…

LIVE WILD OR DIE: It’s not a movement; it’s just a slogan. I just wanted to clear that up since the last thing we intend to do here is to provide another false justification for activity, another ideology or cause to sacrifice happily for. Elsewhere in this paper are discussions about the necessity of acting out of our own true desires., our own wild subjectivity, our internal wilderness. Personally, what I dream of is a fuller, wilder way of life and living, not just a new set of slogans to suffer for. In this, the first, the world premier, the grand opening issue of Live Wild — we’ve included much material that we hope is reflective of the title and what we dream of and we’d like to see these ideas discussed and expanded further. Personally, I’m looking for a way out of industrialism, a way out of the global MegaWorkPillageMachine of civilization. I’m looking for the end of domination and boredom along with a solution to the ecological crisis. I wish for a re-enchantment of everyday life, a life of free-play and dreams, a planetary wilderness, a marvelous, daring, interaction with the earth, each other and all of nature. And I want it now. Hope is suppressed desire projected into the abstract Future; it allows us to bear a miserable present. I have no hope, only demands. There is no future, only Now. So why be modest in the face of impending doom? Live wild or die!

This is not an “Environmentalist” newspaper. Environmentalism is the political ideology which places bureaucratic band-aids on the industrial cancer. Environmentalism is single-issue Liberal politics divorced from the ensemble of life. This is not even a “radical environmentalist” paper! We need to re-invent the world, not re-label it. Avoiding categorization and (non-) thinking that refuses to break with the old packaging of ideas is but one of my necessary goals. We’re also not out to create a niche for ourselves in the political or economic apparatus of the Machine. We have no intention of producing another commodity for the new hip eco-consumer market; another piece of eco-merchandise. This is the motivation for the variable price. We’d rather just give it away but the Post Office and printer are not yet convinced of our views of economics and property. On the off chance that we ever have money left over (ha ha), it will be put toward the kind of direct action we want to report on here. If you think anyone’s ever charging too much for this paper, please just rip it off. Or write us for a free copy. Price should never be a barrier to anything!

It may seem odd to be putting-out an anti-industrial journal when we are obviously using industrial paper, printing and transportation. If we dislike deforestation, the argument goes, shouldn’t we just quit using paper and wood? But do we really have a choice in the matter? Our participation in the industrial process is not voluntary. It is imposed upon us with force: work or starve; pay or go to jail; conform or be shot. We have none but the false choices, the logic of lesser evils presented by the Machine: Democrat or Republican? Communist or Capitalist? Brand A or brand B? Factory slavery or office slavery? Industrialism is a system, an entire, inescapable net of social organization. Even if a few of us went off into the wilderness to live, it would be but an illusory escapism. The Machine is, or soon will be, everywhere. Indeed, we can reduce our impact and dependence on the system a bit by recycling, boycotting the worst corporate offenders, reducing our level of consumption, etc. but even this only rearranges the excrement, makes the shit a bit less stinky. But the offal is the result, not the cause, of the destruction. It is the industrial empire — its technological, mechanical, political, social, psychological and economic apparatus combined into a unified operation, the Machine — that is responsible for the state of the planet and our daily living conditions. We reproduce it but we have no control over it. This is the contradiction, the inconsistency that it feeds off and exploits in order to enlarge itself. Liberation is impossible for the individual while the Machine still functions. The solution, while starting individually, is global or it is not at all. This is no reason for despair, just for action. This paper is intended to spread ideas that further the dismantling of the Machine so that someday we won’t need newspapers. So, don’t recycle this paper, use it to start a sawmill on fire! But I’ve been wondering lately if newspapers aren’t what we do instead of reinventing reality, instead of really solving our problems. Perhaps we produce journals when we’re too afraid of real communication. If a planetary alternative to the Industrial plague is sought, then communication is imperative. But… could it be that newspapers (and radio, tv and all the rest) are inherently divisive and alienating? All media do just that: mediate. And by mediating, they kill the life from everything human and natural they touch: experience, relations, communication. Newspapers place objects between people and the objects speak. When objects speak for us, we remain mute and isolated from one another. Sometimes many people build objects and the objects talk to each other. This is called a “free press” and our ability to observe objects of this free press while remaining in passive isolation is upheld as a great privilege. People have even been convinced to die for this “right.” Maybe we should not do newspapers at all. Believe me, this whole effort has been anything but adventurous, interactive or liberatory — anything but wild. Mostly, it has inspired me to go out and try removing barriers and objects that stand between myself and potential allies. I want to attempt, however feebly, to experiment with what it is to be really human and not just a cog in the Machine or a unit in the Economy. Many of us speak—rather starry-eyed — of creating a new tribalism, of discovering and creating nature-based communities. But these require direct interaction with one another and to function can never be mediated by objects or notions of hierarchy or economy. How, then, can newspapers be anything but an unnecessary diversion, an interference in this discovery process? I can’t help but speculate that we could all do more good by becoming merry wanderers, roaming the countryside and spreading subversion person-to-person, defining and initiating common projects and resisting the Machine in the best way of all — by direct example. There is a world waiting to be seized, a global wildness yet to be liberated, boundless passions to be realized — if only for enough desire and imagination to do so

Mikal Jakubal

February 16, 1988 From a boring room in Sellingham, Washington after three days in front of this fucking typewriter with no end in sight.

Smoke still billowed yesterday from the rubble of the160,000-square-foot plant, one of only two plywood plants Weyerhaeuser operates on the West Coast. The other is in Klamath Falls, Ore.

“The walls, the roof, the whole place was fully involved in flames in minutes. Gasoline started blowing in some equipment.  Finally, the resin tank in the middle of the building blew up with a column of black smoke. And there just wasn’t any water to put on it, except what they trucked in.”