Our dear friend, mentor and Brother, Coyote 76, was killed on New Year's Day in a cycling accident. His influence on T.O.P.Y. runs deep. He will be greatly missed and never forgotten.

  

  



  

  

I think one of the most frightening problems we face is the problem of making sure we have sufficient information. We generally can tell if information is necessary. For instance, if following the political campaign of some candidate, we know that certain elements of personal life have no relevance to the political office they want, and some elements do. The point is, how can we know when we have all of the correct information to base a judgement? The problem becomes more convoluted when we are using our actual own thought processes to make judgement on information. This is one of the reasons that after four or fives years of knowing of the existence of TOPY I decided to becoum involved. When there is someone else (and hopefully many) asking the same questions, there are other minds and thoughts to "bounce ideas" off ov. The key for this work is that TOPY should not become some unified mind-meld for people to incorporate some standard chant. It must be both a loose whole and a bunch of interconnected individuals. I think that if it ceases to be this, the real Kali and Coyotes may break off, but they will still be in contact with themselves and other externals like them. The common meeting ground will exist. Part of the motivation for my finally becouming involved with TOPY (along with other personal revelations) is the fact that when I moved to Kalifornia two years ago, I did not find any sort of group of individuals who THOUGHT, at least like I had back east. This is not to imply any difference between the east and west; what I'm saying is that I had associated with a group of highly intelligent, analytical people, and suddenly left them. I did not go running to TOPY as a surrogate friendship, or a chance to recreate some past. In this sense, it is a way to exchange extremely pertinent ideas with analytical minds (and sympathetic ears).

I think one of the most dangerous types of people are those who have the capacity to think, and do think, but without the sort of questioning that we have been talking about. That is part of the danger of remaining out of touch with minds to keep conclusions in check. We all have "wild" or "risky" ideas at times. A person who has no one to listen to these ideas or question the thoughts of such a person, is dangerous. Everyone who participates in TOPY should expect to be questioned. This is not some subservient protocol that we all must undergo, but in fact the process of thought itself is managed. None of us are the "metathinker".

My final point of the day is that we must not be scared to ask questions. Often they seem trivial, or mornonic, but I have always found that ignorance is very social. The formation of the questions is the basic foundation of analytical philosophy, and thought in general. If one cannot form the questions, how can one expect to find any answers? Questioning everything is a general strategy; yet how can one who cannot properly question be expected to be able to weed out the proper information from such a gigantic influx? They cannot. It is that simple.

By Coyote 76
Winter of 1991

BACK