V04-T05 I'm A Potato

.....My original notes on this spiraled off into a rambling diatribe about De-evolution, evolution, the Church of the Sub-Genius and the Industrial Revolution. I'm going to spare you that and stick to the track in question.

Volume 4: "THE LITTLE BROWN ONES ARE THORAZINE, GEORGE", track 5

• 02:38 "I'M A POTATO" (Bob Casale, Gerald V. Casale)
• performed by Devo
• original source: demo, recorded 1976 [possibly self-pressed single?]
• and my source: CD HARDCORE VOL. 1 1974-1977 RYKOdisc RCD 10188 (US) 1990

.....It may be debated for years whether Devo merely predicted the 1980's or actually caused them. Considering the number and scope of forces at work, I'm inclined to say 'predicted' but their theories of De-evolution seemed to be a blueprint for everything from the Reagan presidency to the Islamic revolution in Iran. Simplification, even over-simplification, became a rallying cry for people who could no longer bear the increasingly impossible burden of respecting others. Well, impossible for them, apparently.

.....The parallels to Ronald Reagan can sometimes be particularly chilling. Before he had the advantage of Peggy Noonan providing an articulate filter for his "the world was how I imagined it as a child" outlook, Reagan often wrote his own speeches in 1960's California. For his gubernatorial inauguration he wrote: "For many years now, you and I have been shushed like children and told there are no simple answers to complex problems which are beyond our comprehension. Well, the truth is, there are simple answers-- but there are no easy ones." At no point does he assert that the simple answers would work, you understand, only that the mere fact that they are simple is in itself a virtue and an end in itself. For Reagan, the point was never to solve the problem. The point was always to adhere to the principle. If you get your way, you win, regardless of the consequences of getting your way. The principle is never subjected to testing. The principle is never subjected to analysis. The principle is the only standard. Simple, simple, simple.

.....Devo never fell into the trap of believing that evolution is progress. The word "progress" implies moving forward, which further implies that there is an understood consensus on which direction is "forward". The truth is that 'evolution' is just the name that we slap on whatever process (and it's usually a process of elimination) that got us from where/what we were to where/what we are. It is not a process that moves toward a goal, it is really just a reaction to conditions as they are. Conditions change, and chances of survival with respect to this or that ability or trait change with them. It has long been a human conceit that whatever we happen to be right now is the pinnacle to which anyone might aspire. Devo have spent decades wryly turning that arrogance on its head by isolating those parts of our culture and civilization that are characteristically contemporary and sarcastically chiding us about the "wonderful world we live in; a beautiful, magic place". Reagan was a textbook example of the dangers of indulging that kind of fuzzy sentimentality. While most us grow up to lose some aspect of innocence and learn that the world is not entirely wonderful, it is usually not necessary to sit each of us down and explain to us that when we were children that the adults in our lives shielded us from many of the worlds more depressing aspects. That's the sort of thing most of us work out for ourselves when it becomes our turn to care for someone much younger and helpless, someone at the mercy of a world that can hurt them and scare them with very little effort. When we need to placate their anxieties we try to tell them only what we assume they can digest at their age. They can deal with more later. It makes us more forgiving of those who soft-peddled the world's evils to us when we were that age. The problem with Reagan is that he behaved, and certainly spoke, as though he thought that the world genuinely was the way it was presented to him as a child. He once said, incredibly, that labor strikes were unheard of when he was a kid and certainly not as violent as they had become in the 1970's and 1980's. Even more incredibly, no one in news media challenged that clearly false statement, probably because Reagan said it, as he said everything, with absolute conviction.

.....The point here is that Reagan was one of many raised to believe that humanity and more specifically western civilization in his youth were the pinnacle. When the world changed, when it proved unable to remain stagnant and dead for decades, he could only conclude that something had gone wrong. It was inconceivable to him that many of these changes were improvements over conditions of which he was unaware and that many more were never changes at all. He hadn't learned as many of us had that the world had not always been how we were led to believe it was and that the changes it undergoes aren't good or bad but merely developments to be dealt with. In "I'M A POTATO" we have Devo painting a nostalgic picture of what most people would consider a nightmare of chromosomal damage and failed elective surgery. The music sounds like an enthusiastic march (again, the illusion of progress, of moving 'toward' something) with electric guitars imitating a trumpet fanfare. It would take virtually no effort at all to write arrangements for high school marching bands to play at football games. All of which is to celebrate being a 'potato', a recurring image and metaphor in many of their songs. The potato actually has more genetic material than a human (48 chromosomes to our 46) with much of that information devoted to storing energy. Recorded in 1976,supposedly the year that the phrase "couch potato" was coined, this demo is already anticipating a time when over-simplification will be lionized as the epitome of human development. The potato becomes the ideal model for the future of human evolution. We would become big featureless inert sponges, soaking up information or some other unit of value and retaining it as long as possible, just as potatoes retain heat energy. What Devo is telling us is that this can be viewed as a problem to prevent or a paradigm to embrace. What is not as obvious is that our current evolutionary status can also be viewed that way. If we don't occasionally step back from ourselves and look objectively at what we are we may never realize that we are the mongoloids happily devolving and embracing ourselves as not only the best that we can be but the best that can be, as Reagan did. Devo painted that picture of mutant dystopia to warn us, but a decade later it seemed that the picture was adopted as a blueprint.