The story here is clearly not about whether Reclaim the Commons can disrupt the BIO meeting. These folks will not even stop BIO members from getting their next latte. The real story is how these people found their way here at all, and what, if anything, they really think they can accomplish. They know something is happening. While they truly don't know what it is, that doesn't mean their intuition is wrong. We may, in fact, be sharing our last human breath together. We may, in reality, be losing our identities as free individuals. It may, in truth, be the end of the world as we know it. If all this does come to pass, we won't be able to blame Reclaim the Commons. They, at least, have attempted to name of the root cause of all this evil. For them, its name is technology.

Technology as the root of all evil. I will hear this mantra endlessly at the Really Really Free Market held Sunday afternoon on Union Square. The Really Really Free Market is described as "a real gift economy." From the Saturday night teach-in, I have surmised that, in the global village (as opposed to the globalized free market), one starts off giving away the things one produces. The next step is hierarchical bartering; first within the local community, followed by regional trade. Profit per se is never a factor. Everyone works for cost and the sense of spiritual well-being that comes from being close to nature. This concept sounds especially ludicrous during my walk up Powell Street through the highly organized, relentlessly profit-driven chaos of San Francisco's Chinatown, a place where the idea of giving away anything that could be sold was probably discarded before it ever reached the communal lower id.

In terms of consumer goods, the Really Really Free Market didn't measure up to a decent Berkeley garage sale, and it made the average flea market in rural West Virginia look like Macy's. A generous estimate would be two cardboard boxes full of threadbare clothing, small anemic plants wilting in the sun, and perhaps a half dozen other booths and service providers. In fairness, there were plenty of free bakery products, but no more than one would find at a regular AA meeting.

As a contribution to the Really Really Free I put up a sign reading, "Genetic Engineer: Free Inside Information About Biotechnology." For the first half-hour folks give me a wide berth. Then a person gathering signatures on a petition about stem cells stops to talk. He has no idea what a stem cell is. Another, violently against cloning, doesn't know what a gene is. I pick up a third marketeer, who knows that the FBI is compiling a list of farmers who save their own seed. None of these people is over 30, and none has any pressing questions about the nuts and bolts of genetic engineering or biotechnology. But after years of teaching introduction to cell biology I have strategies to draw them out.

I start with the stem cell dude. Using a modified psychiatrist's approach, I ask him how he feels about stem cells. He responds that he doesn't really understand what they are but he has heard that they have something to do with human cloning. This is all the daylight I need. I tell him that the issue is really about tissue engineering, and that biotechnology will soon be able to grow humans, or any part of them, in a laboratory. I ask if he understands what this means. He says no.

I have three people in class now so the time has come to make my move. Keep in mind, I say, that your entire body grew inside your mother from a single cell. Obviously, that single cell had the ability to make every part of the human body since, in fact, that is how you got here. Cells like that are called embryonic stem cells. I go on to explain that, in the near future, biotechnology will learn how to take normal cells, say skin cells, and turn them into stem cells. I finish with a flourish. In a tone meant to transmit enthusiasm mixed with menace, I inform them that we will soon be able to grow body parts and even whole bodies. Obviously, I conclude, this technology has the potential to create serious ethical dilemmas for society. The stem cell dude looks at me and says, "Like what?"

Since I teach undergraduates professionally, I am unfazed. I offer the example of growing him a headless body and keeping it on life support in case he needs a new liver or heart. I ask my impromptu seminar group if that would be OK. The general consensus is that it might be, but they would definitely have to think it over.

I decide to take my sign down and circulate around Union Square. It is a beautiful sunny day. There is a kind of reggae band playing and a couple of people are dancing, but what strikes me is the almost complete lack of energy. During the next hour I am unable to locate a single person who can speak coherently about science. Most of the people I talk to come from elsewhere, as in not from San Francisco. The stem cell dude was from Santa Cruz; another member of my seminar was from Spain but was now living in the Mission; the girl concerned about the FBI menacing farmers is from Portland. Many people I interviewed made outrageous claims without a clue as to where their information came from.

I was informed that, because foods are not labeled, we don't know if we are eating a tomato with fish genes or corn with human genes. And, since it's not labeled, we obviously can't know what effect eating all this weird stuff will have on our health. I heard that biotechnology is not how the people want their food or medicine grown. I heard from people who would try a biotechnology cure for cancer, but only if acupuncture failed. I heard that the ecological impact of biotechnology looks pretty grave. I heard that research into Viagra: The Next Generation was preventing the development of a cure for malaria. I learned that our government needs to put a lot more energy into providing healthy alternatives rather than giving corporate welfare to big biotech. I heard a lot about faith, a lot about belief, and a lot about magic. Someone offered to read my future with Tarot cards.

The Really Really Free Market took place on a classic summer day that is the stuff of California dreamin'. All that sun and all that sky cried out for a festival. Yet there was almost no sense that these people were willing or able to celebrate the real, real human spirit that had supposedly brought them together in Union Square. There was no flower power in that park on that Sunday. Whatever their dreams, these people seem to know in their hearts that the most they can hope for is more corporate responsibility, enforced by government regulations. Where is Abby Hoffman, or even Wavy Gravy when you need them? Rather than watching activists, the overwhelming sense was of watching canaries in a coal mine.

The cosmic irony is that these people have tapped directly into the most profound and basic social truth of modern life. But rather than being energized by this connection, the sheer voltage of reality has them paralyzed. What they know in their hearts is that they are witnessing the ascendancy of the corporate capitalist model for controlling human behavior and ultimately human consciousness. These people correctly recognize that they are the subject of the most massive and sophisticated behavior modification campaign in human history -- a campaign that appears to be going splendidly. They have correctly identified BIO as a manifestation of this campaign, but have incorrectly targeted it as a causal agent. Biotechnology is much too young an industry to have any real control. The folks at BIO are simply the newest merchants on a very old trade route. The route itself is the product of powerful trade winds that blow at the behest of far more ancient market forces, forces that control transportation, energy, weapons and the ultimate power that resides with those who take and hold entire regions of the planet itself.

Perhaps this explains the transcendent lethargy that consumed the event at Union Square. On some level, the denizens of the Really Really Free Market know that they cannot win a real battle, much less the war. As a result these people are confused, frustrated and angry. But ultimately they appear to be resigned to going out with a whimper. Just please don't force-feed them any more corn with rat genes.

As I retrace my cable car route back up Powell Street, I know that I will not continue my mission. This battle has been lost. In the sound-bite war for America's heartland, Reclaim the Commons made the gravest of all tactical errors. They got off message. Or, perhaps they never understood their true message. The green revolution, totally reliant on mechanized agriculture, chemical pesticides and fertilizers, was never a true green technology. Now the same players are going to feed us with the green biotechnology revolution even though there is no real evidence that hunger in today's world is the result of a shortage in food production technology.

Agricultural biotechnology is different from the rest of BIO. To succeed, it must literally flood the globe with recombinant genotypes. The people of Reclaim the Commons knew this instinctively, but failed to get their message across. The people in BIO also know this truth, but they believe in their technology. It is, in fact, way beyond the point of belief. If America cannot evolve a coherent environmental action movement Gaia, BIO and entropy will just have to work things out.

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