Bob Schwartz

If you went into a bookstore in 1971, you might find a copy of The Be-Cause Look Book ($2.99). It is long out of print, and even a digital copy is hard to find.

It was a cooperative effort by artists to aggressively criticize America and to promote revolutionary change. The artists came from different directions, but they shared the belief that things had to change radically—politically, socially, economically, spiritually. They faced powerful people who, for various reasons, including greed and unenlightened hearts and minds, were causing problems and standing in the way of progress.

As a technical note, this was created by artists using manual tools and paste-up of pages. These days, artists have digital capabilities that could only be dreamed of fifty-five years ago. But artists analog or digital can still move us along, as the artists of The Be-Cause Look Book understood.

“This book is a notebook a sketchbook. It is a work of people and machines. This book is a look book. It is a picture book for revolutionaries and artists. It is a way—for those who wonder about being here now. It is the cooperative effort of many different people.”

“In the final stages of system-pattern collapse there is widespread social chaos and infantile reversion, like being let out for recess in kindergarten with hatchets and guns.”

Dangerous infantile reversion. How many times in recent news have I heard the behavior of one particular leader described as being like a frustrated child? A child/leader with hatchets and guns.