We should be entering the new world, all the preparations have been made, it has all been written about and everybody wants it, it is so easy to imagine. A world where everybody loves each other and all motion is towards harmony and there is no more war or hate or fear and everybody is together all the time. It is very easy to Imagine.
Yet here we sit in a grey and tumbling world out of place and bursting with song! What happened? We all saw it on LSD. A new consciousness was definitely born. Are we just experiencing the long dry waiting period? Why haven't things changed very much? Nixon is still a stale turd atop the most ridiculous decaying government that ever pretended to lead anything more than a procession of baboons to the slaughter since man first realized he needed order to survive. The Viet Nam war goes on and on and on. Hair gets longer, music gets louder, dope gets stronger, people get sillier, life still goes on and on and on. Perhaps we didn't want ENOUGH. Perhaps we have settled for too LITTLE. Perhaps what we REALLY wanted had nothing to do with everything we THOUGHT we wanted. Perhaps the new world hasn't really even BEGUN yet!
And it hasn't. We're still mired in the death and decay of the OLD one. We're still looking to the new one for something we didn't get out of the old one, we're trying to make a new deal for old goods, we're not READY to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
But why do I even bother to tell you all this at all, no one ever listens to me, you're all too full of dope and pride and ideas and yourselves to know what's even good for you anymore. You will read this piece and go away completely unchanged, probably even a little MORE smug than you already are. I really hate you bastards cause you're killing me, you're stinking up the whole world with your filthy hair and dirty clothes and empty slogans and phoney smiles and false achievements and long lost glory, It's over, man. You didn't make it. Why don't you kill yourself?
It used to be: "graduate from high school, go to college". Now it's: "graduate from high school, go to heaven". Nothing is sacred anymore, everything is cheap, including sex, love, religion and honest accomplishment. We have lost respect, we have no values, all things are equally worthless. I don't know what to do about this mess we're in, there are no answers, most people think everything's just fine. The few who know our deepest needs are still unfulfilled are regarded with great suspicion and contempt for not allowing people to "do their own thing". I don't want you to do your own thing, I want you to do MY thing, WAKE UP!
It's incredible! A whole generation of people who grew up with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO! There is nowhere to go and nothing to do. Education is a farce. Marriage and good jobs and a secure future fill no real need. It is allover before we have even BEGUN. The world is going to FILL UP WITH TRANSIENTS! And then what? A whole generation of people who grew up in a world they can't live in. It's AMAZING! So what do they do, they try to DIE in it. And what SHOULD they do? They should try and make it fit to LIVE in!
The injustice and decay that you are going to have to fight if you are to stay alive would stagger your imagination if you were only aware of it. The whole world is against you, it only wants to die in peace and it will do anything to keep from living, and it will kill you, if you're not already dead. It has seduced you into believing there is a purpose to all this suicide, a condemned and dying culture is trying to take you with it, AND YOU'RE FALLING FOR IT! We were talked out of a Revolution, even the blacks succumbed, they took the good jobs and college diplomas and laid down their arms, AND THEIR HEARTS. You have sold your souls at a mean price, you have been ACCEPTED! And so now we have a whole race of dying hippies and dying blacks, the Revolution has been safely put out and the world can settle back into dying peacefully again. Even our "free press" has fallen into the hands of the living dead. You would be surprised if you really knew who's running things, the same old dollar, AND NOTHING ELSE! The same dollar that we set out to stamp out has stamped US out and we never even realized it, we lost the war in the first battle and the victors have been kind enough to let us live on reservations with plenty of dope to keep us pacified. There is no hope without organization, the world is dying and we must get together and fight this creeping decay. And it's everywhere, EVEN IN YOU!!!
But it won't do us any good to march on the Capitol, and it won't do us any good to try and stop the war in Viet Nam, that's THEIR WAR, ours is here at home. We've got to stop fighting each other and fight the common enemy. We've got to get all these little communities that are forming allover the country into one BIG COMMUNITY. We've got to stop filling up the woods and streets looking for dope and love and get to know each other and start helping each other and start keeping each other awake and stop letting ourselves off so easy and stop thinking we're right and we don't have to do anything about it but just love everybody, we DO have to do something about it, we've got to FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES. Get together with your friends, pool your resources, make some money, buy a house, take on some responsibilities, learn to FIGHT for what you believe in, stop doping yourselves up, stop looking for a Utopia, look around you with clear eyes and make some clear decisions, THE ENEMY IS WITHIN! We have to start a new life here, we cannot live in this dying structure, it will kill us, it has already killed itself. Our only weapon is inner strength, a small group of people with a great deal of determination can transform the world, be the NEW Christians, fight for your life, fight for love, fight for a new world, fight for room to breathe, the Heart of God is a vast darkness that only the brave can know, this is a plea for courage, WE MUST GET TOGETHER AND FIGHT THIS CREEPING DECAY!

First appeared in the L.A. Free Press this was published on a full page bordered with stars, under the heading "Richard Herbruck Presents, under which was written: "promises you everything, gives you nothing", and then the text, without the title "Plea for Courage" and without the name "Mel Lyman". At the bottom of the page in small type was: "This page created by Richard Herbruck Presents, P.O. Box 48788, Los Angeles, California 90048." (1967)