The Basement Dialogues by Joseph L. Foster

The first things you see when you come into the basement are tigers.  There are six wildlife-observation style photos above the cat mangled antique sofa.  The sofa is special kind of classy: wood-paneled, cat mangled, and stuffed with straw.  The carpet has a strange mottled color scheme that could only be appropriate in an alternate version of the 1970s where Andy Warhol was President.  Sitting on top of the carpet is a collectible coffee table from Target -- only 285,000 were made, we had two (the nice one was upstairs). 
            Even though it never seems to be played, the focus of the basements feng-shui is clearly the classic Donkey Kong arcade machine that serenely rests, content in its classic status, on the east wall.  A papasan chair, an international-orange colored lazy boy clone, and an old footlocker filled with half made plastic-lamellar armor and camping gear rounded out the room.  So if you are paying attention, the basement had seating for four, six to ten if people were friendly.
            The basement acted as a nexus for the kind of relaxed armchair social engineering that can only be safely practiced with a joint and a, societally-perceived, useless education.  I often found that I had access to a different part of my genius in those special basement sessions.  There were times when the ideas would flow so rapidly that the epiphanies would compress down into a continuum of purpose.  December 2005 was one of them.
            We created Post-Capitalism because George had come in from Maine for a few days and we wanted to do something creative with the time. George was staying until the day after his birthday, so we decided that we should articulate our views on economics, social justice, and rationality.  This all fell under that umbrella term of Post-Capitalism, which further expanded to include out plan for our future business empire and the coaxing of all humanity into a better, more mature, niche.  It was a lot to accomplish even over a long weekend.
We were a group of entitled intellectuals that had never worked an honest day in our lives.  We all had six figure trust fund, which we wielded with relative impunity.
            Post-Capitalism was the name given to a collection of related ideologies/social transformation plans that our group gestated in the middle years of the first decade.  In the initial writings, Joe Foster and George Dalphin wrote, “consider more frequently holding the banner of enlightenment-revolution in their daily conversations and lives.”

”We need to prepare for this. We have a responsibility to not allow the forces of materialism, militarism, and greed to taint the possibilities of the developing new era.” December, 2005.

Man-Like Machines was created by George Dalphin and Joseph Foster in Amsterdam in the summer of 2002. With its simple three-part tagline/mission statement/philosophy, ART/ENLIGHTENMENT/THE FUTURE, Joe and George essentially summed up the focus of their creative work, which intends to be a tincture of philosophy, base entertainment, futurism, hope, realism, worship of beauty and truth, awesomeness, social progress and hilarity.

George and Joe, both as a creative team and individually, work in the media of traditional artwork, modern albumcentric music, movies and shorts, literature (paren-heavy novels, short stories and plays), and even just straight-up metaphysics and other pseudo-scientific thoughts on futurism, philosophy, esoteric spirituality and social and personal evolution.

It is their belief that Humanity is moving fast toward an entirely new paradigm, and that that is extremely interesting. It is also their belief that if there is any chance of Humanity surviving and doing 'good' (being awesome), that this will be achieved through ART (the communication of complex ideas/the worship of that which is awesome), ENLIGHTENMENT (reflection on the nature of existence, experience and the essense of freedom and identity) and considering THE FUTURE (which it already is; fuckin' look around).

It is also essential to note that, while being composed of artists in need of some sort of means to survive, Man-Like Machines as an organization feels strongly about artistic freedom, and insomuch that the whole concept of intellectual property is folly. Art is theft; it's in the air. It's the words we speak and the shit we look at and listen to. You can't own a word, series of words, sound, image or concept. That is bullshit. So we need to accept that and figure out some fresh new way of thinking about art and media, and of paying artists. That and a lack of notable success asyet are the reasons why Man-Like Machines presently produces and proliferates all of their material as independently as possible.