humansofanarchy-blog

[humansofanarchy-blog]

My name is Juanmiguel Ortiz. I'm 25, I live in Southern California. I graduated from UCSD with a political science/philosophy double major and am currently working as a legal administrator. I’m passionate about music, creativity, memes, and animals.

I was introduced to Anarchy towards the end of high school/beginning of college. However my paradigm shift started in my senior year of high school. Listening to Immortal Technique’s music was the first thing that started to open my eyes that there was something wrong with the current political system (I love listening to underground hip-hop btw). He was openly criticizing the war on Iraq, questioning 9/11, and a lot of injustice in the world in general. Movies like V for Vendetta, the Bourne movies, Law Abiding Citizen, and Shooter also made me realize the amount of government corruption that was taking place all around me.

One day my high school economics teacher was talking about how inefficient and childish politicians were. He said democrats and republicans were like children in at a playground destroying each others sand castles and throwing sand at each other. For some reason that really resonated with me. I thought to myself surely there must be a better way to organize society. I think part of the reason why I started to think about alternative solutions to the current system is due to my personality. I’m an INTJ under the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator. I’m tend to ask myself if something is working or not a lot. If it does not work then I ask myself if it can be improved, and if it can’t be improved then it needs to be replaced or removed.

On my summer break before college (around 2011-early 2012) I was on tumblr and I saw this shirt that had the guy fawkes mask on it and said disobey on it. I thought it was really clever instead of the obey shirts that you see everywhere. I started searching for more images of the shirt to find out where to buy it. While i was searching for more images I found this blog: Disobey by this guy called Dustin R. Snyder. He was an anarchist academic and activist from New York, way ahead of his time in my opinion. I’m not sure what happened to him as his blog disappeared and haven’t seen his content around anymore.

But reading his posts I slowly began to realize the current political system was pointless and his arguments for anarchy made a lot of sense to me. However, my main introduction to Anarchism was through Stefan Molyneux. That’s when Anarchy really clicked for me. I was mind blown and everything about anarchy made so much sense to me. It was the most logically consistent concept I had ever come across. Which was huge for me because I’m a very methodical and evaluative person.

Later I came across Stefan’s videos where he had conversations with people, focusing on interpersonal relationships and the psychology behind their daily interactions with the people closest to them. This was another paradigm shift for me because it caused me to think differently about my interactions with others and how other people’s behavior was deeply rooted in their family life. And while I can’t recommend Stefan’s current content, his past videos and books on anarchy and peaceful parenting are still extremely insightful and I will forever be grateful for prompting me to become an anarchist.

My most recent paradigm shift regarding Anarchy was around 2016 when I discovered the page Psychologic-anarchist on facebook. At this point I was looking for more anarchist content creators besides Stefan. This page is run by Sterlin Luxan and I Immediately started reading all his posts, liked his personal page and also joined the group he co-created “Compassionate Anarchy” along with Gordon Peters. Sterlin pioneered the concept of relational anarchy. Instead of trying to bash people over the head with logic, trying to condem people by pointing out they are participating in a corrupt system, or the constant fighting between AnCaps and AnComs, this approach involves connecting with people as individuals first and compassionately trying to communicate your ideas to them.

I started my own group called Compassionate Anarchy Reimagined on facebook recently as I got tired of the constant arguing between AnCaps and AnComs or just trolling in general. The original group (Compassionate Anarchy) is still a great group and I encourage you to check out both groups. Regarding this page “Humans of Anarchy”, I've had this idea for a while to start a "Humans of Anarchy" blog or facebook page modeled after the popular Humans of New York movement.

It's way easier to talk to someone about new ideas when you can relate to that person and understand their journey as a person. I believe the Relational Anarchy approach Sterlin pioneered is the next step in the evolution of anarchy. I want people to be able to remain anonymous if they choose to do so. That way they're more comfortable sharing their journey on how they became anarchists and other anarchy related actives in their daily lives.

That's also one of the most interesting parts to me about someone becoming an anarchist. Their thought process and the situations that prompted them to change their worldview.

Eventually I want to turn the best submissions from this page into a free book so people can have the opportunity to view Anarchy from a different perspective. Another future goal of mine is to start my own non-profit organization that puts the ideas surrounding anarchy into practice. If you got this far, thank you for taking the time to read it I’ll look forward to reading about your journey regarding Anarchy as well!