#anarchism and ethics

[rotenotes]

Ερρίκο Μαλατέστα - Όταν χτυπάμε την τωρινή κοινωνία, αντιπαραθέτουμε στην ατομιστική αστική ηθική την ηθική της αλληλεγγύης

Ερρίκο Μαλατέστα, Όταν χτυπάμε την τωρινή κοινωνία, αντιπαραθέτουμε στην ατομιστική αστική ηθική την ηθική της αλληλεγγύης via: http://ngnm.vrahokipos.net/index.php/theory/725-2013-07-22-10-26-50 Ο αριθμός αυτών που δηλώνουν αναρχικοί σήμερα είναι τόσο μεγάλος και κάτω από το όνομα αναρχία κρύβονται θεωρίες τόσο διαφορετικές και αντιφατικές, ώστε θα είχαμε πραγματικά άδικο αν τα χάναμε όταν το…

[ohholydyke]

Actually the Great Commission is about generating a culture of love and care between diverse interconnected global communities not about colonizing and trying to convert groups because you think their way of life is somehow lesser unless they approach the Divine from a Christian lens

[hole34]

it has come to my attention some people don't donate their clothes????

DONATE YOUR FUCKING CLOTHES

it doesn't matter if you give them to a local shelter, a thrift shop, dropbox at a church or next to a dollar store, give them directly to a homeless person or to other family/friends that would fit them, any of these are very accessible options and it SHOCKS me that some people just throw away the clothes they don't fit/want anymore. what the FUCK.

and the thing about donating your old clothes is that it also doesn't matter if you're rich or middle class or poor or even homeless, if you have extra clothes you no can no longer fit or no longer need, you donate them.

i don’t know what you upper-middle class fuckers are up to 😭 there's a whole system we got going on here where you get your new clothes THAT YOU NEED from local thrift shops or dropboxes, wear those clothes as long as you can, and then when you cannot fit them or have excess clothes to get rid of, you donate them for the next round of people that need them. don't tell me poor people are the only ones who know how to do shit responsibly???

and i would like to emphasise childrens clothes are a MUST donate. adults' bodies will change and may not always fit the same clothes, but childrens clothes especially do not last and cannot be wasted. please. fucking. donate. your. child's. outgrown. clothes.

small children's clothes are a very big need for lower class people because unlike being a teen or adult, where you can modify your stuff, there is literally nothing else for small kids to wear. babies and toddlers and elementary kids NEED clothes, and babies and toddler and elementary kids' clothes do not last their lifetime. it is SUCH A SIMPLE SOLUTION.

[not to say everyone should necessarily get kids' clothes from donations - if you're upper class and have the money to buy new kids clothes, that's okay, and honestly probably better with the current state of consumerism because it's the lower class people that need the donations.]

hell the clothing dropbox at my therapy office is my main source of clothes (both getting and giving) and nearly all of it is just large men's pants.

please consider that there are people of all ages and sizes out there that need clothes, i honestly think that should be an obligation for EVERYONE. thank you for listening and please stay sustainable.

[voltairineandviolethaze]

And equality is equity. By proclaiming ourselves anarchists, we proclaim beforehand that we disavow any way of treating others in which we should not like them to treat us; that we will no longer tolerate the inequality…

It is not only against the abstract trinity of law, religion, and authority that we declare war. By becoming anarchists we declare war against all this wave of deceit, cunning, exploitation, depravity, vice — in a word, inequality — which they have poured into all our hearts. We declare war against their way of acting, against their way of thinking. The governed, the deceived, the exploited, the prostitute, wound above all else our sense of equality. It is in the name of equality that we are determined to have no more prostituted, exploited, deceived and governed men and women.

- Peter Kropotkin, “Anarchist Morality” (1897)

[evpath]

Good/Bad People Don't Exist

A friendly reminder that no one is good or bad at being a person. Someones Humanity has been equated with their moral goodness for a while now, and that is a flawed concept.

Ask yourself, why are humans any more moral than other species?

By framing someone as morally bad they can be dehumanized by the correlation between humanity and goodness, and vice versa. Prisoners become seen as less than human for committing crimes and racialised peoples become seen as bad through white supremacy viewing them as less human.

We need to acknowledge that even the most evil people are still human (unless they identify otherwise) and that humanity doesn't = good. People with human biology who identify as something different are not less morally good then you as a result of that.

Morals are values one holds, they are individual, no ones morals are defined by their humanity or lack there of.

Instead of saying someone is a bad person you can say:

They are an evil person

They are morally bad

They are a piece of shit

Instead of saying someone is a good person you can say:

They are morally good

They have good values

They are pretty fucking cool

They are moral

[uwmspeccoll]

It's Feral Friday!

If Special Collections were compared to a National Park- a thoughtfully curated, accessible experience of the wilderness of the natural world- where would its edges lie? What would be considered off the beaten path, how would its boundaries be defined, and in what ways would the landscape beyond those boundaries inspire our imagination and broaden our conceptions of the world and our communicative capacities?

That’s the realm of pluralistic inquiry explored by Feral Fridays, a new weekly post where we’ll feature items from our collection like zines, experimental book arts, independently produced poetry and other unruly materials that exist at the margins of publishing and literary traditions.

Let’s get Feral!   

--Ana, Special Collections Graduate Intern

Images:

That Way Issue 1, Spring 2021

That Way Issue 1, Spring 2021, pp. 23-24 (excerpt from interview w/Erma Fiend)

Thing Issue no. 3, Summer 1990

Re: Creation by Nikki Giovanni, Broadside Press, 1970

Aquarius Rising by Ben Fama, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010

excerpt from Ugly Duckling Issue 6, October 2003

Lynch by Inch: an interview to Ali Khalid Abdullah 2003

Blue Horses for Navajo Women by Nia Francisco, Greenfield Review Press, 1988

Mildred Pierce Issue 3, April 2009

The Match! Number 97, Winter 2001-2002

[redheadedfailgirl]

I just had a riveting discussion with a self proclaimed anarcho-capitalist at work, whose opinions included:

Tipping is bad because 'contracts with your employer are voluntary and they can leave if they're not paid enough.' He will still tip if he thinks his wife is watching

If you're stuck inside a torture chamber with an apple you can bite every ten seconds that sends you to paradise for a year, it is illogical to bite the apple and humanity is broken for thinking so

The ending to the good place was bad because the characters weren't being logical and there was so much shit you can do with the afterlife.

The marxist labor theory of value 'isn't true' because paintings have arbitrary value

Heidegger was an idiot

Kant was an idiot

Nietzche was an idiot

He is an anarcho-capitalist

If I don't have 100% certainty for something than I can't truly say that I know something is true, and isn't it illogical that people do that?

I have to see this man every Monday from now until I quit. We work one on one.

[thesunwentdown]

the anarchy paradox

i'm not even twenty and the world is collapsing. natural disasters, failing economies, shootings, corruption, it feels like a bad remake modeled around a teenager's cliche apocalyptic novel concept. i can only hope that i live long enough to see a peaceful, post- post-apocalyptic society.

when i was younger, dumber, and more pretentious, i'd tell you i was an anarchist. i'd get giddy at the idea of chaos, i'd get a rush thinking about a societal crash. the truth is, i was a kid who had no idea what the hell i was talking about.

as i know it, an anarchist society isn't possible. the idea of self-policing is dependent on honesty, trust, and every individual being naturally good. the fault lies in human nature. after all, if all humans were inherently good and moral, which is already a very touchy and subjective matter, then society's issues wouldn't exist. and if society's problems didn't exist, there wouldn't be a need for anarchy, we wouldn't need to change.

true anarchy can only work in a world where it isn't needed.

[philosophybits]

Not only has a coercive system contributed and powerfully aided to create all the present economical, political and social evils, but it has given proof of its absolute impotence to raise the moral level of societies; it has not been even able to maintain it at the level it had already reached.

Peter Kropotkin, Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal

[tommming]

Adoption analogy for trans gender identity

One of my favourite analogies for being transgender (and people should use this more in my opinion, I came up with it idk if anyone else did too) is adoption. (and I am aware that adoption in our society has some problematic issues in its current state, but that’s not the point, especially because humans throughout history and the world can and do adopt children).

When an adult adopts a child, and the child is happier and healthier because they have someone to care for them, and the parent and the child both like to refer to each other as mom/dad and son/daughter, would you deny the reality of this relationship or refuse to use the words mother/father son/daughter?

Some adoptions will be more visually obvious than others (like inter-ethnic), and this can lead to mean and invalidating comments and assumptions about the relationship. 

In adoption situations, it’s clear that the medical implications (genetic diseases etc) are not the same as biological parents and children. 

And some kids will at some point decide they want to call their adoptive parents “adoptive parents” and reconnect with their biological parents, and maybe have two sets of parents, and this is accepted, because parent can mean different things. 

Everyone (idk i’ve never met an adoption hater) accepts that this is all valid and in a sense real, because who counts as a parent or son/daughter is just words, and even if they usually have a concrete biological basis, it would be quite disrespectful and unhelpful to refuse to use the words to include adoptive parent/child relationships. 

As you can piece together I am sure, the visually obvious adoptees are analogous to visually obvious trans people, medical concerns are analogous, and different sets of parents is somewhat analogous to the somewhat nuanced way sex and gender all fit together (like someone can be male and nonbinary or whatever) and that whatever the adoptee kid says about their relationships is probably what others should accept, and just the whole thing is analogous! Especially it’s really the same type of thing: People accept the fact of adoption / gender as something that is socially and psychologically real despite lacking the biological basis that typically defines these things, largely because many of the important parts of what defines these words/concepts actually does apply to the situation, and importantly I would argue everyone is better off because of it! (better both because of the actual adoption / transition itself and because of the validating language and people being understanding of it).

You could argue that adoption reduces the resources available for real parents/children (parenting clinics, family therapy, family lawyers, etc.) You could argue that is degrades  and distorts the meaning of what a child is (so that immigrant parents wanting their children to be reconnected with them might have less legal leverage, or that after someone dies it’s no longer enough to be a biological child to inheret their stuff if they have no will, because being a child no longer has any real definition). You could even argue that it perpetuates unhelpful stereotypes about parent/child relationships (for example I know someone that had an abusive mother and is lowkey triggered when people talk about maternal love, and it’s not helpful at all for people to assume that everyone’s parents are nice and caring and present or even existent/known because so many children’s parents are not, or that parents are responsible and have rightful authority over children, which is a dangerous idea for children that are abused by their parents). But are these realistic concerns? Why or why not? I’m not saying this is exactly the same as gender issues, but it has similarities for sure.

I think these ideas are interesting and important and I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I really think this is a great analogy, and shows how I wish the world would be about transgender people (accepting and validating, even legally, without suspicious concerns and without any delusions or misconceptions about what’s real or not).

Furthermore, if you want to really get into it, both the idea of being a parent and the idea of being a woman or man have an interesting similarity, due to both of them being being complex concepts that involve biology and social relations and stereotypical characteristics and all kind of stuff. Someone who is a father to a child that died before the child was born, and left nothing for the kid (wasn’t married lets say), is a parent, and so is an adoptive father, notice how there is absolutely no single fact that these two dads have in common except for the identification as a father. I think this is very similar to a very masculine cis woman that is consistently mistaken for a man, lives a very masculine life generally, lets say perhaps has had medical issues with her hormones throughout life, and has no real attachment her gender because she is a gender studies professor and knows about how its all bullshit (I knew a professor that was a lot like this), and a trans woman, who is technically male, but passes effortlessly as a quite feminine woman and has since being a little child gravitated strongly towards girlhood and said she’s a girl, and grown up to take hormones etc., although not yet done bottom surgery (you probably are aware of this, but there are many trans women that fit this description). There is not a single fact that makes these people both women other than their identification as women. Both are quite atypical, but both have good reason be called women. 

This is why I think that gender is actually a circular definition. Men are men because they are considered men, women are women because they’re called women. Just like parents are parents because someone called them a parent. There are a million and one things that are typical of a man or woman or parent, but none are completely definitive (in my view), and that’s okay because they are just words and words are tools to understand the world. And likewise I think other complex concepts are probably like this too. Religions, languages, families, crimes, salads, idk! Trans women are women because we regard them as women.

[berlingyatchaser]

[recklessfuture001]

Why is there so much pain in this world? It is strange when you get to thinking about it.

It seems that we shouldn't have to hurt so much. So many things could be better, and when I have expressed this in the past, there are people who seem to get offended by it. That changing anything about the horror of all this is taboo somehow.

Or that changing anything is just an idealistic dream. Sure, there will always be pain in the world, I think. There will always be hurt and abusive people that know how to operate between the cracks. However, there is so much that seems could be done to make things better. Bad things are just allowed to proliferate within this system. So much of this current mode of production feeds off of human suffering that it boggles the mind that you could call this anywhere close to a democracy. Policies that are vastly unpopular with the majority of people are made into law without much of a fight from anyone that we are told are our representatives.

All the things that were considered public goods in the past not all that long ago are cast aside as more and more are privatized. The poor and the working class have to put up with more and more being taken away and a lower quality of life. When does it stop? When do the people gather their strength as one to not just make the demand, but to assert that certain things just should not be tolerated? Things such as child labor, genocide, exploitation of natural resources for private gain, colonial wars of domination, etc. We don't support these things that our governments do, but they keep on happening anyway.

It helps to not give in to too much pessimism. There have been gains in the past that led to positive outcomes. How do we make things happen that reflect the will and desires of the majority of people. It appears to me that what appears to us through the mediums advancing today are both a blessing and a curse. I worry that it is slowly becoming more and more negative though. How do you approach epistemological certainty in a world where technology is geared more and more towards surveillance, deception, coercion, etc.?

[pumpacti0n]

"...Through things like our schooling, mass media and our families, we've been taught to fear solitude and learned to try and possess others to numb this fear. But it is also at these very same institutions where we learned about good and evil. And these things aren't separate.

There's a fundamental link between our moral education and every misguided lesson about love and desire that we subject others to -- it's all cut from the same big cloth. Taken together, people use these teachings every day to run from anything fluid and ambiguous in life."

- Relationship Communism: An Infantile Disorder - An antimoralist critique of The Relationship Anarchy Discussions (RAD) Content Library

[aronarchy]

lovely thread

[cowboymaterials]

too tired to elaborate now but its bonkers to see people saying that being an israeli settler makes you not a leftist. maybe I am just not understanding but idk... it's strange to see people say this when many are settlers in their own countries. are they not leftists?

[stelashe]

The children nowadays think that piracy has a moral. They pirate stuff when they "boycott" or to be "anti capitalistic" which comes as a no surprise but it's so eye roll inducing after they insulted millenials for being RobBeRs for pirating movies before(if u pirate to boycott universal u also affect -or better not affect- ur precious saint fave hello?adding "morals" don't change the result).