#enlightened anarchist vibes

[13thpythagoras]

Pythagoras, me, I'm basically what happens when you inject the joker from Batman, with eons of past life wisdom, and psychedelic awareness

[comicaurora]

(Now I would have used Tumblr's handy dandy reblog function on my last ask, but I felt too self conscious making a long post Even Longer over a single section, BUT!)

'If I put Falst in a notably hostile and unjust city and then just… left him alone, that risked turning the in-universe established fact of people being casually shitty to ferin into a tell-don't-show thing. The last thing I wanted was for it to seem like Falst was being oversensitive, that things weren't that bad or that he could've been hanging out in cities this whole time. ... It was very important that I not shy away from showing the gross, bad side of his experience, because doing so could risk producing the opposite effect.'

Y'know as (half of) a black person, this honestly never occurred to me, like I just Instantly grasped from the way others talked about Falst in his intro arc when he wasn't there "Oh. Oh I Know That." And so seeing him in active peril in the city as opposed to him playing cards with Alinua in the one spot he knew was primarily safest didn't register to me at all as a big difference in presentation because you're not allowed to just Forget that people can and will treat you worse than you are due on sight when you're in Falst's position. But the audience watching a story is allowed and very likely to forget or not register danger levels unless they are being actively shown those things at prudent intervals. Like the silent pressure constantly on Falst is something I Fully Get without having to be given examples, but also it's a silent omnipresent pressure on top of all his other issues that he refuses to bring out of himself, so in crafting a story around All Of That, you gotta shake the jar or else the glitter at the bottom will become such a non-thing that people might just kinda go 'I mean it's just a jar with something at the bottom, I don't see what the deal there is.'

Yeah, it's… a tough balance to strike. I'm not a fan of stories that aggressively fire off nonstop reminders of in-story prejudice (netflix's shadow and bone went so hard on the in-universe anti-"shu" racism I kept cringing away from the screen wondering how this world seemed to be composed 95% of people with nothing else going on in their lives except being racist), but on the flip side you get stories with, as I like to call it, Elf Racism, where some demographic of gorgeous superhumans like elves or angels or catgirls will be allegedly discriminated against or hated by some specific in-universe group and it will usually either be brought up (a) only once in a Very Special Episode where someone is taught quickly and cleanly that Racism Is Bad, (b) literally never, except maybe the token elf/angel/catgirl will be like "you think my ears/wings/kawaii kitty vibes are beautiful? but……… all my life I was told they were hideous", or (c) solely in the context of Radical Anarchist Rebels whose reasonable points about "racism is bad" are obscured by their startling habit of committing random atrocities for our heroes to morally oppose without addressing their actual moral thesis.

My biggest complaint with these executions is that they are wildly, wildly unrelatable. "My life is hard because I have adorable kitty ears, angel wings or superpowers" is the kind of thing that needs supporting evidence before an audience will buy it. "This world is prejudiced, by which I mean elves and dwarves hate each other - but not THIS elf and dwarf, they're besties, but all other elves and dwarves hate each other and in those cases it's just a fun quirk we will never attempt to address" produces a setting that can't decide if prejudice is a moral failing or a funny quirk. "There is prejudice in this world, by which I mean all the bad guys are racist and all the good guys are 100% enlightened and unproblematic" isn't much better, because it's being used as just another flavor of Good Vs Evil - plus the execution on the bad guys' part tends to be so cartoonishly over-the-top as to be completely implausible.

This is a problem, because if the "prejudice is bad" story is trying to communicate, for instance, the complex moral message "prejudice is bad," the prejudice enacted in the story probably shouldn't be so cartoonishly implausible that the audience has no chance of recognizing it within themselves or within anyone whose flavor of bias is anything less blatant than foaming-at-the-mouth-and-cranking-the-hate-crimes-dial-up-to-11. Most people will accept the idea that "people being ridiculously terribly prejudiced is bad," but when the image of prejudice the story paints is so divorced from any sort of lived experience, they will not see prejudice as a harmful flaw that real human people are capable of perpetuating, and they won't recognize it when they see it from the outside in real life - they'll see it as another hypothetical flavor of evil villainy that some bad people intrinsically do.

Prejudice is such a widely experienced issue, especially the "omnipresent invisible uncertainty of whether or not I am safe right now" thing, that it's baffling to me that so many of these stories don't seem to… get it? While the specific nature varies in every case, there is fundamental overlap in the experience! Like, I absolutely do not experience it the same way a lot of other people do - I am very white-looking, and too blonde for the garden-variety antisemites to figure me out, so race-based harassment has never targeted me - but I've been an underage woman in creepy-older-male-dominated spaces, I spent about half my middle school years as the target of nearly-nonstop bullying (a lot of it from people who I otherwise got along fine with and knew were ultimately well-meaning with a blind spot for casual cruelty), and in the past I've been cyberstalked and harassed by random entitled weirdos for long periods of time. I am very aware of the feeling of "there is a target on my back, and I just hope nobody hits it too hard today," and it seems to me that that specific feeling cannot possibly be this difficult to communicate.

It's like these writers read about how prejudice worked and were like "some people hate people for how they were born, got it" and just put that in their world without any nuance. Actually, I say it's like that, but considering the demographics dominating publishing, that's probably exactly why it happens so much.

[ckcker]

Unpaid Intern

Watch, as eagle mistakes abandoned diaper for baby dall sheep carcass on video.  Giggle, divided into thirds.  Watch in a room that smells of must-see.  An unrelaxed giggle, a well-placed giggle.  Giggle for two.  

Template: Eerie Light — an unrelaxed dreamer.  Broken-hearted moobs, real under a giggle.  Real and rancid as a crushed Peep between mattress and wall. Memories of a crushed Peep en route.  Unglanced moobs of a dreamer.  SNAFU of crushed Peep.  Mold untold, heartpinged violence for an air-bulged dreamer.  Thin sneeze of a repressed dreamer, pining for an evil attitude.  FUBAR of indolence.  Stare into a SNAFU and sprint at a reckoning.  

The moobs are prepared for the group.  The giggle is prepared for the moobs. Watching a story of the body.  

The giggle is released.

On what the past several years of drifting have taught me.  Fear can take up a lot of time, drifting has no built-in revelations.  My unpaid internship.  A long pause for no revelations.  I would not want to watch a horror movie where the protagonist is already enlightened and so does not care if they live or die.  No reason for an audience to follow along.  But, good for the protagonist, that is a very mature mindset.  When it comes the gore will feel very peaceful.  As a young child walking with her mother says “hi” to me on the sidewalk and she walks by.  I smile involuntarily and say “hello” back.  The progression of knife-picked thoughts is, under this sudden sweetness, compressed and stowed.  The child has ordered me to engage with the surroundings and respond and smile.  I continue to walk home and for four of those five minutes continue to feel this way, reeling with the pleasant surprise.  Shivering with the undreamt-of giggle.  

Under such conditions did I find myself thinking of Rob somewhat rapidly as I turned the block of my apartment building; it felt like a moment to agitate some details.  He was a hedonist of indeterminate sexuality and indeterminate politics.  He had multiple young friends who were fond of wearing very specific t-shirts.  He worked as an unpaid intern for a company with an indeterminate name, maybe, Personal Options?  He had trouble explaining the tasks of this unpaid internship.  He arrived at a term he made up that one notices him to believe is professional enough: Visual Indexer.  He would say this in a way that communicated an unforeseen weakness to one day appear to others as “professional.”  Beyond this tragic motive, there was no indication anywhere else that entering a realm of prepared hierarchies and the collection of strangers’ respect was at all an interest.  He had the impulsive life pus flooding a young person who has that corrective obsession with the massacre of all infectious traditional boundaries.  Often this had taken the form of the most cheerful defenestration.  As if Rob and his friends regularly made the plan to collect any abandoned objects in the neighborhood of a certain base weight on their way back to our apartment complex and, come drink time, freely pirouette-launch the janky wares from the balcony.  

The neighbors did not seem to care, how could I not be jealous, I was one pathetic moan too old to feel that form of relief.  I touched the extreme upper bridge of my nose which was sore from having accidentally planted it at high speed on the top edge of my slightly angled-in laptop when reaching beyond it to grab a 4 x 6 photo of myself from my late teens.  I thought it a good sign that I was so unconsciously prepared to pummel my face — could it mean that, when that liberating moment finally trembled my way, I would have 100% lack of regret in the irreversible ripening of my useless young flesh?  I could only hope so.  I could also only hope it was as irreversible a procedure as I had imagined it, I often needed to remind myself that I had absolutely no understanding of science.  Indeed Rob’s friend Q.C. had once worn a black t-shirt with a graphic of a beretta on it and underneath it the writing, “ONE SIZE FITS ALL.”  I could not know the tone with which he wore it.  Rob was a Visual Indexer, I did find the term interesting.  The 4 x 6 print of myself was one of many laying on my water-stained table.  Portraits of myself at various ages, alone, printed at a very popular national pharmacy that also sold algae-encrusted vegan turmeric chips and had wine tastings every Friday from 5-7. Portraits at 16, 23, 25, 19, 26, 19, 21, I had the idea to tape them on my wall, sit against them with my eyes closed, and take photos of myself, to try to trace a timeline.  I would close my eyes to perform that I was feeling deeply.  In this photo of myself at 16, I had just a few questions about what is possible.  In this photo of myself at 23, I am apparently cross-eyed.  In this photo of myself at 19, a noticeable uptick in moobs.  

One of Rob’s friends, Bianca (who once, in my presence, and against the seeming silent contract between Rob and his other friends, asked him how he had enough money to live alone when he didn’t make any money at his internship and had no other job, and to which Rob did not even try to respond but only left the room mimicking an animatronic Halloween decoration witch laugh) had told a story of her teen years where, emboldened by some older users in a chatroom she compulsively frequented, used to scream non-white racial slurs at white people shopping at Target and Kohl’s and yell “dyke” and “faggot” at hetero couples holding hands in the street.  Though she told these anecdotes in a withdrawn and ashamed performance, she must have recognized how they might impress her group of friends who could only laugh at the altogether untraditional, societally unacceptable and, bottom line wacky behavior of their friend, who now seemed to be a reverent, committed radical anarchist that, when waiters weren’t looking, ate leftover food from plates less committed people abandoned at various restaurants.  How would I ever save enough money to look peerless and decrepit?  In this photo of myself at 21, a genuine smile, so wild it would seem I am kidding.

With some cheap make-up also bought at the pharmacy that had wine tastings, I had begun to stealthily repair my thriving fat eyebrows with highlights of white, probably only noticeable to me but done in the hopes that the powerful undertone would inch towards a different reception of my face when it was in conversation.  “Nice to meet you” the young video director had said to the middle-aged CEO, they shook hands and the CEO said, “it’s nice to be met.” Upon being introduced to Bianca one afternoon — despite my control system being against the idea of leaving my eremitic pouch, increasingly I found myself accepting invitations to Rob’s apartment — I had carefully prepared these brows blanched in the white of the faintest melting snowflake and so felt just a smidge-stain more futurist and directed.  Just one look at my altered face and people could conclude, “there is nothing different” though I hoped for, “there is nothing different?”  Bianca had looked at my face, I assumed she had never seen it before, we shook hands and her grip was severe.  Her face smiled.  Perhaps one of these elements was meant as a distraction from the other.  There was no comment from Bianca or even lingering-and-falling eye pointed towards my one-sixty-forth-assed aging attempt.  Though he was not there that day, I surprised myself by pulling up badly remembered thoughts of Q.C., as Bianca and Rob discussed the new urban development of a neighborhood that was a couple miles away.  I thought I had remembered the shape of his face and at least the shade of brown in his eyes.  But inevitably, my attempts to display a likeness in my mind were shaved down, and major facial characteristics uncontrollably replaced with the swiftly recalled appearance of a now-grown-and-unsuccessful child star I never had the option not to know or recognize.  I thought, ‘the more I see of Q.C. the more I will be able to remember of him when I am alone.’  Such projects brought their own gore, pah, the gore of worry, the worry I will be derailed.  It wasn’t my place to let myself get in the way of my own revenge.  The most grotesque escape.  This is the strategy, sadness reappears as logistics.  

I was not here to re-engage the viability of my young-ish body for the scarfing of others, I was here to become a vibe-threatening vision of near-death for the rest of my burgeoning life and also I was here to watch the yearly romantic elder comedy starring actresses and actors such as Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson.  I was just bent by the way his shoulders filled out the black t-shirt with a beretta on the front, when glanced at with his face turned away.  There is no choice but to notice.  “A new condo with several stories is being built just down the block from where I am taking improv classes,” Bianca tells us.  “And next to it I think there’s going to be some big retail store with a giant parking lot.”  “Ok,” Rob suggests, “let’s just say ‘that’s fucked up’ and continue.”

[mokeymokey]

I think whenever peopel express a sentiment towards either direction it is very often a rhetorical trick and it puts me automatically on guard. Generally you have like the more technophilic people making the latter case and anarchist-aligned types making gestures towards a simplistic programme that supposed to be more "total" and truly radical

I think the fact that it's so staggeringly easy to imagine better ways things could be is worth contemplating, and it is edifying and enlightening. I think there's a lot to be considered about how easy some problems would be to solve if we the people who want to solve them had the power to do it. Depending on how you slice up the problem-continuum you can end up with very easy problems and very difficult problems in different places.

Genuinely a bit perplexed by the claims that "degrowth" requires everyone or even most people to accept a radical decrease in living standards. Degrowth is a buzzword and as such means different things to different people but taken at face value all it really means is economic reduction by means other than accidental crisis, i.e. as part of an intentional political programme, and like idk I am not an expert but just looking around me I feel like a considerable level of "degrowth" could be achieved without any more than a slight reduction of living standards for the small privileged minority of the world as it stands. Whether that's good or desireable or "enough" is a whole other matter but it's just like. IDK I don't personally find "degrowth" a compelling banner to march under for me myself but I think an assessment like this is just a bit ungenerous?

kind of tangential but I am always thinking about a bit in this Michael Heinrich talk I listened to where he talks about the idea of resisting or limiting capitalism. I think that's like, worth thinking about more. It's worth thinking about what social democracy has already proven to be within reach even for a liberal democratic not-even-anticapitalist political project. I think there may be a case to be made for some kind of "inherent" limitations of social democracy owing to the powerful antics of the CAPITAL-GEIST but so far such cases have been unconvincing to me. The current and particular shape of the US American Empire is to at least some degree a feat of historical accident like I think there is a fallacious tendency to generalize history into rules when we should instead step back and realize there's only been like, so many years, so many states, ever. We have limited data! Who knows what is possible? How many different ways can capitalism be limited and resisted? Some people would tell you that the USSR and PRC and so on are the only conceivable examples but I think they are selling something. You get me

Sorry if this is barely comprehensible I'm just vibing

I have complicated feelings about the idea that undoing capitalism is "easy" or "hard" I think it's like both.

[seahawk]

From 1993 - Digging through the past

A Rant

Anarchy 1. Lack of any political authority, disorder and confusion: the absence of any purpose or standard.

Anarchism 1. The doctrine of the abolishment of all forms of government because they are oppressive and undesirable.

                 2. Lawlessness.

Ummm, I was chatting with a fellow tonight, at the end of the conversation he said, “Wow you’re an anarchist, I had you figured for a goth.”  I don’t know if I’m a goth, haven’t got a clue what I am.  So, I'm here thinking about this thing and how I feel, to write something.  Start with the dictionary.  Pretty harsh, starts off nice though, I wonder if they tacked on the last part later.  Unfortunately, it’s the truth.  I’m not saying to throw the baby out with the bathwater, what I’m trying to say is that we need to start on an individual level.  Start with self-respect, then one can respect others.  Self-control, then there is no need to control others.  If we were to take out “the man” a new head would spring up and take over.  Power, control & insecurity are still an integral part of our society.

I guess what that guy was trying to say by calling me an anarchist, is I aspire to one day live in a world where someone else doesn’t have to tell me the difference between right and wrong.  Not cause the fuckers are slaughtered (sometimes I wish they would be), but cause I know in my body, my own set of values.  Ya, I think our government sucks, and pure evil at times.  The Canadian government lies to us, my favorite being “We don’t sell or make nuclear weapons”.  Uh-ha, we make parts and sell them. In fact, we have had conferences in our country, inviting the foulest human beings, murders at large, on how to up our sales. By the way, this conference last I heard was held during international peace week (talk about adding insult to injury).

I believe the year was 1987, when a friend of mine and a brilliant man was thrown in jail, without a trial, maximum security.  His crime, organizing protest march.  This march (Armex) was to voice the disgust with our government, for holding the above-mentioned convention, during international peace week. That was a tough time for me, I learned atrocities are taking place in third world countries to support our high standard of living.  That often there were little things that our government could do to help but didn’t. We live in a finite world if we give away grain, to save starving people, that would crash the market, better to let it rot in the boats than save lives.

Well, this year has been no better, we have a class war and the Harris Government is making some “changes” with their “common sense” revolution.  Frankly, it scares me, all that matters is the mighty buck, human life not a factor.  Our deficit is blamed on single mothers and the poor when billions are given to corporations.  This is our government, propagating hatred and telling lies.

But can’t we live without them, not yet.  Might is still right, down to the grassroots, in our own enlightened communities. I’m gonna tell you a story, about a booze can in Ottawa.  Our own little “Temporary Autonomous Zone”.   It was an old two-story house; people got together to party, play music and talk conspiracy. Art hangs on the walls, I still remember a painting, multi-colored statue of liberty, on roller skates.  It was an illegal bar and restaurant and pretty soon I was working there.  Got promoted after I got a bad vibe that told me to split.  When I returned the cops had busted the place, the look of relief on the guy's faces when they saw that I had returned with the float.  Went on for about three months and I had the best drug-induced time of my life.  I wanted the whole world to be this way, we were making changes.

Then the Nazi War punks started coming around and no one wanted to turn them away; it went against our ‘ethics of freedom’.  I have to say, I wasn’t into this one, and one of my strongest beliefs is not to tolerate abuse of any kind.  I just hadn’t learned to stand up for what I believe in and that is still a tough one for me today.  Abuse can be so subtle when it starts.  Anyway, the really wonderful people stopped coming and the place was reduced to a dive/drug house.  No more late-night talks on freedom and art.

I felt there was nothing I could do, I was just an 18-year-old, hundred-pound girl.  When I tried to speak to the guys that ran the place, they gave me all this laid-back pseudo-Zen stuff and totally baffled me with bull shit. I felt physically threatened, so did others.  One night a group of guys came in, one was really trying to pick me up. I got this feeling that if there were no people around, he would have no problem beating me into submission.  I was really high that night and thought it was time for me to bolt.

I got a call late that night from Bayba, she had been beaten up bad.  Just after I had left, the guys that freaked me out had been asked to leave. Later two cars had pulled up and about nine guys pilled out with baseball bats.  People running all over the place, Bayba described it as chaos, everyone that was there was not spared.  I saw the damage the next day and knew that she had left out the gorier details.  I quit and stopped going back.  I heard that one of the fellows that ran the place had started something in Montreal that’s still going today.  Funny thing is that was the only one I felt safe with when I was working.  He respected my choice not to serve minors and asked people to leave when they harassed me.

 Well, my dreams couldn’t come true, yet.  We couldn’t defend ourselves and we shouldn’t have to.  People should be empowered to state their opinions in a safe environment.  If someone is dangerous to the community, they should be removed from it at any means. Until we have a way to defend beauty we ain’t gonna have it for too long.  And it starts with me; I will stand up when I see injustice, when something isn’t right for me.  No matter how silly it seems to others.  How they deal with that will show me if they are people that I can count on.  It doesn’t need to be harsh; it can be gentle but if I’m not heard I have an obligation to myself and my community to get louder. Until we live in a society that empowers the individual, anarchy is just my dream.

[eyestumblin]

Found this unpublished opinion buried in my drafts. A bit late but here it is anyway! ===

A friend and I watched Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2 and had some major bones to pick, and ideas that would have made the movie better.

major spoilers below cut

For me the two cardinal sins of the film were Ego saying “I killed your mother” and breaking the walkman. “Of course you didnt like those things,” you might think, “You’re supposed to hate him for that”. It’s not that I disliked the character, those two ‘villain moments’ were just the lowest hanging fruit possible, and honestly the least interesting reason for Peter to change his mind and turn against Ego.

Consider instead: Ego truly loved Peter’s mother,  but his cosmic presence caused her sickness. He had to leave to give her some time alive with her son. Everything up to their reunion plays out the same way. Ego’s plants across the universe are meant to give him some amount of influence on the planets and cosmos surrounding them, but he does truly mean to make things “better” in his own idea (not just summon a bunch of blob???). He wants Peter to help him bring peace and enlightenment/joy/whatever positive vibes to the universe. Peter explains this to his crew and here’s where the conflict comes in. 

Rather than a shoehorned “THIS GUY IS THE VILLAIN!!!” plot contrivance (seriously, Ego loves the music- why would he break the walkman??) the moral gray of one being controlling the universe, even if only subtly, rubs each of the guardians differently. For Gamorra and her sister this would be absolutely unacceptable, as they grew up under a universe-domination minded patriarch who fathered many children to aid him in his aim. Even if Ego’s children were all voluntary helpers who lived happy and long lives in his service, the sisters would find this too close to their nightmare past. Gamorra would vehemently argue with Peter, not about some vague intution (why is it in movies a woman never has logic, just “this feels wrong” as her primary argument against something?). 

Drax may initially align with Ego’s goals of order and fatherly guidance, but as a father who lost his child would probably take offense to children dying in the process (again, even if it were voluntary and not portrayed as murder like in the actual film). We felt Groot may also be positive towards the idea of a collective universe, seeming to be a sort of collective himself (and “we are groot”- the idea of multiple beings sharing one identitiy). Rocket however, being a staunch anarchist, would be completely against Ego’s goals, which would cause conflict between Groot and Rocket.

All of this could have been compelling and interesting conflict to see play out. Instead it felt like the film wanted to simply rush from point B to C and get to the big fight between Peter and Ego, rather than a more thoughtful and interesting slow build of an inconsolable difference in purpose between the freedom loving guardians and Ego’s goals of order. It was disappointing to me that the story arc of Peter’s mysterious father was so quickly played and discarded, considering how much more could have been done.

And having him break the walkman was not only such a flashing neon VILLAIN sign that it was insulting to my intelligence, but also completely out of character. I understand what the writers wanted me to feel, but rather than being outraged with Ego, I was annoyed with the writers for thinking I and the rest of the audience wouldnt be able to handle a more complicated or morally gray conflict.