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dailyanarchistposts · 4 months

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SAFETY AS ILLUSION- DANGER AS FRACTURE

1. Connected to the maintenance of life as living death is the second promise of the walls of civilization, the promise of safety.

2. Safety is always illusionary, as the countless attentats, and ever changing airport security protocols reveal- yet its impositions are very solid. Take the traditional wall around a town or settlement (which offers the promise of 'protection from the outside threat- the barbarian); the wall can be undermined, scaled, even broken to pieces if one has time and motivation, it crumbles with age and without constant maintenance and can be bypassed simply by seducing the one who guards it. Yet, to the individual inside the wall, the towering mass of bricks seems both impenetrable and inescapable, and represents a very material disconnect from that which is outside (one cannot for example even see what is outside the walls).

3. Thus the illusion of safety, is stripped bare, not as a form of protection, but as a form of containment; only those who live inside the walls can be convinced of safeties impenetrability- anyone with will enough to exist beyond the walls can see the paper tiger for what it really is- a trap to prevent escape and not a defense against entry.

4. Todays walls are much more diffuse; produced on and in the psychic level in the schools and social relations, the walls are built up inside the minds of individuals who for so many generations have lived inside of them and now no longer need not to see the outside in order to be afraid of it.

5. The illusion of safety has permeated every aspect of daily life, what 'safety' means is never concretely defined; aside from the columns of foot-soldiers patrolling the streets and CCTV at every corner, there is no discursive definition of what it might mean to be 'safe' and no concrete description of what the danger really is.

6. Even radical milieus have adopted these logics, with demands for 'safe space', policies defining safety, and the imagining that one can create places or communities free from the 'dangers' of the outside world.

7. Safety is always premised in imaginary dangers- usually the dangers of the outside, the 'other', or most often mortality. In the name of being kept alive any number of repressive measures become normalized.

8. To assist or allow suicide is still illegal in most of the world[4], the cages of the mental hospitals and prisons are filled with individuals who present a 'danger' to the life of themselves or others.

9. The demand for safety, always walks hand in hand with the forces of domination. Be that tradition of Radical Feminism which demanded 'safer streets' for women against masked and racialized attackers (and resulted in huge police incursions into poor and racialized communities), or the push by LGBT charities for hate crime legislation to protect individuals from street harassment/harm (and which has been used as a 'catchall legislation' that sees vast increases in incarceration and penal punishments for as little as saying 'fuck' in a public space).[5]

10. A fitting example of the anthropocentric obsession with safety is the 'house cat'; a being for whom the entirety of its existence is passed within the confined walls of an apartment. Premised on the idea that the dangers of the outside world; getting lost, starving to death, being run over by a car- are so terrifying (from the human captors point of view) as to justify the ultimate cruelty and curtailment of freedom. The cat is kept entirely 'safe', in a sterile environment which cannot harm her; and yet can one say honestly that a being for whom long nights, restless hunts, a shrugging disregard for humanity are normal character traits- the four walls of a human made prison will bring her happiness?

11. The 'house cat' also serves as fitting analogy for our own lives- the masters of domination keep us safely contained in the cities, the workplace, the homes; and we may wriggle a little, excited by the promise of the gym or the swimming pool- but to go outside, truly outside of their world is not only forbidden but now impossible. We welcome the crushing wheels of the car or the neighbors dog to carry us away- danger signifies freedom.

12. Individuals oscillate between captor and captive as they internalize and reproduce the logic of safety. From the cop on the street corner, to the parent warning its children of the dangers of pedophiles, to the liberal queer askewing violent or confrontational action and enforcing passivity in the name of 'inclusivity'.

13. Individuals of this epoch must face the fact that nowhere is 'safe', and that anyone promising to provide safety is in fact only (re)producing captivity.

14. When entangled with the enforcers of safety- (the police or their representatives) one soon becomes aware, that the illusion of safety is not some absolute safety from harm, but some imagined parameter of safety defined by the apparatchiks and algorithms of domination.

15. When falling fowl of the enforces of safety, one quickly realities that their version of 'keeping you safe' in fact means keeping you under control, or more often saving you from imagined danger so that they can inflict their own very real harm upon you.

16. One can for example be stopped for driving the car too fast, for passing a red light too early, for trying to jump from a bridge, for exploring and abandoned warehouse, or for engaging in a physical confrontation, in all the examples the behavior will first been defined as 'dangerous' and the narrative usually follows "we are here to protect you". Naturally the moment one is in the hands of those enforcers of safety, she can expect to be beaten, tortured, confined in a cage, sexually assaulted, humiliated, bullied and harmed in any myriad of unnameable ways.

17. "Keeping you safe" is synonymous with maintaining the monopoly of danger, harm and violence.

18. It benefits domination to have as many imaginary dangers as possible at play in any given moment. The more, and scarier the dangers, the greater the playground for imagining ways to ensure 'safety'.

19. The ever increasing number of dangers which the civilized order is happy to integrate into its logic- be that the threat of terrorism, ecological disaster, petty crime, homophobia, gendered violence or racism justifies an ever increasing number of punishments, containments and cages.

20. In many 'liberal democracies' we see how the response to popular awareness of structural oppression has been to criminalize any individuals who are accused of perpetuating it (ignoring the reality that the state is always the biggest perpetrator). From hate crime legislation protecting 'oppressed minorities' to attempts to ban networks like tor (because thats where terrorists live) we see time and time again that the promise to keep us free from danger, warped into the very real application of harm.

21. The illusion of safety rests on a very fluid understanding or what and who represent danger. In the logic of domination, we are presented daily with the idea, that a heavily armed gang, enshrined with the right to murder, kidnap, rape, and torture (the police) are 'safe' and that some kid running a red light or walking whilst black represents danger.

22. This is further complicated by status's awarded to individuals based on presumed compliance/non compliance- the refugee is 'safe' the illegal immigrant is dangerous, the steel worker is 'safe' the sex worker is dangerous, the law abiding citizen is 'safe' the criminal is dangerous. The arbitrary awarding of the right to safety is in fact the real danger.

23. Such arbitrary awarding, mean that In the name of safety we have armed hooligans patrolling the streets with assault rifles- and one can go to jail for carrying a kitchen knife from store to homestead.

24. Anyone who believes, we are safe inside the walls is delusional at best and more likely suicidal.

25. Some 'good citizens' (white, rich, cis, hetro, law abiding) might be able to uphold the lie that they are safe inside the walls (even if they discount the toxic fumes and radio waves slowly annihilating them); but even they will be forced to admit their mistake when in the name of 'safety' they cannot leave their home cage except to go their (re)productive one.

26. More than all of this though, why do we need to be safe? Why have we allowed a fear of danger to incubate inside our minds and proliferate in our praxis? Do we even really know what we mean when we say we want to be safe? We are trapped in illusions curated by tyrants.

27. Safety might be illusionary, but danger can be very real. Not the imaginary dangers domination feeds its subjects in order to keep them servile- but the danger which domination itself lives in constant fear of.

28. To break from captivity, is to accept danger into ones life- not the false dangers which preclude safety; but the real dangers of active confrontation with those who claim to provide it (safety). Accepting real danger, means arming conflictuality against the state, the police, technology, pacifistic ideologues, and perhaps even oneself- it is the realization that even if nothing is worth dying/going to jail for, these possibilities are perhaps less terrifying than remaining safe (i.e. captive).

29. To perpetuate the illusion of safety, into every aspect of life is always the goal of domination, every time one arms conflictuality, imbues danger, creates fracture; safety will rush to plug the breach. Just as one has almost no chance of destroying civilization, there is little hope of destroying safety in its totality; one can chip away, and expand ruptures but one must always be prepared that the ruptures will create new forms, and enforcements of safety- the battle will be an endless one.

30. The fight against safety in and of itself, creates danger for the one who pursues it.

31. If one is to truly realize the illusion of safety, and from this realization act in order to destroy it; she must first welcome danger as a constant friend and companion.

32. Through the process of becoming dangerous, she must face the very real dangers inside the walls (repression, assault, murder), and open her heart to all the possible imaginary ones outside of them.

33. Domination will be at every door when one opens herself fully to danger. It will close tight ranks all around and try to force safety at any cost on the one who seeks it.

34. Danger must embody all the fear of the unknown, all the visceral terror of the lands outside the walls, it must plunge deep into the darkness and never shine a light.

35. If danger spreads, 'safety' will wither.

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dipperdesperado · 4 months

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Notes on Solarpunk Beyond Eurocentrism

Crisis and collapse seem to be the currency of the present. 1st World societies, enveloped in the long shadow cast by prosperity, find themselves coming into open, naked conflict. Reality, or Eurocentricity¹? Reality says, ‘we can't have infinite growth on a finite planet!’ Eurocentrism laughs, walking away with delight. Rather than understanding “that which cannot be repaired is already broken,”² Eurocentricity tells us that we can pull and pull and pull, that a rudderless faith in extraction will somehow lead to balance. What happens if the world is bent until it breaks? All of our communities are at stake. This is “the clearest signal that there is something deeply wrong with the global system in its current form”³. We can see that somewhere along the line, someone fucked shit up. There's no other meaningful way to explain how we've gotten to where we're at. Eurocentricity is so prevalent that we even understand our technology on the scale of the “complex and special”, rather than “how a society copes with physical reality.”⁴ Solarpunk's focus on appropriate technology⁵ is a welcome corrective to the myopia of modernity⁶ and capitalism⁷. However, it is incomplete without an understanding of coloniality⁸.

If there are facets of coloniality that we need to address, they are the processes of (1) creating rigid taxonomies and categories for classifying the world⁹, and (2) creating hierarchies of power and value for the ways those things are classified. These two moves are embedded in the in-group/out-group exclusionary dynamics that coloniality needs to function, from the way that we privilege ‘humans’ over ‘non-humans’, ‘centers’ over ‘margins’, and the ‘visible’ over the ‘invisible’. This isn't just philosophical or for the sake of pontification. These presuppositions of knowledge, being, and meaning privilege Eurocentric assertions that see "other human beings’ ways of life [as] wrong and harming nature, [since] nature needs no human beings."¹⁰ If we are to move out of ecological calamity, ‘The Last Shall be First’ must be our operating system. By centering the margins (in the ontological and epistemological sense), we can actually end suffering, rather than outsourcing it. This has to take shape in such a way that engenders room for a polyculture of meaning, diametrically opposed to the hegemonic "monoculture of meaning"¹¹, beyond the ability to label any human based on what they "lack" as an "Other"¹².

This move to truly embody decoloniality has to critique modernity, capitalism, and coloniality. This is important to understand as “modernity organizes the world ontologically in terms of atomic, homogeneous, separable categories. Contemporary women of color and third-world women's critique of feminist universalism centers the claim that the intersection of race, class, sexuality, and gender exceeds the categories of modernity. If woman and black are terms for homogeneous, atomic, separable categories, then their intersection shows us the absence of black women rather than their presence. So, to see non-white women is to exceed "categorial" logic. [...] the modern, colonial, gender system [is] a lens through which to theorize further the oppressive logic of colonial modernity, its use of hierarchical dichotomies and categorial logic. [...] categorial, dichotomous, hierarchical logic [is] central to modern, colonial, capitalist thinking about race, gender, and sexuality.”¹³ We see that even in ostensibly postcolonial societies, "indigenous people who had already suffered from decades of colonial conservation policies, little changed with decolonization."¹⁴ This shows the depth at which we have to go to adequately respond to the social and ecological issues that are currently coming to a head.

This commitment isn't (principally) a moral or ethical one. One of the main reasons that we have to move towards a holistic decoloniality is because of the inability of coloniality to address the issues we're facing. "Indigenous leaders say [30x30, a worldwide conservation program] ignores generations of effective indigenous land management. [...] there was limited scientific attention paid to Indigenous stewardship."¹⁵ Unless we are willing to be radical, to grasp the roots of all the oppressive structures that we're facing, we will reproduce the things we are (ostensibly) trying to abolish in our (potentially unintentional) inability to critique coloniality onto-epistemically while proposing responses rooted in other ways of being. In the effort to try and correct the excesses of Eurocentricity, we see that Eurocentric modes of being like "nation-states [...] struggling to catch up with indigenous and other non-capitalist cultures’ understanding of the interdependence of life."¹⁶ This is not to exalt Indigenous, Black and 3rd/4th world onto-epistemes, to reify them beyond critique. It is to say that the Eurocentric onto-epistemic inability to see those modes as valid dampers the emancipatory potential extant in the world preventing the ability to reach the purported values of "progress" and "development". Eurocentric ideas have to play catch-up, and by their colonial and capitalist nature are unable to.

We have to problematize, to see as an issue, many of the foundational concepts might deploy as mired in Eurocentrism and coloniality. We can do this by (1) decolonizing what it means to be human by creating the space for Black, Indigenous and 3rd/4th worlders to self-determine and (2) "[take] non-humans seriously as persons[/beings] with agency [which] allows us to de-center humans, to notice how limited our field of sight becomes when fixated by the idea of the Anthropocene. Far from remaining a matter of theoretical discussion, non-humans [... ] influenc[e] social, political and legal realities."¹⁷ We have to bridge these two worlds: acknowledging the ways that the ideas of animality were defined along the bodies of Black people, how that relates to conceptions of humanity, and the care that we should have in highlighting the agency of non-human beings (both in the actual sense, and those who get denied humanity). This has to be done on the terms of those beings, as best as we can manage. If we are able to acknowledge that there are issues in modernity with how we taxonomize humans & how that relates to non-humans, for the sake of the biosphere, and we center those marginal and invisible beings, we can get a lot done.

I really want to impress the fact that not taking the trifecta of Eurocentrism¹⁸ seriously is resigning ourselves to doom. If we continue to build the cyberpunk future that we've been worried about for decades, the future of "urban decay, corporate power and globalization. The rise of zero tolerance policing, anxieties around health care and the psychological toll of the Cold ‘Forever war’ and the possibility of nuclear annihilation,"¹⁹ we resign ourselves, even in our imaginaries, to further our immiseration. We can use the 30 x 30 framework for conservation as a great example, where 200 countries were willing to accept it²⁰. This conservation framework reinforces the dichotomy between human/non-human²¹, assuming that top-down, bureaucratic processes of "management" are the answer to the problems that those very ideas created. The ironic thing is, even though this move would be woefully inadequate in addressing the issue of biodiversity loss or climate change²², we very likely won't even get to see it achieve protection of "30% of the world's land and water by 2030."²³ There's no meaningful accountability structure within the Eurocentric hegemony to do this. There is no room for living freely and honestly under these conditions.

"To see the coloniality is to see the powerful reduction of human beings to animals, to inferiors by nature, in a [piece-meal] understanding of reality that dichotomizes the human from nature, the human from the non-human, and thus imposes an ontology and a cosmology that, in its power and constitution, disallows all humanity, all possibility of understanding, all possibility of human communication, to dehumanized beings."²⁴ This is the double-edged sword of creating hierarchies and taxonomies around valid ways of being, knowing, and meaning. By operating along these lines, we end up in a situation where there is no meaningful way for anyone to truly reach the kinds of fulfillment that modernity is supposed to provide. Now, this is not to say that I'm personally going to cry very hard about colonizers dehumanizing themselves by dehumanizing me, but I think it's worthwhile to mention; we all benefit by tearing down Eurocentrism and building a new, multifaceted perspective that allows for mutualism between different ways of thinking about the world and our relations with/in it.

By creating these rigid categories of difference, there is an assumption of innateness that tends to become a part of it. If we are looking to dismantle coloniality, we have to situate ourselves in such a way that those seemingly subtle distinctions between differences in general²⁵ and the specific conception of colonial difference become visible. This allows us to see that "the epistemological fractures between the Eurocentric critique of Eurocentrism is distinguished from the critique of Eurocentrism anchored in the colonial difference."²⁶ Critiques of Eurocentrism that don't apprehend the imbrication of coloniality, capital, and modernity are left unaware at the meaningful distinctions that can be made between critique left incomplete and critique that gives us a way to move forward and build new relationalities.

I want to point back towards the phrase "The Last Shall Be First", which comes from Fanon (and the Bible). I understand this as resonant with the adage of centering the marginalized. If we truly believe that harmony and unity in life are worthwhile to work towards, the practical move to make is to, in every moment, work towards empowering those removed from power. By foregrounding those most negatively impacted by Eurocentrism through an understanding of intersectionality in material and onto-epistemological senses while spotlighting the "'decolonizers of the imaginary’, [which can be understood as] future generations, past generations, non-humans, and spiritual beings and concepts"²⁷, we can point ourselves towards more egalitarian and self-determining outcomes. We can compose and integrate efforts together, where cultural workers can do solarpunk art and organizers & community/affinity groups can build solarpunk sociality and architects can do solarpunk guerrilla urbanism and more, where collaboration becomes a space that starts to break down the borders between different ways of relating to the world. By problematizing the human "we", by understanding that while, ideally, abstractly we are including everyone, in practice, there are critical things missed that lead to the issues we purportedly want to face. We have to point towards a world where many fit.

As far as my specific commitments on the matter, I'm what I call an egoist. I've appropriated this term to mean that I find myself to be important (though not supremely so), to assert my onto-epistemology as valid, even though Eurocentric society was built at my (people’s) expense²⁸. I have hope, which I understand as the grounded counterpart to "faith" or "optimism", that things can change, that even if the world has to be broken down, that it can be, and a new, decolonial one can be built. In this space, I hope that every being is acknowledged on its own terms, to have the capacity for its "ego" to be fulfilled, roughly along the lines of the golden and platinum rules, depending on what makes sense given the situation²⁹. Solarpunk is very egoistic/anarchistic in my conception. Through horizontal power structures, we can minimize immiseration and foreground approaches to life that move our social activity towards the biosphere.

We can start working towards this, right now. Like, on some "you can go do the work after this" kind of thing. While we don't necessarily have a linear path forward, we can listen to ourselves and our desires, and experiment with doing things to fulfill them in the present, seeing them as springboards for further movement into the kind of spaces that we want to go. On a basic level, we can think about the ways that we are restricted by our needs due to alienation from self-determination, and devise plans to get those things, from food autonomy, to housing security, to social and cultural spaces. With this, I want us to be rooted in place--no White Flight ass culty commune shit. Our work should ground in locality and communality. If every being deserves the kind of world that solarpunk futures suggest, it makes no sense to leave if we have capacity³⁰ to stay. In a more egoist turn, I think places where we can practice what James Scott calls anarchist calisthenics³¹ are worthwhile endeavors; authority, as in authoritarian rule, is never legitimate. Whenever we can and have the desire to, we should rage against it. Hosting do it yourself (DIY) events are a good example of this. DIY events are usually music shows, but they can be parties or anything else, where you do it without "permission" from the state or authorities. They can happen "in a park, on a beach, deep in the forest, in a barn, under a bridge, in a parking lot, next to a pool, or at the top of a mountain. The event could be on wheels: in an RV, on the back of a truck, in a van. You could build a secret tree house. You could borrow a boat. You could find an abandoned or empty building and re-purpose it. If there’s no electricity and you need it for a PA, find a generator. If you don’t need electricity, use candles for lighting. If you would like to lessen the chance of police interference, acquire several buildings and move people from building to building during breaks. You could even take over a street."³²

If we're willing to commandeer space, the elusive element in much theorizing on change³³, we can start changing the paradigms. Rather than "fall[ing] back on [...] creat[ing] protected areas"³⁴ for the sake of reaching "biodiversity goals" and "ecological harmony", we can focus on land back, we can pull from knowledges in appropriate technology, traditional ecological knowledge, and the best that western science has to offer for being good partners with other beings in our communities. To horizontalize relationships between humans, breaking down barriers of political and socioeconomic varieties, we can put the last first and act as accomplices, supporting their needs and fighting alongside them. Any critiques that we have of the system should, within our capacities, be externalized, the (dialectical and logical³⁵) contradictions laid bare in the material world. If there is a public building that isn't being used for the public, we can commandeer it and turn it into a commons³⁶. Around these moves we can build or tie in networks of support and take seriously the militancy, strategy, and tactics required to defend that space. Or, we can be more fluid, moving from place to place, an occupation traveling band that swarms spaces, creates more solarpunk and communistic relations within, shares those tools and collaborates with folks more rooted in that space, and floats out as to remain flexible. Or, a ton of other possibilities, a ton of other ways to engage space. There are many ways to do it.

This is meant to be a conversation starter. I have a lot of love for solarpunk--you can see that from my writings. It is a really useful meta-frame for the narrative component of systems change. I also acknowledge the susceptibility that it has towards eco-modernism, crypto-scheming, and reactionary yearning to return to the "good old days", whether it's a time "before agriculture" or a time before industrialization". I hope that, through the works of 3rd and 4th worlders, and more material ties to prefigurative and insurgent practices vis a vis systems change, solarpunk can shake off the chains of Eurocentrism, towards a pluralistic decoloniality and anti/non-capitalism.

Notes

Eurocentricity/Eurocentrism is the cultural and philosophical constellation of worldviews that sees the ideas birthed from Europe and wedded to capitalism and coloniality as the only valid, worthwhile, and legible modes of knowledge, being/existence (especially as it relates to “humanity”/humanism), and meaning. Things like linear progressions of time, a fetish for scientific thought, and atomistic conceptions of the individual permeate Eurocentric thought.

XXIIVV — permacomputing

Beyond Extinction. Transition to post-capitalism is inevitable | by Nafeez Ahmed

Anthem of the Sun — Real Life

Appropriate technology is essentially what it sounds like; it looks at what technology would be appropriate, meaning that it would minimize ecological harm, to achieve specific needs/goals.

The advent of nation-statism, colonial empires, and industrial capital make up modernity. It is the “never-ending” historical period in which we find ourselves.

Capitalism is distinct, in all of its configurations, for the fact that it combines: (1)private, dictatorial authority over property, most notably of the means of production, (2) wage labor relations where those who don’t have productive private property need to work using someone else’s to survive, and (3) a focus on continual growth, which is seen as an unquestionable good.

Coloniality is the power structural relationships and ways in which society was chopped up and categorized, that, while originating during the eras of European Colonialism, still persist to this day.

Toward a Decolonial Feminism - Maria Lugones

How the world’s favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence

Decolonizers of the imaginary

Wynter Sylvia 1492 A New World View

Toward a Decolonial Feminism

How the world’s favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence

Decolonizers of the imaginary

Capitalism, coloniality, modernity

SOLARPUNK: Life in the future - Beyond the rusted chrome

How the world’s favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence

This is meant in an expansive sense, where colonized subjects and what is commonly referred to as nature is included

Eurocentric assumptions on what it means to "conserve" certain lands go against the very things that are done to preserve biodiversity. There is not a mechanism by which we can meaningfully protect lands from "on high", away from an intimate understanding rooted in place.

How the world’s favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence

Toward a Decolonial Feminism

I don't find issue with the concept of "difference". I am not my phone, or my mom, or my favorite animal. At the same time, we have to be able to separate the idea of difference from the idea of colonial difference, and understand the ways that material and social processes shape the ways that difference in general is constructed. Ossified understandings of difference, like "I am a man and men do X" are antithetical to liberatory change.

Toward a Decolonial Feminism

Decolonizers of the imaginary. Not that there's overlap here between acknowledging 3rd & 4th world folks ways of being and knowing and a flattening of the "nature-culture" dichotomy that is generally espoused in 'colonized imaginaries'

This system tells me to assimilate or to stop existing. I choose neither, and go towards full spectrum resistance and abolition.

The golden rule is treat people how you want to be treated. The platinum rule is treat people how they want to be treated. I think there's an innumerable number of options in this range, depending on how well we can understand what other beings need. By not pedestalizing any one being over the other while understanding the deep history and present, we can move towards that. I want to make it abundantly clear that we cannot just "jump" towards that moment, as things like reparations and land back need to happen. It's a yes and situation. We should understand that every being deserves what it wants as long as it doesn't systematically/power structurally prevent someone from doing the same. And to this end, there are certain, non-privileged/marginalized/invisibled beings that will have needs that reflect a different reality visavis self-determination.

I am not saying to stay in dangerous, toxic, harmful situations. I'm saying that changing the places you're already in has more radical potential, if you're specifically looking for that, than getting a commune established out of arms reach from society.

Anarchist Calisthenics, by James C. Scott

A DIY Guide to Creating Spaces

Anecdotally, it seems easier to imagine vastly different economic, political, and social systems, but it is harder to imagine different technologies, and even harder to imagine different ways of interacting with spatial-temporal dynamics. Much of politics is actually about space and how it is occupied, and we should lean into anarchic, decolonial takes on "geography", "urban planning", and "architecture" among other fields so we can really take seriously how we are addressing all the things we need to.

How the world’s favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence

Contradiction (logical): when a subject, object, or phenomena is said to have features or properties that can’t exist at the same time and be factual. For example, All apples are fruits. If someone were to say that some apples are not fruits, that is a logical contradiction, because there is no way to substantiate that claim through information, reasoning, or data. Logic is all about “internal” consistency, where the “internal” refers to the relation between the claims being made and the things being compared. Within the system of interest, in this case the “system” of fruit classifications, of which an apple is an element, the claims and conclusions should be supported by the characteristics of that system. Contradiction (dialectical): In dialectics (or a dialectical process), contradictions can take the shape of logical contradictions, (All X are Y → Some X are not Y | No X is Y → Some X are Y) but they only need to take the shape of tensions between elements in a system more broadly. It’s all about the relationship between elements.

What if We Cancel the Apocalypse

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