#there's a reason I am more intrigued by anarchism than anything else and it's because I hAte. when a bitch tells me what to do | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

appalachiananarchist · 6 years ago

Note

Hi Kaitlyn! Your post on matching popped up on my dash, congrats! I was poking around your blog, and I realized I'm not super educated on anarchy. Would you be willing to sum up the aim and the vision, in your point of view? I know you're probably busy getting ready for your move, so I understand if you can't! I've just been feeling ultra frustrated with some of the "realities" of medicine in America lately, so I'm intrigued!

I am going to begin with a Lucy Parsons quote that I love: “The philosophy of anarchism is included in the word “Liberty”; yet it is comprehensive enough to include all things else that are conducive to progress. No barriers whatever to human progression, to thought, or investigation are placed by anarchism; nothing is considered so true or so certain, that future discoveries may not prove it false; therefore, it has but one infallible, unchangeable motto, “Freedom.” Freedom to discover any truth, freedom to develop, to live naturally and fully.”

In a literal sense, anarchism means a system with “no rulers.” It places at its core respect for the absolute autonomy of all people—that is, the ability to live as you please without domination by another. It fights against rulers, authorities, bosses, and any others who restrict the autonomy or will of another person by forcing, coercing, dominating, or hurting them. Not only do anarchists oppose power/authority/rulers based on our ideals, but we oppose them practically: we have seen, as evidenced by history, that power is inevitably and always abused to cause more harm than good, no matter how “good” the initial intentions were. In summary, anarchists oppose all manifestations of power in society for both practical and ideological reasons, the two most well-known manifestations of this being the state and capitalism.

We oppose capitalism and the state because the offending parties dominate, or control and inhibit the full autonomy of others, within a territory they claim to own. Some will excuse their domination by saying that if they have a rightful ownership claim to the land, they have the right to control what happens on it, who enters is, and how the people inside it may conduct themselves. Anarchists do not agree that they have any sort of rightful ownership over these properties, so say their (often violent and brutal) control is in direct opposition to freedom. Even the most lenient anarchists, such as myself, stick with a strict occupancy-and-use vision of ownership, which would still disqualify the claims of capitalists and states as legitimate (if you dig deeper into what that idea means, which is outside the scope of your question). Some anarchists deny land ownership entirely. There are lots of flavors of us, but all of us agree that both the state and capitalists have no exclusive right to what they claim, so should not have exclusive control over it or the other people interacting with it.

It is also worth noting that anarchists are aware and consider the ways in which states and capitalists obtained and maintain their power over these properties, and how they are also in opposition to freedom. For example, capitalists and the state are infamous for taking over land and resources from populations that were already using it using state military/police powers and then selling its use back to the original inhabitants in the form of rented properties or wage labor. Capitalists will employ state police and military power to harm workers who attempt to unionize or strike or gain better conditions. For example, during the coal wars in central Appalachia where I’m from, the US government got involved and even dropped a bomb on strikers. Capitalists also use their wealth to influence the state, which enabled them to more easily abuse workers and damage the environment. To quote Parsons yet again, “Never be deceived that the rich will permit you to vote away their wealth.” States start wars in the name of resources and power, killing innocents globally. These are just a very, very few examples of the sort of nonsense state and capitalist agents get away with—all of it in opposition to freedom.

So that’s what we fight AGAINST—now I’ll talk about what we fight FOR. Let me start by saying not one of us believes in utopia. We recognize our ideal world will still be imperfect, as all visions will be—attempting to legislate away those imperfections will always fail and replace old problems with new ones. Anarchism is a set of guiding principles, a process more than a result: the process of always striving for liberation. There is no set, perfect anarchist society we all envision in unison. Communities could take many unique forms and still be anarchist.

I have explained that we oppose domination of one person over another—what we promote is cooperation and free association. Anarchists promote replacing hierarchical structures in society (governments and businesses) with horizontal ones; ones where people are meeting the needs of their community by cooperating and working together freely as equals, not as boss-bossed, ruler-ruled, or owner-owned. And there’s always the option to go live on your own somewhere, but humans are social and most would not choose that. Without a state, you are likely looking at smaller communities of people self-governing, utilizing democratic decision-making among all in the community who wished to be involved in any large-scale decision that affects multiple people. Decisions or projects that affected only you would be made entirely by you, or done entirely by you.

One thing some anarchists have often proposed is a committee system, which is comprised of all who wish to be involved in a community-wide decision, with democratically elected delegated to perform certain tasks. Delegates are instantly abolished if they act beyond what their initial task was. If communities are associating with each other, they too would need to operate democratically using a similar system on a larger scale. If you want a more specific idea of what something like this could potentially look like, you can read here. I’ll quote something from that source:

“The key difference between a statist or hierarchical system and an anarchist community is who wields power. In a parliamentary system, for example, people give power to a group of representatives to make decisions for them for a fixed period of time. Whether they carry out their promises is irrelevant as people cannot recall them till the next election. Power lies at the top and those at the base are expected to obey. Similarly, in the capitalist workplace, power is held by an unelected minority of bosses and managers at the top and the workers are expected to obey.”

Just know that this is ONE vision of how anarchism would work, and likely not all communities would operate this way. Many anarchists aren’t too fond of this system—and that’s expected. We are not looking for a single top-down approach, and there are actually multiple different flavors of anarchism that approach these things a little differently. But we are all unified in a desire for freedom, and opposition to domination.

Anyway, I am trying to give the sparknotes on an ideology with a massive and rich history, described and even practiced in depth by people much smarter than me. For that reason, I am going to leave some links for reading that might flesh out some of what I’ve said, and if there are specific questions, please feel free to ask them. And my other anarchist followers, please clarify any unclear things I said, add your input, or give recommendations for reading! It benefits us all.

This page is nice because its lists LOTS of anarchist texts sorted by author

An Anarchist FAQ - MUCH more detailed than anything I could write

A Lifelong Anarchist by Lucy Parsons, since I quoted it

Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman, because I like her stuff

#i think i just rambled for two pages #thanks benadryl #anarchism #anarchy #my ramblings

92 notes · View notes

leo-dale19 · 7 years ago

Text

Where dreams lead

The Serotonin God has led me down many a winding road - I have followed him to the point of exhaustion, he cannot escape me, he is by no means out of sight but he repeatedly disappears and reappears from behind the trees that are the various obstacles of unlucky fate that separate me from permanent reunion with him. Unless I get permanent brain damage, we will meet again and be united with the present moment anew. This lesson goes to show you should never let go of your loved ones, because you have no idea where you’ll end up without them and there are no guarantees. Well, there are, but merely on a divine level.

I would be highly intrigued to know what is currently happening on a subconscious level, what canals of my birth trauma am I currently unconsciously passing through again amidst the current everyday chaos. On saturday night I had the interesting return of 2001: A Space Odyssey into my conscious space. More precisely, I suddenly remembered Peter Hyam’s sequel to Kubrick’s masterpiece, the tight associations it holds with January/February 2012, the longest, grayest, winter I could remember, literally a pale shadow of its 2011 predecessor (although that comparison mainly refers to March and its 2011 analogue). I was convinced that 2001 world of eternal ectasy was truly eternal, I didn’t see how it was subject to physical laws of what chemicals I may or may not have ingested into my body. But God works in strange ways. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V68pnTJwjQU

For the first time in a very long time, I took advantage of a sudden moment of mental lucidity to take pictures of myself looking more or less presentable. This is a rare occurence, as although I do not consider myself unattractive, I have one of the main distinguishing features of a paranoid schizophrenic - I am very, very bad at regularly taking care of myself. One can deifnitely argue that self-absorbedness is more frequent in moments of mental insecurity, which I agree with, but my paranoias go to such extents that I get states where I am totally unaware of myself as “really being there”. Like I am so absorbed in my ego that all I feel is merely my mental image of myself, rather than what I actually look like to other people. So on Saturday I actually had the luck to experience a brief moment of mental lucidity where I was somewhat in limbo between two states - being paranoically anxious and being self-aware enough to realise what I seem like to the outside world. And so I decided a little cam-whoring was necessary, as I could indulge in some potentially constructive self-loving. That is, undeniably still a state of mental insecurity, but not as detached from reality.

Vkontakte has become a bizarre obsession. I plan on keeping my russian interest going for as long as possible, but the group of people I have come to know on Vkontakte know nothing of who I really am and I shamelessly take liberties in the image I create of myself to them. I am aware it is an escape. I often wondered whether they could realise that too, but people aren’t stupid - I know they do, although they obviously can’t complete the rest of the picture as they lack the facts and can only guess at what my true essence is. I think they are strangely tolerant or just bizarrely intrigued - or perhaps quite simply both - by this foreigner who speaks perfect russian, which, if they are to believe him, he learned all by himself. I also suspect life in russia is quite drab so there is no real time to reproach other people for not getting on with their life (although there probably is but more within the social-status confines of their own everyday society) or quite simply to be picky about fantastically weird occurences that you come across: my mum mentioned the USSR made you appreciate the simple things a lot more, and a an anglo-german russian-speaker who lives in france is more bizarre and interesting than it is worthy of cynically questioning. Although those russians are not a rarity either, I can feel a lot of what I was convinced for many years was unique to the English - a merciless contempt for those more talented than one’s self (although the english, as far as I can tell, are still worse and generally obnoxious about it, since it isn’t merely a petty character trait but a whole institutionalised social class mentality). I’ve already come across a few people on my adventures who I plan to never trust or have any serious dealings with, as, I kid you not, it would not surprise me that if we were to meet, they would give me away to the secret police or some shit because of their immature teenage jealousy, making up some pretext to have me taken away for good, away from the world where I may potentially humble them. Russia, I feel, is one of those countries where truth is a very, very bizarre phenomenon and it is very hard to establish what it is in a country so vast and so varied, the accounts I get of life in Russia differ so much among themselves that it’s impossible to know what really goes on, although inevitably I have been able to attribute certain views to certain precise character types, for example a common archetype is that of the Denial russian: these are generally reasonable looking types, not necessarily extreme-oriented, however they have no interest in a free society, justify the authoritarian regimes they’ve lived through, blatantly deny the existence of certain horrors of russian society to the point where talking to them feels more like reading a history book on Soviet Propaganda than it does like getting an objective view on what’s going on in the country. I accentuate “reasonable-looking” as I feel in the western world we immediately imagine anybody who supports anything totalitarian as a raving fanatic, but we’ve become quite desensitised and we must remember that evil in the vast majority of cases is criminally banal; and if one gives it some serious thought, it could never be any other way, since evil can only be committed by superficial people for superficial motivations. It is destructive and intentionally illusory, whereas love allows life to grow. It is therefore intriguing to see very ordinary people supporting such great evil in such a petty manner; would they maybe be more worthy of respect if they at least had some finesse to their wrong-doing? These people generally have a very strong vanity streak and there are more pictures of them on their pages than ther are of anything else. One could say I am the last person to judge, but I’ve realised my narcissism is quite often merely a by product of my unstable state of mind, an energy that stabilises me so as not to go fully psychotic, but then again, it is possible I am more truly vain than I think. And even then, or rather, especially then, it is a sort of pseudo-narcissism, i.e a hypersensorial daydream, not an actual philosophy to life that I put into action and impose on people around me, I have gained too much self-awareness for that. It is merely an energy that takes hold of my present moment awareness. But on top of that, in the depths of universal love something tells me that I cannot really be a narcissist. Dave Bowman powering through the red Stargate, the light reaching 6 year old me on the grass next to lake Divonne tells me that my mind is blessed with forces too great and beautiful to truly have narcissism at the core of its inner essence. It is a symptom of my illness, and Universal Love is with me. The Consciousness Network knows of me and I have experience in accessing it. It just blows my mind that I have managed to lose touch with it, as this seems unthinkable every time I come in conatct with it. Sand, trickle not through my fingers but shape into an empire!

I am having a sudden OCD panic attack so will have to take a break from writing this (there is still more). The sudden lucidity that allowed me to write everything above is dissipating. It will return. I must believe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR98qq9iHmw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi9buHnx9rU

Underworld are a recent revelation; not a discovery, as I have known of them for several years. It is just that something has grasped me in their music of late, something very homely, friendly to Karl Hyde’s voice combined with their sound textures. Songs like Bird One are moments where, much like I had at times in the past about russians, I catch glimpses (of a man, moving uphill) of hope for english and anglosaxons, that is in a Eugenics sort of way, namely that, despite their general contempt for all things rational, their anarchic spirit gives them a raw spirituality that I find mainland europeans can tend to lack once taken over by their abstract concepts. There is a certain finesse to the constant crescendo that is Bird One that I feel could only come from the souls of a couple of english blokes, a certain friendly naivety that gets lost when for example their mainland european counterparts try to emulate it; although I generally tend to prefer the French to the English, I know from personal experience that the latter have more of a natural feel for making music. I have started to take racial theories seriously recently - not in the sense that I feel they are truly grounded in reality or are necessarily of any value, but in the sense that I believe that people don’t just make these things up, and in our distinct social groups prevalent energy trends can be mutually communicated in a deeply profound way, creating a mystical sense of unity, for better or for worse. I am admittedly highly untypical for an englishman, for various reasons, but even though I have never lived there I feel a sort of strange sentimental attachment to certain things english, things that speak very directly to my immediate behaviour and personality, more so than many french things, although I do still have a special connection with various of the latter having grown up with them and all. I found that for a long time the way I thought in Russian was more cloesly linked to the english part of my brain than to the french part.

Underworld give me hope for the english. That the english are more than the friday night pub-drunkards, or the social-status obsessed sociopaths that populate the country, that they really have a Weltanschauung within their character that is worth sharing. The english generally seem like uncivilised barbarians compared to their european neighbours, and there have been points where I may have considered the possibility that they were quite simply an inferior nation with lower capacities. They have no real sense of culture, any idea of what it is to be human, what it is to be. I feel they are liberal in a way that other european countries aren’t - whereas in France people, I feel, are truly concerned about democracy and freedom, in England liberal mentality seems nothing more than a social trend that shifts according to the tide, for example english people are traditionally the worst homophobes I have ever met, back in the 60′s they effectively condemned one of the world’s greatest minds, Alan Turing, to death for his sexual orientation, and suddenly as of a few years ago it became socially accepted that sexual equality was a thing and now everyone goes along with it likes it’s totally normal. The english have no real values. They are an entertainment culture like the americans. I even find the russians are sometimes more respectable in their fierce respect for their culture, (although I do find them very superficial themselves of late and appreciate the english’s basic niceness which I think is more profound than the paranoid frown russians greet everyone with). But they produce wonders of art that make me think twice. There is something godly in that fuck-off anarchy. Yes, I am a hopeless romantic. But by God does the world need us. It is hopeless without us.

A maintes reprises over the past days I have been convinced that my brain is gone for good and that my Odyssey will have no stargate ending, i.e a banal end in which the computer actually manages to kill me because I forgot my space helmet. This is all because this time last week, I ate about 12 entire packets of ham within the space of 3/4 days, since I realised it had a great capacity for digesting serotonin, i.e to end my current mental drought. I went a bit too full retard on this one though and have been feeling what I believe are the effects of excess serotonin: headache, confusion, trouble with memory, slight depressin etc. I pray to god and have not lost hope that my mind will gradually stabilise, but I will say one thing - there is no worse fate in this world than being boring and superficial. I have felt states of mind so dull these past days I became terrified at the prospect I may never rediscover my former psychotic Eden, but also horrified at the idea that people actually live in such limited states of consciousness. No fucking wonder there is so much evil in our world, I certainly don’t blame anyone for resorting to it. I would literally rather die than live in those states for the rest of my life and so keep going merely in the hope that this is all purely temporary, which I tend to truly believe. Moral of the story is, kids, don’t eat 9 packets of ham within the space of two days, cus y’all might fuck up yo brains in doing so. A worthy death is worth far more than a meaningless existence.

To elaborate on 2001 - Kubrick’s 2001 is more than just a film for me, for many many years, until the wonders of modern psychiatry altered Universal Love’s playing fields, that world was a crucial part of my general life perception. It was an energy that flowed like a river underneath all occurences of the physical world, reminding me of the divine and greater good in this life. It is something supernatural, on a heightened sensory level, where my inner world mixes ecstatically with the ouer. It is when I lost those sensations that I inherently started to become a disgustingly superficial person. Religious faith in such things is crucial, as life may take them away.

1 note · View note