Dunno if this belongs here, but it's going in;

[Brother X]

Damn skippie. This was done to us: it did not just happen.

Aye. We did it to ourselves. We are but the most current state of a continuum of complicity. When we were at the bifurcation point, the decision between civ and non-civ, we should have heeded the advice of Bugs Bunny:



https://web.archive.org/web/2008021...rchy.blogspot.com/2006/12/why-bugs-bunny.html

 

[kitkat]

Politics of this sort is a thing we'd do well to engage with carefully

Touchdooooowwwwnnnnn

I loved reading that, thanks


On ideology - I’m wary of uncompromising ideologies, I’d also say that it is to me, just the theorisation and mobilisation of bias. Created to describe and prescribe for us. So I agree that what we may try to be aware of is only using it as a way to revolt/reform in our heads, living lives as armchair warriors.

They’re indeed also used to legitimate certain activities, structures and organise humans in order for them to combine and unite in their aims. Of course this also ties into what you were saying regarding community and a sense of belonging.

Some, in regards to the levels by which it is active - from the crudest slogans to more abstract philosophies - some would argue that ideology is inseparable from politics, and if so, then it is a living, breathing, complex mosaic of experiences. This creates the tension of those more operational and modified ideals vs the fundamental idealogical dreams.

What am I even talking about…

I guess was Im saying is that maybe understanding ideologies is just a process of understanding conceptions of reality and our world, a number of worlds in fact! Some limiting, other expansive; some allow us to cope and act in the world, others inhibit us.


Mmmm privilege. It does not imply an utopian existence does it? Rather in a relative sense, the opportunities afforded to us, and the importance of checking our privileges. I agree with much of what you said in terms of how such privilege does not automatically insinuate a wholesome existence. I do wrestle with the fact that many of my friends are not able to travel and escape, as a product of political and economic inequity, yet somehow we’re all still living ON THE CRUMBS OF CAPITALISM either way. Also I question the veil we pull over our eyes.


It’s important though that most academic views of social justice, or redistributive justice like you said are only able to reform so much so as to not upset the power relations in order. Keeping in mind that even academics are not safe from neoliberal agendas. Our institutions -the physical and social structures - are definitely not in place to support confronting certain truths to collapse society as we know it.

Sounds like my cycles so far, and my dance for the delicate balance <3 <3 <3

wow lets chill one day/ if our paths should cross

 

[kitkat]

have lost the most basic animal skills, namely how to survive on our native planet.

eyyyy
for sure, what is driving our entire civilisation is energy; mamma earth produced and stored all this potential energy for us to extract it and manipulate and transform our world
and we became disconnected to the source

 

[A New Name]

It seems to me that it's impossible to grind this giant machine to a halt. It's momentum relies on the lack of it by the individual parts, and there's too much of it. Not to sound defeatist but it seems that the only way is if enough cogs jump out of it. So hey, join an independent community. I hear Bussana Vechia is nice (along with a great many number of others).

 

[A New Name]

Aye. We did it to ourselves. We are but the most current state of a continuum of complicity. When we were at the bifurcation point, the decision between civ and non-civ, we should have heeded the advice of Bugs Bunny:

https://web.archive.org/web/2008021...rchy.blogspot.com/2006/12/why-bugs-bunny.html

I don't think that it's entirely impossible to have a civilization that is also sustainable in it's use of resources and in how we live. Given, we may have to regress a bit, or a lot, where it comes to technological and social organization to re-make ourselves from a mostly competitive (at least on the big scale) to a cooperative society but it should be possible. Of course, believing it to be possible will be the biggest contribute to that possibility, while the opposite will be true aswell. Maybe.

 

[Vulture]

Implying that you have had an excess of those who *claim* to be anarchists and idealists in your life?
Or people who are against the social hierarchy of the need for a 'ruler'
Or people who strive for ideals which only exist as an archetype?

actually wanna know

Just antagonizing, I am an anarchist

 

[Brother X]

I don't think that it's entirely impossible to have a civilization that is also sustainable in it's use of resources and in how we live. Given, we may have to regress a bit, or a lot, where it comes to technological and social organization to re-make ourselves from a mostly competitive (at least on the big scale) to a cooperative society but it should be possible. Of course, believing it to be possible will be the biggest contribute to that possibility, while the opposite will be true aswell. Maybe.

I partially agree. Not to get too bogged down in semantics, but if it were to be a distributed, decentralized approach, it would be a interlocked series of cultures, with some overlap, but not really a monolithic civilization and that's fine with me. One of the problems with monolithic civilizations, as we see today, is there seems to be no space for nomadic hunter gatherers, for example. That is due to the concept of land ownership, the overarching attitude of "colonialism" in the guise of philanthropy (help those natives by bringing them civilization) . Or the less dramatic but no less traumatic example of leaving no exit option for those who just don't want or like the civilization paradigm.

I don't want to go all Zerzan here and start splitting hairs about where to draw the line on civilization, how to define it and it's cousin, modernity, etc. However, I do know how I feel about it and what life choices I've made regarding softening its effects on my life. I came to my conclusions by researching the origins and effects of post-civilization versus pre-civilization humanity (as much as we can know) and making my personal decisions based on what I see as a continuum, whose course was influenced in this current direction at some key points and what I can do to lessen it's effects on my personal happiness and to a lesser degree what I and a few like minded friends can do to possibly alter its course in the future. I'm not delusional, I know that the best we can hope for is the butterfly effect from any of our actions. I am happy with that.

Outside of that, eat, drink and be merry as much as you can while you're here. At least there are still places where you can go and see that aren't paved over yet.

 

[kitkat]

has anyone else seen this shit?

 

[A New Name]

I take back the maybe. Just got quite a bit more proud of humanity.

Thanks for sharing that!

 

[salxtina]

Hi Kitkat. A few scattered points I don't have the energy to elaborate on right now:

1. I kind of hate Jensen but also owe a few social-theory framework bits to him, the stuff on toxic mimicry in particular.

2. Understanding how non-profitization has "captured" a lot of social movements since the 60s is key to the U.S. context, from anti-racism to psychiatric survivors to women's liberation - not sure about globally

3. Escape and better/less oppressive options for subsistance are a luxury, yea - so I see them as something we shouldn't lecture people about / frame as morally-superior (bad lifestyle politics!) but as something we should organize and fight to make accesable to more people (good lifestyle politics!!(?))

4. I'm trying to: support anti-prison revolts, learn and share primitive skills and trade skills, draw connections between the issues closest to Empire's central gears (fossil fuel extraction in frontline communities, police brutality, ecocide, control of agriculture, dispossession and migration) and those that radiate further out (homophobia, patriarchy, trauma and addiction, etc,) -- and practice having conversations with people from different backgrounds (outside radical milieus, with different tones/vocabularies/starting points) about how we're struggling to grow beyond the values we were taught as children, whether about gender, careers, nationalism, or anything

5. You deserve waaay better than people's more-burnout-than-thou posturing! Be well! xo

(There is nothing naive or idealistic about setting one's priorities clearly, I have seen hell and lost hope, and I'm still at this shit because there ain't shit else worth living for.)

 

[A New Name]

Not to be arrogant, but you mean except for life itself? Like eating a nice camembert cheese.

 

[Hillbilly Castro]

some would argue that ideology is inseparable from politics

True, and from here it becomes something of a semantic game to pin down what is being said unless we use language that acknowledges its own inadequacies - a.k.a. poetry. We can do this without falling into the postmodernist trap of pure subjectivity and an essentially nihilistic refusal to incorporate our primal origins into how we live life and commence resisting. A poetry that is not purely self-referential and present-centric, but grounded in the dark wilderness of our millions of years of life in forager band society..

did I just say "forager band society"? Oh yeah, I gotta go hit the dumpster to feed the heads who I'm rolling with today. Guess I'm halfway home? The esoteric claptrap definitely gives me the "what the fuck am I even talking about" feeling often enough. Like saying the same word twenty times in a row until it feels like an empty utterance more than a symbol of anything. Today I laid in the sun and drank coffee and kissed a gorgeous traveler and realized my mind's usual rocky road of high-intellectual language had smoothed into a very calm, silent contentment. Silence has been used as a weapon, but - when it can be somehow conjured over the static of the TV and the iPhone and the cops and the interstate - it can also be a liberatory gaze into the future primitive. Now I'm rambling. I'm sure we'll run into each other someday and we'll have our rambles. If yr in the east come to Rainbow in VT? Thanks for thinking. Stay wild. Peace.

 

[kitkat]

forager band society

lol I gotcha
at this point i have something conceived beyond what I can put into physical form - such as language
See ya when Im looking at ya