There are many fearful and wonderful things, but none is more fearful and wonderful than man. He makes his path over the storm-swept sea and harries old Earth with his plough. He takes the wild beasts captive and turns them into his servants. He has taught himself speech and wind-swift thought, and the habits that pertain to government. Against everything that confronts him he invents some resource – against death alone he has no resource.
Antigone, Sophocles
In our time nobody is content to stop with faith but wants to go further. It would perhaps be rash to ask where these people are going, but it is surely a sign of breeding and culture for me to assume that everybody has faith, for otherwise it would be queer for them to be...going further. In those old days it was different, then faith was a task for a whole lifetime, because it was assumed that dexterity in faith is not acquired in a few days or weeks.
Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard
No philosophy of political or social institutions can be complete without articulating the philosophy of the subject. Hence this postscript to a recent series of sketches, "In Defense of Anarchism," parts I through IV.
I
True faith is a child of desperation born of human betrayal; desperation whose source is general human untrustworthiness, realized. (“In God We Trust,” not in man, so says our legal tender.) Likewise with courage, itself an offspring of faith and a true measure thereof. Both result in emotional alienation, having to live one’s life in an emotional desert populated with humans. Couple this now with alienation of the intellect and the circle is well-nigh complete. I call it alienation of the spirit. Hegel was on the right track, trying to imbue statehood with the quality of the Spirit. The ideal he was after approximated the Kingdom of God.
Alienation, whether emotional, intellectual, or spiritual, is the natural condition of humankind. (Durkheim called it anomie and identified it as the major cause of suicide.) If you haven’t tasted it yet, you haven’t arrived. Ayn Rand’s grave error was to accentuate the heroic at the expense of the tragic. By positing the individual vs. the collective as the battlefield of ideas, her characters were all too predictable and writ large. John Galt wasn’t a suffering hero, let alone a suffering servant, but a conqueror, glory and all, the stuff from which fairytales are made. Like Hannah Arendt before her, Rand was overreacting to the evils of totalitarianism.
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - troll
...purgery is a hallmark commonly stamped on totalitarian systems
2 - roger nowosielski
... and it comes under the guise of benefiting the whole
3 - Jane
Not interested in truth then? God in the equation is only meaningful if He is true.
4 - trol l
...anarchist constructs are necessarily anathema in principle to 'consensual' dictatorship - the dominant business model of the recent manufacturing era and that on which blogcritics bases its rules governing the relationships between participants and individual behavior
the question is can bc meet Agamben's challenge and avoid an 'inevitable' slide into totalitarian suppression of ideas and communication styles - not so much whether it can function as an anarchistic venue
and the trend ain't good
5 - Jared N. Smith
You write, "We should be mindful of the false prophets, for they abound in every walk of life, from politicians to well-meaning preachers. “Factions” and “factional politics” were Madison’s terms for it, and he wasn’t speaking with approbation." Yet, I am not sure your reading of Federalist 10 closely enough. Madison is most certainly concerned about factions, since they are by nature a disrupting and divisive force. He writes:
"The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source ... [Factious activity] will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State."
This portion should not be taken to mean that the diversity of factions makes us more of a union (this would be retrofitting the past with an otherwise anachronistic liberal view of equality and diversity.) Rather, factions are not so dangerous because they likelihood of one forming and becoming a danger at the FEDERAL level is so small that we need not fear a civil war.
6 - roger nowosielski
#4, correct. The anarchistic model is posited as an ideal, a relief. And yet, an online community offers a perfect medium, it seems, for implementation of the self-regulating principle.
7 - roger nowosielski
I don't think we disagree, Jared.
8 - TAO Walker
Could it be the dead-end dilemma of "collective" vs. "individual" only arises in those hot-house circumstances that attempt to set Humanity essentially 'apart' from the Whole Living Arrangement of Mother Earth who, after-all, engenders and sustains our Kind on the basis of actual immediate Living imperatives. She shows no interest-in or need-of all the CONceits of philosophy....and its idiot offspring ideology.
"Anarch-ism," like every permutation of its hierarchical "law-and-order" antitheses, is just another obsessively "self"-referential reaction to CONditions arising whenever a Person or a People lose The Tao of their Humanity....the place of our Kind in the larger scheme of The Ten Thousand Things. Getting trapped in some variation of the "vicious cycle" is the inevitable result.
That's not "ethics," either....just plain old physics.
Hokahey!
9 - roger nowosielski
The kind of interconnectedness you're talking about (and I allude to it, however tangentially in section VI), our sense of it, is also a by-product of self-transformation, even in the Buddhist tradition. You're right, however, in pointing out that the Western intellectual tradition and heritage - from which perspective this article was written - is considerably more anthropocentric (you might say, full of itself) than the Eastern tropes.
10 - roger nowosielski
addendum to comments #4 and 6
The business model you're alluding to is all the more perfidious precisely because (in this particular case) it governs the relations in what's presumed to be a sphere of free and unhampered thought and expression.
Chris Hedges' latest article in the Truthdig, "Gone With the Papers, touches on the subject, and comments by such as Anarcissie and TAO Walker speak to the unholy alliance whereby the business interests infect the ethos of investigative reporting. The latter commenter, and for good reasons, I might add, is equally skeptical of the fate of the internet and social media, precisely because both operate on the basis of the same business model.
11 - Cindy
Roger!!! BBL to read your article. :-) I have been meaning to call you.
12 - roger nowosielski
Have another number. Send me an email and I'll post it.
13 - Irene Athena
Hi Roger! I've stopped by BC a few times to check--I see you've finished the article.
You asked me a question about the sick healing the sick, Warriors and Medics. These days I'm thinking it's the Listeners who accomplish most of what needs to get done, and most of THAT happens in spite of great opposition, including the sickness and sometimes even stupidity of the healer. Sorry for being so mystical, but "that's all she wrote." Do your own dang listening, Roger! :D (Happy July to you, Cindy and TrOlL)
14 - Cindy
(Roger, I think you also have a new email address. You may wish to email me instead. If you forgot my address, it is on my blog.)
(Hiya there, Irene...and troll...) (-: :-)
15 - Anarcissie
My criticism of Hedges's article had to do with its retrograde hankering after capitalist authority. He seems to be rather popular with many people who call themselves 'progressives', so that may be a critique of 'progressivism' or 'progress' as well.
TAO Walker notes, '"Anarch-ism," like every permutation of its hierarchical "law-and-order" antitheses, is just another obsessively "self"-referential reaction to CONditions arising whenever a Person or a People lose The Tao of their Humanity....' Yes, of course. Anarchism is a response to the invention of militarism and slavery, that is, the permanent institutionalization of coercive force in the social order, which either occasioned or was a result of the loss of the tao of humanity. It is necessarily grounded in its antithesis and preserves the very terms of the oppression it struggles against. We must begin where we are -- at least in the shadow of slavery -- and learn how to relearn what we have forgotten. If possible.
16 - roger nowosielski
My comment on your comment on Hedges was peripheral. Of course the so-called "progressives" are the most reactionary.
TAO Walker's commentary deserves far more great deal of thought. Are we talking here, or are we not, of two irreconcilable belief/conceptual systems, the Western and the Eastern/Occidental? Justice vs. Karma. The first presumes the reality of our experiences. the second, as per Gita, denies it. These two philosophical/belief systems appear to be at odds and call for different strategies. In the first case, what we do, how we respond to the world, matters; in the second, it doesn't. In the first case, it's of utmost importance how we position ourselves with respect to the injustices all around us; in the second, the notion of injustice is an illusion, the primary objective being that of attaining a state of individual elightenment, Nirvana.
There is a sense in which my article raises these questions. An anarchistic oommunity, in a manner of speaking, transcends the conventional understanding of what we mean by community. As a matter of fact, the very idea of membership, in an anarchistic community, becomes problematic, about to fall by the wayside as one approaches the limit.
And so the question becomes: is it a membership of the species? But why stop there? Why not be more inclusive than that and cover all animate and inanimate things, the entire cosmos in fact. Isn't that what Taoism or Budhhism propose?
Talk to you later
17 - roger nowosielski
To get to the second part of your comment, Anarcissie, let my recall your earlier remark #142), as per link. You write:
"I do have a mass-hypnosis theory, which I call 'the shadow of slavery' -- the cultural after-effects of the seven thousand years or so, from the beginning of history until the initial victories of liberalism-capitalism, in which most humans were serfs or slaves."
In the immediately preceding comment, on this thread, you speak of shadowing again. Could you please extrapolate? I'd like to get a better feel for what you're thinking.
Furthermore, any more comments on my idea that an anarchistic community, when taken to extreme, disintegrates as it were [if membership is to count as an integral part of what it means to be a participant]? No borders, no boundaries, no restrictions to speak of! So again,I ask, isn't the idea of membership obsolete? And if so, then perhaps the very notion of community itself, as commonly understood, obsolete as well? Perhaps we need another term/concept to describe what we're after. A major re-conceptualization may well be in order, or the very construct of an anarchistic community may be spurious, indicative more of an individual mindset, a way of life, rather than serving as a principle of organization. Any thoughts?
I'm counting on you guys, Mark and Cindy too. It's bad enough I received a silent treatment from the usual suspects, the BC "regulars." I expected none would touch the sensitive subject appertaining to self-criticism and censorship with a ten-foot pole. Equally revealing is the same silent treatment on the part of the "injured party," the famous trio, whose case, however peripherally, I undertook to defend. No question, they think me too squeamish to take up their righteous cause.
But these things are inconsequential in the larger scheme of things. Dialog with you and Cindy and Mark, however, is of utmost importance.
The ball is in your corner. I'm not about to spoon-feed any of you with implications of what I consider a ground-breaking paper. Synoptic connections have to be made one person at a time; otherwise, they're not lasting and not meaningful. I'm not anyone's nanny. To the contrary, I expect each of you to think for themselves.
So the final question is: Are you up to it?
Speak up or hold your peace.
18 - Anarcissie
Roger -- by the 'shadow of slavery' I refer to a hypothetical embedding of the values of slavery in modern culture. Some 19th-century anarchists thought that all that would be necessary to establish the good society would be a sudden demolition of the government, after which human beings would be free to regain the tao in their relationships with one another.
But in the ensuing century, many, many states were smashed, and they were generally replaced by worse states. There was and is a public demand for the state. Indeed, many people, even those who call themselves 'progressives' or 'leftists', seem to not only love the state as it is but to desire its extension, its totalization.
Since I find this desire contrary to reason and self-interest, I have to explain it, so I have conjured a sort of psychopolitical dark matter which I call 'the shadow of slavery'. I have ideas from time to time about how to disperse it, but so far none of them have worked very well.
In regard to anarchistic communities, I know what small ones look like, but I have little idea of what a large polity made up of them would look like. I need a file for my shackles and yours; when we can stand up and look around, maybe we can get some idea.
19 - roger nowosielski
Wow, Anarcissie, a "psychopolitical dark matter"? We may as well speak of blind drives and forces a la Freud or Jung. I'm not making fun of it by any means, but therein lies the source of your pessimism.
It was you, remember, who chided me for entertaining Connolly's notion of a "global resonance machine" based on Calvinistic theology leading to resentment. Occam's razor, the simplest explanation available, was your retort. And now you're falling back deep psychology and metaphysics. Why not just say, after Socrates, that most of us lead unexamined lives and leave it at that?
Your argument as to the disintegration of the institution of statehood fails to make your point as well. You attribute this disintegration to real or imaginary elements of the human psyche whereas what we're dealing with in fact is the crumbling of an institution, institution which was flawed from the outset. There is no way for the states to go but down. Like any idea that has outlived its usefulness, they are supposed to get worse and worse; and that's not a cause for despair, I contend, but for celebration.
And yet, on the positive side, and for all of that, we have seen substantial gains in human rights all over the world. There is an increasing awareness and yearning for a true democracy, and the Arab spring is a testament to that. It's only a matter of time when this realization will be joined by another, that a true democracy is not attainable within the confines of statehood, which only stifles it, but requires another, more enlightened political organization.
Again, I'll say that the arch of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.
I'll tend to the last part of your comment shortly.
20 - roger nowosielski
Now to the second part.
I realize now that when I spoke of the idea of membership (in an anarchistic community) as though dissolving, I was laboring under a misconception. The image of community I was working with was of an all-encompassing, global anarchistic community, there being no boundaries or borders. Naturally, given that kind of configuration, the notion of membership falls by the way side since the community, so envisaged, is all-inclusive: no one is excluded.
So here's the necessary corrective. The concept of community, by definition, must include some notion of boundary if it's not to be vacuous. Sure, we can and do speak of a "global village," but that's metaphorical. Hence the real question which suggests itself: what are the proper boundaries for an(y) anarchistic community given that an anarchistic community, if it's to be true to its spirit and principle, excludes no one. Well, my answer is the boundary must be a natural one, which is to say, local (or locally-defined). Consequently, we can speak of an array of anarchistic communities, each of which subscribing to the same anarchistic ideology and principles, and yet, which are distinct from one another if only in terms of their identity as defined by their different localities/geographies.
The importance of identifying an anarchistic community in terms of its locality [as opposed to any other conceivable factor of identity politics, such as ethnicity or shared interests (Miranda Joseph's work, for example, Against the Romance of Community, examines a gay community)] is not to be underestimated, for it goes to the very roots of all meaningful action in the sphere of politics and economics. All meaningful politics and economics must be local, community-based (think globally but act locally!). That's the key to self-reliance on both the individual and communal level. Which is why any community which is not locally-based is a community only by extension. It lacks the generative power.
21 - roger nowosielski
To Whom It May Concern:
I have been invited by an ex-BC participant, recently expelled, to post derogatory comments concerning my experiences with the editorial staff prior to having this article published (see section VI, page 5). When I had told them that although frustrating, the experience was for the most part positive, resulting in a better finished product than it otherwise might have been, I was still invited to post on their site so the authors would provide counterexamples to my positive observations. I still refused.
Out of frustration or sheer meanness, my communicant disclosed the content of my private conversation with him to the management. I'd like to therefore go on record as having broken all communications with this group, private or public, although my position on censorship in general, as expressed in section VI, still stands.
Roger Nowosielski
22 - tro ll
...dissed by one of the pedantic pair - what a surprise
so...how to deal with such malevolence in an anarchist setting?
23 - roger nowosielski
I'm tempted to say a Soviet style re-education camp, but I know that's not the answer.
24 - Anarcissie
'... It was you, remember, who chided me for entertaining Connolly's notion of a "global resonance machine" based on Calvinistic theology leading to resentment. Occam's razor, the simplest explanation available, was your retort. And now you're falling back deep psychology and metaphysics. Why not just say, after Socrates, that most of us lead unexamined lives and leave it at that? ...'
As I recall, I thought the global resonance machine idea was too specific, too detailed. My 'dark matter' theory demands less belief, and evidence for it can be observed in daily life. However, they are related ideas. There's no metaphysics involved unless in the perhaps excessively poetic nomenclature.
I'm not sure what you're referring to when you mention the deterioration of states. I have more than one theory about that. The smashing of states I most recently mentioned refers to events in Europe between 1914 and 1989 (mostly). The degeneration of liberal states into totalitarianism, another kind of deterioration (except for totalitarians) is a different category of phenomenon for me. I suppose they could be related by some universal appetite for domination which I hope doesn't exist.
The contradictory thrust for human rights and freedom on the part of the lower orders I see as a result of the inexorable tropism of liberalism-capitalism-industrialism toward overproduction. Although ruling classes intend to keep power and wealth to themselves, they are unable to do so and it leaks into the sphere of the working classes and the poor, leading to a less desperate life which gives some space for political activity. At least in its initial stages this seem to result in thrusts both towards increased freedom and increased repression. For example, we see both libertarian and authoritarian elements in the rebels of the Arab Spring -- as in so many other such revolts, going back to the French Revolution, the English Civil War, and probably before. The poor get to have too much stuff to be ruled with any assurance. Recall this advice to housewives: 'If you can make a cake you can make a bomb.'
Presumably communities of anarchists, and communities made up of such communities, would have to be as voluntary as possible. Many such fantasies can be entertained. There is a little book named Bolo'bolo that contains one of them which may amuse you; try the title in the search engine of your choice. (If the results are too confusing, there's a Wikipedia entry you can start with.) Whether this is the true tao of humanity I don't know; I rather doubt we can know at this point. Any guess seems like a long shot.
25 - El Bicho
Not sure whom it concerns or why the comment has reappeared, but sounds like you've learned the moral of "The Old Woman and the Snake."