One of the issues that we are going to run into, based on the individualistic and in-group/out-group ways that the human brain works, is politics. Maybe it's identity-based, maybe it's ideological, or economical. Sometimes it's personal. It's a challenge to SO many of the things that we want to get done.
It has sort of blown me away, since starting down the rabbit hole of thinking for myself, questioning what we've been told, and living a principled life, just how often politics ends up coming between people who (from my POV) are clearly working towards the same ends.
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Steps/Goals We Can Agree On
These are just a few points that (AFAIK) just about every anarchist can agree on. Any others you think are pretty universal? Would you challenge any of these?
- No more nation-states in physical reality, and no more state as a culturally acceptable concept of human organization.
- No more banks in physical reality, and no more usury as a culturally acceptable form of interaction.
- No more war, or any other form of mass murder.
- No more people assaulting & abusing children.
- No more factory farming, toxic fertilizers/pesticides/herbicides, and rampant food waste.
Wait... Anarchy?
I'm actually writing this as the very last paragraph, just as I'm wrapping up the post and realizing that there may be a reader or two who hears the word anarchy and what comes to mind is people in black smashing windows. However, that is not anarchy. Those are usually government Agents Provocateur.
That re-defining of anarchy (literally "without rulers") to instead mean "chaos" has been pulled off greatly over the last decade or so, in order to give the average citizen an automatic emotional negative response to a word, a concept, that explicitly represents their path to liberation.
Anarchy is, simply put, the idea that violence isn't the answer. Just that. I don't believe that I have the right to force you to do anything, not do anything, talk in a certain way, or pay for something you didn't agree to/aren't responsible for. The idea that all human interactions should be voluntary & free of coercion. If you'd like to explore this a bit more before moving forward, here's the story of "How I Became an Anarchist." [2215 words - 11 minute read]
If you'd prefer, here are a couple of simple breakdowns by great minds:
“Anarchism has but one infallible, unchangeable motto, "Freedom." Freedom to discover any truth, freedom to develop, to live naturally and fully." ~ Lucy Parsons
"Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners." ~ Edward Abbey
“Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals…” ~ Emma Goldman
If you'd like to explore the idea of anarchy a bit further, I would also recommend:
Reading:
- Reflections on Anarchy & Spirituality & Manifesto of the Free Humans by @DBroze & @JohnVibes
- FREEDOM! by @AdamKokesh
- Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Peter Kropotkin
- Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber
- Grand Unified Political Theory - Anarchy, Libertarianism, Capitalism, and Socialism by @dantheman
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Achieving Anarchy
If we focus ourselves on eliminating the illusion of authority, eliminating the fallacy that violence is ever morally acceptable, eliminating this anthropocentric worldview, and eliminating the illusion that we are all separate from each other and the rest of life on Earth. Once we get to that point, everything else will work itself out organically, peacefully [relatively speaking. I'm not a utopianist, human conflict will always exist. However, it need not be institutionalized & worshipped], and in a decentralized way.
Anarchism is not about attempting to implement a new top-down, universal version of society. It's about doing the exact opposite; working to eliminate forced/coercive systems, so that every individual and community (of individuals) can make their own choice(s) on how to live (as long as they are not harming/coercing others.)
This means there will be Rainbow communities, RBE communities, agorist communities, anarcho-primitivist communities, and yes, even anarcho-capitalist communities... all living together, sharing knowledge, and basically just leaving each other alone.
Towards Anarchism by Errico Malatesta
We Are Many
We are in the millions. I'd reckon close to/over a billion are within a year or two of being there (less and less time the more we all cooperate & synergize the strengths of different archetypes), and the whole world is just a generation or two away from being fully realized conscious sovereigns, if we can just put down our adjectives and focus together on the steps we all agree should happen. I've heard a lot of folks talking about how big they think "the movement" is (coming from folks who consider themselves to be parts of different movements), and I disagree with all of them. In large part, this is because I don't pay attention to the labels & identity politics that so many awakening humans get stuck in.
When I talk about the movement, I'm referring to all the humans who want a more peaceful, free, loving, cooperate, abundant, healthy, communicative world, and who want to help bring that about. I don't care what they identify as, what label they wrap them-self up in, or any of those other mind-based limitations. Anarchists, voluntaryists, Rainbows, hippies, permaculturists, environmentalists, vegans, truth-seekers and many who identify as conscious, spiritual, sovereign, weird, anti-social, or awake are all part of the paradigm shift
As we all know, the biggest threat to a free mind & a happy human is childhood trauma & conditioning. Since the 60s, the shift towards peaceful parenting, unschooling, and not limiting children has been growing at an exponential rate, and we can definitely see the effects. In my travels & activism, I have met so many teenagers that are at the same level of awakening as most humans my age, who are at the same level of awakening as most people in their 50s... As we make more progress as a species, as a planet, each new life starts off a little further ahead, and has a little easier time making their own progress.
Building Bridges
The Movement is Larger Than Any of Us Know
The following video is a presentation I gave at the 2019 Anarchapulco conference about this very subject. I laid out some keys to communicating effectively with those who identify as other adjectives than we do, finding the common ground, and the importance on focusing on what the end goal is, what the foundational principles & ethics are, rather than what we think is the most important issue to tackle first.
Among the groups/movements/philosophies I connected were:
- The Zeitgeist Movement
- The Rainbow Family (and hippies in general)
- Environmentalists
- Buddhists
- Feminists
- SJWs
- and more!
Basically, the key is always to start with the points in common, generally the "problem". From there, it's almost always a simple matter to show how government/authority/corporations are actually the MAIN cause of that problem, and asking for more government certainly isn't going to solve the problem (or even alleviate it.)
The Problem, and a Solution
So, even if we can get everyone to work together to dismantle the state, to end child abuse, to break down the violent power structures... then what? It seems clear that An-Caps, An-Coms, An-Prims, An-Syndicalists, etc. are probably not going to just suddenly decide that they all want to live the same way. But that's the beauty of anarchy, they don't have to! The most beautiful thing of our solution is that it's not just one solution, it is a recognition of the fact that different individuals & communities need different solutions.
I think that a focus on shared agreements, with less agreements at each increasing level of population/distance. I have agreements with myself that don't include anyone else. My family unit will have agreements of our own that don't include anyone else, Same for the commune, village, neighborhood, co-operative, watershed, bioregion, continent, all the way up to the species.
By creating large-scale, but low-level agreements (for example the non-aggression principle, the principle of voluntary interaction, the idea of Ubuntu, whatever it is we can make our way to), we allow the space for people who disagree about a whole lot, and basically want to live in different realities, to still cooperate on the parts where they overlap, and help move away from the statist-corporate-oppressive-violent-competitive-apathetic model that has been running.
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Examples of Pan-Anarchist Organizing
(Or other pan-culture/group anarchistic organizing)
1. The Rainbow Gathering - Every year since 1972, in hundreds of places around the planet, the Rainbow Family has gathered. Inside the territories claimed by the US Inc., we always gather in national forests without asking permit-ssion. Each gathering is run via consensus, with collective decisions being made by councils, open to any family who want to be involved. [See my full write-up of the Rainbow Gathering to learn more]
I mostly go to the annual "Nationals" Gathering myself, the largest one which has been happening at the same time since that first gathering in '72. At Nationals, there are sometimes 50+ different camps & kitchens, each with their own culture, organizational structure, needs, etc. It's common to have Home Shalom, Krishna Kitchen, Jesus Kitchen, Faerie Camp, and a variety of other, quite different communities/belief systems making up the collective mindset of the Gathering.
Every day there is kitchen council, where representatives from the kitchens (all volunteer, self-organizing entities which distribute free food) get together to make decisions, there is Main Council, where the decision is made for where the next year's Gathering will be as well as other general points being discussed, and there are smaller councils called for various conflicts, environmental/logistical issues, and any problems with Law Enforcement.
At every council, the same process of a talking stick, and continuing around the circle until nobody else has anything to add/challenge, is practiced. Everyone has the space to be heard, and the ability to affect how things are decided. And we all understand that any rules your group/camp/kitchen wants to make your own rules, they only affect those in your space, and you have to give people the chance to opt-out and walk away if they don't want to agree.
2. Occupy Wall Street's General Assembly - Yes, in the end Occupy was pretty well de-railed and misled by the intelligence community, but some great things were done, in large part due to the early involvement of many great anarchists. One of the most valuable effects, in my opinion, was the introduction to consensus-based decision-making for SO many people. It is well-documented, and has branched out from OWS, finding its way into tons of organizations & communities.
Personally, I never made it to NY, or Oakland, or any of the big spots, and only briefly checked in on it here in Portland. At that time in my life, I was just working, drinking, and smoking & selling weed. With some video games thrown in there.
Based on what I've heard from people who were at the GAs, whether in NY, Denver, or Portland, it was always an example of many different factions coming together to try to figure things out. With varying levels of success from one to the next.
3. The Dorsa Brevia Conference & The Pavonis Mons Congress - In the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, the colonization of Mars is begun with a 100(+1) person crew, made up of representatives from around the world; they were all highly intelligent and well-trained specialists in all the fields needed to begin a new civilization and terraform a planet. Over the following decades, the planet continues to draw people from across the human spectrum, including many communities & cultures who found themselves persecuted and oppressed on Earth.
In 2107 (M-Year 40), thousands of people representing dozens of micro-societies came to a city called Dorsa Brevia, located in a giant lava tube. Over the course of what I seem to remember were weeks, they held general assemblies, breakout discussion & problem-solving groups, and debates, ultimately creating the Dorsa Brevia Declaration, which included multiple points that the vast diaspora of Mars could agree on:
- Mars will be a world of different cultures and religions; none should dominate over the other.
- All individuals should have some inalienable rights: material existence, health care, education, legal equality.
- The Martian land, air, water are common goods and cannot be owned.
- The fruits of an individual's labor belong to this individual; Martian human labor is part of a communal enterprise; the Martian economic system should balance self-interest and the society's interests.
- Martian economics will be based on ecologic science and should serve the prosperity of the entire biosphere; thus the meta-national order is not sustainable.
- The environmental alterations should be minimalist and eco-poetic; their goal should be to make the portion lower than 5 km above datum humanly viable, anything above (amounting to 30% of Mars's surface) will exist as natural wilderness zones.
- The habitation of Mars is a first in human history and should serve as a precedent for human habitation of the solar system and for human relationship with the environment; a spirit of reverence should exist towards Mars and life in the universe.
In 2127-2128 (M-Year 52), after the second revolution successfully removed the Earth governments and meta-nationals from power on Mars, the Pavonis Mons Congress was held. Again, over the course of weeks, and using the Dorsa Brevia Declaration as a starting point (though much of it was still debated & changed), the people of mars created the Constitution of Mars, which consisted of eight articles:
- Article 1: Legislative Department
- Article 2: Executive Department
- Article 3: Judicial Department
- Article 4: The Global Government and the Towns and Settlements
- Article 5: Individual Rights And Obligations
- Article 6: The Land
- Article 7: Amendments to the Constitution
- Article 8: Ratification of the Constitution
To be clear, this model went quite a bit too far into the realm of statism for my liking. The story, during those times, is largely told from the points of view of characters who definitely fall closer to the anarchist end of things though, which is nice.
StarTribe Village by Brett Jones - Click for full size
Now Is The Time
(IMHO) This is the best time to ever have been alive as a human on Planet Earth. We're going through the most amazing & magnificent paradigm shift that humanity has ever seen (as far as we know). We have already realized our ability to create abundance, we're connected in real-time with humans all around the world, we've got things like open-source, block-chain, and 3D printing to help share knowledge, keep records, and eliminate large-scale manufacturing.
If you look at the way the power structures of the old paradigm are acting now, you can clearly see that we are winning; the system is scrambling to maintain the small bit of control it still holds, and humans are stepping into their sovereignty by the millions. We are all so blessed to be here, to play the role that we are playing. We literally get to have a personal hand in shaping the world of the future, through what we do, what we say, who we connect with, how we heal & integrate our traumas, what we show as an example for others...
Why I Posted This
Anyway, since the post I shared had long since been paid out, I decided to add some value to it in the comments, and ultimately ended up creating a lot more. I decided to add my new thoughts to the old, add in the video of a talk I gave at Anarchapulco, make some revisions, and re-release it as a new post of its own. Seems like 3 different versions of me, from 3 different points in time, should be able to come up with something better than any one of them could.
I feel like this particular area of thought is quite important in moving humanity forward, and achieving a world that looks much like what any of us actually want.
Where have you seen consensus work or not work before? How many fictional worlds have you read/watched where these fundamentals were actually different from the "real world?" I'm feeling more and more that stories, mythology, fiction is really the key to the wide-spread change of mind that we need.
Thanks for reading! I hope to hear your thoughts below.
