#anarchisim

[obitchuary69]

Mutual Aid Monday (x)

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[obitchuary69]

Mutual aid monday!

[yaingus]

While i do belive having needs met and not basing how our entire socity organizes around money would reduce a lot of the cruelty displyed by humans, the problem clearly does run a lot deeper. And Ive found an easier way (for me) to think about it is by understanding it as fear. A wealthy person may have thier needs met, but they still fear. What they have becomes central to their sense of self, in adition to a sense they deserve it all, and any threat to it is fuel for cruelty. And with wealth and power at their disposal those cruel "self-defense" impluses can reach far beyond and begin to self perpetuate. Obviously different people will react to things in different ways, and there isn't actually a way to predict how people will react. Reducing avenues for people to have power over each other in adition to ensuring needs are met are both important for maybe beginning to walk back the generational tangle of stress and trauma that have twisted ourselves in.

[yaingus]

The only sorft of person I'd be conent fo follow would be the sort of person who would not want followers and would be ruined by having them.

[leaning-ivory-tower]

I love slowly radicalized my coworkers buy doing the bare minimum and not answering texts after hours and explaining like FMLA/short term disability to them.

Like these are people with more education than me and in like "do you want to be a socialist/anarchist gremlin?"

[pintsizeddeepthoughts]

Reviews...from Spaaace - SciFi: The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin

Year Published: 1974

Country: United States

A common line of logic in America (and other countries) is that anarchy cannot work. It would be too chaotic for anyone to get anything done or would devolve into something resembling the dictatorial impulses of communism. Would it, though? One of the few novels to simultaneously win science fiction’s two highest literary awards in the same year (the Hugo and Nebula Awards), The Dispossessed is a novel that finds a master at the height of her powers. Later printings would give the novel a subtitle, “an ambiguous utopia” and it’s a very fitting one as Le Guin creates a world that explores not only anarchism but the benefits and drawbacks of individualism and collectivism, and the impossibility of maintaining a revolutionary society.

The main plot revolves around a physicist named Shevek, born and raised on a satellite planet of Anarres. It is a society based on the principles of collective anarchism. People’s needs are looked after by the whole society but there is no obligation to stay in one job for any length of time. However, this means that sometimes people put society’s needs before their own. Shevek begins to pursue a theory about time that could potentially lead to instantaneous interstellar communication. However, in order to do this, he needs to go to the planet his ancestors fled - a very Earth-like Urras. As he struggles to not become the tool of competing ideologies on Urras and comes to grips with the idea, perhaps, there is no such thing as a utopia.

A lot of literary criticism is focused on Le Guin’s worldbuilding, and rightfully so. The world of Anarres is masterful and complete. It is strange without being unfamiliar. What might seem like information dumps are built into the story, anecdotes building to a larger purpose. While Anarres’s culture is self-sufficient it is closed off and ossified. Urras, in contrast, is viciously capitalistic and venal. And yet, Shevek knows he cannot finish his research without them as they have contact with the rest of the galaxy. This idea of societal interdependence is one that the reader is left with. However, that does not mean collectivism is worse than capitalism. In many ways, Le Guin shows Anarres to be superior to Urras. People come together to solve problems, there’s a high degree of social mobility and freedom, and is a high degree of culture. Yet, groupthink closes off this society to new ideas. The stultification prevents Shevek from accomplishing his scientific breakthrough, making not only his world but all the worlds in the galaxy poorer.

Le Guin is one of my top three authors. Her no-nonsense style disguised the poetry she was capable of and the elegance of the worlds she created. A lifelong fascination with the meaning of words meant that her dialogue could be extremely sneaky about getting her point across. As noted by Deirdre Burton, "Shevek's daughter, upon meeting him for the first time, tells him, 'You can share the handkerchief I use’ rather than 'You may borrow my handkerchief', thus conveying the idea that the handkerchief is not owned by the girl, but is merely used by her.” It’s the little things like this that draw me into her worlds and appreciate her genius and provide inspiration to my own writing.

[theandroidk]

I never thought my anarchist friend and my communist friend would agree on anything...

But apparently they both think the Brexit is a good thing. These are troubling times friends.

[ilbabou]

Anarchism... stands for liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from shackles and restraint of government. It stands for social order based on the free grouping of individuals.

True freedom requires sacrifice and pain. Most human beings only think they want freedom. The truth is they yearn for the bondage of social order, rigid laws, materialism. The only freedom man really wants is to be comfortable.