#self-governance

[amber-dreams]

Dionysos has nothing to do with addiction. Addiction is bondage, and Dionysos is all about freedom. Indulgence taken too far is slavery. And so Dionysos is there to help those who are battling against the invisible chains that keep them from living an authentic and self-governed life. Dionysos is the one who invented the custom of watering wine and who taught the ancients to drink temperately. As the god says in a comedy by the playwright Euboulos: Three kraters only do I propose for sensible men; one for health, the second for love and pleasure and the third for sleep. When this has been drunk up, wise guests depart for home. The fourth krater is mine no longer, but belongs to hubris; the fifth to shouting; the sixth to revel; the seventh to black eyes; the eighth to summonses; the ninth to bile; and the tenth to madness and people tossing furniture about. — H. Jeremiah Lewis

[its-a-crazy-world-aintit]

Something that has been on my mind lately: revolution.

What does that really look like?

How does that work right now?

I blame my current media consumption. Rewatching Andor. Rereading the hunger games and reading its subsequent prequels. Rewatching Anon. Binging Leverage and Person of Interest. Hunting down old copies of Uglies and Maximum Ride. Rewatching Equilibrium. Going through old research for cyberpunk and solarpunk worlds I built for me.

I feel a huge dissatisfaction with the world. While not as extreme as the dystopian worlds above, so many tiny injustices piling up. A 50 hour work week just to make ends meet. Pausing a movie to catch a detail but only seeing an ad. Watching multiple sources pull different details out of context to highlight their narrative. A new system at work to “maximize oversight”. Another company mining my data.

And unlike most of the dystopias, there is no one tyrannical entity behind it all. A single place to focus my fury. It’s not just an Evil Corporation out to make maximum profits. It’s not a Totalitarian Government determined to control a populous.

It is multiple corporations trying to make a profit. It is different factions of government all trying to get their agenda pushed. It is all these different companies and parties and individuals scrambling for power and control and safety.

I just want to run away from it all.

When I was younger, I wanted the power to change the world. I wanted to be the Chosen One; to defeat a Great Evil and stop all the wrongs. I sought out ways to increase my power and influence, sure I would use them for the good and safety of everyone.

Which is exactly how you become the Great Evil that must be defeated.

Now I just want enough money and enough power to be left alone. Enough influence to get the things I need.

I see no way to achieve this in the world I currently live in. I want the powers that be to leave me alone. Yet in their version of the world, that is a threat. Anyone or anything outside of their sphere of influence, outside of their grasp, is a danger to the systems that currently hold our world in place.

There’s no one place to concentrate the fight, to rebel against. So many people say pick one thing and fight that. But there are too many things I care deeply for. Too many injustices to push back against. But that just plays into their hands. They want me hopeless. They want me overwhelmed. They want me to be apathetic and inactive.

I just need to find a way forward.

I’ll let you know when I find it.

[volunteerismandanarchy]

I am choosing to become self-governing in a world that is becoming increasingly ungovernable.

[confrontthefamiliar]

Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause; He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws.

Richard Francis Burton

[thehumanfront]

Political freedom: what is it?

(Pictured: William Wallace (Mel Gibson) rallies Scottish troops during the First War of Scottish Independence with a famous rousing speech in Braveheart (1995): 'I am William Wallace, and I see a whole army of my countrymen, here, in defiance of Tyranny. You've come to fight as free men, and free men you are. What will you do without freedom? Will you fight? . . . [W]ould you be willing to trade all the days, from this day to that, for one chance—just one chance—to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives but they'll never take our freedom!')

It’s time for some political philosophy—specifically, to discuss political freedom.

In our personal lives freedom is associated with opportunity and control: a means to meet our own ends. Because of this we fight for it on a political scale. But what actually are people fighting for?

While political freedom is broadly seen as something we should be promoting, the idea that we sing from the same hymn sheet on it is an illusion: we sing completely different tunes! There are multiple ways of defining freedom that are dialectally diverse. For example, to name but a few examples of freedom’s role in ideology: liberalism is a doctrine which seeks to promote and enhance personal freedoms; anarchism represents a fight towards the abolition of overarching governmental powers; and capitalism, particularly laissez-faire economics, describes the distribution of goods and services through free-for-all private ownership.

There are freedoms, we can agree, worth protecting and fighting for. For instance, we usually concur that freedom of thought should be enshrined as a human right for as many people as possible to exercise. However, these are pragmatic agreements, not analytic convergences on what freedom actually is.

Traditionally, there are three opposed camps for this:

(i) Negative freedom: The absence and removal of obstacles which inhibit liberty. (Famous supporter: Thomas Hobbes. Example laws: A lack of border controls, physical barriers, or ‘unjust’ laws.)

(ii) Positive freedom: Self-governance and autonomy of choice. (Famous supporter: Immanuel Kant. Example laws: Self-determination of gender or sovereignty.)

(iii) Republicanism: Not being subjected to the arbitrary rule of somebody or something else. (Famous supporter: Machiavelli. Example laws: Rules for preventing powerful and wealthy individuals from putting out influential media which favours their private agenda.)

Philosophers continue to disagree (naturally). Our own notions tend to be fuzzy and incoherent and based on individual ideology. We sum up the parts we each favour, stirring up endless debate about which freedoms take precedent. [eye-roll]

[robertogreco]

How This Town Got Rid of Crime:

This Mexican town kicked out the government and returned to its indigenous roots. Now they're practically crime-free – and determined to keep it that way by banning all political parties and elections.

[the-funtime-autocrat]

In the wake of the Watts Riots and the assassination of Malcolm X, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale decided to get their Second Amendment on and start an inner city militia for black people living under the jackboot of the notoriously corrupt Oakland PD. Contrary to popular mythology, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense actually worked pretty damn well until the feds started to fuck with it. Not only did they manage to protect they're streets from the gangsters in blue with bitchin leather-clad patrols armed with walky-talkies and law books as well as rifles and shotguns, but they started up a wide array of decentralized social services and "survival programs" that empowered disaffected youth and fought crime at its roots in the garden of urban despair. In Chicago, young Panthers like the late Fred Hampton even went so far as to convert well known street gangs to radical organizations that serviced their communities rather than preying upon them. I think we need to bring these kind of experiments in community self-defense back and make them even more radical. I honestly believe that if allowed to flourish rather than being sabotaged by J. Edgar Hoover's Cointelpro, the Black Panthers would have likely developed into something akin to the more popular militias active now in the Middle East, who not only provide an alternative to centralized law enforcement but an alternative to the centralized state itself. The safest working class neighborhoods for minorities to live in in the Middle East are the ones governed by groups like Hezbollah and the Sadrists.

Comrade Hermit, “Silence of the Swine” (June 21st 2020).

[jrich103]

The true sign of royalty is the ability to govern the self.