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Post by wombat on Apr 8, 2015 3:35:00 GMT -5
I just listened to FRR77 and am responding to grounding in relation to egoism. First, there is the identification of anarchist, which starts as a sort of grounding. As has been seen historically, egoists of the pro-market persuasion have existed. Stirner is not a new author, nor is Nietzsche and we've seen their ideas adopted a great deal in the past in many variety of experiments.
However, this railing against reification is hardly a part of these types of egoism. Perhaps strict contemporary Stirner readers have taken this mantle up, but most readings of egoists a century ago I've read hardly meet this rather strong criticism. Getting rid of false ideas, false conceptions, certainly. But even in this episode, they railed against Goldman, who identified as influenced by individualists and egoists while also taking up the mantle of communism. So Bellamy, correctly does something that many earlier egoists weren't really doing. I do know of a handful of egoist/nihilists from that era were swinging rather strongly and they were republished from obscurity in recent times in books like "Enemies of Society" and "Disruptive Elements" IIRC.
Reading Jason Adams, Lawrence Jarach and Wolfi Landsteicher, all hold views I also hold some affinity to. They would agree with your striking at reification. Jarach went as far as to write a couple essays taking on anti-primitivist authors and demand a critically thinking anarcho-primitivism. Jarach probably could be seen in the same boat as Bob Black, not an AP, but in favor of it. However Wolfi Landstreicher is the only author which took strong issue with rewilding, primitivism, the definitions of domestication, wildness and so on. Wolfi Landstreicher is also the only author which mocked anarcho-primitivist views IIRC. I would think that Bellamy could see why it is easy to confuse Wolfi Landstreicher as the way egoists think given that he wrote that Egoist Encyclopedia and many other thoughts in regards to egoism. However, I think we all can all see that Wolfi's criticisms hold little water and were more positional, defending his semantic alteration attempts to create negative definitions for anarchist primitivist concepts.
I can feel the frustrations on grounding. Those that want to just decide things individually are doing something normal. What they do doesn't define what they are. Anti-civ does give this feeling of unlimited choice and it makes sense for egoists to be attracted to this as an identification before anarcho-primitivist. But if egoists are as honest about reification as is suggested, this unlimited choice is a reification. Agriculture is temporary and limiting, which Bellamy is aware of. There are methods to practice permaculture or feralculture which seem rather sound. The actual truth could be far more limited than is perceived, especially given the diversity of habitats people may be found in. I'd have to learn much here though before I could speak more strongly about it.
So in a way, we are all anarcho-primitivists in much the same way that everyone is an egoist (from an egoist's perspective). The ones that self identify as anarcho-primitivists are the ones that are aware of our domestication and the limitations of immediate return, so we look at the world and what has domesticated us and what that domestication has created. We look for others like us and try to figure out how we can change our personal situation and perhaps consider a way to rebel and build community at the same time? At least, that is how I'm seeing things. |
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Post by KT on Apr 8, 2015 9:33:52 GMT -5
I was really frustrated listening to the show last night. As I've said before, I'm really interested in seeing where this debate with Bellamy goes for BAGR 2.
But I feel like this just keeps getting pulled back into this philosophical void. Take Bellamy's pure empiricism or A!'s "answers are the enemy" or Wolfi's essentialist egoism; I get that theoretically any of them can be anti-civilization, but if it's just this individualist pursuit, what's the purpose? What do they really have to offer? How is "this is why I don't like civilization based on my egoist. empirical subjectivist position" relevant to anyone else? In their own terms there is limitation on the impact of their own thought and actions, but that's not a problem when the goal is based in individual desire/response.
To put it bluntly: what does this have to offer anyone else? My position, as a green anarchist and anarcho-primitivist is simple: civilization is destroying the earth, we weren't meant to live this way, it makes us miserable and lead lives obscured by toxic distraction that is physically, psychologically and spiritually crippling. Civilization is innately wrong, should not exist, and should be actively refused and resisted. The earth, wildness and its inhabitants have innate value that must be protected.
You can do something with that. And not just sit around talking shit to other anarchists or try to find yourself.
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Post by Bellamy Fitzpatrick on Apr 9, 2015 20:18:37 GMT -5
Hey Kevin, wombat, and others,
First post, whooo! I'm actually working on the piece now. Like I said on the show, I think it will become, maybe already has become, monotonous to keep having this back and forth with JZ, the anonymous BAGR author, Art, and others without putting anything out in writing. It actually has started to feel like a bad faith way for me to argue since I am able to just prattle on on the show without anyone responding - I'd rather put it in a long-form written medium so it can be out there in a thorough and provisionally conclusive way.
I somewhat pessimistically suspect it may be received similarly to the way my statements on the show are received: people who already more or less agree with me will feel more validated in their analysis while people who already disagree with me will have a written record of my stupidity - but I do hope I am wrong, and Kevin and I instead provoke new discussion.
I agree to some extent with wombat's statements above. I think my analysis ends up as de facto primitivism; in that sense, "you can do something with [it]". The crucial difference, to me, is that it leads there without metaphysical presuppositions, reifications, dogmatic assertions of objective value, and other delusions that leave one vulnerable to switching from one cause or spiritual or religious belief to another.
Unfortunately, Kevin, I'm already at 2000 words and am only maybe a third of the way done - whoops.
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Post by wombat on Apr 10, 2015 3:11:26 GMT -5
First, glad that you started posting Bellamy. I enjoy your show.
On being an anarcho-primitivist by default, I think this is kind of the point, at least for me. From what I've heard and read, over and over, both the egoists and the anarcho-primitivists, feel the other wants a purity while denying their own approach is pure. This was even said on your show by people like Kevin Tucker and Kathan Zerzan in regards to anarcho-primitivism..by Rydra and yourself in regards to egoism. Both seem to have proponents with a criticism of ideology and those same proponents typically don't feel they have an ideology.
I feel the criticism of ideology goes no where as a pejorative. To me, the criticism of ideology is something one benefits from examining and considering for how one approaches their own views. When applied as a criticism, it is typically countered or brushed aside. So not only will those accused of ideology reject the criticism, it also holds very little strength when looking for substantive differences, when often glaring and far stronger criticisms may be laid.
On dogmatic (sic) assertions of objective value, this is where I also strongly disagree with Kevin. I prefer the viewpoint of merelogical nihilism and do not trust my perception, but I do feel a great connection to reality, one that I feel beyond my senses and I am prone to premonitions. Maybe I just have a brain injury or the premonitions are a projection of my great ennui, I do not know, but I take a step forward, asserting with what I can only call faith and say we are all the same thing and we will never be less than the hum of the universe, which may or may not be an extremely significant thing. But ultimately, what I think about these things matters little. We are on planet Earth and are forged from the same fires as everything else that surrounds us.
How the Earth interacts with the solar system, the Milky Way, the universe and anything beyond falls within a context of such an extreme complexity that we have no hope in understanding our own planet and our relationship to it through the scientific method, quantum physics or any other human attempt at grasping its awesomeness. Feeling an empathy for the planet is self-love as we are the planet. Yet the planet will not operate out of any human value system. Our theories to truly understand it at times sound like we are almost done by how certain they are expressed, to only then 20 years later be completely overturned for a brand new consensus of understanding. Of course, human invention could prove me wrong here, but I doubt it.
However, I believe this may fall within the realm of metaphysical presuppositions? I would be curious what kind of result this would cause on me. It seems you suggest a correlation between metaphysical presuppositions and vulnerability to switching causes. Is this because logic is supreme beyond context? I feel this correlation is weak, perhaps the opposite claim would be more true? A vulnerability to switching causes is often attributed to a lack of conviction, but then there are environmental factors to consider. Have you examined your contemporaries? Bob Black was a left communist. Wolfi Landstreicher was a Feral Faun. Lawrence Jarach was an activist. I'd say this accusation is rather weak as people change all the time and nothing can stop this from occurring.
As for reifications, this is a good charge on lazy thinking. Egoism doesn't think or do anything. Egoists in general have no commonality to claim any way egoists think. Just the same, anarcho-primitivism doesn't think or do anything, but anarcho-primitivists do have some shared commonality and some claims can be made. Anarcho-primitivists tend to have a critical view of rewilding, emphasizing an analysis of civilization with the conclusion that civilization needs to be gotten rid of. Anarcho-primitivist analysis of civilization tends to put great detail into agriculture, patriarchy, mass society, industrialism, technology and science. John Zerzan also makes references to a dominant order which benefits from ensuring the interests of society, which seems mentioned beyond him, but with less frequency iirc.
This above commonality also can spring shared practices. In the FRR interview with Kathan Zerzan, I believe you guys asked her what is the praxis of anarcho-primitivism. Kevin Tucker makes mention of primal war and gives some detail on what this could mean. For me, I'm very excited about Seaweed's insurrectionary subsistence approach and I have my own ideas, which hopefully I can create discussion around and perhaps can find ways to compliment other ideas. The permanent subsistence zone is a good example of something that may make sense within the context of these new feralculture land node projects. I'm also practicing currently with a small group by learning primitive skills and having discussions. |
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Post by Bellamy Fitzpatrick on Apr 10, 2015 18:34:22 GMT -5
Thanks for replying, wombat - several ideas in your message resonated with me. Some I can't fully respond to, as I'm still processing, but:
".by Rydra and yourself in regards to egoism."
For the record, I don't think Rydra would call himself an egoist. I think he would eschew any label besides "anti-civilization anarchist".
Whoops, I see how I misused "dogmatic".
"I prefer the viewpoint of merelogical nihilism and do not trust my perception[...]"
Hm, I was unfamiliar with that position until just now, and I only read the Wikipedia gloss. So, it seems to resonate with my interest in dissolving the subject/object dichotomy...but how do you reconcile that with consciousness? While I agree with the kind of inseparability of parts and wholes that this idea is driving at, there is still a "wombat" in the sense that there is a vantage point of perception, yes?
"Feeling an empathy for the planet is self-love as we are the planet. Yet the planet will not operate out of any human value system."
I agree wholeheartedly with the first sentence. I believe we can dissolve the selfish/selfless dichotomy by erasing our narcissism and recognizing that what harms our community (understood as operating different levels of scale: friend group, ecosystem, biosphere, and so forth) harms each of us individually. But the second sentence seems borderline if not actually contradictory - if we are the planet, as you say, then our values are a particularized manifestation of the planet's values, no?
"However, I believe this may fall within the realm of metaphysical presuppositions? I would be curious what kind of result this would cause on me."
I hope to address this in my piece. It may be that I will be accused of seeking some mythical philosophical purity, and maybe the accusations will be true. For now, though, as I work through these ideas in the process of writing, they seem more than merely intellectually important.
"For me, I'm very excited about Seaweed's insurrectionary subsistence approach and I have my own ideas, which hopefully I can create discussion around and perhaps can find ways to compliment [sic] other ideas."
Yes, I am going to be visiting Seaweed in about two months and will be interviewing them for FRR on insurrectionary subsistence. If you don't mind my asking, where are you located?
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Post by wombat on Apr 11, 2015 3:25:56 GMT -5
Thank you for the reply, I'll reply more later. Just to be quick, I'm located in Columbus, Ohio. I'll respond in detail to the rest when I have the time.
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e
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Post by e on Apr 11, 2015 13:23:52 GMT -5
I'm not sure how concepts of 'purity' or 'egoist thinks they're not being ideological but are really operating through another ideology' apply here. Why? What's being offered in destroying the Self/Other split is an undermining of anthropocentric myths, beliefs, narratives. Bellamy, in my mind you hit the nail on the head in a recent episode when talking about color and language as schema. The problem I see encountered a lot when speaking in egoistic, non-dual, or indigenous ways is they often seem to accidentally provoke straw man attacks from people only accustomed to a worldview seen through the schema of Subject-Verb-Object linguistic orientation. Any of us risks (butchering the words of Nietzsche) defining ourselves based on the enemy's terms. Since the SVO schema assumes a frame of fixed space in order to operate, the spatial dynamics of the complex relations we're embedded in are ignored, forgotten. If our linguistic orientation limits our view/experiencing of the world, where does intuition come in? Recall the tsunami that hit Thailand in 2004(?). Tourists took footage of the wave crashing into resorts, while days earlier indigenous on nearby islands took signals from birds to venture inland. How irrational of them! Yet we with our beach front resorts and superior worldview (of SVO-enables human rational control over the earth) didn't SEE it coming, in more ways than one. I have seen different anarchists than Free Radical Radio, Aragorn!, or @news poster 'emile' challenge human linguistic orientation. Seaweed and, more recently, Tom Nomad comes to mind (albeit from a different set of terms re:policing). Unlike emile, at this point i'm very interested in working with others to not just point out the problems of and SVO/dualist/anthrocentric/western/scientific/whatever-you-call-it worldview, but begin undermining spooks/human rational control of the earth with new narratives. In other words not to constantly say "hey everyone look at this imaginary boundary in our heads and see how not real it is" or "look at how this self/other split isn't real" and just write without having to focus on referencing back to abstractions like the self/other split as if they were ever real, and not just aspects of a narrative of the dominant belief system (which believes in a material logistics of force through space). If that was too confusing, here's this: youtube.com/watch?v=r8VNSrl6yck |
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Post by landb4time on Apr 11, 2015 21:10:00 GMT -5
I'd be interested in a discussion between Bellamy and KT related to spirit, seems like that may be a topic that could draw out basic differences between Kt's embodied knowledge and Bellamy's conceptual approach. I don't know, maybe it has already been discussed on FRR or elsewhere.
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Post by northernfrostbite on Apr 12, 2015 8:47:12 GMT -5
Egoism, in it's various shades, places the 'material' in either the 'individual' or 'desire'. Yet these notions are hugely influenced by human social relations and their accordant relations with nature. Grounding happens when we develop AP communities wherein the 'material' is not located through some mastubatory process of the mind, but through through the process of participating directly in wildness. You can't philosophise yourself out of the Self/Other split; you must live it by getting outside and interacting.
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Post by KT on Apr 12, 2015 9:11:02 GMT -5
"I'm actually working on the piece now. Like I said on the show, I think it will become, maybe already has become, monotonous to keep having this back and forth with JZ, the anonymous BAGR author, Art, and others without putting anything out in writing."
Absolutely. It's hard to have a good faith discussion about any of this when all it's been so far is responses and even a revolving response. Last week you said you were in fact a die hard radical subjective empiricist. I don't know if that's a claim you've stood behind before, but you seemed to have a gut reaction to reject that association earlier. So I'm not going to continue the back and forth if there's an allusion to something that I'm missing that so far simply does not yet exist.
But the continued reference to "straw man" is really infuriating because we're responding to actual claims, most of them made by Wolfi who has and will continue to be the poster boy for anarchist egoists. And we've been responding to these really ridiculous claims about being ideologues to which we've responded, if this is ideology, then what the fuck is your egoism? Wolfi only ever threw out "ideology" as a way to dismiss AP and I see Bellamy tracing those same steps, but doing so defensively rather than as a clear assertion.
I've openly stated before that if being a biocentrist makes me an ideology, then fuck it, I'm an ideologue. I'll take these battles on and I don't think JZ or myself, or Art or the other editors of BAGR as well, have any delusions about the critiques of ideology, but the crux of our arguments aren't DOA on whether another anarchist has something to say about it.
And I know we're really going to get into this point in the debate, Bellamy, but I feel like you're trying to use our own concepts against us. John introduced reification into anarchist lingo. Dissolution of the self/other dichotomy, for fuck's sake, my journal is called Species Traitor: meaning that "species" is an arbitrary delineation meant to reify the human experience as disconnected. Your language surrounding the dissolution of the self is still only sheltered into all other conventional and philosophical notions of the self: we are only motivated to care about the consequences of ecocide in so far as it relates to ourselves. I wholeheartedly oppose that presupposition and have attacked it long before any of this round of this discussion took place.
Thinking egoism is the path to dissolution of the self, is, in my eyes, the exact same argument I started getting in with "small c communists" and insurrectionalists (all egoists or heavily influenced by egoism, btw) over a decade ago where, after much coaxing of their "anything can happen" scenarios, the end point was the same: in that moment of insurrection the proletariat will recognize their role as the proletarian, overthrow the bourgeoisie and dissolve class society.
You're presenting the ego as the path to enlightenment through the eventual dissolution of the self. But the entire reason that AP chimed reification in was to show how civilization needed the self/other split in order to subject and dominate. As I point out in "Egocide", the creation of the self is the starting point for domestication and, as landb4time alludes, the spirit is the path to its immediate dissolution. It's a worldview. We don't need a tool to rid ourselves of it, we just need to open up our eyes and target the "Uniqueness" that Stirner repackaged, but that the domesticators have always sold us.
If there's a middle ground here, it's in reconciling that our frameworks are radically different and, at base, mutually exclusive. So really the dogma needs to be deescalated ("Ideologue"), the lines need to be clearly delineated instead of unstated and then defended, and then maybe we can work from that point.
As far as word count, 6K words could be fine, we'll edit it and help refine it as well since, that would mean it would get really, really hefty in the issue. But bear in mind the way this can happen is that we sell enough copies of the first issue to print the second. So if you have an outlet, like a weekly radioshop perhaps, maybe counter some heavy frothing over two paragraphs with a bit more promotion of the project..
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Post by KT on Apr 12, 2015 9:45:30 GMT -5
Dude, I can't read about Merelogical Nihilism without hearing every word come out of Caterine Vauban's voice from I Heart Huckabees.
This is just my preliminary glance at it, but it seems to be saying there is no whole, only parts, whereas your (Wombat) take sounded more like the part maybe be uncertain, but the whole ("hum of the universe") is definite. Your take sounds closer to my own: reality is objective, experience is subjective, but we live on stolen land where day-to-day existence continues at the hands of blood soaked colonization and an on going domestication process that keeps us following along through individualistic promises of uniqueness and purpose while we continue to kill the earth and its wild inhabitants.
Egoism and other individualistic tendencies, to me, represent the fear of giving up your own control. That's like the last line of defense for the domesticated mind ("Give me Uniqueness or give me death"), but that's why the idea of accepting that we are a part of something that is literally written into our DNA sounds frightening. It probably looks like suicide. But I find the vastness of wildness to be liberating. In terms of praxis, when you're looking at a rewilding program (my application of the term, btw, not his) like Jon Young has come up with, the idea of exuding entropy is to get to the point where your presence in the wild is acknowledge in passing by the wild community and not as causing alarm and caution. To be wild is to walk amongst wildness. Experience comes from being able to exist outside yourself and then that door is open to you.
I think what egoists think they're bringing to the table about "The Nature" sounds like a challenge only if you don't realize that AP is as influenced by Paul Shepard and Lewis Mumford as any anthropologist. The idea of "wilderness" was so central to Shepard's thinking that he spurred and entire line of thinking on the matter which to me is summed up by recognizing the difference between wildness and wilderness. Max Oelschlaeger, author of the nearly 500 page, "The Idea of Wilderness", was the editor of "The Company of Others", a book of essays honoring Shepard. I think there's a disingenuous assumption that "spirituality" is a lazy way out of the self/other issue instead of being the product of challenging it.
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Post by Bellamy Fitzpatrick on Apr 12, 2015 14:42:20 GMT -5
Kevin,
I'll try to address everything you brought up in the first piece. Do you mind if I cite comments you've made on this forum and/or in our personal e-mail correspondence? I think you have brought up issues and grievances that don't appear in your printed work. You will of course have the opportunity to see them during editing and can decide then.
I understand the length is extreme and would be happy to edit, though I will probably want to put the complete text up on our website after the issue is circulated.
"maybe counter some heavy frothing over two paragraphs with a bit more promotion of the project.."
That wasn't very nice, Kevin - you know my frothing dissolves the first paragraph/second paragraph dichotomy. We will promote it.
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Post by KT on Apr 12, 2015 22:28:36 GMT -5
Kevin, I'll try to address everything you brought up in the first piece. Do you mind if I cite comments you've made on this forum and/or in our personal e-mail correspondence? I think you have brought up issues and grievances that don't appear in your printed work. You will of course have the opportunity to see them during editing and can decide then. I understand the length is extreme and would be happy to edit, though I will probably want to put the complete text up on our website after the issue is circulated. That's all fine as far as citations. I know you hang on to my every word. What are paragraphs but structured reifications of speech. A mere assemblage of the individual sounds of air pumped through the vocal cords of the whims and will of each individual, each piece delicate and unique on its own terms, but then brought together into the Voltronification of the symbiosis of individual syllables strung together in their own light, yet making a beautiful noise when aligned in cosmic unison by the sheer chance of place and possibility. A sonic canvas splattered with the strokes of insignificance to be cast down by the presuppositions of inherent and latent dogma smeared from the ears of the wayward individual who might catch a glimpse of their shimmering dance with the unknown only to feel as though that individual can chain those very words, those random sounds, together into the confines of their own empirical ecstasy. That the passerby might become the listener and chose to impose meaning onto those sounds as if the very experience of Uniqueness was not, in its own rite, purely subjective and ground it in their own worldly limitations. And here, before us, lies the moment at which the beautiful Anarchism, that chaos of unkempt moments and free radicals strolling into the abyss of the unknown against a backdrop of unending nothingness and reifications, is killed off as the listener attempts to ground the unbound beauty of vocalized sounds as if each one of them was known. As if each was familiar. As if each was a reification in and of itself; a mirror reflecting the hideous form of animal body and mind in the shadow of objectivity. As if each syllable had meaning unto itself, to be held accountable for its flared use. And the beauty of the Unique, the chaos of forms and random glory of the unknown are lost, wasted on the uninspired flesh of deaf, reified ears. As the listener, chained to their own world without the Self, a world unruled by the singular majesty of the empirical sensory intake, is already dead. |
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Post by wombat on Apr 13, 2015 11:20:22 GMT -5
Hmm. My language for my views on spirituality and perception need not be mereological nihilism I suppose. It is words to describe something that I typically have no words to describe as I typically don't share my spiritual views. However, I do feel Kevin and I are on the same wavelength from a prior face-to-face discussion. I do have to admit that I have not read a great deal on the subject and I find it more of a superficial agreement. I considered defending this view, but it would not be defending my actual views, just the language I have for the views, which is not very heavily influenced by merelogical nihilist thinkers, but rather through experience. For now I'm dropping my points on mereological nihilism. |
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art
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Post by art on Apr 13, 2015 16:34:10 GMT -5
Going from my own investigations of ITS / Reaccion Salvaje, it seems that they inhabit a sort of middle ground in this question. On the one hand, they cite Stirner, but not religiously, in stating that building community in any significant way is not possible: as if there is a sort of break in humanity and "communion" in one sense. I know that KT has stated on a number of occasions that he believes in human nature, and many egoists, etc. sort of play gotcha with that stating that "human nature", like "nature" itself is a reification. The only "nature" RS seems interested in viz. human beings has more to do with violence than with solidarity. The "individualist" aspect I suppose would sort of indicate this for me: there is no point in "building a movement" e.g. Kaczynski or "authentic community", etc. The primary thrust until recently has been the ability to lash out against artificiality and the "techno-industrial system" as individualists, though they seem to be softening their position very recently.
On the other hand, there is definitely a "reifying" of "Nature", which they say is the only Good, and Civilization is the only evil. The interesting thing about their ideas, in my opinion, is that their investigations involve the Chichimecas of northern Mexico, who had a long history of resistance even before the Spanish arrived. This was an ultra-ascetic and ultra-violent group of indigenous people. In other words, they do not stay in "egoism" but seek to expand into a real relation with Nature (and arguably, History), but this seems all but impossible for us as modern people. I don't know, here the various factions of RS seem to be stating different things. More recent talk can include "rewilding" but previous communiques sort of indicate that they were cool with the whole "suicide by cop" option, fighting civilization and ending up dead or in jail. This can only be done as individuals and not authentically reconstituted tribes or groups or whatever.
Not that I agree with it, but I find it a very compelling third position.
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