The daily behaviour of an anarchist

Something i told myself when accepting anarchism, was to not allow myself to feel inadequate from not knowing so much about politics, history, terminology and definitions. I have seen this before, a need to be all knowledgeable about something, as a way of establishing some authority on a subject or experience to instil a sense of power, even if over your own anxieties.

As a kid growing up in the 80’s and 90’s there was always some new crazy thing coming out and some new way to learn about it. A new magazine, a new technology, a new hobby and subsequent rabbit hole of knowledge gaining to be the voice on it. Don’t get me wrong, sharing knowledge is great, but using knowledge for a position or status is just shitty.

Not knowing stuff can feel difficult, i think this is mainly as we are taught to feel shit at not knowing. From early childhood, particularly in school, we are tested, punished, categorised and segregated based on our knowledge, all in the aim of turning into competitive capitalists, trained up for the workplace, which continues this tradition. It’s sick and as a result we have a sick society.

I have open on my phone, multiple pages linking to various places on the internet, as a way to be absorbed i an a world of new terms and understanding. I have multiple Wikipedia pages which i read and reread: Murray Bookchin, Social Anarchism, Withering away of the state, Socialism, Communism, Anarcho-syndicalism, Workers self-management, Proletariat, and these pages open other pages and they open more still.

It’s super important we educate ourselves, as this rarely happened in school, at least it didn’t when i went. I don’t have kids and for sure there are better schools out there, but the fact we still live in a capitalist, hierarchical society, one that is seeing more and more examples of this failing, for kinda obvious reasons, nobody really wants to work all day and spend that money each evening and weekends, or save that money and spend it on a house.

When i think of what schools have done for me, compared to how much they damaged me, and to understand we send our kids to these places, is kind if crazy when you think about it, especially now with so many other ways to educate ourselves.

Today i learned I understood a word wrongly. This often happens. My Dad used to pronounce words wrong and use them incorrectly so often they become his sayings. The word i learned correctly, i hope, is tradition.

I knew what tradition felt like, very similar to the feeling of nostalgia, a nausea and foggy oppression. I also knew but probably would have struggled to articulate as is often seems the case when asking what s word means, is the passing of knowledge from generation to generation. What i wrongly assumed was something i do each Christmas, like revisiting The Waltons movie and Charlie Browns Christmas, is tradition, it’s not, it’s annual reflection. This is good, as I’d hate to think i had a tradition in me that I didn’t want to question and most likely destroy.

Tradition: the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on in this way

I have been thinking about property a fair bit over the years. I think this firstly came to my mind through minimalistic living, although at that point very much was conflicted by what seemed ultimately a style and prestige around how to live, versus a functional living that may or may not require more or less stuff.

I remember a university friend visiting our studio, and being surprised at how much stuff we had, assuming we would live in some minimal white room.

I find having loads of stuff can be super anxiety inducing. I feel if it’s not important, or being used it has to go. I have a history of throwing things away. I don’t like doing it, but the feeling of getting it out of the way is a very powerful one. My partner would explain we might need it, or at least we should give it to a charity shop. I agreed, I often give stuff away if I think someone will use it. I do find it a bit of a piss take though that charity shops take free stuff and make money off it. Still, we made up a few bags and boxes to give to charity. They stayed in the cupboard for a very, very long time. I think throwing it away feels so good and also so bad, that it’s sort of like a micro punishment to ensure what I do get is important.

Another moment around property was the way we talk about where we live, or what we need to do to be able to live somewhere. Phrases like getting on the property ladder or owning property versus having a home, or somewhere to live, strike a scary contrast and look into what we have been force taught and have a hard time unlearning, that makes up so much of peoples intent in the world. Spending a lifetime working to own a thing, all the while under the illusion you already own it. I bought my first house…no you just bought yourself into a massive commitment to pay off a debt for the rest of your life with a chance you might live to be old enough to say you own it and that be true. What a nice feeling, being able to buy the chance to have a home. Crazy isn’t it. How about this crazy phrase affordable homes.

One of the more recent thoughts around property is since I was forced to marry for Visa reasons. I love my wife, I wish to spend as long together as this is good. I use this term often, but it really troubles me… my wife, like she is mine. My partner is better, riding of the system of contractual and legal marriage, but also the my part is an issue. It’s a bad habit and I have yet to shake it. Although I think I have learned a way to do just that. My partner has a name, so I shall say this is Lucia.

Yesterday I popped out quickly to pick up some food. I’d normally take my phone but as it’s such a short trip, I didn’t. The diner was really busy, and they were later than expected, not long, but I waited 10-15 minutes in total. However, during that time Lucia decided to pop out and find me. She did this not because she is my property, not because she is obliged to my contractual, religious law, but because she cares, and as she said, she was hungry.

I was reminded of a friend of my Dad speaking to him…hmm there it is again, my Dad, but I’ll came back to this. His friend was worried his wife was going to leave him and he didn’t know what he could do to make her stay. My Dad said, in his typical way of using either cars or birds, that he can’t keep a bird locked in a cage, and that he needed to open the cage door and if she wants to fly, then she will. It’s quite profound for my Dad and I wonder if he could have found that before going through a divorce, having tried everything he felt he could, but loosing the love of his life, you know, until he loved another. Anyway, the friend came back and was angry towards my Dad, saying he followed his advice, open the cage, and his wife has left him immediately. I guess she didn’t want to stay after all.

This story has always stuck with me. It’s full of grammatical and actual entitlement. It speaks about investment in a person for just rewards…whatever that is. It highlights transformation through experience, the married man, to the divorced broken heart, to the lover once again. It also shows people trying to understand behaviour, and experiencing the systems of understanding falling away, contradicting themselves, and ultimately breaking and failing for them. People are left trouble, lost, and needing to learn and share that learning to others. The battle of how we should live versus simply living.

So what about my Dad? How should I say this, how should I think about it?  I have alway have the belief of family, at least the family I was part of, that we are people and we share some connections with each other and some share more than others. The idea of feeling obliged to do something because they are family, or that a parent knows best, always really pissed me off. They don’t. They are just people who can be shit at stuff as well. They might have more experience in trying to inact a role than others, but that doesn’t automatically mean they are in charge or know what is best for their property. Any child can remember what it felt like for a parent saying you will do as I tell you! F**k off with your orders. You are not mine no more than I am yours. We can be father and son, we share some history, we even share the present in my mind, but we are who we want to be. We decide the direction.

The removal of property, in as many ways as possible, I believe, fundamentally changes our relationship to the world the relationship of the world to us, and how we behave in it.

I had a good chat on a walk this morning with a good mate about ACAB and the potential responses from people who either are police or might know someone who is in the police.

A person sees it on your t-shirt and says “my mates a policeman, does that him a bastard?”…”i think so yes”.

We went back and forth, considering how this potentially provokes hostility.

I felt when we imagined a world without the police, and imagined the protest from people, quite capable of living safely, when suddenly told they are to be ordered and controlled, when suddenly aware of the police is being introduced. I can imagine the street protests, and the potentially aggressive signs against such control, and in that moment we would find this totally appropriate, acceptable even. We would clearly see where the hostility is from and how we need to protect our freedom.

Let’s imagine that freedom has already been taken, that we have lost the battle and what comes as a consequence of that loss. The subtle, manipulative fear mongering, propaganda and control of humans.

I’m closer to getting an ACAB t-shirt.

Sometimes my anxiety reaches a level where I feel I can barely move. I obviously do, I move, I fight, but I just want to curl up and recover.

It’s normally always the same shit that triggers it, feeling forced to be employed, earn money, to live a certain way in this world ever shaped by power hungry assholes. It’s either direct, or the anxiety of others indirectly attacking as lost from little choice, little alternative.

I think of those immediately who have it worse, way worse, and there are looooads of us, and appreciate that I have to try and do something to change this, even if for just a small bunch of us. I believe that if we can influence the lives of each other in small ways, in the way we act, in what we stand for, in how we try to understand and how we support, then we can shape our immediate world, and that starts to change the way the world works.

I can feel as I write this post I am mid fight, mid anger.

Today I felt attacked through something that caught me off guard. It’s clear then I have my guard up all the time. Of course I do, as I know deep inside what I believe, I’ve known for as long as I can remember, and I feel I have to guard that, as people will attack, they always do.

After the attack has gone, I dip low, for moment, I feel backed up against a wall. I want to slide to the ground and give up, and at that point I find something in me that just won’t allow it. I just will not stand for it. I’m not f**king accepting this bullshit!

Change is scary. After a long time feeling like I am on loan to someone else, I’m taking myself back!

As I begin to look at myself, in those moments in the tug of war for myself, I look down at myself in my arms and I look f**ked! What has happened to me since I was gone? I need to rebuild, to understand, to work hard…again. It’s always so much f**king work. It get’s really, really tiring. I feel so exhausted inside sometimes. I think I have got really, really good at hiding stuff, even from myself. But I am ripping off the protection cover, and the whole thing is cracked to shit.

Being judged, being called a liar, being forced, being lectured, being misunderstood, being accused, being poorly defined, not being trusted, these all really f**king annoy me. I get it, people have their own shit, and it’s easy to just take it out on someone else than deal with your own shit. People can be d**ks. Still, I practice empathising in those moments. It’s hard. It takes work and I don’t always have the energy for their shit.

I’ve noticed since accepting anarchism, accepting that is what I am… it was accepting it after all, as it wasn’t like I thought yeah great, lets get into something that’s going to potentially cause me another f**k load of hassle…so, since accepting anarchism, I struggle to see how to operate in the world. It’s very disorientating. I look for support structures, places, spaces, words, thoughts, ideas, examples, guidance, the experience of others. I am beginning to understand why Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed was recommended to me, thank you for that. It’s not surprising how much this is referenced in Scott Branson’s Practical Anarchism. To practice anarchism in a world that is the enemy to this practice, is hard, very hard. We need more books like this and similar ways to practice.

I’m reminded of the film Event Horizon. It’s a kinda shit, but crew members start going “mad” after learning something the ship has showed them. Sounds like propaganda doesn’t it.

How to know you’re in it? While there is a profit motif, we are always in it.

I was shown this video a few days ago and I keep thinking about it. It’s of a bird trying to eat a caterpillar. Presumably it still thinks like it did when fed by the parent bird, in that food just falls into its mouth. It chases round this caterpillar, expecting it to just fall in. It obviously doesn’t.

I thought about how we have been trained from school, and even earlier in many cases, to think and act a certain way. A propaganda forcing us into a society that revolves around capitalism, around competition, around fear, around ownership. Just like the bird, unable to grasp how it could be different.

I spoke to someone I did some web work for years back, and this time our worlds met differently. We talked about COVID a little, but mainly we spoke about kids and then eventually adults, wrapped up in their adult school uniforms, the suits. She kept saying “It’s a load of bollocks”, and I couldn’t agree more. I was surprised to hear it honestly, I was surprised that today I was to meet someone who would have just as much energy and need to say how fucking shit this system is. It felt good.

I wonder what I might have done before, and the difference between having the thought, and saying it loud. Just the simple act of saying it, and stating a view, it’s amazing how much that shapes the world you are in.

When we picture something that seems so far removed from where we are now, we picture something seemingly so radical, to happen in the streets through protest, with fire, flags waving and violence, and sure, maybe there needs to be some of that, I mean what do you do when the police force attack people we opposing views? Assholes.

I wonder how much impact there can be through simple daily actions, in our behaviour, in our words, so we can more easily understand the shift through actions, through our own experiences, and those be more easily practiced in a variety of environments.

I’m sure that bird isn’t still walking around waiting for food to jump in its mouth, so why the fuck are we still walking around expecting this shit to change if we don’t change.

This morning i got a response from Freedom who have kindly offered to support an AA session if i should want to. Amazing! That’s one email, and people willing to support and help find a way to make something happen.

This reminds me again of general society’s constant drive and concern around efficiency, something coming right out of profit driven activities.

Today is a friends birthday so we are travelling to spend time together. I feel kinda anxious as isn’t Monday a work day? Aren’t we supposed to only do social activities weekends and evenings. When we think about this simple idea, it’s so crazy to think that the majority of our life functions like this. We know deep down inside this is very backwards. We can try to argue it, to justify it, but the moment we take away payment for our time, i.e. going to work for free, we’d immediately switch to something we want to do.

I travel often with a beanie, it has an anarchist pin on it. I wonder what people think when they see it. I imagine being stopped by someone, someone curious, asking questions, needing some support. I imagine another anarchist reaching out, a friendship being made. A common struggle bringing people together.

I’m anxious about doing this AA session, but then i think about someone like me, who this might be exactly what they need or might inspire them to investigate or share some experiences. I think of what a month later would feel like, a year later, and that excites me and drives me to do it anyway.

I become the anarchist who does something about it. It’s simple, it’s in the actions. It’s always in the actions.

Days are filled with trying to understand and navigate the mess on the world we are living on, and particularly the bullshit system that is imposed upon me.

As an anarchist, trying to talk about this stuff with others is hard. People just want to get on with their own shit, generally convincing themselves it’s not actually that bad, it could be worse, and in any case, what are you going to do anyway?

Emotions are screaming, the brain is ignited and the fire is hot.

I’m wondering if there is a need for an Anarchist Anonymous session of sorts? I’m not sure if the anonymous would mean exactly the same as it does in Alcohol Anonymous, although there does seems there is some irony in there somewhere, but simply being able to share experiences, struggles, perspectives, learnings, and to feel supported, encouraged, connected and ultimately driven and enabled to act, all seems pretty huge.

Each day I try to instil more and more anarchistic behaviour, now finally embracing what I have always felt and believed, a belief I denied myself for years of my life, for the very same reasons I just mentioned, what are you going to do about it anyway? Well, there is a lot as it turns out.

It’s pretty crazy how everything changes when you say you’re an anarchist. People’s reactions are different. I’ve noticed this before when I first started wearing glasses. People looked at me differently, interacted with me differently. People I met after presumed I always wore them. I am a glasses wearing person. Now I am an anarchist.

I’m experiencing more support than before, maybe because I am more able to operate after so long living beneath my own sense of a freedom that is allowed. I also get more hostility from people now too. I can be just recommending a book, and I get attacked, or suggesting letting people decide and the controllers don’t like it, they think they do, but they don’t.

It’s always in the actions. The actions speak a better truth. I guess this polarisation of support and attack, is the cost of being yourself, some people simply don’t like it. They don’t want that to exist in their world and they think their world extends to every part of where they look and interact with it.

A friend said something recently about peoples sense of entitlement to control your view everywhere they go, especially on the internet, he suggested “I think you’ve accidentally stumbled into the wrong part of the internet mate, perhaps you should fuck off”. I like this. It’s to the point. It reminds me of Mutual Aid food banks, and how if someone was to keep taking more than they donate, they can be simply asked to change their behaviour or leave. Take your entitlement elsewhere mate.

Of course, this is often the challenge with many things around anarchism, “what if everyone…” so, it’s not everyone, when has it ever been everyone. In fact the only people instilling this notion of everyone is the people upholding the system we already have, and that still isn’t everyone, it’s them and everyone else.

We have a tendency and habit to systematise everything under this baggage of efficiency, one taught and practiced with capitalism in mind for sure. We probably don’t always realise it, but it’s there. Maybe some stuff isn’t meant to scale, you ever think about that?

I find some people have a hard time knowing what they would do if they didn’t need to work for money. The lottery winnings dream often met first with what they can buy, who they can help out of this shit we live in, and then the dream gets cloudy for many. After spending money, maybe getting out of the shit, it’s hard to imagine a different life, as we are so used to practicing the shit we are in. We need to start practice it differently, in everything we can.

You can take your designed system, a system to control people under some illusion of safety, and you can shove it up your arse.

What’s the problem with being free? What’s the problem really?

https://beacon1.bandcamp.com/track/problem