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?