Comments | theoldanarchist: thoughts on the state and mass murder

theoldanarchist

thoughts on the state and mass murder

Apr 20, 2007 11:30

from LRC:

The state is the embodiment of organized aggression. It is, after all, the legal institution that monopolizes the right to commit theft (taxation), kidnapping (mandatory attendance laws), slavery (conscription), and mass murder (war). It imprisons millions, loots trillions and slaughters civilians as a matter of course. Its powers cannot ( Read more... )

decency, christianity, conservatism, death, mass murder, anarchism, the state, crankiness

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Nothing wrong with having fun, per se... theoldanarchist April 21 2007, 15:55:09 UTC

I think most of these kids are still stuck in the spirit of just having fun rather than spreading a message of spontaneous acts of hope for mass creativity.

The problem is the kind of reactionary-oppositional thinking whereby those occupying the outside of society define everything as the opposite of whatever those on the inside are saying. All this does is reaffirm those false dichotomies. So, "having fun," as it were, always means any kind of activity that burns off energy and has nothing to show for it afterward. This is fine, and is even necessary (read Bataille), but real creative play is necessary too. Fourier, of course, argued that in Harmony all work would actually be play. We have to overcome the false dichotomy between the two, and overcome the childish thinking that only reifies everything our parents ever said, reverses it and says little more than "What is good is bad; and what is bad is good."

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Re: Nothing wrong with having fun, per se... theoldanarchist April 21 2007, 22:31:46 UTC

Bataille is a mixed bag. One of the Chicago Surrealists once commented, in print, that "Georges threw so many punches that some of them were bound to hit the target," but that, in the meantime, he expended a lot of energy needlessly. I share many of his fascinations---the common ground shared by sexuality, sacrifice, death, the surreal, spirituality---and the confluence of these themes in the folk/peasant Catholicism of rural France, Spain, Ireland, and Mexico ( ... )

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liberty, beauty, love theoldanarchist April 23 2007, 16:11:24 UTC

But individuals (& small groups), through both the creation of symbolic Art and the real discurive power of social engagement, can affect, or even overturn these institutions, for a more free, beautiful, and loving humanity.

Yes, indeed! This is what we are all about, right? I hope that soon our Vaguely Marginal group can get together and talk about our project.