1988

I think I'd listen to capitalism advocates a lot more if they could acknowledge that the faction advocating relatively unfettered flow of wealth won the great conflict in human history.

But I'm digging the bumper sticker, Galt fans.  I guess I need to say I'm a Robin Hoodist and expect people to take me very, very seriously.

Fresh and Vacuum-Packed

Two months.

I made a fucking Pinterest of MLK and a quote.  I really did.  It's the utmost lifestylist shit on one level, but hey, hey!  Forgive my bourgie-ness because I used the one where he calls the US government the biggest killer on the planet.  That'll triangulate neatly to offend both the libs and the rightwing faux-bertarians I know.

And what of my own position of power?  It seems like a big hypocrisy to some of my close friends; work has been kind to me and it only operates arbitrarily, right?  It chose me, they chose me because of my talents, because they trusted in my abilities.  But I still distrust the system, so where does that leave me?  I say revolution and act servant-leader horseshit.

But it's made things better for some people.  Within a context.  It's made things better for people even as we live in a world soaked in crime and injustice.  I throw water on people in burning buildings.

I write fiction and it seems to say what I can't or won't with my life's effort.

I play along to feed my kids.

Or so I say.


Why don't I say as much these days?  I feel a sense of grim understanding, of settlement without conclusion.  I feel wise?  And so I say less?  Or wise enough to feel ignorant, to feel profoundly unknowing, to not venture forth and say "this is so," "that is thus," all the crap.

I don't know what's missing.  I do so much and something's missing.

P Esquire A

One thing I can take away from recent nonsense.

Parents, talk to your kids about law school.  Because if you don't, someone else will.

Or Maybe Just Good Luck

This week I had to grapple with a couple local bureaucracies.  I should add that I'm in one of those states in which small-statism is shrinking the staff while herding people through the system more than ever.  In any case, I expected a nightmare.

It wasn't easy, and I don't want to ignore that the slight stability I've found in my life always makes acting calmly a bit easier, but I steeled myself to deal with the individuals I met as individuals.  On two interactions with unholy state institutions and in one with a local business I found myself treated in return as an individual.  I won't say I caused their kindness--I didn't--but I certainly didn't try to dissuade them.  I explained my situation.  I expected nothing.  I just did my best to get through.  And people helped me.

This is simply anecdotal, but it felt good to be cut a little slack.  There are plenty of people in this world who need to be cut a bit more than I do, but anyway, I emerged from a few transactions with impersonal powers with my faith in individuals affirmed.  If you see my former posts as bleak, it's because I intended them to be.  I remain confident of the flaws in mass society and the intrinsically mixed bag of human behavior.  But that mixed bag means that hope also never vanishes, and that compassion and collaboration is just an individual choice away.  This perhaps makes the dark darker, when you realize how much difference some individuals can make in cases of extreme injustice and brutality--autonomy means greater guilt falls on the wicked or their servants--but it is also cause for hope.  I believe in exceptions.  We all have need of them on occasion.

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Eternal Recurrence

Man will always (I don't speak for women) seek power enough to express himself and this will always suffice to persecute, dominate, and manipulate others.

In this I am a conservative, for I do believe human nature is fixed.  What can go wrong, I assert, will go wrong.  One need only wait.  One need only watch families to see that persecution is cultivated young and no political, cultural, or belief system will ever remedy this completely.  And so in enough time you will have people with the charisma enough, and others with the affection/neediness/desperation enough to devote themselves to others.

This is bombastic and stupid, but it is correct--if you want to see demagoguery and control and ruthlessness, it is important to look at the pathologies of millions, but I say to you that very little is expressed there that is absent from a smaller scale.  Violence, orchestration, cruelty, internalized control...  All society's maladies are present in families.  We were not corrupted by the state.  We gave birth to it and replicate it every day.  We don't even need to play it out; it would die without our assistance and the truth is that it is maintained daily by us.

And so I advocate resistance and upheaval and destruction when we assert it is necessary.  Will these efforts go wrong?  Yes.  Inevitably.  But still we try.  Still we do our best.  Still we seek freedom for ourselves and freedom for others.  And this is a very subjective concept, I grant.  Freedom ain't rational and never will be.  You can't draw the line at control through overt violence or political systems.  Anyone who has seen individual violence knows that you can have the best system in the world and yet, in the moment, you can still be enslaved or corrupted or crushed or co-opted, finding yourself your own jailer.

This will never go away.

But nevertheless I believe in finding a way to liberate ourselves and help others liberate themselves.  I just don't know what form it needs to take, now or ever.

I am happy to fumble through this until my ideas get better.

Venue

Generally, I'd support a system where small communities--less than 50 thousand, maybe?--were able to pass laws that superseded larger jurisdictions.  Naturally, we might draw the line at murder, but I'd like to see this kind of shift take place everywhere.  It doesn't happen, but give us the option.

And if we want to assist those who move elsewhere, just fine.  The system can be voluntarized as much as we like.

Hangover

Yeah, I know.  And you can hate me too.  I actually voted for the guy.  You want a defense?  I'd actually try if you're interested, but I don't need to waste time if you'll chalk it up to me being a betrayer of liberty.  Fact is that's exactly what I was yesterday.  I soothed the state.  But there--I've admitted it and now I'd like to move on to my main point, politician-style.

Reach out to the sad.  Find out why.

Talk to the ecstatic.  Find out why.

This is very simple.  But you see, election or no election, our first responsibility is to politically explore our fellows.  Actually talk--not on the Internet, or not only--but actually talk to the disgruntled co-worker who rolls her eyes at all the "I Voted" stickers.  She has her reasons, unless she actually is an idiot like the voterprop tells us to expect.  Apathy can be easy, but principled avoidance is another thing.  There's fucking wisdom there, even if you won't or can't share it.

In short, Obama won because a whole bunch of people said so.  We can debate the particulars, we can say this is good or this is bad.  But the fact is that from Bush to Obama to whoever the citizenry (or a portion of them) selects or ratifies of whatever, the most I want to see from us critics is a shrug, because the people are still the only hope for those who would limit or push back or reinvent or extinguish or kill the state.

History Student Angst

I'll just keep writing until more of you come back.  Things are better now in some ways, but I have lapsed into some kind of bourgie intellectual laziness.  Was my ambition sharpened by that morass of disappointment and recrimination?

Anyway, I like to read books about really powerful people (I wanted to say "great men") and ask myself if I'd do better.  Would I be me, were I some minor noble artillerist from Corsica?  Would I be me, were my father a king?  Would I be me, were I some horny young man with an attractive classmate conveniently drunk?

In short, I return to this--am I my assumed inclination or am I no more virtuous than my opportunity will allow?  I can't point to my restraint in this--abusers do it all the time, highlight their hesitance to offset their indulgence of brutal instincts.  I want to show you the times I've been kind to the weak and the useless, the patience I show with my boys, the time I've spent listening to those who are clearly lonely.  I was born low and I'm low in rank.  Of course this means that I see more utility in kindness, collaboration, and kindred spirit.  But what if I really didn't need anyone?  What if I stood atop a tower of bodies, others holding me up while many lie stilled by the hands of my servants?  What if I were born, as I am born, to a heritage of conquest and possession, only I occupied a rank far above any I can imagine?  What if I, an American in the greatest age of diffusion of responsibility, a man who lives under spectacle and remote drones, really stood in a place of total culpability, a place where my decisions mattered not to handfuls but millions?

Who am I to say I'd do better than the butchers?  Can the answer be anything other than assertion, opinion, speculation?

Gone Native

What's the difference between a schizophrenic and a normal man?
The schizophrenic tries to make sense of the madness around him.

I repeat myself.

Pacifists are but partisans of whoever won the last war.

Learning Precedes Intelligence

I read an article today on how lemon sharks learn from observing each other feed.

And then I remembered that the definition and measure of intelligence in our culture seems to have always been rooted in one key trait: the capacity for training.

Rusty Exercise

There is no substitute for using your power deftly to elevate others, seek their opinion, and treat them fairly (as you see fit, of course, since there really is no "fair").  You can try to apologize for your power, or act like it doesn't exist, or give it away, but these emphasize rather than erase the sin of hierarchy.

That principle, a bit of moral fluff, is going to be true both here and in the Anarchist Utopia, since there will always be some forms of power or--a better term perhaps--advantage that renders others dependent on or observant of you.  Natural advantage is a lovely thing, and present in all spontaneous, undirected order, but can it ossify, in time, and become privilege?  Of course it can.  Humans make habits of everything.

Now it's starting to be my opinion that I have been considering two rather distinct anarchist ideas.  One is a process of collaboration and ally-making with others, not as roles or offices but people.  The second is the classic political project of assaulting and questioning concentrated power.  There is structure and there is also culture.  They interplay and each feeds the other; sapping a poison from one pool will only buy time before the other feeds the one.

What, is this f-ing LiveJournal?

One career step ahead, a car expense back.
Read inspiring passage in a book, get paranoid and bitter e-mail.
Talk to the ex maturely.  Read her get passive-aggressive same day.

See the boys.  Nothing's going to keep me from being a father.
Think about the threats she's made to me and others.

Friend makes a comment about legal process favoring women.  I protest weakly, drift off.  His fiancée finishes my words.  She was wrecked in her own split.  I smile sadly.  Keep quiet.  Don't want my issues with this one woman to affect my feelings toward more of them.

Day upon day of riding high, doing what I need to, helping others, impressing others.  Rise in petty politics, work well with others.  In harmony as much as possible.  Protect those under my eye.  Serve those in power above me.  Liberal dream.

Flip out, feel miserable, sob for hours for the first time in months.  Get told that this kind of thing doesn't go away in weeks or months or even the better part of a year.  Get treated compassionately.  Peer with tunnel vision at the cruel and the treacherous and the vengeful.  Want to scream at her, When did you become so coercive?  When did our love yield to the fixtures and trappings, and when were you the type to prefer us chained together than free, if apart?  Why do you host house party after party now when it was an effort to get you out of that goddamned recliner and away from the fucking Facebook browser games for nearly a decade?  I didn't hate you, though you're trying hard now.  I hated that you lived like a ninety-year-old at thirty-five, and I hate that you'd use words like socialist to describe yourself with me and now you're nothing more than a vindictive bourgeois hausfrau.  Vote for Obama like that makes you different, but a woman who expects others to validate her social blueprint is the same as any other social repressive.

But I know her better than she ever knew me, and I know that to shout at the traumatized and the victimized achieves nothing.  We had our chance to learn from each other voluntarily, and I surely learned from you.

I'm surviving, and I thank anyone who asks or cares.  I teach new staff now, and it is wonderfully cathartic to find a position of both power and raising others to my level--or beyond, depending on their gifts.  I write.  I father.  I hope to return here, but I'm low on the pyramid right now.

I can't wait to not be scared anymore.

Confusion of Tongues

Is there anything as a political system, independent of its cultural context?

"Feudalism" has been used for a variety of ancient political systems, from Northern Europe where it was born to the Mediterranean agricultural estates to even East Asian contexts.  But a closer look, even a cursory glance at that great repository Wikipedia, will show that "feudalism" is but one kind of agricultural-military-political exchange.  There are myriad differences between Roman politics, German politics, the Anglo-Saxon system, the Norman system of land tenure and so on.  Can we really use one name to define these?

Where does power flow?  Power flows from people first and foremost, from the ability to make others do what you want, from the ability to do what you want from the land and resources you hold.  But no one man can work the land by himself.  Others breed the draft animals, others provide the seeds and the fertilizer (whether it's pig shit or synthesized concoction), others provide the defense of fields...  So power is, must be, seen as relational, as a thing that is wielded between people.

But the organization of power is what blocks us from changing things.  Kings can do what they want, right?  But not if their rights are stripped away by nobles and their assemblies, if soldiers swear fealty to subordinates or cities first, which in turn swear allegiance to the king.  And who names a king?  In some countries it was a noble council.  In other places, it was the priests who anointed kings the representative of God or some other divine force.

What we have now is the republic, and the republic is as diverse as any other set of conditions that use a common name.  If Syria calls itself a republic, if China calls itself so, how are we to say that we are more so and they are less?  What do any of these names mean?  Have we lost the ability to describe political systems, or did we ever have the ability to begin with?

This is why leftists are so critical of private wealth.  It is all very well to believe that we have our little bit in accordance with the same law that preserves the right of the rich to their very much.  We "have," but do we really have in the same way?  Is the owner of a factory enriched by the same flow of property and power that modestly enriches his employees?  I don't see it if there is.

Likewise, with our rhetoric that states are all the same, that a president is a king is a pope is an emperor and so on, perhaps we blind ourselves to the ways that all these people are empowered and enriched.  Perhaps we are as blind as those who believed that kings' power stemmed from bloodline and destiny, until we come up with a real mechanic that can explain all of human circumstances--at least in the political dimension.  What we need, what I need to understand things, is a political physics, an understanding and a diagram of how people become more powerful than others.  It is a joint interest to find that kind of understanding between both reformers and dismantlers.  At the present, each is as blind as the true believer in the systems' justness.

Coercive Love

Now that things are a little better, I remember the good times. I'm less scared. I think about the relationship and I can't say that any of the development over the last six months is due to being out of it.

Improvement, save from the most glaringly obvious conditions, is unquantifiable to the point of being imaginary.

And yet, if the future (whatever that is) needs to be rational, then it is held to a standard unreached by any past and all present.

Anyway, I can miss my ex now. Now that it seems she's not going for my throat. Was she ever? Was it all just fog of war? I don't know.

I went from having to know what she was thinking--and I think she felt the same way, for whatever reason--to deciding that I must never try to predict her feelings and thoughts. That was what really led to the end-of-relationship shakes. That was what really pissed her off after the split. I didn't infer. I listened to what she said and that was it. I tried not to be painfully logical--men do that a lot, I hear, and boy, did she do it well too, self-hating masculinized arch-Anglo that her family raised her to be. Anyway.

Now I can see her well, and I hope she can see my positive traits. Even now, I'm desperate for her approval, and I have to give up on that. Ten years didn't get her to see me as I wanted to be seen. Ten years and she still saw me as someone either to tiptoe around or dismiss, the same way her mother treats her father, as bumpkin/dominator.

Okay, so there's still rage there. But what I wanted to say is that the old pack of once-mutual friends, with rare exception, had an interesting way of encouraging compliance with the relationship. Most peer groups don't want what's best. They want status quo. Bros will denounce a marriage or engagement; couples friends will need to see a break-up in terms of betrayal.

One friend who should have known better--they all should have known better, I think, which is to say that I thought them better than they turned out to be--told me that I'd lose the love of my children. I regarded and regard that as an utterly stupid thing to say. A father who loses the love of his children following a divorce probably never had that love to begin with, or suffered an especially vicious smear campaign--which may yet, in time, be undone. I never suspected my wife of being the type to commit the latter, though she has played a bit with actions of the sort. In any case, I wondered what kind of man I would be to present my children with a marriage of coercion. A marriage of fear.

Other "help" appeared in the form of other threats. A marriage counselor--no shit--threatened me with never seeing the kids, living in a tiny apartment, and paying my wife all my money. He was an ugly stereotype, I suppose, down to the assumptions about our relative income and involvement with the children. Then again, when I said I didn't know who I was, his first question was "Are you gay?" I'm still not sure if I forgive him for knowing the bulk of the market or if I'm derisive that I never really felt heard. I prefer female counselors anyway.

As I've said to a few people, I felt myself looking down a path of coercion. We all know or should know what lies down that path. It's monkeys in cages, alcoholism, chronic masturbation, deadening of impulses, resentment of partners, misery being taught to children. It's domestication in the ugliest sense.

I still can't imagine ever being in a long-term relationship again. I pine for some kind of affection, some kind of romantic attachment. But I prefer being alone to being miserable, to being beholden to the choices I made at 19 and 21.

And when I've been called a coward by people who once called me friend, I scoff. Yeah, I really chose the easy way out. I leapt from one branch without so much as holding another. I had no home, a new job, no girl waiting in the wings, nothing. I was honest the entire time, explaining in painful detail how I felt and where I was mentally. If bravery is what I've seen of other people's "relationships," then call me a coward. I loved my wife, but I couldn't anymore. And I didn't believe in the institution surviving the spirit that animated and founded it.

The Upshot of Apoliticality

You know, I can scoff at a libertarian with appreciation for Trotsky, or at the transgendered with praise for Eurosocialism and a love of Ayn Rand, for their ideological impurity, or I can see them as a good start.

I still believe in political philosophy. Affiliations don't matter so much as a coherent whole that makes sense to you. That said, I grow amazed at the buffet philosophers of our world. Soundbites abide. I'm not saying you need to be utterly consistent; nobody is. But that said, at least account for the other things people said. I mean, give a nod to Proudhon's nationalism, Lenin's use of terror, Guevara's tenure in economic ministry, Jefferson's catalogue of human acquisitions, and so on, and so on.

But... such rigor can go too far. And if I meet people who seem almost childlike in their surprise to find that Rand thought homosexuality, Beethoven, and facial hair were irrational, or in their enthused mixing of any image, aesthetic, or style that strikes their pre-political fancy, maybe I should be content to say they'll get there. Good luck, all you crazy kids.

Except for Ron Paul fans in the military (be your own rebel--leave!) and Democrats for interventionism. They hurt my head.

The Authoritarian Alternative to Authoritarianism

I heard the tale end of NPR's "On Point" tonight. Tom Ashbrook was interviewing Clay Christensen, a religious and business leader.

He recited an anecdote about a Chinese Marxist and economist who studied with him at Harvard. You can find a similar retelling here. The main thrust was that in order to create a stable and prosperous culture, there were two ways about it. You could go the way of Singapore, and have clear rules and clear ramifications for those who broke them, or you could go the way of democracy, which Christensen sweetly stated through the mouth of his Marxist friend was far harder.

But in democracy, the only way people would behave in a just way was that they believed they would be punished or rewarded according to a higher power. The PDF I link to makes the religiosity much clearer, though even the radio statement (toward the last 10 minutes) was blunt as a hammer.

Personally, I am not surprised that an economist from the PRC would believe that people are weak and require some kind of authority to "hold them accountable"--or, in other words, make them do what is "right." I am sure Christensen saw this as some incredible validation--"Look, even the Marxist thinks we need rules, and that democracy needs religion!" But for me, this is no surprise. An authoritarian and an authoritarian will likely agree on the people; it's the nature of authority on which they differ. It is no surprise that authoritarian socialism gave way to monarchy, state religion, and cults of personality. It is no surprise that Juche and Maoism resemble ancient despotisms, complete with supernaturally gifted leaders. It is no surprise that Guevara became a Castroist Jesus and Stalin was painted with happy children in the same tacky style I see in Adventist portraiture. Man as he is is unimportant to these doctrines. Man is to be molded, recreated, and perfected. They are all Procrustean exercises, all self-demeaning faiths. As valuable as Marx is to deconstructing capitalist economy, he despised anarchists and believed in a rule by elite. He and his heirs ushered in a new priesthood and a new liturgy which has only given way to new Marxian philosophy with great effort and the fall of the Soviet Union.

This is the same as Democrats being trotted out by Republicans when they personally agree. I am not impressed that Lieberman agreed with Bush, no more than I am that Republicans voted for Obama in droves. What is presented as an alternative is not often that significant a difference. Those who are presented as opposites may share great similarities in many areas, especially when the range of discussion is so very small.

In the past, it was much easier to spot this kind of false choice, though people were still ignorant and distracted. Have you ever seen the faces of the Kings of Great Britain, Germany, and Russia at the eve of the First World War? The inbred fools could be practically brothers. Now the appearances are greater among our options, but we still have much the same choice as then: this empire or that, this thug or that, this master or that. And yet we have not improved on the Marxists of a hundred years ago. We do not reach outside to the rest of the world. For all our technology, we have dwindled to myriad disparate homebodies and provincialists. I am all for home rule, and yet I do not believe in being divided and being conquered. And if it is not obvious right now, despotism is as strong as ever it has been. After all, the Mormons and the Maoists talk when they are at the highest levels of power. We commoners cannot say the same. We libertarians and anarchists and resisters have yet to answer the authoritarians. And as a result they continue to choose our alternatives, and control our fates.

Justice

It must be a miserable existence to mistrust and punish each new acquaintance for the sins of past others.

What are others for?

Other people start out as housing and food source.
Then they basically provide the same thing, only with more apparent labor.
Then they're masters, sometimes kind ones, sometimes bewildering ones, sometimes cruel.
And they are also playmates. And rivals.
They're too close and need to get away.
They're too far away; please don't leave!
They teach us. They teach us some things that make sense and some things that are very, very wrong.
They hurt us.
They soothe us.
They ignore us.
Others come.
Others leave. Some come back. Others never come back.
Peers, entertainment, necessary collaborators, enemies, brutalizers, allies....

What are others for?
Themselves? Sure, we believe it sometimes. We know that their interests are theirs. But sometimes it's so hard to extend to them our own desire for autonomy and we want to see them in some manipulative, Stirnerite way. They are for me and my interest.
But let's be honest. It's so hard for us to even get to a point where we can be earnestly egoist. Most of the time we don't know where they end and we begin. Most of the time we have no idea when to please others or revolt or stand alone or accept the wisdom of others. When do we accept logic or agree and when do we knuckle under?

I'd say most people don't know the difference between agreement and acquiescence. And that's a real problem.

I interact with others and the more "professional" the interaction, the better. All the rules. And if I know you very well, then good, too. I can be honest. And then between them is a vast sea of individual interactions in which I have neither title nor familiarity and I freeze. My work has made me very good at talking to anyone, so long as I do not offer too much of myself. The disintegration of my marriage has made me very, very scared, however. Every interaction brings peril if I say anything about my personal life. I don't know who to trust, I don't know what to say, how much is oversharing, how much will bring quiet resentment. In short, I've had four and a half months of education that have told me not to be so open, not to be forthcoming. I've had multiple instances where I have learned that others will use your information against you, even if you speak freely and with no distress.

So what are others for? I want to play and talk and speak boldly and be very open, very blunt, and very forgiving with others. But I am learning that I must regard every other as a potential threat. The thought sickens me, is foreign to me, but there it is. Right now I am realizing that threats come from all directions. It is a lonely thing to realize. It drives me a little mad, which is to say deeper into my mind, farther away from tangible experience. I am out of touch with my instincts to associate and trust. In my current environment, those impulses appear rather stupid.

What are others for? I don't know. I look forward to the time when I interact with new people. Now I operate in isolation. My greatest goal is to continue until the danger has passed. It feels autistic. I don't know if it's healthy or if it's necessary.

Maybe the question I really want to ask is "What am I for?" Because there are times right now I feel like an empty skin, a husk, a hull of a man.