Yes, I held my nose and voted…

For the vast majority of any 4-year period you can find me railing against republican, representative democracy as an unjust, unrepresentative, failure of a system that results in a general race to the bottom as far as candidates go and, recently, has resulted in little more than a compete lack of action on the catastrophe that is our ecosystem, our economy, and our entire socio-political system.  Furthermore, you will frequently find me pointing out that the two parties, with the exception of a few social issues such as abortion of gay marriage, are really quite alike in most of the ways that matter.  In short, they are both war-hungry capitalists hell-bent on destroying everything we love for a profit, and they will only give us the small bit of freedom that they have to, and only when they’re forced to.  To sum it up nicely, here is Mr. George Carlin, one of America’s greatest political thinkers…

Ultimately, when you get right down to it, I agree with Carlin.  I think he’s right.  To put it another way, here is one of my favorite quotes from the comic book Transmetropolitan:

“You want to know about voting. I’m here to tell you about voting. Imagine you’re locked in a huge underground nightclub filled with sinners, whores, freaks and unnameable things that rape pit bulls for fun. And you ain’t allowed out until you all vote on what you’re going to do tonight. You like to put your feet up and watch ‘Republican Party Reservation.’ They like to have sex with normal people using knives, guns and brand-new sexual organs that you did not know existed. So you vote for television, and everyone else, as far as the eye can see, votes to fuck you with switchblades. That’s voting.”

So I’m telling you, I think this shit is right.  Any form of “representative” government is bullshit.  No one has the right to represent me, and they do not represent me or you.  They represent their own interests and the interests of those who have bought and sold them.  This is true whether you voted for a Democrat or a Republican.

That’s all true.  And I voted today.

I’ve been a political junky since I was about 15 years old.  While I today vehemently identify as an anarchist, I have gone through a series of political identifications (all on the left) before I arrived at this position over a decade ago.  And throughout that time I have been obsessed with politics, even if I do loathe them and those who work in them.  So, on the one hand, this probably contributes to why I vote: I pay close attention to this shit and it’s hard not to get wrapped up in it.

But that’s hardly a good enough reason.  There are others.

For one thing, it does not seem to me, sadly, that the “Revolution” is coming anytime soon.  When Occupy Wall Street and the other Occupies were taking place, I thought it might be, I really thought it had that chance.  But, as is always the case when the state’s ideological apparatus organizing general consent breaks down, the coercive apparatus (the cops, and so on) stepped in and “put us in our place.”  When that happens, there are only a few options: most obviously, you either surrender and society goes back to a state of functional consent, or you fight back.  And I mean fight–revolution isn’t always pretty.  Looking around the country, it’s clear what mostly happened (this does not mean the Occupies were useless or did not good–they did–but that’s a post for another time).  It’s less clear that this is true elsewhere–some countries are still protesting, still fighting, and in some cases, they’re winning.  Regardless, the failure of the Occupy movement to progress into a revolutionary movement led me to believe that we are still a bit of a ways off from truly radical social change in this country.  With that in mind, voting might do some good to prevent things from getting worse.  Yes, I do mean protecting a woman’s right to an abortion, a gay couple’s right to wed, and an ill person’s right to get treatment, among other things.  However, that’s not all I mean.  Historically, it’s been the case that radical movements have had more successes and have simply occurred more often under liberal parties / The Democrats.  With that in mind, if you want a radical movement and radical organizing to take place, it’s actually better for you to have Democrats in office, no matter how much we hate them.  If you need an example, well, there’s always Occupy.  Or the birth of the anti-globalization movement in American, which was under Clinton’s presidency.  Or the radical movements of the 60s, much of which was also under a Democrat (JFK, for example).   The list continues into history, though it’s certainly not an absolute truth or anything like that.  But this is actual a very important point, at least for me.  See, I think social movements matter a great deal more than who is in office.  I think that Richard Nixon was further left than Barrack Obama because the people forced him to be.  And I think that President Obama was not able to get more left-wing things passed (for example, I truly believe that he wanted a single payer healthcare program, or at least a public option) because, at the time, The Tea Party was the primary “movement” in the United States.  With that in mind, politicians are rotating stooges filling an office for the entertainment of the masses, and only a movement can pull their strings to the left.  So, why worry about who’s in office?  Because, as I said, movements do better under Democrats.  Even Democrats who hate movements (let’s not forget that the federal government under Obama partially coordinated, and at least assisted in, the crackdown on Occupies nation-wide).

Perhaps a little more pragmatically, I think Obama’s programs, regardless of my anarchist politics, are working.  The economy is doing better, unemployment is down.  In fact, corporate profits and the stock market are at all time highs.  What’s that you say?  Those profits aren’t giving you a job, or increasing your family’s income?  Good point: you just argued against Romney’s belief in “trickle down economics.”  See, those aren’t working, so we need someone who isn’t completely opposed to Keynesian Economics who might, given the chance, actually give a little back to working and poorer people.  Of course Obama won’t do enough, of course he’s owned by huge corporations, of course he’s an elite capitalist, and of course Romney is the same.  But similarities are not equivalence.

In the past I have, at times, voted “against” rather than “for.”  I cannot honestly say that this time I have quite voted against Mitt Romney (AKA “Mittens”).  Frankly, Mittens has given us very little to vote against.  He’s “for” things one minute that he was “against” the moment before.  He is, more than most politicians, an empty shell filled with the ideologies that are most convenient to give him power–I have no idea what his real ideas and beliefs are, and so I cannot vote against them.  However, we can take a guess at how he would govern.  What was most useful about his choice of Paul Ryan as his Vice President was that, as many Republican and Democratic strategists alike pointed out, is that it gave his campaign a focus.  Unlike Romney, Ryan seems to actually believe in things (even if he, for pragmatic purposes, goes against his own beliefs–for example, while trying to dismantle Obama’s healthcare reform, he was also trying to get dollars from it for his state).  I despise what Ryan believes in, but he believes, and that gives us something to look at.  I suspect that Paul Ryan tells us a lot more about what a Mitt Romney Presidency would look like than does Mitt Romney himself.

However, that’s not all.  Even more than Paul Ryan, I am voting against Mitt Romney’s supporters.  This is a little harder to articulate, because this is less of a “fact-based” thing.  However, I see in Mitt Romney’s supporters something I do not necessarily see in Mitt Romney himself, and that is the very worst of America.  (Note: Obviously this is not directly at all Romney supporters.  I recognize that there are decent people who just honestly believe his policies are better than Obama’s.  Now that I’ve pointed that out, move on.)  I’m thinking of people like this.  Let me be abundantly clear: Obama’s message of “hope” and “change” were not lived up to, to say the least.  In fact, these ideas were trampled on by his administration.  But when it comes to the difference in the candidate’s supporters, the situation is less clear.  Obama’s supporters, and to a much lesser degree, Obama himself do present a positive, optimistic message.  If you don’t think that this matters, I want you to go to Google and look for any of the numerous articles that have been published over the last 4 years about how the rest of the world, especially in places like Europe, have come to see America since Obama took office and when compared to the image of America under W. Bush.  The message of America is far better under Obama.  Ultimately, I am voting for that image.  I am not doing so because I am patriotic–I am not–and I am not doing so because I am nationalistic–I am not–and I am not doing so because I believe that American is a shining beacon of hope to the rest of the world–if those times ever existed, they are dead, and they are unlikely to come back, at least in the way they were–and I am not doing it because I believe voting is the best way to effect change–I’ve already said that I do not think that.  But I do think that image and the positive message of, yes, hope and change that are associated with it, I think that these things matter, even if only a very little bit.  So I am voting against those who bought into the current right’s politics of hate, fear, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and, again, fear, fear, fear, fear.  I want them, I want them very badly, to realize that 4 more years of a black man in the white house will not mean the end of America, as some have claimed it will.  In fact, America is likely to be better off in 4 years if the policies of today continue.  No, we probably won’t have a revolution, but women might still be able to have an abortion, gay people might finally be able to get married, sick people might be able to get care, students might be able to get loans, natural disaster victims might be able to get help, and the environment, if we’re very very lucky, might be slightly better off (In spite of the debates, Obama is genuinely more concerned about climate change than is Romney and is likely to do more about it.  Romney has already told us he would roll back restrictions and deals with the auto-industry that might make things better–not perfect, far far from it, but better.  Obama, on the other hand, while publicly not talking much about climate change has been working behind the scenes on it, something he had little choice about because of America’s economic woes, and this resulted in things like the very deals with the auto-industry that Romney has promises to change.)

Yes, we need a revolution of some sort.  Yes, we need truly radical democracy.  We need anarchy.  We need communism, in its true anarchist nature.  We need freedom, peace, a world we can pass onto future generations.  We need to abolish capitalism, tear down the state, destroy the borders that separate us both into nations as well as into the varying identifications, the borders of which we continue to police in our minds, actions, and so on.  That’s the only real liberation, and you will never, ever get that at the polling place.  Ever.  Period.  I know that and I hope that you know that.  I think that the general American disillusionment with politicians and politics indicates that we do know that.  But until then, until we can tear it all the fuck down, maybe things can at least suck a little bit less.  Maybe the fascist Tea Parties can get their nose rubbed in it a little, maybe a few more people can get jobs (yes, I recognize that the unemployment rate is only slightly lower than when Obama took office, but it is dramatically lower than it was at its height), and maybe a few more women can get abortions if they want them, and so on.

And for those of you who think Obama “did nothing” or “accomplished nothing” while President, in spite of how much I dislike the guy, I recommend watching former President Bill Clinton’s speech at the 2012 DNC.  One of the better political speeches I’ve seen and it at least counters that point, whether you like what he did or not, and whether you want any government to ever do anything or not.

So that’s it.  I held my nose to keep out the stink, and I clicked that damn button marked “Obama / Biden.”  In some cases I also voted for third party candidates (in Philadelphia the only options for most were libertarians, and in a few cases I voted for them).  I even got ultra-pragmatic, and hated myself while I voted for Bob Casey.  I despise Bob Casey.  First of all, he’s pro-life, and that’s enough to make me not want to vote for someone.  However, I want to see the Democrats maintain control of the Senate.  Having Democrats in control of the Senate is likely to have the effect of better laws for women in spite of Casey himself.  So yes, I voted for that bastard.  It’s an ultimate compromise, and I can’t say I was happy about it… but hey, I started this by admitting that really, when it comes to true change, the kind of change a politician will never and can neer give you, voting does not matter–that’s not what voting is for.  And if you’re anti-voting, then you don’t think voting matters!  So how mad can you be that I did something that, ultimately, does not matter?

Tosh.RapeCulture

I posted this link on my Facebook page the other day to a petition requesting that Daniel Tosh’s TV show, Tosh.0, be cancelled in response to his highly inappropriate rape comments during a comedy show the other night.  Of course, this sort of response is not unheard of, and is not too different from the Don Imus incident, though there the comments were racist and, of course, made on air, differentiating the situation a bit.  However, also different, is the fact that there is no recording, video or audio, of Tosh’s comments.  This is the sticky situation because we can’t be sure what was actually said.  Therefore, I want to say this first: I suspect that there is absolutely no recording.  Once this had gone viral, any recording that was made almost certainly would have been released to the internet.  That this has not happened leads me to think that there never will be a video of the incident, and so we are stuck with what we have.

With that in mind, I want to say that I suspect that what did happen is very similar to what the woman claims happened.  You can read her actual blog post describing it here.  If a video is eventually released and I’m wrong about this, I will completely admit that I was wrong and take it back, no problem; I have no qualms about admitting when I’m wrong whatsoever.  But I want to address why I believe her.  First, Tosh’s comments are in line with his humor style to begin with.  It is, therefore, very easy to imagine that this is the kind of thing he would say.  Secondly, this only went viral and became significant after the blog post was made.  Why does this matter?  Because I don’t see any good reason to expect that she would make up such a dramatic incident if something like that hadn’t happened.  What would her motivation be?  It couldn’t be to justify her own actions or claims because it didn’t go viral until after she made the post and would have never been a “thing” is she hadn’t posted about it.  Again, I’m happy to admit I’m wrong, but that’s my opinion.  Sure, in the heat of the moment you don’t remember things perfectly, and so there’s probably some differences between the actual incident and what she posted, but I suspect that something like that is what happened.  If I’m wrong, so be it.  After all, the club owner has said that the incident has been misconstrued, but no one else that was there in the audience has spoken up as far as I can tell, so we don’t know.

What I really want to address isn’t particularly effected by what actually happened anyway.  I want to use this as an example, and if this particular incident proves to be a bad example, the content of what I want to say won’t change.  So, first, to understand the various claims, I recommend that you read the initial blog post describing the incident so that you have an idea what I’m talking about.  All done?  Good.  I believe that the initial incident, if it happened in a way as she describes in the blog, and more importantly the fall out from it, and all the defenses being offered for Tosh, are a manifestation of rape culture (I recommend reading that article to understand what I’m talking about, though Wikipedia is also a good source on this).  Why do I believe that?  Because the things I hear people saying about the woman making the claim are so similar to the things that happen to rape victims.

First, a woman is making a claim that a man did something inappropriate to her that relates to sexuality: he used his power as a celebrity on stage to “jokingly” encourage others to rape her because she told him that a joke he said was inappropriate.  Many people’s first response was to defend Tosh: “She shouldn’t go to a comedy show if she can’t take a joke” (in relation to, “She shouldn’t wear a skirt like that if she doesn’t want to get fucked”); “Everyone knows Tosh makes jokes like that, what was she doing there?” (in relation to, “Everyone knows if you invite a guy upstairs you’re going to fuck him.  If she didn’t want to have sex, why would she have the guy in her house/room?”); “He probably did not really say what she’s claiming he said” (in relation to, “She probably wasn’t really raped”); “It probably wasn’t as bad as she’s claiming” (in relation to, “It wasn’t rape-rape“); “There’s no video, so we can’t know what happened, and shouldn’t judge” (in relation to, “No one else was there, so how can we be sure she was really raped?”); “She’s probably just trying to justify being a bitch in the club” (in relation to, “The bitch probably had sex with him, and regrets it/pissed of her boyfriend, and is trying to get out of trouble”); “She was a heckler, so she deserved it” (in relation to, “She’s a slut anyway”); and so on.

In short, rape victims are regularly not believed.  When a woman claims that she was raped, it is extraordinarily common that she is not believed by friends, family, the police, lawyers, the media if it’s someone famous, her co-workers or boss if it takes place in a work-related context, and so on.  This is a part of rape culture, and in the Tosh incident we are seeing how much it permeates our entire culture.  A woman is making a claim about something inappropriate a man did to her, and too many people’s first response is to defend the man against the woman’s claims.  Yes, of course we should have evidence before anything drastic takes place, such as a firing or, in the case of rapes, someone going to prison.  But waiting for the evidence is not the same thing as waiting to form an opinion, nor does waiting for evidence mean defending the person who is cast in a negative light.  We can say, “I believe you” and then investigate what actually happened and, if we were wrong, that’s fine.  When women claim that they are raped, even in very public circumstances, it is often people’s response to immediately claim that she’s making it up.  In short, people rarely “wait for the evidence,” instead claiming, “She’s a gold digger looking for money,” or, “She probably wanted it,” and people do this to negate a woman’s claims of assault, to disbelieve her; disbelief about rape is the spontaneous and immediate reaction in many instances, and this is central to rape culture.  That this is about a rape “joke” rather than an incident of “rape” does not change its root in the hegemony of rape culture.

Secondly, I want to distance this from being about Daniel Tosh as an individual.  By all accounts, while he is, in some opinions, my own included, not a very talented comedian, Daniel Tosh is a nice enough guy.  But that’s important to this too.  Most rapists are “nice enough guys” to their friends and family.  They’re not all creepy dudes lurking in alleys.  They’re boyfriends, husbands, uncles, co-workers, and so on.  That the person is a “nice guy” is another way that people make claims that the woman must be lying: “He’s a nice guy, he wouldn’t do that.”  Let’s be clear, “nice guys” can commit horrible acts.  And so I do not want this to be strictly about Tosh.  I want to make it bigger than that.  If Tosh said what the woman claims he said, then Tosh’s comments are a manifestation of rape culture, as are the comments made by those defending him.  But even if Tosh did not say that, these kind of things happen every day, and my point remains the same.  This does not necessarily make Tosh or those defending him bad people.  Again, I don’t want this to be about individuals.  This is simply the manifestation of hegemony.  What to most people just appears “normal” or “just the way it is” is always a manifestation of what is articulated in a culture as the norm.  In other words, I want to say that this is not about whether or not Daniel Tosh did something stupid, it’s about a culture in which doing stupid things like that is acceptable, and in which people do not defend victims of this sort of thing, and do not believe victims after it’s taken place.  That’s what this is really about.  Daniel Tosh is just some dumbass who happens to be famous enough for his stupidity to become public.  But this stuff, and rape itself, happens everyday, and that’s what is important.  This is just one good example and how it works.

Finally, one last remark about the incident.  I have heard people claim, “She was heckling him” (compare to, “She was flirting with him!”).  First of all, there are appropriate ways of responding to hecklers, or to any kind of interruption of a comedy show.  Tosh knows this, as any professional comedian does, as they will have dealt with hecklers at some point, and Tosh has dealt with problematic audience members correctly in the past.  Here’s a video of him dealing with drunks at his show who are being disruptive.

So Tosh knows how to deal with people who he does not like at his show.  So, if the incident happened as indicated, then the real problem is Tosh’s approach to rape and to women.  This too is a manifestation of rape culture and of this patriarchal culture overall.  However, second of all, the woman was not much of a heckler.  This is just one justification for Tosh’s actions (compare to, “She was a slut”).  Why do I say she was not a heckler?  Just to work from Wikipedia, they define heckling in the following way: “A heckler is a person who harasses and tries to disconcert others with questions, challenges, or gibes.  Hecklers are often known to shout disparaging comments at a performance or event, or to interrupt set-piece speeches, with the intent of disturbing performers or participants.”  Furthermore, heckling is usually a persistent thing, not a single comment.  I don’t think she was trying to harass Tosh (though I would call Tosh’s comments, and rape jokes generally, harassing to anyone in the vicinity), nor necessarily to disconcert him, nor had she made multiple comments.  She was, rightly, stating that rape jokes are never acceptable, and they’re not.  The shame of it is that more people did not do the same, and that more people did not walk out with her.  Yes, she could have just left (compare to, “She could have gotten away if she really wanted to”), which she did after he verbally assaulted her, but we’ll never confront rape culture if we just keep ignoring it and laughing along with the “jokes.”

[Yes, I recognize that in this I treat rape as if it is only something that happens to women by using female pronouns to describe generic incidents.  It is, of course, the case that men and those who do not identify with a gender binary are also victims of rape.  I’ve simplified here because, one, the person in this instance was a woman, and, two, women are much more likely to be victims of rape and other forms of sexual assault than men are, and so for the purposes of this post, it was just easier.  However, men are also regularly not believed, though for different reasons: a manifestation of our patriarchal culture and its assumptions about men are that men are supposed to “always want it.”  As such, people often do not believe men.  This is but one problematic element of our cultures approach to male sexuality as well.]

Appropriation…?

Throughout my life I have had dreadlocks, a mohawk, a shaved head, blue hair, purple hair, red hair, blonde hair, black hair, brown hair, spiked hair, long hair, short hair… you get the point.  However, those who run in radical circles will know that only two of these hair styles–dreadlocks and mohawks–have gotten me in trouble. It’s not just about hair though, some people have similar problems around issues of clothing, or other stylistic and cultural “things.”

Attacks on people for these sort of stylistic things usually are based in the idea of “appropriation.”  For the purposes of this post, we can understand those who make these sort of attacks as defining appropriation as, “The taking of a cultural element from a subordinated group my a superordinate group.”  For example, when a white person has dreadlocks, these individuals understand the white person to be appropriating African culture(s); if a white person has a mohawk, they are appropriating Native American culture(s).  Other examples could also be used, but you get the point.  Those who would attack individuals for these stylistic appropriations generally feel that it is not the superordinate group’s place to take cultural elements that are not “their own,” and also feel that it is important that the stylistic elements remain in the hands of the originating group who, presumably, can determine the styles signifying meaning.

In my opinion, though, the attacks on “appropriation” are, while important and in some cases accurate, problematic.  This is not to say that attacks on appropriation are always invalid–some, maybe even many, are valid–but that context matters, and that the issue of appropriation, what I would in some cases instead call “borrowing,” is more complicated than those that strictly oppose it would like.  Here I hope to explain why.

(1) The arguments against appropriation are based on a series of rather problematic assumptions.  The most problematic is the assumption that there is a “pure” and “isolated” culture or society from which a particular cultural formation emerges.  For example, the assumption requires that African peoples or Native American peoples (the Iroquois, not the Mohawks, ironically) were strictly isolated, not only from European populations, but from other African or Native populations.  In other words, the cultural “thing” had to not only originate with a given specific group, but we can determine what group that was, and we can be certain that there was not cross-pollination with other groups.  In short, we can determine a strict cosmogony of a stylistic or cultural “thing.”  However, I would argue that this is simply not the case.  Music is another instance in which “appropriation” is often attacked, especially the white appropriation of black music.  However, music is easily shown to be more complicated, and that the development of musical forms such as rock music is a back and forth, not a strict theft from one group by another (which is not to downplay the significance of black musical developments–there is no doubt that early rock and roll groups were listening to American blues music made by black musicians.  The point is that the development of rock as a separate form is not strictly based in cultural “theft”).  There is a smilar thing going on with the Native-American inspired “Pendleton” blankets: the situation is far more complicated than whites simply making a profit off of native fashions (though that element is there, and it is very important). Furthermore, as I’ve shown in other posts, pre-colonial populations were engaged with distant trade long before colonial domination and oppression.  WIth that in mind, we should expect that some elements of style or culture were developed in a hybrid fashion, and that there is no “let there be light” moment for a cultural type, or at least none that can today be known.  What is most likely is that even pre-colonial cultural types were developed in a back and forth borrowing between cultures.

Now, the anti-appropriationist might argue that this borrowing was done between equals and not between dominated and dominating groups.  I think that this is actually an important point to make, and should be taken seriously.  However, we cannot really know if that was the case or not.  While it is true that many indigenous and pre-colonial populations were far more peaceful and egalitarian than European cultures, they were not strictly so, and we simply do not know the context in which the borrowing, or appropriation, between these pre-colonial cultures took place.  Furthermore, if the anti-appropriationist argument is that an “originating group” should be able to determine the future of a cultural type, than domination makes matters worse, but the absence of domination should not necessarily negate the problem of appropriation.  In other words, of there is a spectrum for the problem of appropriation, then European and European-descended cultures appropriating cultural forms might be the “worst,” but non-dominated appropriation should still be seen as a problem if appropriation is strictly, rather than contextually, problematic.

(2) A second problematic assumption is that there is an inherent meaning to styles and cultural forms.  This assumption goes something like this: the cultural form, be it hairstyles, clothing, blankets, rituals… whatever… has an inherent and axiomatic meaning that does not change over time and cannot be altered if another group uses these cultural things.  The things originary meaning is somehow carried over through time into its future manifestations.  Therefore, when a group that is not a part of the supposed originating group makes use of the cultural thing, they are not only disconnected from this meaning, but because they are incapable of being connected to this meaning, they somehow lessen the significance of the cultural form.  However, while this might have once been a valid idea, postmodernism has stripped this assumption bare: things have no inherent or axiomatic meaning.  Meaning only comes into being through discourse, and is always open to change.  Therefore, even without (1), a mohawk or dreadlocks might have different meaning for European descended cultures, and might have very little connection to the supposed originating culture.  For example, punks might trace the lineage of the mohawk more readily to Taxi Driver than the Iroquois.

Even if punks and others do trace its lineage to Native Americans, or the Iroquois specifically, this does not have to mean that the styles meaning has remained the same.  With the stylistic use by another culture, the meaning will necessarily change.  With that in mind, the question again arises: if you agree with the postmodernist argument that value and meaning are not axiomes, why is it necessarily, rather than contextually, problematic?  I’ve encountered several responses to this that I want to address.

(2a) The first response is that the “thing,” whatever it might be, had more important meaning for its originating group.  In some cases, this is certainly an important point to make.  As I’ll discuss more below, I am not arguing that all forms of appropriation are equally acceptable.  Some, such as the racist usage of Native American symbols, people, and ideas by sports teams, are clearly just fucked up (The Braves “tomahawk chop” comes to mind, as does the very name “The Redskins”).  Ironically, at least in some cases, it seems that the problem is the maintenance of the connection between a type and its originating group by an outsider group.  So in the case of sports teams, they are maintaining the connection to Native cultures, but doing so in a deeply offensive, exploitative, racist, and harmful way.  So, the question is: is it true that some “thing” had more meaning for the originating group (if we can determine that there even is one–see (1) above), and if so, when is this a problem?

Dreadlocks and mohawks have been used by their “originating” group as signs of resistance to colonialism, as signs of power in war, and as ways of maintaining an important identification in light of oppression, imprisonment, and so on.  This is, without a doubt, an important meaning.  Even if we recognize that meanings can change, we might argue that this is too important and thus we should work to maintain this meaning rather than rearticulating it.  This is something I might be sympathetic to, but there are problems with it.  First, it assumes that the “new” group cannot use these symbols in the same way.  In other words, that punks do not use hairstyles as a form of resistance. However, anyone who knows anything about punk knows that this is not true.  Therefore, the assumption must be that non-originating groups do not have the right to use these symbols in the same way, as a form of resistance.  However, the question is, why not?  I think there are a few possible responses to this, which I will address in points below.  Moving on, a second problem here is that one must assume that those who are descendants of the originating group maintain the cultural types earlier meaning.  While this will certainly be true in some cases, it is not true in all.  For some African descended peoples, dreadlocks are just a hair style and do not signify resistance.  If this is the case, and the argument is that this earlier meaning is what is valuable, then presumably these individuals, who do not maintain that meaning, should not be making use of the style because it is appropriation without the incorporation of meaning.  However, I have never seen an anti-appropriationist making this claim, and I don’t expect that many would.  Thus, it seems that somehow those who descend from the supposed originating group have the right to use the “thing” without any meaning, but that others do not.  It is unclear to me though why this should be the case if the meaning is what has the most importance and is what makes appropriation a problem.

Furthermore, and briefly, it may be the case that groups that the “thing” does not originate with might find real and important meaning in it.  Religious or spiritual rituals are an obvious example of this.  Even if they originated with a different group, European descended cultures might still find a great deal of value in them; these values may even be similar to the value placed upon the “thing” by the originating group.  If that’s the case, is it a bad thing?  If so, why?

(2b) This response is a bit simpler and, frankly, is one that I am sympathetic to.  It goes something like this: those who are a part of the group that is being appropriated are offended by your taking, or borrowing, their cultural forms.  Who cares what the argument is?  Stop being a dick by offending people with your white privilege.  I think this arguments pragmatism and simplicity is what makes it appeal to me so much.  However, there are some important holes in it that I want to address.

Hole 1: This argument homogenizes the supposed originating group.  To take dreadlocks as an example, I can state from personal experience that not all African-descended peoples are offended when white folks have dreads.  Some are, but others dig it.  I received many compliments from African-Americans on my dreads when I had them.  I cannot say the same of my mohawk, but I rarely encounter Native Americans.  Therefore, if the argument is that people are offended, the question is why do we privilege those who are offended over those who are pleased?  The answer might be that we simply shouldn’t offend people, and those who like it won’t be offended by white people not using those cultural forms.  However, this strikes me as a rather weak argument.  After all, if you are arguing that our first and primary goal should be to never offend anyone, then the argument falters if I’m offended by being told not to have dreads of a mohawk.  In that instance, shouldn’t I be left alone?  I doubt it, but that’s why the argument doesn’t work very well.

Hole 2: It is almost exclusively whites who are attacked for appropriation.  Ultimately, I don’t think this is such a bad thing.  Whites are primarily the group that have oppressed these others, killed them, enslaved them… etc… so we really shouldn’t whine about being told what to do or not do here.  However, in reference to appropriation, it’s problematic.  Why is it not a problem for non-Iroquois descended Native Americans to have mohawks?  Can African-Americans have mohawks?  What about Mexicans who trace their lineage to indigenous groups, but not any groups who made use mohawks?  There are good reasons that whites should deal with the most attacks for anti-appropriation arguments, but I do not think that there is a good reason that other groups can appropriate unproblematically if appropriation is necessarily a problem rather than a problem in context.  Anti-appropriationists might even agree with me on this, I’m not sure, but I think it’s an important point to make.

(3) That whites, again, I think rightly, deal with the majority of anti-appropriationist attacks leads to another problem connected to (1) above: the problem is the assumption that not only is there an inherent cosmogony of cultural types, but that there cannot be more than one historical moment in which this cultural “thing” came into existence, disconnected from one another.  This is simply not true.  For example, in the case of dreadlocks, one need only go as far as Wikipedia to see all the different cultures that have used this style.  The Scottish, now a white culture, also used them; so did Vikings and Germanic tribes.  In the case of mohawks, a 2,000 year old male body was found in Dublin with a mohawk.  Many cultural forms, then, have a diverse history with varying groups that developed in some cases separately, and maybe in some cases together (again, see (1) above).  With this in mind, why don’t all the groups have an equal claim to their meaning and importance?

This also leads me to a subsequent point: why are some things attacked and not others?  The best illustration I can think of for this point is facial hair.  As many people know, very long beards can have very significant meaning for some groups, such as some Muslim or Islamic cultures.  However, I have never heard an anti-appropriationist argue that white men should not grow long beards.  Why not?  It seems that there are only two possible answers to this.  Either, (1) it’s because white men can grow beards naturally, just like many other men, or (2) because beards have a history of importance to white cultures as well.  However, if that’s the case, then (1) should also negate the problem for whites who can naturally grow dreads, as some can.  And mohawks are certainly not any less natural than any other haircut.  Furthermore, many Native American tribes valued long hair very highly, so should whites not grow their hair long?  Response (2) should also be negated by the preceding paragraph, showing that this is not only the case for beards.

All of this leads me to the conclusion that the problem with appropriation, or cultural borrowing, is contextual.  Because it is a cultural thing the problem cannot be that  it is literally taken or degraded.  When the elite appropriate the surplus value of the proletariat, they are literally taking something from the laborer that would otherwise belong to him or her, he or she has less wealth because of it.  The same cannot be said of cultural forms that are a limitless resource with infinite meaning and use-value.  So the final question is: in what contexts should whites, like myself, recognize that we should not be making use of those things that, to the best of our knowledge, might not have originated with European cultures?

There are a few obvious examples of super-problematic appropriations.  These include, but are far from limited to, sports teams’ usage of Native American symbols, frat parties based on Native American “costumes” or “ghetto parties” in which white frat assholes dress up in what they consider “funny” “ghetto” (read: urban African American) clothing, and the use of non-white clothing and styles or traditions for “comical” but non-satirical purposes, such as when whites, in a workplace even, dress up as a non-white culture for a comical performance.  The latter is so obvious, based on the fucked up, racist history of minstrelsy and black face, that it should go without saying, but I know that it doesn’t.  Let’s be clear: these things are all racist and white folks should fucking knock it off!  And, in the process of knocking it the hell off, white folks should not whine and moan about the fact that they’re not allowed to do this shit.

In all of these cases, as I mentioned above, it seems that the most significant problem is connected to the fact that the appropriater is maintaining the assumed originary meaning.  In other words: why is it a problem for a white business person to wear “hip hop” clothing as a joke in the workplace, but Eminem is a legitimate performer (regardless of whether you like his music)?  The answer, it seems, is that Eminem, for all his problems, is an actual hip-hop artist and a part of the hp-hop culture.  The white business person, most often, is not.  Furthermore, the white business person is treating hip-hop as a joke, they are partaking in racist minstrelsy, while Eminem takes hip-hop very seriously.  Eminem has appropriated–borrowed–African-American culture, to the degree that any musical form can be traced strictly to one group, but he is not mocking it.  Instead, he is creating it anew.  Eminem is not engaged in minstrelsy, the business person is.

In the case of mohawks and dreadlocks, I think that we can say something similar. When a frat boy puts up a fake mohawk for an “Indian Party” or when frats host “ghetto” themed parties, perhaps using dreads as a sign of blackness, they are engaged not only in appropriation, but in mocking, degradation, exploitation, and oppression.  They are being racist, and they need to be called the fuck out on it, at least.  However, when punks or other subcultural groups use mohawks and dreadlocks, they are doing something very different: they are using, not mocking, a style that they have found legitimate value in.  They may be recreating its meaning, they may create entirely new meanings.  This, it seems to me, is not necessarily problematic.  In short, they are not necessarily engaged in a kind of colorblind racist minstrelsy, as the frats and so forth are.  This, I think, is a very important difference that helps to separate the problematic from the less problematic, or even unproblematic, forms of cultural borrowing.

Finally, none of this is to say that white folks should not be called out on their shit.  Nor is any of this to say that non-white folks should not criticize whites for appropriation.  I actually take the critiques of what I am calling cultural borrowing very seriously.  I would not have written this blog if I did not take them seriously.  This is something that I, as a white punk, have spent a lot of time thinking about, and I am open to changing my mind about the issue.  But in order for me to change my mind, the above arguments would need to be dealt with.  At times in the past when I’ve been called out for having dreads or a mohawk, sometimes the person calling me out has used my whiteness to avoid addressing my actual arguments (i.e., “Well, of course you can say that you’re not convinced of my arguments, you’re conveniently white!”).  This is an ad hominem and, while not entirely invalid, is not particularly convincing, nor does it make people want to hear the other person’s position.  I think the issues I’ve raised here are at least valid, and that if someone wants to argue against appropriation, then they should do themselves the decency of dealing with these arguments so that their position can be all the stronger for it.

In Defense of Extremism

The term “extremism” has been appropriated by so many different groups to describe their Other that it seems as if the term has very little value left to it.  Like currency, it has been devalued as it has been inflated, and as is usually the case with inflation, then hyperinflation, as this devaluation has occurred, its use has rapidly increased to the point of being worthless.  The worthlessness of the term is well reflected in this cartoon:

The Democrats are extremists?  Please!  I wish!  And it’s this wish that I want to turn to.  Allow me to be blunt: I am an extremist.  According to Wikipedia, “Extremism is any ideology or political act far outside the perceived political center of a society; or otherwise claimed to violate common moral standards.”  Well, I’m an anarchist, and this is certainly beyond the political “center” (though the center is itself a malleable concept–some things that might be considered extremist in America today, such as non-revolutionary forms of socialism, or even socialism generally, including its revolutionary variants, would have been considered fairly mainstream, though not centrist, in the 1920s and 1930s).  Furthermore, I wholly reject moral standards as such.  I am a moral subjectivist, a nihilist of sorts, and this could certainly be understood as ideological extremism (though I would argue that everyone is a moral subjectivist and has nothing more than ethics in the Foucaultian sense that ethics are dialectically and subjectively developed while morals are imposed from an outside authority, such as the church or the state, but that’s a larger conversation than belongs here).

As an extremist, I do not side with all extremisms.  I oppose, for example, conservative incarnations of religious extremism, whether that be Christian (Rick Santorum), Jewish (the Jewish Defense League), Muslim (the Taliban), or otherwise.  I also oppose some other extremist doctrines, such as statist communism, and fascism.  These are all extremist ideals, and I oppose all of them.  In fact, it is in part, though not exclusively, because of my own extremism as an anarchist that I oppose these things!  This is one of the problems with the term “extremism.”  It combines so many schools of thought under a single label that it comes to make little sense and to have virtually no meaning without countless qualifiers and adjectives.  In the case of morons such as those on Fox News, they even create chains of equivalence between these differential ideologies, acting as if they have articulated a common set of goals and actions (chains of equivalence are a term taken from the work of Ernesto Laclau in which differential political movements articulate their identifications, and as such their goals and desires, into a common end.  In practice, the end was not common but different.  The articulation served political purposes and was maintained through linguistic and political games until the point at which it was no longer useful, or the chain of equivalence broke for some other reason–this is an over simplification, but I don’t want to get too caught up in that terminology at the moment).  This attempt at establishing these chains of equivalence is not based upon blatant falsehoods, but makes very little sense to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of politics.  This was most obvious of Glenn Beck who liked to find ways of creating such chains of equivalence between groups as divergent as Greek insurrectionists, Islamic theocrats, statist communists, environmentalists, and student protesters to name just a few.

However, while the term extremism might not be terribly valuable, this does not mean that extremism itself is not valuable.  Just the opposite: extremism is the only thing that has ever changed the world.  Moderates have had their role to play, but they have never pushed for the kind of radical changes that most of us, retroactively, value (I say retroactively because most moderates also value these in hindsight, but would not have supported them at the time because, by definition, as moderates, they could not have supported radicalism).  For their time, some of America’s founding fathers were extremists (and terrorists).  Certainly many of the working class peoples, both black and white, of early “America” even before the revolution (and thus before “America”) were extremists (and, in many cases, terrorists) who did not necessarily side with the elite that we now call the “founding fathers.”  The Black Panther Party and Malcolm X were extremists (and not opposed to violence, and as such possibly terrorists).  We could say the same of The American Indian Movement, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), the Zapatistas, the anarchists in the Spanish civil war, some feminists, and so on and so forth.  All of these individuals are either potentially or necessarily “extremists” relative to the common political discourses of their day.  Furthermore, many of them were terrorists or were in favor of violent actions against the power structures, actions that would today be considered “terrorist” (terrorism being another term that has become so hyper-inflated as to lose most of its value).  And good for them too!  Violence has always been necessary for radical social change.  Non-violent tactics, though a useful tool when used properly, have never been enough.

So, with this in mind, is it even possible for anyone who thinks about language to oppose extremism?  Do you oppose all the groups above, and more?  You may oppose some of them, but all of them?  I suspect not.  Extremism and terrorism are not all bad, necessarily.  They are only bad in relation to the ideological position that they correspond to.  Terrorism and extremism in the name of setting up a Christo-fascist state in America is bad (see Rick Santorum).  Terrorism and extremism such as that which is practiced by the KKK, The Taliban, the CIA and FBI, and Coca-Cola… all of these are well worth opposing because the ideologies that they are based on are opposed to life, freedom, and equality and in support of death, slavery, exploitation, oppression, and suffering.  But why should this mean that we must oppose all extremisms?  It seems to me that we must, instead, embrace some forms of extremism.  This is especially true if we take a long term view of things.  Even if you oppose the extremisms of today, do you also oppose the American Revolution, the French Revolution, slave revolts, The Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, the Greek insurrectionists, the Zapatistas, and so on?  I suspect that for most people the answer to at least one of these is “no, I do not oppose them.”  If that is the case, then you do not oppose extremism.  And, if that is the case, you should ask yourself the following question: are you sure that you oppose the extremism of today?  If you were born 100 years from now, how might you feel about today’s “extremists” if we win, and our “extremism” is tomorrows normal?

Perhaps you do not oppose extremism.  Instead, you just have a particular political ideology that does not side with what you consider “extreme” today.  In other words, your political ideology involves investing your identification into the hegemony, while the “extremists” represent a counter-hegemonic discourse.  My extremist (anarchist) discourse puts me on the side of some struggles (creates a necessarily temporary chain of equivalence with them) and in opposition to others.  Your “centrist” discourse does the same, and your centrism might be another times extremism (furthermore, your centrism is only centrist because of when and where you live–the current American “center” is actuallyFAR to the right relative to a broader political spectrum of ideologies.  This shift has taken place over the last several decades.  Ultimately we might say, to simplify, that it began with Nixon, and then ramped up with Reagan, and has reached the point today where Barrack Obama, considered far left by the right, is right of Richard Nixon himself based on many of the policies implemented under each President).

What I really want to suggest is that we avoid the use of words like “extremist” all together.  The fact is, as I said at the beginning, it’s become a rather useless term through its linguistic hyperinflation.  However, if we were to use the term, it would have to be hyphenated with others.  Phrases like “Right-Wing-American-Christian-Extremist” might be useful.  However, what would be more useful would be an actual understanding of political ideology.  Anarchism, Statist-Communism, Libertarian-Capitalism, Theocracy… all of these are, contemporarily, often considered extremist in the United States and should not be lumped together; in practice, no chain of equivalence is established between them, and any attempt to do so commits ideological violence upon the adherents to those ideologies.  Glen Beck may have attempted to show that there was an imaginary chain of equivalence between these discourses, but Glen Beck is bat-shit-crazy, and no such chain actually exists.  So, my suggestion?  Learn your political and economic theory and use the terms that better correspond to what you actually mean.  Doing so would actually improve political dialogue between people of different perspectives and would also allow us to better understand our ideologies.  When I say that I think the Tea Party is a quasi-fascist group, I really do mean “fascist.”  I understand enough about the ideology of fascism (and recognize that while Nazism was a fascist ideology, fascism does not necessitate genocide or racism necessarily, though nationalism and xenophobia are probably essential to it) to properly apply those extremist identitarian labels to particular groups.  I think being able to do this is important, and that we would be in a better place if more people could do so.

Fuck The Police…?

Those who know me will find it to be no surprise that I hate the cops.  While I may not bring it up all the time, I do not keep this a secret and I will defend opposition to the cops.  However, when I do so, I often get the following response, which I meant to shut down conversation, or at least to be a response that is hard to argue with: “There’s a few bad apples, but most cops are decent people who want to help.”  Personally, I am not sure if I agree with this statement.  It seems to me that when we see cops brutalizing people every day around the world, when we constantly see murders and rapes being committed by cops, and when we are talking about a job that literally requires a willingness to use excessive force, and possibly to commit homicide, then we have to question whether or not these are are just a few bad apples.  It might be more likely that there are “a few good apples” (I do suspect that not all cops are pure evil, even though I’m down the ACAB line).

However, I have no intentions of trying to prove this.  The reason for this is that I do not think the “apples” argument matters.  Frankly, it’s just not the point, and I plan to illustrate why.

First, the Nazis.  Now, hold on, I am not about to say that cops are like Nazis.  I’ve had enough of the hyperbolic comparisons between any given group and Nazis, even though it sometimes applies (The Nazis were fascists, and so fascist groups like the Tea Party can be legitimately compared to them, but it’s not terribly useful in conversation unless you’re talking to someone who has actually done the work to understand what fascism means as a political and economic philosophy, which most contemporary Americans will not have done).  However, the Nazis are a useful example in this context without being a direct comparison.  Frankly, today, few Americans have any understanding of the Nazis.  This is for two reasons: (1) the Nazis are rightfully remembered as committing some of the word atrocities that have ever been committed; (2) the Nazis lost the war (if the American colonizers had lost to the Native Americans, they would be remembered alongside the Nazis, as they fucking should be).  Because of this, very few Americans recognize that the Nazi party was about more the genocide: it was a fascist political party organized around a coherent, if vile, political and economic theory that guided their actions.  In fact, it was organized in a way not very different from most other organizations in the modern world.  Furthermore, fascism does not require genocide or even racism.  But I digress… all the evidence suggests that your average Nazi was not an anti-Semitic zealot, nor vehemently dedicated to the Nazi party as such.  In fact, the Nazi party actively avoided the use of anti-semitic zealots, because what they wanted was obedience to hierarchy and authority, and you could not count on functional obedience from zealots–they were too hard to control.  Your average Nazi party worker, whether in an office, a death camp, or in the military, was just a normal person going about their day.  In most cases, they had no direct hand in committing atrocities (in fact, the death factory that was the Nazi party was organized so well that no one person almost ever killed anyone off the battle field anymore than just one person makes a car in Detroit).  These were just normal people.  And, whether you want to believe it or not, if your average American at that point in time had been raised in Germany, they too would likely have committed the same simple acts!  Experiment after experiment has shown that when you (1) separate people into conflicting groups and (2) implement an authority system that allows for the removal of responsibility from the actor to some outside authority, the most normal, kind people will do awful things.  In fact, they will do awful things even more directly than your average Nazi party member did.  The Milgram Experiments are one of the best examples of this, though there are many other examples, and the Nazis made use of this fact masterfully.  If you want evidence of all the claims I’ve made here, you should read this book.  It’s one of my favorite books and will help any modern person understand both fascism and Nazism specifically in a way that gets past their evil and to their ideology, methodology, and functioning, which is much more important to understand if we want to oppose fascists now and in the future.

I’m stressing this point for the following reason: knowing this, one could honestly say that your average Nazi was not an evil person, but just a normal person doing their job, and that rarely did they intend to bring about The Holocaust and the death of millions.  So you could honestly say that in the Nazi party most people were, generally speaking, “good people” even though the accumulation of their acts were horrific.  In fact, it’s even easier to say this than about the police today because the Nazi party went to such lengths to make sure that no one person was responsible for the killings.  We cannot say the same about the police.

However, even if you’re willing to accept these historical facts–and I promise you, they are accurate–we can still say, “Fuck Nazis!”  We can still hate Nazis, and we can still wish to see the abolition of Nazis.  The fact is that Nazism is a vile, disgusting thing that should be destroyed.  Even when we recognize that most Nazis were just normal people in Germany, we should not have to then defend Nazis, protect Nazis, or get mad when someone says “Fuck Nazis!”

FUCK NAZIS!

What I am arguing is that I can say “Fuck The Police” in the exact same way.  If you believe that the cops who murder, brutalize, rape, and profile every fucking day are just a “few bad apples,” that’s fine.  It can be true and I’ll still say “Fuck The Police.”  The police are a part of a system that I despise.  Worse yet, they defend that very system, sometimes with their lives!  This puts them in opposition to any revolutionary for as long as that remains true.  It should put them in opposition to any loving person, though that’s clearly not the case.  The fact is, your average person defends the cops for the same reason your average German would have defended the Nazis and in exactly the same ways.  If a cop is willing to turn his gun on the politicians and the capitalists, then s/he is on our side (and will not be a cop for much longer, as they’ll quickly be kicked out, or possibly killed).  Until then, fuck ’em.

So unless you’re equally willing to defend Nazis and police, don’t tell me it’s just a few bad apples.  I don’t care.  Fuck the police!  They are a part of a racist, sexist, classist, oppressive, exploitative, capitalist system.  The only way that inequality and oppression has ever been maintained is through the use of the state’s oppressive apparatuses, including the fucking police.  If it wasn’t for the cops (and the military), or their cultural manifestation at any given time, most forms of oppression, including slavery and class, would have been abolished much sooner, if they ever could have been started at all.  As long as the cops are continuing to defend these systems, I have no interest in defending them.

(From Occupy Oakland)

Derrick Jensen’s Moral System + Brief Reflections on His Recent Statements

First, the reflections on Jensen being an asshole recently…

I am currently kind of pissed off at Derrick Jensen.  As many of you will know, he was recently quoted by Chris Hedges in what can only be described as an impressively bad article in reference to “black bloc anarchists” (a highly problematic term).  Not only did Jensen insult “black bloc anarchists” (still problematic) and break solidarity with the left (which is something he accuses “black bloc anarchists” (seriously, what the fuck?) of doing, ironically), but he contradicted his own writing.  It made it all the worse that the very day this article came out I had been reading Endgame in a diner while eating breakfast as my car was being worked on and had read a chapter in which he not only accepts violence (and good for him too) but defends black bloc tactics (“tactics,” not “anarchists” or “group” or “organization”).  Either Jensen has sold out, or he’s highly contrary and possibly hypocritical (as Chris Hedges definitely is, as evidenced by this article written a few years ago–compare it to his most recent and you’ll see what I mean).  Many people have addressed Hedges’ incessant and idiotic anti-solidarity whining since the article broke (this piece by David Graeber does the best job of addressing what Hedges got wrong, in my opinion), but this piece does the best job of addressing Jensen’s role, I think.

After reading Hedges article and considering Jensen’s words I had to consider whether it was worth my time to keep reading Jensen’s work.  After all, if he’s that much of an inconsistent hypocrite, then how much can I really learn from him?  But I realized that I was looking at it all wrong.  The fact is, lots of very important people are internally inconsistent.  Someone I am influenced by is Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first person to publicly pronounce himself an “anarchist.”  Unfortunately, Proudhon was also a sexist and an anti-semite.  Must we wholly denounce Proudhon (or Nietzsche, or Marx, etc.) because of this?  No.  We must denounce his problems, but recognize that his misogyny is actually inconsistent and in contrast to the ideologies in his work.  With this in mind we can still respect and be influenced by Proudhon (or Nietzsche, or Marx, etc.) without glorifying or deifying him: he was a human, and he was at times inconsistent.  He was also brilliant and anarchy (and communism–Marx stole some great ideas from Proudhon) would not be what it is without him.  I’ve decided I need to take a similar approach with Jensen and engage with his work not with him as a flawed man, which he is.  Just like I should not glorify the flaws in his work if it turned out he was as nice and cuddly as a teddy bear, I should not deify all he’s said just because he might not be entirely wonderful as a person (something I knew was a possibility going into this), and if his work has something to offer (and it does) then this is more important than Jensen’s hypocrisies, which are many.

Of course, I’m still pissed of at Jensen.

With all that being said, as promised, I am now going to write a blog in which I compliment Derrick Jensen’s work.  Not surprisingly, what interests me most right now is his development of a moral system (my dissertation emphasizes theories of ethics and morality, so this is something quite close to my heart).  I do not believe that his system is complete, as I’ll address at the end, but I do find it interesting and worth thinking about.

First, two quotes from Endgame: Volume 1 that are necessary to begin to understand Jensen’s moral ideas.

“If the foundation of my morality consists not of commandments from a God whose home is not primarily of this Earth and whose adherents have committed uncountable atrocities, nor of laws created by those in political power to serve those in political power, nor even the perceived wisdom–the common law–of a culture that has led us to ecological apocalypse, but if instead the foundation consists of the knowledge that I am an animal who requires habitat–including but not limited to clean water, clear air, non-toxic food–what does my consequent morality suggestion about the rightness or wrongness of, say, pesticide production?”  (Endgame: 32).

“When you take the life of someone to eat or otherwise use so you can survive, you become responsible for the survival–and dignity–of that other’s community.  If I eat a salmon–or rather, when I eat a salmon–I pledge myself to ensuring that this particular run of salmon continues, and that this particular river of which that salmon are a part thrives.  If I cut a tree, I make the same pledge to the larger community of which it’s a part.  When I eat beef–or for that matter carrots–I pledge to eradicate factory farming” (Endgame: 138).

There are several parts to this system, then: (1) Jensen’s moral system is based on our embodied nature.  We are physical, embodied beings and this embodiment produces certain needs, which include most importantly food, water, and air, but could also perhaps be expanded to include habitat, sexualities, social interactions, emotional well-being, and so forth.  (2) We are responsible for those things that help us maintain our bodily well-being, as they are responsible for us.  By not being responsible for those things, we slowly commit suicide by destroying that which keeps our selves–which is our bodies (there is no Cartesian duality for Jensen, nor for I (or maybe there is for Jensen, he talks of “spirit” in an oddly ambiguous and undefined way, though at other times he seems to be clearly a materialist… but I digress)–alive.

This raises an interesting idea that Jensen doesn’t mention (which surprises me).  It gives us some insight into why people are so reluctant to engage in revolution.  Based on the second quote above, we can say that Jensen’s morality requires that we commit ourselves to protecting that which sustains us.  However, for many of us, it is civilization, capitalism, the state, and its associated apparatuses and mechanisms that [appear to] sustain us.  Yes, yes, of course they are actually killing us!  Of course they only sustain us just enough to exploit us!  DUH!!  But for many people, on a day-by-day basis, this is not their immediate and spontaneous experience.  Most people may feel as if they are reliant upon mass produced products, the state, and capitalism to survive, and so, in line with Jensen’s morality, they pledge themselves to protecting that system (even if they take this pledge unconsciously).  Every day people eat, breathe, and drink capitalism and the state, and so they are committed to protecting it because it appears as if it protects their embodied well-being to do so.

This appearance is a lie.

Don’t get me wrong, to some degree it has to be true.  Those who are hungry and reliant upon food stamps for survival are having their continued embodiment protected.  The same goes for the homeless being sheltered, the ill being cared for on Medicare or Medicaid, America’s only socialized medical systems.  But ultimately these systems, though they do good, are there to protect the larger system–capitalism and the state–that are killing all of us (and the planet).  Why are there more empty homes than homeless people in Philadelphia?  Because the cops, the state, protect property, not people.  Why does India (and America) dump food into the oceans (or leave it to rot) when Indian (and American… and every other type of fake imagined community grouping) people are starving?  Because food costs money (an amazingly bizarre concept, when you think about it) and those starving are poor.  Why can’t they just take the food?  Well, that brings us back to the cops, the state, who are mostly (though not entirely and not always) controlled by capitalists and the elite.

In other words, while we all are to differing degrees reliant upon this system that, if we are paying attention, we despise, we are only reliant upon it to offer us half-assed solutions to the very problems that the system creates and that it defends.  Our embodied well-being would be far better off if we could abolish this system and implement anarchist-communism and some version of green-anarchism.  Therefore, it would be more moral to destroy this system and implement these alternatives than to protect it, but it may still be moral to protect those few things the system does that helps people in the meantime.

In addition, from Jensen’s morality, we can also see that while we are reliant upon capitalism and the state, we are more reliant on what it gives us–food, housing, etc.  And, ultimately, it does a very bad job of that!  Furthermore, if it is really those things we are reliant upon, and not the system that at times provides us with them, then we have to ask the question: are we protecting those things?  And, if we are protecting capitalism and the state, then the answer is quite clearly NO!  We are protecting that which is destroying those things.  Therefore, the only real problem is seeing far enough down the tracks to realize that we’re killing ourselves in the longterm–the train may be getting you to where you’re going, but if there are no breaks and a wall at the end of the line, then you’re pretty well fucked; but hey, you’ll still get there.

Therefore, from Jensen’s morality, we’ve already derived (1) an explanation for why so many people do not engage in revolution and in fact defend the systems of oppression in their lives, and (2) an explanation for why (1) is a shortsighted and inaccurate thing to do, and why something else–revolution and anarchism–would be more moral.  Not bad.

However, for a moral system to really do some serious work, it does need applicability to other venues, and fortunately I think Jensen’s is applicable other than in the realm of environmentalism.  And, for fun, I want to see where it leads us if we consider black bloc tactics (notice I said “black bloc tactics” because black bloc is a tactic, not a group, nor a coherent ideology), since Jensen has fucked up so badly on that point recently.  Basically, to do this, we have to answer the following question: are black bloc tactics being used to protect our embodied well-being?   Or, conversely, are they being used to destroy that which harms the long term sustainability of our embodied well-being and those things that we are reliant upon, such as food, water, air, and housing?

Phrased the first way, the answer could be no: after all, you might get the shit kicked out of you by the cops, a very embodied experience.  This is a possible problem with Jensen’s morality because it potentially promotes inaction is you might be physically hurt when taking any given action.  However, I think this is clearly not what Jensen wants to suggest.  Instead, he is suggesting a moral system in which we have pledged to defend that which we are reliant upon, that whose life we have taken.  In fact, we may even need to defend this with our lives, as its’ life has been used to extend our own.  Understood this way, the question is, are these tactics being used with the goal of destroying the culture that is destroying us and that is destroying that which we depend upon for our continued existence as embodied beings?  And to that the answer is quite clearly yes, as long as the tactics are used well.  And, even when used poorly, they are at least attacking that system, and that makes it hard to argue that they are immoral unless they are doing some sort of obvious harm to one’s comrades or something like that.

In short, under Jensen’s moral system, black bloc tactics are defensible, even good.  Of course, at one point Jensen knew this.  He says as much in Endgame (though not through a direct connection to his moral theory), and that’s why it pisses me off so much that he’s done a 180 more recently.  However, like Proudhon, I will continue to read Jensen’s work, taking what I find useful from it and eschewing that which I find less useful, which may include Jensen himself, if not all of his ideas.

As a concluding note, I think there are questions to which Jensen’s moral system might not apply that are incredibly important to developing a moral or ethical system.  The most obvious one is: what does it mean to live a good life?  (This is a question that ethicists have often held central to their work.)  Jensen is clearly throughout his work dancing around the idea of “the good life.”  After all, much of his approach to why “civilization” is a problem for humans specifically (rather than everything else it is killing) is based on his approach to the good life–he clearly thinks that there is a good life out there, or at least there was, and that we have been separated from this by the alienating forces of “civilization,” including capitalism and the state.  However, I do not believe that he has yet fully articulated precisely why this life is ultimately a better life than the one in which we live–what makes it the good life?  In other words, what is it about a “primitive” life that makes it superior to a “civilized” life?  Is it the extra leisure?  The increased equality?  The environmental protection?  All the other advantages Jensen believes it has?  All of these, probably.  But for a moral system to work, Jensen must articulate why these things in particular, and the “primitive” version of them specifically, are conducive to living “the good life” more than are, say, some technocratic anarcho-futurist approach to “the good life,” which is actually based on many of the same goals (increased equality, more leisure, food access, etc.).  I am not sure if Jensen will answer these questions, but I think he should.  Early on in Endgame he attempts to address how our nature as embodied beings makes rape so horribly immoral an act.  He admits there that he has not yet been able to come up with an exact way of saying why this is the case (though he says he almost did, whatever that means).  I think that if he considers what “the good life” means, and what makes it “the good life” in connection with his points (1) and (2) above, then he will take a significant step in answering the question of why rape, and other things such as murder, are morally reprehensible, but why breaking a window in defense of freedom and the Earth is not even morally problematic, no matter what Jensen might think right now.

Against the Dogmatic Fetishization of Non-Violence

This is not a new piece on my part.  It is something that I wrote a few months ago, and as such some of it is outdated (such as the suggestion that cops had left Occupy Philly alone–at the time it was mostly true). However, in light of Chris Hedges’ (and Derrick Jensen’s) recent comments, I feel that the main theme of the piece remains appropriate.  I may address these issues again in my next blog post, which will be about Derrick Jensen’s approach to moral theory in Endgame (a book in which, oddly enough, he defends black bloc, property destruction, violence, and a diversity of tactics…)

This post originally appeared here.

Note: Nothing contained within here is meant to spur anyone to commit acts of violence.  While I am a defender of violence and threats thereof as a tactic, I do not necessarily believe that our movement is in a place to begin committing these acts (though I think we should stand in solidarity with those who choose to do so, such as some in Oakland and elsewhere).  It seems to me that, at this stage, it might be most important to build linkages with others outside of our movement, and if violence alienates those individuals, then perhaps it is a tactic best not used in the name of Occupy at this point in time (though I think we should leave that open to debate rather than assuming from the outset that violence is an illegitimate tactic).  Instead, this article is meant to challenge the notion that violence is never acceptable and that only non-violent means serve legitimate purposes in a movement.  I also do not intend this article to fetishize violence—I believe that both tactics have merit, and that both have a time and place.

Note 2: The first few paragraphs of this article involve some “theory” before moving on to pragmatics.  I hope you’ll work through it! 

Tonight, Occupy Philly will be holding a candlelight vigil for non-violence.  The Facebook page for this even reads, “We invite our allies and friends to join us in expressing our earnest desire for continued nonviolence and an ongoing, peaceful dialogue with the City of Philadelphia.”  It is unclear to me what use this language serves in light of recent events.  While a candlelight vigil against the physical assaults on our comrades in New York, Oakland and elsewhere makes sense, the simple fact of the matter is that the vast majority of violence that has been committed at Occupy protests nationally has been committed not by Occupiers, but by authorities such as the police, in apparent collusion with the federal government.  So why is the candlelight vigil directed primarily at us?  What use does it serve?

It seems to me that throughout the Occupies nationally, there has been a dogmatic Fetishization of non-violence; there has practically emerged a religious cult of the non-violent who are hijacking any other messages and denouncing the “sinners” of “a diversity of tactics” (seen above: are those who might consider using violence not your friends and allies?  Are they not the 1%?  Are we not the proletariat?).  When I use the term “fetishization,” I mean it in its’ philosophical rather than sexual articulation (though it would be a mistake to construct these as wholly separate conceptual categories).  When something, such as an object or other man-made construct, is fetishized it is endowed with supernatural powers and is believed to have an inherent value unto itself and independent of any other existential reality of the object.  In the work of Karl Marx, the idea of fetishes in relation to commodity fetishism is used to describe something that people obsess over or concentrate on that prevents them from seeing the truth of the object or system in place.  To move Marx’s analysis away from economics, we could say that the symbolic value of something is transformed into an inherent and objective value that the object has unto itself, which the fetishizer may treat as an axiom of the object.

In short, it is my opinion that we have seen such a value attributed to the concept of non-violence.   Non-violence as a tactic has been treated by many in the Occupies as the starting point of dialogue rather than something to be debated.  Non-violence is treated with a value inherent to itself that does not require dialogue, debate, or dialectical reasoning—in short, it is treated as if its value is axiomatic. When violent acts occur, even if those acts are of violence against something as arbitrary and unethical as private property—which is only itself every created and protected by the violence of the state, the capitalists, and alienated labor—those who have broken windows or some other such thing are immediately denounced (I would say that they are thrown under the bus, but I suspect that many on the side of pacifism would reject the violent metaphor).  Often these individuals are assumed to be anarchists—and perhaps they are—but so what?  There are both violent and non-violent anarchists.  Must you homogenize and represent the group for us?  And is our Occupation solidarity so weak that it breaks as easily as the glass on a storefront window the minute the religion of non-violence is confronted with an act that might be interpreted as violent?  Are the pacifists so certain that their method is not only best, but that it actually works, that the very possibility of some other form of action need be removed from the table, necessarily?

The simple fact of the matter is that radical social change has never taken place without either violence or at least the threat thereof.  Even the saints of the church of non-violence would often have not been successful if violence had not at least been on the table: Martin Luther King Jr. was successful in part because groups such as the Black Panthers, armed and ready, scared the white establishment so much that King’s non-violent methods seemed more acceptable.  Gandhi’s movement in India was in part successful because of the horrors of World War II, which bankrupted England.  In addition, there were violent activists in India at this time too, who are not often heard from in history texts.

However, if the dogmatic fetishization of non-violence is going to be enforced by the Occupying Powers That Be, then I encourage the following: either at tonight’s candlelight vigil, or at a future General Assembly, denounce the following, even if retrospectively: The Boston Tea Party, The American Revolution, The French Revolution, Native Americans fighting against colonization, slave uprisings against their masters and the racist American government, non-pacifist uprisings of poor people against the bourgeois ruling elite in America and the rest of the world, race riots in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, sabotage on behalf of workers in the 1930s or slaves in the American south, the events of May 1968, the Spanish Civil War, the acts of the Zapatistas in Mexico, the acts of the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement (AIM), the Arab Spring, the Greek insurrectionists, the Weathermen, John Brown, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Malcolm X… the list, of course, goes on… in short, denounce many of our radical forebrothers and foresisters who gave their freedom, blood and lives for a cause greater than themselves, who recognized that at times violence was a necessary tool.  History teaches us repeatedly that the state will use violence, and that the state is only ever—EVER—threatened when violence is at least a possibility on behalf of the people.

Non-violence is one tool among many, and it is a legitimate tool with many wonderful and beautiful uses, and I encourage everyone to participate in non-violent acts, and I respect individuals who for personal or religious reasons will never be able to bring themselves to engage in acts of violence.  But to engage in the dogmatic fetishization of non-violence, to become an adherent to the church of non-violence, will only work to separate us.  Historically, the state has worked hard to separate movements.  We see examples of this at least as early as 1636 when the state of Virginia passed laws granting advantages to the White indentured servants while placing all Black servants in permanent slavery.  The state of Virginia was scared because a united working class was rising up and using acts of sabotage and violence against them.  We see many such examples of historical splitting of movements, of ways of keeping us looking at each other rather than at the “1%” who are entirely willing to use violence against us as well as against our brothers and sisters in Iraq, Afghanistan and anywhere else that the neo-liberal power structure is challenged.

We in Philadelphia have so far been left alone, more or less, by the police.  This will inevitably not last.  However, our brothers and sisters around the country and the world have not been so lucky, and they have been fighting back.  Who are any of we to judge what they need to do to continue this movement?

When they kick out your front door, how you gonna come?  With your hands on your head or on the trigger of your gun?  ~The Clash~

What do you mean you’re against “civilization”?!

I believe that definitions are pivotal for any meaningful discussion.  This is especially true among those who may disagree with one another on any given point.  It is simple to have a conversation with those you agree with, but challenging to have one with someone you disagree with.  If you can’t imagine what I mean, just think about discussing “freedom” at a table with an anarchist, a statist-communist, a libertarian-capitalist, a democrat, a republican, and a fascist.  It is quite likely that all would claim to believe in some [re-]articulation of “freedom” as a valuable conceptual category that they wish to defend.  However, it should be abundantly clear that at least some would be working from largely, though not exclusively, different definitions.  If we drew this as a Venn-Diagram, there would be at least some crossover, more or less depending on which group the circles represented, but the definitions would be different in important ways.

This is just one of the many reasons that I felt coming into this “primitivist” reading project that offering a definition of “civilization” would be essential.  I am happy to say that Derrick Jensen does, in fact, offer a definition of civilization (in spite of the fact that many of his detractors claim otherwise).  However, I believe that there are some important flaws in his definition that I think cause some significant problems in Jensen’s primitivist argument.

First, his definition: Jensen claims that civilization is the accumulation of humans into cities.  This raises a second question though.  What are cities?  Fortunately, Jensen also answers this question.  Cities, and as such civilization, are based on the accumulation of people into areas called cities, which are areas densely populated “enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life” (17).  In short, for Jensen, civilization is the large scale accumulation of people into geopolitical areas whose lifestyle is based on the taking of resources from areas that are outside of that geopolitical region in order to satiate the needs of those within the geopolitical region (there’s element of Sartrean ethics here, but that’s for another day).

First, a problem with the definition…

Jensen claims that individuals living in areas outside of the geopolitical region do not willingly give up their resources to others.  However, this is not entirely accurate.  While civilization is 10,000 – 12,000 years old, long-distance trade has existed for at least 130,000 years.  Other sources suggest it might be as much as 150,000 years.  In addition, even within the confines of the civilization’s quantitative existence, during times when “uncivilized” lifestyles were still commonly practiced there is evidence that even these groups participated in long-distance trade.  Jensen may, perhaps, solve this problem by claiming that these groups did not rely upon this kind of trade for the necessities of their existence.  However, he would have to show this, but does not seem to even engage with the problem.  Instead, a reader could easily come away from Endgame believing that this had never happened.

However, I think there is a larger problem.  The problem emerges from the fact that his arguments have to follow from his definition.  I am not, however, necessarily convinced that they do.  First, it is not necessarily the case that all those who lived outside of civilization lived in small scale groupings.  In Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, he shows that upon Columbus’s accidental landing in America (which saved the life of Columbus and his entire crew, as they did not have the supplies to survive an actual journey around the world), many native groups were living in areas as densely populated as some European cities.  Were these cities by Jensen’s meaning?  Perhaps not, if they did not rely upon resources from outside their region.  However, if that is the case, then dense populations don’t immediately prodice “cities.”  If that is the case, then perhaps the essential element is reliance upon outside resources.  If this latter point is the case, then we have to ask: would Jensen be willing to accept cities if they did not rely upon this?  I suspect, on the contrary, the fact that cities would still destroy their landbase for their existence would mean he would not support them.  But then why work this the definition offered?

And while we are at it, what exactly counts as an “outside recourse”?  How far away does the accumulation of a good need to be in order to count as “outside”?  If I borrow something from my neighbor, is this outside?  What if they live a mile away?  Where does the “outside” begin and end?  And is this really the problem that needs to be confronted?  Isn’t the bigger problem the process by which this accumulation takes place (in relation to both the producers and the land on which they live)?  If we could gather resources without exploiting the population for whom the resource is indigenous and without doing significant harm to the earth, would it be so bad to be reliant upon these, or even to simply decide to have them available, even if we could live without them?  If so, why?  If not, then why is this an essential part of the definition of civilization?

In short, how does Jensen’s definition of civilization lead us directly to a need for “stone age” ways of being?  Even if we accept his definition as it is, a call for the end of civilization is then only a call for the end of cities and long-distance trade to fulfill needs.  And yet Jensen (and other primitivists) go much further, calling for an end to agriculture, housing, and so forth–in short, they wish to return to a gatherer-hunter way of being.  If this is the case, then the definition needs work, as they are opposing far more than “civilization” by their own definition.

Would it really be so bad if people chose to participate in a rural-agricultural way of communal life?  And if these individuals chose to import some resources–say oranges from Florida–would that be so bad?  While I think Jensen makes some excellent arguments, I do not see any good arguments (yet) against such a way of life.  So why the stone age?  In other words, why primitivism?  I’m generally critical of the word “primitive.”  However, in this case, I think it’s far more accurate than “anti-civilization” based on Jensen’s own definition.  He is more than just anti-civilization, he is a primitivist.

Finally, Jensen claims that civilization literally cannot sustain itself–it is impossible because we are reliant upon too much energy production.  Because we are rapidly running out of oil, industrial civilization will collapse, and none of the “green” technologies can replace oil.  However, there is evidence to suggest that this may just be wrong.  Advances in solar technology will potentially allow us to far exceed the energy used in the world today within the next decade or less just using the energy from a small part of the Sahara desert.  Imagine if similar installations were put in other deserts around the world.  We could power this planet for a very very long time.  If that were successful, would Jensen change his mind?  I suspect not; I don’t know that he even should, as industrial civilization would still be quite harmful overall.  In fact, a new energy source that is far less limited might make it even more harmful as we remove yet another limit to profit and exploitation.  But my point is that his definition and arguments don’t necessarily lead to this opposition, and they need to for his argument to work well.

This is not to say, though, that because of this I don’t take his work seriously.  I am actually finding a lot of value in it!  I am just not finding that I am convinced we need to revert to a “stone-age” level of culture and society, which I think is Jensen’s goal.  I think that Jensen offers a lot of really good points, I just don’t think that these points are necessary against civilization as such.  Instead, they seem to be against industrial civilization (and Western Civilization).  On this, I think he makes some excellent points.  But I’m not yet convinced that civilization as such needs to be destroyed just because Western industrial civilization is so destructive.  This is a final problem with his definition: he conflates all civilizations together rather than recognizing their multiplicity.  In doing so, his argument becomes weaker, as there are plenty of counterpoints to his claims about civilization as such; not all civilizations that have existed for the past 10,000 – 12,000 years have been industrial civilizations.  Are they all equally harmful?  Hardly.  But Jensen opposes all of them.  There might be a good reason for this, but it does not follow from his definition of civilization necessarily.

So that’s that for me.  As promised, my next blog post will be a positive review of Jensen’s work, which I really am enjoying and finding a lot of good from.  Just one quick example is the following: “Really, though, this cultural conflation of sex and violence can be reduced to one word: fuck. It’s an extraordinary comment on this culture that the same word that means make love to also means do great violence to” (181).  After reading this, I will have trouble using the word “fuck” as flippantly in reference to sex as I have in the past (I’ll still happily litter my speech with it in other contexts), and I was really quite moved by the statement.  More positive reviews to come!

Why I’m Glad The Fence Came Down

(I am going to cross-post this to my blog at Occupy Philly Media, which I only use for Occupy-specific blogs.)

For those of you who have kept up with my writing in the past, you’re likely aware that I am not a pacifist and that I oppose what I have called “The Dogmatic Fetishization of Non-Violence.”  I originally posted that on my old Occupy Philly Media blog, but it seems to have spread to other anarchist sites around the internet (which is cool by me).  So, knowing that, you probably won’t be surprised to know that I have no problem with the fact that last night, at our rally in solidarity with Occupy Oakland (Occupy Oakland having recently been brutally attacked while trying to take over a completely abandoned building that the city was doing nothing with–the occupiers planned to turn it into a community center to benefit their community), one of the fences to the steps of Dilworth Plaza was torn down, and for a short period of time (10-15 minutes) we retook the steps of our beloved original Occupy before voluntarily leaving those steps (as we had no plans nor the ability to retake it permanently–there were no tents, sleeping bags, etc.).

However, I do not want to reduce my support to a knee-jerk reaction nor to nothing but opposition to the police (who I do continue to loathe, perhaps even more so after I watched them needlessly abuse a female medic, whose lip was split open by the cops for NO REASON, and arrest two of my comrades last night).  Instead, I want to explain why I think that actions such as these are valuable and defensible even if they do not immediately bring an end to capitalism and the state (or even if small scale actions like this, perhaps, cannot bring an end to capitalism and the state unto themselves).

(1) All too often the criticisms of these sort of things, which we might describe as “Black Bloc Tactics” (this is not an entirely fair description, as all forms of sabotage long predate the creation of Black Blocs and have been used by slaves, workers, native people’s, and so forth, all of whom you must necessarily oppose to oppose violence as such), is directed at their lack of usefulness afterwards.  In other words, you’ll hear people say things like, “Sure, you broke some windows [or in this case, moved a fence–it was not even broken, and the cops put it back up after we left], but what are you going to do tomorrow?  How are you creating a better world?”  Well, in the context of Occupy, this criticism quite simply no longer applies.  People are working every damn day to make a better world now (even if it is not so obvious to non-participants now that the encampment is over).

(2) The authorities ability to stop us comes from our own refusal to act (well, OK, that and extreme violence on behalf of the authorities).  Sometimes we should refuse to act–maybe it’s not in our best interest.  But other times, we should act.  My point is that the authorities put up a fence and a sign to tell people that what was once public property no longer is (as of 9:30am EST this morning the land around our city hall has been privatized in a private ceremony on the 9th floor of a corporate building).  We took that fence down and, effectively, told them that it is what we want it to be.  If we want a space, we will take it, and you can try to stop us, but we will do what we want in spite of your stupid fences and your attempts at control.

Make no mistake, this is a power game that we are in.  The police show their power with guns, armor, batons, and violence.  We showed ours last night (even if only briefly).  Admittedly, it’s a minor thing, but what isn’t in the grand scheme of things?  Small tactical victories can be galvanizing, energizing, and powerful for the participants and those watching, even if they make only a small contribution to the larger picture.  In this case, we have yet to see what contribution the fence taking will make to the larger picture.  This was the first time Occupy has had this kind of event (with the possible exception of eviction night)–perhaps there will be more, and if there are they might be inspired by knowing about hat happened last night.  If so, then even this small act could prove valuable to the larger goal of revolution.

(3) Every day in this city the police are committing acts of murder, brutality, and surveillance against communities.  Every damn day!!  Now there are actually large groups of people resisting through various strategies, and these groups have largely emerged out of or grown since Occupy began.  These people, as I said in (1), are working every day to make a better world.  Then, we show up in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Oakland, and we see our enemy–fences, private property, the elite, the police.  And you know what?  It pisses people off.  Good!  So people took a fence down, took the steps of Dilworth Plaza.  Good!  What is so wrong with letting out those emotions?  What is so wrong with making sure everyone knows that Dilworth Plaza has been and will be again OURS, as it always should have been?  Why oppose this simply because you care about the feelings and well-being of an aluminum fence?

(4) Jean-Paul Proudhon tells us that “Property is Theft.”  However, I want to go further and also point out that property is violence.  Private property, state property, and corporate property have only ever been maintained against the people’s desire for equality and freedom by the violence of the state’s repressive apparatuses, such as the police and the military.  As long as this system exists, there is no such thing as non-violence and pacifism.

The fact is, every moment of our lives is infused with violence.  For most of us, our clothing, our food, our interactions, our jobs… they are violent.  Our homes (including my own) are violent, as we only have them via the genocide of America’s indigenous people’s.  This culture, this society, is violent and anyone who claims to be non-violent is simply distancing themselves a little more from this truth, acting a little more alienated from the violence of this world.  And you say not to move a fence?  Please!   We need to move the world!!

So I am glad we took the fence down, and I cannot wait until the day that we also take down every artificial border in this world, and take down capitalist, statist society with it.  And guess what?  Doing that will require some violence!  Until then, taking down a fence and showing our strength, and showing that we are not afraid to take what is ours… well, that’s nice for a night, and I stand with my comrades.

Finally, I want to recommend a poem by an indigenous writer: the title is, “They always tell me I’m too angry,” and I originally read it in John Zerzan’s Against Civilization (which, as anyone reading this blog will know, is a book I take some issue with).  I found the text of it here and I highly recommend it.  It spoke a great deal to me, especially because I too have often been told that I am “too angry.”  If you ask me, in this world, it is damn near impossible to be too angry, even at a fence.

On Zerzan’s Opposition to “Symbolic Culture” (+Lacan, Darwin, and an awesome elephant)

I recently read this article by John Zerzan. It seems to basically sum up his approach to what he calls “symbolic culture,” which I believe we can define as the element of human culture that is based on semiotic representations of the world in which we live. Included in “symbolic culture” would necessarily be art, music, crafts, but also language itself.

I am happy to say that I do not get the impression so far that opposition to “symbolic culture” is inherent to the opposition to civilization. I say that I am happy about this because this is the part of “primitivism” that, frankly, I find the most… absurd. I do not suggest this just because I find value in symbolic culture, but because I disagree with John Zerzan on a central point: I believe that what I will call “semiotic cognition,” or the way in which human consciousness is structured through metaphor and mediated experience, is inherent to humans, while Zerzan flat out rejects this opinion. (I briefly reflect on some elements of mediated experience in my first blog post here, if you’re curious about what my thoughts were on that before reading and writing this.)

Allow me to expand on my disagreement with Zerzan. He argues in the linked article above that, perhaps, the first symbolic culture(s) was / were based in religion (or more accurately, spirituality, I’d suggest). This seems reasonable enough. I’m willing to also believe that religion might not have been the first, but I’ll grant Zerzan that it could have been. Why not? In fact, Zerzan’s disdain for religion, which he also blames “domestication” on, is something I like about him (though that’s for my personal subjective reasons as an atheist). However, already in this argument he makes a critical error. His beginning point is symbolic culture (even though the sub-title of the article involves the phrase “symbolic thought”), while his actual beginning point should be what I’m calling semiotic cognition. As I’ve shown in my own work, semiotic, symbolic, and metaphoric cognition are necessary for the cognitive development of spirituality and later religion (I won’t recount those arguments here, but the link above is to the full article if you want to see how I argue for this point). In short, semiosis comes before spirituality and religion necessarily. The reason I believe that Zerzan is making an error is that while he may be able to trace “culture” to a particular starting point (or, more likely, to a series of various starting points), it is my belief that semiotic cognition is as natural to humans as opposable thumbs and bipedal locomotion (I’m using these to make a point–if you don’t think these are natural to humans, please don’t bother pointing that out, as that’s not really the point).

So from the outset I disagree with Zerzan. However, there are also other problems with his work on this topic. First, the “primitivist” authors seem to generally agree that “civilization” is roughly 6,000 years old (give or take–it might be as much as 10,oo0). However, the first branch of modern humans comes into existence roughly 160,000 years ago (making Zerzan’s claim that there was millions of years before symbolic culture technically accurate, but far from the point). However the earliest known human artwork is at least 30,000+ years old. This leaves us with just under 30,000 years between the first known cave paintings and the point at which “primitivists” want to claim that “civilization” began. There’s more though. Roughly 77,000 years ago, humans recorded information on external objects. Any recording of information outside of the brain would necessarily be a part of semiotic cognition. Almost 20,000 years before that, though, we had created special tools for fishing, implying that our minds had the ability to “represent” fish to us as a long-term acquisition goal. This is a form of early or pre-semiosis.

(And, not to get distracted, but let’s not forget something that might be even older, which is the representational culture of non-human animals. A number of different non-human animals have been shown to engage in representation and semiosis. Elephants are just one such example. Other primates also may engage similarly, and as we all know, some chimps can be taught sign language.)

I point this out for a number of reasons. First, “cultural” artifacts are far harder to keep intact than biological artifacts, which are more likely to be fossilized, and non-written language itself, of course, cannot be fossilized at all. Therefore, even the oldest artwork found or the earliest human “documents” may not represent the oldest that were ever created, and will definitely not represent the earliest linguistic hominids. Second, in order for humans (or non-humans) to create artwork or to record data outside of the self, as Zerzan rightly recognizes, it is necessary for us to have semiotic cognition–it is necessary for us to be able to “represent” the world that we bear witness to in art form, in data on rocks or walls, or even in the tools we use (if artwork represents a fish, a fishing rod also represents a fish, only in a different sense).

In order for any of this to happen, we have to first have what I am calling semiotic cognition. Therefore, semiotic cognition must predate the artwork itself. It is also unlikely that our cognitive ability for representation evolved “all at once,” as it were. In fact, that’s quite simply not often, if ever, how evolution works by our best knowledge (there is some good information about this in Daniel Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea). The evolution of language, as Zerzan points out, also would have required the development of semiotic cognition, and Zerzan is perhaps right to tie language and representation to culture. However, part of what I want to get at is the time gap between the evolution of these cognitive abilities and the start of “civilization” according to “primitivist” authors: if, as I’m suggesting, semiosis long-predates civilization (and the evidence suggests it does), then why should we see semiosis as effectively “to blame” for civilization as such? And why should we need to abolish language, art, and “culture” if we are to abolish “civilization”? I might be willing to grant that it is a prerequisite for civilization, but drawing any sort of direct causal line between the two is just odd at best and perhaps pointless at worst, and the idea that the abolition of the former is necessary for the abolition of the latter makes little sense whatsoever.

There’s also some funny elements of Zerzan’s work here. For example, if is filled with metaphor, a form of representation, and as such a form of semiotic cognition, tied to symbolic culture. Here are just a few examples of many in the text…

“As the substance of culture seems to shrivel and offer less balm to troubled lives, we are led to look more deeply at our barren times.”

“The more involved this internal representational system is, the more distanced we are from the reality around us.”

“Symbolism is an extensive and profound empire, which reflects and makes coherent a world view, and is itself a world view based upon withdrawal from immediate and intelligible human meaning.”

“It is our fall from a simplicity and fullness of life directly experienced, from the sensuous moment of knowing, which leaves a gap that the symbolic can never bridge.”

(As a side note, I’ll give him credit for his use of the phrase “which leaves a gap that the symbolic can never bridge.” One of the basic Lacanian theses is that our entrance into the symbolic through language is an alienating process in which we lose access to the “real.” In this way, Zerzan is latently references Lacan, whose idea this is, another oddity due to how critical he is of postmodernism, which I mentioned in my last post. However, I suspect that he does not directly reference Lacan because doing so would require the recognition of Lacan’s belief that this element of human development is not only necessary, but that our imaging of the pre-linguistic, pre-Oedipal wholeness (“wholeness” being another term Zerzan steals from Lacan) is fantasmatic and, in fact, was never real; it was an illusion created by the pre-Oedipal, pre-mirror phase development of the human infant which is shattered in the moment of separation through the mirror phase. In practice, though, according to Lacan, we never had access to the “real,” which, for Lacan, is itself language-like anyway, and he is famously quoted as saying, “The unconscious is structured like a language.” Lacan’s approach to the symbolic and language may tell us something about why Zerzan positively referneces Frued, to some degree, but never directly references Lacan or gives Lacan credit where credit is due. Anyway… back to the point…)

You might argue that some of the above quotes are not semiotic, but they frankly are. The use of direction to represent emotion is semiotic (“deeply,” “withdrawal,” “progress,” etc.). There is nothing inherent about “moving forward” as a way of understanding “doing better,” for example. The connection between direction and emotion is metaphoric and representational by its nature, and our use of these types of directional metaphors has to do with our evolutionary history (if you believe in Darwinism, that is–I’m willing to engage with debates about that, and about science itself, but for the purposes of this engagement with Zerzan here we have to take it as a starting point). Similarly terms like “shrivel,” barren,” and so forth in reference to culture are quite clearly metaphorical in nature, as “culture” is not the kind of thing that can get wrinkly or lose its ability to reproduce, as it were, in any way other than a metaphorical one (well, it can, but not in the way that Zerzan means it–to better understand this see the way Richard Dawkins’ uses cultural reproduction as Darwinian evolution when discussing memes). The same goes for “leaving a gap” that cannot be “bridged” in reference to experience and emotion. These are all metaphors and tropes, and our usage of this type of speech is a part of the very nature of linguistic creatures, which I’ve argued we necessarily are. In addition, there is evidence that all languages are structured this way. The most recent evidence for this is coming out of neuro-psychological and neural-networking sciences, often in connection to evolutionary biology, psychology, and perhaps chemistry. I also summarize some of this in the article linked to above, and the bibliography for that article could direct you to some of this information.

Zerzan could, I think rightly, argue that this isn’t his fault. Culture and civilization have inculcated metaphor into his very cognitive being. If we had different ways of being in the world we might have different languages, and these different languages would produce different mental states, which might be other than what we have. This I grant him. However, I don’t grant him that language and semiosis are optional parts of the human experience, nor that these are problematic parts of the human experience. Again, if his argument is against “civilization,” then the tens-of-thousands of years that predate his starting point for “civ” must be taken into account, as we had semiosis prior to this starting point. On this, he fails, instead only claiming that “cavemen” did not have art because their “IQ” was no high enough. (Do I even need to get into his ridiculous misuse of the word “IQ,” which seems to represent that he has no idea what the term actually means or its generally inaccurate representation of human cognitive strengths and weaknesses?) In addition, he fails to tell us why we should hate art, music, poetry, song, literature, and language. This may be a part of “civilization,” but so what? They were also a part of “pre-civilization” or “primitive” cultures for tens-of-thousands of years. So why should we assume that their abolition is so necessary? He completely fails to make this argument.

If you want to better understand some of these points, and don’t want to rely solely upon one piece of my own work, I recommend the following books…

Danielle Dennett’s Consciousness Explained

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By

George Lakoff’s Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind

Richard Joyce’s The Evolution of Morality

I do want to complement Zerzan on one important point though. Modern culture is obsessively based upon one particular sense: the visual (we can call this “occularcentricity” or “occularcentrism”). We must, as Zerzan implores us, keep in mind that we have quite a few other senses to boot (though his reference to psychic powers is silly, not only because they are not real, but especially in Zerzan’s case because he later claims that all human consciousness is physically based in the brain, as he rejects Cartesian dualism–it seems to me that without any mind-body dualism or separatism, psychic powers are impossible… which they pretty demonstrably are). Our reliance upon visual perception is certainly something that holds us back from understanding our world more fully. It is also, as Zerzan emphasizes, something that directly impacts our knowledge about the world. A culture based on a different sense, or on all senses equally, might develop very different knowledge than we have. In short, sensory analyses are both epistemological and perhaps ontological, and I think Zerzan is wise to recognize this. However, he is not the first to have done so, and some postmodernists have recognized this as well (again making his critique of postmodernism increasingly shallow and naive–I know, I’m as shocked as you are that it could get any more so, but here we are). Zerzan is also right to critique Chomsky’s linguistics for being too occularcentric as well as too computationally based (though Zerzan does not give Chomsky the credit he deserves otherwise).

This will most likely be my last blog about John Zerzan. I am more than 150 pages into Derrick Jensen’s Endgame Volume 1, and I hope to start blogging about that soon. I intend the first of those to be about Jensen’s (and other primitivist’s, including Zerzan’s) definition of the word “civilization,” which I think is interesting, but ultimately lacking if their goal is to bring humanity to a stone-age way of existence (I’ll explain why then–it involves an unexplained intellectual leap). After that, I want to write a blog about Jensen’s work that is more positive. So far, a lot of my engagement and writing on primitivism has been negative and critical, while at least in Jensen’s work, I do find some things of value (I have to admit that I’m actually enjoying Endgame a great deal, even if I don’t agree with every single thing in it). So, in order to not be a total downer, I’ll try to write about some good stuff in the near future.