a short annotated response:
> On 1 Jun 2017, at 10:25 am, Amir Taaki <amir@???> wrote:
>
> There's no simple answer and to develop the analysis, a person needs to
> put the energy because reality is complex and social. But our society
> instead is focused on the present, a time which doesn't exist. We're
> obsessed with efficiency and time, rather than space and existence. Like
> insects we chase momentary reward rather than trying to attain a higher
> fulfilling existence that lives on in the world around us. We're
> completely detached from our natural existence as pure mechanical
> objects manipulated by neoliberalism. That's the crisis of modernity,
> the lack of higher purpose or meaning which was rejected with the
> enlightenment in favour of the religion of rationalism.
Yes, this has been the crisis we have been in for longer then I feel anyone on this list has been alive, before our birth. What we have seen though in our lifetime is a further stripping of this notion. I as most of us where born into a doctrine of religion, some when forced to see that doctrine decide to choose another doctrine, they replace what thefalse god or false narrative (whatever suits your tongue) with another false god or narrative. However this is not true growth or internal evolution this is merely the exchange and swapping out of something, like moving from an apartment in the westside of London to the eastside, you just changed your scenary. When we realise the doctrine we are then freed to realise that we are but a drop of water in the ocean and the ocean at the same time, sadly only nature can teach us this but in modern day living we strip away more and more of our ability to connect with nature.
>
> This megamachine is extending its roots beyond just the physical human
> but deep into our souls with the entire technics and sciences of
> engineering humanity from media to psychiatry. It's a very sinister form
> of control, worse than the old forms of domination which are
> dissipating. That's why our main fight now is in the symbolic,
> ideological and spiritual realms. You see it in the come back of ISIS,
> the European new right and Russia (Dugin). We cannot understand these
> phenomena in a purely material way.
In my youth when my uncles would take me to the ashrams, they would introduce me to their great “Guru” this often changed sometimes I felt more often then they changed their clothes… In my internal questioning of what I saw I started to wonder why was it that people where so desperate to replace one doctrine with another? what was the root cause of that? I would explain to them that the accronym “GURU” simply stood for "Gee yoU aRe yoU” … but you see we as human beings seek connection we seek community we seek to be around people. One of the greatest inventions of the modern day the internet allowed even those who could not pshyically move or emotionally leave their spaces to connect with other people, this was and to me always will be the greatest part of the connectedness we now see ourselves in, the ability for us the individuals to connect without an organsing head or leader or hierarcy. When I left the womb of my youth I started to realise that many have lived and live without the feeling of being the ocean so to speak, being the drop of water and the ocean at the sametime… this is why I feel so many seek and crave the extremes of this aka what Amir mentions above, we like the pendulam swing violenty from one side to the other in order to justify or seek to clarify our existence on the other side… when doing this we fail to see that the desire of the pendulam is not to sway violenty but to reduce is swaying.. whilst we seek to understand through the material perspective we sway violently from side to side as is the nature of material concepts...
>
> Human history is always the result of human will, but always within the
> framework of belief, ideology and religion. Old forms of domination and
> power are dissipating, and instead we know are seeing an explosion of
> knowledge and networks with fuzzy reference points. Our task now is
> metaphysical with creating a body of knowledge that can unite a group of
> people with coherency, sharing a critique of modernity working towards a
> shared utopia.
>
> That's why I'm telling people now that if you're anarchist, you should
> start studying Democratic Confederalism because this is the new ideology
> we should be following. There's a book by Ocalan on Amazon called
> "Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization: part 2 - capitalism". These
> are a set of teachings that we study and spread to others. They are
> instructions for everyone to be a revolution and what we need to do as
> individuals to construct a new nation founded on these ideas.
We have the library of Alexandria at our fingertips, least we not forget this… I think Brewster Kahle said this once whilst I was sitting down for lunch during the openhouse days they hold at the Internet Archive.
>
> And we need to build on these ideas with our own ideas. To expand this
> ideology with all our knowledge of technology, because this is a new
> major ideology that is going to be playing a major role in future world
> revolutions and uprisings in this increasingly fractured planet. We are
> witnessing the breakdown of global power and the return of difference.
> All the small upstarts now are planting symbolic flags that will inspire
> copycats. To keep our ideas relevant, they need to serve the movement,
> and we choose what that is. Right now we have to update to a
> contemporary analysis, not the dangerously simplistic conception of
> freedom as doing things when I want, however I want. Western society is
> experiencing a huge cultural decay because of the loss of noble values.
> With the recognition of struggle and sacrifice, we can maybe save the
> remnants of humanity from this huge octopus monstrosity of the globalist
> liberalism, the megamachine blandly expanding over huge natural
> geographies consuming the planet for its own expansion.
We are at turning points, nature reminds us of this each day as we reap from her without question we fail to see how we are reaping from ourselves...
>
> We have to ask hard questions to ourselves about what we have helped to
> construct. There is a line and we need to make it visible. Nature, life
> and humanity vs the megamachine, the swamp, the state. Societies used to
> have a core of values and people had a sense of destiny. Now we live in
> a generalized exchange of signs, a completely visual material objective
> society with no divine values. We rape mother nature for our own
> material wants completely unconstrained by any sense of ethics. It's not
> only trees but the type of human being that is being created by this
> society. Not a human that is strong with agency, courageous living for a
> higher sense of purpose, striving to be a higher form of life and uplift
> humanity. But a swamp. A confused featureless landscape, high streets
> with shops full of many many variations of all types of products. Just
> like the end days of Rome when there emerged the class of the
> proletarians living off welfare grain handouts from the state, and
> spending all their time drinking, gambling and occupying themselves with
> entertainment, talking non-stop and continuously watching gladiator
> games. Is it no surprise then that the enlightenment was basically the
> re-discovery of Roman ideas, and we live in the last days of the second
> version of the Roman empire. We are endlessly expanding the human race
> but it is not a better human we are creating. In fact it is a human
> eating genetically engineered poor quality food, dressed in cheap mass
> manufactured clothing, with consumer culture and a completely mechanized
> education working unfulfilling jobs to accumulate wealth for personal
> pleasure at the expense of the planet with no sense of destiny, meaning
> or purpose.
>
> And I talk about the herd but hackers have been completely complicit in
> the construction of the megamachine. After all this mechanism of tyranny
> that is the internet didn't bring increased knowledge and a smarter,
> richer, better governed society like the optimists and singularists
> predicted. We now have atomised humans consuming the spectacle of
> Facebook locked in tiny bubbles, consuming catchy headlines selected by
> algorithms for the benefit of generating profit for Zuckerberg. How can
> you be free if your entire persona is constructed for the benefit of the
> state. It is a form of indoctrination, a neo religion of individuals
> separated from culture and history, pursuing material cheating of death
> because of the lack of divine belief. We live on through the change in
> the world, through our ideas that groups of people then walk a path.
> Material master-slave relations are transitory but there is another form
> of sovereign power.
In pshycology after 9/11 they started talking about a “Death Culture” which was once explained to me by one as when we do not see a purpose or we see the end as imminent we start consuming more and more, what is the purpose of the future if it can be removed aka taken away? consumption for the sake of consumption is not forfilling and leads to further consumption.. never stopping to even question “Do we need this product, what is its purpose?” There is an Australian bush song called “Rip, Rip Woodchip” it is a country song which I know some may shun as a genre, but as a muscian I seek to not be limited by genres and rather seek out musical composition… but I digress this song as a phrase in it I will give you the chorus for context:
"Rip rip wood chip
Turn it into paper
Throw it in the bin
No news today
Nightmare dreaming
Can't you hear the screaming
Chainsaw I saw more decay”
The phrase I refer to now you have that context is:
"Remember the axeman knew their timber
Cared about the way they brought it down
Crosscut blackbutt, tallowood and cedar”
Here he is reffering to not that the chopping of timber as a resource was bad, but that the balance between man and nature was removed and with it the art of our labor, the value of our tools, the difference of our approach… in modern times I have been excited to see the youth (nearing my middle age so even though it feels odd to say that as we as a society I feel are still in an adolescent phase, but within the constructs of modern society I am no longer a youth and the world was different when I was one) anyways, to get back to the point I have found great pleasure in seeing a rise of craft goods and a rise of people seeking out the handmade, the skill of the craft… like the difference between buying an Avocado (I hear thats all the rage these days ;) and growing one. Now I know in modern day life not everyone can grow an Avocado tree and to be honest they are hard to grow, but the difference in buying our food from a mass market store and growing our own or even purchasing from a local food market and chatting with the person who grew it is not the same, and the later gives us a feeling of being more connected. Which is something I have greatfully see the youth appricate a desire to be connected and not just a meer consumer….
>
> Unless hackers understand these ideas, and start to organize around them
> then this movement is fast becoming irrelevant and will lack the power
> to make a proper challenge to power. We're already a joke of people
> tinkering on toys for their own amusement, and I hope the christian mob
> comes to burn down the palace because the hackers will deserve it.
> Conceited and inwards looking, refusing their power in this age when we
> are facing a future with a huge amount of human suffering. It is the
> most shameless unethical ignorance. Technology is one of the main
> drivers of the civilizational process. It is a huge power. We can take
> the power if we have a strong ideology and good organization.
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