"Don't mourn, organize"

In response to my last post my friend Paxus asked this:

"'Don't mourn, organize.' Okay so what is the fix? I think it is creating more intentional communities, both culturally and place based. Places which can deal with depression and other mental health problems, because they are culturally strong and because they are not economically destitute all the time.

(I)An-ok you have a massive intellect, what do you think is the key to creating more communities which are not just crash pads for drifters, but have some chance at filling the need for tribe and family that the mainstream has basically abandoned, except in its most sterile and insidious forms."

I wrote a reply to this, and I would like to share it with everybody here.

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I appreciate you asking me these questions, and nudging me towards thinking more proactively as to what can be done to prevent these kinds of things from happening repeatedly. I agree with you about “creating more intentional communities, both culturally and place based”. But I think that more needs to be done than just that. I have a lot of specific details in mind as to what I think can help here.

My personal vantage-point with all of this is through the three people who ended up committing suicide whom I befriended, each of whom lived or were somehow connected with intentional communities that I was also a part of. With each of these situations there was a combination three factors taking place simultaneously:

1) They all had physical body ailments that they did not fully understand and were not getting sufficient treatment for.

2) There was a lack of stable consistent ongoing emotional support and empathic listening for them.

And

3) On their part there was a personal shyness and social anxiety which would keep them from reaching out and really getting to know others, or letting others know them.

Addressing each point, the first part would involve having a good reliable health care system in place where people are getting quality treatment for whatever their physical ailments may be. This treatment would also include an educational or informative component where the patient learns all that they need and want to know about their conditions, body and health. Treatable conditions going untreated, or people being in the dark about what’s going on for them, does not need to happen and these kind of things can really just eat people alive. I totally see there as being a mind-body connection at play. In the cases of the folks I saw, I do think that there were psycho-somatic stimuli for their physical conditions, as well as their physical conditions reinforcing the shitty stories that they were telling themselves as a part of their depression & despair. So good medical care and education would be the first part.

The second part, regarding emotional support and empathic listening, would first involve have a stable reliable structure in place where you have people that are sufficiently trained in things like Nonviolent Communication and Focusing, so that they can empathically listen to folks. These two practices are teachable and learnable modalities where people can learn how to do sensitive-yet-active empathic listening. Empathy is something specific and something that can and should be learned. And underlying this, is a genuine interest on the part of the listener of what the actual lived experience is for the person whom they are listening to. Empathy cannot take place if genuine interest is not there. You cannot just go through the motions of empathy, you really have to be there for it.

With people trained in practical empathic listening, there would then be structures in place for everybody to go to, at least once a week, to candidly talk with someone about whatever is on their heart and mind. In other words, I would like for everybody to trust that there is at least one place or group of people whom they can go to to just totally spill their guts and drop off all the emotional baggage that they have unknowingly been picking up and carrying around with them. I would say actually that the more people whom are trained in stuff like Nonviolent Communication and Focusing, and Vipassana Meditation too, the better and more solid basis you would have for everything. But at the very least I would like for there to be one core structure in place for everybody to go to receive good solid reliable empathic support on a regular basis.

And finally there is the third part, which has to do with people’s personal shyness and social anxiety. This is perhaps the most important part, and in fact if this is not actively dealt with this can interfere with the other two parts even being addressed, let alone fulfilled. In other words, one can be so shy or socially anxious that one would refuse to seek medical attention for a physical problem, or would decline to speak up about some personal emotional thing that is troubling them, even if it is haunting their every living moment.

This is where I see Carl Rogers’ “Person Centered Approach” as coming in, as well as the “Radical Honesty” of Brad Blanton whom you are more familiar with. Carl Rogers speaks about the importance of establishing real person to person relationships, real human contact. This means that the “therapist”, or the “facilitator”, or whatever you want to call the person who takes the action of initiating the deeper more intentional relationship puts special attention on being really authentic and congruent with whatever they are thinking and feeling, along with being warm and caring and nonjudgmental, as well as having the qualities of being empathic that I spoke about earlier.

The “Radical Honesty” part is important too, in that one just says what is on one’s mind, rather than having it being implied or sort of hanging in the air of the room unsaid. This is vitally important, because often people who use things like NVC, for example, try using a method like that to skirt around being really honest about what they are actually thinking and feeling. I much prefer the approach that has been described as “just get it out there, and then clean up the mess afterwards”. That “cleaning up” can be done by having the dance of dialogue which includes the empathy and the caring, as well as the deeper and more focused work of Focusing, for example.

I have done this myself with shy and socially anxious people, I know first-hand that this approach can work, I know that this can happen. In fact, with the three people in question here, the three folks who prompted all of this for me, I did that with them. They were shy, reserved, socially anxious, and I was able to get through to them, to connect with them. The key is consciously approaching them with empathy, personal authenticity and genuine caring for them. This most often took place in one-on-one interactions, when nobody else was there to potentially derail the interactions. These experiences also are what lead to the additional frustration for me personally, later on, when I told people that I had some real, wonderful, heart-to-heart conversations with them. People often had a hard time believing me, because these folks were just so generally shy, quiet and reserved that they could not imagine them any other way.

And, of course, those wonderful encounters, those totally awesome connections, was not enough to save these people’s lives. I would say that this was because I was by no means systematic about the whole thing. I did not establish any reliable structure for support, as in having regularity of such interactions, follow-ups on continuing threads, goals-setting, feed-back, assessments, and such things. My interactions with all of these folks was more or less random, haphazard, sometimes the deeper more personal more intentional thing, and sometimes totally superficial and trivial banter. What I am saying is that, even with the shy and socially anxious folks, I believe that a more deliberate, intentional, systematic and structured approach can be taken to help “get through to them”, instead of resigning them to their own personal hell inside their head. Therefore, gradually, work together with them can be done towards uncovering whatever is most important and meaningful for them to work with internally.

Ultimately, I think that all of this can and should be done as roles and structures existing within intentional communities and other such communal enterprises. This is important, especially for shy and.or depressed people, because even if you have amazing authentic and deep human contact experiences, if that all ends and the person is totally alone for all of the rest of the week, this can pretty much undo whatever productive work was accomplished in those sessions. Within an intentional community, this work can be done as a part of a “mental health team” or a “conflict resolution team”. The essential thing is that the folks who are acting in such roles are trained in and committed to using the skills that I mentioned here (NVC and Focusing, for the sake of empathic listening), and that the three principles of authenticity, empathy and unconditional caring are the three guiding lights in all that they do. I believe that these three lights, when held to, can help people to avoid whatever rigidity or stiltedness that could creep in by virtue of someone acting within a role in a social institution.

I really want to emphasize here, if I haven’t already, the absolute importance of having regularity, continuity and reliability of support here. This is so important. All three of the people I mentioned had support in all three areas that I mentioned – health-wise, emotional & empathy-wise and in the area of breaking through their shyness. The thing is, a one-time thing or sporadic occurrences is not enough. This support was not continuous and ongoing. Without that, they fell through the cracks. All that I’ve said here is a part of what I see as being necessary for weaving a kind of social fabric that is capable of really “holding” people in a supportive way. The income-sharing intentional community structure would be another aspect of the social fabric that supportively holds people as well.

You said that it is important to create more “communities which are not just crash pads for drifters, but have some chance at filling the need for tribe and family” – I think that this needs to be addressed head-on. For all three people, and all three communities in question, the phenomenon of having “drifters” come and go was very much the norm. I think that in all three places the communities generally wanted a more stable solid group of community members who stayed put, but the reality was that people would just drift in and out. I think that this needs to be addressed explicitly and directly in dialogue – have all the parties take the time to sit down with each-other and to honestly address the questions: “What will it take for you to make a real commitment to stay put and really invest yourself in this community?” as well as “What will it take for me to make a real commitment to you to support you in whatever ways that you need support and to really invest myself in my relationship with you?”

So this is another part right there – the issue of the sustainability of the relationships of all of the people such that they will all stay put and stick it out with each-other to have there be a lasting ongoing community of people together. This involves having open direct conversations with each-other, distinct and separate from the other conversations that I was talking about which would exist more for emotional support purposes. What I am referring to here are more clearing-the-air, putting-all-the-cards-on-the-table kinds of conversations so that everybody knows where everybody’s at as far as their various relationships with each-other. One group that I am a part of, the “Consciousness Transformation Community”, has these kinds of conversations take place once a month. Perhaps that would suffice for an intentional community as well.

What I was just referring to would be for community-wide conversations. For individuals or small groups of people who have conflicts or other stuff come up between them, I like Ganas Community’s rule of “No Non-negotiable Negativity”. That is, if you have some kind of negativity come up between you and someone else, you are committed to openly addressing it and actively working on it. I consider this to be a very important common agreement to make, because I know first-hand how negativity, judgment, anger, etc. can just poison a community, as well as interpersonal relationships, and one’s own sense of personal well-being as well! Negativity can be a poison that seeps in and ruins everything. So to counteract that, I would like for everyone to make an agreement right upon entering the community that they will work on their shit when (not if, but WHEN) it comes up.

To rekindle that sense of tribe and family that people are missing, I think that it is important for people to ask themselves – “what makes me come alive?”, “what helps me to feel closer and more connected with others?”, “what helps me to feel like I belong?” – and then actively take steps, create action-plans even, based on the answers that come up for them through these inquiries. Through purposefully discovering your own authentic self, together with others, the ground-work is laid to then have the conversation about how to live authentically with others who are doing the same. Step-by-step it would be a kind of re-creating of tribe, or family, but in a way that actually works for the people involved.

Looking back at what I wrote here, it seems as if what I am advocating is conversation after conversation after conversation. Well, that’s true, but all of it must be done intentionally. Intentional conversations for and within intentional communities. I think that after a while, after people have been habituated to it and it settles in as a cultural norm, the specific formats and structures of these conversations will cease to be such a big thing, and the general attitude and “consciousness” behind the whole thing will permeate people’s lives in general. That kind of environment of casual free-flowing connection is so totally different from the world that we live in, so very different from the background context of those whom I mentioned lived in. I am awe-struck by the disparity between the two.

These are my ideas, for a start. There is certainly more that can be said about everything. Feel free to ask me more questions. I would love to develop these ideas further.

"In a world full of no ones, I am a someone"

A couple of days ago I found out that a good friend of mine died, probably by suicide, but I’m waiting for the police report to arrive before that is confirmed. This is news to me, and for a number of other people who knew him and were friends/friendly with him. But the actual death happened about three years ago. To me this is the kind of silence that says a lot.

His name was Mario, and I lived with him in two different intentional communities, and we both volunteered in post-Katrina New Orleans at the same time as well. He originally knew about me from my anarchist writings on the internet and in radical publications before we even met. It was only when we were first living together and he saw how my name was spelled that he realized that I was the same guy whose writings he read. We had many different interests, values and ideals in common, and he was one of the folks whom I wanted to create a wonderful new utopian community with together, but it never quite happened.

Mario was a very shy person, admittedly socially awkward, and as a result of that he was pretty chronically quite lonely and longing for social connection, friendship and romantic relationship. His great fear was social isolation, and that much-feared result very often was a part of his day-to-day reality. However, he was quite personable, quite friendly, quite knowledgeable and he opened up quite readily to me. He held an ideal for a kind of drop-out crusty-squatter way of life, along with a desire for authentic spiritual experience and authentic interpersonal connection, anarchist social revolution, communal living and the kind of tribal social structures that I wanted as well.

The reality was that we drifted in and out of each-other’s lives, and the kind of engaged constructive work of building what we wanted to see in the world kept on getting deferred to some vague distant future. Eventually we parted ways, he ended up traveling cross-country to various places, and I started traveling cross-country to various places too. We never met up again, although we did stay in touch somewhat via e-mail. He started talking about increasing health problems, as well as depression. His health deteriorated to the point that he could not do much, so he took refuge at the home of his one parent that he was in contact with, and stayed there. He was quite socially isolated there, a crippled radical anarchist in the middle of a small town in Kansas. He began to despair that he would ever get better emotionally or physically. I don’t know what happened after that, but eventually he died, in May 2009.

None of the deaths that I have experienced before has ever felt as disconnected as this one. He died in a place where hardly anyone knew him or could grieve his loss together, I am in a place where nobody around me knew him and can grieve with me, and everybody I know who knew him is living in a different geographical place. That, and it has been years since any of us had any contact with him, and years since he died as well. This whole situation is like a picture-perfect example of social fragmentation.

I look back at this story and I feel quite angry. I feel angry because I feel quite certain that if he had a strong, supportive and loving community surrounding him, that this would not have happened. I am convinced that things do not have to be this way. If he did kill himself then that would mean that I have now had three close friends/coworkers in my life who have killed themselves. Each time, I speak the rhetoric of community, emotional health and personal growth, and each time these people feel increasingly estranged, despairing and completely powerless about their personal circumstances.

I do recognize that suicide and the choices that one takes to get to that point are all a matter of individual responsibility ultimately in the hands of the person who takes that action. However, I do not see the matter as being entirely about that. I see our human reality as being inextricably a kind of social fabric in which we are inter-related and connected with each-other, for better or worse, like it or not. We all make choices in relation to one-another to help or to ignore, to listen to or to write off, to engage with or to mind your own business. All too often I believe that we all, including myself, make the later of these choices.

And here’s the clincher – this is happening everywhere. It’s not just Mario, it’s not just the other people in my life who have committed suicide, it’s people all over the place. Just because I do not know personally all of the different people who have, or are, or are considering right now committing suicide does not make it any less important. Joseph Stalin is reputed to have said that “one person dying is a tragedy, many people dying is a statistic.” I believe that suicide, and the isolation, the despair, the lack of meaningful social contact that is underlying it endemic to the world that we live in, to the kind of society and social organization that we participate in, and that ultimately we each need to take personal responsibility for this happening just as much as each individual takes responsibility for deciding to kill themselves.

To me, the kind of profound social isolation and disconnection that Mario lived in, which is also reflected in the way that so many people in our society live their lives, is completely and totally unsustainable. People need connection, community, belonging and care. Without that, suicide, homicide, and any number of other horrible things, is just a matter of time before it happens.

I don’t want your sympathy. I don’t want to hear any condolences, any “I’m so sorry for your loss”, because ultimately this loss is not my loss – it is our loss. Even if you did not know the guy, this has affected you, the underlying social condition affects the context that you live in, and you helped to make it happen. We’re all in this thing together. Let’s start acting like it.

The Middle Way

So often in my life I have felt like an extremist. I have continually been drawn to the most radical views, the most fringe life-styles, and I have cherished the most extreme experiences. As a child I felt inside like I was extremely weird and different from everybody else. As an adult I have somewhat consciously longed for the most extreme results for the future of humanity. In many ways all of this is still the case for me. At the same time I am having a dawning appreciation for something else – balance.

“Buddhism” can mean many different things to many different people, but one key idea in it is that of “The Middle Way”. This idea got started as being about the “middle way” between hedonism and asceticism, indulgence and denial. But this can also be interpreted as being about the “middle way” between nihilism and absolutism, atheism and theism. This interpretation is one that has particular resonance for me right now.

A lot of the time my view-points tend to fall into the extremes of nihilism or absolutism, despite my conscious wishes to the contrary. “Everything is shit”, especially everything that we see in this world – nihilism. Or, “here is The Answer”, and over the years I have posed so many things as being that – absolutism. Back and forth, back and forth I’ve gone, sometimes reflecting a kind of internal mood swing in the process. At times I’ve also seen anarchism as by necessity incorporating these two elements, as being a kind of marriage of nihilism and absolutism. I don’t think that that approach really works, at the very least it is sort of crazy-making, but more than that there are other approaches out there.

A “middle way”, or balance, can be an integration of the two in the sense that it recognizes and acknowledges the best aspects of both. When something is destructive, it is seen as such, no need to deny it. When something helps with health and well-being, then that is acknowledged as well. There is no need to find fault with everything, nor is there a need to find the bright side of everything. Although both faults and bright sides do exist, when they exist, and that is recognized. An approach of balance would then be based on a profound acceptance of what is. There is no need for rose-colored glasses, or dark-tinted glasses either.

This is definitely an area where it is far easier to talk about it than to actually practice it. As I write these words even, I see within myself a desire to put up “The Middle Way” as being “The Answer”, my old absolutest approach. Swirling around this are my critiques of all that’s surrounding, something that can very well lead to an “everything is shit” conclusion, my old nihilist friend. I am so used to either trying to recruit everybody to The Righteous Cause For a Better Tomorrow, or to rain on their parade and dynamite their hopes & dreams. The radical notion for me then is to do neither, or aspects of both. There is nothing to be recruited to but there are better ways to live. There are flaws and draw-backs to everything, but not to the point of everything being worthless.

Perhaps the most difficult thing to grasp, or at least one of them, is that there are no beliefs that can console you. Nothing can really comfort you, for it is all an illusion in the end. This is one of the great back-handed gifts of nihilism. This sentiment is best expressed by this poetic phrase by Vasily Rozanov:

"The show is over. The audience get up to leave their seats. Time to collect their coats and go home. They turn round...No more coats and no more home."

Conversely, the Buddha is claimed to have said:

“Make an island of yourself, make yourself your refuge; there is no other refuge. Make truth your island, make truth your refuge; there is no other refuge.”

In other words, stark reality is to be faced, point-blank, as it is. It is not to be denied, nor is it to be all puffed up with some grand theory of something-or-other. Perhaps it is not as bad as one makes it out to be, perhaps "making it out to be" anything is actually part of the problem. Straight down the middle, with no hiding from it or craving for something else, a balance can be found. That is the middle way.

2011: Looking on from afar

I have an annual tradition that I do around each New Year of publicly reflecting in writing on my personal experience of the year that just ended. Here is my experience of 2011.

The main general theme that I can think of that runs throughout 2011 is “looking on from afar”. The first half of the year I was looking on to my up-coming move to Minneapolis with great anxiety, uncertainty and anticipation. The second half of the year, after having moved to Minneapolis, I looked on to various places, people and situations of my past with nostalgia and sometimes yearning to see them again. My experience with life first-hand has generally been second-rate with thoughts of what might-be, what has-been, and what is going on over-there.

And this year, out over-there has been absolutely amazing! This has been the year of the Arab Spring with the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, and the uprisings in Bahrain, Syria and Yemen. This has been the year of the big protests in Spain and Russia, the riots in Greece, Rome and England, and the end of the Iraq War, Osama Bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi. Most strikingly for me as an American radical, this has been the year of the Occupy movement, something that I totally did not see coming and have been totally transfixed with.

However, all of those things have all been stuff that I have observed from afar, as a kind of politically engaged spectator of sorts. The Occupy stuff I have only marginally gotten involved with. I have intentionally kept my distance from it all since I do have some strong reservations about it. I have not really gotten deeply involved with anything this year. If anything this year has been marked by me getting more un-involved with stuff instead of involved.

There have been some things that I have gotten involved with this year, or rather, got RE-involved with once more. One of them is anarchism – I realized that I am now and have always been an anarchist all along ever since I first discovered the philosophy. I have re-gained my comfort with ideologically and socially re-associating myself with things A-word-related. It also became very clear to me as the year progressed how much disgust and aversion I have within me to mainstream contemporary ways of life.

Then there is Vipassana Meditation (as taught by S.N. Goenka). This year I sat another ten-day course, volunteered at another, and then volunteered at the Illinois Vipassana Meditation Center during some periods in-between courses taking place. This is the most involved with Vipassana Meditation that I have been since 2008, which is the year that I first got into it. I have also publicly introduced people to Nonviolent Communication this year, which is something that I had not done for a long time.

There are some other things that I have more-or-less gotten involved with afresh, such as Buddhism. Now, Buddhism is something that I have already been interested in prior to this year, but this year I have studied the subject more than I ever have before in the past. I also took part in a short class on Buddhist history here in Minneapolis, taught by Rita M. Gross, the author of the book “Buddhism After Patriarchy”. That experience was very informative for me, and was quite mind-blowing at some points. Related to Buddhism I also got into reading the works of the Beat Generation, namely Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. The first two were self-proclaimed Buddhists, though they had some different perspectives on the matter.

Gary Snyder’s perspective on Buddhism has been very influential for me this year, for 50 years ago (in 1961) he wrote an essay entitled “Buddhist Anarchism” (also known as “Buddhism and the Coming Revolution”) that I first read this year. Reading this inspired me to write two articles on the subject of “Buddhist anarchism,” to produce a pamphlet about it and to give a public workshop presentation about it. I have been very excited about the possibilities around this semi-new philosophy of “Buddhist anarchism”, yet I have also felt very wary and reluctant around it as well. This latter is because I am afraid of creating a big new Identity around it all. Building up and clinging to some self-constructed identity is what I have done many times previously in the past related to my identity as an “anarchist”. I know first-hand the profound suffering that can come with clinging to a particular identity (or anything else), and it would be of the utmost irony if this occurred related to something with the philosophy of Buddhism! The challenge for me here is to appreciate and cherish something without clinging to it.

I also have to say that all of these things are essentially about ideas – the reading, the writing, the theorizing. These particular ideas have not really impacted my own personal life that much. My actual real-life experience day-to-day this year has actually been pretty dull and bland for me. The dullness of my life has not necessarily been “bad”, it has all been rather nice, and keeping in mind all of the different horrors and atrocities taking place in our world I am very much appreciative of what I have experienced. I also feel very grateful for the continuing relationship that I have with Liz. However, I’ve also had very few close personal friendships with people this year, and these mainly have been with people who live somewhere else and who occasionally I’ve visited with for at most a couple of days. Some of these friends, and family members too, have had some amazing experiences and adventures this year as they traveled to different places and countries abroad. I have only been able to enjoy these experiences vicariously, mainly through reading written accounts about them online and imagining.

Looking back on it my own personal favorite experiences of the year, the ones that most stand out for me are ones that also involved traveling. They were the trips to Twin Oaks and Acorn communities in central Virginia with some other coworkers from Camphill Soltane in March, going to the New York City Anarchist Bookfair and tabling and co-facilitating a workshop there in April, going to the Christian anarchist festival, called “PAPA Fest”, in rural Pennsylvania and giving a workshop there in June, and visiting Camphill Village Copake in up-state New York in July. These were the experiences where I personally felt the most alive, the most free and in integrity with myself this year.

As the year ends I am left with a continuing sense of uncertainty, of not-knowing. In a way I have learned quite a lot this year, and in another sense I feel like I have learned nothing at all. I do not know what the up-coming year of 2012 will bring me or where it will take me. The very best thing that I can think of in terms of finding comfort with the uncertainty and peace with the not-knowing is the philosophy of Buddhism and the practice of Vipassana Meditation. These are some of the reasons why I like them so much and why they have been such important parts of my life this year. I feel grateful that they are there and reassured knowing that I can relate with this proactively instead of just reactively.

One of the things that I learned this year is that you cannot repeat the past when it is something positive and you try to intentionally re-create it. However, you can repeat the past when it is something negative and you unintentionally stumble upon it (again). This to me implies an additional lesson of the importance of going into things with a clear mind, free from preconceptions of “the way things ought to be”, and allowing whatever arises to be there. This way the not-knowing can be an ally and not a menace.

May all beings be happy, be peaceful, be liberated, for the coming year. :-)

Envisioning a Buddhist Anarchism

I see Buddhist anarchism as being important for two reasons. I see Buddhism as essentially being about the individual’s personal liberation from unnecessary suffering. Anarchism I see as essentially being about freeing the world, through a profound social and political transformation, from unnecessary pain. We create all of this unnecessary pain and suffering ourselves.

The distinction between the two is that pain is usually a physical or an "external" thing, such as what you would normally think of with pain. There is also emotional pain, such as what comes with the loss of a loved one. Suffering is the particular kind of agony that comes about by holding onto an idea that something "should not" be happening that is happening, or "should" be happening that is not happening. This turns whatever pre-existing pain into something else, something worse. That's suffering. Suffering is created by our own habits of mind, where we choose to put our attention and what we choose to hold onto. Pain on the other hand is inevitable in life, however the social systems and institutions that humanity has chosen to organize the world with creates more pain for people than is necessary. A Buddhist anarchism would simultaneously be eliminating unnecessary suffering in the psyche and unnecessary pain in the world, and towards more joy and appreciation of life.

The other reason why I see a Buddhist anarchism as being important is that I see the two philosophies as complimenting and completing each-other. It is a union of the personal and the political, the psychological and the social, so to speak. This is ultimately about liberation in its fullest sense – both on the individual personal level and within the larger social body.

The philosophy of anarchism implies that a fundamental shift in the consciousness of people is necessary. In order to have a new world without domination, property or authority, people would need to be accustomed towards living with more benevolence, attentiveness, caring and flexibility with each-other. However, this shift in consciousness is rarely explicitly stated or elaborated upon in anarchist discourse, and the skills necessary for how people can achieve this shift in consciousness are almost never taught within anarchist circles.

The other angle to this is related to the arguments for what is called “Engaged Buddhism”, and that is that far too often Buddhism in practice becomes a means for people to escape from the world, to ignore the sufferings of others, and to blindly contribute to the injustices of the world. If one really does wish for the liberation of all beings, then one would inevitably be drawn to more thorough social engagement for working towards this.

Time has passed

A number of months have elapsed since I wrote my previous essay about this subject. I’ve received a number of different responses to it, all across the board. I’ve had some time to reflect further on the matter. One thing that has struck me is that there really is no pre-existing philosophy that is formulated which goes into depth about “Buddhist anarchism”. Various people have used this label to describe themselves, different articles, blog posts, audio or video recordings have been made, yet there has been no real lineage or tradition established for “Buddhist anarchism” as such.

This term was first publicly noted as being used 50 years ago, in 1961, by Gary Snyder with his essay entitled “Buddhist anarchism”. Given that Snyder is still alive, that means that we are still in the period of the first generation of living “Buddhist anarchists”. The whole thing is still very much in its initial formative stage, which means that we all can still define and lay out what we would like for a Buddhist anarchist philosophy to be. I would like to contribute a few more pieces here about what I would like for such a philosophy to include, this time drawing more from the core tenets of Buddhist philosophy than my previous essay did.

Disclaimers for potential subtlety

One thing that I would like to say right away is that I do not see Buddhist anarchism as being in any way connected with the various tyrannical governments, religious superstition and patriarchal traditions around the world that are associated with Buddhism. The “Buddhism” that a “Buddhist anarchism” is connected to would be the core philosophical tenets of Buddhism. The various outgrowths of Buddhism which are fundamentally at odds with the philosophy of anarchism are not a part of Buddhist anarchism as I see it.

I do admit that there are many different kinds of Buddhist philosophies out there. There are many different kinds of anarchist philosophies out there as well. Put together, this means that there exist innumerable different ways in which “Buddhist anarchism” can take form and be expressed by different people. My own background that is influencing my perspective on Buddhist anarchism is coming from my experience with Vipassana Meditation, which derives from a Theravada Buddhist tradition, and anarcho-communism which is associated with the writings of the Russian anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin.

Core Components

Despite all of the diversity within Buddhism, there do exist some things that are core to Buddhism and that all of the different traditions have in common. Looking at these core elements, I see a number of parallels and cross-overs with the philosophy of anarchism. Let’s start with the Four Noble Truths.

The First Noble Truth of Buddhism is that suffering exists everywhere. Wherever you look you will see people miserable or in some way experiencing some degree of suffering in their lives. This would then correlate with anarchist philosophy which says that the world that we live in is organized in a way that is fundamentally corrupt and harmful to life. Anarchists everywhere share the commonality of looking around at the world and seeing a society that is deeply and pervasively against life. The world as we know it is really messed up.

The Second Noble Truth of Buddhism says that suffering has a cause, and that is craving, aversion and ignorance. In other words, “having to have” something, having to avoid something, or simply refusing to look at life as it is are the causes of suffering. These three causes of suffering correlate with the anarchist philosophy’s pointing to the institutions of capitalism and the state, and underlying that domination per se, as being the cause for all of the corruption and oppression of the world. Domination at its root is based on craving and aversion for it comes about when those at the top of the hierarchy “have to” have things their way, even at the expense of others, and no other possibilities are tolerated or permitted.

Anarchists frequently decry the ignorance that is prevalent in society as well, seeing that as being a fundamental part of the problem. Anarchists see the social tendency for people in our society to ignore or disregard the various injustices and horrors that exist in our world and instead focus attention on trivialities, superficialities and entertainment. This social dynamic of continuing distractions ensures that all of the injustices and horrors will continue.

The Third Noble Truth of Buddhism is that it is possible to overcome suffering. There exists a psycho-spiritual condition called “nirvana” or “enlightenment” and individuals through their own effort can attain it. The correlation of this with anarchism is that of the vision of a new utopian society which exists without the state or capitalism, without domination or hierarchy, and that instead is based on free people organizing together directly as equals and sharing all of the world’s resources in common. Similar to the Buddhist assertion that it is possible for people to reach this radically different condition through their own efforts, anarchists assert that societies of people can create this radically different world through their own efforts as well.

The Fourth Noble Truth of Buddhism is that there is an explicitly delineated path for people to follow to reach nirvana. This is called the Noble Eightfold Path. I won’t go into each of the points for the Noble Eightfold Path here, perhaps that can be a topic for another article. Instead I will look at the three categories that the Noble Eightfold Path is broken down into: morality (sila), mastery over one’s mind (Samadhi) and experiential wisdom (panna). For the philosophy of anarchism there is also an explicitly stated means for achieving a social revolution that has three different components. This involves practices that are characterized by the principles of prefigurative politics, self-organization and direct action.

The Buddhist concept of morality (sila) is basically that one should not do or say things that will harm others, and that one should work towards doing and saying things that helps others instead. The idea is that if one does or says things that hurt others, one is also at the same time hurting one’s own self psychologically and spiritually as well. I see Buddhist morality (sila) as corresponding with the anarchist notion of “prefigurative politics”, which is the principle that one’s actions and the projects that one engages in now should reflect the kind of world that one wants to see in the future within it. “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” At the heart of an anarchist morality, expressed through a prefigurative practice, would be relationships where the autonomy of each individual is respected, without coercion, and where everyone’s needs are valued equally. Altogether this would mean that one’s actions and projects would be done for the benefit of others as well as for one’s self, and that they are done for the sake of a better future as well as for the present.

Mastering one’s own mind (Samadhi) is about developing the ability to control what thoughts one has on one’s mind at any given time, being able to choose where one places one’s attention, and being able to clearly make decisions and follow through with them. Meditation is a kind of practice that is used to develop mastery over one’s own mind. The anarchist correlation that I see with this is the principle of self-organization, which is where a group of people organize their own affairs together directly and democratically without utilizing social hierarchies or groups outside of them to make decisions for them. I see this as relating in that in order for a group to survive and thrive in a self-organized way, they need to develop means to facilitate what is being talked about, where the group’s attention is placed in a given situation, and to make collective decisions and carry them out effectively. In a way Samadhi and self-organization are both forms of “self-organization”, just one is on the individual level and the other is on a larger social level. Self-organization within a group would require the same kind of cohesion, clarity and self-discipline that are characteristics of Samadhi.

Experiential wisdom (panna) is about experiencing a deeper understanding of the nature of existence personally and directly. This kind of understanding goes beyond what can be read about in books or writings. In fact it goes beyond what can adequately be expressed in words at all. It has to be lived to be understood. I see this as correlating with the anarchist principle of direct action, which is that of meeting needs and making necessary changes without being told to or asking for permission from some form of authority. I see these as relating in that what is learned in the process of carrying out direct action and the kinds of changes that this brings about within people by going through this process is beyond anything that can be learned or gained by writing or talking alone. Direct action brings about a deep fundamental shift in people, very similar to the kinds of shifts that come from panna. These are both shifts on the direct experiential level. Direct action dispels the illusions of authority, panna shatters illusions altogether. When you are able to see first-hand things getting done without authority, you get a sense of what a straw-man authority is. When you experience the truth that is beyond all words, you can see how paltry words are.

Marking a new existence

Buddhism also has a particular understanding of the nature of our world. This is summarized by what are called the “three marks of existence”. Looking at each of these I realized that each can form the basis for an argument for an anarchist world. The three marks of existence are impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha) and no-self (anatta).

The idea behind impermanence (anicca) is that everything is always changing, everything comes and goes, and that nothing stays the same forever. “This too shall pass.” I see this as being an argument for anarchism in that I see the complexities and constantly changing nature of things and situations as being beyond the scope of authority figures or institutional bureaucracies to be able to understand or handle. Things just change too much and too often to keep up. In my view the people who are living and experiencing the changes themselves are those who are in the best position to understand the situation that is going on, and hence are in the best position to be able to deal with it appropriately. For those who are cut off from the situation itself or detached from others who are also experiencing it, the understanding can only be partial.

Suffering (dukkha) was already discussed above as the First Noble Truth of Buddhism. It is that suffering exists and is a fundamental part of the human experience. This in turn relates to an argument for anarchism in that the world that we live in now is filled with immense pain and injustice, and subsequently that this is unnecessary and that we can do something about it.

The third mark of existence is no-self (anatta), which is that there is no essential permanent “self” for an individual. In other words, everything that comprises “you” is so contingent on innumerable different factors and variables, be they biological, social, cultural, material, etc. that there is no basic core “self” which exists independent of all of that. That is, if all of the different contributing influences and components from different sources are taken away, nothing is left.

I see the anarchist correlation to no-self (anatta) as being that all of the notions of property, social status and political power exist as mere social constructs that are comprised by innumerable different factors all coinciding together. The efforts of countless people combined to make a material object that someone considers to be “theirs”. Generations of acquiescence, obedience and the social construction of meaning combined to create what is called a “king” or a “politician”. All kinds of factors reinforced by scores of people created what we have now. No Divine Intervention came and created relationships of domination, nor did capitalism and the state naturally exist since the beginning of time – we created it all ourselves together and it would not exist without us.

Eight Streams Leading to One

It has been said that the entirety of Buddhism can be summarized with this phrase: “Abandon unwholesome qualities, cultivate wholesome qualities, and purify your mind.” Similarly, a take on anarchism can be: “Abandon capitalist and state-based ways of doing things, create and participate in free and cooperative-based ways of doing things, and clean your mind of the mainstream domination-based programming that fills it.” But what does all of this look like in practice? And what would a specifically Buddhist anarchist approach look like?

Towards this end I have identified eight different pre-existing independent practices, projects or sub-cultures which I believe that woven together could form the fabric for what a specifically Buddhist anarchist practice can be. None of these are explicitly “Buddhist anarchist” per se, but they form the beginning foundations for the practical expression of it.

1) Engaged Buddhism: This is where Buddhism and activism formally meet – where Buddhists do activism (or activists practice Buddhism). Under this name, various groups like the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, the Zen Peacemakers and Thich Naht Hanh’s people do the political and social activist work that they do. It could be said that a Buddhist anarchism by definition is a kind of “engaged Buddhism.” The only difference is that the political orientation here is a radical anarchist one.

2) Vegetarianism, veganism, animal liberation: There are some folks, and anarchists and Buddhists are often among them, who say that animals have rights, that animals should be free, and that they should be treated with care and respect. In practice this view-point can be expressed by refusing to eat animal flesh, by abstaining from animal products altogether, or by engaging in more militant actions to free animals from captivity. From an anarchist stand-point this can be justified by the desire to do away with all forms of domination and oppression, and the captivity and killing of animals can be seen as one form of that. From a Buddhist stand-point this can be justified by a desire for compassion for all living beings, by the wish of “may all beings be liberated”.

3) The Public Meditation Project and meditation flash mobs: Anarchists often have the desire to reclaim public space, to open up space for everyone outside of the control of the state or private property. Buddhists often want more people to know about and to practice meditation. Put these two together, and you have the Public Meditation Project. This is an endeavor to have people practice meditation out in the open in public spaces. This can also be done as “meditation flash mobs”, where people semi-spontaneously arrange to all meet up together at the same time and place to meditate in public. Reclaiming public space does not have to be aggressive, in fact no talking even needs to happen at all. It can be done sitting down in complete silence and stillness.

4) Dharma Punx: Since the late 1970’s and early 1980’s the philosophy of anarchism and punk rock music have been strongly associated with each other. The anarchist sub-culture often blends into the punk rock sub-culture, and vice versa. Because of the efforts of authors such as Noah Levine and Brad Warner, and others, a new sub-culture has come about of Buddhist punks, or “Dharma Punx”. While not explicitly “anarchist”, Noah Levine’s writings at least often make casual reference to how what he is advocating is “revolutionary” and “radical”. Often-times the Buddha himself within this sub-culture is referred to as being “the rebel saint. This particular sub-culture has probably done the most to help develop a Buddhist anarchist culture.

5) Nonviolent Communication and the Consciousness Transformation Community: Coming from the self-help scene is a practice called “Nonviolent Communication”, or “NVC” for short. This is a series of conceptual and interpersonal tools that can be applied to help with resolving conflicts between people, developing personal clarity or sensitively listening to others. From a Buddhist perspective I see this as in many ways being a kind of “applied Right Speech”. From an anarchist perspective the principles and theory underlying NVC explicitly rejects relationships of domination, and NVC is viewed as being a way to help overcome it. Most recently something has emerged from NVC that is called the “Consciousness Transformation Community”. The CTC is based around a set of 17 “core commitments” which basically summarize the kind of consciousness that NVC aims for. In the realm of interpersonal relationships, NVC and the CTC can be viewed as tools and a framework for practicing Buddhist anarchism.

6) Radical political straightedge: In the hard-core punk sub-culture there exists a tendency called “radical political straightedge”. This is a kind of social intersection where people are into punk rock music, hold radical political views, and abstain from all forms of alcohol consumption, recreational drug use and intoxication in general. Within the Buddhist morality (sila), there is a precept where one who wishes to develop along the Buddhist path vows to abstain from all forms of intoxication. Radical political straightedge can be seen as one step on the Buddhist anarchist path within a (sub-)cultural context.

7) Buddhist atheism and Critical Buddhism: There is an author named Stephen Batchelor who is a former Buddhist monk in both the Tibetan and the Zen traditions who has renounced his monk-hood. He has recently been writing about what he calls “Buddhist atheism”. This approach is basically where all of the metaphysical ideas within Buddhism such as the notions of rebirth and reincarnation, as well as beliefs in deities and “higher” and “lower” cosmologies, are stripped away from Buddhism.

Similar work has been taking place in Japan with something that is called “Critical Buddhism”. This has been the work of some Japanese Buddhist scholars to modernize Buddhist beliefs to make it all more relevant and applicable to a contemporary audience. Given that most anarchists are atheists (ie, “no gods, no masters”), or at least come from a Western secular outlook on life, such forms of Buddhism would be the most appropriate for a Buddhist anarchism.

8) The Gift Economy: This is a way of arranging economics where all goods and services are offered freely as a gift. With this nothing is offered with a price-tag or as a part of a trade or exchange. Everything is given without any strings attached. People may give things to the original giver, but that is done so as a gift in itself, not as “payment” or “reimbursement”. A number of different anarchist events and projects operate as a gift economy, as do a number of Buddhist events and projects as well. Within the Buddhist context the practice of operating with a gift economy is connected with the virtue (Pāramitā) of “Dāna”, or “generosity”. Within the anarchist context, the gift economy would form the basis for an anarchist-communist society. There is much potential within the gift economy to be explored.

Letting Go For Freedom

Perhaps the most succinct to-the-point summary of Buddhism is this one quote that has been attributed to Gotama the Buddha: "Nothing whatsoever should be clung to." Clinging to ideas of the way things should be, what should be happening, what people should be doing, etc. is one of the sure ways to ensure that one will experience suffering. Likewise, for anarchists, clinging to ideas of how the world should look, how projects should be carried out, ideas of identity or ideological purity have also caused a lot of suffering. I believe that one of the biggest contributions that Buddhism can make for anarchism is precisely this peace of mind which comes from not clinging. Without clinging, desperation, anxiety and putting demands on one’s friends and comrades goes away. Instead, projects can be carried out with calm, clarity and a sense of inner spaciousness. This in turn can set the tone for the kind of world that we would like to live in.

Taking Up Responsibility

Having said all of this, I want to emphasize - anarchism and Buddhism are not the same thing. They are two separate traditions. They are two traditions that complement each-other like two sides of the same coin of true and total liberation. Buddhist anarchism is something new, even though it has very long and ancient roots. My hope with writing all of this is to help to make space for this something new to emerge further. Both traditions emphasize responsibility, individuals taking responsibility for themselves in the fullest way possible. The same goes with the future of the philosophy and practice of Buddhist anarchism. If we want for it to grow, develop or evolve, the responsibility is up to us. As with everything, when it comes down to it, it is always up to us.

A remarkable man, a remarkable book

I recently read a book that in a sense I have waited for years to be published. The book is entitled Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader, and it was published last year by PM Press. The book is a translation and collection of writings of Gustav Landauer by Gabriel Kuhn.

I have been interested in the work of Gustav Landuer for years, since pretty much around the time that I first discovered the philosophy of anarchism. However I have never before actually read any writings by Landuaer directly. My experience with Landuaer has been through reading various descriptions written by others of his work, his philosophy and his life. Plus, there is one well-known quote that is attributed to him that I have always loved and held dear to my heart, and that is:

"The state is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another."

There are quite a number of different parallels between the philosophy and outlook of Gustav Landuaer and my own. For one, Landuaer was an anarchist-communist, a pacifist, and a spiritual mystic. He advocated the creation and proliferation of intentional communities and other forms of alternative institutions to meet people's needs so that folks can start living a new socialist way of life right now, as opposed to waiting for a revolution to create it. As he put it:

“If you want socialism, i.e., if you want to live in communities of justice and solidarity, then create it! Look for the cracks in capitalism and find ways to escape the economic war. Figure out how to no longer produce for capitalism’s commodity market, but to satisfy your own needs. This is a collective process: the more that individuals are able to unite their needs, their creativity, and their lives, the more effective they will be.”

And, as that afore-mentioned quote demonstrates, he emphasized and insisted on an anarchist outlook that really focused on social relationships per se and how they reproduced authoritarian structures or not. As he put it:

“It is indispensable to distinguish material realities like the land and its products from complexities like the state and capital. Without such a distinction, neither real understanding nor real action are possible. The state (and the same goes for capital) is a relationship between human beings; it is a form of (active and passive) doing and enduring that has been passed down from generation to generation.”

Reading this book of Landuaer's writings I was struck by how many other ways Landuaer's views dove-tails with my own. From the very beginning, he outlines very clearly and succinctly what all of this "anarchist" stuff is all about to begin with, why it is so important to him:

“Anarchism’s lone objective is to end the fight of men against men and to unite humanity so that each individual can unfold his natural potential without obstruction.”

That being said, he also makes a point to say that this and other such labels are not important to him, and what really matters instead:

“I could not care less whether one calls me a radical or not. I can easily do without labels. Neither superficial garishness nor garish superficiality are indications of radicalness. The same goes for smashing fanfares. ‘Radical’ is not, as it is often claimed, the opposite of ‘moderate’, but of ‘superficial’.”

This search for "depth" that he speaks of is related to his spiritual beliefs, and the importance that he places on people, everyone, actively engaging in sincere self-reflection and striving for an authentic personal spirituality. This is, as he put it, the “…the even more important, yet slow and gradual work of freeing and creating spirit…” This is because, as he said:

“Socialism has to be constructed from an inner desire and requires the awakening of a new spirit.”

To do this work he said that it is important for people to occasionally take the time to pursue active spiritual retreat. As he said:

“Since the world has disintegrated into pieces and has become alienated from itself, we have to flee into mystic seclusion in order to become one with it again.”

At times, when speaking of this kind of spiritual or "inner" work, Landuaer even mentions the kinds of "parts work" that various self-help/emotional healing modalities talk about, such as the Inner Empathy process and Inner Relationship Focusing. Doing this kind of work, and finding peace and harmony with the various aspects of one's self is actually a pre-requisite for finding peace and harmony with others. As Landuaer says:

"Once individuals have transformed themselves into communities, then they are ready to form wider communities with like-minded individuals. These will be new kinds of communities, established by individuals with the courage and the need to separate from the dullness of superficiality."

Coming from an understanding and acceptance of all of the difference aspects of one's self, one can likewise be in a better position to see and accept that society as a whole is also comprised of many different varying perspectives. As Landuaer said:

"Our world can only be understood if we understand the several parallel supplementing perspectives by which we have created it."

Likewise, Landuaer explicitly took steps to avoid painting specific individuals as being the enemy. As he put it, “I felt disgust with society way too early to still feel fury or hate towards individuals.”

Concepts of "us vs. them" as a whole were rejected by Landuaer, and he chose to focus on what the specific behaviors were that people were engaging in instead. As he said:

“I refuse to divide people into those who are the masters of the state and those who are the state’s servants. Human relationships depend on human behavior. The possibility of anarchy depends on the belief that people can always change their behavior.”

This then leads into Landuaer's perspective of how a new society, a socialist/anarchist society, would be primarily based upon a kind of nonviolence. As he said:

“True socialism is something entirely different from the fight of a social group against another. Being unable to enter the ranks of the rich – as a result of both external and internal circumstances – does not make you a socialist. Being a servant to a master or to your own reflexes and instincts does not make you a socialist. Socialism is not a war between people. Socialism is first and foremost a struggle of man against himself; secondly, it is a war against war.”

This view inevitably lead to a great deal of difference and antagonism between Landuaer and others within the anarchist and socialist milieu of the time. As he once lamented:

"Within all this calculating bleakness one longs for a word from the heart. However, no such word can be found; let alone a word that leaves behind the paradigm of war and heads for the true foundation of socialism."

Likewise, he considered all of the revolutions that most people thought about when they used that term as being “little more than champagne to a patient who is slowly and painfully recovering from a deadly disease.” As a result of this, instead of advocating for a "revolution" per se, he considered it to be vitally important to instead work for the "preparation and creation of spiritual and economic foundations for a stateless society of societies.”

The kind of work that Landauer is advocating I would say could be described as being a "Person-Centered" way of being. As Landauer put it:

“We must not forget that the masses have been turned into what they are over hundreds of years. The individuals who are different show themselves because we approach all individuals as if they were different – this is how we find it possible for them to join us. This is an apt and well-tested strategy: if you want to awaken reason and energy from dormancy you have to assume that they are not dormant.”

I find the whole thing to all be quite astounding. Through reading this, I feel as if I have found a tradition that is associated with the A-word that I can more whole-heartedly identify with, compared to most everything else out there that goes by that name. It is a shame that this lineage was pretty much entirely wiped out in 1919. But that is a topic that will be covered in another book

A new kind of communism

I have come across a lot of sentiments lately from well-meaning peace-loving Nonviolent Communication-oriented folks, in response to the Occupy Wall Street movement, about how they want to overcome the divide between the 99% and the 1%. The idea is that this kind of language is an "us vs. them" language, with the 99% being "us", and the 1% being "them". The implication is that if a series of mediated dialogues could take place between the two "sides", then we can have a new era of peace and harmony as a new unified "100%".

I don't buy into this.

The way that I see things is that we live in a class society, and that capitalism makes this the case. The 1% is another way of saying "the capitalist class". In other words, they have all of the wealth and the power that they have because of their ownership of capital. Their money makes them money, and a lot of it too. The 99% is "the working class", ie, they have to work for their money, and if they don't then they die because of the lack of things that money can buy. The labor of the working class goes to support the capitalist class, for the working class makes it possible for the capitalist class to have all of the wealth and the power that they have. All of this was thought up of and talked about long long before the current Occupy movement got started.

I am going to take a bet here that everybody who will read these words is a working class person, a 99% person, regardless of what your political views may be. In fact, I would go so far as to say that chances are that you have never even met a person who is a part of the capitalist class. These people keep themselves socially and culturally separate from working class people and (with the exception of those who have jobs as butlers, waiters, chauffeurs, security guards, etc. who are directly employed to serve them) we never come into contact with these people. We may see a few of them from time-to-time on TV, but then one can see a lot of different crazy stuff on TV, so it's best to not take that too seriously.

Recently I have seen a few signs of folks in the Occupy movement saying that they have inherited some money, so they are actually a part of the 1%, and yet they still stand in solidarity with the 99%. I don't believe these people. The way I see it is that the working class includes a broad and diverse bunch of people, folks from all kinds of different backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, etc. These people may come from relative privilege, ie, they are more well-off than most people, but as long as they still have to work for a living and they can not totally rely on their money to make money for them so much so that they can comfortably survive, then they are still working class, and hence, they are still "the 99%". A feeling of personal guilt over one's relative privilege does not change one's class status.

A few Nonviolent Communication folks have occasionally mentioned from time-to-time that they would be into having "both sides come together", they they would be into giving empathy to "both sides", that they would like to overcome all of the "us vs. them" language, etc. Here is my take on this. As far as I am concerned, there is only "us" - the working class. The working class makes everything within this society possible. The working class makes everything "work", it runs the gears, operates the computers and harvests the fields of our society. The working class is by and large operating within a frame-work of capitalism, that is, we have capitalist models within our heads and we act accordingly, hence we all live in a capitalist world. If we had a different frame-work that we worked with, a different model in our heads, and different actions as a result, then we would not have capitalism, we'd have something else. The thoughts and actions of the working class determines all of this.

What I would like to see is a complete social revolution that abolishes capitalism. I would like to see spaces and things occupied and used in different ways under different models and paradigms. To the extent that one believes in what is called "property", then what I am talking about here is collective "expropriation", but in a massive revolutionary context. What the "capitalist class" or "the 1%" think or feel about this does not concern me. This is because I see capitalism as such as being a social system that inherently, by it's very nature, utterly disregards and is destructive towards all life. Humans and animals, physically and spiritually, mentally and ecologically, within the U.S. and internationally, capitalism is a negative force that has got to go.

This inevitably will involve a degree of coercion, however this can be worked with in a compassionate way. As I see it, the 1% / capitalist class are like people with a mental illness, completely delusional about these notions of "property" and various things that they supposedly "own". Similar to people with mental illness, we usually are kept apart from them and we do not see them or interact with them. However, unlike with mental illness, we reinforce their condition by saying and doing things that encourage their delusions. By our very thoughts and actions we are encouraging a mad world. If someone were walking around pointing to various different buildings and things saying "that's mine, I own that", we would think that that person is crazy. However, if that person were wearing a suit and had a piece of paper that we call "a deed" or "a title", then we would reinforce these ideas they have. We don't have to do this, these are all choices that we make.

If there were to be a revolution, I would want the health and well-being for what is called "the capitalist class", as well as for everyone else. The capitalist class would probably have experienced coercion, they would probably be going through emotional pain and suffering as a result, however this can be worked through with care and sensitivity. Given my experience working with people with developmental disabilities and mental illness, I know first-hand how people can be completely delusional, how their personal attachment to their delusional ideas can cause emotional suffering for them, and how other people can do things to help them to experience more calm and peace as well as to work towards more social integration and productive harmony within society as well. This is the same process that I'm talking about here, just with different specific details.

Ultimately what I am wanting is communism, but a different kind from all of the stuff that has come before with that name. The old communist dictum is "from each according to their ability, from each according to their need." To have this along with ensuring the presence of the qualities of care, compassion, consideration and participation, I would amend that phrase to be this:

"From each according to their ability and willingness, to each according to their needs and feed-back."

I do find it very inspiring to see that behind this current international Occupy movement there is a living practice of various forms of decentralized, non-hierarchical decision-making. The consensus process, direct democracy, as well as networking and ultimately federations, this is how I would like to see a new kind of communism to be organized - not based on the decisions of elites or top-down models.

Another thing is the idea of needs, as in, "to each according to their needs" - I would like to see the whole conceptualization of needs be changed around. I do appreciate Nonviolent Commmunication in that it brings to the fore an understanding that we all have a variety of different kinds of needs - mental, social, spiritual, intimacy-related, as well as the more traditional physical needs that we usually think of when we use that term. With capitalism, huge swaths of people are starving in a whole wide variety of different ways, it's not just the lack of material food. A new kind of communism would actively address all of the different needs for all of the different people.

I really don't want to gloss over or overlook the vast differences and diversity of people out there. Cultural (and sub-cultural) differences between people can really make the differences seem like we all come from different planets. However when it comes down to it what I think should be actively looked at in terms of implementing the kinds of fundamental social changes that I am talking about here can be broken down to these questions:

1) Where are people spending their time?

2) Who are people spending their time with?

3) What are people talking about?

and

4) How are people talking with each-other?

A change towards a more directly democratic, non-hierarchical, egalitarian, sharing-based society would address these very questions and try to answer them as objectively as possible. To have power together in our society we would be talking openly about the things that concern all of us together. The general tendency towards individual isolation and the common banter about topics without any real meaning or relevance to us is totally antithetical to this. The idea of the "General Assembly" that is used with the Occupy movement is a step in the right direction for this change that I am wanting.

The way I see it, "we are the 99%" is a mnemonic device to help us to all remember that we all have more in common with the social situation that we are in than we have differences. I do not see this as a divisive thing for in the end "the 1%" is irrelevant. It is us who make this whole social system that we are in possible, and it is us who can make a new one too. The important thing is to continue moving in that direction.