tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84917580303605706592024-03-13T13:21:02.960-07:00The Implicit & Experiential Rantings of a PersonIan Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.comBlogger97125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-44365297126930394212022-07-16T14:09:00.002-07:002023-10-03T17:07:31.669-07:00Imagining Utopian Anarchist Communities<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfuwkR0g2JrffD4Zmvjyya4r0imi8-HB_dSyYvbtg6fFN9VgzWwSrJQv94tIC-QeK_EtmbEV1ih-pmyiaOK6i3t2HYWH2l0bIZXmIyYQkHeb5vnB9RbjmmyYRIfjHxpM8sWE0fwfo58VHP75VemhM9d6fM4psMKkdTrSQyM0Sv5cF6A6sbg7m_-OLJ/s396/acn.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="170" data-original-width="396" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfuwkR0g2JrffD4Zmvjyya4r0imi8-HB_dSyYvbtg6fFN9VgzWwSrJQv94tIC-QeK_EtmbEV1ih-pmyiaOK6i3t2HYWH2l0bIZXmIyYQkHeb5vnB9RbjmmyYRIfjHxpM8sWE0fwfo58VHP75VemhM9d6fM4psMKkdTrSQyM0Sv5cF6A6sbg7m_-OLJ/s320/acn.jpg"/></a></div>
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Having elaborated upon <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2022/06/envisioning-utopian-anarchism.html">the kind of anarchism that I believe in</a>, the question that immediately then comes up for me is: <i>"How does one move forward with all these big ideas? How does one actually practice all of this stuff?"</i> Okay, maybe that is really two questions, but my answer remains the same: <b>Create new intentional communities<i></i></b>.
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The <a href="https://www.ic.org/foundation-for-intentional-community/">Foundation for Intentional Community defines</a> an "intentional community" as being <blockquote>"a group of people who have chosen to live together or share resources on the basis of common values."</blockquote> What I would like to see are intentional communities created around the kinds of values that I wrote about in my previous piece. I said a lot of stuff in that piece, so the I part that I'd really want to focus on with this are the <b>"Ten Principles for My Utopian Anarchism"</b>. I would summarize these as being:
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1) Keep an image in mind of the kind of society that you want.
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2) Try to have a comprehensive understanding of all the various systems at play.
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3) Keep in mind the goal of it all, "Quadruple-H": "Happy Healthy Harmonious Humans".
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4) The mission of "anarchism" here is to elimate all forms of domination and to replace them with voluntary cooperation.
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5) Keep in mind the four interconnected "perspectives": the individual, the relational, the structural and the physical.
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6) Critiques are valued, but are not the main focus.
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7) Heartfelt conversations, holding both the needs of oneself and others, is the basis for it all.
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8) All social constructs are impermanent and can be replaced with new ones if necessary.
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9) Uniformity is not necessary for sufficient cooperation to be possible.
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10) All associations are voluntary. Individuals can choose to leave groups and groups can also kick people out.
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In other words, if you have a group of people choosing to live together or share resources on the basis of these ten principles, then you have a utopian anarchist intentional communitiy. It's as simple as that, nothing more is required! Of course, there are infinitely more details to consider... <P>
I would like to put some particular emphasis here on the fifth principle listed, "keep in mind the four interconnected "perspectives": the individual, the relational, the structural and the physical." What this means in practice is that people in this community would be supporting each other with their mental and emotional health, learning and personal development, they would also be putting particular time and energy towards the health of their communication and interpersonal relationships, they would be designing and maintaining social structures that reflect their values and they would also be mindful of the physical environment that they reside in and how that physical environment is affecting everybody as well as how they are affecting it and the nonhuman life that surrounds them.
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One of the things that I have learned from the <a href="https://nglcommunity.org">Nonviolent Global Liberation community</a> that I've found to be a valuable insight is that there are five different areas that groups need to consciously design and attend to in order for the group to continue to function in a sustainable and harmonious way. These five areas are: decision-making, resource flow, information flow, feedback loops, and conflict engagement. Here is a set of questions that I found on the old NGL website that I find particularly helpful to consider when designing systems for these five areas: <P>
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<b>"Decision Making</b>: Who makes which decisions? Through what process? Who gives input? Who hears about which decisions? <P>
<b>Resource Flow</b>: What resources exist? How are they generated? How are they distributed? What principles are used to decide the flow? Who makes the decisions? <P>
<b>Information Flow</b>: What information is shared with whom? What mechanisms are used for sharing it? <P>
<b>Feedback Loops</b>: Who gives feedback to whom? For what purpose? How? How often? What external feedback mechanisms will support learning about effectiveness in carrying out the mission? <P>
<b>Conflict Engagement</b>: What support is available? What process is used for engaging with conflict? How can anyone initiate it? How is all that made known to people?"</blockquote>
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All of these questions would need to be discussed and answered by the various members and participants of each community. I do not feel comfortable answering all these questions here as some detached individual speculating about some future hypothetical community. Rather, the real life people who feel personally invested in creating such communities would need to determine the answers to these questions by talking with each other. Throughout it all there would need to be the common intention of sharing power among everyone involved, maintaining a sense of heartfelt connection between everyone involved, keeping an awareness of everyone's needs, and holding onto the ten guiding principles that I mentioned earlier.
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There is then the matter of where these utopian anarchist communities would be located. Would they be rural or urban? Would they own the land or rent it? Would they be inside the United States or outside of it? Could they own multiple properties, or possibly not own anything? My answer to all of these questions and more is: <b>it all depends. </b> <P>
I've come to view intentional communities as basically being all about the people involved, not about the land that they reside on. Don't get me wrong, the land that they reside on is quite important, and the "Physical perspective" in the "Four Perspectives" model I give is all about looking at the various aspects of one's direct physical environment, but still, without the people there is no community. I've come across countless people in my life who own great pieces of land with the intention of creating a community on it, but who have no actual people who want to live there as an intentional community together. It is all about the relationships between people, and the interconnecting web of relationships between people, that form communities. Land by itself doesn't cut it.
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That being said, the process of forming these communities should focus primarily on the relationships between people. The emphasis initially should be on people getting to know each other, getting to better understand the wishes and desires of everyone involved, to find the points of agreement and disagreement, to understand what everyone's strengths and weaknesses are, to understand what all of the needs are as well as what resources are available to potentially meet these needs. The physical location of a community can actually be a pretty malleable thing.
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Here's how I see it: as long as the people involved in an endeavor to create a utopian anarchist community are on the same page as far as their shared principles and the five areas of how the community structure is functioning, they can be living anywhere. Groups like this could own and live on land out in some rural area, or they could own a house in the suburbs. Groups like this could rent an apartment in a city, or they could be squatting an abandoned building or tract of land. Groups like this could even be homeless and camping in the streets or out in the woods. Groups like this could be mobile and traveling together in a big biodiesel bus, or they could traveling the world on a ship at sea, or they could be criss-crossing the country in large caravans of multiple vehicles. There are no limits to where and how these communities can be located in different places, the key thing is that the relationships for them are in place.
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After writing my previous piece, <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2022/06/envisioning-utopian-anarchism.html">Envisioning a Utopian Anarchism</a>, a few questions emerged through discussions with various people about it. Here are some of the questions that most stand out to me:
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1) What would the criteria for membership be for utopian anarchist communities and what are the non-membership options available for people to still be involved with these communities without being members?
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2) When we are examining our <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Max-Neef%27s_Fundamental_human_needs">fundamental human needs</a> together how can we identify when and how the various ideologies that we are immersed in throughout our lives are consciously or unsconsciously influencing the ways in which we are looking at needs?
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3) How can we ensure that there will be sufficient space for spontaneity, autonomy and flexibility for people within whatever agreements and structures are created?
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4) What processes would be in place for changing the group structures if and when the need to do so arises?
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5) Where is the threshold point for disagreement when it is no longer feasible for people to continue living in such a community?
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Again, I do not have the answers to these questions. As is the case with a lot of what I've talked about here, the people who would actually be involved with such projects would need to discuss these things and come to common understandings and agreements among themselves about these matters. I just wanted to make sure to "flag" these questions, to make sure that they do not get overlooked and forgotten.
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So, where does this all leave us now? What is the next step for forming real life utopian anarchist communities? Well, the next step as I see it is for like-minded people to find each other and start talking with each other. This process can look many different ways, and it can take place both in person and online. And if the like-minded people who find each other are in substantial disagreement on one matter or another, or if they are not compatible with each other for whatever reason, that's okay. Hopefully this whole process of discerning can lead to there being more personal clarity on which areas of agreement and compatibility are essential in terms of what one is looking for, and which areas are not as important.
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I have faith that over time, through these different ongoing contacts and conversations, both individual and group clarity can emerge and the beginnings of the relationships can be established that can lead to the creation of these communities. These groups can start out small at first, say "pods" of 5 - 8 people, and then over time organically expand until <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number">Dunbar's Number</a> is reached and the community splits into multiple communities. Likewise, I imagine that some degree of cross-over and collaboration between these different utopian anarchist communities will be happening as well.
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This all seems quite big to me, like an enormous task, or rather, a series of related enormous tasks, with no guarantee that anything will ever work out. But regardless of that, I do still have a faith that based on all the knowledge, skills and resources that we have in the world today, that people have the ability to weave this all together to make it work. Everything that we need to make this all happen already exists, it is just a matter now of making the right connections, learning the right things, and building up the right relationships. Together we can do this.Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-3982396490113198832022-06-09T16:36:00.001-07:002022-06-24T07:34:20.072-07:00Envisioning a Utopian Anarchism<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNgOcm6zlIF2Gt5DzyUrFil6KdIpsDg9reyj1d8XyDQebjI8MA1Ge-WgQMrrSVXYJOO8-bhSkTM9aIgbCObR8p_YN-TX7cY7nuRq1VTvZdGvSgjm1zhxZnxoMGjmo1jPqVT8DJH7gMWkzHJTdcoT24Wq2GqB4pyQQaVmEahhrjSBLJrKg-HWksxF_e/s500/0f10986ebd879ce7fe5d16dff67568c1--law-students-funny-shit.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNgOcm6zlIF2Gt5DzyUrFil6KdIpsDg9reyj1d8XyDQebjI8MA1Ge-WgQMrrSVXYJOO8-bhSkTM9aIgbCObR8p_YN-TX7cY7nuRq1VTvZdGvSgjm1zhxZnxoMGjmo1jPqVT8DJH7gMWkzHJTdcoT24Wq2GqB4pyQQaVmEahhrjSBLJrKg-HWksxF_e/s320/0f10986ebd879ce7fe5d16dff67568c1--law-students-funny-shit.jpg"/></a></div>
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I've noticed a pattern that I have. Every few years I feel the need to publicly re-think and re-clarify what exactly it is that I personally believe regarding <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism">anarchism</a>. This usually corresponds with me affixing a new anarchist label to my beliefs and presenting it as being a new and unioque <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_schools_of_thought">anarchist school of thought</a>. The very first time that I did this I was calling my kind of anarchism "communitarian anarchism" and some friends and I created a short-lived organization related to that, the <a href="https://www.ainfos.ca/01/may/ainfos00125.html">the Anarchist Communitarian Network</a>, to promote this perspective. Following that, there was <a href="http://www.en.nvcwiki.com/index.php/Compassionate_anarchism">compassionate anarchism</a>, then <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2011/03/reflections-on-buddhist-anarchism.html">Buddhist anarchism</a>, and most recently <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2016/12/my-kind-of-anarchism.html">humanistic anarchism</a>. Now I am calling my approach "utopian anarchism", and while I have already spoken about this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQHLY2zmg7I&t">on YouTube</a> as well as in a small informal workshop at the <a href="https://nvctraining.com/live-nvc-courses/online-nvc-conference-2022">2022 Online NVC Conference</a>, this is my first time publicly writing about this.
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The key thing that sets my current approach apart from my previous ones is that I now view it as being important to place the vision that one has for a radically different world <b>front and center<i></i></b>. I know that the world that we live in now is shit, many different anarchist writers have penned many different brilliant critiques of our current society, and the various systems and structures in it that brutalize us all have been analyzed by many anarchist thinkers much smarter than I am. However, I have come to believe that without keeping a vision in our heart of the kind of world that we want to see, that eventually the steady diet of only critique and denunciation eventually leads to things like burnout, cynicism, despair and even misanthropy. How can we create the kind of beautiful world that we would want to live in if the only thing that we can see is shit? How can we have hope and inspiration to move towards a better world if the horrors of our current world is all that we can bear? One needs to hold a vision for a better world and radical imagination is needed for this, as well as analysis and forethought. <a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-a-beautiful-ideal">A breautiful ideal</a> needs to be at the forefront of one's anarchism in order to lead one to a place that one actually wants to go to.
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<center><b>The Four Perspectives on the Ideal Society </b></center>
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The broad outline for my vision of a new society is the same as always: a world without domination or top-down hierarchy where people voluntarily associate as equals, where cooperation, mutual aid and sharing are done without coercion, and where everyone who is affected by a group decision has a voice in the process and collective agreements are based on consent. This vision remains the same, but I now have four different perspectives that I use to look at it. Each perspective is vitally important to keep in mind for the understanding, realization and maintainence of such a society. These four perspectives are the individual, the relational, the structural and the physical.
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<b>1) The Individual Perspective</b>
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I start with this perspective here because each person goes through life experiencing things as an individual. And since a goal of anarchism is for everyone to be liberated and free, a basic question would then be "does everyone perceive their life as being liberated and free?" The door is opened here for a whole plethora tools and tactics from the areas of psychology, self-help and self-improvement to be utilized for each individual to find their own sense of personal choice and empowerment. People's individual health, their own thinking processes, their relationship with their own emotions and the degree to which they are continually learning all fall within this realm. Ultimately, this area relies upon each individual to take responsibility for themselves and their own personal growth and development. Traditionally <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualist_anarchism">individualist anarchism</a> and the <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2011/03/reflections-on-buddhist-anarchism.html">Buddhist anarchism</a> that I used to advocate for tends to concern itself almost exclusively with this area.
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<b>2) The Relational Perspective</b>
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The relational area is the point where individuals come into contact with each other and interact. It includes things such as communication styles, how people deal with conflict, how people make decisions together and nonverbal interactions. This area is often overlooked by the individualists who are looking mainly at their own lives and choices, or by the collectivists who are looking at groups in general or society as a whole, but this area in many ways is "where the rubber hits the road". It is in the relational area where people experience most of their joys or frustrations in a collective endeavor and the lack of sufficient attention to this area can lead to the difference between a project succeeeding or failing. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_anarchy">Relationship anarchy</a> and the <a href="http://www.en.nvcwiki.com/index.php/Compassionate_anarchism">compassionate anarchism</a> that I used to advocate for tends to focus almost exclusively on this area.
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<b>3) The Structural Perspective</b>
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This area is focused on large groups of people, as well as groups of groups of people, and how they interact with each other. It is in this area that social insitutions and systems reside. Historically speaking, most of anarchism has focused on this perspective, concerning itself with corporations and capitalism, governments and statecraft, and white supremacy and patriarchy across societies. Within the anarchist milieu, this perspective comes into play when we examine alternative and counter-institutions, anarchist federations and networks, and the anarchist "movement". <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-communism">Anarcho-communism</a> tends to focus primarily on this perspective, as was the "communitarian anarchism" that I used to advocate.
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<b>4) The Physical Perspective</b>
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And finally the physical perspective is about just what the name suggests - pure physical reality. This includes things such as people's physical health, food, agriculture, architecture, water supply, transportation, clothing, urban planning, ecological matters and nonhuman life. In some sense this perspective is the most straightforward of them all, but any close examination of any particular aspect of physical reality reveals a myriad of complexities therein. The devil is in the details indeed. And since we are still dealing with people here, social structures, interpersonal relationships and people's individual psyches does come into play here as well. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_anarchism">Green anarchism</a> tends to focus mainly on this perspective.
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Each of the areas that I mentioned here, the individual, the relational, the structural and the physical, each one connects with and affects all of the others. None of them exist independent of the other, rather they work together as a kind of interdepedent system. If someone is having troubles with their individual life and psyche that then affects their interpersonal relationships, the social structures and the environment that they live within. Likewise, one's physical environment affects one's mental health, the way that people relate with other and the ways that social structures function. What I am trying to do here is to examine the whole gestalt of the human experience, and these four ways of looking at it can make clear certain aspects that could more easily be overlooked if one where to only be using just one or two perspectives.
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<center><b>The Four Influences on My Utopian Anarchism</b></center>
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Keeping in mind the radical anarchist ideal, the utopian vision for a new society that it points to, and the four different perspectives through which to look at it, I will move now to elaborating upon my own utopian anarchist vision. Everyone has their own vision for the kind of ideal society that they would like to see, but for me personally I realize that I have four distinct influences that originate from outside the anarchist scene that inform my approach to utopian anarchism. These four influences are: the work of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Max-Neef">Manfred Max-Neef</a> and his concept of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Max-Neef%27s_Fundamental_human_needs">fundamental human needs</a> and his related work with <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130319153338/http://www.max-neef.cl/download/Max-neef_Human_Scale_development.pdf">human scale development</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller">Buckminster Fuller</a> and his <a href="https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/big-ideas/design-science/">comprehensive anticipatory design science</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_science_revolution">design science revolution</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_socialism">utopian socialism</a> and the various <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_socialism#Notable_utopian_communities">utopian communities</a> that came about as a result of it, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Rosenberg">Marshall Rosenberg</a> and the framework for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication">Nonviolent Communication</a> that he created.
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<b>1) Manfred Max-Neef's fundamental human needs</b>
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The basic premise behind this is that everything that human beings do is motivated by a desire to meet a basic human need that everybody has. Needs in this ceonception of them are finite and distinct from "satisfiers" which are the infinite ways that people act to meet needs. Needs can be physical, such as food, water and shelter, or they can be mental, emotional or social in nature as well. Manfred Max-Neef identified nine fundamental needs that people have: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, rest, creation, identity, and autonomy. I like looking at things from this point of view because it opens us up to the possibility of infinite different ways to meet people's needs while still focusing on the key things that people need to have fulfilling lives.
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Manfred Max-Neef then took this concept of fundamental human needs and applied this to communities of people living together with his work in community development that he called "human scale development". With this he used a process of bottom-up direct participatory democracy for people to identify their needs and how they are getting met or not within the context of their communities. This approach took the focus away from concepts like "standard of living" and "gross national product" and instead focused on what can be done within the community to help there be more happiness and fulfillment among the people there.
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<b>2) Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science (CADS)</b>
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This is a body of work that primarily operates on the "physical perspective" that I mentioned earlier. It uses very much a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory">systems theory</a> approach of looking at the various systems that influence any given thing, and in turn looks at how that thing influences the larger systems that it resides within. This approach anticipates the various challenges and opportunities that may arise from the various systems that are being utilized and responds by designing other systems that can address these by using a rigorous process grounded in science. This approach is very much a type of engineering mindset that strives to meet the material needs of everyone while avoiding the systemic oversights that lead to the kinds of pollution and ecological devastation that we see in the world today.
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<b>3) Utopian Socialism</b>
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"Utopian socialism" is an umbrella term that refers to the kinds of socialism that existed before Marxism and anarchism came about that were characterized not by an emphasis on class struggle and revolution but instead on proposing new forms of society based on radically different designs. Some of the proponents and enthusiasts for these radical designs for different kinds of societies came together to create new utopian communities that were based on these designs. The emphasis here was on focusing on what one wants instead of what one doesn't want, articulating a design for that vision, finding like-minded people and then moving to the same place to live and work together to turn that vision into a reality. There is a quote from Buckminster Fuller that I think nicely encapsultes the underlying sentiment behind utopian socialism: "You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete."
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<b>4) Nonviolent Communication (NVC)</b>
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NVC is something that I have written about <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2022/05/my-continuing-relationship-with.html">recently</a> as well as <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2013/03/reflections-from-ten-year-giraffe-freak.html">in the past</a>, but to succinctly summarize what it I would say this: Nonviolent Communication is an approach to communication based on principles of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolence">nonviolence</a>, evolved from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person-centered_therapy">person-centered therapy</a>, that instrumentally uses Manfred Max-Neef's concept of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Max-Neef%27s_Fundamental_human_needs">fundamental human needs</a> that I mentioned above. NVC has been used to assist people in acheiving greater personal psychological self-understanding and self-discovery, it has been used to assist with people's interpersonal relationships and it has been used as a guide for creating new kinds of social structures and institutions. The goal of NVC is to increase people's capacity to acknowledge and value everyone's needs and to meet those needs out of an authentic desire to contribute to everyone's wellbeing.
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<center><b>Ten Principles for My Utopian Anarchism</b></center>
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Diving into the heart of what my approach to utopian anarchism is about, I would frame it with ten distinct principles:
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<b>1) Have an idealized positive image for the kind of society that is the end goal.</b> This positive image does not need to be set in stone, nor is it something that I am wanting people to be uptight about or something that is used to judge people over. Rather, it is someething that I would like to be used as a kind of guiding light for all the actions taken towards the end goal. This idealized positive image is intended to be aspirational and inspirational, and not to be used as a kind of "spook" such as what is talked about in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner#Philosophy">the philosophy of Max Stirner</a>.
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<b>2) Have a comprehensive general understanding of the systems and structures that are operating behind the scenes that make such a society possible.</b> Usually when people envision an anarchist society the picture is painted in very broad strokes, with little to no elaboration on what is actually happening to have this society function. I would like to take a very different approach than that, and instead I find it useful to continuously be asking "What's going on here exactly?" "How does it work?" "How is it sustained?" "How does it survive the inevitable challenges and hardships that life brings?" Pursuing this line of rigorous inquiry can ultimately deepen one's understanding of the end goal that one is pursuing and can serve to support one in "reverse engineering", so to speak, that vision to better discern action steps to get there.
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<b>3) The whole point of such a society is to have happy healthy harmonious humans.</b> Sometimes one might wonder why the hell are we doing all this work and investing all this time in what I am calling "utopian anarchism". My response to that is what I call "Quadruple H" - happy healthy harmonious humans. That's the whole point of it all. That's the reason why.
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<b>4) Aims to eliminate all forms of domination and instead meet needs through voluntary cooperation and sharing.</b> This in my view is the whole goal of anarchism in general and I believe that it is important to keep this reason succinctly stated and in the back of one's mind at all times. Think of it as the "anarchist mission statement", if you will.
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<b>5) Focuses simultaneously on personal inner work, relationship work, larger group structures and the physical environment.</b> This is a reference to the four perspectives that I talked about earlier. It is good to periodically re-examine how one's collective endeavors are faring through using each one of these four perspectives in order to ensure that nothing important is being overlooked or neglected.
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<b>6) Incorporates all of the various different anarchist critiques but focuses primarily on the positive end goal.</b> The majority of anarchist writing out there focuses primarily on critiques of the various aspects of the world we live in that dominate and oppress people. I appreciate these critiques, I find them to be useful in terms of pointing out various things that we need to avoid and keep an eye out for, but in the end these critiques do not tell us where we want to go or how to get there.
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<b>7) Open, honest, thoughtful and considerate conversation that includes awareness and expression of one's own needs as well as those of others is the foundation for it all.</b> This is the kind of thing that Nonviolent Communication talks about and advocates for and I believe that ultimately if the people involved in this utopian anarchist endeavor can succeed at practicing this then the project would stand a good chance at weathering the inevitable challenges that it will come across.
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<b>8) Recognizes, uses, creates and discards of social constructs and is not bound by them.</b> Human societies everywhere create and abide by social constructs as a way to help the society function smoothly. I don't see social constructs as necessarily being "good" or "bad" per se, but what I do see as being deleterious is belieiving that any particular social constructs are "inevitable" or "necessary". Instead I would like to cultivate a habit of recognizing social constructs for what they are, to not be attached to them and to instead be willing to replace them if a consensus is reached that doing so would be advantageous. I have previously written about the social construct of "ownership" <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2017/01/nobody-owns-anything.html">here</a>.
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<b>9) Acknowledges that uniformity of vision is not necessary for sufficient cooperation to be possible.</b> I have lots of ideas on, lots of beliefs about and lots of desires for the world at large. And while I have a lot that I can say about my approach to utopian anarchism and the ideal society I envision, I do not want to convey a notion that everyone would need to abide by everything I say about the subject in order for it to be realized. People can cooperate in a variety of different ways, in a variety of different capacities, each for their own reasons. The last thing that I would want to see happen is have some kind of cult created in the name of some anarchist vision. Uniformity is unnecessary.
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<b>10) Voluntary associations that people choose to be in.</b> Any involvement with the kinds of utopian anarchist societies/communities/projects that I am envisioning would need to be done voluntarily. I hold this vision dear to my heart, but I would not want anyone to ever be coerced into participating in it. Individual willingness is a key principle necessary for the whole thing to work. I have previously written about this <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2016/12/voluntary-only.html">here</a>.
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<center><b>Ten Practices for My Utopian Anarchism</b></center>
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Moving from the abstract to the practical, there already exists a number of different practices that people can engage in now as well as in a future utopian anarchist society. All of these practices are grounded in some way in the principles that I elaborated upon above. A lot of what I mention below are more like groups or clusters of different practices, but nevertheless what I want to emphasize is that there are some real life things that people can do to begin practicing utopian anarchism.
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<b>1) Egalitarian income-sharing intentional communities.</b> This is where people live together intentionally, share income and resources, and make decisions together in some kind of democratic way. In the United States the <a href="https://thefec.org">Federation of Egalitarian Communities</a> is a good resource for such communities.
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<b>2) Vipassana Meditation practice.</b> With regards to the first perspective that I mentioned in this piece, the individual/personal perspective, Vipassana Meditation practice is a great way for one to better understand oneself and to develop more personal insight, self-discipline and self-control. <a href="https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/index">This website</a> is a good starting place to go learn more about this practice.
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<b>3) Empathic listening exchanges.</b> Empathy is an essential part of maintaining healthy interpersonal relationships, and the approach to empathy that I draw from the most comes from Nonviolent Communication. NVC teaches some specific ways to practice empathic listening, and there is one instruction guide for that online <a href="https://www.compassionateconnecting.com/blog/empathic-listening">here</a>.
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<b>4) Restorative / Transformative Justice for addressing harm.</b> People often hurt other people, whether it is done intentionally or unintentionally it is a regular part of life. The approaches to addressing harm that I consider to be the most beneficial for individuals, relationships and communities is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice">Restorative Justice</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_justice">Transformative Justice</a>. These approaches focus on healing those whom have been hurt, repairing relationships and changing the systemic conditions that have helped to create the situation where harm occured to begin with.
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<b>5) Convergent Facilitation for group decision-making.</b> Based on Nonviolent Communication and created by the NVC trainer <a href="https://mikikashtan.org">Miki Kashtan</a>, <a href="https://convergentfacilitation.org">Convergent Facilitation</a> is a method for facilitating meetings of groups of people to find consensus while also addressing all of the different needs and concerns that the participants have.
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<b>6) Decentralized organizational structures.</b> The field of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_development">organizational development</a> has produced a lot of work over the years designing ways that people can structure decentralized directly democratic organizations that are efficient and effective at what they are trying to do. Some examples of this are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy">Sociocracy</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holacracy">Holacracy</a> and <a href="https://www.reinventingorganizations.com">Frederic Laloux's <i>Reinventing Organizations</i></a>. There are many practical and valuable insights contained within this work, but since it originates from the corporate world it has largely gone unnoticed by most anarchists.
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<b>7) Fundamental human needs assessments.</b> This practice has first been developed by Manfred Max-Neef and the work he did with <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130319153338/http://www.max-neef.cl/download/Max-neef_Human_Scale_development.pdf">Human Scale Development</a> in small-scale communities. I'm thinking that a similar practice could be developed for individuals where a person takes the time to sit down with <a href="https://thefearlessheart.org/nvc-reference-materials/list-of-needs/">a list of needs</a> and carefully examines whether or to what extent each need is being met in their life and in what ways. This can be a guided process of self-reflection where one gains clarity about the relationship that they have with the various different needs that they have. I'm thinking that a kind of annual ritual could be created for this practice, possibly carried out each year on one's birthday.
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<b>8) The Co-Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.</b> Based on Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science and organized by the Buckminster Fuller Institute, this is an inventory of various practices that people can do to implement this way of thinking into real life situations. The website for this can be found <a href="https://spaceshipearth.live">here</a>.
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<b>9) Group Size Based on Dunbar's Number.</b> The anthropologist Robin Dunbar has suggested <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number">a number</a> of people which is the maximum size that a group can be where everyone who is a part of the group still has meaningful relationships with one another. Anything above that number results in relationships within the group becoming impersonal and abstract. I would like for there to be an agreed upon mechanism within utopian anarchist communities for the group to split into two new communities once that number has been reached. Think of it being like a process of cell division, but for groups of people.
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<b>10) Student-centered learning.</b> A number of different educational theorists have discussed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student-centered_learning">student-centered learning</a>, and the one that I resonate with the most is that which was articulated in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Learn-3rd-Carl-Rogers/dp/0024031216/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3G1Y4QMVNVU63&keywords=freedom+to+learn+rogers&qid=1654808598&s=books&sprefix=freedom+to+lea%2Cstripbooks%2C83&sr=1-2">a book by Carl Rogers</a>. I have also written about this subject previously myself in a blog post <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2015/03/education-and-its-discontents.html">here</a>. Briefly stated, the idea behind it is that in situations where learning is being facilitated, the emphasis is to be placed on the learner and wherever their interests and enthusiasm may be and to de-emphasize the importance of curricula, educational standards and schools in general.
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So that about wraps it up for now. I realize that in some sense what I am talking about here is nothing new. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solarpunk">Solarpunk</a> is a relatively recent phenomenon that covers a lot of the same ground as utopian anarchism, albeit it is not a specifically anarchist project and is instead more of a generally radical ecologically-oriented one. Going back further in time, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_socialism">utopian socialism</a> also has a number of similarties to utopian anarchism, but like solarpunk it is also not a specifically anarchist project. I would say that both solarpunk and utopian socialism are "siblings" of utopian anarchism, but not twins.
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Regarding the "utopian anarchist" label specifically, there are only two people other than myself who have publicly associated themself with that term. There is the author <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Kinna">Ruth Kinna</a> who has <a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ruth-kinna-utopianism-and-prefiguration">written about</a> the subject, co-edited <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Anarchism-utopianism-Davis-Laurence/dp/0719079349/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2R04YI7AJZV39&keywords=anarchism+utopianism&qid=1654812549&sprefix=anarchism+utopianism%2Caps%2C76&sr=8-2">a book</a> about it, as well as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVzR4d-3ZOM">given talks</a> about it. And the other person is Elon Musk, who has publicly stated that he <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-utopian-anarchist">is a utopian anarchist</a>, but has never elaborated on what that term means to him in any great detail.
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For me, I prefer sticking to my own ideas for what an ideal anarchist society would look like and how it would work. And ultimately I think that this is how it will play out for everyone, each person will have their own ideas for what the ideal world would look like, and it is up to us all to find ways to work together to begin moving towards these ideals. My hope is that what I have written here has stirred up some thought to that end.Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-50366224489792864772022-05-26T10:29:00.004-07:002022-05-26T10:53:04.893-07:00My Continuing Relationship with Nonviolent Communication<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif7SdcG7CFO7gHOgM-q6pwoSwMVOYJ2in-v-luIwDgMg_6KhD7R47JL_CLGxfSmyCypX2QWKJ6D1yzuJ_lb6M5NVYX0MUJfbyYLaeqWVJIB5ajykZzFarNkcVxIrPKLhPg9_n3lUqM8yImbqWQEa1VFfdoKj6-Qa3jSC9M1duYEhsJKV7uAmC-caVp/s1279/365_day_219_flying_giraffe_by_korikian_d465an3-fullview.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="1279" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif7SdcG7CFO7gHOgM-q6pwoSwMVOYJ2in-v-luIwDgMg_6KhD7R47JL_CLGxfSmyCypX2QWKJ6D1yzuJ_lb6M5NVYX0MUJfbyYLaeqWVJIB5ajykZzFarNkcVxIrPKLhPg9_n3lUqM8yImbqWQEa1VFfdoKj6-Qa3jSC9M1duYEhsJKV7uAmC-caVp/s320/365_day_219_flying_giraffe_by_korikian_d465an3-fullview.png"/></a></div>
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I have a long-standing and complex relationship with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication">Nonviolent Communication</a>. This is something that I have <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2013/03/reflections-from-ten-year-giraffe-freak.html">publicly reflected upon</a> and <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2010/08/out-beyond-ideas-of-nvc-and-non-nvc.html">pontificated about</a> in the past. A few years ago I wrote a blog post titled <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2018/07/why-i-am-not-into-nvc-anymore.html">Why I Am Not Into NVC Anymore</a> and more recently I have felt moved to write a follow-up piece here elaborating on where things stand now with regards to my relationship with NVC. Long story short, I am into NVC once again and that blog post was indicative of but a temporary period of time away from NVC. Let me explain...
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I believe that what happened was that over time, in a ten-year period between the years of 2008 and 2018, my personal practice of NVC gradually decreased. My participation in things like empathy exchanges, practice groups and other NVC events as well as my personal individual NVC practice, things like self-empathy inquiry and journaling, all of these things became fewer and further between for me. This resulted in my relationship with NVC becoming more of an abstraction to me, more of a mental concept than a lived practice. During this time, the founder/creator of NVC <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2015/02/it-usually-begins-in-detroit.html">Marshall Rosenberg passed away</a>. This set in motion a chain of events that would substantially affect the global community of NVC enthusiasts. In other words, people needed to figure out where to go next with NVC without the top dog being around anymore. One thing lead to another and eventually the <a href="https://www.cnvc.org">Center for Nonviolent Communication</a> organization launched an initiative to restructure itself along the lines of more of a decentralized bottom-up network. This initiative was called <a href="https://nvc-global.net/new-future-process/">the New Future Process</a>. I had a lot of excitement about this initiative and my big hope was that this could lead to <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2015/05/my-top-ten-recommended-areas-of-change.html">a lot of the different changes that I wanted to see</a> in the global NVC network finally coming about. When <a href="https://nvc-global.net/2020-op-ed-nfp-status/">work on the New Future Process was suspended</a> that was the "final straw" for me. I was hurt, disappointed, disillusioned and disgusted with the CNVC organization. My faith and trust in both NVC in general and the CNVC organization in particular took a big blow with that. This all resulted in me deciding to take a break from NVC in general and writing that aforementioned blog post, <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2018/07/why-i-am-not-into-nvc-anymore.html">Why I Am Not Into NVC Anymore.</a>
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After a couple of years went by, something happened. Inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns and social distancing that was happening all around the world, the international NVC community began to create it's own new decentralized network of NVC practitioners who organized primarily online through various platforms such as WhatsApp, Zoom, Signal, Facebook and the like. I discovered various international online NVC events that were taking place, organized by various different groups around the world such as <a href="https://www.nvcrising.org">NVC Rising</a>, <a href="https://nvctraining.com">NVC Academy</a>, <a href="https://empathiceurope.com/online/">Empathic Way Europe</a> and <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/o/nvcdayone-32564628827">NVCDayOne</a>. I believe that the ease of access for these events, being able to attend them while staying in the comfort of my own home, lead to me being more open and receptive to exploring NVC again. My previous period of heavy involvement with NVC was predicated on me being both willing and able to travel all across the country to attend various NVC events. Given that my lifestyle no longer enables me to have that same kind of freedom to travel, I think that I unconsciously must have come to the conclusion that that kind of involvement with NVC was no longer possible for me anymore. Through my getting involved with NVC though this decentralized online network I have been able to meet a number of different NVC practitioners from all across the country and around the world, which is something that I am very much grateful for since it has significantly contributed to my life. And in some respects, this decentralized network is the kind of thing that I was wanting to see come about as a result of the New Future Process in the first place!
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Because of this process of being re-introduced to NVC through this informal online global network of NVC practitioners, I have resumed having a personal practice of NVC once again. I have beem engaging in empathic listening exchanges with others in addition to self-empathy for myself, as well as having many conversations with other NVC practitioners about their own NVC practice. This resumed personal practice has been of great benefit to me, it has helped me to be both more self-aware and attuned with what's going on within me mentally/emotionally-speaking, and it has helped me to be more aware of the various choices that I have been making and the effects of these choices. This practice has also helped me to get better at empathizing with other people, to view others with more compassion, and it has gradually made me more aware of how various choices I have made has lead to there being more or less connection with others. And thanks to one NVC friend I met through this, I have also been able to come to appreciate how <a href="https://girafferebel.medium.com/non-violant-communication-and-codependency-4379831f701c">intentionally setting boundaries with others can be supportive</a> to me and my practice of NVC. Throughout all of this I began to dust off my old NVC skills and knowledge and I began to appreciate NVC as a lived practice once again, and not just as a theoretical understanding (although <a href="https://thefearlessheart.org/nvc-reference-materials/key-assumptions-and-intentions-of-nvc-2/">that can be helpful too</a>).
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Ultimately I have come to appreciate NVC again as a great tool for increaseing my own self-understanding, for humanizing others and developing more compassion, for getting clear on what exactly my choices and actions are, and for better understanding the complex interplay of emotions and what drives them. I think that I lost a lot of this through neglecting my personal practice of NVC. I certainly do not view NVC as being the only practice or tool that can be useful for people in this realm, nor do I view it as being the "best" one out there per se. But NVC is the one that I have a high degree of comfort and familiarity with and appreciation for, so I believe that I will contunue to stick with it.
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This all being said, I also realize that nowadays I have no interest in being an NVC trainer or teacher, nor do I have any interest in marketing or proselytizing NVC to others. If you have an interest in practicing NVC, that's great, come join me in practicing it sometime somewhere. If you have no interest in NVC, that's great too, go do something else then that suits you better. I have no desire to convince or convert others to NVC. I leave it entirely up to other people to determine for themselves what they think about and how they relate with NVC.
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Frankly, I recognize that attempting to practice and live NVC is tough work. Our pre-existing social conditioning is extensive and our habitual patterns of thought and behavior are deeply engrained in us. Trying to undue all of that to live in a radically different way is an uphill battle. The standard marketing pitch for NVC is filled with promises of joyful connection and playful contribution, and while those things can occur at times, experiences of emotional pain and difficult conversations are just as likely. And what I said in that blog post, "Why I am Not Into NVC Anymore", about my never having witnessed NVC being used to successfully resolve conflicts, well that still rings true for me. I still haven't seen it happen. It might be happening without me knowing about it, and I hope that it is, but unfortunately I still haven't seen it myself.
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So where does this all leave me in my relationship with NVC now? What is my role within the greater NVC community currently? Well, this is still a work-in-progress for me. This is something that I am still trying to figure out. What I would like to be, in addition to being an NVC practitioner, is an NVC supporter. I would like to be someone who helps other people who are trying to learn and practice NVC and who are looking for support with this. Maybe one can call this role a "coach", a "guide", a "faciltiator", I don't know, nor do I particularly care about these labels (although I am fond of the term "flying giraffe"). The key thing is that I would like to work with people who already know NVC to some extent, people who already have some degree of personal committement to NVC and it's principles and practices and who actively want somebody such as myself to help them with whatever it is that they are struggling with. I do not want to impose myself on others who do not want my assistance or involvement with their NVC journey, nor do I want to try to sell NVC to others who are not familiar with NVC. In a number of ways, <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2012/04/my-goal-as-nvc-trainer.html">what I wrote about this subject over ten years ago</a> still applies to me. I do very much appreciate the sense of community and mutual aid that can develop between NVC enthusiasts, and that is something that I would like to partake in and support as well.
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Taken altogether, I guess that I will say that I am back in NVC-land now! The landscape has certainly changed, since it is all much more online now and less reliant upon in-person gatherings, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Rosenberg">Grand Poobah is dead</a>, as are <a href="https://nvctraining.com/nvc-trainer/inbal-kashtan">a few other</a> notable <a href="https://everloved.com/life-of/robert-gonzales-lake-oswego-oregon/timeline/">NVC trainers</a>. Some of my friends who were also into NVC in the past have drifted away from it, some of these friends have died, and I now have some new friends who are into NVC, all coming from a variety of different backgrounds and experience levels with NVC. Things arise and pass away, in constant motion and change, and I guess that that is an essential part of life. I am glad that I have something like Nonviolent Communication to accompany me through all of this. Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-18117816615222215472021-05-11T10:08:00.000-07:002021-05-11T10:08:01.236-07:00Why I am excited about Mars<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qbeLPRaxJbQ/YJqnaKo51iI/AAAAAAAAA3s/OsKTvgOMTlcVOuH2ag_eBREY6uShjeAQACLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/1280px-OSIRIS_Mars_true_color.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1280" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qbeLPRaxJbQ/YJqnaKo51iI/AAAAAAAAA3s/OsKTvgOMTlcVOuH2ag_eBREY6uShjeAQACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/1280px-OSIRIS_Mars_true_color.jpg"/></a></div>
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In recent years I have been becoming increasingly interested in and excited about the prospect of people exploring and colonizing the planet Mars. A friend asked me recently about what I find so compelling about this idea, and I thought that I'd elaborate some on it here.
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First off, I view the possibility of humans going to and living on Mars on a permanent basis as being an enormously important milestone for humanity overall. This move will signify humanity as being a species that resides not just on <b>one</b> planet, but on <b><i>multiple</i></b> planets. Humanity would then be a multiplanetary species. This would be a <b><i>huge</i></b> development, comparable to when humanity <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_human_migrations">left Africa 1.8 million years ago</a> to become a multi-continental, multi-regional species. To think that we can witness such a thing, and potentially be a part of such a thing, is just mindblowing.
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And as far as the survival of the human species goes, I do think that it is best to not have "all of our eggs in one basket", so to speak. There are any number of different things that could kill off humanity on Earth, be it human-based such as ecoological devastation and nuclear war, or naturally-occuring phenomena like asteroid impacts and supervolcano eruptions. I think that the more that humanity can spread around throughout our solar system, the greater the likelihood that humanity can continute to survive on into the future.
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I also appreciate the great challenges involved with space travel, Mars exploration and ultimately settling on another planet. This is the kind of endeavor that would challenge people on every possible level: psychologically, physically, socially, technologically, architecturally, medically, you name it. I think that this kind of challenge is a good thing, because it is the kind of goal that can help get people out of lazy "comfort zones" where trivialities and petty conflicts preoccupy people's minds, and towards big collective goals where people have to work together and bring out their best selves. Beceause, frankly, their lives would depend on it. There's simply no room left for fucking around.
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Relatedly, by taking on such a task I think that the conditions would be set for enormous scientific and technological breakthroughs and developments to occur. One of the areas in particular where I believe that lots of development will occur is the area of creating and maintaining life-support systems. This knowledge can be useful for assisting in efforts to colonize other places in our solar system, as well as for the people on Earth, since the Earth is currently on track towards dismantling it's life-support systems. The problems of too hot, too cold, the lack of immediately accessible drinking water, runaway carbon dioxide emissions, producing breathable air, the lack of good soil for growing plants in - these all are increasingly becoming major Earth problems, and of course these are also problems that are front and center with regards to colonizing Mars and other planets as well.
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Now, with all of this being said, I also have my own unique goals and aspirations regarding Mars colonization. What I would like to have happen is for people with anarchist and libertarian socialist orientations to work together to establish new self-sustaining utopian colonies on Mars. I would like for these colonies to be separate and distinct from whatever colonies that businesses like SpaceX and Blue Origin and governments like the United States and China might create on Mars. I am excited about the work that SpaceX and NASA are doing, since I see their work as progressing towards human beings eventually actually being able to get from Earth to Mars, but ultimately I think that the kind of utopian anarchist colonies on Mars that I envision would need to become independent of these various agencies and go their own way.
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This topic of establishing utopian colonies on Mars is actually something that I gave a workshop about at the international <a href="https://www.marssociety.org">Mars Society</a> convention that took place online last year. You can watch a recording of this talk on YouTube <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Jb8cNzS_ao&t">here</a>. My excitement about the prospect of creating utopian colonies on Mars comes down to this one thought: <b><i>this is our opportunity to finally create our own new society in alignment with our own visions and values</i></b>.
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I have been an anarchist for a long time now, and all this time I have been wanting to create a new world that more closely aligns with the kinds of ethics and values that are talked about in anarchist/libertarian socialist philosophy. And repeatedly over the years, the efforts of myself and my comrades have failed in accomplishing this. And now, looking at the state of the world as it is today, I don't see it as being likely that the world will go in the kind of direction that I'd want. What <b><i>does</i></b> seem increasingly likely to me is the possibility of human beings going to and colonizing the planet Mars. So as a result, I think that a shift has occured in me in recent years, a shift away from a "change the world" mindset and towards a "create a new world somewhere else" mindset. This is the same kind of mindset that inspired the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_socialism">utopian socialists</a> to leave Europe and go create their own new utopian colonies in the Americas back in the 18th and 19th centuries.
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Part of the appeal to me of the idea of colonizing Mars is the "new frontier" and "fresh start" aspect of the place. Nobody is living there currently, and all of the various required life support systems would need to be intentionally created by human beings. The way that I am approaching this then is thorough focusing on this question:
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As long as we are designing life support systems for human beings, how can we intentionally design life support systems to meet <b><i>all</i></b> of the different <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Max-Neef%27s_Fundamental_human_needs">fundamental human needs</a> for <b><i>all</i></b> of the different people involved? In other words, how can we design social relationships and social structures that would more effectively meet human needs? How can group decision-making, interpersonal communication, conflict resolution, emotional and psychological well-being, the allocation of resources, the management of public and private spaces, how can <b><i>all of this</i></b> be intentionally designed in new ways to maximize the health and happiness of everyone involved? I view the creation of utopian colonies on Mars as being the opportunity to look at all of this from fresh new perspectives.
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With that being said, I do not view this question of colonizing the planet Mars as being an "Earth versus Mars" question. Looking at this as an "Earth versus Mars" matter is indicative of the kind of narrow-minded zero sum thinking that I think is currently leading humanity to a dead end. I much prefer "both/and" thinking, with an emphasis on creativity and ingenuity (as well as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter)">Ingenuity</a>). To that end, I would like for all of the developments in space flight, life support systems engineering, alternative architecture, social relationships and structures, and other areas, to be looked at with an eye towards applying them to life on Earth, Mars, as well as other places in our solar system. These are all human problems that we are trying to address here, and these are all things that we are trying to create to better support human life, therefore the benefits should be for all of humanity.
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One thing that I have come to realize regarding a potential future utopian anarchist coloney on Mars, is that in order for such a thing to be successful, a massive functioning alternative infrastructure would need to be created by the utopian anarchist would-be Martian colonists right here on Earth beforehand. These people would need to be able to understand and operate alternative institutions that are capable of meeting people's various real life needs. These people would also need to be able to effectively make decisions together and resolve conflicts together. And while we are all still immersed in a capitalist society, these utopian anarchist would-be Martian colonists would need to be able to make and manage money together to not just buy necessary materials, but also to pay SpaceX, or whatever company is offering commercial space transportation, to get from Earth to Mars. This kind of high level of cohesion, cooperation and collaboration is not at all present within the contemporary anarchist and radical milieux, and perhaps it never has been. This means that there is a whole lot of work, innovation and development that needs to take place even before we can begin to tackle the various enormous challenges associated with living on another planet.
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It is all still very much worth it to me. Living on Mars is an opportunity to create and live in a "New World", both physically and socially speaking. It is all of the exciting "frontier spirit" that animated a lot of the European colonization of the Americas, but without any of the conquest and genocide of indigenous peoples. This can be a place where the world of our dreams can be created, by our own human efforts, in our own human-created life-support bubbles. And all of this can very well happen during our own lifetimes. What a time to be alive!Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-64917454260974631122019-10-06T16:58:00.000-07:002019-10-06T16:58:40.790-07:00Anarchist Colonization of Mars<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IeYvCUToY2I/XZp_hKcbg6I/AAAAAAAAAYc/3Zp5p-4UOSUZiS7aIyFPA_w0o28rK5lvwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/anarchism_space_square.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IeYvCUToY2I/XZp_hKcbg6I/AAAAAAAAAYc/3Zp5p-4UOSUZiS7aIyFPA_w0o28rK5lvwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/anarchism_space_square.png" width="320" height="320" data-original-width="1500" data-original-height="1500" /></a></div>I was on a recent episode of the <a href="https://anarchybang.com">Anarchy Bang</a> podcast with the topic being <a href="https://anarchybang.com/podcast/episode-39-anarchist-colonization-of-mars">Anarchist Colonization of Mars</a>. Here are the pieces that I wrote for the intro and the editorial for this episode.
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In 1974 Ursula K. Le Guin published the science fiction novel “The Dispossessed”, which told the story of a movement of anarchists who collectively left an Earth-like planet to go colonize a Mars-like planet, establishing there a new society organized around their anarchist beliefs. In 1992 Kim Stanley Robinson published the science fiction novel “Red Mars”, the first book of his “Mars Trilogy”, which told the story of people colonizing the planet Mars, including a number of explicitly anarchist groups, who then go on to become independent from the various authorities on Earth.
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Then last Saturday, September 28th, Elon Musk held a press conference where he introduced the world to the “Starship” vehicle that he intends to use to send humans to Mars to begin the process of colonizing that planet. Musk’s company, SpaceX, has already shown the world that reusable rockets which are capable of going out into space can be made, and that a private company can make them. Prior to this only single-use rockets were made for space travel, and government agencies were seen as the only organizations capable of going out into space.
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Taking inspiration from all of this, the question here becomes: How about we build some real-life anarchist colonies on Mars? Our current planet is fucked, in all kinds of different ways, so how about those of us who yearn for a completely different world go set up shop on a completely different world? How about we turn “the Red Planet” into “the Red & Black Planet”? Let’s become Martians!<br>
Join in the conversation!
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<B>Editorial for Episode 39 - Anarchist Colonization of Mars</B></CENTER>
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For a long time I advocated for a Global Anarchist Social Revolution. I said that everybody in the world can and should change the way that they relate to get rid of all hierarchy and domination, and instead have voluntary cooperation and sharing be the basis for all of social life. This would involve the elimination of all governments, capitalism and patriarchy worldwide, and the dawn of a beautiful new age of freedom and equality for all of humanity. I saw my role in all of that as being to help inspire people to move to unlock this latent potential to make this happen.
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Over time, after a series of different heartbreaks and disappointments, I came to hold a belief that a Global Anarchist Social Revolution (or "GASR" for short) was most likely not going to happen and that it would be best to not be putting my time and energy into things assuming that it would. At around the same time as this, other anarchists were coming to these same conclusions, most notably with the widely circulated text called "Desert". That piece took things a step further by saying that not only would an anarchist revolution not happen, but the sibling project of "saving the Earth" from ecological catastrophe was not going to happen either, and that we should adjust our plans and expectations to accommodate that. My anarchist goals became much more diminished and narrow in scope, shrinking from a global scale down to a more individualist scale, looking at just me and my own little life.
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Then in more recent years a new and completely unrelated development has taken place. Elon Musk and his company SpaceX has publicly announced their intention and plans to send humans to the planet Mars, and they have developed some reusable rockets to help make this happen. SpaceX also has the advantage of also being a private company, not a government agency, thereby showing that these kinds of endeavors can take place outside of the purview of a government. If SpaceX can do this, what can other non-governmental agencies accomplish?
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An idea then hit me, perhaps a new big grand world-changing mission can be adopted by anarchists to fill the void left by what was previously occupied by the "GASR" (Global Anarchist Social Revolution). Perhaps instead of focusing on changing this world, anarchists can focus on getting off of this world and settling on Mars instead? Both tasks are enormous, involving lots of work, resources, and would most likely take generations to accomplish. But if we are indeed writing off all hope for this planet, as far fetched as it may sound, there may be some hope in the planet Mars instead.
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I would like to have a conversation that I have never had before, and that is to talk about the possibility of anarchists colonizing Mars. How can we conceptualize this project in a way that is in some sense realistic and tangible? How can we even begin to break down this massive undertaking in a way that we can make some progress with it? How would we need to re-organize our tiny little anarchist scene or subculture to be able to tackle such a big endeavor? Or perhaps this all is still a project that is ahead of it's time, and is best left for a future "wave" of anarchism to take up?
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I don't have the answers to any of these questions. Plus, there are a million other questions and variables to consider when considering something like a project on this scale. But I would like to talk about this, and in particular I would like to talk about all of this while using an anarchist lens. So let's get going. Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-13999711252618835482019-09-15T14:45:00.003-07:002019-09-15T14:50:01.370-07:00Buddhist anarchism and Nonviolent Communication writings for Anarchy Bang<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xvzIBhaWodI/XX6vcGJ_t2I/AAAAAAAAAYM/m2j__Hji_iAgoCmmEXEvehvC77bX-QUfgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/theotherswillhelp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xvzIBhaWodI/XX6vcGJ_t2I/AAAAAAAAAYM/m2j__Hji_iAgoCmmEXEvehvC77bX-QUfgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/theotherswillhelp.jpg" width="320" height="315" data-original-width="720" data-original-height="709" /></a></div>
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Here are some pieces that I wrote up for two episodes of <a href="https://anarchybang.com/">the Anarchy Bang podcast</a>. One episode was about <a href="https://anarchybang.com/podcast/episode-33-anarchist-buddhism/">buddhist anarchism</a> and the other episode was about <a href="https://anarchybang.com/podcast/episode-36-non-violent-communication/">Nonviolent Communication & anarchism</a>.
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<B>Buddhist Anarchism</B>
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It's hard to really know where to begin with Buddhism, given that there are so many different ways that people relate to the thing. Buddhism can be seen as a religion, a philosophy, an approach to psychology, a personal practice or a culture. And then there are the infinite different sects, traditions, branches and sub-branches within Buddhism. It all can very quickly become very overwhelming and confusing.
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That all being said, the way that I like to begin to make sense of Buddhism is by studying some of the renowned lists within Buddhism. What better way to organize one's thoughts on something than to use lists? One list in particular stands out to me the most, it's called "the three marks of existence". Basically it lists the three qualities that mark life as we know it. The first quality is that change is constant and inevitable, that nothing lasts forever. The second is that everything is comprised of many different interacting components and forces acting on it, that nothing exists on it's own, in and of itself. Basically, "anti-essentialism" is how I like to look at it. And the third is that suffering exists, it's an experience that we all have.
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This then goes into perhaps the most famous list within Buddhism, the Four Noble Truths. The first one is what I just mentioned, that whole "suffering" thing that we all have. The second is that there is a root cause to this suffering, and that is craving or clinging to our ideas of what we want. The third is that it is indeed possible to overcome this kind of attachment. And the fourth is the way to go about doing that, which is itself another list, the Noble Eightfold Path.
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...And as much as I love the Noble Eightfold Path, I won't go into that list here.
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So what does this all have to do with anarchism? Well, as I see it, that whole "suffering" condition that we all experience makes us all crazy, it makes us all desperate and frantic, even if we are able to put up a good front and present ourselves as being mature capable thinkers. Our lack of dealing with our own suffering head-on deprives us of our own personal power.
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Buddhist practice is all about developing one's own personal power, self-mastery, cultivating one's ability to choose and act on one's choices, rather that letting one's own old habits, old beliefs and emotional reactivity dictate one's life. It's also about getting more peace and contentment in one's life. You are not always going to get what you want, anarchists will always disappoint you, your dreams for an anarchist world will never happen, and if you do decide to embark on a Buddhist practice, you will probably fuck that up too. But the paradoxical beauty of Buddhism is that even with that all being the case, one can come to acceptance of all of that, and still keep on going. At least for as long as this life you are living now exists.
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<P> <B>Nonviolent Communication & Anarchism</B>
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Nonviolent Communication (also known as “NVC” or “compassionate communication”) is a set of conceptual tools and a general worldview that a number of anarchists have found useful and at times have adopted. Some have found it to be a how-to guide for living without hierarchy and domination, whereas others have found it to be a series of tips for approaching conflict in ways that are hopefully more productive.
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NVC can be used as a way to do conflict resolution, which is what it is best known for, but it can also be used for meeting facilitation, counseling & therapy, and some would say for social change work itself.
The crux of NVC is developing one’s ability to make distinctions between objective observations vs. subjective interpretations, bodily-felt feelings vs. cognitive evaluations, and fundamental human needs vs. the infinite ways that needs can be met. The ultimate goal of NVC is for it’s practitioners to come to embody a way of being that the psychologist Carl Rogers said is most helpful in relationships: heartfelt authenticity, empathic understanding and unconditional positive regard. The idea is that through such qualities being present in a relationship, that relationship will eventually and inevitably become stronger, autonomy-respecting, collaborative and conducive to those involved realizing their own personal power. Anarchy, baby!
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Join us September 15th as we talk about how NVC relates to anarchy, how it doesn’t, it’s potential for becoming an exciting new anarchist social of thought vs. just a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.
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<B>Some related readings</B>
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<a href="https://baynvc.org/basics-of-nonviolent-communication/">The Basics of Nonviolent Communication</a>
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<a href="https://baynvc.org/key-assumptions-and-intentions-of-nvc/">Key Assumptions and Intentions of Nonviolent Communication</a>
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<a href="http://www.en.nvcwiki.com/index.php/Compassionate_anarchism">Compassionate Anarchism</a>
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<a href="http://thefearlessheart.org/can-the-social-order-be-transformed-through-personal-practice-the-case-of-nonviolent-communication/">Can the Social Order Be Transformed through Personal Practice? The Case of Nonviolent Communication</a>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person-centered_therapy">Person-centered Therapy</a>
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I will begin with a quote which has always been the touchstone for me and my anarchism, that famous quote from Gustav Landauer:
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<i>"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… We are the State and we shall continue to be the State until we have created the institutions that form a real community.”</i>
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With this in mind, I immediately ask: what are the different kinds of relationships that would comprise anarchy? What would these relationships look like?
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The answers that I come up with is that these relationships would, generally-speaking, acknowledge and respect the autonomy of everybody involved while also enabling people to cooperate, collaborate and make decisions together as equals, with no one person or group of people bossing everyone else around. All of this stuff is easier said than done, which is why I eventually started to look for some guides and pointers for how to actually do this, practically-speaking.
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This lead to me eventually discovering something called "Nonviolent Communication", or "NVC" for short. NVC generally lives in the self-help/self-improvement world, and the demographic that is mainly drawn to NVC is middle-aged middle-class 1st world white women with liberal/progressive politics. In short, NVC is not at all something that originates from the anarchist scene, yet as soon as I started to study I immediately saw the connections and correlations with anarchism, and I got quite excited about that.
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For about five years I was a zealous missionary for a kind of NVC-anarchist hybrid that I tried to develop and promote to anybody who would listen to me. For the next ten years after that I had more of a low-key involvement with NVC lasting until just last year when I decided to end my involvement with the NVC milieu altogether. My overall takeaway message from the whole thing is that while some maps, guides and conceptual schemas may be helpful for actualizing anarchy in the real-world, ultimately human beings with all of their complexities, foibles and psychoses go above and beyond anything that we can come up with.
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To quote our anarchist daddy, Mikhail Bakunin: <i>"No theory, no ready-made system, no book that has ever been written will save the world. I cleave to no system. I am a true seeker."</i>
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This leaves me with a belief that Nonviolent Communication is something that can be useful and helpful for anarchists, if one cares to spend the time & energy to seriously consider it. I do not think that NVC is something that anybody "should" do, and in fact I think that the moment that one looks at it that way the whole thing becomes completely worthless and a waste of time. But if the sincere interest and desire to learn NVC is there, then the time spent can be worthwhile. So let's talk about Nonviolent Communication. Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-30601291337439005212019-07-07T15:48:00.000-07:002019-07-07T15:55:50.717-07:00An Anarchist Postive Program<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lK6Dkyd_BDI/XSJ4U26XkbI/AAAAAAAAAXQ/GedkT-VH7SkAq8tgqWW3_btov841BWkagCLcBGAs/s1600/20840695_474565169567918_3974896270176211132_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lK6Dkyd_BDI/XSJ4U26XkbI/AAAAAAAAAXQ/GedkT-VH7SkAq8tgqWW3_btov841BWkagCLcBGAs/s320/20840695_474565169567918_3974896270176211132_n.jpg" width="320" height="320" data-original-width="250" data-original-height="250" /></a></div>
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Here are some things that I wrote for an episode of <a href="https://anarchybang.com">the Anarchy Bang</a> podcast. The episode itself can be found online <a href="https://anarchybang.com/podcast/episode-27-an-anarchist-positive-program">here</a>.
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<center><b>Introducing An Anarchist Positive Program</b></center>
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Alright, enough with all the negativity, and time to get positive. Now, I know very well that we don’t want <b>this<i></i></b>, and we don’t want <b>that<i></i></b>. <b>This<i></i></b> is fundamentally corrupt and needs to be destroyed, and <b>that<i></i></b> is entirely oppressive and needs to be abolished. <b>This<i></i></b> is completely fucked-up and needs to be attacked, and <b>that</b> thing over there… well, let’s not even talk about that!
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Instead, let’s get clear: what exactly is it that we DO want in terms of “anarchism” and/or “anarchy”? In other words, let’s say that all of the Big Bad Things are made to go away, through some means or another, then what exactly would our brave new anarchist world look like? What specifically would the people in an anarchist society (or “community”, or whatever) be DOING? What is our big End Goal? What’s the beautiful dream?
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Back in the day, various books were written about this topic, both non-fiction such as <a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-fields-factories-and-workshops-or-industry-combined-with-agriculture-and-brain-w">Fields, Factories and Workshops</a> and <a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/p-m-bolo-bolo">Bolo’bolo</a>, and fiction such as “The Dispossessed” and “The Fifth Sacred Thing”. And of course there is the whole <a href="http://theconversation.com/explainer-solarpunk-or-how-to-be-an-optimistic-radical-80275">solarpunk phenomena</a> that is floating around the interwebs. We can talk about these writings, if they describe the kind of anarchist world that you would like to live in. And if not, then fuck it. What’s important is your anarchist dream, your ideal world and what it would look like. Let’s go into it.
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<center><b>An Anarchist Positive Program - Editorial</b></center>
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For me anarchism has always been a two-sided coin. There is the destructive "anti" side, the side that says that all forms of capitalism, government, hierarchy, authority, etc. should be completely destroyed ASAP. And then there is the positive side, the part that says that "another world is possible", and that that world would look something like people coming together voluntarily as equals to cooperate, share and help each other out. My concern is that in recent years the positive side of anarchism has been overlooked, or even forgotten about, while the attack-and-destroy negative side of anarchism has become more of what people think about when they think of the big A-word.
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I would like to see this change. I would like to see anarchism become more positive. Now, I know that I may sound stupid and hokey saying this, but I really do believe that positivity in some form really does serve a purpose. I believe that positivity can sustain & nourish people, that it can keep people going. And with a big social-political philosophy like anarchism, it also serves the purpose of providing a sense of direction, a way to orient yourself towards what it is that you do want, instead of just getting away from what you don't want.
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There is an Israeli anarchist guy I've known for a long time named Ilan Shalif who recently said this online: "<i>If I had no vision of libertarian communist alternative for human society I would not have survived the full 82 years of my life</i>." Now, I am definitely not as old as he is, but I do feel the same way he does. Having a vision for what human beings are capable of, in the positive sense and on a large-scale global level, has certainly kept me going all these years that I have been alive. And with the anarchist scene being what it is these days, this positive sense of our human potential has kept me sticking with anarchism, even though there are a million and one reasons presented to me as to why I should leave it all behind.
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Let me be clear here, just because human beings have the potential for great and beautiful things does not at all mean that these things will happen. Possibility does not mean inevitability. And likewise, having a wonderful vision for how human society can be does not mean that this vision will ever be realized. In some sense our visions for a future anarchist world are siblings to the fantastic worlds created in science fiction. The difference is that our anarchist visions are of worlds that we actually do believe can happen, and they are ones that we are ostensibly working to make into a reality.
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So with this episode, I would like to hear what your anarchist utopia looks like. I would like to hear how your ideal society (or lack thereof) would function, what daily life would be like, how stuff would get done. Would your ideal society keep the old anarchist dream of workers' councils, neighborhood assemblies and mandated recallable delegates within massive federation structures? Or would you go with more of a 21st century approach and make collective decisions via directly voting for things on your smartphone that is connected with a mesh network and uses heavy encryption? Or would you keep things really old school and instead have humanity be organized the way it was for most of its history, as small bands and tribes of nomadic hunter-gatherers?
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Speaking for myself, the centerpiece of my ideal anarchist society would be authentic heartfelt connection between people. So my ideal anarchist world would have people taking the time and effort to be honest with themselves and those around them, really taking the time to listen to and understand those around them, and working through the conflicts and difficulties that inevitably arise in human relationships. My ideal anarchist world would then have specific times and spaces set aside for people to do this kind of messy personal/interpersonal kind of work. And then with that foundation in place, the whole gamut of non-hierarchical meeting facilitation processes and organizational systems can be utilized to help the various "councils", "assemblies", "tribes" and "collectives" run more smoothly and harmoniously than a group of alienated antagonistic people using Robert's Rules of Order or Formal Consensus would ever be able to.
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And then, ultimately, we would have bad-ass anarchist colonies on Mars, the asteroid belt, and the rest of the solar system. That is my dream, anyway.... Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-84144913893537258542018-12-31T10:09:00.000-08:002018-12-31T10:10:59.641-08:00Flying By: my experience of 2018<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iZ7ysqkQ80w/XCpXj6dhMnI/AAAAAAAAAVg/lxlg5m7nSwoPCQq30tu4zMeTcbeuUYKgQCLcBGAs/s1600/space-photos2018-3%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iZ7ysqkQ80w/XCpXj6dhMnI/AAAAAAAAAVg/lxlg5m7nSwoPCQq30tu4zMeTcbeuUYKgQCLcBGAs/s320/space-photos2018-3%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" height="180" data-original-width="1000" data-original-height="563" /></a></div>
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It's that time of year again! The time when the planet Earth is at that one particular spot in its orbit around the sun where a lot of us like to pause, reflect on our lives and the world we live in, and get wasted. So here are my own reflections on the year-that-was, 2018, and my experience of it.
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In a number of regards my experience of this year was a boring repetition of the same-old same-old. I lived in the same apartment, worked the same job at the same location, drove the same car, and had the same friends, the same family situation and the same coworkers as the year prior. I don't view that as being a necessarily "bad" or "good" thing, it just is. It is/was the bedrock of stability from which I can look at everything else.
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Traveling-wise, this year I traveled out to Las Vegas, New York City, West Virginia, Michigan, South Dakota and Chicago. So I was able to get some traveling in this year, albeit each one of these trips was a little short trip. I had the most fun in Las Vegas, which is kind of what the city is designed for. But going to New York City was my favorite of them all, simply because: <br>
I ❤ NYC.
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My time in NYC this year was also probably the most eventful time for me, as far as different big events crammed into a small period of time goes. During my time there I saw a few long-time friends of mine, I ended the friendship with one of those friends, I narrowly missed meeting up with some new friends of mine, I met up with someone who was once a member of a cult that I was once tangentially involved with that nevertheless had a huge impact on my life, I became disillusioned with NVC (which some people also call a cult), and I realized there that going to public anarchist events is a waste of my time. Oh, and I also saw the remains of real-life dinosaurs!
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This year I got involved with a bunch of different things/groups that go by Three Letter Acronyms: PCT, NVC, NFP, DSA, LSC. With each of these I went through cycles of thinking that they were quite interesting and that I had a bright future with them, to eventually thinking that they were quite boring and overblown. My thoughts on all of these things now is that they each have their place in life and the world at large, but also that putting too much faith or importance in them is best described with a Two Letter Acronym: BS.
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Belief-system-wise, my heart is still with The Beautiful Idea of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism">anarchy/anarchism</a>. There is no <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_schools_of_thought">particular hyphenated ideology of anarchism</a> that I am tied to, I am more interested in the whole thing in general. Yes, the whole social scene/subculture that surrounds anarchism is total shit, but I am lucky to have some friends who are anarchists as well as a body of thought that speaks to how I see life and the world at large.
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Speaking of the world at large, 2018 has been a big year for Politics! I spent a lot of time paying attention to mainstream politics this year, mainly in the U.S., but also in some other countries as well. I view mainstream politics, particularly in the U.S., as being a kind of team sport, and this year I treated it as such. My team that I root for is the Democrats, and so as the scandals, investigations, testimonies and elections wore on, I cheered as my team scored points, booed when the opposing team scored points, and strategized as to how the next few moves can and should play out. I have no illusions that the Democrats, nor any other political party or politician, will ever bring us freedom, meaning, a brave new future, or anything else worthwhile. The whole system is based on deception, death, destruction and despair, it is all propped up with outright violence and the threat thereof, and while it all plays out <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction">the Sixth Mass Extinction Event</a> for this planet is continuing on unabated. But team sports, be it political or otherwise, can be a fun way to pass the time, and so that was a game that I partook in this year as well.
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Speaking of entertainment, in the world of science fiction Star Trek and Star Wars surprisingly were not that big on my mind this year. 2017 was a big year for me for both of those franchises, but <b><i>not</i></b> 2018. This year I would say that my favorite sci-fi TV show was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(TV_series)">The Expanse</a>, my favorite new sci- movie was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_(film)">Prospect</a> and my favorite new publishing sci-fi author was the wonderful <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Stanley_Robinson">Kim Stanley Robinson</a>. Yes, I acknowledge that there are other genres out there besides science fiction, I just don't see them as being interesting enough for me to write about here. ;)
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Real-life science had an interesting year this year as well, what with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk%27s_Tesla_Roadster">SpaceX doing some cool things</a>, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InSight">robotic lander</a> successfully touching down on the surface of Mars, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/26/worlds-first-gene-edited-babies-created-in-china-claims-scientist">first genetically engineered humans</a> being born, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-report-2040.html">the details of our impending doom</a> being laid out for all to see and ignore.
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Speaking personally, one notable thing for me this year was that 2018 was the year that I turned 40. <b><i>40!</b></i> There is no more pretending that I am a youngling anymore! Ten years ago, when I turned 30, I went through a huge existential moment of trying to figure out who I am and what I am doing in the world. Turning 40 was far less dramatic, more subdued, more accepting of my place in life. I wonder if turning 50 will be similar?
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Happy New Year to all! And good luck to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons">New Horizons</a> as it flies by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(486958)_2014_MU69">Ultima Thule</a>!Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-88911159655914955412018-07-13T12:48:00.000-07:002018-07-13T13:09:29.318-07:00Why I am not into NVC anymore<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uZys7DsVcf8/W0jr6Ot7XkI/AAAAAAAAAUY/6J5UAiDIll84ZREH1vCShDkQvb257jvUgCLcBGAs/s1600/645x410-1530275069199.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uZys7DsVcf8/W0jr6Ot7XkI/AAAAAAAAAUY/6J5UAiDIll84ZREH1vCShDkQvb257jvUgCLcBGAs/s320/645x410-1530275069199.jpg" width="320" height="203" data-original-width="645" data-original-height="410" /></a></div>
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From 2003 until pretty recently I was really into <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication">Nonviolent Communication</a> (aka: "NVC"). This is not the case for me anymore. I have a few reasons as to why this is the case.
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<B>1) The central claim behind NVC is bogus</B>
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The central claim behind NVC, and the initial selling-point to get people interested in it, is that NVC is a uniquely effective way for peacefully resolving conflicts between people. This is not true. In the 15 years that I have been involved with NVC circles I have seen countless conflicts occur between people who are ostensibly committed to NVC and the overwhelming majority of these conflicts were not peacefully resolved to the satisfaction of everybody involved.
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For a long time I have been ignoring this fact and persisted in having a faith in the conflict transforming power of NVC. Now I see that my faith has been misplaced and that my actual real-life experience shows that NVC does not achieve what people says it does. I do not wish to continue believing in something when the evidence right in front of me does not support it.
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2) NVC is not special
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Shortly upon entering the NVC milieu I was introduced to a whole slew of other different self-help, personal growth, interpersonal, spiritual and organizational methods, practices, processes and packages. Each of these claim to be uniquely beneficial and a good thing to have as a regular part of your life. I agree that a lot of these are useful helpful things to use and have a working knowledge of. But then I ask myself: why is it that I prioritize NVC as being the thing that I most practice and talk about to others?
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And the answer that I come to for this is that NVC is the personal/interpersonal tool that I came across <B><I>first</I></B>. I established a habit of thinking and talking about it, and I maintained that habit over the years since my initial encounter. A habit is a habit, not necessarily a good thing or bad thing in and of itself. It just is what it is.
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When I think about it, a lot, if not most, of the other different personal/interpersonal tools have some beneficial things to offer. Prioritizing NVC over the others is essentially an arbitrary thing to do that comes from whatever personal biases people have. My personal bias has been towards NVC and as a result I have been showcasing the benefits of NVC over the years, while disregarding the benefits of all of the other different personal/interpersonal tools that are out there.
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3) There's nothing new here
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For a long time I have been frustrated with NVC essentially manifesting itself as a perpetual series of workshops, retreats, practice groups and merchandise that one can purchase. Utilizing this model is pretty standard within the larger self-help subculture that NVC is a part of. A few attempts by NVC enthusiasts have been made to go beyond that model, but these attempts pretty much always sputter and die due to a combination of confusion, conflict and lack of interest. I think that by and large the NVC milieu has found a comfortable routine and niche for itself through the model of workshops, retreats, practice groups and merchandise. If you want something transgressive you need to go somewhere else.
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4) Grand Poobahs everywhere you go
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Most of the time when people think of "Nonviolent Communication" they think of one man: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Rosenberg">Marshall Rosenberg</a>. I have long been frustrated with that tendency and I have hoped that that would go away with Marshall Rosenberg passing away. That was not the case.
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NVC is filled with Grand Poobahs, people who are adored, put up on pedestals and who appear to have very high opinions of themselves. What these people say generally carries a lot of weight within NVC circles, whereas what the people who are not in these positions have to say is generally inconsequential. I am tired of this dynamic.
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When I think about it, though, this is probably tied to the training and merchandising model that NVC is wedded to. If you have people whose economic livelihood is dependent upon other people paying money to them for their NVC goods and services, the best way for you to have security and stability in that position is to have people think that you are hot shit and be eager to hand over their money to you for whatever you say or do next. This is a tiered system of trainers, students and administrative support staff for the trainers who may or may not be paid for the work that they do. For someone who is opposed to hierarchy in all its forms I find this to be a profoundly uninteresting set-up to be stuck with.
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5) People are people
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I have long had the belief that NVC enthusiasts are more likely to display the qualities of empathic listening, abstaining from judging people, and expressing themselves honestly and vulnerably. I no longer believe that this is the case. I now think that NVC people, just like other people, are just as likely to perpetuate blame, shame, judgement and emotional disconnection. I give them kudos for trying to go beyond it, that is, when they actually do try to do so.
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However I think that it is unwise to expect anything else when we are all programmed by the same overarching society that we all live in, a society that is based upon blame, shame, judgement and emotional disconnection. This is not to say that I have not met some remarkable people in NVC circles who clearly have displayed these qualities of empathy, non-judgement and personal authenticity, but I have also met such people in spaces <B><I>outside of</I></B> the NVC milieu as well. So, again, NVC is not particularly special in this regard.
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6) A question of consciousness
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I have heard a number of different NVC trainers over the years say that the purpose of NVC practice is to get one's mind into a kind of consciousness of peace and love. These same NVC trainers are also often quick to point out that this kind of consciousness is not only available via NVC and that many other means also exist to achieve this end goal. The NVC trainers say that NVC is their preferred method for reaching that kind of consciousness and that their preference for NVC does not make NVC "better" than the other methods out there.
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What comes up for me upon reflecting upon this is: <B><I>What about the other paths? What if I prefer to use one of those instead? Perhaps over time some other path, or combination of paths, has become more appropriate for me? </I></B>
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Regardless of all of that, my excitement and enthusiasm for "walking the path" these days is shot. It is simply not something that is important to me right now. The <a href="http://baynvc.org/key-assumptions-and-intentions-of-nvc/">principles and intentions behind NVC</a> are still things that are close to my heart, but an NVC practice or affiliation is not.
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What now?
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I do not feel any kind of anger or hostility towards the various different NVC people out there. I wish those people who continue to be enthusiastic about NVC well and good luck. And to those people who are new to NVC and who are interested in learning more about it: by all means, go for it!
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But for me, personally, my time with NVC is up. My enthusiasm for it is gone, my faith in it has evaporated and my interests now lay elsewhere. NVC has had a profound impact and effect on me and my life, but now my life is at a different place from where it was in the past. It does not make sense to me to keep things around simply for the sake of nostalgia and habit. It was great while it lasted, and now it is time for me to move on to other things. Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-31890198802772528262017-03-02T11:39:00.002-08:002017-03-02T12:02:00.775-08:00Letting Go of Social Change<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c1O7GKOrC0E/WLhwRaWh_jI/AAAAAAAAAOA/ex2g9v_3kVM86RPc4uzZqIS54RR2rTZUQCLcB/s1600/self-righteousness1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c1O7GKOrC0E/WLhwRaWh_jI/AAAAAAAAAOA/ex2g9v_3kVM86RPc4uzZqIS54RR2rTZUQCLcB/s320/self-righteousness1.jpg" width="305" height="320" /></a></div>
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So much of anarchism, and radical politics in general, seems to be about envisioning an ideal society, strategizing about how to get there, and charging forth on that mission. For me, I don't really believe in that. I mean, yes, envisioning an ideal society (or two, or three, or three hundred) can be fun, and strategizing about how to get there can be an enjoyable way to pass the time, but in the end I simply do not believe it.
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The way that I see it is that while the concept of a utopia can be enchanting, it is essentially just a work of fiction. While I do believe that all kinds of different possibilities exist for how human beings can live together and organize their affairs, I do not believe that it is healthy or wise to think that such-and-such a society is on it's way towards becoming a reality, or that you are the harbinger for a new era.
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This is to say, then, I no longer believe in social/political change. Perhaps it is inaccurate to say this, since change of all kinds is a constant in life. Things have changed in the past, things are changing now, and I fully believe that things will change in the future as well. What I don't believe is that things will change in the way that I (or you) want them to. I would love it if that did happen, and it could happen, I just don't put my faith in it.
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The reason why I say this is that we live in a world of 7.4 billion human beings, give or take a few million. All of these different people are in their own ways influencing the world to change in some way or another. I can have my influence, and then immediately have it be counter-acted by another person, and then another, and on and on. Or I can even inadvertently counter-act my own influence myself by saying or doing something that goes against the kind of world that I would like to see.
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And then there are various non-human influences as well, such as the various forces of nature, always in motion, which in their own way also affect the direction that human societies change over time. It is all simply too much, which leads me to throw my hands up in the air at the prospect of being a "change agent" in the world. This is yet another rat race that is pointless to pursue.
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And yet, we are still alive, and for as long as that lasts we still do have the power to make choices and determine what actions to take. It is from this basis that I appreciate the perspective of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualism">individualism</a>, which emphasizes this ability of individuals to choose and act on their own, if they so desire. This then leads to the kind of anarchism that I value being a kind of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_anarchism">philosophical anarchism</a> in that it does not necessarily imply any particular action being done, while at the same time serving as a set of conceptual tools and frameworks to use to look out at and interpret the world around us. Ideally, I would like for this philosophical anarchism to be a form of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quietism_(philosophy)">quietism</a>, in that it would serve a personally therapeutic purpose, helping people to reconcile themselves with the world that they find themselves in, relieve personal distress, and increase personal clarity.
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Through my saying all of this, I am not meaning to imply that I no longer have an interest in big picture projects, utopias and social/political movements of various stripes. I find all of that to be quite interesting indeed, I just do not believe in them, or that the intended results that people want will necessarily come about. I may even choose to participate in some of these myself, for reasons that are similar to how I choose to be employed and work at a job. That is, to meet <a href="http://www.cnvc.org/Training/needs-inventory">various needs</a> of mine, none of which being that of high-minded idealism.
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That being said, I still do find some sense of solace and direction in the philosophy of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_philosophy">Buddhism</a> as well. This is namely through the understanding that everything has a merely apparent existence through various different interacting component parts, that suffering is something that we bring upon ourselves through our own choices of which kind of state of mind to maintain, and that change itself is constant and inevitable. With that in mind, the best way to find happiness in this fleeting existence is to do what you can to contribute to the well-being of others, and to work to have love in your heart.
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As is often the case, all of this stuff is easier said than done. But I would rather tread this difficult path than to have my head stuck in the clouds, trapped in the various competing illusions & delusions of competing political utopias, political movements, and an exaggerated sense of our own importance. The kind of anarchism that I embrace is not so much that of "burning it all down", but rather one of seeing through the smoke in a world that is already in flames. Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-10804374915030763522017-01-03T14:36:00.000-08:002017-01-03T14:36:19.202-08:00Nobody Owns Anything<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QSkY3SCFY6k/WGwdljrya_I/AAAAAAAAANE/vMr5_OKdt68Q2xHXCiBgzTQB6_Cr7PL9wCLcB/s1600/anti-ownership-300x300.gif.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QSkY3SCFY6k/WGwdljrya_I/AAAAAAAAANE/vMr5_OKdt68Q2xHXCiBgzTQB6_Cr7PL9wCLcB/s320/anti-ownership-300x300.gif.png" width="320" height="320" /></a></div>
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Throughout my tenure as an anarchist one thing has always set me apart from everyone else: my beliefs around the concept of property and ownership. These are some real foundational beliefs for me, because it is based on them that I evaluate various things like "capitalism", "socialism", "communism", even "economics" writ large. My beliefs on ownership are ones that I have largely kept silent about, but recently I have been feeling the need to sit down and elucidate my thoughts on the subject. So here it goes...
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As I see it, the concept of "ownership" is a fiction that does not really exist except to the extent that people believe in it and act accordingly. People can chose to believe in it and live their lives by it, or not. Ownership is of course a very popular and prevalent concept that people believe in, but it is by no means inevitable that people have to believe in it. It is up there with other concepts in that regard, such as "money", "government" and "religion", that have shaped history and dominated people's lives and that I think that we all can and should do away with in order to live more free and fulfilling lives.
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I opt for a perspective that I consider to be more natural and real, one that I tentatively am calling "non-ownership". This applies to everyone and everything, in that nobody owns anything. This includes all people, places, things and ideas, all of it is unshackled to the concept of invisible lines binding such-and-such with so-and-so. I am not saying that "government" owns everything, or that "the community" owns everything, or that "society" owns everything, I am saying that <b>nobody</b> owns anything, since <i>ownership does not exist</i>.
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The rationale behind this is that everyone comes into the world naked and carrying no possessions, and leaves the world taking no possessions with them. The interim period between birth and death is when people usually ascribe the concept of ownership to people and things, but this is a faulty concept given that people can and do accidentally break, misplace, or have their "property" taken from them against their will through various means. If somebody really "owned" something, then at the very least it could not be accidentally broken or misplaced, since it would always be under the complete control of the owner and it could not do anything that goes against the owner's will. The fact that things can go their own way regardless of the desires of the so-called owner shows that there is no invisible sanctified bond between object and owner. It's just make-believe.
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As far as property being taken against people's will by other people, whether we call it "theft", "fraud", or whatever, I would say that this is a case of people with different ideas of who should have what things. Different systems that we call law, trade, fair and just business transactions, justifiable means of establishing ownership, all of these are different rules for playing different games with the same basic fiction that we call "ownership". It is similar to how different computer games exist focused on 'Star Wars'. Star Wars is still a work of fiction, even though different games exist that are focused on it, and none of the particular rules or codes that these different games abide by are more "true" or "legitimate" than any other, because it is all still premised on a work of fiction. It is just a game, and we can choose to play different games, or we can stop playing games altogether. The same goes with "ownership".
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Often people bring up the idea of finding things and making things as being the basis for ownership. However, people find things (and lose things) and make things (and break things) all the time, usually with the help of predecessors and those around them. To find out the original discoverer or creator of something or somewhere, among a species that goes back hundreds of thousands of years and that is fundamentally social in nature seems like an absurd and arbitrary game of catch-up. People exist, places exist, things exist, let's go with that.
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People often bring up the idea of one's own body, "don't people own their own physical bodies?" I would say, no, even that is not really owned by people. I would say that the fact that injuries, illness, aging and accidental deaths all occur are proof that people do not own their own bodies. If people really owned their own bodies, then none of these things would ever occur, because people would control it. This kind of control is an illusion, as is the concept of "ownership".
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Usually at this point people are imagining a world of some kind of violent madhouse free-for-all, filled with people whimsically taking whatever they want and doing whatever they want to everybody else. My response to that would be to ask: wow, what kind of dark twisted psyche are you carrying around with you? All of this segues into my ideas around what concepts should be used in lieu of the concept of "ownership" in order to support there being more peace, harmony and happiness for everybody.
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First off, I think that it is essential that people have a real sense of care, consideration and connection with both those around them as well as with themselves. If people really knew, understood and cared about the happiness and well-being of those around them, they would not blithely be acting in ways that cause hurt or distress for others. People would be openly talking about situations, thinking things through together, and coming up with creative ways to meet the needs of everyone.
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Now that I have just used that word, "needs", I feel that mention should be made of another concept that I find supportive here, and that is of "needs" as articulated by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication">Nonviolent Communication</a>. In this case, "needs" are the underlying motivational drives that inspire all actions, thoughts, and feelings that human beings have. Needs are not quantifiable, they do not look like any particular thing or course of action, and they can exist in the intellectual, emotional, and social realms, as well as the physical. All human beings have the same underlying <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_human_needs">fundamental human needs</a>, people just express these needs, and their desires to get these needs met, in a wide variety of different ways. Also, the strategies that people use to try to get their needs met can look very different and can be in conflict with other strategies used to get needs met.
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An important process that can be used to navigate life in a non-ownership world is that of continually <a href="https://www.cnvc.org/Training/needs-inventory">identifying the various different fundamental human needs</a> that are at play. What needs are "on the table", so to speak, what needs are which people wanting to have met in any given situation, and how can we try to meet these needs with the various different resources that are accessible right now? These are the kinds of conversations that I would like to see people develop their skills and capacities for having.
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This then begs the question: what needs am I anticipating being met through people pursuing the strategy of adopting the perspective of "non-ownership" instead of continuing on with using a variation of the already more prevalent concept of "ownership"?
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My first answer is that more resources and possibilities are freed up and made available without the arbitrary constraints of who-owns-what. "Ownership" creates a whole vast minefield of different tripwires that can go off and areas that are foreclosed on right off the bat. Without that concept existing, the whole world exists filled with different things and places that can be used to meet people's needs. The sky's the limit.
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The second part of my answer is that a perspective of non-ownership really forces people to confront the question of what it is that they are really needing. What is it that would truly make them more of a happy and healthy human being? In a world of "property management", of relentlessly pursuing and maintaining that which one supposedly "owns", people lose track of that which is really important to them and what really makes them happy. Non-ownership forces those questions right to the forefront of people's minds: existential self-examination is required.
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A third part of my answer is that "non-ownership" provides an additional incentive for people to have strong intimate connections with the other people around them, to have more and better "community" with other people. With the concept of "ownership" being the main operative fiction used in a society, it is easy for people to wall themselves off into separate little enclaves of "me" and "mine". In a world of non-ownership, the question of "how are you doing?" becomes a real and vital question that people ask each other, as well as "how am I doing?" The quality of people's relationships with one another becomes a very important matter for people in a society of non-ownership.
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If it is not apparent already, this concept of non-ownership has elements to it that go into both the personal individual realm as well as the interpersonal social realm. It ties in with how people view themselves, their own lives and the various different objects and places that surround them, and it also ties in with how people relate with one-another, how people get along with each-other, what concepts they hold together, as well as what social systems and structures people create together to support one-another.
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Non-ownership is not implemented by a lone individual adopting this perspective and deciding to go off and live their lives by it. And non-ownership is not implemented by a group of people collectively deciding to live their lives this way and making sure that everybody abides by it. It is simultaneously both individual and collective, it is a way that people relate with both themselves and each-other. One-sided perspectives with this do not work.
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People sometimes mention the possessive language that we use now, such as "mine" and "yours", or the strongly entrenched habits that people have as showing the "inevitability" of the concept of ownership. But these too are areas that people can change if they really wanted to. For example, more neutral language can be used, "the" and "that", for example. And habits can be spoken of and acknowledged directly as such, "that house that you like to sleep in", "that toothbrush that I usually use", etc. If people want to ensure the continuity of their habits, they can openly state it. Likewise, people can also take the opportunity to examine their own habits and see if it is really serving them, or to see if something else could perhaps serve them better.
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I also want to acknowledge that people often do have strong emotional attachments to particular things, places and people. These strong emotional attachments do exist, I see that. In the kind of non-ownership society that I am talking about here, these emotional attachments would be openly recognized and spoken of, and they can be worked around or dealt with as needed, depending on the situation and the people involved. The point is not to trample over people or to force them into particular ways of being, but to more clearly see where we are at and where we would like to go. I believe that non-ownership helps with that.
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A key here is that of pursuing freedom, the freedom of knowing that infinite possibilities exist to meet all of the different needs we have. The strategies that can be implemented to meet needs are by no means fixed or limited.
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Likewise, this freedom is linked together with being in community with others, it openly acknowledges the interdependence that people have with one another, and as such the social relationship becomes an area of prime importance as well.
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And tied in with all of that is the quest for increased self-knowledge and self-understanding. For if one does not really know oneself how can one ask for what would truly be supportive for oneself?
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All of this is bundled together in this concept that I am calling "non-ownership". This is a concept that I have had for quite some time now, yet it is also one which is always evolving as time goes on. This concept is one important part of my anarchist views, for it is one way that the various systems of authority and domination can be exposed, and freedom and community can take their place. All of this is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-possession">by no means my original idea</a>, it is rather an idea that I have tweaked and adjusted in my own way. Make of it as you will. Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-82093875444117265452016-12-16T12:55:00.003-08:002016-12-16T12:56:42.645-08:00Voluntary Only<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-r0iqKrRKdig/WFRQYDuE2FI/AAAAAAAAAMs/4fhViZCQ_3YkQpFOt7oVOWvfIKvi_IPCQCLcB/s1600/vv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-r0iqKrRKdig/WFRQYDuE2FI/AAAAAAAAAMs/4fhViZCQ_3YkQpFOt7oVOWvfIKvi_IPCQCLcB/s320/vv.jpg" width="320" height="320" /></a></div>
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Among the whole world of ideological labels that I could potentially attach to myself, there is one in particular that I feel called to talk about. Voluntaryism. This is a label that I have for a long time now felt affinity with, and in recent times have been cozying up to more and more. According to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntaryism">the Wikipedia entry on Voluntaryism</a> it signifies:
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<i>"a libertarian philosophy which holds that all forms of human association should be voluntary."</i>
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And since that definition immediately points to the other label of "libertarian", I will for good measure give <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism">the Wikipedia entry</a> definition for that word as well:
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<i>"a collection of political philosophies that uphold liberty. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and freedom of choice, emphasizing the value of political freedom, voluntary association, and the importance of individual judgment."</i>
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What these two definitions describe are attitudes and approaches that I personally believe in. Hence, I am a voluntaryist, I believe that all human relationships should be voluntary.
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It feels odd to me, in a way, that I believe that I should be publicly saying this, since in my eyes the philosophy of anarchism contains voluntaryism within it as a fundamental principle. However, as the years have gone on, I have had more and more reason to believe that many, if not most, people who call themselves "anarchist" do <b>not</b> in fact think that all human relationships should be voluntary. So-called "anarchists" have said and done things that have lead me to believe that they <b>do</b> think that certain things should be compulsory and forced on people whether they want it or not.
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I say, to hell with that. If you believe that people must or must not do certain things, or must or must not belong to certain associations, and these people are not aggressing on anyone to begin with, then you are not an anarchist. Anarchism, in all of it's different varieties and complexities, grows out of the fertile soil of voluntaryism.
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The fundamental starting-point principle here is: voluntary only. Everything must be voluntary. If it is forced, then it is rotten to the core. Having an association or interaction being voluntary ensures that people are authentically being themselves, and it lays the foundation for the association/interaction to be more thoroughly joyful and creative. This is a principle that I cherish.
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The way that I determine whether something is truly voluntary or not is to see whether there is an explicit or implied threat hanging over someone if they were to say "no". For example, will one be physically attacked, killed, or forced into a cage if one did not comply with what is being asked of them? With the case of governments everywhere, these things will happen to people if they did not comply with the various commands associated with government. So government is then by it's very nature a kind of non-voluntary association, making it incompatible with voluntaryism.
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However, here is where I begin to diverge from most people who consider themselves to be voluntaryist: I view the set-up that is created materially with the social constructs of capitalism and private property as being one where people are forced into non-voluntary relationships as well. This is because everything that one needs to physically survive, such as food, water, shelter, medical care, etc., has a price-tag associated with it. People are then put into the position of being compelled to jump through whatever hoops necessary to ensure their own survival and the survival of those they care about. Instead of the threat being "do this or be shot" or "do this or be forced into a cage", the threat then becomes "do this or starve to death" or "do this or die of exposure". The result is the same: a non-voluntary foundation.
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Another direction that I take my voluntaryist philosophy has to do with the realm of the social needs. Human beings all have a need for intimate personal connections with other people, a need to be understood and accepted for who they are as individuals, and a need to belong in community with other people. These needs can all be met in a wide variety of different ways, there is no uniform strategy for meeting these needs. What remains universal, though, is that all human beings have these needs inside them yearning to be met in order to have happy and healthy lives.
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With that being the case, the threat of social ostracism and dehumanization plays an equally coercive role resulting in people being compelled to jump through whatever hoops necessary in order to ensure that their social needs are met. This dynamic plays a large role in how social conformity and groupthink comes about. Since this particular form of coercion so often falls into the realm of the personal and interpersonal, it is often not noticed or recognized by people who have a political-oriented mindset. But just because it is often not seen does not mean that it is not there, nor does it mean that it is not felt by all of us as we go about our lives.
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This then means that I see the various threats to a voluntary society as coming from three main directions: the overt political nature of men with guns coming to tell you what to do, the material/economic realm of the various threats and stresses associated with being forced to "make a living", and the social realm where the continuing threat of being excluded, alone and unloved is always present.
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How to have a truly voluntary society then comes as a huge conundrum, since it goes against every existing model that we have for looking at political/social change. This is a big question, and one that I hope to tackle and address in various bits and pieces as time goes on. But to give a brief summary of my approach I will say this:
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<b><i>What I am advocating for is a certain kind of way for people to approach relating to one another where they are not aggressively threatening one another, where they try to honestly recognize and talk about whatever needs they have, where people are actively working together to try to get their needs met together, and where they are continually trying to better understand one another more deeply and without judgement. My approach is based on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person-centered_therapy#Core_conditions">the Rogerian principles</a> of having authentic conversations with sensitive empathy and unconditional caring present, while also ensuring that the basic material needs of everyone are being met, as well as ensuring that everyone feels free to leave the interactions/associations whenever they see fit.</i></b>
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This is a whole different way to view human interactions, but also one that I believe goes way back in time, before the vagaries of civilization made force and compulsion the norm within human relationships. "Voluntary only" is a wonderfully simple, yet quite powerful, principle that does a lot to get the conversation started on how we can all have free and happy lives. And it is for that reason that I am happy to call myself a "voluntaryist". Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-92134136895175488512016-12-03T14:00:00.000-08:002016-12-03T14:02:26.128-08:00My Kind of Anarchism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FL37CRFKKZA/WEM1y2otb9I/AAAAAAAAAMM/6tZfJfXwnVE2gjAqPRIZ7d67ELYnZUNGwCLcB/s1600/anarchism-is-for-everyone2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FL37CRFKKZA/WEM1y2otb9I/AAAAAAAAAMM/6tZfJfXwnVE2gjAqPRIZ7d67ELYnZUNGwCLcB/s320/anarchism-is-for-everyone2.jpg" width="320" height="148" /></a></div>
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For quite some time now I have had this strong discomfort with the anarchist milieu. I believe that this discomfort stems from my strong desire to belong to a community and to be together with others who see things and value things in the same ways that I do. And on the other hand, I have the sense that the others who inhabit the anarchist social milieu are in some very important ways different from me, that they believe things and value things that in some crucial ways are at odds with where I am coming from. I find it difficult to just write these people off and forget about them because they identify with the philosophy of anarchism, which for whatever reason is a label for a philosophy that I find myself very much attached to.
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So it seems to me to be important to take the time and effort to spell out exactly what it is that I do believe regarding "anarchism". I am assuming that by spelling out what I do believe, I can clarify and set apart the difference between my "anarchism" and that which is espoused by others.
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First off, I am assuming that every and all forms of "anarchism" out there is against all kinds of domination, that capitalism and the state are rejected by all forms of anarchism as being manifestations of domination, and that all anarchists yearn for a new world of sovereign people freely associating with others as equals, cooperating, helping each other out and sharing together as they see fit. Now, perhaps this brief definition of anarchism is simply too much, and too radical, for how many people would define the term, but I don't care. This is just a baseline bare minimum definition of the term that I am using to begin elaborating on what my own anarchist philosophy looks like.
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Also, as is probably obvious by now, I really do not see anarchism as being a political thing. I see anarchism as being primarily a social philosophy. In other words, I see it as being a kind of philosophy that advocates for particular kinds of human social relationships and social organization. Anarchism is against politics-as-it-is, all politics of the existing social orders, because each and every one of these are based upon domination, not the respect of people's autonomy. Anarchism is a very radical philosophy because it goes straight to the roots of things, how people relate and organize their affairs together. Politics, all politics, is a relatively superficial matter, compared to the depth of an anarchist gaze.
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My approach to anarchism has for a very long time now held this one quote by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Landauer">Gustav Landauer</a> as being a touchstone descriptor for how I approach things:
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<i>"The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another... We are the State and we shall continue to be the State until we have created the institutions that form a real community."</i>
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With this in mind, my approach to anarchism is mainly focused on what these "other relationships" will look like that would form the ideal new "real community" that is an alternative to the state and domination in general.
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The primary crux for my anarchism is that coercion is not good for people. I have a strong belief that when people do things because they have a sense that it is coming from their own free choice, and <b>not</b> out of a fear of some kind of dire consequences that would befall them if they did not pursue that action, that that leaves them in a state where they are open to learning more and connecting with other people. When people do things out of coercion their minds are more distracted by the stress and pain that the coercion inflicts, making it all the more difficult to conjure up any kind of authentic curiosity that would support learning and connection with others.
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I have mentioned a few times this phrase of "connecting with others", and I feel the need to elaborate on it some here. This is actually an element that I consider to be core to my own approach to anarchism, since it is the glue that holds people together. By "connecting" I am referring to seeing the humanity in someone else, and valuing it. It involves knowing where someone is coming from, knowing who they are and what they are about, and being able to personally relate with it in some way. And, importantly, it is having a reciprocal relationship where that feeling is mutual. If this sense of connection is not present, I don't believe that a social situation of anarchy can be real or lasting.
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Another important aspect of my anarchism is that of individuals taking responsibility for their own choices and actions, and based on this being committed to continuing to develop and improve themselves in various ways. Yes, I do recognize and acknowledge the existence of social forces that impact and effect us all quite profoundly, but we can still think and make our own choices, and with that being the case, let's choose to improve our own situations.
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A commitment to having an open mind, critical thinking, and continual learning would then go hand-in-hand with that of having a commitment to ongoing personal development and self-improvement. This involves having a commitment to becoming aware of and recognizing the myriad different ways that one can become encumbered by prejudices of different kinds, get trapped in ideology-based thought-prisons, or judge people, thereby resulting in narrow one or two-dimensional perceptions of them.
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And in conjunction with people taking personal responsibility for their own choices, I also see the creation and maintenance of real communities as being essential. By "community", I mean that the people who you know and care about in your day-to-day in-person life also know and care about each other as well. This also pre-supposes that you know and care about a substantial number of people in your day-to-day in-person life in the first place!
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A crucial part of a community of people being real and lasting is that people help each other out. We all need support of some kind, and part of the kind of community environment that I would like to see is one where people are interested and able to help each other out, out of a personal authentic desire to do so, and not because of some kind of coercion or implied threat.
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And in order to have mutual aid within a community be able to actually happen effectively, you need to have ongoing substantive communication, cooperation and coordination of efforts taking place. Communication break-downs need to be tended to, the quality of communication needs to be constantly elevated, and those who for whatever reason are silent or unable to speak need to be remembered and reached out to.
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So, to summarize, the core underlying principles to my own approach to anarchism are these eight things:
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<b>- Non-coercion
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- Authentic connection between people
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- Taking responsibility for choices
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- Valuing ongoing self-improvement
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- Free thinking and continual learning
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- Real communities of people
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- Mutual aid and mutual support
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- Ongoing communication, cooperation and coordination</b>
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As a consequence of people developing along the lines of these eight principles, I foresee the concept of ownership becoming de-prioritized. Expropriation and confiscation are things that I would like to see avoided, not because I am a fan of the concept of "property", but because it involves a form coercion. And with the entry of coercion into the picture, the relationship between people is damaged, and chances are that there is a breakdown of communication between people going on as well. I do think that people's needs can be better met the less the focus is on "who owns what?", and the more the focus is instead on "how can we solve this problem?". But I don't even see people getting to the point of addressing a problem together, and valuing the needs of everyone involved, if these eight principles are not adhered to.
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I have used a variety of different terms to describe my approach to anarchism in the past, from <a href="http://www.ic.org/wiki/communitarian-anarchism/">"communitarian anarchism"</a>, to <a href="https://www.cnvc.org/compasionate-anarchism">"compassionate anarchism"</a>, to <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2011/11/envisioning-buddhist-anarchism.html">"buddhist anarchism"</a>. Looking at where I am at now, I think the term "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism">humanistic</a> anarchism" could be an accurate description of it. But, ultimately, none of these labels really matters. All too often I have seen people squabble over terminology, or circle their wagons around particular labels, thereby perpetuating "us vs. them" and "my beliefs vs. their beliefs" dynamics. Also, labels often have the tendency to start out as being tools, and then to eventually become chains. All of that is totally counter to what I am wanting to achieve with all of this. And frankly, I am just tired of all of those bullshit dynamics.
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So here I am, this is what I believe, this is my approach to anarchism, all laid out for you, call it what you will. What do you think?Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-66153738326624190942016-11-08T10:14:00.001-08:002016-11-08T10:39:27.598-08:00Why I Voted Today<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oVWsEPt5nQg/WCIFPt6qwMI/AAAAAAAAALU/EaFzo9d6u9MI3N70p3VlVIEwtjQMiSiagCLcB/s1600/20161108_105501.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oVWsEPt5nQg/WCIFPt6qwMI/AAAAAAAAALU/EaFzo9d6u9MI3N70p3VlVIEwtjQMiSiagCLcB/s320/20161108_105501.jpg" width="180" height="320" /></a></div>
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Today I went to my local polling location and voted. I voted for Hillary Clinton and all of the other Democrats who were listed on the ticket. I did this not because I am a Democrat, but because I want to stop the rampant spread of what I see as being a kind of 21st century fascism in the U.S. The act of voting was easy, it took me only a few minutes. What I foresee as being really difficult is what is coming next.
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Also, at the same time, I am an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism">anarchist</a>, and I have been one for quite some time now. I know many anarchists who do not vote and who consider the act of voting to be a very un-anarchist thing to do. This has stirred up in me a desire to try to publicly explain myself on this.
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There is a common notion among anarchists that the act of voting is one that legitimizes the existence of the state. An individual freely choosing to vote is often viewed as an individual consenting to the existence of the state. I do not see it that way.
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I see voting as being a big huge collective game that many many people choose to participate in that is an adjunct to the larger social structure of the state. All of this has meaning because people choose to give it meaning, and then they act accordingly. In other words, like many things, it is a social construct that is ascribed meaning by people, and people play along with it. One can play the game and go through the motions, together with others, while also simultaneously not holding the same meanings that other people are holding. One can "be in the world, but not of it," or to use a less grandiose phrase, <b>people can do actions without believing in what they do.</b> (And, in fact, one could make an argument that this is indeed how most people get through life).
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I see voting as being an act that is essentially value-neutral. In my eyes, there is no obligation for anybody to participate in this ritual (or anything else, for that matter). Subsequently, there is also no obligation for an anarchist to <b><i>not</i></b> participate in it. I choose to participate in voting because this particular ritual is one that many people believe in and use to operate the dominant social structure of the state. This is an area where for a brief amount of time one can exercise a small amount of leverage in the current social machinery that surrounds us. So, one might as well use it while one can, or, "smoke 'em if you got 'em".
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And in this particular case, in this particular country right now, I think that this guy, Donald Trump, wants to become an outright dictator, no holds barred. Whereas Hillary Clinton is just your run of the mill corrupt career politician, you have seen them all before, they are a dime a dozen in a representative democracy. And I would rather have the kind of B.S. that we are used to over an outright dictator. In other words, I see there as being more happiness and freedom, to whatever marginal degree we can find it, in a bullshit society that is structured as a "representative democracy" than in a bullshit society that is structured as a "dictatorship". And the best way for us to stop a Donald Trump fascist regime from coming about, at this point, is for us to vote for Hillary Clinton.
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This stance of "being in the world, but not of it" is one that I take with many different things in my life, every day of my life. It is by no means just confined to the single act of voting. I basically do not believe in much, if not most, of what I do. I do not believe in capitalism or the state, private property or ownership. I do not believe in people working jobs, using money, paying rent, going to school, driving automobiles, and the list goes on. I could go so far as to say that I do <a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/wolfi-landstreicher-barbaric-thoughts-on-a-revolutionary-critique-of-civilization">not believe in Civilization itself</a>, and yet here I am, thoroughly domesticated as all get-out. The notions of "purity" and "integrity" are ones that I no longer believe in or strive towards. The way I see it, we are all in a cage, through-and-through, and the world that I want to live in is <b>completely Other</b>. A truly anarchist world is completely outside of all of this, and it is one that I can only imagine and dream of. Yet at the same time, it is worth everything to me.
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That all being said, there is also the real possibility that the world as we know it now is on it's way out. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton could very well help to start World War Three (this one with the nuclear option available from the start). The bitterness and acrimony between the Democrats and Republicans, and the Left and the Right writ large, could wind up with the U.S. entering a second Civil War. And then there is always the looming possibilities of a global economic collapse, or an ecological collapse, or a technological collapse (or a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity">Singularity</a>). Who knows! The point is, if any of that happens, and if the human race survives the experience, perhaps then a window of opportunity will be available for people to truly leave this bullshit society behind, with all of it's egregious ascribed meanings and performative rituals that work the gears of the spectacular machine that so many people find oh-so-fascinating. Perhaps then a door to the cage will open.
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Until that point, however, I will be watching the election results on TV.
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<i>**Disclaimer: I am not saying here that I think that you should vote, or that you should vote for a particular candidate. And if you read this piece and say that I am "not really an anarchist", then my response is "fuck you too"**</i>Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-49843081896077094752016-08-25T13:02:00.000-07:002016-08-25T13:02:39.230-07:00Beacons of Light in These Dark Days<center><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iYDLG6gUlMY/V79OxNGfzII/AAAAAAAAAKo/TiYKqRVquX0Mh4Bn-Be1-pXMRDCVBO1lACLcB/s1600/20160824_eso1629a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iYDLG6gUlMY/V79OxNGfzII/AAAAAAAAAKo/TiYKqRVquX0Mh4Bn-Be1-pXMRDCVBO1lACLcB/s320/20160824_eso1629a.jpg" width="320" height="208" /></a></div></center>
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I notice when I look at my blog these days that I have not written any new posts at all for this year, 2016, so far. There are some reasons for this. For one, I quite frankly have been very consistently feeling very cynical and scornful regarding everything related to politics. I follow political things, both mainstream and radical, and in both spheres I feel such strong negative feelings regarding it all that I largely just keep my thoughts all to myself. Why subject my reading audience to witnessing me trashing everything? So much political commentary is already just that and I personally do not want to contribute to more of that kind of thing being put out there into the world.
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Yet, I still have been following political stuff and perhaps it has been to my detriment that I have been doing so. Basically, it has been a form of entertainment for me. Similar to how people follow their favorite TV shows and professional sports, I follow politics. I find it all to be quite interesting, and at the same time, I am often left with a feeling that we are all doomed. So with that in mind, I would like to talk about some areas where I have been finding some hope and solace in the world today.
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I continue to be a member of <a href="http://planetary.org">the Planetary Society</a> and an advocate for space exploration. I do think that the kind of change-in-perspective involved in moving from Earth-focused to cosmic-focused can have profound implications in how we both view things in our everyday lives, as well as how we view political concerns on this planet. How big, bad and important we think everything to be all shrinks, shifts, or reconstitutes itself in light of this greater perspective. I like that, it does away with what I consider to be limited and arbitrary constraints, and it is a breath of fresh air (assuming that there is "air" in whatever environment we find ourselves in).
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Piggybacking off of my love of space exploration is my love of Star Trek. I have really been getting into Star Trek lately. This is, for one, because it is a way to have my mind escape from the horrors of the world that we live in into one of complete fiction. But, beyond simple escapism, I am in love with the setting that the protagonists of Star Trek come from. I am referring to what is called the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Federation_of_Planets">"United Federation of Planets"</a>, which is a diverse cosmopolitan inclusive society where everyone's needs are taken care of, where money does not exist and where individual expression, exploration and creativity are encouraged. That is awesome, and that is exactly the kind of society that I would like to have humanity be operating with in the future. (Based on this, I have also be interested in a new book that has come out this year called <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Trekonomics-Economics-Star-Manu-Saadia/dp/1941758754">"Trekonomics"</a>, which explores the economics of the societies depicted in Star Trek)
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When I consider my love of Star Trek, I think that perhaps I was also primed for it with my upbringing in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahá%27%C3%AD_Faith">Baha'i Faith</a>. The Baha'is advocate the creation of a new world that shares many of the same kind of values as expressed in the United Federation of Planets: one with international unity of all of humanity, the abolition of racism and sexism, a new economic system that sensibly attends to everybody's needs, and full support for the advancement of education and scientific inquiry. It was during my formative younger years that I was both studying the Baha'i teachings as well as watching Star Trek, so from different angles these same values seeped into my consciousness.
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And in light of my feelings on politics these days, I very much have been appreciating the approach that Baha'is have on political concerns as well. For one, they hold a position that says that Baha'is should not be members of political parties, nor should they campaign or be partisans to any political causes. The reason for this is that they believe that doing these things creates too much unnecessary rancor and discord among people. When matters of common concern need to be addressed and decided upon, they instead advocate the use of a process that they call <a href="http://www.bahai.org/action/institutional-capacity/spaces-consultation">"consultation"</a>. This all seems to me to be quite respectful and considerate of the wellbeing of all, and I would love to see it grow and spread.
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Regarding approaches to dialogue, I still have a great appreciation for Nonviolent Communication (aka "NVC"), as well as for NVC practice groups where people come together to intentionally develop their skills with Nonviolent Communication. Internationally, I also have a lot of excitement around the work that has been done to create a new global organization of NVC practitioners and enthusiasts. The proposal that has been made about this is now out, and those who are have helped to craft this proposal are now <a href="http://www.cnvc.org/future/phase3/integrated-plan-feedback-invitation/announcement">actively soliciting feedback on it.</a> I like this proposal, personally, because in my eyes it allows for greater access for those who are into NVC to meet each other and work together on whatever projects that they find meaningful, as well as to help systems of mutual support become more available for people.
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Anyway, these are my few beacons of light currently in these dark days for the world. What are yours?Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-18679176854280627562015-12-29T19:33:00.001-08:002015-12-29T20:04:22.376-08:00Circling the Sinking Ship: Reflections on 2015<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZWFfbfaEPns/VoNMJvZPB9I/AAAAAAAAAKA/RyYGnAgpOFo/s1600/DSCF4748.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZWFfbfaEPns/VoNMJvZPB9I/AAAAAAAAAKA/RyYGnAgpOFo/s320/DSCF4748.JPG" /></a></div>
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For a while now I have had an annual tradition of around New Years <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2015/01/my-2014-year-in-review-marking-existence.html">writing up a reflection</a> on my experience <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2013/12/traveling-circling-some-reflections-on.html">of the year</a> that is ending. Here is my reflection on 2015.
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This year began in the thick of my <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2015/07/reflections-from-traveling-around-world.html">big international travel excursion</a>, in Macau, China. Shortly after that we (my wife Liz and I) went to Hong Kong for about a week, and then we went on to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonga">Tonga</a>. We were in Tonga for about five months, staying at the national center for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahá%27%C3%AD_Faith_in_Tonga">the Baha'i Faith in Tonga</a>, and volunteering at <a href="http://oceanoflight.to">a local international school</a> there. At that school I served as a librarian assistant, an English language tutor, a history teacher, a science teacher, a meditation teacher, a substitute teacher, a recess playground manager and various other odds and ends. Working there really did feel like I was working at a job, except that I was not getting paid money (just given a place to stay). This turned out to be an undesirable situation for me, since I did not believe in what I was doing, I am not a Baha'i and <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2015/03/education-and-its-discontents.html">I do not believe in the way that education is usually done</a>. I can do work that I do not believe in, as long as I am getting paid. That is how the world we live in usually works. Doing work free of charge does not make sense to me unless I believe in it.
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If I was a paid staff at that school I suspect that I could have enjoyed the work more, settled into doing the work on an ongoing and sustained basis, and set up something of a quasi-Tongan life for myself. Tonga is a poor country, some of the amenities that we know and love in the Western World simply are not there, or are hard to come by. And my white skin and American accent immediately single me out in a crowd as being a Unique One. But nevertheless, I believe that I could live there if I had to. I doubt that I will ever return to Tonga, not because I hate the place, but rather because it is so far away and out of the way (and it may be <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34738408">swallowed up by the rising ocean levels</a> anyway).
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During this year Liz and I had three different experiences that were quite similar to each other, where we spent about a week or a few days in a major world city, renting a motel room, and doing tourist stuff. The three places that I am referring to are Hong Kong, Auckland, New Zealand and Los Angeles. I had been to L.A. before, but I had never previously really gotten a sense of the city. The same goes for Hong Kong, since Liz and I were there briefly in 2014 right before going to Macau. These three trips were unabashedly tourist experiences, but nonetheless they were some highlights of the year for me. One of the things that I liked about these experiences were the unambiguous nature of them. They never pretended to be anything other than standard tourist experiences.
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After our bouts with tourism then began a period of me visiting various places in the U.S. that I used to live at, and people with whom I used to live with. Altogether this list includes the San Francisco Bay Area, Eugene and Portland, Oregon, southeastern Pennsylvania and central Virginia. Visiting all of these places made me feel nostalgic each and every time, and part of me wanted to live at that place again, at each old home that I visited. It was both a literal and a figurative trip down memory lane for me, and in the end I was able to reach an appreciation for the fact that I used to live at all of these different places, but that none of them are appropriate for the person that I am now and where I am at with my life currently. It was overall a very helpful, and dare I say it, a "healing" experience for me.
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Three experiences stand out for me during those visits through nostalgia-land. The first is being present at my brother's wedding in Portland, Oregon. That was a very unique and special experience for me, and one that I am glad that I was able to have.
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Another is my involvement with the "August Program" at <a href="https://camphillsoltane.org">Camphill Soltane</a> this summer. I had worked at a couple of those before, but this time really felt fun, loving, and like a true (albeit short-lived) experience of community. I also got to experience first-hand some of the new forays that Camphill Soltane is doing into the world of job coaching programs and group homes for people with developmental disabilities.
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And the third experience was that of visiting <a href="http://www.ic.org/directory/open-circle/">Open Circle Community</a> in September. With that experience I really felt like I was returning to visit family, in a good way. I was able to help out some, enjoy the company of the folks there, and it was a nice breath of fresh air for me before returning to my life in Minneapolis.
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This now brings me to Minneapolis. I have been living here since September, first at Liz' parents' house, and then in an apartment of our own. Right around the same time that we got our new apartment, I also was hired for a new full-time job and we bought a new (used) car. After that transition occurred, I have been living this life of urban-dwelling employee-renter-car owner. It is kind a bizarre way to end the year, given what the rest of the year looked like.
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My job now is that of working at a group home supporting adults with severe developmental disabilities. I have done this type of work before, but not supporting people with disabilities this extreme. All of the people whom I support are unable to walk, talk or eat, and they require total care, 24/7/365. I have met and worked with a wide variety of different kinds of people throughout my life, but never people like this. And now, here I am.
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In the world of media, I read a number of different books throughout this year, but the one book that stands out as my highlight of the year is that of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3187154-ends-and-means">"Ends and Means (an Enquiry Into the Nature of Ideals and Into the Methods Employed for Their Realization)"</a> by Aldous Huxley. This is a really obscure, out-of-print book, published in 1937. I able to find a copy of this book in a used bookstore in Auckland, New Zealand. This is a very thorough, comprehensive book about how to completely re-organize society along what could be called anarcho-pacifist lines. I basically agree with what is said in this book.
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But, there is a catch to all of this. "Ends and Means" was written right before the Second World War, and it shows. Aldous Huxley seemed to know that something like WWII was about to happen, and he went to the effort of writing and publishing that book as an effort to prevent it from happening. That book came into the world, was largely ignored by the world, and the world then plunged head-first into World War II. That book has since largely been forgotten, and it leaves me feeling very cynical about the prospect of brilliant, articulate and carefully thought-out pieces of writing having any substantial effect on changing the world for the better.
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In the world of movies, however, my favorite film of the year is actually an animated children's movie - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Out_(2015_film)">"Inside Out"</a> (which is ironically about some Minnesotans moving to the San Francisco Bay Area). This movie is a wonderful exposition on internal thought and emotional dynamics, a very playful and fun way to elaborate on how complex personal experiences work. Other notable new films came out this year, namely those reviving old movie franchises (Mad Max and Star Wars), but those films were very grim and bleak compared to the essentially uplifting and positive spirit that pervades Inside Out.
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This year I was also introduced to a TV show that blew me away, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Robot_(TV_series)">"Mr. Robot"</a>. I loved this TV show for the same reason that I love the 1999 film <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club">"Fight Club"</a>. But unlike Fight Club, this show takes place in the modern (as in, 2015-ish) era, and season one for that show is about eight hours in total, instead of the around two hours of the movie. So this TV show leaves one with a lot to chew on, in a very contemporary context. I eagerly look forward to season two coming out next year.
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But where does this all leave me, though, with all of the traveling, lifestyle-changing and media consuming that I did throughout this year? I now live in a city that does not really excite me, but is tolerable. The same can be said for the job that I have. I feel very alienated and disconnected from the various social scenes and subcultures that I am familiar with. I spend a lot of time on the internet, probably more than what is healthy. I am not exactly happy with my life now, it is just - tolerable.
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I am happy to share my life with Liz, however. She has been my partner and companion through all of these things that I outlined here. It is hard for me to imagine what my year would have been like without her.
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Looking forward, I feel like everything from here on out is just a waiting game of sorts. I am waiting for Liz and I to save up money from our jobs to do something different at some point in the future. I am waiting to be able to officially take vacation from my job while still technically remaining employed with the job. I am waiting for various things to change with various different far-flung family members. I am waiting for various new projects to emerge that I could find interesting and actually want to be a part of. I am waiting for The System to collapse, and for everything to look Totally Different.
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But until then, there is as least a new Star Wars movie that will be coming out each year, starting this year.
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I wishing you all the best!Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-5256319559481387362015-10-28T10:36:00.001-07:002015-10-28T10:42:07.312-07:00A Space for Me<center><img src="http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/nvc_anarchy/1283300/6208/6208_900.jpg"></center>
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I recently posted something on my Facebook account that caused some question among folks. It is:
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<i><b>"I am now officially a member of the Planetary Society. I actually feel better about being a part of and supporting this, moreso than any other political project that I can think of, radical or mainstream."</i></b>
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Behind this statement is a bunch of stuff that lead me to want to write that. Let me elaborate...
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For the past few months I have been feeling increasingly disappointed, disillusioned and ultimately disgusted with the subculture, or subcultures, that call themselves "anarchist". I have already <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2014/05/individualist.html">written about this before</a>, so you may be asking, what else is new? Well, what's new are a couple of different recent incidents, including <a href="http://littleblackcart.com">my favorite anarchist book publisher</a> and one of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Black">my favorite anarchist authors</a> having a <a href="http://aragorn.anarchyplanet.org/2015/09/19/in-defense-of-bob-black/">very public falling-out</a>, a big public spectacle around <a href="http://anarchistnews.org/content/about-schmidt-how-white-nationalist-seduced-anarchists-around-world-chapter-1">the purging of</a> a well-known anarchist author for being a white nationalist, and some anarchists where I live here in Minneapolis resorting to <a href="http://anarchistnews.org/content/nlrb-rules-union-canvasser-fired-illegally-sisters’-camelot-orders-back-pay-reinstatement">using the powers of the U.S. federal government</a> to resolve a dispute between them and another group of local anarchists.
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This is not to say that there are absolutely no projects out there that are anarchist, or anarchistic, that I do not find to be inspiring or at least interesting. The part of the world known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rojava">"Rojava"</a> continues to <a href="http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2015/10/22/from-germany-to-bakur/">hold much promise in this regard</a>, although in many ways it is off-limits to Westerners since going there can get one jail-time (since many Western governments officially consider <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers%27_Party">the PKK</a> to be "terrorists") and they do not speak English there anyway, they speak the Kurdish language. Also, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Egalitarian_Communities">Federation of Egalitarian Communities</a> seems very exciting to me nowadays, with a number of new communities forming that want to be a part of it, including a number of <a href="http://frompointa.org">new forming urban communities</a>. Neither of these two projects, however, adorn themselves with the label "anarchist".
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Regarding my own affiliation with anarchism, some friends and myself recently recorded <a href="http://attackthesystem.com/2015/09/30/beyond-social-justice/">a podcast conversation</a> where I elaborated upon my own perspectives on things, and subsequently this conversation was roundly ignored by other anarchists, except for people expressing upset about the website where this recording resides. Also, <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2011/11/envisioning-buddhist-anarchism.html">for a while now</a> I have considered myself to be a "Buddhist anarchist", and now I see that the Wikipedia entry on "Buddhist Anarchism" no longer exists, and instead searching for that term takes one to the entry on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Snyder">Gary Snyder</a>. Taken altogether, this leads me to feel as if I have no space for me within the "anarchist" subculture, that whatever space I might have had within it has been dismissed.
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Coincidentally, I now have a job where much of my time and energy goes to (is sucked into) this job. Yes, this is one, among many, signs of the soul-crushing nature of capitalism, wage-slavery, civilization, what-have-you, but <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2013/12/traveling-circling-some-reflections-on.html">like what has happened to me before</a>, having this job enables me to redirect my energy away from feeling invested in the failing project of "anarchism" and into something else, something that is actually making me some money.
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I do, however, still feel a need to be a part of something and to belong with a group of people who are doing things that I more or less believe in. Just having a job, residing in an apartment building and consuming things does not meet these needs for me. Enter: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planetary_Society">The Planetary Society</a>. I was once a member of this organization way back, like when I was a young teenager. Then my interest drifted apart from them, and I pretty much forgot about them for a long time. In recent years they have once again entered my sphere of awareness, mainly because of the new leadership of the organization, under the helm of the big charismatic media personality <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nye">Bill Nye</a>. The world of space science has been quite exciting and interesting in recent years, what with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philae_(spacecraft)#Landing_events">landing on the comet</a> that happened last year, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons">New Horizons probe</a> exploring of Pluto, the recent confirmation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars">water on Mars</a>, and the continuing discovery of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-438b">planets that are very similar to</a> Earth. The Planetary Society itself has also had a big success with it's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LightSail-1#LightSail-A_test_flight">recent test flight</a> of a solar-powered spacecraft.
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You may be wondering now why I have this interest in all this space stuff. The reason is that I view all life on this planet as being inter-connected, and that with human beings especially we are all in it together, with all of our actions affecting each-other, for better and for worse. We all share the same planet, and if we try hard enough, we can even transcend this planet to go on to other places as well. I see space science and exploration as being something that has the <b>potential</b> to unite humanity in ways that are more productive and forward-thinking than the old ways based on nationalism, political ideology and religion. Surviving and going deeper into outer space requires systems thinking and serious thought about what is necessary for life to survive and thrive. This line of thinking is also desperately needed right now regarding our own ecological situation here on Earth. I am hoping that these kinds of thoughts about other planets and such could also carry over to our thinking about our own home planet right now.
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I also have to say that it is a relief for me to not be thinking so intently about various political things all the time, nor to get caught up in a vortex of self-reflective navel-gazing, and to instead think about other things in this universe above and beyond all that we know. So, that is where I am at right now.
Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-28388436295128497882015-07-26T15:46:00.002-07:002015-07-26T17:59:02.521-07:00Reflections from traveling around the world<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AVWxcLdabtA/VbVaXjIwt-I/AAAAAAAAAI4/RhjIkP09oKQ/s1600/1965503_714347131985597_3406929401991807182_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AVWxcLdabtA/VbVaXjIwt-I/AAAAAAAAAI4/RhjIkP09oKQ/s320/1965503_714347131985597_3406929401991807182_o.jpg" /></a></div>
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I recently got back from an epic trip around the world. It was by means of traveling east, first to Virginia and New York City, then to India (New Delhi, Agra, Jaipur and Dharmsala), then to Macau and Hong Kong, followed by Tonga and New Zealand, and finishing up in California and Oregon before heading back home to Minneapolis where the trip all began. The trip started in September of last year (2014) and ended a couple of weeks ago (July, 2015). Out of all of the international places, Tonga was the one that I spent the most time at (five months), followed by India and Macau where I spent a month and a half at each, followed by Hong Kong and Auckland, New Zealand where I spent a week at each.
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People have occasionally asked me what I learned or gained from all of this. I am sorry to disappoint, but there are no big insights, no profound revelations, no shattering revelations, transformations, what-have-you, to pass on to you from all of this. I am still the same person today that I was when I started the trip. This is not to say that changes and insights did not occur during the trip, it's just that I have no grand story or package-of-insight to give you. Everything is all fits-and-starts, scattered and diffuse stuff.
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Hands down, my favorite part of the trip was India. This is a place with a whole lot of everything: people, history, ideas, sights, sounds, smells, dangers, delicacies, kindnesses, cruelties, good and bad. We only saw a tiny smidgen of the country, with most of our time spent up in the Dharmsala area which is in the Himalaya mountain region. Of the whole India experience, my favorite part of that was my volunteering at a Vipassana Meditation course at the <a href="http://www.sikhara.dhamma.org">Himachal Vipassana Centre</a>. This is because I felt actively engaged with something, a part of something, belonging to a group and a team with a clear mission and purpose. This provided an appropriate container for lots of weird and crazy shit to happen, and for me to be able to handle and weather it all with grace and fortitude. Such a situation could be replicated elsewhere, but since this experience occurred in India specifically, it provided me with a unique introduction to many of different aspects of Indian life, in addition to the usual profound benefits that Vipassana practice offers.
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One tendency that I noticed in all of the overseas locations that we visited was for Westerners to mainly socialize with other Westerners, despite being in another foreign culture. This happened to me in India, Macau and Tonga, and I suppose that this is just the usual pattern of like associating with like. It did help me to learn more about other Western cultures outside of the U.S., but that was not my intention in going to these places in the first place. It was damned annoying, in a way, while at the same time also providing me comfort and solace as well. It did detract from me pursuing my purpose with this trip.
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So what was my purpose for this trip anyway? It was basically to just get away, <b>far away</b>, from my regular life and routines that I had in the U.S. I quit my job and moved out of my apartment before going and then I set off to go experience places and things different from what I was previously used to in the U.S. I had already done extensive traveling within the United States before all of this, so I figured that it was time for me to see what it is like in other countries as well. The purpose was simply that of personal exploration of other places and experiencing something different from my norm. That is it.
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This trip generally accomplished this goal. For example, in Tonga, where I spent the most time at during all of this traveling, I worked as a volunteer at a school with children. I had previously not worked with children or in a school setting before. This was new to me. It brought up many memories for me of my own school experiences as a child, and I witnessed much of the same bullshit there as I did when I was child going through the whole thing the first time around. The difference was that this was in Tonga instead.
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That was one revelation right there: I do not want to willingly contribute to something that I consider to be bullshit, and not be paid for it. I view employment as generally-speaking being a situation where one is paid money in order to spend one's limited time on earth and scarce personal energies towards contributing to something that is more or less anti-life. But, in the hostage situation that is capitalism, at least one is being paid for it and can therefore continue to live. So, I would be willing to work at a school again, the only difference is that next time I will go in with no blinders on, no illusions of grandeur (not that I had much of these to begin with), and would be paid for my efforts.
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This brings me to another topic - that of international "voluntourism". I recently came across an article that summarizes my thoughts on this topic nicely, which can be <a href="http://aswwu.com/collegian/voluntourism-more-harm-than-good/">found here.</a> The succinct summary of it all, found within this article itself, is: "without knowledge of language, local culture, societal nuances, and the economical framework of the community, this type of “voluntourism” is sometimes wasteful at best, and possibly destructive to the community at worst."
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My experience with "voluntourism" overseas is that it was mainly involved in setting up systems and patterns of doing things that the local people had no interest in and most likely were not going to continue after I left. In other words, it was a nice public gesture but ultimately a waste of time and effort. The one possible benefit was that the people I interacted with, especially the children, might possibly remember me in the future and hopefully it will be some kind of a positive, constructive memory, and not just a meaningless novelty.
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As far as working with children goes, I am referring here mainly to my time in Tonga, although I did also volunteer briefly in a school in India as well. I found the most meaningful experiences out of all of that to be those that took place outside of the established curriculum, where I was interacting directly with the actual sincere interests of the students. For me, this took place mainly with the subjects of history, geography, science and library science. I was not officially assigned to work with the kids on <b>any</b> of these subjects - I was technically assigned to work with them on their literacy skills and math. Neither me nor the kids were generally interested in those subjects when we were together, so as a result I believe that very little learning actually took place with those subjects.
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One thing that stood out for me with all of these travels was how I stood out as a white person. In India crowds of people would stare at me as I went by, since I was a white guy in a sea of non-white people. I was stared at, pointed at, and publicly remarked upon as a white person in Tonga as well and frequently would hear the word "Palangi" uttered in my presence, which means "white person". My assumption is that for many people, white skin = lots of money, so people were probably looking at me as a walking moneybag from a faraway land. This experience, combined with what I said earlier about "voluntourism" leads me to think that simply giving money to trustworthy local charities is probably more effective in actually helping people than going to distant countries to volunteer there.
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In all of these countries I definitely felt like I was largely running on a designated tourism track, part of some vast international Tourism-Industrial Complex. I do not necessarily see this as being a bad thing in and of itself, it is a series of jobs like any other job that people perform, an industry within capitalism like any other. Tonga was definitely the least developed country in every respect that I visited, and it's tourism industry was the least developed of them all as well. Tonga does have a number of genuinely beautiful "tropical island paradise" locations, and I think that if one wanted to go to some far off location to get away from the maddening crowds and to just read, write and meditate in peace, then Tonga would be the place to go for that (assuming you brought everything that you need for that with you).
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A commonality that struck me through all of the different countries that I went to was the global rise of China as an international super-power. First off, we spent a lot of time in Dharmsala, India, which is the center of the "Tibetan Government in Exile", with a massive population of Tibetans who moved there to escape the Chinese conquest of Tibet that took place in the 1950's. Then in Macau we were there to witness the massive celebrations for the 15th anniversary of the official handover of Macau to the People's Republic of China from Portugal. And in Tonga the society there is experiencing a large influx of Chinese moving there and setting up successful businesses while the Tongan government is going increasingly into debt to the Chinese government with little hope of ever being able to pay it off. We also went to Hong Kong, which was handed over to the Chinese government from the British in 1997, and New Zealand which has received a massive influx of Chinese immigrants, the largest Asian ethnic group in New Zealand. These are all different ways and means of growing Chinese influence and dominance over the world.
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Despite the rising Chinese influence, though, my being an American citizen was like a gold standard everywhere I went. It was a sure thing for people to know about the U.S., to generally appreciate the U.S., and to express a desire to me to want to visit or re-visit the U.S. if they could. I often met people from other countries who knew more about some aspects of U.S. culture than I did. The desire for U.S. cultural products was prevalent everywhere I went, and I had no worry about being kept up-to-date on the newest movies coming out of Hollywood.
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I had an eye out for anarchist groups everywhere I went, and was basically unsuccessful everywhere I went, with the one notable exception of Hong Kong. In Hong Kong I visited two different anarchist cultural spaces, a bookstore and a collectively owned cafe. This was nice except for the fact that everything was in Chinese so I had very little understanding of the particulars of what was going on there. In Auckland, New Zealand I had the address for an anarchist social center, and when I went there I found an abandoned empty space that was up for sale or lease. India, Macau and Tonga were complete blank slates as far as anarchist activities goes. I do believe that the potential exists in these different countries, if one were to go there with an anarchist missionary zeal and was able to speak the local languages. I, however, went to these places with neither of those.
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As far as international traveling itself goes, this is something that I am interested in pursuing again in the future. I would want a more clearly defined intention and purpose before setting out, however, and the vague do-gooding "voluntourism" methodology is not something that I would want to pursue further. I would also want some different destinations as well, to see some places that are new to me. But the desire for more travel and to see more different things is still there.
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Also, the fact that I did these travels together with my wife, Liz, is a significant factor in this whole trip. It adds a whole new dimension of richness to be able to experience things together in partnership with someone with whom you are close with, and for this I am very grateful to have been able to do this traveling together with her.
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One thing that I do realize upon returning to the U.S. is how odd this experience makes me in comparison to so many others who have not had comparable experiences themselves. This general phenomena is nothing new for me, but it is something that I find to be somewhat sad. It is not at all unique to the U.S. either, since I met many people in India and Tonga for whom the idea of doing big international travel trip was completely out of the question for them. A lot of this has to do with financial concerns, I realize this, but nonetheless I do find it to be sad. It has been said that historically one of the biggest motivators for international travel for people has been war and displacement. My desire is for a world completely different, where this was not the case, and where people could view world travel as being a realistic and desirable option for them, among other things. Ultimately, though, I do think that we need a whole new world in order for most people to be able to go out and see the world. I'm down for that.Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-12912376293591270382015-05-27T19:13:00.000-07:002015-05-27T19:32:29.589-07:00Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?<center><img src="http://imgc-cn.artprintimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/60/6068/KQID100Z/posters/emily-s-hopkins-tad-none-of-these-patterns-are-going-to-scream-anarchist-new-yorker-cartoon.jpg"></center>
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There has been an ongoing debate, or controversy (depending on one's frame of mind), that I have been aware of pretty much the entire time that I have been an anarchist, and at various points it has even had some big effects on my own life. I am referring here to the infamous debate between <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_and_anarcho-capitalism">the “anarcho-capitalists” and the “regular” anti-capitalist anarchists</a>.
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This debate has been taking place in some form continuously since the 1990’s when the internet first started becoming a big thing. I have yet to find any evidence that this debate was taking place before the internet, which leads me to suspect that this is essentially an internet phenomena. Nevertheless, this is certainly taking place now and this has been having a big effect on online discussion spaces that are adorned with the label “anarchist”.
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The issue is this: in the 1960’s, about one hundred years after “regular” anti-capitalist anarchist started up, a radical laissez-faire economics philosopher in the U.S. named “Murray Rothbard” decided to create a new ideology by fusing together the individualist anarchist philosophy of Benjamin Tucker and his “Liberty” magazine cohorts with the philosophy of classical Liberalism and the political-economic approach of the “Austrian school of economics”. As a result of this, various friends and disciples of Murray Rothbard generally started adopting the label of “anarchist”, and more specifically, the label of “anarcho-capitalist” came into existence. That trend has continued on to this day, and it appears to be growing, although there is no way to accurately assess numbers on this. This social milieu of “anarcho-capitalists” mainly appears to stay within the social venues adorned with the label “Libertarian”, but with the advent of the internet they have been found in online “anarchist” discussion forums as well. And that is where the conflict begins.
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To summarize the problem, imagine the philosophy of “anarchism” as being a kind of big family, comprised of different distinct yet related ideologies all living together under the same roof. Then imagine “anarcho-capitalism” as being a distant cousin to that family, related, yes, but through a common relative who passed away long ago whom most family members forgot even existed. Now imagine that this cousin is somebody who talks a lot, and loudly, and who behaves in a way that most of the family members view as being both strange and irritating. This cousin now wants to come over to the house all the time, they invite themselves over to every family gathering and Sunday dinner, and also have invited some other cousins in who are similar to him. This is basically what is happening with the “anarchism” vs. “anarcho-capitalism” debacle.
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Philosophically-speaking, anarchism and anarcho-capitalism are on the same page in that both are ostensibility anti-state and for purely voluntary, consensual relationships and free association. The world of industry and corporations as we know them have always existed because of the strong support of the state, and the world that the anarcho-capitalists argue for has technically never existed. And there lies a big source of the conflict - what the anti-capitalist anarchists and the anarcho-capitalist anarchists are advocating for has never really existed in either case. Some small, temporary, fleeting examples may have existed long ago in the past, but there are no good real-life examples of what they want to see in the world to point to in either case. In their arguments with each other they each try to hit the other over the head with examples that do not really represent what the other is actually advocating for. In the case against the anarcho-capitalists, the horrors of global corporate capitalism are given. In the case of the anti-capitalist anarchism, the atrocities of the various “communist” regimes are listed. Neither of these really apply, because what each side is arguing for is a castle in sky - a fantasy that has never existed in reality.
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Then there is the recurrent topic of “What would an anarcho-X society look like?” I want to point out that all speculation about these ideal future anarchist societies is essentially just science fiction. It is the same kind of gee-whiz mentality about how humans can be in future worlds. Which is not a bad thing, but it is not in any way indicative of "the way that things will be" in any kind of anarchist society. I say that a "future anarchist society" will be a crazy unpredictable thing, because human beings are often crazy and unpredictable. What I believe a real anarchist society would look like, if one were to ever be created, is whatever the people involved with it would want it to look like. This could be anything. The future is completely indeterminate and unpredictable. To have it be enforced to look any one particular way is to have a state in place.
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I would like to see less emphasis being placed on the imaginary future utopian society that our valiant armies of anarchist revolutionaries (or insurrectionaries, or organizers, or agorists, or whatever) are supposedly fighting for. Also, less emphasis on the dystopian hell-holes that our supposed enemies are scheming to imprison us in. Instead, I would like to see more focus on the world that we live in here and now, the current trajectories that it is set on, and our options within it.
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When it comes down to it, the actual real-life practice, or praxis, of anarchists of all stripes is not all that different. The anti-capitalist anarchists like to paint the anarcho-capitalists as all being well-funded and on the payroll of the large corporations of the world, and likewise the anarcho-capitalists all like to paint the anti-capitalist anarchists as having the armies of Stalinist Russia all laying dormant waiting at their beck and call. The reality is that both sides are comprised of some rather unspectacular people. We are all pretty much working class people from Western countries, with the surveillance state and law enforcement looking on at our every move. We are also all marginalized, misunderstood weirdos, as far as how our political beliefs relate to those of mainstream society. What we do in response to all of that, in terms of real-life anarchist projects of subversion and survival, is where we have much to learn from each-other.
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For example, the anarcho-capitalist concept of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agorism">Agorism</a>, or “counter-economics”, of living financially outside of the state’s economy, could be of much benefit to anti-capitalist anarchists. Likewise, the anti-capitalist practice of having cooperatives and collectives to live outside of the corporate system and to do away with having bosses could be of great benefit to those who want more freedom in their lives. Can we have counter-economic cooperatives, perhaps?
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One of the basic arguments against working with the other side is that they are all a bunch of assholes. It’s hard to argue with that, since you should work with who you want to work with and not be forced with anyone you don’t want to be with. Having some degree of affinity and trust with those whom one is working with is essential towards projects of any kind being successful. That being said, I have met a number of complete jerks and assholes among BOTH the anarcho-capitalists and the anti-capitalist anarchists. I can honestly say that neither side holds a monopoly in this area. Likewise, I have also met a number of different really awesome people in both camps, and I think that both “sides” contains some really talented and intelligent folks.
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The incessant debating and arguing can still happen, and probably will continue on until the end of time. The important thing is that the quality of these interactions change for the better. For example, are people learning anything new from these exchanges, or are preconceived views just becoming further entrenched? Is any kind of creativity or innovation taking place, or are old arguments just being rehashed and recycled? Is any kind of mutual understanding being developed, or is each person just focusing on their own particular opinions and perspectives on the world? Interactions between people can be toxic and lead to dead-ends, or they can help lead to the positive growth and development of those involved in them.
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What I would like to see come out of the continued interactions of the anti-capitalist anarchists and the anarcho-capitalists is NOT seeing one side acquiesce to becoming a bunch of ruthless capitalists or control-freak communists, but to rather have those engaged become individuals who have more capacity and skill at living free lives, which hopefully can develop into an inter-connected culture of more effective resistance to the state and all of the different forces that would have us not be free. I can only hope that this particular culture clash between two peoples that are so seemingly strange and alien to each other can be a learning ground for better navigating all of the different social attitudes and cultures that exist among people throughout the world. Differences exist between people, both in this world now and in whatever future utopian society our imagination is preoccupied with, and the sooner we learn how to more productively and harmoniously deal with these differences, the better off we will be. Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-33855820529941817032015-05-10T16:57:00.001-07:002015-05-10T17:01:21.935-07:00My Top Ten Recommended Areas of Change for the NVC Network<center><img src="http://www.vermontnvc.org/images/green-infinity-logo-ai.gif"></center>
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The NVC (which is short for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication">Nonviolent Communication</a>) world seems to be in an interesting position right now. The founder/creator Marshall Rosenberg recently passed away and the international organization that owns the trademark and coordinates many things related to it, the CNVC (short for <a href="http://www.cnvc.org">Center for Nonviolent Communication</a>), is currently in the midst of a lot of different <a href="http://www.cnvc.org/future">re-evaluation and restructuring</a>. The time is ripe for changes in the NVC world.
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I, for one, am really happy and excited to see this window of opportunity open. For quite a number of years I have strongly desired great changes to take place in the NVC world, in hopes of having NVC grow, reach out, and be more effective with different people around the world. In the last few years my despair about these changes happening has led to me pretty much pulling away from actively engaging with the NVC world and instead just observing it from a distance. Perhaps now is an opportunity for some of the changes that I would like to see to come about, and if so, I would like to do what I can to assist this in happening.
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To clarify about what specifically I would like to see changed in the NVC world, here are ten areas that I would like to see worked on:
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<b>1) Abolish NVC Certification.</b> It appears to me that for quite a while now a whole lot of time and effort has been put into the CNVC "certified trainers" program. This, in my eyes, is a lot of time, energy and resources that could be better spent in other places. The intention behind the official CNVC certification process is to protect and preserve the integrity of NVC. I do not believe that this succeeds in fulfilling this purpose. For one, I have met and seen a lot of people who are officially NVC certified trainers who have not expressed NVC in ways that I view as being in integrity with the NVC process. At the same time, I have also met quite a number of different NVC enthusiasts and trainers who I consider to have a great deal of skill and integrity with expressing NVC, and these people do not have and never have had any interest in becoming an NVC certified trainer. I have also seen people "get the wrong impression about NVC" by the words and/or actions of countless different people, some of whom are and others who are not official CNVC certified trainers. If the general integrity of NVC is lost then it will go not because of the actions of certified trainers, but because of the general behavior of NVC enthusiasts everywhere. Therefore the "certified trainer" label is arbitrary and unnecessary. With that being the case, the focus then needs to be shifted to that of more effectively supporting with integrity <b>everyone</b> within the NVC network. (also, if you're interested, I recommend that you read <a href="http://www.mediateyourlife.com/dare-away-professionalism-carl-rogers/">this piece</a> by Carl Rogers which expresses a lot of my own views on certification and licensing.)
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<b>2) Focus more on ways and means for NVC people to more easily connect and collaborate with each-other directly.</b>
I would like to see the NVC network be oriented more towards peer-to-peer support and connection, and less on looking towards any one particular person or group of people for direction. Towards this end, I would like to see either the CNVC web-site be designed to support NVC enthusiasts in being better able to find each other based on any number of different criteria, be it geographical location, common interests or desired project to work on. Likewise, I would like to see the site designed to make it easier for people to meet and form ad hoc groups to work on whatever common projects they would like to initiate. I acknowledge that in recent years the CNVC website has been greatly improved towards this direction, however much more can still be done in these regards. Similarly, I also see the groups of NVC people on Facebook as having been developing a lot more towards these ends as well, as far NVC people finding and supporting each-other in different ways. So the specific means for NVC people to find each other, be it the CNVC website, different Facebook groups, or something else is not important as long as more effort goes towards developing this further towards being more effective and useful.
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<b>3) Focus more on publishing/producing new and different NVC voices.</b> For many people the NVC message is synonymous with the name "Marshall Rosenberg", and vice versa. Very few other authors have been published in the NVC world, or if they have, not that many NVC enthusiasts know of their work. I would like to see more of a variety of work from different NVC authors made available. This applies to audio and video, as well as written works. I would also like to see the authors be more people from outside the standard demographics found in the NVC subculture. More people of color, people who are not middle-aged and people who are not from North America, Western Europe and Australia should be sought out to have their work published/produced.
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<b>4) Create and proliferate more NVC gatherings/events that are outside of the traditional workshop/training model.</b> Personally, I am not interested in going to another NVC workshop, nor do I want to go to some structured NVC event where some leader/organizer has activities planned for me to do. At the same time, I am interested in learning more NVC and connecting more with people in NVC environments. I am guessing also that there are a whole lot of other people out there in the world who <b>could</b> be interested in learning NVC, but who would never want to go to a workshop or a retreat. This leads me to think that there has to be other different ways for people to intentionally be together in-person without replicating the workshop or retreat models. Experimentation and creativity is needed here! For example, how about we experiment with having free and open NVC gatherings and events in public places, such as parks and parking lots? The intentional space for practicing NVC can be created by the organizers of the event, and the borders of the space can be left wide open for new people from the outside to wander in and experience what we have to offer. This can be one new way that we can introduce and promote NVC to the wider world, by offering people a direct lived experience of it.
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<b>5) Digitize and offer free of charge more NVC materials online, audio, video or text.</b> Increasingly, more people are learning about NVC through the internet. For example, lots of people are becoming NVC enthusiasts by watching NVC videos on Youtube, or reading articles online about NVC. With this being the case, we can assist this process by adding more of the NVC materials that exist, be it audio, video or text material, onto the internet free of charge. I emphasize the "free of charge" aspect, because charging for things is indeed a barrier. Often if people see a charge associated with something, their attention just moves on to something else, something that is free of charge.
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<B>6) Develop more of a grounding in the world of empirical research and academia.</B> The lineage that NVC comes from can be traced to the work of the psychologist Carl Rogers and his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person-centered_therapy">Person-Centered Therapy</a>. However, ever since Marshall Rosenberg left the world of professional clinical psychology and went off on his own to create "Nonviolent Communication", NVC has pretty much been cut off from the worlds of research and scholarship and stranded in the world of self-help. This can be rectified. NVC enthusiasts who have ties to academic institutions can work towards bringing greater awareness of NVC, as well as promote research and studies of NVC. For example, the questions of "When does NVC help people?", "How does NVC help people?" and "What exactly do people do with NVC that is helpful?" can be studied with a lot more rigor and depth if NVC was applied to the standards of empirical research.
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<b>7) Develop an NVC approach to economics that is needs-based and willingness-based.</b> Questions of economics comes up a lot in the NVC subculture, whether it be matters of how to fund NVC events and organizations, how to maintain the livelihoods of NVC trainers or how to enable the participation of interested people who are unable to afford to attend NVC trainings. <a href="http://thefearlessheart.org/abundance-inequality-needs-and-privilege/">Some effort has already been made</a> towards elaborating on what an NVC-based gift economy could entail, but I think that this is an area where a great deal more potential exists. One area of investigation that more can be gained from for this endeavor is the work of Manfred Max-Neef. Max-Neef is a Chilean economist whose work Marshall Rosenberg got the concept for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_human_needs">"fundamental human needs"</a>, that was later incorporated into NVC. Max-Neef originally used that concept for his work in economics, and given that NVC enthusiasts are already familiar with the concept of fundamental human needs, I believe that there are already good grounds here for expanding upon a new vision for NVC-based economics. The key here is an economics that focuses on meeting as many different needs for as many different people as possible, as much of the time as possible, with all actions being carried out willingly.
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<B>8) Reach out to and strengthen the NVC ties with the world of activism and political organizing.</B> This is an area where a great deal of work has already been done, including by myself. However, the work that has been done here has mainly been for those who hold some particular kinds of political orientations, namely, liberals, progressives and leftists. Other kinds of political perspectives exist whose adherents have never been introduced to NVC. What about the conservatives? The Tea Party people? The Christian right? Additionally, the work that already has been done with activists and political minded-people has mainly been of the one-shot introduction variety or offering people empathy at protests. Much room exists for more in-depth and substantial work to be carried out with integrating NVC and activism.
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<B>9) Establishing guidelines or protocols for emotional processing sessions</B> One of the ways that NVC can be used is for deep emotional healing. It can be really powerful and helpful in this regard, and undoubtedly a lot of different people have received benefit from this. At the same time, a lot of the big emotional processing sessions that take place at NVC events can also go in very negative and unhealthy directions as well. This can range from sessions that go on too long and are emotionally draining for those involved, to at worst, situations where important boundaries are crossed and that could be categorized as being a form of "abuse". With this being the case, I think that if some clarified standards and procedures regarding emotional processing sessions were written up and distributed throughout the NVC world that this could go a long way towards having these activities being more healing and less damaging for those involved.
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<B> 10) Focus on translating NVC learning materials into the various languages most spoken by the human race.</B> Some of the top ten most spoken languages in the world have very few NVC materials available in that language. For example, Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali and Punjabi are all languages used by a substantial part of the world population, yet very few if any NVC materials are available in these languages. This in my eyes is a great barrier to NVC spreading around the world to places other than North America, Western Europe, or Australia. The translation of NVC materials could take place in an organized and systemic way, and one of the benefits of having a global organization is that efforts like this could more easily be coordinated through it.
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I will wrap up what I have to say here with this. I invite dialogue and conversation about what I said here, either on this blog itself or in NVC forums and venues elsewhere. These are all areas where I would like to see more discussion on, as well as tangible action!Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-50922978645297137202015-04-01T14:37:00.001-07:002015-04-01T15:09:56.980-07:00Authority and morality<center><img src="http://storylineblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/443909a-i1.0.jpg"></center>
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<i>"I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it." - George Carlin</i>
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Two pillars combine to support this edifice of domination that we live under: <b>authority</b>, which is the belief that one person or group of people has the right to make decisions for others and to impose punishment upon them if they disobey, and <b>morality</b>, which is the belief in the concepts of "good", "bad", "right", "wrong", "obligatory" and "forbidden". None of this is really helpful for any kind of free and authentic life, hence, I would like to see the whole thing done away with.
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The justifications for authority comes from a lack of trust in people making wise decisions for themselves, likewise, the justifications for morality comes from a lack of trust in people's judgement in determining what is supportive of themselves and others around them. The mechanism of authority is the relinquishing of one's independent decision-making capacity over to someone else, likewise, the mechanism of morality is the relinquishing of one's independent capacity for making assessments and evaluations over to some prescribed code that was written by somebody else.
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"Good", "bad", "right", "wrong" is moralism. Amoralism is not caring about any of that, and using a different standard for evaluation. "Might makes right" is a moralistic statement because you are bringing the concepts of "right" and "rights" into the picture, but one can still find value in the statement even without believing in it by seeing that the one with the most "might", i.e., the ability to parlay the use of force, holds the most sway in any given social situation. One follows what that person says out of fear of getting one's ass kicked. This is the fearful situation that is often conjured up when people imagine scenarios where there is no authority or morality present, but this is also the case for the world that we live in now: what else are all the police, militaries, and prisons doing everywhere?
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Compliance in order to save one's skin does not mean, however, that one has to <b>believe</b> any or all of the stories that surround the person or people who are deemed to be in "authority". One could just be marking time and not drawing attention to one's self until those people go away. We are fortunate that people are not mind readers, for often when those in authority see people portraying the affectations of obedience, they often make the assumption that the corresponding thought processes of obedience are in place as well.
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Morality is a type of story that people tell each other, similar to myths and legends, it is a story that gives an explanation for who we are, what we are doing, and what we should be doing in this world. Beyond just explaining things, morality also contains proscriptions and injunctions, along with an added motivating emotional oomph that feelings of fear and righteousness provide.
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When one talks about "morality" and "moral behavior", one is also referring to something else in addition to the conceptual club that is used to psychologically bludgeon people, and that is a roadmap and way of relating with other people that generally, conceivably, results in more social peace and harmony. That is speaking in broad strokes though, for the closer one gets to the fine details, the more room opens up for disagreement on interpretation. I am all for the use of social tools that are supportive of mutual coexistence and cooperation, the thing is, I think that what that is varies from person to person, place to place, and situation to situation. I don't think that any kind of standardized universal code could possibly encapsulate it all, and that instead social harmony requires a great deal of dialogue, deliberation and creativity among those involved.
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My hatred and hostility to those in authority comes from the sheer arrogance that I see in the situation, them setting themselves up to be little gods and messiahs, where they not only feel entitled to tell others what to do, they also feel entitled to create a little cosmology story (i.e., morality) where apparently the very nature of the universe justifies why they are in authority. Come off it - you are human like all the rest of us!
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The thing is, though, I believe that often those who exercise authority are not even aware that they are doing so. Authority, and the accompanying morality, is so prevalent in our society that it is like the air we breath - we often do not even notice it. It is often through accomplishing a kind of conceptual break, usually through the telling of a different kind of story, that people are able to raise their head above the water and see the world around them fresh for the first time.
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The story that I tell about human beings is that people are capable of making their own decisions and having their own lives go in the directions that they want through the choices that they make. The story that I tell also has everybody with the abilities to discern what they want, why they want it, and with the ability to access whether they are successful at getting that or not. Nobody is required to either believe in or use each other's stories. The decisions people make and the directions that people go in may in the end not serve them or lead to the kind of results that they want, but that is for each person to discover on their own. Advice can be given, suggestions can be made, but ultimately each person must walk their own path themselves.
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To try to play games of authority is to attempt to ignore all of this. It is to try to force others to take the approach that one considers to be correct, it is to ignore one's own capacity to choose and make decisions. Going the authority route is to follow the dictates of others and to ignore the feedback that is gained from the results of the decisions made and to instead keep one's mind preoccupied with the various stories that are presented by authority.
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Those in authority are constantly ready with an array of threats to be used in response to anything that displeases them. The tools at their disposal include emotional manipulation, playing cards in a game that is stacked against their opponent (such as through the use of "grades" and other points-systems), appealing to other more higher authorities, social manipulation resulting in social exclusion, and the ultimate trump card, physical force itself. These are the responses of a person who is ready to pounce, a predator on the prowl.
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Ultimately, the only way out of this is for a person to discover their own power. A person has the ability to believe their own stories, and to choose what stories that one uses in the first place. One has the ability to choose one's own actions, one's own words used, and one's own responses to other people and situations. One can know why one does what one does, and what one is trying to accomplish. Others can try to help you to forget all of that, but nobody can take it away from you. It's existential.
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Socially, though, constructed through the cumulative beliefs and actions of those who surround us, what we find ourselves in is a <b>prison</b>. That is because, control over one's own beliefs and choice-responses aside, there is seemingly no way out. Those who are playing the authority game invite us to do the same at the barrel of a gun. There are various other prisoners who surround us, as well as various predators, and those who support that predator behavior. What is needed here are prison survival strategies. Prison escape is always an option, but that is always much glamorized and easier said than done. And there is always the question of where one will go once one is out, and how one will then survive in that new and different environment.
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But that is getting ahead of ourselves here. The first step is cutting through the illusions that surround us. Learn to notice a story when it is being told, and learn to discern who exactly is benefitting from the stories that are being told. Learn to recognize one's own ability for choice and agency in a given situation, and learn to discern one's own intentions, reasons and goals, instead of relying on pre-formulated standardized responses. To live without authority or morality requires a lot more effort on one's part - it involves a lot more personal thought and self-reflection, and a lot more facing up to one's own self-responsibility. But in the end, it is an experience of being truly alive, even when it is not allowed. Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-31429781956446589232015-03-05T15:15:00.000-08:002015-03-05T15:21:26.972-08:00Education and Its Discontents<center><img src="http://www.groovinmoms.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/lastdayofschool.jpg"></center>
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The other day I was left in charge of the school library for the day, which I loved, since I have always been a library nerd. That same day I was also left in charge of the 6th grade class for one hour and 50 minutes. Since I am not into enforcing rules, the class quickly became a bunch of raucous chaos. I was cool with that, as long as nobody was getting hurt. However, a teacher outside the library heard the noise, came in and started yelling at the kids to be quiet, and glared at me for not enforcing the rules. To which I thought to myself "I don't f***ing care." This could be the kind of thing that leads to me leaving the volunteer gig.
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Let me back up a bit here. I have beliefs about education in general, and epistemology in particular, that are different from that of most people. To begin with, I disagree with the very notion of "compulsory education". To be "compulsory" means "you have to go whether you want to or not". That, in my eyes, is wrong. That makes it a prison. Period. (and in case you are wondering, I am anti-prison as well)
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Carl Rogers once said: “Learning of all kinds goes on best, lasts best, and tends to lead itself on more when it grows out of a real focus of interest in the learner.” That is essentially how I view learning, and in the situations of compulsory education those who are compelled are most often interested in just learning to say and do that which is necessary to please those who are doing the compelling. The ostensible subject matter at hand is incidental.
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Situations of compulsory education therefore consists of students who mainly do not want to be there who face teachers and other school authority figures who use some combination of yelling, threats and bribes presented to the students to get the students to act in ways that they desire. What is taught to the students is basically: "You have no choice in where you will be. If you do not do as I tell you, worse things will happen to you. If you follow orders, better things will happen to you." The subject here is learning to accept the basic context of being in a prison and to follow orders to escape a worse fate.
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I believe that people have an innate desire to be free, and that that is slowly whittled away by compulsory education and other experiences in our authoritarian society to result in the psychological state of most adults, who have suppressed that desire to be free and have internalized the policing inside themselves. Children have not yet reached that condition, hence the role of most teachers being that of policing the children. Most classrooms that I have been in, both as a child and as an adult, I have seen the scenario play out where the teacher or other school authority figure leaves the room and as soon as that happens total chaos breaks out. I have seen this happen <b><i>SO MANY times now</i></b>, that I basically have come to expect that to happen whenever the authority figure leaves. I see this as being expression on the part of the children of their yearning to be free.
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Authority is a kind of social relationship that people act out with each-other. In it, certain people are designated the roles of giving the commands, and other people (the majority) are designated with the role of following the orders. Authority is prevalent all throughout our society, not just in educational settings of course, but when the objective is presumably one of learning the presence of the authority relationship is particularly egregious. I realized all of this when I was a student in high school. I noticed how and when the teachers would play out the authority relationship, and how the other students would respond to that with either submission or rebellion (and the authority's response with punishment or threats of punishment). And I observed the times when teachers were <b><i>not</i></b> acting out the authority relationship, when they were simply peers and fellow human beings with the students. I realized that I really enjoyed the presence of the teachers when they were not acting in an authority relationship, and I hated them when they were.
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The key thing for learning, as I said earlier, is to have authentic interest and curiosity. Sometimes this does by chance exist within the school environment. For example, I remember when I was in the second grade and I was sincerely interested in learning how to read, and that year the teacher taught the students how to read, and I loved it. A similar thing happened when I was in the fifth grade and I was really interested in colonial history, and it just so happened that the teacher was covering the history of the time period. I totally soaked up that information, and I recall even talking about history stuff with the teacher during recess periods while the other children were playing. Most often, though, what is being taught does not overlap with the students' interests, which fits most of the rest of my educational experience, which I simply don't remember as a result. The norm is for students to learn what is necessary to pass the tests and to please the teachers, and then to promptly forget it all and move on. In other words, most of what is taught is forgettable.
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The kind of learning environment that I support can more or less fit under the category of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling">unschooling</a>. That is, the learner chooses what they want to learn about and how they want to go about learning it. This could include the traditional classroom environment, if the learner chooses to pursue that, but with the way that those are usually run, what with the teachers yelling, threatening and bribing the students, I doubt that learners would choose that kind of option that often. Teachers and parents <b><i>do</i></b> have a role in the learning process, and that is as a kind of facilitator, helping the learner get access to the resources and materials that they want and need, keeping track of what they are doing and studying, making suggestions when appropriate and giving advice when wanted.
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Unschooling, in the case of children's education, is usually contained within the larger category of "homeschooling". I did traditional homeschooling for half of eighth grade, and I can very much tell the difference between that and unschooling. In my case, my mother and step-father determined the curriculum, regardless of my interests. I recall even coming up with and suggesting to them an ambitious idea for a new curriculum design for us to use that spanned across, and illustrated the relationships between, many different subjects and disciplines. My proposal was summarily shot down, and we continued on with pursuing the original curriculum design that they previously established for me.
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By contrast, unschooling is based on the active <b><i>choice</i></b> of the learner. Those who are helping the learner are there to assist that person in pursuing the interests and objectives that they have set for themselves. I unofficially practiced unschooling myself during the second half of my high school experience, after I officially dropped out of high school. During that time period I spent most of my days in libraries, pursuing whatever subject matter and materials my interest and curiosity took me to. I did not have any guides or mentors during that time period, my parents essentially had no idea that this was going on, and I was pretty much on my own. Although that was not the kind of unschooling environment that I would recommend for others, I feel as if I learned more during that time period than I did in the years prior to that. This is because my own <b><i>authentic interest</i></b> was present, because I was learning what I <b><i>wanted</i></b> to learn, and because all that I did was based on my own <b><i>free choice</i></b>.
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Which brings me to the issue of "choice". I have seen many well-meaning teachers try to establish for their students some degree of "choice", in order to get closer to an approximation of the kind of free learning that I am talking about. Usually these kind of "choices" do not amount to much and the students see through the visage to what's really going on. In these cases the teacher is still in control, the teacher sets the parameters, determines the acceptable choices, and if they so desire, reneges on the choices that were initially offered. This is a particular kind of teacher-controlled classroom activity, not a learner-directed unschooling situation.
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In an unschooling situation, two of the best resources that I could recommend are libraries and discussion groups comprised of people who are all interested in the subject matter at hand. I have always been interested in libraries, my entire life, because I have always seen it as being a place where one has free reign to learn about whatever one wants to learn about. Discussion groups with fellow interested participants is something that I have developed an enthusiasm for only in my adulthood, and thanks to the internet it has now become a lot easier to find and organize these than what was once the case. Also, a third resource, the internet, goes without saying as being an invaluable resource for unschooling learners.
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So, back to the topic of me volunteering at the school in Tonga. I am working at this school not because I believe in what the school is doing or what it is ostensibly about, but because I wanted to have the experience of working in a remote foreign country doing something that I have never done before. Think of it as a kind of unschooling elaborate field trip excursion. In a way it is better that I am not being paid for the work that I am doing here, because then I would feel more contractually and financially beholden to the systems and methods that the teachers at the school are practicing. On the other hand, this leads me to be in a situation where my own direct labor is contributing to an institution that I do not believe in, and in my ideal world would not even exist, and I am not even being paid to support this! From what I am told, however, this school is one of the most lenient schools in the nation of Tonga because the teachers at this school do not physically hit their students. There is a whole spectrum of epistemological beliefs out there.
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I like working at the library at the school because the library is a place where the students could at least <b><i>potentially</i></b> learn and discover things on their own that could take them off to new places. The issue of classroom chaos, children "getting out of control", does not concern me, as long as everybody is physically safe. The reason for this is that most people are not used to having the experience of freedom, and often when people first experience freedom there is for many an initial period of frantic confusion where they try to figure out what to do without the presence of an authority. Instead of responding to that with a desire of immediately reinstating authority, I prefer to just give people time and let people discern on their own what they would like to do next.
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Already I have been identified as somebody who is comfortable with "chaos" - disapprovingly by a teacher, and approvingly by a student, who has expressed astonishment that I have not yet yelled at any of the students. This is a precarious place for me to be in, since generally those who reject authority on principle do not do well within institutions whose job it is to instill in others the love and obedience of authority on principle. So, we will see how it goes. At the very least, I can always move on to learning other things. Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-43147123007148634482015-03-01T13:48:00.000-08:002015-03-01T13:50:13.706-08:00Anarchism and me<center><img src="http://anarchadia.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Jez12.png"></center>
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I have been feeling drawn lately to write about anarchism. There has been a pattern in my writings for the past few years that I've noticed of me feeling inspired to write when either a recent death occurs or an anniversary comes about. Well, I have both now in relation to anarchism.
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The recent death that has occurred is that of <a href="http://anarchistnews.org/content/howard-ehrlich-rip">Howard Ehrlich</a>. Howard was an anarchist for many years, from at least the 1970's to the present. He was the editor for the journal <a href="http://www.akpress.org/bestofsocialanarchism.html">Social Anarchism</a>, as well as the author or editor for a number of books. I met him in person on a number of different occasions, and he was a delightful fellow to be around. His work served as a kind of bridge between the beginning of "Second-Wave Anarchism"(that is, the anarchism that emerged in the 1960's and 70's) and the anarchists of today. He will be missed.
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The anniversary that has occurred for me recently is that of realizing that I now have spent that majority of my life considering myself to be an anarchist. Through different years and periods I have affiliated myself with different <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_schools_of_thought">schools of thought</a> within anarchism, and for one period of about two years I went through a kind of sabbatical where I refrained from associating with other anarchists or thinking about anarchist-related topics, although in my heart I still remained an anarchist.
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This all leads me to now feel the desire to re-state my anti-statist beliefs, to say what anarchism means to me and how I see the world.
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I would say that anarchism is a family of political philosophies that first emerged in the mid-nineteenth century that views all forms of authority, hierarchy and centralization as being both both unnecessary and undesirable. Various mass institutions, such as capitalism, the state, patriarchy and white supremacy, are all viewed as operating based on a fundamental principle of domination. As a result, anarchists wish for all these institutions to be completely abolished.
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Instead of all of that, anarchists would like to see new forms of relationships and organization based upon voluntary cooperation, free association, people relating with each-other directly as equals and groups relating with each-other in a nonaggressive and decentralized manner.
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The <b><i>reason</i></b> for all of this, for me at least, is a deeply felt desire to live as truly free as possible, to treat others and be treated by others as a genuine equal with all other people, and to have an experience of being an integral part of an authentic, caring and mutually-supportive community of people. I have the sense that these things once existed for humanity, long ago, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution">gradually over time</a> they all have eroded away more and more, until the sense of personal disempowerment and social alienation gave way to lives lived in narrow prefigured institutional roles. This makes it possible for millions to routinely be slaughtered with no more response than perhaps a slight shaking of one's head before moving on to the next topic for one's attention. The people being killed are simply too abstract, and the machinery that is killing them (that they are also a part of) is just too vast to effect any substantial change in it. So helplessness and powerlessness become the prevailing subtext of our world.
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That all being said, there are many different <b><i>kinds</i></b> of anarchism, different ways that people express their anarchist response to the horrors of the world. This is why I say that anarchism is a "family" of political philosophies, instead of simply "a" political philosophy. The differences within anarchism fall along many different lines, be it what kind of economic structures they would like to see in a new society, what kind of political structures they would like to see in a new society, which particular oppressed demographic groups they want to focus on, which other philosophies they want to combine with anarchism, how much they want to focus on individuals and how much they want to focus on society writ large, what strategies and tactics they want to use to get from the world that we have today to a new anarchist society, and whether one should even focus on "a new anarchist society" at all instead of on just life here-and-now.
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There are some anarchists who respond to this multiplicity of different anarchist schools of thought by wanting to unite all the different tendencies under <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_anarchism">an umbrella organization</a> or a broad inclusive identity, and others seek to downplay the differences and seek to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_without_adjectives">emphasize what is in common</a> to all anarchists. Others spend a lot of time and energy engaging in perpetual ideological rhetorical warfare in favor of their particular anarchist sect.
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It has also been said that there are as many different kinds of anarchism as there are anarchists. This is because inherent in the whole thing is freedom of thought, each person doing their own independent thinking and coming to their own conclusions. This naturally can result in a whole wide variety of conclusions being reached on a whole wide variety of different issues. The trick then is to find, create, and implement different ways for different people with different perspectives to work together for common goals and interests, and for each to go their own separate ways when their goals and interests diverge.
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Personally, where I find myself now in terms of the various anarchist schools of thought is a place where I can appreciate many of the different points-of-view that people are each coming from, while at the same time not really whole-heartedly identifying with any of them specifically. I am at once an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism">anarcho-communist</a> as well as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-left_anarchy">post-left</a> anarchist. I am an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualist_anarchism">individualist</a> who sees the concepts of "property" and "ownership" as <a href="http://slingshot.tao.ca/issue.html?0082010">being meaningless and absurd</a>. I appreciate Max Stirner's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egoist_anarchism">egoism</a> as well as the Buddha's concept of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatta">anatta</a>. I have a fondness for both <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacktivism">anarchist hackers</a> as well as for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewilding_(anarchism)">rewilding anarcho-primitivists</a>, for both <a href="http://anarchism.pageabode.com/andrewnflood/resources-rojava-revolution-kurdistan-syria">the Bookchinite fighters in Rojava</a> as well as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatherapy">touchy-feely anarchists</a> who hang around self-improvement workshops. Unlike <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2011/11/envisioning-buddhist-anarchism.html">various</a> times <a href="http://eng.anarchopedia.org/Compassionate_Anarchism">in my past</a>, I currently have no quick-and-easy label to succinctly express what particular kind of anarchist I am. I'm OK with that.
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What I do find to be the most important is to find ways to navigate through the world that we live in that maintains as much personal clarity, and mutual and self respect as possible. At the same time, it is just as important to keep an eye on the horrors and brutality that the world of domination continually threatens us with. This is no easy task. One's focus can easily be lost in ideological pissing matches and petty interpersonal squabbles that are blown up through the injection of moralistic undertones.
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This then brings me to the matter of the anarchist subculture such as it currently exists. I have already written much on this subject, so I do not wish to repeat myself here. One thing that I will say, however, is that in spite of all my criticisms and apprehensions regarding the anarchist subculture, I do find a certain value in associating with it in some form. The reason why is that anarchists, regardless of the particular kind of anarchist one is, are at least a kind of person who sees through many of the extensive illusions that are projected at us about mainstream society. Such people are unfortunately rare and hard to find, given that so many buy into and abide by the narratives of authority that are fed to us all from birth onwards. A kind of basic need for kinship and companionship is met through anarchists associating with each other, regardless of whether any broader social/political change is effected as a result. And, if the people involved are able to live happier healthier lives because of the association, then that's even better!
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Ideally, I would like to see and participate in a lot more anarchist projects that are designed to meet people's basic needs in the world we have now. I would like to see more different needs being met for more different people in ways that are in harmony with the principles underlying anarchist philosophy. The word "anarchist" is not important to me here, but meeting needs in harmony with the principles behind it <b>is</b> important to me.
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I do not know what the future brings. While I do believe that human beings are capable of living in an anarchist society, there is no guarantee that people will not continue to live in authoritarian ways indefinitely. There is also no guarantee that human beings won't simply <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction">wipe out all life on this planet</a> before any major change can take place one way or the other. For now, I am placing my bets on small pockets of people, scattered here and there, living more or less anarchically on different parts of the planet. Perhaps at some point the opportunities would present themselves for an endeavor that is larger than that, but for now we have to take what we can get. Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-59557487232180093072015-02-11T21:42:00.000-08:002015-02-12T20:56:19.654-08:00It usually begins in Detroit<center><img src="http://www.bcncc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Marshall-Rosenberg.jpeg"></center>
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Yesterday I discovered that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Rosenberg">Marshall Rosenberg</a>, the creator of Nonviolent Communication (aka "NVC"), passed away last Saturday February 7th.
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I feel as if I am still processing this news. As I said in my Facebook post about the subject, "Both NVC and Marshall Rosenberg personally had an enormous impact on me and my life. I simply cannot imagine where I would be, or who I would be, if it was not for him and his work."
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A number of different things are coming up for me regarding this. One of these are of various memories that I have of interacting with Marshall Rosenberg. I have a number of really vivid intense memories of being with him, and they are not all sentimental, sappy, or even necessarily positive memories of him. I have a lot of vivid memories of antagonism, frustration, and general conflict with him. I also have a lot of memories that I find to be generally reassuring, that I feel grateful for having. It is all a mixed bag, and I don't want to throw any of it out.
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To be clear, I do not fault or blame Marshall Rosenberg for anything. If anything, I get the sense that a lot of my interactions with him brought up to me, right in front of my face, my own lack of clarity as to what I am really wanting and/or asking for. I had, and still have, a whole lot of different vague generalities with strong emotional attachments to it floating around inside my head. I acknowledge this.
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And I usually have not sat down to take the time and effort necessary to find out what is behind it and how I can better move forward with it. The NVC process that Marshall Rosenberg taught is one way to help productively address this, but that does not necessarily mean or guarantee that the work is being down. His contribution has been to show spotlights on the matter, for better or worse. The rest is up to me.
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Then there is my relationship with NVC itself, which also is coming up for me as a result of Marshall Rosenberg's death. When people think about NVC they usually think of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication#Four_components">"the four-part model"</a> which is often given the four-letter acronym "OFNR" for "Observations Feelings Needs Request". Practically-speaking, this translates into a sort of robotic formula that I have no interest in hearing. This is not how I usually relate to NVC, at least not anymore.
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Nowadays when I think of NVC I usually think in terms of a series of <a href="http://www.baynvc.org/assumptions_and_intentions.php">key assumptions and intentions</a> as well as some <a href="http://thefearlessheart.org/resources/core-commitments/">personal commitments</a> that those who have really dedicated themselves to integrating NVC into their lives often take on in some way. However, <b><u>none</u></b> of these things I hold as dogma. I see it all as being quite fluid and dynamic, open to change, and even being dropped altogether, depending on the particular situation and context. None of this even needs to be called "Nonviolent Communication", it can be called whatever, as long as the basic elements are kept in mind.
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Marshall Rosenberg's death also brings up another thing for me - my ambiguous relationship with what can be called the "NVC community", or put another way, the "international subculture of enthusiasts who often can be found at venues that are adorned with the label 'Nonviolent Communication'". Basically put, for the past year or so I have stopped affiliating myself with the NVC community altogether, aside from my occasionally reading something on the internet.
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The reason for this is that I have discovered that I am usually bored going to these kinds of events. The way that NVC events and activities are usually structured do not interest me. I imagine that if the events were "unstructured yet intentional", or, if I was considered to be the "leader" or "facilitator" of the event that I would feel quite differently.
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And this brings up the last thing that comes up for me regarding Marshall Rosenberg's death, which is actually something that the NVC trainer <a href="http://www.baynvc.org/bios/MikiKashtan.php">Miki Kashtan</a> expressed quite nicely in her recent e-mail about this as well:
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<b><i>"With his passing, I suddenly feel like an elder, along with others from my "generation" of trainers, ever more deeply committed to the calling. I sense that I am not alone in this; that many of us are drawn to taking even more responsibility for carrying forth the extraordinary potential that we see in this body of work."</i></b>
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Yes, I am interested in being an NVC trainer/teacher/facilitator, and, at the same time, I feel torn about this since I am not interested in pursuing this in the standard ways that people usually go about this. I am also not at all interested in marketing or self-promotion. I am also, for the record, not interested in advertising, arguing, debating, persuading and trying to convince & convert others towards how I see things or the NVC worldview in general. Both the kind of connection that I am looking for with others and the quality of personal change that I am wanting to work towards with others all exists on a level that I consider to be far more deeper than any of those things. I am open to receiving requests of my services, and I am also open to looking on as the NVC world continues to change and evolve.
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This brings me to a few things that have caught my attention and interest in the NVC world as it stands now. One of these has been the growth and proliferation of what are often called <a href="http://familyheartcamp.org">"NVC Family Camps"</a>. I have volunteered at one of these, and I am interested in volunteering at more of these again in the future. The kind of social environments that are created at these are unlike anything else that I have experienced in the NVC world.
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Another thing that I am excited about is <a href="http://www.focusingnvc.com/focusingnvc/home.html">the work that is being done in El Salvador</a> teaching/practicing a hybrid model of NVC and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focusing">Focusing</a>. I do not have personal experience with this, but I am quite interested in learning more and seeing where it all goes.
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And lastly, I am also interested in <a href="https://www.cnvc.org/future">the ongoing process</a> that the international <a href="http://www.cnvc.org">Center for Nonviolent Communication</a> has embarked upon to try to reform and reorganize itself in a way that is more open and participatory. This process is a lot slower than I would like, but I am hoping that that fact means that more deliberation and consideration is being put into the process than what was the case with previous attempts at organizational change within the CNVC before.
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So this all leaves me in a kind of wait-and-see state at the moment. Wait and see which requests are made of my services, and wait and see what new developments arise and opportunities present themselves. In the meantime, I am grateful, I do honestly feel that way for all of the many rich experiences that I have had through NVC over the years. I feel grateful for all of the many people I have met over the years as a result of my involvement with NVC, and I feel grateful for all the ways that they have contributed to my life, and I dearly hope that I contributed to theirs as well.
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I feel grateful for all the very practical ways I have learned to work with both myself as well as with other people, using the tools, models and principles that were first outlined by Marshall Rosenberg. And I feel grateful to Marshall Rosenberg, who as a result of all his efforts ended up making all of this possible.
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The title for this blog post comes from the fact that Marshall Rosenberg, like my parents, spent his formative childhood years in the Detroit, Michigan area. Marshall Rosenberg would frequently cite his experiences of living in Detroit as a child during <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_race_riot_of_1943">the 1943 race riot</a> as being a big motivating factor as to why he was inspired to create NVC.Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-60748283314351872132015-01-01T00:09:00.000-08:002015-01-01T00:09:31.468-08:00My 2014 year-in-review: Marking Existence<center><img src="http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/nvc_anarchy/1283300/5312/5312_900.jpg"></center>
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At the end of every year I carry out <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2013/12/traveling-circling-some-reflections-on.html">a personal ritual where I reflect and talk about</a> my own experience of the year that is ending. Here is what I have to say about 2014.
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In general, I would say that this year is characterized by a few different things. One is that I continued to feel <a href="http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.com/2014/05/individualist.html">estranged and disconnected from</a> various sub-cultures that I once felt a part of and used to derive much meaning, inspiration, and solace from. In particular I am referring to those surrounding anarchism, Nonviolent Communication and to some extent even Buddhism (<a href="http://www.tricycle.com/blog/10-misconceptions-about-buddhism">this article series in Tricycle magazine</a> helped with the later). My core beliefs and opinions are pretty much all the same as they were before, it's just that my feelings of alignment, affiliation and belonging with groups of other people who believe similarly to myself has very much evaporated.
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At the same time as this, this year I have met my needs for belonging and social connection with other people through other, more "mainstream" means. This year I got married, and as a result I have been feeling more connected with both my wife and her family. For much of this I also worked at a regular full-time job, and I felt very much connected with and a part of those people whom I worked with. These are all connections not necessarily based on shared belief systems, goals, and values, but they have been real and meaningful for me nonetheless, and they have stepped in to fill real needs for me that were not being met through the ways that I was previously used to meeting them.
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This year I also engaged in international travel for the first time in my life (not counting my previous small excursions into Canada and Mexico). In particular, this year I traveled to northern India and Macau (which is a part of China), with a small little jaunt into Hong Kong in-between these two places. During this time I have met and talked with a lot of people from these places, as well as people from different countries who are also travelers and/or expatriates. This has been very profound and fulfilling for me, and it continues on into this next year, 2015. So this is not over yet, by any means, and I very much look forward to seeing where it all leads to in the future.
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Speaking of the global scale, one thing that I have wrestled with a lot this year is that of wrapping my head around and accepting the likely demise of modern civilization at the very least, and all complex life on this planet at most. The <a href="http://www.amazon.in/The-Sixth-Extinction-Unnatural-History/dp/0805092994">scope, scale and intensity of the global ecological destruction</a> that life on this planet is facing, combined with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_global_warming">the intractable institutional interests and forces</a> that are producing this destruction, makes <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove#mediaviewer/File:Dr._Strangelove_-_Riding_the_Bomb.png">certain doom</a> out to be the most likely future that we all face. Much of this year I have spent a great deal of inner effort towards coming to peace with this.
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I have come across a number of fictional works that have "met me where I'm at" with all of this and that likewise express a lot of similar thoughts and feelings that I have towards the world these days. Movie-wise this year, the two that most stand out for me are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowpiercer">Snowpiercer</a> directed by Bong Joon-ho and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpsJPOMfGSo">Zero Theorem</a> which was directed by Terry Gilliam. In the realm of books, the two that stand out the most for me this year are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyeless_in_Gaza_(novel)">Eyeless in Gaza</a> that was written by Aldous Huxley and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_Cradle">Cat's Cradle</a> by Kurt Vonnegut. All four of these pieces I strongly recommend that <b><u>you</u></b>, my dear reader, take the time to watch/read <b><i>yourself</i></b>.
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Perhaps one of the most interesting anomalies and conundrums for me this year has been my relationship with <a href="https://www.dhamma.org">Vipassana Meditation</a> (as taught by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._N._Goenka">S.N. Goenka</a>). On the one hand, I do not regularly practice Vipassana Meditation, I have no interest in setting out to be an evangelizer or proselytizer for Vipassana Mediation, and as a result, I would not really make a very good poster child for it. At the same time, I have now done so many of these ten-day courses, both as a student as well as a volunteer worker, that I am often now given roles and positions within the Vipassana social settings of being some kind of Vipassana example for others to emulate. Vipassana Meditation has continued to be a very meaningful, helpful and important part of my life, but not in the ways that most people usually expect and understand it to be so. It is all just a bizarre situation all around.
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Speaking of Vipassana Meditation, one experience that I had with it this year that really stands out to me is that of volunteering during a ten-day course at <a href="http://www.sikhara.dhamma.org">the center in Dharamsala</a> in northern India. That experience was definitely the most intense volunteering experience with Vipassana that I have ever had. There were new situations and circumstances that I was confronted with that I have never before come across. Through it all I met some quite wonderful people, and I feel more capable than ever of being able to positively confront various difficulties in life.
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I realize that I am leaving out quite a lot of details and specifics in this piece. That is done intentionally - I am speaking in broad strokes on purpose. If you are interested in knowing more of the specifics, I welcome direct and personal one-on-one conversation. Beyond that, what I have here is the beginning of the the painting of a picture of my year 2014 for you here. I hope that you enjoyed it. :)Ian Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.com0