rebecca on hidden truth
rebecca solnit on david graeber and nika dubrovsky‘s ultimate hidden truth of world (book) [ultimate hard copy]
note (from end of guardian post): This is an edited extract of Rebecca Solnit’s foreword to The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World by David Graeber
via fb share in david graeber discussion forum [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/07/david-graeber-optimistic-anarchist-rebecca-solnit]:
‘It does not have to be this way’: the radical optimism of David Graeber – nov 2024
As a new collection of his writing is published, Rebecca Solnit remembers her friend, the late activist and anarchist who believed ordinary people had the power to change the world
ultimate hidden truth of world (book)
That joy: maybe this is how everyone should feel about ideas and the ways that they open up or close off possibilities. The way that, as he wrote, “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.” If you truly believe that, if you perceive a world that is constructed according to certain assumptions and values, then you see that it can be changed, not least by changing those assumptions and values.
In order to believe that people can govern themselves in the absence of coercive institutions and hierarchies, anarchists must have great faith in ordinary people, and David did. .t
huge huge..
what we haven’t yet tried: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
he argues that anarchism was not, by comparison, an idea created by a few intellectuals; instead, “the basic principles of anarchism – self-organisation, voluntary association, mutual aid” – have been around “as long as humanity.”
anarch\ism et al.. david on anarchism ness
His essay Despair Fatigue opens: “Is it possible to become bored with hopelessness?” David’s superpower was being an outsider. He did not proceed from widely shared assumptions but sought to dismantle them, urging us to see they’re arbitrary, confining and optional, and inviting everyone into the spaces this opens up (while saluting those already there). So much of his writing says, in essence, “What happens if we don’t accept this?” – if we dissect it to see its origins and impacts, or if we reject it, if we lift it off like some burden we don’t have to carry, some outfit we don’t have to wear? What happens is we get free..t
swartz no going back law et al
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be you. 