to change everything

after having read many pieces by crimethinc via anarchist library.. and in particular.. while reading from democracy to freedom and posting notes on bsky.. @crimethinc.com likes a post and so i see their pinned post [https://bsky.app/profile/crimethinc.com/post/3lcmvzjzd522q]:

Welcome to everyone who is just now following us! We are a thirty-year-running all-volunteer anarchist collective involving participants on several continents. Everything we do is collectively produced, anonymous, and not for profit. Here’s a short introduction to our work: tochangeeverything.com

notes/quotes from link:

We could spend the rest of our days trying to douse these fires one by one, but they stem from the same source. No piecemeal solution will serve; we need to rethink everything according to a different logic..t

or rather.. let go of everything.. and trust us.. trust the unconditional part of left to own devices ness

re thinking ness keeps us bound up in the same song

start with self-determination

If you had complete self-determination, what would you be doing right now? Think of the vast potential of your life: the relationships you could have, the things you could experience, all the ways you could give meaning to your existence. When you were born, it seemed there was no limit to what you could become. You represented pure possibility.

*i think this might be one of the cancerous distractions.. thinking that if we were legit free.. we would still be seeking meaning ness..

The open secret is that we do all have complete self-determination: not because it’s given to us, but because not even the most totalitarian dictatorship could take it away. Yet as soon as we begin to act for ourselves, we come into conflict with the very institutions that are supposed to secure our freedom..t

because we are still clinging to us/them ness..

legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do

start by answering to ourselves

More harm has been done throughout history by obedience than by malice.

zinn obedience law et al

ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)

the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness

[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]

there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance

start by seeking power, not authority

There’s nothing oppressive about power per se. Many kinds of power can be liberating: the power to care for those you love, to defend yourself and resolve disputes, to perform acupuncture and steer a sailboat and swing on a trapeze. There are ways to develop your capabilities that increase others’ freedom as well. Every person who acts to achieve her full potential offers a gift to all.

Authority over others, on the other hand, usurps their power. And what you take from them, others will take from you. Authority is always derived from above

In this society, power and authority are so interlinked that we can barely distinguish them: we can only obtain power in return for obedience. And yet without freedom, power is worthless.

start with relationships built on trust

In contrast to authority, trust centers power in the hands of those who confer it, not those who receive it. A person who has earned trust doesn’t need authority..t

if you had to earn it.. not legit trust

the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness

[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]

start by reconciling the individual and the whole

“Your rights end where another’s rights begin.” According to that logic, the more people there are, the less freedom.

We are not discrete individuals. Our bodies are comprised of thousands of different species living in symbiosis: rather than closed fortresses, they are ongoing processes through which nutrients and microbes ceaselessly pass. We live in symbiosis with thousands more species, cornfields inhaling what we exhale. A swarming pack of wolves or an evening murmuring with frogs is as individual, as unitary, as any one of our bodies. We do not act in a vacuum, self-propelled by reason; the tides of the cosmos surge through us.

thurman interconnectedness law et al

Language serves to communicate only because we hold it in common. .t

do we? hold language in common?..

rather.. language as control/enclosure et al.. need a diff/deeper way to communicate (than whalespeak)

ie: need means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening as global detox so we can org around legit needs

But rather than breaking the world into tiny fiefdoms, let’s make the most of our interconnection.

for that need ai as augmenting interconnectedness

start with the liberation of desire

Growing up in this society, not even our passions are our own; they are cultivated by advertising and other forms of propaganda to keep us running on the treadmills of the marketplace.

wilde not-us law et al.. need global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake

start with revolt

..the problem is the systems themselves. No matter who holds the reins, they produce the same power imbalances and petty indignities. The problem is not that they are broken, but that they are functioning in the first place.

Our enemies are not human beings, but the institutions and routines that estrange us from each other and from ourselves. There are more conflicts within us than between us. The same fault lines that run through our civilization run through our friendships and our hearts; this is not a clash between people, but between different kinds of relations, different ways of living. When we refuse our roles in the prevailing order, we open up those fault lines, inviting others to take a stand as well.

*The best thing would be to do away with domination entirely—not to manage its details more fairly, not to shuffle the positions of who inflicts and who endures, not to stabilize the system by reforming it..t The point of **protest is not to call for more legitimate rules or rulers, but to demonstrate that we can act on our own strength, encouraging others to do the same and discouraging the authorities from interfering. This is not a question of war—a binary conflict between militarized enemies—but rather of contagious disobedience.

*for that has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do

**any form of re ness is a cancerous distraction.. need to try/see something legit diff.. global re\set.. hari rat park law.. et al

We don’t need unanimity, nor a comprehensive understanding of the whole world, nor a road map to a precise destination—just the courage to set out on a different path.

rather.. imagine a turtle.. so let’s do this first

findings from on the ground ness:

1\ undisturbed ecosystem (common\ing) can happen

2\ if we create a way to facil the seeming chaos of 8b legit free people

the problem is control

the problem is missing pieces.. control is a symptom (coming back to this after reading rest of pdf.. all the ‘the problem is’ statements are actually naming symptoms.. if we want to get to the root of problem.. we need a problem deep enough to resonate with all of us

The greater the imbalances that are imposed on us, the more control it takes to preserve them.

When the infinite possibilities of life have been reduced to an array of options coded in ones and zeros, there will be no more friction between the system we inhabit and the lives we can imagine—not because we will have achieved total freedom, but because we will have perfected its opposite. Freedom doesn’t mean choosing between options, but formulating the questions..t

how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..

ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)

the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness

[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]

there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. the unconditional part of left-to-own-devices ness.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it

ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition

the problem is hierarchy

Some of these mechanisms have been almost completely discredited. Few still believe in the divine right of kings, though for centuries no other basis for society was even thinkable. Others are still so deeply ingrained that we cannot imagine life without them.

All of these mechanisms developed together, reinforcing each other.

To put it another way: as long as there are police, who do you think they will harass? As long as there are prisons, who do you think will fill them? As long as there is poverty, who do you think will be poor? It is naïve to believe we could achieve equality in a society based on hierarchy. You can shuffle the cards, but it’s still the same deck.

same song since forever..

the problem is borders

siddiqi border law et al.. yet.. border ness still only a symptom.. ie: border ness because missing pieces ness.. khan filling the gaps law et al

The liberal ideal is to expand the lines of inclusion until all the world is integrated into one vast democratic project. But inequality is coded into the structure itself. At every level of this society, a thousand tiny borders divide us into powerful and powerless: security checkpoints, credit ratings, database passwords, price brackets. We need forms of belonging that are not predicated on exclusion, that do not centralize power and legitimacy, that do not quarantine empathy to gated communities.

h u g e

brown belonging law et al

the problem is representation

When every effort to exert leverage on the world must be channeled through the mediation of representatives or translated into the protocol of institutions, we become alienated from each other and our own potential.

the problem is leaders

Leadership is a social disorder in which the majority of participants in a group fail to take initiative or think critically about their actions. As long as we understand agency as a property of specific individuals rather than a relationship between people, we will always be dependent on leaders—and at their mercy. Truly exemplary leaders are as dangerous as the obviously corrupt, in that all their praiseworthy qualities only reinforce their status and others’ deference, not to mention the legitimacy of leadership itself.

When the police arrive at a protest, their first question is always “Who’s in charge?”—not because leadership is essential to collective action, but because it presents a vulnerability.. It’s better if everyone has her own agenda and a sense of her own agency.

the problem is government

Governments promise rights, but they can only take liberties. The idea of rights implies a central power to grant and guard them.

rights ness et al

Wherever there are hierarchies, it favors the ones on top to centralize power. Building more checks and balances into the system just means relying on the thing we need to be protected from for protection.

the problem is profit

Money is the ideal mechanism for implementing inequality.

When all value is concentrated into a single instrument, even the irrecoverable moments of our lives are drained of meaning, becoming tokens in an abstract calculus of power. Everything that cannot be financially quantified falls by the wayside. Life becomes a scramble for financial gain: each against all, sell or be sold.

To make a profit: that means to gain more control over the resources of society relative to everyone else.

the problem is property

The foundation of capitalism is property rights—another social construct we inherited from kings and aristocrats. Property shifts hands more rapidly today, but the concept is the same: the idea of ownership legitimizes the use of violence to enforce artificial imbalances in access to land and resources.

What would it take to protect the things that are important to us? Governments only exist by virtue of what they take from us; they will always take more than they give. Markets only reward us for fleecing our fellows, and others for fleecing us. The only real insurance is in our social ties: if we want to be sure of our security, we need mutual aid networks that can defend themselves.

if still need to defined.. then something already taken

The things that really matter in life—passion, camaraderie, generosity—are available in abundance. It takes legions of police and property surveyors to impose the scarcity that traps us in this rat race.

the last crime

Every order is founded on a crime against the preceding order—the crime that dissolved it. Afterwards, the new order comes to be perceived as legitimate, as people begin to take it for granted. The founding crime of the United States of America was the rebellion against the authority of the king of England. The founding crime of the society to come, if we manage to survive this one, will do away with the laws and institutions of today.

The category of crime holds everything that exceeds the limits of a society—its worst and its best. Every system is haunted by all that it cannot incorporate or control. Every order contains the seeds of its own destruction.

Nothing lasts forever; that goes for empires and civilizations too. But what could supersede this one? Can we imagine an order not premised on the division of life into legitimate and illegitimate, legality and criminality, rulers and ruled? What could be the last crime?

Anarchy is what happens wherever order is not imposed by force. It is freedom: the process of continually reinventing ourselves and our relationships.

again.. the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness

[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]

Anarchism is the idea that everyone is entitled to complete self-determination. No law, government, or decision-making process is more important than the needs and desires of actual human beings. People should be free to shape their relations to their mutual satisfaction, and to stand up for themselves as they see fit.

so need to try imagine if we.. to jump start the unconditional part of left to own devices ness

Anarchism is not a dogma or a blueprint. It is not a system that would supposedly work if only it were applied right, like democracy, nor a goal to be realized in some far-off future, like communism. It is a way of acting and relating that we can put into practice right now. In reference to any value system or course of action, we can begin by asking: How does it distribute power?

focus on power is cancerous distraction

Anarchists oppose all forms of hierarchy—every currency that concentrates power into the hands of a few, every mechanism that puts us at a distance from our potential. Against closed systems, we relish the unknown before us, the chaos within us by virtue of which we are able to be free.

When we see what all the different institutions and mechanisms of domination have in common, it becomes clear that our individual struggles are also part of something greater than us, *something that could connect us. When we come together on the basis of this connection, everything changes: not only our struggles, but also our sense of agency, our capacity for joy, the sense that our lives have meaning. **All it takes to find each other is to begin acting according to a different logic

*ie: itch-in-the-soul

**rather.. humanity needs a leap.. to get back/to simultaneous spontaneity .. simultaneous fittingness.. everyone in sync.. otherwise we keep perpetuating the whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world