1. Among the Undead
Today, very few people truly live.
Very few few people experience the vitality of their becoming in the present moment.
Very few people reach out to grasp the energy of their desire in order to create that becoming...
Instead, they work.
2. Sleepwalking
I may dream of a world through which unique beings gracefully wend their way, every move, every passage through the streets, the gardens, the wilds,
a dance, a game , a voyage in an endless adventure.
But this daydream itself is belied by reality as my wandering mind is shocked back into my lurching body just in time to avoid crashing into some other distracted sleepwalker.
Such a graceless, joyless world, this world of work.
Not the world of a dance or an elegant game or a voyage into the unknown,
but of bouncing atoms and grinding gears and lock-step marches toward death.
Not lives created joyfully in complicity and conflict, with spontaneous intent,
but survival acted out habitually, in roles already set, where somnambulists thoughtlessly fall into place,
gears in a machine whose purpose eludes them.
But all that really matters is that it works...
that you work...
that I work...
3. My Revolution
And so my revolution--
any anarchist revolution--
any revolution that intends to take back life here and now--
requires the destruction of work...
IMMEDIATELY!
4. Revolutionary Work?!?
No revolution to date has managed to eradicate work,
because even the revolutionaries most hostile to work have failed to imagine a revolution free from its logic...
Working against work, their efforts are doomed.
So it is necessary to know what work is and how its logic operates.
5. The Work Ethic
"Those who do not work shall not eat."
This hellish christian motto sums up the work ethic perfectly.
Small-minded and small-hearted, pathetic and miserly,
it is the feeble morality of the shopkeeper frightened of the clever thief or daring robber.
It is the threat of the police--the slave driver's whip of our times...
And it is easy to reject this self-serving ethic of grasping, narrow-minded bigots.
Far more difficult is seeing through to work's logic,
beyond the bigots, to their masters...
6. Undercover Slavery
The logic of work remains hidden, veiled, operating undercover, because it functions through alienated activity.
When you and I act out of habit,
without thinking for ourselves,
repeating the same banal motions,
we are sleepwalkers,
somnambulists...
When you and I sell our activity for a cause we do not know,
we are slaves...
somnambulant slaves...
zombies...
This is alienation, where the aims, the goals, the products of our activities are strangers to us.
And this is why the logic of work remains well-hidden,
operating undercover
through the judgments of the work ethic.
7. A Limited Attack
And perhaps this is also why the enemies of work have mostly just attacked the work ethic.
In this limited attack, all that is opposed to work is leisure,
the time of idleness,
of inconsequential activity.
The battle is then merely quantitative--
a reduction of work-hours,
an increase in leisure time--
a withering away of work,
perhaps even to zerowork...
but still within the framework of the world of work and its logic.
8. The Logic of Work
The logic of work can be summed up in this way:
All activity of consequence must have a goal, an end.
And so every activity is to be judged and valued in terms of its end product.
This product takes precedence over the creative process,
causing the non-existent future to dominate the present.
Immediate satisfaction in the joy of creating has no value,
only success or failure count...
and counting is what value's all about.
Winners or losers, but not a free creator in the lot.
It should come as no surprise that in the world of this logic, efficiency is valued for itself.
Regardless of the end, what works most efficiently to bring it about successfully is what counts...
penny by penny...
dollar by dollar...
And this is why you have to work...
This is why I have to work...
Or be counted among the worthless...
the zeroes in society's accounting book.
9. The Theft of Life
Always aimed toward ends,
final goals,
products,
life in the present disappears.
The aimless, end-less becoming of each unique individual
is sacrificed to the goal of production and social reproduction.
The flux of interweaving relationships is dammed up
and channeled into roles which are nothing more than gears in the social machine.
This is alienation,
the theft of my activity,
the theft of your activity,
the theft of my life
and of your life.
Not even the products we make are ours.
Not even the successes are ours.
Only the failures,
above all, the failure to live...
10. Revolution in the Logic of Work
Within work's logic, revolution is a task with an aim...
a goal...
to produce the perfectly functioning society.
It has a beginning and an end.
It succeeds or fails, is won or lost.
But always...
it comes to an end.
Within this logic, there is only revolutionary work
or revolutionary idleness.
Anti-work revolutionaries can embrace the task of activists or militants,
defeating themselves from the beginning
by working for the end of work...
Or they can idly wait for an abstract History
or an equally abstract "objective" or "essential" revolutionary subject
to make the revolution in their place...
Once again defeating themselves...
choosing to let their lives slip through their hands
waiting for their savior to appear.
Failing to escape the logic of work,
every revolution to date has failed...
even the ones that were victorious...
especially the ones that were victorious.
They have failed from the beginning,
because within the logic of winners and losers,
of success and failure,
the revolution has already ceased,
because the past has fixed the future,
guaranteeing the defeat.
And so with their victory these revolutions ended
and the "liberated" people...
went back to work...
11. Breaking with the Logic of Work
So why not break completely with the logic of work?
Why not conceive of activity that is of consequence, not because of its end product,
but because of what it is here and now?
Why not embrace RESOLUTE PLAYFULNESS?
To conceive of revolution in this way is to conceive of it in a way that is fundamentally different,
absolutely other
than the ways that it has generally been conceived by revolutionaries...
Revolution not as a task,
but as a form of play,
as a game, but only in the broadest sense...
As an exploration,
an experiment...
with no beginning and no end...
Rather an endless opening out into new explorations, new experiments, new adventures.
A kind of alchemy or magic of continual transformation...
Putting our lives at stake in each moment for the sheer joy of living...
Here there can be no failure...
Here there can be no defeat...
because there is no aim, no goal, no end...
just the ongoing adventure of conflict and complicity,
destruction and creation,
that is life lived to the full.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
AGAINST THE LOGIC OF WORK: a revolutionary manifesto intended to be taken lightly
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
DESTROYING CIVILIZATION, DESTROYING NATURE
1
One of the most harmful prevailing prejudices of our times is the belief in Nature as a unified being separate from, and even opposed to Humanity (also perceived as a unified being). In the context of this doctrine, what is specifically Human – what is created by conscious human activity – is called Artificial as opposed to Natural.
2
The concept of Nature (that is the concept that all beings, things, relationships and activities not created by human beings constitute a unified whole that stands in contrast to all the things, beings, relationships and activities consciously created by human beings) is itself a product of conscious human activity and, thus, artificial.
3
Etymologically, “nature” simply refers to what is born into something, what is inherent to it; “artifice” refers to something that is made through consciously applied skill. Considered in this way, there is no necessary (“natural” if you will) opposition between “nature” and “artifice”, since what is consciously and skillfully created can only be made by natural beings (at least as of now) with an inborn capacity to learn to act consciously and with skill.
This does not mean that all or even most “artificial” creations are desirable. Just as there are certain “natural” realities that may cause us harm, so there are many “artificial” realities that are detrimental to us. Furthermore, while “natural” harms are usually temporary events that we can endure and get beyond, artificial creations that cause us harm are often meant to be permanent and even expansive. Thus, the only way to put an end to their harmfulness is to dismantle or destroy them. For example, institutions, large-scale structures and technological systems are all created through conscious human activity. They form a network that defines and limits the possibilities of our lives. They harm us socially and psychologically through these limitations that cripple imagination and creative capacity. They harm us physically by causing or enhancing disasters, illness, poverty, pollution, etc. Getting beyond them requires not endurance, but rather conscious human activity aimed at destruction…
In addition, there are aspects of the reality in which we live that are neither “natural” or “artificial”, neither inborn nor consciously created, I am speaking here of the vast array of historical, social and cultural contingencies that develop out of the continuous, fluid interweaving of human relations amongst themselves and with non-human beings and things. Though they develop from human activity, they are not conscious creations, but rather reflect the meeting of chance and necessity in living in the world. For this reason, they often reflect the absurdity of the attempt to institutionally rationalize the world. But they also often provide the opportunities for challenging this institutional rationalization. Thus, in order to attack the civilized ruling order, we need to see beyond the “natural”-“artificial” dichotomy and explore this realm of historical, social and cultural contingency in order to grasp what we can as weapons for our revolt.
4
The conception of Nature as a unified entity is the basis for two apparently contradictory, but in fact complementary, ideologies that serve the ruling order by enforcing control over our lives: the moral ideology that ascribes goodness to the Natural and evil to the Unnatural and the metaphysical ideology of inherent alienation that sees Nature as a force hostile to Humanity and its development, a force that must be conquered and brought under control.
The moral ideology is applied most widely to in the sexual realm, but has also been used against magical and alchemical experimentation as well as any activity that is looked upon as a challenge to god’s rule (hubris). In our times, it is used against a variety of sexual acts as well as against abortion. Sexual minorities interested in assimilating often try to prove the naturalness of their sexuality (for example, by claiming it is genetic) as opposed to the unnaturalness of certain other forms of sexuality (pedophilia, whose definition has been expanded in recently years to mean the sexual attraction of an adult for anyone under the legal age of consent1, and to a lesser extent bestiality are the prime contemporary examples of “unnatural” desire). But whether used against the hubris of alleged sorcerers, alchemists or courageous infidels, or against specific sexual or reproductive acts, this moral Nature serves as a tool for keeping passion and desire in check and thus for keeping us under control.
The ideology that views Nature as a hostile force which Humanity must conquer in order to meet its needs occurs to some extent within all civilizations, but only seems to have become the dominant conception within western civilization in the past five or six hundred years. Its rise to dominance, in fact corresponds with the rise of capitalism and the beginnings of industrialism. It was necessary to begin to channel human creative endeavors into activity that would maximally exploit all potential economic resources – natural and human – and this ideology provided a justification for just such an exploitative development. It makes use of disease, storms, floods, droughts, earthquakes and other so-called natural difficulties and catastrophes to back up this perspective and justify the most intrusive and controlling technological interventions. More than the moral ideology, this perspective is the modern justification for domination and control.
5
Civilization is a network of institutions that materially and practically alienate us from our own lives and creativity and, at the same time, from the myriad of relationships with the infinite variety of beings and things that make up the world in which we live. This alienation is what transforms the variety of beings and things into the unity of Nature. This unity mirrors the imposed unity of civilization.
6
Overcoming alienation could thus be seen as a process of decivilizing. But what does this mean? It does not mean rewilding, going back to the primitive, going back to Nature. All these ideas imply a return to a way of being that is in reality a conceptual model (the Wild, the Primitive, the Natural) and thus a civilized ideal. Decivilizing is not a return to anything. The flow of relationships between ever-changing individuals that is existence outside of the Civilization-Nature dichotomy is never repeatable. So decivilizing has to be understood and explored without models, without any concept of a return.
7
A process of decivilizing would instead be a process of destruction and dismantling. Of material and social institutions and structures, of course. But also of the ideological structures, the false conceptual unities (Stirner’s “spooks”) which channel thinking to such an extent that most of us don’t even notice these chains on our thoughts. The oneness of Nature, the oneness of Life, the oneness of the Earth are all civilized ideological constructions that guarantee that we continue to view our relationship with the rest of the world through the lens of alienation.
8
In this light, the desire to attack and destroy the institutions, structures and people that enforce the rule of the civilized regime becomes meaningful only when we are experimenting with ways of grasping our lives as our own and encountering other beings as individuals striving to create their lives – i.e., when we are practically attacking the ideological structure that channel our thoughts and desires. This does not mean rejecting all categorization, but rather recognizing its limits as a specific tool. Categorization can, for example, help us to distinguish poisonous from edible plants. But it cannot tell us the reality or even the most significant aspects of another being: their desires, their aspirations, their dreams…
9
By recognizing and encountering the uniqueness of each being in each moment, we find the basis for determining how to carry out our desires, for recognizing where complicity and mutuality are appropriate, where conflict is inevitable or desirable, where passionate encounter might flare up and where indifference makes sense. Thus, we are able to focus on what we need to realize desire, what place other beings and things and the relationships we build with them have in this creative process.
10
In terms of attacking civilization, this means rejecting any monolithic conception of it, without losing sight of its nature as an intertwining network of interdependent institutions and structures. These institutions and fundamental structures can only exist through the alienation of individuals from their lives. That alienation is their basis. This is why we can never make these institutions and basic structures our own, and there is no use in trying to grasp them as such. Rather they need to be destroyed, removed from our path.
But the development of civilization has created a great many byproducts of all sorts: materials, tools, buildings, gathering spaces, ideas, skills, etc. If we view civilization simplistically, as a solid monolith, then we can only bemoan our need to continue to use some of these byproducts as we dream of a distant future when we will live in a paradise where every trace of this monolith is gone.
If, on the other hand, we can distinguish what is essential to civilization from its byproducts and encounter the latter immediately in terms of our needs and desires (i.e., in a decivilized manner), new possibilities open for exploring how to live on our own terms.
11
This is how outlaws, the so-called “dangerous classes”, tend to encounter the world. Everything that isn’t nailed down is there for the taking to create life with. As anarchists who recognize civilization as the institutionalization of relationships of domination and exploitation, we would also encounter these byproducts in terms of how they can be used to attack, destroy and dismantle civilization.
12
But how does the idea of relating to each individual being in its uniqueness affect the human need to consciously and skillfully create? If we conceive of the ever-changing myriads of relationships around us as a monolithic Nature that is basically hostile toward us, the techniques methods and structures we develop will aim to conquer, control and dominate this hostile force (perhaps even to destroy it). If, instead, we see ourselves and all the beings around us as unique individuals in an ever-changing interaction with each other, we would still use skill and artifice, but not to conquer a monolith. Instead, we would use them to weave our way through a wonderful dance of relationships – destroying the calcifying institutions that block this dance – in a way that brings the greatest enjoyment to our lives.
13
A practice of this sort requires a vital and active imagination and a resolute playfulness.
By imagination, I mean the capacity to “see beyond” what is, to see possibilities that challenge and attack the current reality rather than extending it. I am not talking here of an adherence to a single utopian vision – which would tend to create authoritarian monstrosities in search of adherents to devour – but of a capacity for ongoing utopian exploration without a destination, without a goal.
Perhaps this is what distinguishes anarchists from other outlaws. Imagination has moved their conception of the enjoyment of life beyond mere consumption to playful creation. Certainly, the ways in which outlaws have often historically consumed – the squandering of all they gained through their wits and daring in excesses of debauched feasting and immediate enjoyment of luxuries – runs counter to the capitalist value of accumulation, but it still equates wealth with things, reflecting the alienation of current relationships. Active, practical imagination can show us the real wealth that can spring from free relationships as creative activity.
By resolute playfulness, I mean the refusal to compromise oneself by taking on an identity that pins one down, the refusal to take seriously precisely those things to which this society gives importance, the insistence upon experimenting with one’s life in each moment without worrying about a future that does not exist. The world is full of toys, games and challenges that can heighten the intensity of living. They are often hidden, buried beneath the institutional seriousness or the necessities of survival imposed by the ruling order. The insurgent and outlaw grasping of life involves breaking through these barriers.
14
So, a process of decivilization, of freeing ourselves from the constraints and obligations imposed by the network of institutions that we call civilization, is not a return to anything. It does not center around learning certain skills and techniques or applying certain utilitarian measures. It is rather a matter of refusing the domination of the utilitarian, the domination of survival over life, of insisting upon going out into the world to play on our own terms, taking hold of what gives us pleasure, and destroying what stands in our way.
1 It original meant the sexual attraction of an adult for prepubescent children.
Monday, September 14, 2009
MY DEAR AND DELIGHTFUL FRIEND
My mind has been racing with thoughts tonight, and I am hoping to catch a few within a net of words – first of all for myself, to wrestle further with the ideas – and secondly for you, because I think perhaps (despite the limits of words), you may appreciate them. Sadly, not knowing where you are, I am capturing what I can of these ideas on this contemptible machine (that I believe – I hope? – is dying….).
I was playing with an Italian translation of the words of a beautiful man (his photo – from the late 19th century – on the back of a book made me smile and dream of kissing his pointy beard and waxed moustache) and drinking nectar brewed from grains and hops… Then a dance began in my brain …
I realized that if we are pessimistic (and nearly all anarchists I know – except the few who are delusionally optimistic – are, even if they try to hide it behind some quasi-deterministic “vision” of the future), it is because we are still too much of this world, the social reality we claim to hate. This reality is one in which our dreams are always in the future, always yet to come, something for which we must strive. The very talk of ends and means – discussed in oh so many ways within our own milieus – is itself a reflection of this… It assumes a future toward which we strive. And inevitably, particularly in times like these, if one is not delusional (regardless of one’s political or anti-political views), it is nearly impossible not to be a pessimist. But what if anarchy, rather than being an end for which we strive, is a way we confront the world? What if insurrection and revolution are not means to achieve an end, but ways of living in the world? What if utopia is not a destiny, but an endless journey elsewhere for the immediate joy of it, an endless stretching beyond (more the “no place” of endless exploration and experimentation than the “good place” where you settle, plant roots and vegetate)? This is the difference between Nietzsche and Hegel (and thus also Marx). Hegel’s dialectic was a journey down a single path toward a specific end. Nietzsche’s “stretching beyond”(? – there is no accurate English translation) has no end; it is an intense urge to perpetually encompass all that is possible and more – now, immediately. In any case, there is no place for either hope or despair, optimism or pessimism in any of this, simply the joy of the immediate challenge and conflict.
Yes, the thoughts are dissipating, but that isn’t important. Do I have dreams of the world I would like to live in? Yes, but they are constantly changing – unique in their place and time, like the one who dreams them… And they are of less importance than my immediate confrontation with the world. They simply provide it with energy.
Pessimism (but also optimism in a different way) eats away at creative imagination. I refuse it.
ON POETIC LIVING
When I speak of poetry, I am not talking about versifying or wordsmithing. I am speaking about creating lives of passion, intensity and wonder. I call those people poets who go into the world with the creative intention of living life to the full. They may then choose to express the wonder, the intensity, the passion – the marvelous – that they discover in words, but the words are not their poetry – their lives are.
Those who try to pass themselves off as poets at most “poetry” readings have little to do with real poetry. The sonorous, pontificating voices with which they choose to read their banal verses prove that they have more in common with papish priests and sleazy televangelists, those buzzards voyeuristically feeding off the corpse of the marvelous banalized. A true poet in the midst of these slimy ghouls can only have the lycanthropic urge to rip out throats in order to stop the insipid babblings of these sentimental saps.
THE INSURGENT OUTLAW
Insurgent illegality is not to be mistaken for criminality. Yes, the insurgent outlaw does commit crimes and may do well to have some peripheral underworld connections...But the professional criminal is using crime to make a living, whereas the insurgent outlaw is consciously trying to undermine the mores, laws and manners of society. The intelligent criminal will have friends among the enforcers of the law, because this is good business; the insurgent outlaw will avoid such connections, because her desire is the creation of a life that recognizes no law...Any connection with the enforcers of law endangers such a life. There are outlaws whose rejection of law is based on a moral principle - usually an abstract conception of "anarchy" or "freedom" or "individuality." But these outlaws only wish to replace state law with moral law. The insurgent outlaw is amoral - he rejects law in all its forms, because it restricts her life and limits his possibilities. An insurgent outlaw may destroy a stolen item, sell it on the black market, keep it or share it among friends - as it pleases her. He may rob a bank and use the money for a project, squander it on friends, take a trip or burn it. But moral outlaws will feel obliged to use all stolen goods for their chosen cause.
*
Professional criminals are not outlaws. They dance with the law and twist it to their own ends. They break laws not out of defiance, but for economic reasons. Within their subculture, they have quasi-laws and methods of enforcing them. But their illegal jobs are better than most legal jobs because they involve elements of risk: the thrill of outwitting the heat. It may be wise for the professional criminal to stay in one place, to create established connections. But for the insurgent outlaw? No, never in one place for very long. The insurgent outlaw no more wants to be integrated into the criminal subculture than into mainstream culture or any alternative subculture...
*
VAGABOND INSURGENCE 4
VAGABOND INSURGENCE 3
Settled places and settled lives seem stranger and stranger to me. There’s something too ordered about most places and most lives. They make me a bit crazy - I want to fuck ‘em up. This is why I appreciate every individual who actually breaks out of this and why I get anxious when I’m feeling too settled. I start feeling like I don’t belong - then I remember that the concept of belonging is absurd. Instead, I need to make each place through which I pass my own as I go through it, until I am done with it.
VAGABOND INSURGENCE 2
VAGABOND INSURGENCE 1
Farmers possess land and work it. Possession and work are the farmer’s basic defining activities. Vagabonds traverse space and transform it through play - moving and playing are the vagabond’s basic activities. Farmers need habit, ritual, consistency, unity. Vagabonds break habit, transform, fluctuate, diversify. Farmers deify order. Vagabonds create chaos.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
DREAMING IN THE FACE OF DISASTER
-1-
A world of disaster… this is all that capital offers, all that it has ever really offered, but now it can’t even hide this behind the apparent abundance of goods. The world falls apart as it becomes one huge poisonous supermarket. Desperation abounds in its many guises. The loss of values, of principles, a desperation that is willing to take any action, and so mostly acts in ways that reinforce the current order of things. The apocalyptic visions of collapse, the dreams of the hopeless, replace revolutionary desire. If joy can’t ever be ours, if wonder and the festival of revolt are beyond our reach, at least we can imagine the collapse of our misery, the fall of the horror, even if it must take us down with it (all but the elect few who will somehow survive in its poisonous ruins). So the “dream” of some is nothing more than the belief that this sad, impoverished vision is the only possibility, because the other possibilities that they imagine, variations on the continuation of the present desolate survival, seem so much worse.
But isn’t the worst aspect of our current desolation precisely the impoverishment of imagination, the death of every utopian dream that is not a program, a scheme, i.e., a conception of how to continue the present existence? Certainly, at this point, our hatred of the present reality requires the strength of dreams, of desire, of the utopian journey that is the opposite of every utopian program, of the utopian experiment that rejects all schemes. Capital can only provide the final answer, the final solution. But final solutions only bring death. Life is continual questioning, experimentation, exploration. So as everything closes down around us, we cannot follow suit, letting our dreams drown in the misery of realism, pragmatism and utility. Now, more than ever, we need to grasp all the marvelous force of impossible dreams expressed in the fiercest of insurgent principles, in the refusal of compromise, with the fullness of our passion and our reason. Not out of a desire for purity (which is always an illusion), but from the realization that dreams of freedom can only be realized in freedom, that dreams of a life lived fully as our own can only be realized by living our struggle here and now as our own without any willing compromise with the institutions of domination. Disaster surrounds us, but our lives must not be defined by it. In its midst we must continue to dream and to grasp our dreams, transforming them into our reasons for revolt.
-2-
It is clear that we are living in a world moving further and further into horror and misery. Sometimes in the name of great ideals, more often nowadays quite blatantly in the name of naked power, the rulers of this world pursue policies that homogenize and impoverish existence, spreading disaster everywhere. But this is not really so new. Didn’t Columbus begin to spread this process (already well under way in Europe) when he brought a religion that gloried in death and an economy with an insatiable appetite, eating everything in its path to produce shit, to a world already thriving with human life, as well as that of plants and animals unknown in Europe? Thus, a process euphemistically called colonialism, more accurately described as genocide, began to spread throughout the world, slaughtering and enslaving people everywhere, kidnapping black Africans to enslave them in the Americas, all after having dispossessed the peasants of Europe, forcing them into destitution and survival by any means necessary. This process of dispossession has advanced to the point that now our language diminishes and it often seems that even our thoughts are not our own.
The masters of this world tell us that we cannot go back. And they are right as far as they go. We cannot go back. The world has changed too much and we have changed too much. But though we can’t go back, this does not mean we must go forward. If the path we are on can only lead to a drab and lifeless horror and if the passage back is blocked, then we must go elsewhere, the elsewhere of the unknown that is insurrection, the utopian dream. If Columbus helped to forge a path that meant misery for nearly all of humanity, then we must diverge absolutely from all known paths, to enter into the marvelous of wild, uncharted desires.
-3-
“I am in love with a dream, and the moisture between my thighs is utopia.” So spoke the dark eyes of a woman whose beauty was a mist that drew me into its marvelous obscurity. Her earlobes sang of insurrections exploding through her nipples caressed by silken fingers and the wings of butterflies.
The poetry of true utopia rests within the heart of desire. It is at war with the schemes that would define every moment of life. The bureaucrat’s vision of paradise where everything is perfect and nothing is human, where love is forgotten and dreams are ignored, this is the enemy of poetry.
-4-
Where are the fiery-eyed utopians, those whose passions have no patience, those whose hearts burn so hot that their eyes flash flames of madness, the madness of utopia and love that has not divorced itself from lust? It has been far too long since I danced naked on a wild, barren hilltop that rises from a singing forest with other wild dreamers, leaping to kiss the moon.
Here is the difference between utopias: Those of dreams glimmer in the moments that spark revolt, that move us toward insurrection. Those of schemes are never seen in the present except in the form of holocausts and genocides, the holy wars of true believers, because schemes must rid themselves of the unpredictable. Dreams, on the contrary, depend on the unpredictable, thus on the passion of love, the erotic spark of lust. It is not by chance that revolt is a lover seen backwards through a cup of (mushroom?) tea.
-5-
Dark shining eyes
like an octopus dreaming
caress the cavity of my mind,
plunging into caverns
where the flowers of desire
glow in iridescent midnight blue
like the thorax of a tree frog
whose marvelous tongue
engorges the flattening flies of
the midnight sun.
Once again the dances find
a universe within the spreading thorax
of a hummingbird
who sings of dreams
that scamper past the limited
utopias of those who accept
the measurement of rulers.
I have clothed myself
in vaginal splendor
in those times when insurrection
spread its aphrodisiac face
across the horizon
and the wombats found their pleasure
in a cup of minstrel wine
left by the eyeless girl
whose lovely dreams went far
beyond the world of drawers.
For hours we danced within
midnight flowers licking the petals
of our skin which was the paper
of a manifesto of lust
that spread its seed throughout
the continent of daydreams
and found the land of silver-backed
gorillas laughing at the amber fluid
of a lovely dreamer of symptomatic beams,
and the days flourished through the vibrancy
of beer and love.
One day we would find our dream
and it would not be an Eden
but a voyage to unknown places.
-6-
It is a delightful paradox that utopian dreamers are so often accused by utopian schemers of only being negative – always criticizing but never making positive proposals. Such accusations have been flung at anarchists, surrealists, libertarian communists and so many others. Yet when these vibrant dreamers choose to become schemers, their schemes always seem to fall short of the critique offered by their dreams. This is no accident. When one rejects all hierarchy, all domination, all representation, then one cannot present a completed vision of the world that one desires. Rather it would be a world that transform in every moment with the desires, needs and aspirations of those who live in this world freely interacting coming together in love or common interest, separating when conflict of desires moves them in different directions. It would be no paradise, but a constant, adventurous journey without end full of loves and hatreds, joys and sorrows, real conflicts as well as joyful intercourse of all sorts. And those who strive to impose their schemes of a perfect world, a paradise, who strive to force this journey to a predetermined end, are as much my enemies as the current institutions of domination that impose so many barriers to this journey. So, indeed, like all utopian dreamers, I am a great negator – I seek to destroy every barrier to the marvelous journey of a free existence.
DROWNING
Drowning...
A death in which one is completely overcome by a natural force too great for one to fight...
But what deaths do not involve such a force?
I think drowning has its special significance because the force surrounds the victim, encompasses her, ingests and plays with him. Particularly in the sea, it is as if infinity has swallowed the one who has drowned, has taken him in and turned her into a part of itself. While there are similarities to death by fire, which also consumes its victims, fire lacks the apparent infinity of the sea, and the victim has freedom of motion limited only by her own fear, at least until asphyxiation causes him to lose consciousness. But one who drowns finds himself to be the plaything of the sea, forced to partake in its fluidity of motion. Certainly the drowning one will struggle against the power of the sea. But to what avail? Her motions are conformed to the desires of the sea; his struggles merely lead to exhaustion and limpid acceptance. The motions, the currents, the fluid tidal dance possess one's body and take it where they will. I imagine one's mind is also slowly possessed by the aqueous dream and slowly drifts along toward inevitable oblivion. Who does not imagine the drowning victim dreamy-eyed and languid? Do not forget that we are mostly water. Doesn't it make sense then that such a death would seem, in our imaginations, to simply be a return to our source? Maybe this is why we attribute calm and peace to the last moments of one who drowns. I have heard people speak of this as if it were a known established truth, even a scientific fact. But of course, no one knows. The drowned do not return to tell the tale of their last moments. So such a "truth" must be understood poetically, as a reflection of our view of the sea and of our own unperceived fluidity.
We are strange creatures. We desire...we need...to separate ourselves from the infinity, to find our own uniqueness and color all the infinite worlds with it, in this way making them our own. But such a task is daunting. And more so as social constructs developed by those in power in their attempts to dominate this process channel our endeavors into mere reproduction of this social system which drains the infinity of color and of its infinitude, leaving us with lifeless matter and lifeless lives.
Then the appeal of losing ourselves once more in the infinite, of drowning ourselves, comes to the fore – the appeal of religion. Surely by this time, the absurdity of religion has been exposed a million times over, both practically and through intellectual argument. Yet in these desolate and dreamless times, its appeal is on the rise. The anguish of living as a unique individual without the possibility of creating the universe in one's own image, of coloring the infinite marvelous from which one has extracted oneself, with a beauty that enhances the world and one's own life, makes oblivion attractive. And the oblivion offered by religion, drowning in the waters of baptism, is far less frightening to most people than the absolute and final oblivion of suicide. But those who choose the oblivion of religion are not merely cowards, but traitors to themselves and to all who strive for self-realization, because religion-however soft and malleable its form (even in the guise of spirituality, that insidious thief which steals the marvelous from the physical world and encrusts it with belief, destroying its fluid and convulsive beauty)-is part of the social system that stole our creativity from us to construct the monstrous, gray nightmare that surrounds, this mad civilization that replaces creativity with production, free activity with work, vibrant living interactions with technological and bureaucratic mediation. This explains how religion is an opiate: it makes us oblivious to the anguish of our suppressed uniqueness and creativity, allowing us to forget the damage without curing it. It numbs us to the point where we accept the damage and its cause, civilization in its totality. One can see how certain forms of atheism-its stalinist and maoist forms as well as the 19th century rationalist forms touted by the American Atheist followers of Madelyn Murray O'Hare-can be religions. Atheism only avoids religiosity by having an existential as opposed to a dogmatic basis-that is as a willful decision to refuse god rather than a belief in no god. And the willful refusal of god has its basis precisely in the decision to extract ourselves from the infinite-that is the mass-and to live to the full the singularity of our being, drawing the universe into ourselves as our own and, thus, creating the marvelous in all its poetic beauty...the decision to pull ourselves from the sea so that we may come to know and love it with the fullness of our own unique being as only those who refuse to drown can.
FUTURIST AtTACK MANIFESTO 6
Fluctuating, vagabond lives are what we will create. If society makes us rigid, we will relax.... If society makes us armored, we will strip down to the berserker's bearskin shirt.... If we have become structured, we will make ruins of these structures and play among the ruins as a jungle growing through in lush beauty. There is much to be destroyed so that much can be created. There is much to be silent about so that much can be sung. For the range of colors that can paint the music of what our lives could be has not begun to be heard—or is heard only in the distance—a faint and beautiful cacophony that skims the edges of our present existence. Misheard by many as a call to other worlds, mis-seen as visions of heaven... The colonization of imagination that turns it into fantasy, destroying creative intelligence... But a few of us hear these colors more clearly...as part of ourselves—a part not yet existent (except in moments) because it is the selves we could create if freed from the constraints of the social context. Selves created consciously out of nothing, not constructed by social relationships in which our interactions are determined within limits that we could live far beyond. No language now exists to describe this way of being, this intensity and passion that is intentional and conscious, because such a language would have to be perpetually created and destroyed and re-created as each moment is created. All language as we know it is a social construction created to define the parameters of thought and perception—and so of creation—to limit possibilities to those that will reproduce society, extending the past forever.... Everywhere one sees this—in the papers, in pop songs, in books, on TV—language that manipulates our thoughts into a simplistic, limited range of choices. It is our strategy to use language against this, to subvert it, to undermine it. Always a difficult, uncertain, and experimental project, but also a game, a form of play in which mistakes are part of the adventure. To use language this way is to seek to make a ruin, a shamble, of language.
We are bound to be misunderstood, and we laugh at the idiots who misunderstand us! Kindly mockery toward the well-intentioned and unfettered cruelty toward all dogmatists and would-be prison guards of possibilities. In this way we learn to revel as much in misunderstanding as in understanding and take pleasure in worthy opponents. Making language fluid, flowing like a river, yet precise and pointed as a dirk, contradicts the social purpose of language and makes for a wonderful dance—a martial art with constant parries that hone the weapon of subversive language.... All of this said, we recognize that there is no radical language, only the intentional radical (ab)use of language aimed at undermining it and destroying it in order to create free and unconstrained expression. But unless one believes in the superstition of the apocalypse, in a sudden and miraculous transformation just around the corner, this process involves the dialectic use/abuse of language and other social modes of communication in antisocial ways. We are talking about the social modes of daily life interaction—the entire network of social codes and roles and relationships that have come to define daily life, everywhere, in societies—that are what compose a society. These are what Futurist AtTACK, as insurgent individuals, tries to subvert, to undermine, through intelligent, passionate play.
FUTURIST AtTACK MANIFESTO 5
Do I find the marketplace of culture around me very interesting?
How could I, who hate all culture?
Like a volcano, my mind is seething.
I want to blow, to smash, to inundate this city with a burning flood, to create ruins that aren't a sign of past glories, but a finger pointing to the wondrous possibilities of a world in which culture has disappeared so that people can blossom as self-created individuals.
NED LUDD WAS RIGHT!
Smash it without mercy!
Don’t tell me technology is neutral. Every day I wander this city, and every day machines flash lights trying to tell me what to do. Huge tarmac pathways cross my way, upon which gigantic, speeding metal machines move, machines capable of killing me if I cross their path and already slowly suffocating me with their toxic fumes which fill the air.
WHY SHOULD I TOLERATE THIS INSANITY?
NED LUDD WAS RIGHT!
The machine is the enemy.
SMASH IT WITHOUT MERCY!
Around me stand tall buildings, -- ugly monstrosities of steel and glass and concrete, overpowering in their hugeness and sterility. I dream of them as ruins being eaten by a forest. But for now, these structures—the products of machines—house other machines. Machines on which the lies by which society defines my life—and the lifes of everyone—are recorded, and which, with electronic blips and flashes, can transmute the lies and so control our lives.
I WANT TO SMASH THE LIES!
NED LUDD WAS RIGHT!
The machine is the enemy.
SMASH IT WITHOUT MERCY!!
And all of this did not appear from nowhere. The roads, the cars, the traffic lights, the skyscrapers, the computers could not exist if, every day, the lives of millions were not eaten by the factories. Machines control their daily activity, determining their movements, eating up their time, to produce more machines. Their only respite comes when the machines which control them break down—or when they break them down. Then for a moment, they are not machines. Don’t tell me technology is neutral—I’m not blind enough to buy that one!
NED LUDD WAS RIGHT!
The machine is the enemy.
SMASH IT WITHOUT MERCY!!
Can’t you see? Each little machine—each car, each computer, each factory, each worker—is not a separate entity, a mere individual tool. NO! They are all cogs in one vast machine, the machine of social reproduction—and if we let them be, we too are cogs, the gears that manufacture society. Will you be a mere cog, a gear, a tool of social order?
TO HELL WITH THE SOCIAL ORDER AND ITS PHYSICAL BODY: TECHNOLOGY!
NED LUDD WAS RIGHT!
THE MACHINE IS THE ENEMY!
SMASH IT TO POWDER WITHOUT A GRAIN OF MERCY!!
Saturday, September 12, 2009
FUTURIST AtTACK MANIFESTO 4
Ruins are the thing—intriguing and amazing playgrounds. Their beauty is not in what they were, but in what they are and could become. Too many ruins now are protected by the preservers of crystallized cultures. Free play is not permitted, because all are supposed to honor dead cultures—but why honor the dead? Everything dies eventually—there's no honor in that. Before the ruins were ruins, they were monuments to oppression, obsession, superstition...to idiocy best forgotten... But as ruins, they are beautiful—for ruins are not symbols of past glories but signs of possibilities for life outside the morass of civilization. To play among the ruins—going wild in the midst of what once strove to suppress all wildness—a great thing indeed. But better yet—to create ruins! As long as civilization exists—as long as society creates the ways most people live—the most creative act is the creation of ruins. Crashes and explosions in the night—more beautiful than any symphony! Piles of crumbling stone and masonry—more pleasing to the eye than any sculpture, to those not blinded by the past! Ashes blowing in the winds—far more poetic than a million books of verse! Create amazing playgrounds, terrains for ruleless games and unchoreographed, crazed dances...Destroy!
WAKE UP!
It is not infrequent in certain anarchist circles to hear the call to act on one’s instincts. But since so few people actually think about what they do, couldn’t it be argued that most people are acting on their instincts? Maybe – assuming that we have instincts at all – our greatest instinct is to do what comes easiest, what involves the least challenge, thus, in the present society, to conform. However, what the advocates of instinct are actually calling for is for individuals to discover their desires and act on them. But this is also too passive. Every society creates within individuals the desires – and the mode of desiring – appropriate to that society. If one merely discovers one’s desires, they may well just be those created within the person by social training, not their own desires. Thus, the anarchist who speaks of his freedom to fulfill his desire for Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream as if such a desire is anything other than conformity to commodity consumption. We who desire the destruction of this society and the creation of new ways of interacting have to take conscious, willful action, not passively follow anything. We must become the creators of our desires – willfully creating them outside the mold of commodity consumption. In this light as well, the limits of automatism as an insurgent way of life becomes evident. One need only observe the automatons on the expressways, in the offices and factories, and at the malls with their glazed expressions to see that automatism is not sufficient as long as this society exists. It too readily creates the banality of habit, the repetition of patterns. This is not to reject the potential of objective chance (nor the use of automatism as one tool among many), but to recognize the necessity of seizing it with one’s full consciousness which is able to grasp with spontaneous intelligence the moment and the method for acting in the moment. We have been sleep-walkers for far too long… Let’s wake up to the joy of adventurous, insurgent living.
DO NOT TOLERATE ME!
I
I WILL NOT BE TOLERATED!
I demand the burning fires of passion, the untamed conflagration of desire without constraint, of lust without limits. Love me with an energy that cannot be denied - or hate me with a fury so intense your glance could wither me were not my passions equal to your own - but DO NOT TOLERATE ME!
Toleration is a sickness of bourgeois society that smothers us in boredom - a cop inside our heads that keeps us passive in the name of social harmony. SHIT ON SOCIAL HARMONY! Let the hot, ecstatic energy of IMPASSIONED VIOLENCE burn through us! LET ALL THE GRAND, VOLCANIC ENERGY OF OUR REPRESSED PASSIONS ERUPT, A VIOLENT EXPLOSION OF HATRED AND LOVE, FURY AND ECSTASY, DESTROYING MEDIOCRITY - destroying all that bores us - BEFORE WE’RE BORED TO DEATH!!!
Those who choose to tolerate - to merely exist - will be BURIED IN THE FECAL MEDIOCRITY THAT TOLERATION CREATES - Let them drown in the boring shit they have chosen...But none of that for us who truly choose to live. Coursing through our veins are dreams and visions, passions and desires, the chaos that can birth a dancing star - don’t dam this wild and fiery flood with that disgusting cancer - toleration. Demand of every encounter amazement, wonder, ecstatic passion. AMAZE AND BE AMAZED!
I WILL NOT LET MY LIFE SLIP FROM MY GRASP IN PASSIVE BOREDOM! I WILL BURN - A CONFLAGRATION OF UNTAMED DESIRE! A SOARING PHOENIX IN FLAMES WHICH CANNOT BE IGNORED!!! I will live my life in a burning heat of untamed lust and passion! With a violent ecstasy, I will demand (of myself) - I will CREATE a world of wonder and amazement.
No more will free spirits put up with being bored and passive.
ENOUGH! IN FACT, TOO MUCH!!!
WE WILL BURN and in our burning, burn society to the ground.
TAKE THE TORCH TO TOLERATION!
TAKE THE TORCH TO BOREDOM!
TAKE THE TORCH TO SOCIETY!
BURN IT ALL IN THE UNQUENCHABLE FIRE OF OUR DESIRES UNBOUND!
II
We will not be appeased - All the rowdy, crazed, laughing, dancing, raging, free spirited rebels WILL NOT BE APPEASED, for we will have nothing less than our LIVES TO THE FULL, each moment burning with our uncouth passions! We will not tolerate what does not make us DANCE WITH JOY, ROAR WITH RAGE, WEEP WITH SORROW, HOWL IN ECSTASY OR QUAKE IN TERROR!!!
And we will not wait around for our lives to begin. WE ARE CREATORS!!! We will make the world the way we want without waiting for the old world to fall! On the edge of society, joyfully outcast, we dance. We are hidden from the powerful, yet they know we exist - AND THEY TREMBLE!
For from our hidden realms, we flash forth like LIGHTNING, leaving our mark, our crazed message that a life of INTENSE PLEASURE and WILD ADVENTURE is possible EVEN NOW for those who dare to create it!
We are OUTLAWS and RENEGADES - and this is our strength! Already, we are freeing ourselves of the chains with which society shackled us. Already, we are learning to live our lives FOR OURSELVES!!! We need no ideologies or dogmas, no masks or disguises. We face society with ourselves - BOLDLY - as its enemies. Our passions, our desires are the energy with which we live our lives - HOW CAN WE LOSE!?!
For, indeed, it is our lightning-bolts of SPONTANEOUS, CHAOTIC, EROTIC ENERGY, these flashes of FREE LIFE, that could spark a fire of REBELLIOUS PASSION that will raze society to the ground!!!
III
Free spirited rebels cannot tolerate economy. Wherever it exists, constraint exists. Its demands that we pay, that we sacrifice, that we work, that we accept less than the fullness of life which we desire nauseate us! But we will not let ourselves be passively sickened by this vampire, sucked dry of real life. NO! For while we live within its midst, we will be ROBIN HOODS - stealing what we can for our own pleasure and to share as we desire, breaking down property and exchange in festive games of theft and free sharing. We will NOT tolerate the half life which economy offers nor allow ourselves to be made into pawns in its game.
For economy sucks the wonder out of life and steals its beauty. All that would be vibrant, dancing, burning with WILD PASSION, it has strangled with a price tag. Where there could be a world of wondrous lovers, mad adventurers and amazing monsters who NEVER COUNT THE COST, instead we find commodities for sale. But we will not offer ourselves to the sacrificial altar of the market. Nor will we passively watch as the world is transformed into a market place. With all the FIERY PASSION of those who dare to CREATE THEIR OWN LIVES, we will BURN all that has made WILD AND AMAZING MONSTERS into mere commodities for sale TO THE GROUND! And we will FREELY SHARE and FREELY GIVE and FREELY TAKE as we are moved by our UNBOUND DESIRES!!!
FUTURIST AtTACK MANIFESTO 3
My place in this world is: Enemy, Outsider, Vagabond... Even in the worlds of "alternative" culture, this is my place. To all of those who want a world—unified and coded—I am a destroyer, for I refuse all codes. With joy, I offend and attack, for attack I must! I expose delusions, mock mercilessly, and gladly make enemies of fools. If I am alone, it is because I am on a peak which others fear to climb, preferring the morass of superstitious worship of the past to the clear, fresh air of self-created living.
Friday, September 11, 2009
AMAZING MONSTERS III
Society would lock me in its cages, chained and kept down, but I will not belittle my self to fit its molds. I explode forth, a fiery meteor, into infinity. I MAKE LOVE TO CHAOS! Within the hidden realms, beyond the knowledge of order - there we meet - the wild ones, the free spirits. We dance, we sing, we feast, we make love freely. We break down the walls of civilization so that free life can spread. Where we live cannot be named, for all names are lies. It has no boundaries - it exists wherever we are. Authority has no control within our realm for we are beyond all rule. We are chaotic outlaws, creating free life in the cracks of society through the untamed play of pleasure.
FUTURIST AtTACK MANIFESTO 2
Futurist AtTACK has no interest whatsoever in preserving cultural heritages. Preserving heritages only serves the ruling powers since all heritages belong to them. A jungle, wild and unkempt, with the crumbling rot of a gladly forgotten monster—a dead civilization—makes a much grander playground than a neatly trimmed lawn with properly framed and reconstructed monuments to the enslavement and human sacrifice which are a civilization—any civilization... Away with all museums and the high blown rhetoric in praise of dead monstrosities—this superstitious veneration of the past! No more heritages! Destroy the past completely – including its abortive children: the inauthentic present and the rust-encrusted future that dominate our lives! We are too great for anything less than what we ourselves create...for ourselves...from nothing... Now, we will create ruins.... And after—something new and unimagined.
