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ruin wrote

This was a great intro I might share with people. Nihilism and pessimism are so liberating, but also just plan fun.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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ruin wrote

Yes.

It’s all irreparably fucked so let’s all make the most of it!*

*It’s a matter of scale and context, of course;) I willfully avoid strict adherence to any/all -isms.

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cyberrose wrote (edited )

I think I, as anti authoritarian communist, am starting to learn what this individualism is about. Also I think my viewpoints are not completely different than whats described in the text. I have the liberating nihilism in common. I share the knowledge that a utopia in the future can not (really) be imagined. I also share the point to start from the now and here. The only thing I could not come over (and currently still don't want to) is the aim to create something new from the ashes of the old. I can not relate to the joy of pure destruction, I don't have to have a concrete future in mind to work for a future I can relate to.

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ruin wrote (edited )

I wouldn’t waste any more time thinking about it. You don’t need to take joy in pure destruction, or anything for that matter, to act as an individualist.

The whole point is that you choose your actions based on your wants and desires and in relation to your situation.

This text definitely leans towards a certain romantic anarchist-as-action-figure flavor of anarcho-nihilist rhetoric. I’m not pointing that out as a negative, I enjoy it for what it is, but you don’t have to blow shit up, engage in street actions, or rob banks for subsistence to be a nihilist.

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[deleted] wrote

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ruin wrote

Hahaha!

Its all about balance. I mean I feed clothe and care for my kids immediate needs, but I also make sure to tell them they’d be better off just not waking up when I tuck them in at night.

So conflicting...

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celebratedrecluse wrote

My sobriety is a feral sworn enemy of industrial civilization.

Occasionally, this kind of discourse veers into the nakedly conservative.

It's one thing to abstain from drugs, sex, or other hobbies, but to use abstention as a moralized, politicized self-definition can lead one right into the maw of reaction. I don't want to declare this inherently problematic, and finding a group identity in fellow abstainers is good and well...but this type of identity formation is inherently loaded with power dynamics, between multiple marginalizations and socialities, and I think it's safe to say that the puritanical morality that surrounds the communities and conversations at least sometimes seeps in. It's ok to use medicines and other substances consensually as an adult, and I watch discourse that seems to question or demean people who use medicines or other substances with attention and minor concern.

The authoritarian “revolutionaries” who carry communist bibles filled with “better futures” are a predatory bunch, discouraging individualist selfdetermination and targeting those most vulnerable to groupthink buzzwords like “hope” and “community”.

One is led to a believe in and choose a side within a binaryist worldview: find a future of happiness through the riches of capitalism or find a future of happiness in the communalism of communism.

what i'll say is this isn't how I understand being communist. Communism is one thing, but being a communist means participating in communization. Communizing economic structures, even the basic forms of contesting capital, are supposed to give people more time, more resources, and more options, within the system, compared to what the same people had before. The goal is to give enough people enough breathing room, that more begins to feel possible, and thus more things enter a process of becoming. It starts and contributes to a chain reaction of social relationships which foster and nurture new senses of possibility. Some of it can, should, and is done by one's self, sure. But the bulk of it imo is done with other people in some capacity, or has to do with your relationships with other people.

I think re-wilding, anti-work, affinity organizing, and being communist, all kind of flow naturally from each other.

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cyberrose wrote

what i'll say is this isn't how I understand being communist. Communism is one thing, but being a communist means participating in communization.

Yes but thats also a very specific and in general not the most popular view on communism. And self defining communist groups (at least here) are not really working on changing this since the 80s or so. I just think the writing person did not have this in mind?

I like your points.

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