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Fool wrote

I think that the tendency of Anti-Civ (at least for those writing about it) is primarily the domain for people that have understood the Creative Nothing / the Tao / etc.

As such, critique and understanding of self has broken down the walls of domestication within a person's mind; in order for one to let go of the "logic" of progress.

I'll just add, it just occurred to me, how much Bellamy Fitzpatrick - "What does the World Desire?" - had on my acceptance of Anti-Civ. Do I now believe in the consciousness of the Earth? I don't know, probably not... but it makes as much sense as bacterias in our gut controlling our personality - which is a real thing with research backing it up...

Now I'm just rambling. I forgot what I was saying.

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

I'm going to try my best with this but I've always struggled with spirituality. Someone asked me to write a spiritual piece for a collection they're putting together and it's been in the back of my mind, but I'm not sure if I have it in me. I seem to have such a materialist view of things.

Anyway this is what I have so far for you and kore's suggestion, so help me make it better if you can:


The supposed divinity of “progress” has consumed the left since the dawn of the industrial age.

Elisée Reclus summed it up well in 1905:

“Progress,” in the strictest sense of the word, is meaningless, for the world is infinite, and in its unlimited vastness, one is always as distant from the beginning as from the end. The movement of society ultimately reduces to the movements of the individuals who are its constitutive elements. In view of this fact, we must ask what progress in itself can be determined for each of these beings whose total life span from birth to death is only a few years. Is it no more than that of a spark of light glancing off a pebble and vanishing instantly into the cold air? [...]

The missionaries who encounter magnificent savages moving about freely in their nakedness believe that they will bring them “progress” by giving them dresses and shirts, shoes and hats, catechisms and Bibles, and by teaching them to chant psalms in English or Latin. And what triumphant songs in honor of progress have not been sung at the opening ceremonies of all the industrial plants with their adjoining taverns and hospitals! Certainly, industry brought real progress in its wake, but it is important to analyze scrupulously the details of this great evolution! The wretched populations of Lancashire and Silesia demonstrate that their histories were not a record of unadulterated progress. It is not enough to change one’s circumstances and enter a new class in order to acquire a greater share of happiness. There are now millions of industrial workers, seamstresses, and servants who tearfully remember the thatched cottages of their childhoods, the outdoor dances under the ancestral tree, and the evening visits around the hearth. And what kind of “progress” is it for the people of Cameroon and of Togo to have henceforth the honor of being protected by the German flag, or for the Algerian Arabs to drink aperitifs and express themselves elegantly in Parisian slang?

In the spirit of Tao, Green anarchy goes further than merely critiquing material structures of domestication and domination, it also critiques our conceptions of what the world is, how we place ourselves in it, the purpose of self, and indeed the very idea of a fixed reality.

The way we conceive of the world and of our existence on a metaphysical level is as important to the green anarchist tradition as our understanding of the manufactured systems erected to domesticate us. These systems restrain both body and mind, in order to maintain the constant forward march of civilization, keeping Leviathan fat and powerful and everything else in a state of perpetual spiritual starvation. Without a keen understanding of the self, the constraining "logic" of progress will forever linger in our minds, and blunt all the provocative, stimulating possibilities we could be exploring, hindering us from living a life of joy rather than the tragic loop of suffering and sacrifice we eternalize in service of Leviathan's monstrous appetite. Only by breaking down the imposing walls of domestication within our minds can we hope to truly progress beyond our compulsion to feed the gluttonous serpent.

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kore wrote

yeah pretty good also what fool said

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

Though these anti-green crusaders are almost exclusively white North American men with high paying jobs in academia or the tech sector, they work tirelessly to harness the identity of actually marginalized people to use as weapons in their tedious war against anyone who has strayed from the threadbare leftist program.

They present themselves as morally pure knights in shining armor, sent by Murray's ghost to cleanse anarchist spaces of the reactionary green menace – to preserve the forward-momentum of Western-civilization – to safeguard progress, democracy and the Western way of life.

Their sworn mission statement is to save poor, innocent marginalized people from the cold, cruel clutches of green anarchy. But their allegiance to this performative social justice dance crumbles to pieces when they react to the indigenous ways of life that are such an integral part of the green anarchist philosophy. They speak of indigenous lifeways with barely restrained disgust. To them, anything and anyone that isn't wholly dedicated to preserving the industrial monolith is dirty, backwards, savage.

Their tireless mission to punish and purge anyone who dares think beyond the realm of ponderous and feeble leftist solutions is the biggest hindrance to the development of the beautiful idea.

Pushing us into dark, damp rooms – the walls lined with moldy little red books. They lock the door shut and barricade it. The left works so hard to hold us down, to shackle us with their stale 19th century nostalgia because they know – they know this is the only place they have power over us. This dark room with the peeling red walls that only they have the key to.

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kore wrote

cool yeah i think this gets into the intellectualism of the left which was also something that thoreau, laozi etc questioned in a sense so that can tie together nicely

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Fool wrote

I've always struggled with spirituality

I think the bigger thing I was talking about was questioning the narratives assumed a solid facts by society.

I really get this though - that's sort of why I lead with the "Creative Nothing", because it's essentially the same thing, but not "Spiritual".

I've basically been learning about spiritual things to link them back to the mundane realities that were likely the original basis.

Most spiritual things seem to be rooted in breaking down your thoughts and questioning them in order to overcome ideology, trauma, etc.

The techniques they teach still work if you don't believe in the fancy back story.

I bet that's literally what they were, teaching aids that people started taking literally.

What this all has to do with Anti-Civ? Well mostly I guess in the consolidation of power through authority over idols and storytelling.

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