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subrosa wrote

allow me to riff on this

beyond our human understanding

Some external and beyond comprehension, approximately eternal, bigger-than-all-of-us nature that pumps out spontaneity, patterns, causes for larger conditions of whatever. Chaos as a post-left leftover god, barely capable of antagonizing the gods of natural order... I'm not sure what to do with it.

Hakim Bey was probably the first and last anarchist to do something interesting with "chaos", and even then it was really just the era of 80s hippies incorporating then-new and exciting pop-science and science fiction themes in their writings. Capturing a certain anxiety about the "end of history", about entering a new millennium without the old basis of left vs. right politics on the world scene. Also capturing a certain optimism about possible futures imagined then, of the sort that fed transhumanism into existence. Chaos-talk lent itself to conflicts between lifestylists and anarcho-leninists, and between other caricatures of anarchists.

When I read about "chaos" in anarchist forums, that's what I'm thinking of. A term charged with meaning in now fading contexts; no more immune to nostalgia, conservatism, impotence and relative fixity as "progress" and "change" turned out not to be a century earlier. When it comes to ontological speculation, I'll say Proudhon's "certainty and its criterion " dance was the more elegant one so far.

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ukuleleclass wrote

very interesting ! i’ve heard of Hakim Bey but haven’t read any of their stuff. it sounds like there’s maybe specific contexts for how chaos has been used that i’m not really aware of to be honest. i'm mostly coming from a performative new materialist, transcorporeal and maaaaybr Deleuzian sense but i’m rusty on all of my ontology readings.

is the certainty and it’s criterion an essay by proudhon or a part of a larger project ?

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