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celebratedrecluse wrote

I don't think I was talking to you about lifestyleism, I think I was talking about individualism and collectivism. The only reason I even used that slur for your perspective -at all- is in response to your use of it, but I kind of regret that because I feel I reified toxicity without realizing it at the time

Hopefully, other people will find something worth taking away from the discussion. I certainly feel I have a lot to think about, and with so much that needs to be done around me, it may be a minute before I return to this kind of discourse on the platform.

however, be well, & I shall be returning soon in better health for sharing some of my content which the community has seemed heretofore happy to welcome

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ziq OP wrote

Lifestylism is the word Bookchin coined to attack "individualists"; the words mean the same thing - anarchists who are concerned with living anarchy in the here and now instead of in a theoretical future society that requires global upheaval to produce.

I'm not hurt or anything if that's what you think. I was a little insulted, but that's to be expected when debating on anonymous forums. I'm sure I'm a lot more insulting to people without realizing it.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

To be fair, collectivist anarchists and their fellow travelers like me are also primarily concerned with the here-and-now, we just have a different interpretation of what we want and/or what scale of action we are focused on. But you are right, there are certainly collectivists (such as capitalists, statist socialists, nazis, even some anarchists, etc) who are mostly just concerned with a theoretical future, and they are indeed the primary problem which anarchists of any affiliation face. I would argue even some individualists & individualist anarchists are mostly just concerned with possible futures and distant pasts, even despite how the ideology might seem predisposed to deliver a greater concern with the present.

To be honest, I am really somewhere in between all of this. I don't really consider myself to have much allegiance to either collectivism or individualism, but rather just to what has seemed like effective praxis for liberation on the issues I am concerned with (race, class, gender, sexuality, ecology). There are elements from both of these incredibly traditions which must be drawn upon by any serious revolutionary, as well as elements which must be rejected for their irrevocable toxicity to one's own revolutionary aims.

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ziq OP wrote

And I hope I didn't make you feel unwelcome in any way, that wasn't my intention. You actually helped me get a lot of ideas out that I can use to put together an article later.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

I appreciate that. I hope your article comes out well, and I'm glad to have had a place in a dialectic with you

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