What is Green Anarchy? part 1 of 2, on Immediatism podcastComments
zoom_zip wrote
how prevalent is the “anti-science” viewpoint expressed here? does that bleed into other anarchist schools of thought?
subrosa wrote
Vaguely related, this I found interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_and_Repetition#Introduction:_Repetition_and_Difference
Generality refers to events that are connected through cycles, equalities, and laws. Most phenomena that can be directly described by science are generalities.
Science deals mostly with generalities because it seeks to predict reality using reduction and equivalence.
Politically-minded folk and "scientific socialists" tend to get a little stuck in that mindset, it seems. Resulting in a 'conservative' result-driven approach: If anarchists don't have a whole bunch of models that can be tested, that can predict reality, it's not scientific enough.
How does anarchy work? You know, in general, but also in detail, with certainty, proven, peer-reviewed. Quantify me the quality of anarchy! Show me its numbers!
I think as anarchist outlaws we'll have to learn to live with a bit more uncertainty of outcome.
For humans, repetition is inherently transgressive.
I have only just started reading Deleuze, so maybe I'm embaressingly and completely missing the point here. Please let me know if I do! But there is something to the idea that the methods of science aren't neutral, even on a more individual level.
_caspar_ wrote
"I think as anarchist outlaws we'll have to learn to live with a bit more uncertainty of outcome."
I agree, which is why recently Ive looked to ideas such as forgetting (or unlearning mastery), contingency, entanglement, diffusion, and getting lost as helpful tools. even scientists at an incredibly specialized level have come to understand that the cosmos as indeterminate and relational: full of uncertain outcomes.
subrosa wrote (edited )
I think what makes 'being comfortable with uncertainty' important for us is, first and foremost, the potential complexity of free individuals and their social relations. In absence of legal guidelines, narrowing social roles, and authorized decision-makers, we'll likely learn to encounter and live with a great variety of 'uniques', all of them free to live outside the dividing lines of simplistic yet rigid binaries.
Rigid binaries like work and leisure, consumption and production, feminine and masculine, teacher and student, my own and your own, being early and being late, etc. -- There's lots of good stuff to be found in combinations, off-the-spectrums, alternations and in-betweens. There's rarely a real need to be certain about any of them, not in advance, not for others.
Does that relate to what you wrote? or are you talking about a very different approach?
edit: not sure why I take replies as prompts to sketch things out, always wrestling with concepts and language :P
_caspar_ wrote
"not sure why I take replies as prompts to sketch things out, always wrestling with concepts and language :P"
I do the same thing. I think it helps me alot doing so.
and yes, its close to that, and I like the way you put it. Ive been writing more expansively on these and related ideas recently here to help me keep wrestling. it might be of interest to you, and any feedback is much appreciated.
ziq wrote
In a lot of ways, scientists have taken the place of missionaries and other clergy, spreading Western civilization far and wide, while leading inquisitions against heresy (e.g. anti-capitalism) inside the empire.
CoryImmediatism OP wrote (edited )
Anarchism rejects ideologies(1), so to the extent that science is an ideology, anarchism rejects it. I reread the passage and three bits stand out to me as the main points of the "anti-science" analysis: "Science is not neutral." "[R]eality itself is not reproducible or predictable or the same for all observers." "[T]his urge [for control] has driven every decision about what counts as 'progress.'" In reality, the anarchists I know use Western medicine (with or without moderation), get vaccines, and take science classes in college, etc. But we also carry with us every day an analysis of the critiques of science and use those analyses to make decisions and to not get swept away by science as an ideology. I think my answer here is true to the experience and attitudes of people in my circle, at least, and hope it is helpful to you.
(1) Further reading on this can be had in Break-Out From the Crystal Palace: The Anarcho-Psychological Critique: Stirner, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and I recorded the whole ideology chapter recently on Immediatism.com.
ziq wrote
It's not so much anti-science as it is anti alienation. Science alienates people from their world, allows them to observe life rather than live it. This allows scientists to detach themselves from the processes of domination that they're so integral to.
Science in our world is a fiefdom used to both uphold and justify authority and greatly restrict what is considered acceptable knowledge and who can participate in its study and dissemination.
does that bleed into other anarchist schools of thought?
It should if they truly reject authority. Academia is the backbone of all civilization: especially fascism and other forms of corporatism e.g. neoliberalism.
But no, it doesn't because other schools of thought don't see any problem with civilization and usually just seek to limit authority rather than reject it outright.
ziq wrote
Perfect, gonna spread this around in spaces that seem to think green anarchy is communalism.