a discussion forum for the spanarchist evolution!

Found this interesting visionary approach while internet surfing! (slightly edited for clarity) (Yes, I admit, it’s an old posting by myself!)

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“How we see what we see affects the quality of our reality.”–John Trudell, Lakota wisdom keeper

Tucson, AZ–Just yesterday, i went riding about 15 miles with a neon sign on my back that read: “Realize the value of being radically empathetic with each other.” I had a few powerful interactions, but way too few…

All during the ride i caught myself being queasy about how vital the sign wasn’t; as cars passed by so fast, not even slowing…i got down on myself…and by the time i got back, was not exactly “empathetic” as i had “preached”!

But then art came to me, and writings, and here is what i came up with (which you may pass around freely).

The following sharing is intentioned as something i invite all to think about. We are all descendants of tribes, yet even when we see this, we still too often miss [the gifts?--ed]!

We miss our powers of relating, of radically interpreting towards the meaning we intuitively feel in this world, yet have no or very little frame of reference for. Thus we assume such alternatives are “crazy” and pass them by, so habituated to our pain.

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Chieftan spirit’d winkte MeL
was/is pretty good about rousting
folks up into action, even if he doesn’t full know it.

Without using more weapon words (thankfully)
He got me going, in 5 minutes flat, after i was getting hung up on:

–old flows of same old again
–not getting my windo fixed (to more safely live)
–inputting intensity into my claimed excellence of visions
–aiding me to see where another elder counseled–away from ego-centricized reaction-ism (even tho i thought he was way too reducing)

Yeah, i shoulda been more in touch
with Chieftan spirit’d MeL!
Uh, but a’course all his pain pain pain & me
wantin to avoid avoid avoid
while still clutching my visions somehow!

Chieftan spirit’d MeL, merely lightly blasting!
i truly NEED’d his SPIRIT SPELL,
hiz wizardly boltedly light
even as he flails without adequate sight

A good proverbial kick in the butt cheeks
to at least sober me right the f— up!
after all i’ve been bringing onto myself
in this spirit-uaL pathing.
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Better this learning HAPPENED:
It’s certainly a good truth, MeL raised,
about me ‘just believing’ anything we’re told;
i shoulda agreed
except that i felt that same old vibe
where he grapples on & won’t let go
(like all his cats, i suppose).

And i knew i was to be trapped,
“no way” to avoid (except put on a fort face like all around him)

i thought i might “steer clear” by ending the topic, but
i was so tired/exhausted
after yesterday & all nite online.

So i got out in the “5 minutes” he alloted & here i be,,,
thinque-ing thru about how i wanna be

When i step back, away from that…
i recall how i praised, in “radical’s radical” euro-ancestral style,
hiz chieftan way.
And how he surely tests me!
but in reality i am still beating myself up inside my head
as he, i figure…

[...]

Even tho i know full well not to fear, i fear;
it’s the domestication
i cannot help but be when
i have so little “truly meaningful”
village-ing (ah, look how i devalue so quick!!)

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Some commentary that I think goes with this:

So basically, the author found a way to poetically see, rather than uncritically accept the Given wisdom about an elder who apparently had an authoritarian aire about himself. I.e. Conventional wisdom says that such a man would be something like a “crazy maker”, or else, someone to be avoided, to avoid actually listening to.

The author listened, but he listened behind the man’s intensity. And saw, there, a CHIEFTAN energy! Wow! Isn’t that a “radical” way to see a fellow human being in this day and age?!!

THEN a fellow human beings’ intuitive (?) emotions and bubbling-up frustration with their lives is seen differently than the way social and cultural managers would have us see. It’s a crucial truth!

Note: original link has a little bit more art:

http://newmexico.indymedia.org/news/2007/01/5648.php

How about you? Do you have a way of seeing that might fit here? Do you know of any stories, any anecdotes for life as few seem to know it these days? Leave a comment and I’ll get back to you sometime!

Enjoy the new art here. It is anti-copyright, so that means all non-corporate/non-profit-oriented entities may utilize it freely. My main interest is to “get the word out” about decolonizing consciousness in general. And if my art aids you in this endeavor, please use it! (And, of course, i wouldn’t mind hearing from you about using it!)

Those who may want to make shirts (etc.) out of this stuff need to contact me about their project, first. Thanks!

Spirits often “speak” through me, via my unconscious, bringing me gifts they’d “like” me to share with the human world. Having been severed from my indigenous consciousness (as a descendant of various tribes of europe), i can only share these; there’s no more to say other than what you might or might not get out of them.

Anyway, one way of spanarchy is to engage in “radical empathy” (perhaps more aptly named “radical’s radical empathy) with human beings and our currents. Informally. That is, when human beings are allowed to be outside of the systems they/we are surrounded by, our private thoughts can come out to the light.

No “scientific” studies needed here, this is the stuff of our shared intuition. You either can hear such yourself, or you have been made into such a “good” robot that all you hear are your constant orders.

an early version of this peice..

Constant orders, you ask?

Think about it awhile. Here’s a bit of a launch:

Orders to conform with fashion, lifestyle, get a job, be Nice, Shut Up and Go Along With the Program, and so many many others!

The trick with spanarchy is that while we see the value of empathizing with human beings *informally*, we apply our critical consciousness to the ways in which people are *formally* utilized for such things as “human resources” and/or other tools of formally organized severe alienation.

Severe alienation: The “normalized” society all around us which we take for granted, but can’t help thinking (usually privately) that things could be so much better…

Intense alienation: war. In all war’s forms. From the everyday “taken for granted” (i.e. the just-ice/professional system and how it has been imagined and continues to be “implemented” and “deployed”, to what we have been more popularly trained to think of such as.

Who wants to be the first to argue these?!?

Note: this was originally posted at a forum put up by the folks at www.anti-politics.net

I know most of you can already see this. Yet I haven’t seen many actually say this like [i]this[/i]. And I’m feeling like saying it out loud, and clearly. At least as clearly as I can. Maybe a few of you can help me better articulate this, even.

What I want to say is that [i]both[/i] the Right and the Left are part and parcel, aiders and abettors of colonialism, both historical and ongoing. Colonialism both abroad and at home. Not merely against racial minorities, either. Against all, systematically. If you haven’t thought about it this way it can be thought-provoking. Think of everything and anything that the Left is oriented to.

First, let’s take on the Left and its projects abroad.
They say “development” of the non-Western world. What do they want to do? They want to impose colonial values. In classic propaganda style, they take a germ of truth and then project it in such a way to make that germ seem to be the WHOLE truth.

They say “progressive”; they want to progress the imposition of colonial values, again, both abroad and at home.

They say they’re anti-corporate, and on the one hand they are. Yet on the tell-tale other, they are part and parcel of non-democratic authoritarianism. Amongst them are all kinds of white shirt professionals. In itself this isn’t “bad”; what’s bad is that these people “do their jobs” uncritically. They certainly don’t form solidarities with their “clients” in any way which will make increased challenges for them in their work! And in their media, they certainly don’t help survivors of their business practices wake up!

Look at the media of the Left. They are engaged in a similar type of propaganda/thought management that the Right-wing is engaged in. Germs of truth displayed, certain “schools of thought” attacked, but the bigger picture is NEVER lit up for all to see. Instead, they trumpet “isolated corruptions”! And they manage that belief in their followers (those whom have no other outlet, no other frame of reference). And they “put out their eyes,” so to speak, “and then call them blind.” Also, certain voices have to be kept suppressed, or just marginalized and discredited. Certain truths have to be blocked or kept “beyond the bounds” of the “rational.” Both wings play the game of the propagandist, to the hilt.

The Left claims they are “anti-war”; but they are at war in a perpetual way, themselves.

For instance, they appear to be against open war, but they remain reactionary, always waiting waiting until the war-makers have already acted. They are never pre-emptive themselves! And then they actively suppress the reality of the war of diplomacy, of the so-called “peace process”, and what “aid” actually means; they act like it doesn’t exist. They certainly do not demystify these things!

They believe they cannot and must not. Why? Because their alleged “solidarity” with “the people” is hollow. It is simply a cynical technique. They uncritically accept the alienated assumptions of Western nations’ severely alienated assumptions about “we,” the people, being “stupid” and “incapable” and so on. Noam Chomsky has shed light here, while his Leftist handlers try to contain him. I remember one example, when he spoke at MIT in the 1990s; he remembered it too. The well-known Leftist cut him off when he began going over what he went into in his “Media Control” speech. Then Zmag’s archive for him curiously edited out those parts that they said “didn’t matter” because “there’s lots of other stuff like this elsewhere on our site.” Oh, so they were saving a few bytes of space, then?? Riiiight.

And then there’s the war of everyday society.

The war against the natures of the youth (in their oft semi- or in-articulate, intuitive rebellion), coercing them to become “civilized” and “mature” and not to trust their desires, their natural intuitions. To just follow orders and be “successful.” That’s one aspect. The war against the citizens, another, coercing our strategically-challenged identity (not seeing the polytricks of it all) to keep the dominating narratives in our heads.

The Left? They do nothing to help us wake up to the reality that “the biggest cops are in our heads.” They leave to the Right-wing the topical demystification of things like the fraud of ADHD, and the fraud of social sciences like psychiatry itself; but the Left-wing won’t touch that. When’s the last time you even HEARD OF Mindfreedom Magazine? Because much of its constituency, in the vanguard at least, is made up of professionals [i]in[/i] those precise professions! And to tell the truth would be TOO MUCH!

I could go on and on about the Left (and the Right)’s game of “pulling wool over” our collective “eyes.” Most of you know the score. And they both keep the stupidized, dumbed-down masses “on track” just like their aristocratic teachers taught them; people like Walter Lippmann, Reinhold Neighbohr, Harold Lasswell.

BOTH wings act as though they’ll help us, yet they play a shell game. If we start catching onto one part of it, they’ll back off, sacrifice their own people, and then work overtime to try to keep us from seeing the interconnected picture. And through it all, whatever the other wing says, is ALWAYS suspect. Woe be someone who has some real honesty to point this out openly! They’ll be routed!

If the techniques of thought-management lose control, or the other wing’s propaganda is viewed as “too strong”, the Left will shrink back into the cowardly position that they tend. Their “solidarity” with people is a lie. If your group can’t defend itself, too bad. If you’re having successes, the Left will come along and try to wrest control of the leading members. It happened to the feminists in the 1970s, and look where it took them: Politically Correct fascisms of various sorts.

They do “good work” to keep the status quo running smoothly, while acting as though they want to truly stop the status-quo and their Great Hype against “capital.”

The bottom line is that neither “wing” demystifies the war of everyday life. Neither gives “the people” the kinds of consciousness to truly defend themselves from the REAL aggressors. We are kept distracted with scapegoats and red-herrings, perpetually kept hyped-up against THE OTHER WING, never seeing our human commonalities.

And the masses seem to go along with it; why? Because there’s nothing else that they can easily find. Nothing else really is allowed to sustain itself, and those that do (i.e. the anarchy mag project, happening since at least 1985), can’t really get into all the places that the others can get into. And…then there’s the reality that most people are really just pawns at the bottom of the chain-of-command…because they’ve been trained to not prioritize consciousness, or to even value such. Compulsory schooling, et al, has successfully quite deeply depleted their belief in themselves to even try; psychologically beaten most of us into just going along with the program. The leading demystifyer, John Trudell, has called this state of affairs “psychological genocide.” It makes a lot of sense. For folks to even inform themselves takes, first of all, a feeling that success is possible. But if you’re surrounded by the thought control system, it seems overwhelming.

So the key for us lies in how we understand this, and how we respond. I say the more creativity the better. The more we move on from the “traditional” ways we’ve been beating over the head since the 1800s, the more we can start reaching the hearts of each generation that intuitively knows something is very wrong. And, yes, I said [i]reaching their hearts[/i]. Politics cannot reach people’s hearts.

Some of the early anarchy mag writers had some good ideas. They replaced everyday media with theirs, but with the cammo of the everyday media. Here’s one:

[img]http://www.spunk.org/library/misc/images/sp000966.jpg[/img]

There have been tries towards this since anarchy mag. But they’ve been something requiring a large budget. Witness the Crimeth Inc Collective. Good ideas somehow pushed into bulky directions. Their mag wasn’t bad, but soooo intellectual-oriented, that only college students would be able to take the necessary time.

Okay. Who wants to take a slug at this first?

(note: as a “spanarchist” i see the value of solidarity with informal humanity, not formal humanity)

The following is a discussion between Clarity, on anarchis.netm. and spanarchist also on anarchism.net. Challenges with this computer are making me unable to adequately edit this right now, sooo, hopefully you can read this somewhat coherently as it is.

If you speak your own language that no one understands, how far do you get?
>>One comment here. I’m thinking of the part where you said previously of looking at parts, rather than wholes. In this instance, I think of how indigenous and others (i.e. Italians) have allowed and even cherished those with their own kind of language. For the Italians, there is a cultural way for “crazy” folks to be allowed to be, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone.
>
> Fine with me. That’s not inconsistent with my statement, if I can get that statement to read right so that it is not misconstrued. I’m saying something fairly trivial, which is that there are costs and benefits to speaking one’s own language. For most of us, communicating is very beneficial so that we learn a common language.

Agreed, in general. What i am inclined towards (and will try to articulate, but am not always “great at it”), however, are bringing forth the anomalies, i.e. those persons who are “the antennae” as Ezra Pound said of creative people; and promoting and inspiring such persons so oriented to meaningfully participate and even lead in their capacities and inclinations, while others realize the value of assisting them. I.e. the tribal way of letting people do as they do, and informally assisting them, if they feel they can, towards articulating themselves more, even in languages not easily understood, or remaining “impossible”. Then, such people become puzzles rather than unimportant and ignored.

i happen to see this as crucial for a system, whereas eurocentric ways of being seem to tend towards martial-subordinated values such as expedience and ignoring anomalies.

In spanarchy, the way of bridging is tantamount, or consistently encouraged. With the values of mutual aid popularized everywhere, seeing the value. Especially in the context that most systems of formal politics deny or otherwise rationalize away (i.e. into neat boxes) such people, and they go unlistened to, and have a curious effect on others whom might have seriously contributed but, due to lifetimes of political/system experience, intuitively refrain.

However, if “champions” of “crazy folks” are enthusiastically encouraged, such folks will begin to come out of the woodwork. A historical example would be the early social challengers of the 1950s/early 1960s, who were seen as something like “nuts” early on. i got this feeling when reading Martin Luther King,Jr’s early experiences with both the black and white status quo.

> > For indigenous folks of the world, there seems to be a tendency to make “crazies” into shamans, or similar. Basically, putting into gear the idea of protection by enrichment strategies, i see. And by having a unique (rather than “strange”) way of approaching life, such people are allowed to flower and become as their intuition/spirituality teaches.
> >
> > This could and should be done for youths, for the differently abled (i.e. autistic), and anyone else (i.e. someone who’s gone thru some major psychological challenge, whether in defending the community or surviving a natural phenomenon).
> >
> > Do you see value in this kind of approach?
>
> Yes. Anything is better than today’s repressive, oppressive, straitjacket culture! I can’t bear the thought of how society is trying to homogenize youth, and welcomes using drugs to do it.

Ah, I agree up to the tendency to generalize away “drugs”, tho that’s a popularized assumption; –another reason for the putting the value of bridging/spans up to the forfront, and making a distinction from panarchy!

“Drugs” can, after all, be viewed as an opportunity, or tool, towards enhancements of various sorts, such as communications outside of imposed Knowns. We could surely launch into a big discussion of “drugs” but i just want to say that there are anomalies of excellence that could be focused on and brought forth.

And, again, i’m seeing the tendency of a system called panarchy to [i]not[/i] see such value; and merely valuing already organized political, or status quo systems. What’s your take on this?

Also, does panarchy allow for “anti-political” or informal ways of articulating and creating systems?

> > (This angle resonates with my idea of spanarchy, where value is found in ways that are not necessarily already imagined, as i figure panarchy confines itself to; re: governing methods already dreamed up)
>
> Panarchy is open to ways not already imagined.

To be “open to” such ways is nice, yet i really think there needs to be distinctions made for the inclusion of non-traditional and un- or semi-articulated inputs. So that’s why i’m staying with my intution that spanarchy ought to be.

For me, spanarchy is a crucial methodology (trying to avoid ideology here, thanks to the critique leveled by the post-left anarchists) which can, first, bridge the gap between people who feel unable to participate meaningfully (and usually just go along like sheeple, while privately or covertly pouring out their real feelings via expressions like “crime”, wife/child-beating, bar fights, and so on); and second, aid in inspiring these [i][b]becoming champions[/b][/i] towards their truly meaningful desires/intuitions/tendencies.
And away from those ways of being and seeing which i think contribute to the overall picture of how and why societies aren’t able to radically beautifully thrive.

iN short, i think spanarchy is a pivotal approach; which, notably, does not categorically deny the formal and status-quo political/social/martial, but instead, via [color=#99f]the “crucial arts”[/color] (the principle method of invoking spanarchy), demystifies and renders incapacitated, their authoritarian/hierarchical and severely alienated tendencies.

> There is a book coming out on panarchy soon, and one of the essays I recollect makes a point of how the future setups will lead to yet more unimagined setups and responses, so that we cannot plan in advance how we will realize spanarchy, using your term.

Ah, that last thought touches me like a point put to my skin, i think. Well, i say it is possible to “plan in advance” to degrees. And that is crucial. That does not mean that the territory, so to speak, is somehow mapped. Just that the openings (best word?) come into our oft-eurocentricized consciousness. (By “our” i mean we idealistic promoters [i]as well as[/i] what are usually called “the stupid masses” by the usual gang of elites.

As for [b]the book, do you have an author, publisher, and other info[/b] I might use to get my library to carry the book?

By the way, you asked in another thread for an example of the “personal as political”, and here it is: We can see that anything is political when authoritarians force it to be so. How we dress has been made political. How we walk (witness black youth who look like “gangs”, or “jay-walkers”). Do you see what I’m saying now?

With those innaugural nonsense words, let the adventure begin! An adventure in radically creatively activating our intelligence! And applying such to the situations which affect us all the most: socially and, er, anti-politically, towards *mutually beneficial outcomes* and evolutionary mutual aid!

Basically, spanarchy is a method of my understanding of the best of anarchist critique; yet seemingly moving beyond anarchist thought in the methods of escaping perpetual alienation mongering.

The spanarchist method is about looking for the good within all that is, all around and behind. And bringing that good out, towards angles on radical excellence becoming, in perpetual flux, radically beautiful!

So here i’m going to explore some of the biggest challenges to spanarchist thought. And put my creative gifts (both in art and ideahz) towards, as i see it, evolutionary ways of seeing and being in this world.

Crucial to spanarchy, by the way, is a methodology i’ve been playing with for some years which i call “the cruciaL aRts/artz”. The cruciaL arts/z is a set of radically creative, informal tactics which  see the value of remaining in “human solidarity” or solidarity with humanity’s original, naturally-inclined tendencies.

Well, that’s as far as i’ll go for now. The computer I’m using isn’t optimum for working tonite, so i’ll move on. More later!