'Realist' bias (intolerance) in Anarchistnews Editorial policy

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emile
'Realist' bias (intolerance) in Anarchistnews Editorial policy

‘Realist’ bias (intolerance) in the editorial policy of Anarchistnews.org

The following comment was deleted by thecollective from the thread 'Strengthening Our Politics, Commitment and Growth: BRRN 4th National Convention'

my guess as to ‘why’ it was deleted was that there is a ‘realist’ bias (and intolerance of 'pragmatic idealism') in the editorial thinking of Anarchistnew.org. ‘Realist’ is explained in the body of the below comment.

Since two thirds of my comments are deleted by thecollective (and half of my shortened resubmissions are also deleted) which are no longer than many others' comments, it seems as if the editors; i.e. 'thecollective', have a problem with my content. meanwhile, my comments are always intended to contribute to shared development of understanding as to how to bring about a Western society 'remake', not something that can be said of much that thecollective continues to publish, including comments by emile9000 etc. which are for no other purpose than adhominem attack and contain no views of their own.

Here is the deleted comment, as submitted, which tries to speak to a prevalent 'misunderstanding' that is endemic in Anarchistnews discussions:

clashing concepts of 'struggle' where east meets west

confusion reigns from the manner in which different people use the word 'struggle' with a different understanding of its meaning.
sir einzige tries to inject some common understanding but the division is as deep as the division between indigenous (relational) culture and Western (rationalist) culture.

relational experience based intuition (a); perceives 'struggle' as a situation-induced phenomenon, while reason (b); has one conceive of struggle as intention-driven action.

e.g.

(a) "getting through the freeway traffic was a real struggle"

(b) "i struggled to weave my way through the heavy freeway traffic".

if a team of scientists installed a paint marker beneath one's car to mark its trajectory on the pavement, and went back and reviewed the trajectory when the freeway was empty, they would ask the driver; is this tortuous trajectory capturing your struggle to weave your way through the traffic? i.e. were you in full charge of the vehicle and the author of all of these swerves and curves? the driver would probably say yes, but might hesitate on contemplating the word 'author', thinking of the dog that came from nowhere and darted across and also that it was not as if he was weaving through a bunch of static traffic cones'.

in a relational understanding, there is no 'being' and thus no 'personal, self-actualized authorship' as implied in the semantic construct "I struggled".
in the physical reality of our actual experience, all dynamic phenomena are 'situationally-relationally induced' as in an 'inhabitant-habitat nonduality' [Mach's principle]. 'struggle' cannot be reduced to the pole of personal intention-driven authorship, but Western noun-and-verb language fashions semantic constructs implying such inside-outward (genetic agency driven) dynamics on a routine basis.

'struggle' as an intention-driven activity leads to 'bottom up' authorship which is operationalized in a 'top-down' organizational fashion.

eg: -- "do you want to join the workers' struggle against corrupt and abusive corporate management? Yes? ... then pick up your placard over there, join the line of protesters standing on the sidestreet and wait for further instructions".

the scientists or 'rationalists' who gathered the data on the individual driver's trajectory use a simple being-based, dualist, thought-economical model that reduces dynamics to terms of 'what things-in-themselves do', ignoring inhabitant-habitat nondualism [Mach's principle].

rationalists aka 'realists' aka 'mainstream scientists' see no problem in the imputing of a being-based source to a relational dynamic as in the semantic constructs "the struggler struggles", "fire burns", "water washes", as if 'there is a 'being' there that is the authoring source of a PURELY RELATIONAL-SITUATIONAL nondual inhabitant-habitat dynamic;

"In brief, the Western mind cannot help but think that all reality has been done away with when all "being" (form, substance) has been negated; but the East has found that the removal of the immediate and overpowering face of reality is but a necessary condition for what is really real to appear' (van Bragt, `Introduction', in Nishitani, K. Religion and Nothingness)

Nishitani critiques the adequacy of being-based logocentric representations ; i.e. his emphasis on the non-presence of simple being-based identity and meaning enables nothingness, emptiness or sûnyatâ to become a critical issue in our search for non-illusory reality.

`Unless the thought and deeds of man one and all be located on such a field of emptiness, the sorts of problems that beset humanity have no chance of ever really being solved' – Nishitani

one of those "sort of problems" lies in understanding 'struggle' as something that brews up in, and froths out from, the interior of an independently-existing human being thing-in-itself who dualist science claims exists independently of the operating theatre he is included (contained) in.

as Poincare shows, 'realists' in Western society are people who MISTAKENLY believe that 'being-based 'genetic agency' [as in predicative logic] is 'real' in the sense of the 'physical reality of our actual experience'. It is not. There are no 'things-in-themselves' with their own jumpstart 'genetic agency' to sole-source authorship of development, actions and results, in the physical reality of our actual experience.

anonymous
And this deleted this

And they deleted this irrelevant, senile nonsense?! Those BASTARDS

emile
how popular is the nondualist understanding of anarchy?

the answer to that depends on the milieu in which one shares such ideas. in Anarchistnews, most topics with Eastern philosophical content (e.g. Buddhist anarchy) draw comments from people who are unfamiliar with Eastern thinking who react like many of us act upon finding foreign coinage in the change we are given. Even if the alien coins were worth more than their American 'look-alike', they are likely to be swiftly and angrily pounced upon, as if the mere proferring of the alien currency constituted some kind of insult.

ad hominems will be thrown at those who present such material without the attackers even addressing the particulars of the content. The response is much like 'racism', wherein the 'Eastern content' should know better than to try to share the same facilities with 'Western content'. Perhaps it is because Western people, the strain that is 'in power' and that demands that everyone else learn their language and customs, are 'out of their element' in their encounters with nonduality and have neither interest nor energy to 'develop fluency' in nondual content in case they become mistaken for one of those odd fellows, ... whereupon, their posts, too, might start getting mocked and dismissed out of hand.

Notwithstanding the evident bias and intolerance of the Anarchistnews milieu to nondual content [though there is likely a 'silent minority' out there], ... nondual anarchism has worthy roots that haven't been scared off in all milieus; e.g; such writings as those of Zen Anarchist (and Beat Poet) Gary Snyder;

True to this anarchist legacy, Snyder ultimately rejected Marxism, which in his view was part of the “the whole Western tradition” of millennial Protestantism. In place of what he viewed as Marxism’s essentially Christian utopianism, he emphasized the need for immediate, inner revolution aided by Buddhist practice directed toward anarchist models of social behavior. Shortly after his undergraduate rejection of Marxism, he “found in the Buddha-Dharma a practical method for clearing one’s mind of the trivia, prejudices, and false values that our conditioning had laid on us,” beneath which lay “the deepest non-self Self.” The insight that Buddhism offered into the nondual nature of self and other—this deepest non-self Self— would complement and complete Western utopian traditions. As Snyder argued in “Buddhism and the Coming Revolution,” published in 1961 under the title “Buddhist Anarchism,” “The mercy of the West has been social revolution” while “the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both” in order to affect “any cultural and economic revolution that moves toward a free, international, classless world.” --- excerpt from ‘The Zen of Anarchy: Japanese Exceptionalism and the Anarchist Roots of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance’, by James Brown

The first comment in this forum thread, on the nuanced understanding of 'struggle' (dualist and nondualist) is part of what Snyder is talking about in speaking of 'needing both', and likewise the need that Nishitani is talking about where he says;

`Unless the thought and deeds of man one and all be located on such a field of emptiness, the sorts of problems that beset humanity have no chance of ever really being solved' – Nishitani

Shifting one's understanding from dualist mode to nondualist mode is not difficult. One merely has to let one's experience-based intuition prevail over reason without following our usual Western habit of dumbing ourselves down by putting reason into an unnatural precedence over intuition.

of course, even a few barking dogs can be enough to hold people at bay, where they have not yet had the chance to apprise themselves of the value of what they are being warned to stay away from.

thecollective
emile, we remove your stuff because of length

as we have said MULTIPLE TIMES.
i, for one, no longer read them at all, so the content is irrelevant to my actions.

emile
interesting values!

i see, it is just length. i mistakenly thought that the popular intolerance to nondual views might have influenced Anews editorial interventions in this post-worker era.

i was confused by the fact that you often leave in others comments that are longer than some of mine which you have removed.

that you have never given me a maximum allowed length in words in spite of my having asked for one.,

that when you moved my comments offline to the forum 'because of their length', you put mocking titles on them,

that when emile9000, emileemile and others with intolerance to nondual perspectives simply replicate to mock and thus double, triple and quadruple the length of text of my comment without addressing content, you leave all of that in.

your valuing of shorter comments more than longer ones makes an interesting contrast with 'learning circles' where the talking stick is passed to allow the speaker the length of comment she needs to express herself. i appreciate that value in spite of there being no 'scroll over' option in a 'learning circle'.

thanks for being so honest and upfront with me..

thecollective
i have personally explained the "discrepancies" you complain

about in this post. more than once, iirc.
i'm not doing it again, as clearly you don't care and/or won't remember the next time this comes up.

Anonymous (not verified)
jfc ... You have the patience

jfc ... You have the patience of a saint. Seriously!

emile
you've explained nothing.

the lack of overt, explicit policy (same for everyone) by a central control authority is carte blanche for abuse of power and the backroom empowerment of lobby group influence.

'This has been explained already' is the word-smithing used by 'concensus science' to steamroller over unresolved differences.

.

Anonymous (not verified)
Or you have a transparent

Or you have a transparent persecution complex that pairs with your compulsive behaviour? Occam's razor yo. You smell shit everywhere Emile, check your shoe.

emile
i think you'd better check the end of your nose

the obsequious are always there when needed to 'back up' the 'seat of power'.

“The capacity for self-surrender, he said, for becoming a tool, for the most unconditional and utter self-abnegation, was but the reverse side of that other power to will and to command. Commanding and obeying formed together one single principle, one indissoluble unity; he who knew how to obey knew also how to command, and conversely; the one idea was comprehended in the other, as people and leader were comprehended in one another.” --Thomas Mann, Mario and the Magician.

Anonymous (not verified)
"You're a self-important

"You're a self-important jackass that thinks everyone has as much spare time as you." - anon

emile
why won't dissenters back off, shut up and fall in line?

divisions between people do happen and are highlighted most recently, on the one side by 'self-important jackasses' who refuse to stand during the singing of the anthem, and on the other side by those who are in solidarity with a prevailing authority that stone-walls minority complaints and dissent.

we know a lot about this division. nietzsche wrote about it. so did lenin, so did Poincare. it is intensifying all over the globe at the present time. the name-labels vary but the implications are the same. some people put intuition in precedence over reason [IPR] and others put reason in precedence over intuition [RPI].

the IPRs do not believe that there is any such thing as 'objective truth'; i.e. there are only personal perspectives based on unique situational experiences. Nietzsche and Mach are IPRs.

For Nietzsche, each perspective on the world will have certain things it assumes are non-negotiable – "facts" or "truths" if you like. Pointing to them won't have much of an effect in changing the opinion of someone who occupies a different perspective.
.
As Nietzsche saw it, once we realise that the idea of an absolute, objective truth is a philosophical hoax, the only alternative is a position called "perspectivism" – the idea there is no one objective way the world is, only perspectives on what the world is like. ... according to perspectivism, we agree on ... things not because these propositions are "objectively true," but by virtue of sharing the same perspective. When it comes to basic matters, sharing a perspective on the truth is easy – but when it comes to issues such as morality, religion and politics, agreement is much harder to achieve. People occupy different perspectives, seeing the world and themselves in radically different ways. These perspectives are each shaped by the biases, the desires and the interests of those who hold them; they can vary wildly, and therefore so can the way people see the world.
.
Nietzsche didn't mean to imply we are doomed to live within the limits of our own biases. In fact, Nietzsche suggests that the more perspectives we are aware of, the better we can be at reaching a watered-down objective view of things. At the end of his 1887 book On the Genealogy of Morality, he writes:
.
"The more eyes, different eyes, we know how to bring to bear on one and the same matter, that much more complete will our 'concept' of this matter, our 'objectivity' be."

The same conclusion falls out of quantum physics compliant communications theory (Gabor) where many different views on the same thing is the basis of a holistic view as in the holographic image.

The RPIs include all those put into positions of editorial authority, who believe they have a good handle on 'the objective truth' and thus they 'make judgements' and use their power of central authority to administer on that basis. Because they (a) believe that there is 'objective truth', (b) feel they 'know the truth in advance', they (c) feel equipped to discriminate between 'truth and falsehood' and make judgements and editorials commensurate with those judgements.

Concensus groups form in the RPI collective, on the basis of their feeling that, together, they have worked through the issues and distilled out the 'objective truth' of what is going on; i.e.

"A core tenet of Enlightenment thought was that our shared humanity, or a shared faculty called reason, could serve as an antidote to differences of opinion, a common ground that can function as the arbiter of different perspectives. Of course people disagree, but, the idea goes, through reason and argument they can come to see the truth. Nietzsche's philosophy, however, claims such ideals are philosophical illusions, wishful thinking, or at worst a covert way of imposing one's own view on everyone else under the pretense of rationality and truth."

So, emile has always embraced the IPR (intuition prevails over reason) mode of understanding and in his non-internet physical experience, has been involved in indigenous peoples' guided 'sharing circles', 'learning circles', 'healing circles' and 'peace-keeping circles'. The circles tradition arises from the understanding that everyone has their own unique world perspective developed from their own unique situational-relational experience; i.e;

"The more eyes, different eyes, we know how to bring to bear on one and the same matter, that much more complete will our 'concept' of this matter, our 'objectivity' be."

In this mode of understanding, there is no need to suppress a dissenting view. all views are dissenting because there is no 'correct view'; i.e. there is no objective rational truth. there is no need to debate whose view is the most truthful and develop a concensus view and divide off into factions and 'run for election' on this basis.

when all views are listened to and 'heard', the next step is NOT to DISTILL OUT THE TRUTH, but to look for 'coherency' by bringing the multiplicity of views into connective relational confluence. The circle tradition remains 'flat' and the 'circle keeper' never becomes an 'editor' but is there to remind circle participants of the circle protocols [respectful listening to the person holding the talking stick etc.]

Lenin's, an RPI wrote 'Materialism and Empirio-Criticism' (1909)specifically to 'put down' the IPO mode of understanding which was becoming a popular alternative 'non-materialist' way to interpret Marxism by those who Lenin referred to as 'Machians'

For IPOs, the many dissenting groups that arise around the world, like the Saddam regime, the Qaddafy regime, Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, Kim Jong-Un, .. are inductively actualized from relational tensions associated with global colonizer power oppression. For RPIs like Lenin and materialist Marxists, all such dissenting groups are viewed as 'real things-in-themselves with their own internal 'genetic agency'., thus it makes rational sense to deal with them simply by eliminating them. However, since they are inductively actualized and not real 'things-in-themselves', eliminating them is 'tilting at windmills' without coming to grips with the root source (epigenetic inductive influence). Such RPI interventions engender unanticipated 'externalities' such as 'the rise of ISIS'.

The IPO mode of understanding is 'nondualist' while the RPI mode of understanding is 'dualist'.The dominant mode of understanding, since it has been globalized by Western European 'enlightenment' view that believes that rational debate can reduce observations to a common 'objective truth', is the RPI view.

As this Forum topic suggests, Editors (and their acolytes) who are not like 'circle keepers' but who believe they know the objective truth and who edit on that basis, reflect the continuing tendency to dominance of the RPI mode of understanding.

Anonymous (not verified)
Geez... You just get more and

Geez... You just get more and more worked up, don't you? I wouldn't have a problem with you if you weren't always insisting everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot.

emile
don't worry, be happy!

if you see me knock out a few para's fairly expeditiously, don't assume it is because 'i am 'worked up''.

if you knew the circle ethic, you would not have to make the 'common assumptions'.

the circle does not have an 'editor', it has a circle keeper and the circle-keeper does not give orders, he/she simply reminds people of the circle protocols [listening respectfully, giving each person holding the talking stick the time and space they need to share their thoughts/experiences etc.]. the power of the circle lies in what 'comes through the centre of the circle', not what the centre dishes out.

if you don't know the stuff someone is writing about, it doesn't make you an idiot and no-one is suggesting that. we are always in the position of not knowing what someone else may know.

ok, in circle ethics, there is no 'ranking' of people on the basis of 'how intelligent' you think they are so that you will then put 'more weight' on what they say than someone who grunts and points. that is, the western approach to developing a common understanding is to use rational intelligence in a debate to come up with a rational model of what is going on. the circle process makes no assumption that participants are 'rational' [everyone is nuts in a different way] therefore 'intelligence' or 'rational thinking muscle' can be more of a hindrance than a help.

e.g. developing a healthcare system could take the RPI approach and use a team of experts to produce the final product through rational debate and then 'lay it on the masses', or could take the IPR approach and use a learning circle to share personal experience of what works. it's not a question of 'EITHER 'I' OR 'R' [either (intuition) or (reason)], but a question of which you put in precedence over which.because those alternative options lead to very different types of 'community'. this means that one doesn't have to 'go primitive', just let experience-based needs inductively actualize genetic expression (the development of technical solutions).

the other point that may need emphasis, is the key point of what comes from problem solving sessions depending on whether the group is IPR or RPI; i.e. the RPI group are 'logicians' and 'realists' like Lenin. they believe they are closing in on the 'objective truth' when, in fact, they are in the process of gathering a herd around a particular 'perspective' which satisfies their group emotional needs.

the IPR group are intuitives and 'pragmatist-idealists' [we find it useful to contrive semantics that depict an inductively actualized relational form as a thing-in-itself with its own genetic agency, like 'hurricane Harvey', but we do not confuse that with the physical reality of our actual experience]. in other words, the IPR group does not believe there is such a thing as 'objective truth'. as nietzsche said,

"The more eyes, different eyes, we know how to bring to bear on one and the same matter, that much more complete will our 'concept' of this matter, our 'objectivity' be." -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morality

That's why the 'circle keeper' never operates as an 'editor' since it is impossible for him to know, from his own limited experience, what the contributions of particular contributors, however educated or uneducated, contribute to the mix. 'worker' (prior to the collective) seemed to me to operate more like a 'circle keeper'.

Anonymous (not verified)
This thread be liek:

This thread be liek:
Emilio: Wah! I make out the was pretty!
thecrew: You're dumb and you suck, but you should already know that.
Emillion bucks: Wah, buh muh stupid crap blah blah blah.
theunionofnerds: ...

Anonymous (not verified)
Don't forget random guy (me)

Don't forget random guy (me) being like "quit nailing yourself to the cross you old weirdo"

Followed by another condescending brick wall of text claiming persecution.

Then my pity, then Emile's massive ego reconstituting itself like the T-1000.

random dude (not verified)
i like emile.

he is like a #antifa regimen for the rational mind

emile
this trust in the rational mind is crazy

nietzsche's writing sticks around and continues to stir interest because Western society continues to self-destruct by trusting more in science and rationality than in our experience-based intuition, ... and the doubt grows, as it should, that maybe nietzsche was right and intuition should be restored to its natural primacy over reason, rationality, science.

authoritarians love reason, and why shouldn't they. it's a birdsnest on the ground! imagine this, ... you can exploit, abuse and humiliate people to your dark heart's delight.and reason will continue to come up with the conclusion that rebels are the full and sole source of rebellion!

what heart of darkness could ask for more than that. listen to the intuitives scream, but to no avail, because 'reason' is the dominant mode of understanding in authoritarian societies such as ours.

and watch out innocents, because reason is also the source of the concept of 'categories' and you might find yourself binned into one that will be your total undoing.

because 'reason' assumes the 'independent existence' of 'things-in-themselves', it defines things on the basis of 'their own properties and characteristics' [a 'great stupidity' as nietzsche says]. and also, the origin of 'racism' and 'identity politics' in general.

reason has us 'call a spade a spade'. that's where that comes from, the concept of an independently-existing thing-in-itself known by 'its own properties and characteristic behaviours'.

our experience-based intuition would say that the child-soldier's ruthless behaviours are inductively actualized by the epigenetic influence immanent in the relational social dynamics he is situationally included in. indigenous peoples, since they put intuition in its natural primacy over reason and science, say that 'it takes a whole community to raise a child-soldier' and thus defining him as a terrorist on the basis that he has the characteristic behaviours of a terrorist and thus qualifies as a member of the category 'terrorist' and 'rebel' and so, let's call a fucking spade a fucking spade, ... the child-soldier is a fucking terrorist and he is fully and solely responsible for his own fucking behaviour because that is how reason works. no more fucking excuses for being born into a ghetto and all that horseshit.

it's reason that puts people into categories because that's the only way to define 'things-in-themselves'. you have to measure 'their properties' to define 'them'. that's how 'reason'declares the 'existence' of 'things-in-themselves', one measures their properties.

remember all the guys who have said to impressionable teenage girls on the internet. "if you love me, share with me (just with me) a picture of your beautiful thighs-wide-open naked body", ... and when the picture goes viral on the internet and everyone does as reason directs them to, 'call a slut a slut', ...she may change schools a few times and then hang herself.

according to science and reason, an individual is an independent thing-in-itself that is fully and solely causally responsible for their own actions and their results, that's where 'calling a spade space comes from; ... science and reason. we call a rebel a rebel no matter if he is a slave whose rebellious behaviour has been inductively actualized by the abuse, humiliation and exploitation of slave-masters. for them, reason works great. forensic science is capable of proving that the rebellious slave is fully and solely causally responsible for the injury to the slave master but forensic science, and science in general, is blind to epigenetic influence that inductively actualizes genetic expression. ['what things do']. reason insists that rebellious behaviour jumpstarts from the interior of the rebel. how convenient! the bully group that uses herd power to attack the alleged politically incorrect behaviour of the teenage girl, labelling her a slut and attacking, alienating and humiliating her in a vicious fashion not unlike medieval stonings, comes from 'reason' that says she is an independent human being-thing-in-herself who is fully and solely responsible for her own behaviour, same as in the case of the child-soldier and the rebel.

have you ever seen how all the most beautiful and richly resourced spaces, special items in the finite expanse on the surface of the earth are taken over by the rich and powerful and placed off-limits to the poor and disempowered? there's no basic limit to how disparate that can get; i.e. it could lead to very few controlling all of the natural beauty spots while most of the rest live in a toxic wasteland filling up with shit that is being dumped out by those living high on the hog in the beauty spots.

remember what reason and science is going to say about this, as it has always been saying. if there is rebellion, it can only come from rebels because science and reason tell us that humans are independently-existing beings-in-themselves that are fully and solely responsible for their own behaviours. rebellion, according to forensic science, is jumpstarted by rebels, no 'epigenetic inductive actualizing influence allowed!

so what does science and reason say about the rich and powerful monopolizing the resource rich lands so that the poor and disempowered, by reciprocal complement, must retreat into the lowland swamps and toxic wastelands?

science and reason are founded on 'dualism', the notion that humans are independent 'beings', material inhabitants who are separate and apart from the 'habitat'. the logical corollary is 'property ownership' where humans, being 'separate' from the 'habitat' can act on it to 'have their way with it', to screw it, extract stuff from it, exploit it, abuse it, rape it, with impunity because reason denies what intuition acknowledges, inhabitant-habitat nonduality.

"The dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat at the same time as the dynamics of the habitat are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants " -- Mach's principle of inhabitant-habitat nonduality

science and reason have a built-in dependency on dualism, along with Western religions, that is where 'property ownership' and 'categories' and 'racism' come from; dualism is the big disconnect, the subject-object disconnect, the inhabitant-habitat disconnect, the 'is' 'is not' existential disconnect;

"God, when he gave the world in common to all mankind, commanded man, … to subdue the earth; i.e., improve it for the benefit of life, and therein lay out something upon it that was his own, his labour. He that in obedience to this commandment of God, subdued, tilled and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it something that was his property, which another had no title to, nor could without injury take from him” – John Locke, 1690

Western science and reason, Western religion, ... both are founded in dualism, the subject-object split which gives us the impression that what we are looking at 'out there' is an 'objective reality' apart from ourselves.

can you imagine how those weird intuitives, the indigenous aboriginals could have come up with nondualist views such as;

"“You must teach the children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves. … This we know, the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” —Native Belief Tradition

those crazies! and how about physicists like David Bohm and others buying into that nondualism which puts intuition into primacy over reason, ... claiming that 'indigenous science' affirms modern physics while Western science and reason is hung up on abstract being-based dualist beliefs that we got from noun-and-verb language-and-grammar.

who, besides Bohm and indigenous aboriginals, is interested in inventing, reviving, cultivating and sustaining 'relational language' that will wean us off those spooky noun-subjects-and-attributes that are the source of 'categories' and 'identity politics' and continue to 'bewitch our understanding'?

Anonymous (not verified)
perhaps you should lay off

perhaps you should lay off writing huge walls of text in the comment section. i'm sure they wouldn't delete your comments if they were condensed versions of your wall of text spam. start a blog if you want to write walls of text.

emile
thanks for your message which i just picked up

my interest is in engaging with others on particular current issues. what takes a lot of words is the deconstruction to get around the dualist, being based structure of standard formulations in noun-and-verb language. it looks like repetition but it is because of the problem that we normally leave out a lot when we communicate in a language we all know because we don't have to unfold all of the definitions that everyone is familiar with. i do have to unfold them because i need to remove them and substitute new 'nondual, relational' underpinnings. relational language is a language with 'new footings' that remove the dualist, being base that is in standard usage. i continue to try to find a way to reduce the length of these deconstruction-reconstructions, meanwhile.

Anonymous (not verified)
You might not get deleted if

You might not get deleted if your shit was a pragmatic-idealist-indigenous-quantum-nondualist-whatever-the-fuck-you-are perspective on the topic at hand. Whatever the topic, you always say the same thing. It's about things-in-themselves not existing and agency not existing, and everything is one big quantum field, and we know this from Nietzsche-Einstein-Mach-Tolstoy and indigenous peoples. Is that relevant to BRRN? Not really. You object to "Organise and Struggle", and everyone knows in advance you will object to "Organise and Struggle" and exactly why, because BRRN is a left-anarchist organisation and they don't subscribe to your ontology. You don't say anything about BRRN's version of "Organise and Struggle" which is different from how you object to any other version of "Organise and Struggle". You don't give anyone the slightest idea what a pragmatic-idealist-whatever-the-fuck approach to workplace organising would be, or an approach to work, whether work is itself a dualistic colonising construct, whether workplace action should involve non-separative harmonising and consensus-building with the bosses, whether workplace organisers should carry on just the same way but while recognising that change comes from the universal field and not themselves (in which case, what's wrong with the article?), or whether pragmatic-blah-blah means that one should refuse work and if so, how. You're not discussing how they responded to Charlottesville, whether your rejection of the imperative to fight means that anarchists need to use nonviolent communication with Nazis rather than punch them, whether Nazism is just a symptom which shouldn't be fought because its real causes lie in the wider energetic field, or whether we should punch Nazis while recognising that we're just being caused to punch Nazis by epigenetic influences... this is the kind of thing you need to do for your perspective to be relevant!

Realists may be wrong but they're on-topic. Do you see realists turning up and reeling off the same general ontological points like "according to Popper, nonfalsifiable reasoning is the root of totalitarianism" or "Sokal and Bricmont show that postmodern language is fashionable nonsense, and that's similar to what Marx said in his critique of Stirner, here have a quote", on an article which isn't about general ontology but about a specific political conference? That would probably piss everyone off, too. Hell, Zizek always says the same thing too, but at least he relates it tangentially to whatever he's meant to be discussing.

emile
reply to #21

normal language delivery is 'set up' for 'realism', for accepting that subject-names refer to things-in-themselves which are assumed to have their own genetic agency, rendering them causally responsible for their development actions and accomplishments.

in order to respond to such built-in-being-assumptions, it is necessary to (a) call attention to the built-in assumptions, (b) deconstruct and expose them, and (c) show what new assumptions are being used to reinterpret the same subject/issue that the original comment was directed to.

the realist chooses to split apart the inhabitant-habitat nonduality, endow the inhabitant with being and genetic agency, and forget about the epigenetic influence of habitat. this makes for 'less words' thanks to dropping out the most essential aspect of what is being discussed, - nonduality.

the words are then like 'dead bees in an abandoned hive'; i.e. they are the words of mechanistic science and reason.,

i appreciate that you are addicted to their greater simplicity, convenience and economy of thought [Mach], but the price exacted from such usage is the subjugation of intuition to reason. that is not a price that i am willing to pay.. my intuitive understanding is that 'rebellion' is epigenetically induced by land monopolization and associated extortion of slave-labours, and realists and their reason can insist all they want that rebellion is caused by rebels and their internal genetic agency, ... but just as tolstoy was unwilling to buy into that, and nietzsche, who called 'subject and attribute' 'a great stupidity', neither am i willing to buy into it.

Anonymous (not verified)
>normal language delivery is

>normal language delivery is 'set up' for 'realism'

Yeah we know you think that.

>in order to respond to such built-in-being-assumptions, it is necessary to (a) call attention to the built-in assumptions, (b) deconstruct and expose them, and (c) show what new assumptions are being used to reinterpret the same subject/issue

In every single instance where someone uses language?!

* We already know* you think everyday language is "realist".
* We already know* you think realism is wrong.
* We already know* which theories you're using to ground these two claims.
* We already know* what other perspective you propose (although its implications for particular topics are rarely clear).

You don't need to tell us what we already know, every single time you post.

It's as if you think that by repeating the same objections over and over, you're going to convince people that you're right. It's more likely the opposite - the more you sound like a cracked record, the more people will dismiss what you say (which is a shame, because you're often partly right).

Instead of rehashing the same metatheoretical critique over and over, it would be more helpful to tell us what a nondualist perspective entails *politically*, in each case, instead of flogging a dead horse and repeating yourself over and over.

>this makes for 'less words' thanks to dropping out the most essential aspect of what is being discussed, - nonduality.

The other thing you consistently fail to do, is to show how we can speak in a way which includes nonduality. Your own language is verbose, repetitive and utterly parasitic on the realism it criticises. It must be possible to create a language which recognises nonduality but can also be used in a pragmatic way. Hell, I wish I could fucking speak Quechua or Tzotzil or Maori, then I could teach you a thing or two about how to speak nondualistically. Since I can't, suffice to say: it's perfectly easy for a speaker of Quechua or Tzotzil or Maori to make mundane everyday statements in these languages without assuming duality, but also without every statement turning into a deconstructive clusterfuck.

Here's a project for you: go away and learn an indigenous language or two, and copy its grammatical structures into English. What does English look like when it's spoken with a Tzotzil grammar? You might have to invent, add words or tenses or kinds of syntax to import the relational stuff... but it should be possible (see: Walter Benjamin, The Task of the Translator), and it should be comprehensible or at least learnable. I'm very interested in the things which could be *said* on this basis.

>i appreciate that you are addicted to their greater simplicity, convenience and economy of thought

Fuck off with your authority complex. You're not my therapist, you've never met me, and you have no grounds for claiming to "know" that I'm "addicted" to anything. The very fact that you can make such swingeing empirical claims based on flimsy or nonexistent evidence disproves your claims to be anti-essentialist and nondualistic. You refuse to talk to people as equals, you fall back on this kind of diagnostic "what-you-just-said-is-a-symptom"-speak which creates a dualistic metaphorical doctor-patient relationship between you and your discussant, and thus asserts scientific power based on the very principles you reject.

emile
more selective deletions by thecollective

my reply to anonymous 06:52 was deleted from the TOTW thread by thecollective. here it is below 06:52's comment which was left in as if 'unanswered' by thecollective, in the TOTW thread on 'projects'

Anonymous (not verified)
Fri, 10/27/2017 - 06:52
Where the fuck's Emile got to
Where the fuck's Emile got to this week?

"The idea of local projects is a semantic falsehood derived from a dualistic scientific worldview promoting the delusion of a separation between the local and the universal, when in fact from an intuitive point of view the entire universe is local to any one of its points and locality is an effect of the prejudices of the observer as shown by Mach..."

you called? ... with respect to 'local projects'

as Tolstoy pointed out, the government considers rebellion a 'local project', but you can't really separate this project of rebellion from ongoing relational dynamics of the community and Russia and beyond. intuitively, we understand that 'everything is in flux' and every point in that flux 'is the flux'. there is nothing in a flow that is 'local' other than thanks to the lantern carried by the observer that casts light on a limited region of the flow, making it 'appear' to be a local feature-in-itself; i.e. local comes about by way of observer subjectivity. scientific reality derives from such observer subjectivity.

why would anyone want to declare a 'local project' to be a thing-in-itself?

well, if the government declares a 'local slave rebellion' to be a 'local project', then the government and the monopoly landlords whose extorting of slave labour from the unlanded is the deeper source of relational tensions that induce the rebellion are not going to be included in the inquiry. thus, the causal source of the rebellion will be found to lie within 'the local project' in the agency of causal agents known as rebels who will be deemed fully and solely responsible for the rebellion.

governments everywhere can celebrate the fact that even the people who are abused and exploited with impunity by this 'semantic falsehood' of 'local projects' [every system is included in a relational suprasystem] continue to be 'hoodwinked by science' as tolstoy said, so that rebels are found to be the cause of rebellion while our intuition screams out that it is the abusive, slave-labour extorting practices of landlords that sources [inductively actualizes] rebellion.

tolstoy tried to get people interested in how science hoodwinks us and so did nietzsche. i have tried various ways of expressing this, including citing from Poincare on how science synthesizes 'locality' where there is none; e.g;

“Origin of Mathematical Physics.—Let us penetrate further, and study more closely the conditions that have permitted the development of mathematical physics. We observe at once that the efforts of scientists have always aimed to resolve the complex phenomenon directly given by experiment into a very large number of elementary phenomena.
.
This is done in three different ways: first, in time. Instead of embracing in its entirety the progressive development of a phenomenon, the aim is simply to connect each instant with the instant immediately preceding it. It is admitted that the actual state of the world depends only on the immediate past, without being directly influenced, so to speak, by the memory of a distant past. Thanks to this postulate, instead of studying directly the whole succession of phenomena, it is possible to confine ourselves to writing its ‘differential equation.’ For Kepler’s laws we substitute Newton’s law.

the "progressive development of a phenomenon" such as rebellion includes the monopolization of common living space land, and the use of that monopoly to extract slave labour from unlanded peasants that gives rise to growing relational tensions that induce rebellion. but science says that we can chop out local events and solve what is going on in them and that this will deliver the 'correct answer'.

1. science says that the rebels are the cause of rebellion.

2. intuition says that landowner extortion of slave-labour is the deeper cause of rebellion and that rebel actions are a secondary or derivative phenomena [the genesis of rebellious actions is inductively actualized by epigenetic influence in an epigenetic-genetic nonduality]..

what do you say? i.e. do you agree with 1. or 2?

Anonymous (not verified)
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/047/536/562.png

I honestly don't give a fuck whether 1 or 2, it's metaphysical masturbation. I care about getting shit done, not about whether my getting shit done is due to myself as a self-caused agent or the epigenetic effects of something which is invisibly causing me to do it. Seriously, what is the *real political significance* of the duality-nonduality difference?

emile
re 'the 'real political significance?' of duality vs nonduality

nonduality acknowledges the physical reality wherein inductive influence actualizes genetic expression whereas duality does not.

we see a lot of slaves picking cotton and inhabitant-habitat duality says that the dynamics of these slaves comes from their own internal genetic agency. nonduality says that this slave-labour is extorted from the slaves, inductively actualized by the relational dynamics of the habitat in which they are included.

science is dualist and being-based so it reduces the dynamic, semantically (by noun-verb constructs) and affirms that the slave's actions derive from his internal processes; i.e. the inhabitant is independent of the habitat.

but it is the inhabitant-slave's dependency on the habitat [food, shelter, clothing] that allows those who have a monopoly on these things to inductively actualize and shape [extort] his actions and deeds. this is physically real, the habitat is the teat of nature that keeps man going so long as he is able to draw from it. the sailboat can't sail without drawing from winds and currents. it is these habitat based epigenetic influences that inductively actualize our genetic expression. the actions of sailboats do not jumpstart from the sailboat's own 'genetic agency' nor do the actions of human inhabitants jumpstart from the human's own 'genetic agency'. epigenetic influence inductively actualizes genetic expression in our physically experienced intuitive reality (PEIR)

humans are self-actualized notionally by their own 'genetic agency' ONLY IN SEMANTICALLY CONSTRUCTED SCIENTIFIC REALITY. (SCSR).

if people want to continue to confuse scientific reality for reality then the politics will continue to get really confused as everyone thinks that people's actions, like the slaves in the field, come from the people, without seeing people's actions are actualized by outside-inward inductive influences, like landlord extortion and/or the inductive call of nature. therefore, when there is rebellion, the scientific reality portrays this as the work of rebels [their jumpstart genetic agency], without acknowledging the inductive actualizing influence of the habitat that is controlled by a land-monopolizing elite who squeeze off access to essential resources and extort begging and slave labour in exchange for limited access.

the political significance is that in acknowledging nonduality and thus putting intuition in its natural precedence over reason, the rebellion is never seen as being jumpstart authored by 'rebels' but is seen as being inductively actualized by land-monopolizing elitists, ... so the rebel never goes on trial, never gets convicted/condemned and never goes to jail.

is that not politically significant to you?

Anonymous (not verified)
Explain how believing that

Explain how believing that resistance is inductively actualised by outside forces (rather than genetic agency) will keep us out of jail.

As far as I can see, this only works if you manage to convince the judges or the landowners of this - and even then, they'd probably fall back on "compatibilism" or "behavioral conditioning" (believe me - I've actually had the "what if free will is an illusion" argument with statists). Tip: you aren't going to find judges or landowners on Anarchist News.

Anonymous (not verified)
Tip: you aren't going to find

Tip: you aren't going to find judges or landowners on Anarchist News.

Idk what about those people who used all their porn money to buy a few acres somewhere

Anonymous (not verified)
Correction: you aren't going

Correction: you aren't going to find landlords who are causing peasant rebellion by oppressing peasants on anarchist news (or at least, I hope not).

emile
the power of 'the word' in our projects

anarchists such as RA Wilson have hatched projects to promote the use of language without words that signify 'being'. this is a project that needs to be restarted.

words that signify 'being' remove our intuitive understanding of inhabitant-habitat 'nonduality' from our semantic reality constructions and constrain us to a mechanistic 'scientific reality' which obscures [occludes] our physically experienced intuitive reality.

1. nietzsche, like lamarck and rolph, captured evolution in terms of epigenetic-genetic nonduality wherein epigenetic influence immanent in the relational dynamics of the habitat, inductively actualized evolutionary genetic expression within the habitat. this meant that the diverse multiplicity of forms arising within the habitat were habitat-induced rather than inhabitant-pushed, agreeing with the physical reality of our actual experience wherein the habitat (universe) is 'one thing' which is continually gathering and regathering innovative forms within itself. forms have no 'being' or thing-in-itselfness in this understanding.

2. darwin built his theory by imputing 'being' to forms, splitting apart 'inhabitant' from 'habitat' and notionally endowing the 'beings' with internal genetic agency to modify themselves, adding into this recipe 'random chance variations' along with 'natural selection' whereby the modified 'being' either persist or disappear depending on how well equipped it was to 'compete' in a collection of being-based forms constituting the 'habitat'. as stephen jay gould pointed out using the analogy of hitting-fielding nonduality in baseball, the rise and fall of a hitter's performance is not just due to the 'genetic agency' of the hitter, but is at the same time due to continuing variations in the accommodating/ disaccommodating reception of the habitat. this is already support for lamarck's and rolph/nietzsche's model since it dissolves the 'being'-based notion that the form is fully and solely responsible for its own development, actions and deeds and suggests the re-interpretation of forms as epigenetic-genetic nondualities in the manner of storm-in-flow nonduality.

a project group of indigenous aboriginal anarchists employs the understandings in (1.) in organizing their undertaking; i.e. they will see themselves as an epigenetic-genetic nonduality, as do exceptionally performing teams in non-indigenous euro-american culture. by letting their project team identity 'float' and be continually reshaped by the needs of friends, family, brother projects, host space, this epigenetic pull that is shaping their genetic expression gives them a 'design for evolution', in contrast to 'normal' euro-american project teams that see themselves as 'things-in-themselves' who are 'fully and solely causally responsible for their own development, actions and accomplishments [as 'powerboaters' rather than 'sailboaters', the latter deriving their power and steerage (direction) from the relational dynamics they share inclusion in.

there is a choice here, as Goethe says in Faust, ... between "Im Anfang war der Tat' and 'Im Anfang war das Wort'. (do things come from actions or from words?). If we name things like project teams and members of project teams, we implicitly fix their identity and impute to them jumpstart authorship of their own development, actions and accomplishments [powerboater style]. whereas, if we suspend naming them, we can see them immersed in the world dynamic as inhabitant-habitat nondualities aka 'relational forms in the evolving flow-continuum'.

anarchist organization opts for "Im Anfang war der Tat", the nietzschean intuition-over-reason option where in we suspend our fixed identity formal position, status, qualifications and let our creative potentials be pulled into blossom [genetic expression] by the needs of the relational matrix we are included in.,

However, 'science' insists on organizing things according to "Im Anfang war das Wort", e.g. portraying the body as being powered and directed by its named internal parts, and portraying the project team as being powered and directed [powerboater fashion] by its named members and attributing to each named 'component' their own fixed identity, status, and jumpstart genetic agency.

euro-american society is characterized by its addiction to keeping 'science' in an unnatural primacy over intuition, hence the need for projects of the RA Wilson type, to dissolve fixed identity status.

Anonymous (not verified)
>by letting their project

>by letting their project team identity 'float' and be continually reshaped by the needs of friends, family, brother projects, host space, this epigenetic pull that is shaping their genetic expression gives them a 'design for evolution'

First question. When does this nondual locality known as "Emile" let itself float and be continually reshaped by the needs of Anarchist News and other contributors, instead of repetitively pushing "its own" agenda and crying foul when it doesn't get its way?

Second question. In a world where our immediate environment is dualistic neoliberal capitalism, won't a "floating" identity responsive to its immediate environment necessarily become simply a puppet of the dualistic cybernetic network?

For example, an anarchist responsive to their neighborhood context in nearly every area will avoid having loud parties, doing graffiti, blocking roads, interfering with community-supported police operations... in short, will be undisruptive of the capitalist order.

I don't care if it's a powerboat or a sailboat, as long as it sails away from capitalist conformity.

emile
reply to #28

you wrote;

First question. When does this nondual locality known as "Emile" let itself float and be continually reshaped by the needs of Anarchist News and other contributors, instead of repetitively pushing "its own" agenda and crying foul when it doesn't get its way?

you, me, anyone, can put ourselves into intuitive reality and/or into scientific reality. intuitive reality is informed by our physical experience of our inhabitant-habitat nonduality. e.g. we are included in relational social dynamics that inductively actualize, orchestrate and shape our actions. when you see rebellion, scientific reality depicts what is going on in terms of the actions of rebels which derives from their own internal genetic agency. intuitive reality understands that these rebel behaviours are inductively actualized, orchestrated and shaped from the outside-inward [epigenetically], for example, by a landlord that is extorting slave-labours and/or prostitution and/or other demeaning behaviours from 'have-nots'.

Western moral judgement is based on visualizing things in scientific reality which attributes the actions of an individual fully and solely to the individual through whom the actions manifest. Thus, not only is the 'rebel' held fully and solely responsible for the destruction and injury of rebellion, the landlord is held fully and solely responsible for the production from his land and can be celebrated as a pillar of community even as his abused slave-labourers suffer on the brink of starvation.

Intuitive reality gives a beyond-good-and-evil view of the same phenomena, acknowledging that rebellion is inductively actualized within an inhabitant-habitat nonduality wherein roots of the sourcing of phenomena draw from the depths of the transforming relational continuum [relational dynamics are the invisible backplane sourcing secondary phenomena of manifest people dynamics. justice in this case is restorative and seeks to restore balance and harmony in the relational social community dynamics.

your question concerns forming relational collectives such as project teams or communities, my views concern the vital importance of keeping intuitive reality into its natural precedence over scientific reality. There are people in Anews that do this but what is popular is to put scientific reality into an unnatural precedence over intuitive reality. you can't form a restorative justice peacemaking circle with members who insist on putting scientific reality first, as goes hand-in-hand-with moral judgement and retribution. peacemaking circles form when people decide to put intuitive reality into precedence over scientific reality.

i have been there, i am there. i wouldn't have it any other way, and like many others, i try to share its benefits, and what may be a bit different, i try to share understandings [from Mach, Nietzsche, Bohm etc.] on the source and impact of dysfunction associated with putting scientific reality into an unnatural precedence over intuitive reality.

so, i am floating and i do and will continue to participate in peacemaking circles [or intuitive reality teams] and let the cultivating of balance and harmony take precedence over my rational perspective.

but as those who opt for the peacemaking circles of restorative justice know, it isn't a peacemaking circle if its participants are still putting scientific reality in precedence, and making rational-moral judgements that block the transforming of relations as is the source of the peacemaking.

“Spirituality helps to connect and bind us to each other as a community, as a tribe and as a nation. It clarifies relationships and is what makes healing happen.” —Judge Joseph Flies-Away
.
"The Navajo phrase hozhooji naat’aanii very loosely translates as peacemaking, but really means something more like “people talking together to re-form relationships with each other and the universe,”
for more, see (click on) the following;
Restorative Justice Practices of Native American, First Nation and Other Indigenous People of North America: Part One

as far as 'crying foul', whether one calls the split in approaches to understanding 'anarchism' as 'pragmatist-idealist' versus 'realist' [these are well known] or intuitive-over-scientific versus scientific-over-intuitive [Nietzschean], there is an evident popularity of the 'scientific-over intuitive' commentaries on the issues that is accompanied by a popular dislike of emile's and a few others 'intuitive-over-scientific' commentaries, which seems to sometimes sway editorial action re my posts, a fact that i have queried thecollective on from time to time, as in this forum thread.

you wrote;

"Second question. In a world where our immediate environment is dualistic neoliberal capitalism, won't a "floating" identity responsive to its immediate environment necessarily become simply a puppet of the dualistic cybernetic network?

as in the answer to your first question, i am speaking of two different realities available to us [PEIR intuitive reality and SCSR scientific reality] and related ways of organizing for project team activity and/or dispute resolution. the popular mode of organizing is to put scientific reality into (unnatural) primacy over intuitive reality. my writing is to expose the fundamental flaws in that popular [in Western civilization] approach which is really what is taking Western society to hell in a hand-basket as Nietzsche and Tolstoy have already belabored.

letting the identity float opens the door to non-mechanical teamwork and organizing (anarchy). the holdouts who can't or won't let go of putting scientific reality first would not want to participate in a team or community that puts intuitive reality in precedence over scientific reality, and the intuitive-reality-first team or community is where those that put intuitive reality first come together. as restorative justice comes to non-indigenous communities, anglos learn how to let go of their scientific reality first 'attitudes' which is incompatible with restorative justice.

the beyond good-and-evil team and community organizing approach comprehend that one must decouple the individuals from his actions. the actions that manifest through us do not originate in us;

“The western law way is to punish you, so that you don’t repeat the behavior. But the Navajo way is to focus on the individual. You separate the action from the person.” —Robert Yazzie

if you want to rehabilitate the child soldier, you acknowledge that relational tensions originating in the community are venting through him.

if you want to get rid of capitalism, form teams and communities by putting intuitive reality in its natural precedence over scientific reality. scientific reality is blind to nonduality. intuitive reality is awareness of nonduality and thus awareness of how epigenetic influence inductively [e.g. landlord extortion of slave-labours] actualizes rebellion and therefore is aware of the error in imputing the source of actions to the individual through whom they manifest.

this is the same recipe for de-mechanizing the organizing of teams and communities that is implicit in Tolstoy's 'The Kingdom of God is Within You'.

Anonymous (not verified)
I'm gonna ignore all the non

I'm gonna ignore all the non-answers and boring repetition.

>you, me, anyone, can put ourselves into intuitive reality and/or into scientific reality

That statement implies genetic agency, and ignores that genetic agency is actualised epigenetically in a complex relational matrix of inhabitant-habitat nonduality. And this is the glaring contradiction of your theory which you won't recognise.

By your own theory, we can put ourselves in one or the other only if epigenetic causes make us.

>so, i am floating and i do and will continue to participate in peacemaking circles [or intuitive reality teams] and let the cultivating of balance and harmony take precedence over my rational perspective

… but only when the other members of the circle have an intuitive rather than scientific worldview, i.e. when your existing (rational) perspective and ego are not threatened by their (different) beliefs and practices. In other words, you allow your existing views to take precedence over yourself, without the views themselves shifting.

By the way, this kind of communitarian self-renunciation for the good of the (imaginary) collective is not at all logically derivable from Emilean epistemology/ontology, as is shown by the fact that solitary, survival-oriented animals exist. One is no more alienated by being like a honey badger than by being like a sheep.

By the way, indigenous restorative justice relies on the fact that people *are in* multiplex mutual aid relationships already (see Bob Black's piece on this). People in capitalist society *are not* in these relationships unless they create them by an act of will (interdependence through a globalised economy does not create these kinds of personal bonds).

>if you want to rehabilitate the child soldier, you acknowledge that relational tensions originating in the community are venting through him

I'm somewhat sympathetic to your attempts to get rid of punitive reasoning by relying on deterministic causality and the rectification of relational tensions (rather than individuals). But, you're failing to see the central problem here. You are still taking an adversarial, punitive, dualistic approach to people you deem to be within the “scientific worldview”. You do not engage respectfully with others' points of view. And your general ontology has no place for your failure to apply it in this case (unlike, say, Deleuzian ontology with the univocal/biunivocal distinction). If your holist theory applies in all cases, then people who accept a scientific worldview are also doing so because this is the way in which energies in the relational field are venting through them. You're restoring the idea of determinate local mental agency by blaming the scientific worldview on determinate local mental agency.

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