Speaker 1: It could happen. Here is the podcast that you're listening
Speaker 1: to right now. I'm Robert Evans. All right, that's that's
Speaker 1: my job done. What are we What are we doing?
Speaker 1: What are we doing today? Hey? What's up? Hey? Andrew?
Speaker 1: Back at it again with another podcast. UM. Today, we're
Speaker 1: doing something a little bit different from the previous episodes
Speaker 1: that I've done. We're having a bit more of an
Speaker 1: open discussion about certain book that has been passed around
Speaker 1: for about a decade now and as polarized UM members
Speaker 1: of the anarchist community. UM for it that way, UM.
Speaker 1: Today we'll be talking about the book the infamous uh
Speaker 1: polemic Desert by Anonymous. For those who uh, you know,
Speaker 1: not aware of this extremely controversial text. Desert is a
Speaker 1: nihilist anarchist text who is published in two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: that is mainly directed at other anarchists and seeks to
Speaker 1: address issues of climate collapse and revolution. It became somewhat
Speaker 1: of a meme to tell folks to read Dessert. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure when that was, but I just remember scene.
Speaker 1: It's a lot um I think in yeah around read
Speaker 1: Desert became a name yeah yeah, all over Twitter and
Speaker 1: Instagram and Reddit, but of course, being a thing that
Speaker 1: exists on the Internet, people who naturally became torn on
Speaker 1: the subject of it. And so there are a lot
Speaker 1: of perspectives and opinions and think pieces about desert, some
Speaker 1: more or less accurate than others. But we are here
Speaker 1: to discuss the book, all personal experiences reading it, things
Speaker 1: we think it gets right and wrong, and what we
Speaker 1: could potentially looen going forward, so I would see the
Speaker 1: floor is yours, whoever wants to go first. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan of the quote that the book
Speaker 1: takes it or that the that it takes its name from,
Speaker 1: which comes from you know, Tacitus, who was a dude
Speaker 1: writing in the Roman period Um, and the exact quote
Speaker 1: that it comes from is and he's talking. Tacitus is
Speaker 1: talking about the Roman Empire, robbers of the world. Now
Speaker 1: that the earth is insufficient for their all devastating hands,
Speaker 1: they probe even the sea. If their enemy is rich,
Speaker 1: they are greedy. If he is poor, they thirst for dominion.
Speaker 1: Neither East nor West has satisfied them alone. Of mankind,
Speaker 1: they are equally covetous of poverty and wealth, robbery, slaughter,
Speaker 1: and plunder. They falsely name empire, they make a desert
Speaker 1: and they call it peace. Huh, goodass quote. It is
Speaker 1: a it is a solid Yeah, And obviously I think
Speaker 1: people living in the shadows of every empire that's ever
Speaker 1: existed can identify with that quote. Um, it's it's a
Speaker 1: powerful kind of central idea to hang your extended essay.
Speaker 1: I don't really know what the best term to refer
Speaker 1: to it as. Yeah, it's it's it's it's a long essay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a very long essay. As we talked about kind
Speaker 1: of coming into this, it's extremely two thousand tens um
Speaker 1: three Arab Spring pre all the big uprisings and revolts
Speaker 1: we had in twenty nineteen, and Um, there's definitely some
Speaker 1: stuff that it gets very right. And I think kind
Speaker 1: of one of the ways in which it's had an
Speaker 1: impact on me is kind of I've I've thought about
Speaker 1: what happens to sort of culture as the result of
Speaker 1: this kind of Hollywood engine that is heavily tied up
Speaker 1: with the United States military Industrial complex UM as a
Speaker 1: process of desertification of ideas and the ability to like
Speaker 1: conceive of of of new futures. UM. That said, I
Speaker 1: I don't really I haven't reread it in a very
Speaker 1: long time and haven't really felt um called to in
Speaker 1: in many ways because I do think I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think there's an extent to which it's been kind
Speaker 1: of left behind. Um yeah, some of the things that
Speaker 1: have happened since I think. Yeah, UM, I will say
Speaker 1: that as someone who really came into my owners an
Speaker 1: archist in like, although I had identified with it before, um,
Speaker 1: when I had read the book, Um, I think it
Speaker 1: was in late late so when I read the book
Speaker 1: first time, I read it and honestly, um, there was
Speaker 1: some good, some add some some very outdated stuff, and
Speaker 1: also some stuff that I don't know. Maybe the author
Speaker 1: felt it was like groundbreak and at the time, but
Speaker 1: you know, at this present stage just feels like common
Speaker 1: knowledge sense, you know, I mean it was, it was
Speaker 1: groundbreaking in a way for like climate realism, right, like
Speaker 1: this was this was written before you know, this is
Speaker 1: written before climate levy thing. This was written before um,
Speaker 1: the uninhabitable Earth. This was written before a lot of
Speaker 1: kind of the texts that view climate change is an
Speaker 1: absolute Like this was written one year before hyper objects,
Speaker 1: Which is really interesting actually because you know, the whole
Speaker 1: prepence of that book is that climate change is done,
Speaker 1: like it happened, where we're like there's no turning back
Speaker 1: the clock. And the Desert was written even before that,
Speaker 1: like it was. It was one of the first things
Speaker 1: now and of course it's it's it's much more niche,
Speaker 1: but like it was. If I if I look back
Speaker 1: in books that have like impacted me, it was it's
Speaker 1: one of the first books like that came out, like
Speaker 1: timeline wise to take climate changes, like yeah, it's there's
Speaker 1: no saving it, like there's no living in the two thousand's,
Speaker 1: there's no living in the nineties. Again, it's like things
Speaker 1: are like the world's not going to end, but things
Speaker 1: are going to get worse, right like and that, and
Speaker 1: that is kind of a big, big part of the
Speaker 1: book because it's it's also it's also not pro collapse
Speaker 1: like it it doesn't take collapse is an absolute. It
Speaker 1: doesn't take. It doesn't it doesn't subscribe to global collapse.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the misconceptions I think people have
Speaker 1: about them. Yeah, that they just assume it's like this
Speaker 1: collapse dumorous like mr. Rupic kind of text, but which
Speaker 1: I did not read it as that. I first started
Speaker 1: around this same time you did, UM, And I read
Speaker 1: it as a part of a lot of books I
Speaker 1: was reading to prep for the show when we when
Speaker 1: we were writing our first five episodes on like on
Speaker 1: climate change and like the Crumbles. So I read it,
Speaker 1: read it as a part of my kind of general
Speaker 1: research and yeah, like at that point it was already
Speaker 1: kind of mimified to be like, you know, like an
Speaker 1: anarcho nihilist like Dumer Manifesto. And I read it, I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's not what it's saying at all. It's actually once
Speaker 1: i'd read it, I was like, I was really taking
Speaker 1: it back at how how easily um, popular perceptions of
Speaker 1: a piece of media good um, I mean honestly corrupted
Speaker 1: beyond recognition. Yeah, you know, like if people are a
Speaker 1: bunch of people are telling you know it's that about
Speaker 1: is in text or whatever, you know, it's kind of shake,
Speaker 1: it kind of shakes the opposite like actually consumed for
Speaker 1: yourself and then realize, how did you all get that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: how did you read that out of it? It is
Speaker 1: really interesting because I'm not even sure if they did
Speaker 1: read out of it, or if that was the perception
Speaker 1: they had going into it, So they read it through
Speaker 1: that lens, and that lens basically you know, changed the
Speaker 1: text in their heads to fit that thing, because yea,
Speaker 1: it is really interesting how how it is so associated
Speaker 1: with like dumerism um. Yet if you like, engage in
Speaker 1: good faith with the text, it's very much not a
Speaker 1: Doomer manifesto anyway, although there are aspects of it that
Speaker 1: I am um that I think attitude wise, that I
Speaker 1: am critical of. But I think Chris was going to
Speaker 1: say sometimes, yeah, so I was just like, I, I
Speaker 1: really I've always not liked this book, Like I read
Speaker 1: it back, and I think she doesn'teen when it was
Speaker 1: first sort of like coming back, yeah, And I didn't
Speaker 1: like it then, and I read it this morning and
Speaker 1: I like it even less now than I did then,
Speaker 1: And I think, I think, I actually I actually okay. So, like,
Speaker 1: I think it's true that most of the text doesn't
Speaker 1: do the duomer thing, but I think I understand where
Speaker 1: people got it from, because you know, you have quotes
Speaker 1: in this like, uh, here here's one. Yet I can
Speaker 1: already hear the accusations from my own camp, accusations of
Speaker 1: deserting the cause of revolution, deserting the struggle for another world,
Speaker 1: such accusations are correct. I would rejoin that such millinarian
Speaker 1: and progressive myths are at the core of the expansion
Speaker 1: of power. And this is this is what I really like.
Speaker 1: I think from an ecological perspective, it's sort of okay.
Speaker 1: I strongly dislike Desert as an anarchist text because I
Speaker 1: think that's just wrong. I think, I think, I think
Speaker 1: there's there there's there's there's an ingrained defeatism in it
Speaker 1: that is so strong that it it it just it
Speaker 1: like warps the author's perception of the past. Like you
Speaker 1: get these things where he's talking about these these kind
Speaker 1: of he's talking about like the you know, what you
Speaker 1: call the classical anarchist movement from roughly like eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: two really sort of ends with the defeat of the
Speaker 1: anarchists in Spain and like seven and and he you know,
Speaker 1: they say things like from Spain pre nineteen thirty six
Speaker 1: to the Jewish anarchists in North America, the illegalist of France,
Speaker 1: and the Italian anarchosenty close to Argentina. The habitants of
Speaker 1: anarchist counter societies were always, by definition active minorities. The
Speaker 1: minorities may have gotten larger in an instructionary moments, but
Speaker 1: they remained at minorities always and that's just wrong. It's
Speaker 1: it's factually wrong. Like these these movements were not minorities,
Speaker 1: like the like the entire like the like the largest
Speaker 1: union in France was the CG like in the early
Speaker 1: Action hundred was the the you just see it this
Speaker 1: deep that all all of the French, Spanish and Portuguese
Speaker 1: country speaking countries have a they have one union that's
Speaker 1: called the U G C and one union it's called
Speaker 1: the CG T. And I can't remember which ones which,
Speaker 1: but like like that was that was the largest union
Speaker 1: in France, and it was the syndicalist union right like
Speaker 1: it was like and there's you know the same thing
Speaker 1: with Argentina, right for a like for a while was
Speaker 1: the largest union in Argentina. And I think and this
Speaker 1: this is sort of my problem with this, which is
Speaker 1: that you know, this is a person who's basically like
Speaker 1: they talked about, like they are born in the seventies
Speaker 1: and they've they they're writing the steals in eleven in
Speaker 1: just the midst of the collapse of sort of like
Speaker 1: the complete and total destruction of the old anarchist movement, right,
Speaker 1: the anarchist movement that had been born out of sort
Speaker 1: of like the Zapatistas and the anti globalization movements. And
Speaker 1: they've been beaten so badly that you know, I mean
Speaker 1: they were crushed, they were completely destroyed, and they've been
Speaker 1: beaten so badly that they they can't they literally can't
Speaker 1: imagine winning and think that like like revolution in general,
Speaker 1: like is essentially is a secular theology. They repeat this
Speaker 1: over and over and over again. It's like revolution is
Speaker 1: the theology, Revolution is a myth. And it's like and
Speaker 1: this is this is something that's just a product of defeat.
Speaker 1: It's not a product of sort of taking seriously the
Speaker 1: conditions that are emerging around them. And you know, I
Speaker 1: was talking about this before the recording. It's like right
Speaker 1: after this is written, it's you get the movement of
Speaker 1: the squares and then you get occupied, and it's like
Speaker 1: basically like every major city in the world goes into revolt.
Speaker 1: The revolts are anarchists inspired. And you know, and the desert,
Speaker 1: like this is why Dessert vanishes for like six or
Speaker 1: seven years, because desert is a piece that's written like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a piece that's that's only happens in
Speaker 1: a in a very specific part of a revolutionary cycle,
Speaker 1: which is when like every everything has been crushed, all
Speaker 1: resistance has been crushed, everyone's losing hope, and then everyone
Speaker 1: starts reading dessert again and then the revolutions restart, and
Speaker 1: and at that point, like once once once there's like,
Speaker 1: you know, two thousand people in the streets again like
Speaker 1: fighting the cops, it becomes less and less sort of
Speaker 1: like like that, that part of its analysis becomes less
Speaker 1: and less relevant, until you know, inevitably everyone like there's
Speaker 1: there's a defeat and then everyone goes sort of like
Speaker 1: and I think I think that's why it has the
Speaker 1: duomer rep because it's it's it's the text that people
Speaker 1: read when you've been beaten in the streets. See, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's an interesting look at it because I mean,
Speaker 1: I definitely agree with the revolution is an idea, like
Speaker 1: is a thing like I I specifically within the context
Speaker 1: of the United States, which I believe that's what the
Speaker 1: books trying to mostly focus on. They do bring up
Speaker 1: other parts of the world and stuff, um, but it's
Speaker 1: definitely written by in a by an American like citizen
Speaker 1: and that that that is I mean, I mean that
Speaker 1: that could actually be wrong. Um. It may not be
Speaker 1: written by an American, but I in terms of reading it,
Speaker 1: it is kind of through like a very like Western
Speaker 1: lens of like revolutions not happening here. Um. And I
Speaker 1: definitely sympathize and agree with that viewpoint. And I mean
Speaker 1: if if you're in a point of being like it
Speaker 1: was two US and eleven then occupied happened and like yeah,
Speaker 1: but occupied in't. But that that also fits like every
Speaker 1: every attempt has not succeeded in this country did to
Speaker 1: get any kind of big, meaningful change that we can
Speaker 1: push towards something that's like post capitalist. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I do think I think it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's mostly targeting people specifically like communists um or Marks
Speaker 1: Lendonist who like are just waiting around for the revolution
Speaker 1: to happen and then don't do anything like that. Right,
Speaker 1: that is that but but but but but I think
Speaker 1: this is this is why it's a text that's like
Speaker 1: that's not good for the moment, because our problem isn't that,
Speaker 1: like like the problem right now isn't that there's no
Speaker 1: one like there's no uprising on the horizon, Like everyone's
Speaker 1: completely beaten down. No one's ever going to go into
Speaker 1: his treats again. Our problem is that like there's just
Speaker 1: there's there's there's there's periodic uprisings everywhere, and every single
Speaker 1: time everyone is caught off guard, and every single time,
Speaker 1: no one is able to actually sort of mobilize off
Speaker 1: of it. And you know, like like like no, no one,
Speaker 1: no one's been able to like pivot it into something
Speaker 1: that's actually like transformative. But but but but I think that
Speaker 1: that's a very different problem then the problem that desert
Speaker 1: is because desert has already abandoned the possibility that an
Speaker 1: uprising can win. That's I mean, it's yeah. And then
Speaker 1: let's specifically been the idea of like global revolution, right,
Speaker 1: that is, that is the thing that specifically targeting there's
Speaker 1: things smaller specific they're saying, like smaller local things actually
Speaker 1: can't succeed in a lot of ways. But they're trying
Speaker 1: to tie this idea of global revolution is like a
Speaker 1: pacifying idea, right just waiting around for this to happen
Speaker 1: and tying that to this at the time much more
Speaker 1: niche idea. Now it's now it's way more popular. But
Speaker 1: this idea of like global collapse and how people think
Speaker 1: if they can people think believing in global collapse is
Speaker 1: smarter than believing in global revolution. They think it's more realistic.
Speaker 1: But the book saying no, this is this idea of
Speaker 1: global collapse actually falls under all the same issues that
Speaker 1: global revolution has. I think i'd want to um sort
Speaker 1: of comments here um with regard to like the defeat
Speaker 1: is sort of reading um in the text. I understand
Speaker 1: that reading um. I mean personally, I distinguished in like
Speaker 1: defeatism and dumerism, and I always think, like my own
Speaker 1: personality and my own perspective kind of like inoculates me
Speaker 1: in a way from like adopting that kind of defeatist
Speaker 1: attitude towards um, you know, change. But I don't think
Speaker 1: the book is entirely um, you know, dismissive of like revolution. Um.
Speaker 1: It just I think the main thrust of it is
Speaker 1: that it's critically the idea of like one global revolution,
Speaker 1: one global collapse. What it really emphasizes is that, you know,
Speaker 1: climate change brings new possibilities for new anarchies plural to
Speaker 1: develop worldwide and responds changing circumstances. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: you know, in some areas things are going to get
Speaker 1: worse than some areas things are going to get better.
Speaker 1: And it's not that really one broadbrush could be applied
Speaker 1: to the entire earth, but I think, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think like this, this is another thing that they're really
Speaker 1: guilty of, especially like there's an entire section in here
Speaker 1: where they just keep writing about Africa and it's like well,
Speaker 1: and then you know, and they'll get pressed on it
Speaker 1: and they'll be like, no, no, we mean sub Saharan Africa,
Speaker 1: and it's like, what are you talking like. They they
Speaker 1: won't name countries, they won't name movements, they won't name people.
Speaker 1: It's just they'll just write something about the whole of
Speaker 1: Sub Saharan Africa. And it's just like, well, I think
Speaker 1: that's evidence of the kind of of what Garrison was
Speaker 1: talking about this, right, And this is something you see
Speaker 1: all over the place with people writing about politics, with
Speaker 1: people trying to write about like particularly revolutionary politics, UM
Speaker 1: in a global sense, and I think it's usually a
Speaker 1: mistake to do that, UM for the reasons we've kind
Speaker 1: of discussed. Any time I see a left wing even
Speaker 1: as somebody who I think is generally on point. Who
Speaker 1: starts talking about, for example, like extending their theories about
Speaker 1: revolutionary politics to places I happen to know just a
Speaker 1: little bit about, it's always very clear like, oh you
Speaker 1: don't know shit about Syria. Oh you don't know shit
Speaker 1: about Libya. Oh you don't know shit about Angle like um.
Speaker 1: And that's and that's like not even a moral failing.
Speaker 1: It's just that it's impost It's it's impossible really to
Speaker 1: have in depth knowledge of like what's actually going on
Speaker 1: in those racism, what's going on in those revolutions. It's
Speaker 1: why people default so much to the whole. Well, whatever
Speaker 1: side the US is on must be the bad side,
Speaker 1: and whatever side the Russians on must be the good side.
Speaker 1: It's the easiest way to look at that ship. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't I think that's. I think that's a worthwhile
Speaker 1: critique to make, and it's a critique to make any
Speaker 1: time that it happens. Um. I agree with Garrison and
Speaker 1: with Andrew that I think the thing that is that
Speaker 1: desert gets right. Um. And the thing that I've seen
Speaker 1: in my own life is that like the opportunities we
Speaker 1: should be looking for are not suddenly that some sort
Speaker 1: of global revolution sweeps all of the things we don't
Speaker 1: like out of power and magically institutes something better comprehensively
Speaker 1: across the globe. It's it's it's room for little anarchies.
Speaker 1: It's what we saw in northeast Syria, right where the
Speaker 1: government pulls out and people have an opportunity to do
Speaker 1: something not perfect, but better. And I think that is
Speaker 1: that's kind of one of the things we talked about
Speaker 1: a lot on this show. That's why a mutual aid
Speaker 1: is valuable, It's why building these connections are valuable. It's because, um,
Speaker 1: as things crumble, there will be opportunities two in local areas,
Speaker 1: piecemeal institute and and push through for more just and
Speaker 1: and better ways of living. Um And I think that
Speaker 1: if you're looking at kind of the broad level potentially
Speaker 1: optimistic point is that when you have enough of those
Speaker 1: and when they spread well enough, and if communication is
Speaker 1: good enough, maybe the things that work will get adopted
Speaker 1: on a wider uh scale. And there's always the opportunity
Speaker 1: that when enough, when ideas spread far enough, they have
Speaker 1: a tipping point and and they go viral, you know,
Speaker 1: so to speak. But I I I don't I think
Speaker 1: that While there's a lot of specifics that Desert gets wrong,
Speaker 1: I do think they were ahead of the curve and
Speaker 1: recognizing that, and I think it's it's a more productive
Speaker 1: way to look at the idea of revolutionary change. Then
Speaker 1: we're going to finally have nineteen seventeen. But everywhere, you know,
Speaker 1: m throughout to the Africa chapter. The impression that I
Speaker 1: got while reading that chapter, and I think the book
Speaker 1: itself references Um Samba Um. I got the impression that
Speaker 1: the author had read UM Afghan Anarchism, History of a
Speaker 1: movement by Sam Member and they were just kind of
Speaker 1: like inspired by that, I would say, because as I
Speaker 1: do point out, they didn't like specify the specific cultures,
Speaker 1: which is an issue considering, you know, the tendency that
Speaker 1: Westerners have of you know, being to Africa this large
Speaker 1: brush as if it's you know, all one way or
Speaker 1: the other. Um. But I think what we do see now,
Speaker 1: UM is you know, from the Horn of Africa to
Speaker 1: South Africa to Nigeria too, I mean recently Sudan. I believe, Um,
Speaker 1: there are Africans, smaller number organizing under the mount of anarchism,
Speaker 1: and they are anarchic elements that continue to persist on
Speaker 1: the continent. Yeah, I mean I think that's like, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean one of the things that they sort of
Speaker 1: got they got right, was about how like this the
Speaker 1: sort of the the sort of renewal the spread of
Speaker 1: urban anarchism they're talking about like Chile in particular, they
Speaker 1: got right, Um, Indonesia Bangladestra somewhat. But but but I
Speaker 1: think I think there's there's another like my, my, my, my,
Speaker 1: my biggest issue with them in terms of the way
Speaker 1: they think about ecological stuff that this comes This is
Speaker 1: something they talk about with like they have this thing
Speaker 1: where they think that forger societies are like, Okay, they're
Speaker 1: they're they're they're they're they're more careful than most people.
Speaker 1: To frame it as like the forging soci ideas can
Speaker 1: be a gallitarian, but I think they wind up talking
Speaker 1: about these sort of like the way that sort of
Speaker 1: forging nomadic society sort of inherently defy the boundaries of
Speaker 1: the state, and like that's true, but you can also
Speaker 1: have like nomadic forging societies that have that are you know,
Speaker 1: hereditary slave societies. And this is this is a problem
Speaker 1: because there's a there's a lot in here about that
Speaker 1: that that's about sort of like they're they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're taking this a sort of like soft anti
Speaker 1: se of right. Yeah, it has a few lids where
Speaker 1: it does specifically say fialization is the cause of like
Speaker 1: I think it's like the civilization is genocide, um, which yeah,
Speaker 1: and that can't silly, Yeah, by civilization genocide. Sure if
Speaker 1: they're saying that they do cause genocide, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're trying to make the case that it seems to
Speaker 1: be that civilizations, Uh, well, I don't know every civilization
Speaker 1: does not commit genocide, but no, but civilization gives you
Speaker 1: a constant Yeah, civilization gives you the framework that makes
Speaker 1: genocide possible, well, like potentially intentional genocide possible. I don't
Speaker 1: know that I would agree with that, because I think
Speaker 1: you see examples of genocide from hunter gatherer societies and
Speaker 1: from from so societies, and that the obviously documentation on
Speaker 1: that isn't as extensive because we weren't documenting things for
Speaker 1: a lot of it. But you do have examples from
Speaker 1: from what we know of like um, the America's of
Speaker 1: their word genocides committed by societies we would call stateless.
Speaker 1: So I think I might argue that like genocide is
Speaker 1: a thing that human beings do, and civilization because it
Speaker 1: allows us to do everything on a larger scale, allows
Speaker 1: us to do way better genocides. That's definitely in our
Speaker 1: I think. I think my problem with it is is
Speaker 1: that they're going back into this sort of like that
Speaker 1: they're going back into the you know, there's this inherent
Speaker 1: binarya between forgers and sales societies and that you know,
Speaker 1: and and specifically they think that that that these sorts
Speaker 1: that the foragers ideas are you know, inevitably gonna become
Speaker 1: a gualantarian. It's like that's not true, and it's not
Speaker 1: true in ways that you can see right now in
Speaker 1: like like they're like they're like there are lots of
Speaker 1: places right now where you can look at you know,
Speaker 1: forging anxieties that are incredibly right. Like there's there's like,
Speaker 1: for example, you get sort of you get the Filani
Speaker 1: joining like right wing Islamas groups, right and that like
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. I think it has a problem
Speaker 1: with It's the same thing as looking at indigenous societies
Speaker 1: and and seeing them all on one side of the
Speaker 1: fight with with colonizing nations as supposed I'm reading a
Speaker 1: book about the history of them a Poochay right now,
Speaker 1: which are historically like the indigenous group in Chile that
Speaker 1: resisted the law, and the indigenous group really and you
Speaker 1: could argue in all of Latin America that resisted the
Speaker 1: longest and most effectively. But even then, when you look
Speaker 1: at like the campaign to the Chilean government in the
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties and eighteen eighties, large like significant chunks of
Speaker 1: the Mapoocha sided with the government against other mapoo Chay
Speaker 1: and like that's the like, it's it's always a mistake.
Speaker 1: I think this is a good one of the things
Speaker 1: that you get out of the dawn of everything. It's
Speaker 1: always a mistake to like look at any of these groups,
Speaker 1: hunter gatherers, stateless societies is like one thing or another.
Speaker 1: They're people and some of them sucked just like yeah
Speaker 1: they're yeah anyway, Yeah, there's there's one thing that I
Speaker 1: wanted to sort of push back against. Robbert, you had
Speaker 1: said that genocide is a thing that humans do. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't think I agree with that assessment um in
Speaker 1: this sense, or at least I'd rather I would like
Speaker 1: to clarify um. Okay, if you an opportunity to clarify
Speaker 1: what you mean by that. I you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know that it's just humans, but I think that genocide
Speaker 1: is a thing that as long as we have evidence
Speaker 1: in recorded history, it seems like we have done not
Speaker 1: just against are not just against other humans, but against
Speaker 1: other kind of hominid species. We have we have examples
Speaker 1: of things that it seems fair to call genocide, going
Speaker 1: back further than we have any kinds of written records. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, villages in the Balkans that were you know,
Speaker 1: burnt in people who like groups of people, tribes and whatnot,
Speaker 1: who seem to have been killed in mass and you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's other theories for some of that. Some of
Speaker 1: them may have been like people trying to stop a play.
Speaker 1: We don't plague or whatever. Like. There's not any kind
Speaker 1: of comprehensive solidity. But what we do know is that
Speaker 1: as long as we have documentations of humans doing things,
Speaker 1: we have documentations of things that we could call genocide.
Speaker 1: I see, I see, look look into that a bit more.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the glarification. Yeah, can I can I do
Speaker 1: a Balkans pivot because there's a there's a there's a
Speaker 1: thing like like it genuinely disturbed me reading it in
Speaker 1: here about the Serbs dream read that the Bosnian genocide
Speaker 1: were so that they're they're they're quoting. Its disturbing about that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but this is this is a I uh okay,
Speaker 1: So they're they're they're doing they're they're reading a quote
Speaker 1: from the book Gypsies, Wars and Other Instances of the
Speaker 1: wild where he's talking this is about the Boston genocide.
Speaker 1: How is this possible in Europe at the end of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century was the question that played obsessively through
Speaker 1: my mind. What the war in former Yugoslavia forced us
Speaker 1: to suggest the fact that people proved willing to make
Speaker 1: a conscious and active choice to embrace regression, barbarity and
Speaker 1: return to the wildness. Take the serve fighters who dreamed
Speaker 1: of a return to the Serbia of the epic poems
Speaker 1: were quote there was no electricity, no computers, when the
Speaker 1: serves were happy and had no cities, the breeding ground
Speaker 1: of all evil. And then this is this is the
Speaker 1: next thing that's that's the text coming back and commenting
Speaker 1: on it that some modern day militias reflect romantic desires,
Speaker 1: while shelling towns, massacring villages, and being killed in turn
Speaker 1: should neither surprise us nor necessarily fully validate romance. It does, however, suggest,
Speaker 1: along with the honest expression of joy and destruction mouth
Speaker 1: by some soldiers in every war, as well as many anarchists,
Speaker 1: that there was a coupling of some sort between a
Speaker 1: generalized urge to destroy and disgusted at a complex human society.
Speaker 1: And there's there's there's another part um only later on
Speaker 1: they're talking about ethnic diversity and autonomy will often emerge
Speaker 1: both from mutual aid and community and animosity between communities.
Speaker 1: I'd like to think, and our history back this up,
Speaker 1: that self adantified anarchists will never inflict such pain as
Speaker 1: Serb nationalist militias, an example that shows purposely for the Repugnicans.
Speaker 1: But we should admit that our wish to function up
Speaker 1: is partly driven by the same urge to civilizational dismemberment
Speaker 1: that can be found in many interethnic conflicts and in
Speaker 1: the minds of fighters more generally. And I think that's fucked.
Speaker 1: I think that's true. That's just I think there's commenting
Speaker 1: a specific type of anarchist literature, which is like the
Speaker 1: make total destroy thing. And yeah, I've definitely I have
Speaker 1: observed that in people the same the same urge that
Speaker 1: you're you're so broken down by everything that the only
Speaker 1: urge that is the only creative urge you have is
Speaker 1: to destroy the things around you. I've seen that. I
Speaker 1: don't think they're necessarily celebrating that, but they're pointing out
Speaker 1: that that urge can be there. When I think they
Speaker 1: get really wrong here is that I don't think that's
Speaker 1: the urge that that is is like that, that's when
Speaker 1: when when you're dealing with interethnic conflict, when you're dealing
Speaker 1: with genocide, I don't think that's the urge that's going on.
Speaker 1: It'sc s pratically with the Serbs, because the Serbs, like
Speaker 1: you know, okay, like when when when an anarchist is
Speaker 1: doing mate total destroying right there, you know there, like there,
Speaker 1: there's there's a very specific set of things they're attacking
Speaker 1: or they're you know, they're attacking building, the attacking the
Speaker 1: physical infrastructure of the world. When the Serbs are doing
Speaker 1: the Bosnian genocide, like that, they have a very specific
Speaker 1: thing they're doing, which is killing Bosnian Muslims. And I
Speaker 1: think that's extremely different urge than the sort of like
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think that's about sort of what
Speaker 1: it's civilizational dismemberment or whatever. That's about Islamophobia and genocide.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a different I think the genocidal
Speaker 1: impulse is a I think a very different one than
Speaker 1: the sort of the like the impulse to break the
Speaker 1: society that has harmed you. Yeah, I think it's important
Speaker 1: to draw a distinction between you can kill a shipload
Speaker 1: of people without it being a genocide, um. And I
Speaker 1: think and it's also one of those things I think
Speaker 1: sometimes why people I think why there's hesitation to see
Speaker 1: certain acts in early history of genocide is that they're
Speaker 1: not as complete as modern genocide. But but what a
Speaker 1: genocide really is, and I think it's important to lay
Speaker 1: this out. It's not necessarily killing every member of an
Speaker 1: ethnic group or a religious group or whatever kind of community. UM.
Speaker 1: It is stopping their ability to propagate and continue themselves.
Speaker 1: That's why things like destroying churches and destroying the cultural
Speaker 1: distoral markers are part of genocide. And it's also why
Speaker 1: a lot of genocides they left the women and children alive.
Speaker 1: They would kill all the men, and they would take
Speaker 1: the women in and they would breed with them. They
Speaker 1: might kill the kids sometimes, but it was this The
Speaker 1: goal was not necessarily where we need to kill all
Speaker 1: of you, it's we want to kill this, this culture,
Speaker 1: this population. Um I think the I think, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think the parallel he's trying to make here or there
Speaker 1: or she? Uh? Is that? Uh? That like that type
Speaker 1: of like genocidal cultural destruction is targeted against specific groups.
Speaker 1: The difference here is with this type of like you know,
Speaker 1: he's he's writting this for other anarchists. He's pointing out,
Speaker 1: like our destructive urge, our cultural urge isn't even for
Speaker 1: a specific group, it's just for everything, and that can
Speaker 1: be unhealthy sometimes sometimes there's ways to do make total destroy.
Speaker 1: That's totally fine, but that can go to unhealthy places. Now,
Speaker 1: he's not equating like ethnic cleansing with that. He's like
Speaker 1: they are like they are different. But when when your
Speaker 1: total destroy urges against all of culture, then yeah, that
Speaker 1: that can like that's something you should probably ponder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's definitely I would agree that that's the
Speaker 1: thing that's potentially problematic. Right, Like with a number of
Speaker 1: different desires. Uh, there's a way in which that can
Speaker 1: lead to people doing really fucked up things. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like it's like it's pointing out that that type of
Speaker 1: accelerationism not specific to ideology, but just like accelerationism in general.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think when I when I talk about
Speaker 1: things like the fact that because not every culture commits
Speaker 1: genocides and every civil civilization does, um, and throughout history
Speaker 1: there have been more that found the idea repugnant than
Speaker 1: found the idea acceptable. Um. But it is really a
Speaker 1: consistent thing in history. And I think the lesson with
Speaker 1: that isn't necessarily that everything could end in genocide. So
Speaker 1: I don't think the lesson is necessarily like, oh you
Speaker 1: should look at make total destroy as if you know,
Speaker 1: the this kind of trend in anarchist thought could lead
Speaker 1: to genocide. It's that people in groups are nearly always
Speaker 1: capable of killing a shipload of other people for a
Speaker 1: variety of reasons if applied in the proper ways, And
Speaker 1: so those of us who seek mass movement should always
Speaker 1: be conscious of that, because human beings in large groups
Speaker 1: can do wonderful things, but there's a long history of
Speaker 1: them doing really fucked up ship sometimes in ways that
Speaker 1: surprised the people that got the large group of human
Speaker 1: beings together in the first place. The other thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to bring up this kind of more circling back
Speaker 1: to the dum kind of idea UM, because yeah, a
Speaker 1: big part of the book is trying purposely is to
Speaker 1: disolution people with this idea of global revolution and dissolution
Speaker 1: people with the idea that we can save the earth
Speaker 1: because we can't UM. So that's a big thing. And
Speaker 1: first I think I think for some people, if you
Speaker 1: stop right there and you that's how you end that thought, Yes,
Speaker 1: that does lead to dumorism, obviously, like that that is,
Speaker 1: that is, but the books, the book doesn't stop there.
Speaker 1: The book continues on from there. Now they continue on
Speaker 1: from a nihilistic standpoint. I'm not a nihilist. I prefer absurdism.
Speaker 1: I prefer discordionism. But those two things are pretty caught
Speaker 1: like there. They are more similar than not. UM is
Speaker 1: that you can be disillusioned with global revolution and the
Speaker 1: idea to save the earth, but that should not change
Speaker 1: what we do or how we feel or operate as anarchists.
Speaker 1: It's not that we should be disillusioned and then do
Speaker 1: nothing and step aside that we should be disillusioned, and
Speaker 1: then find that disillusionment itself a form of liberation, like
Speaker 1: the freeing nature of being free from this idea of
Speaker 1: revolution is that like, no, we are living our lives now.
Speaker 1: Don't live for a revolution. Live your life now and
Speaker 1: do things now, because that's what you actually have. So
Speaker 1: it's like that type of nihilistic, absurdist discordion things. This is,
Speaker 1: this is, this is this is where I come back
Speaker 1: have a problems with it again because this this is
Speaker 1: literally just there is no alternative except it's it's yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's do anargy. But I mean, but that's how
Speaker 1: I live like that like that, I think, I think
Speaker 1: this is a bad I think that's a bad plan.
Speaker 1: And I think if if you look, if you look
Speaker 1: at what happens with because you know, this, this was
Speaker 1: the thing that was really big in the American anarchist movement,
Speaker 1: like in you know, from about just and seventeen like
Speaker 1: roughly now, and it's like people were rising too. Yeah
Speaker 1: that didn't succeed like that, like not really like but
Speaker 1: I think like like this is like I think I
Speaker 1: think this is like like one of the reasons it
Speaker 1: didn't work, Like, okay, this is like the thing that's important.
Speaker 1: One of the things is the point of revolutions, even
Speaker 1: when they don't succeed, is that for a very brief window,
Speaker 1: you actually can like it becomes it becomes possible to
Speaker 1: imagine the other world. And what what What this entire
Speaker 1: thing is saying is don't do that. That's not that's
Speaker 1: not that's that's that's that is not what it absolutely not.
Speaker 1: This is okay, I can I finish that sentence? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, okay, so what what what what? What I'm
Speaker 1: saying here is that what what they've abandoned, right, the
Speaker 1: thing that they're giving up when they when they give
Speaker 1: up revolution, when they're like this is a progressive myth,
Speaker 1: this is like uh theology. What what they've abandoned completely
Speaker 1: is our human capacity to actually shape a different world.
Speaker 1: What they're arguing is that like the the you know,
Speaker 1: essentially that the combination of ecological and social forces are
Speaker 1: strong enough that humans humans no longer have the capacity
Speaker 1: to reshape the world into a way that is different
Speaker 1: than this, and that this is now the eternal present,
Speaker 1: and you know, and and yeah, inside of the eternal present.
Speaker 1: They're saying, you should be fighting for the same things
Speaker 1: you should be fighting for, like you know, you should.
Speaker 1: You should be in your own sort of local domain.
Speaker 1: You should be like, I mean, there are some of
Speaker 1: the recommendations are wild, Like I think, I think their
Speaker 1: conservation stuff is sketchy given, I mean, it doesn't but
Speaker 1: it doesn't apply to an eternal present though, Like they
Speaker 1: lay out, like the world is changing a lot and
Speaker 1: will for the next fifty years, Like there will be
Speaker 1: massive changes and how things are set up in the
Speaker 1: next like in the next century, and we need to
Speaker 1: take advantage of that. We need to turn those liabilities
Speaker 1: into assets and start making those little anarchies like that.
Speaker 1: That that is what it's trying to do. And I
Speaker 1: would add as well that as it points out the
Speaker 1: situations in plastic stooke in Bangladesh, a difference in the
Speaker 1: present and will be in the future. You know. What
Speaker 1: I think is is trying to be sort of drilled
Speaker 1: in here is that at least in the text and
Speaker 1: how I read it um is that yes, things will
Speaker 1: be different in different parts to wood and probably maybe
Speaker 1: they won't be this, you know, or as the what
Speaker 1: this is they won't be you know, this one global revolution.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, Um, I think
Speaker 1: what it's trying to emphasize is that we don't have
Speaker 1: the structures. And I think what part of what is
Speaker 1: trying to emphasize is that we don't have instructures in
Speaker 1: place right now to launch an instruction we can meaningfully defend.
Speaker 1: And so that is the sort of thing we should
Speaker 1: be focusing on. But but but they, but they, but
Speaker 1: this and this, this, this is going back to my
Speaker 1: problem with it, going going back to the thing where
Speaker 1: they go on the rant about how anarchists are like
Speaker 1: a permanent cultural majority and will never become a majority.
Speaker 1: Is that even even in situations where people had that
Speaker 1: capacity and did it they go back, they project back
Speaker 1: onto it, go no, no, no, no no, they couldn't have
Speaker 1: done that. Like, it's it's not about it's it's it's
Speaker 1: they they have a belief and this is something that
Speaker 1: they do explicitly say that that anarchist will always be
Speaker 1: a permanent minority right there. There will always be an
Speaker 1: active but permanent minority. And that is the like like
Speaker 1: that specifically, I think is just an actual rejection of
Speaker 1: the belief that we collectively can make a better future.
Speaker 1: Because if if, if you think our ideas that you know,
Speaker 1: if being free right, if if a society, if you
Speaker 1: think that that is permanently always going to be a minority,
Speaker 1: you are you know, you are condemning. You're condemning the
Speaker 1: future to the people who don't believe that. And and
Speaker 1: I I understand why, especially if you know, if, if, if,
Speaker 1: if the only thing you've ever known is fifty years
Speaker 1: of when the new Liberals actually did the thing right.
Speaker 1: They took over the entire world, restructure of the entire
Speaker 1: world economy, seized every government. Like if if that's what
Speaker 1: you live through, I understand why you would think that.
Speaker 1: But I think the fact that it was possible to
Speaker 1: do it from the other direction is in some ways
Speaker 1: a sense that like, yeah, we could do it too.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Sorry, I will stop harping on this
Speaker 1: one specific point. It just extremely annoys me. I think
Speaker 1: it's not giving up the idea that the world can
Speaker 1: be better. It's that like, we don't need to have
Speaker 1: the majority of people be anarchists to make the old better.
Speaker 1: We can still spread our own anarchies and people don't
Speaker 1: need to self subscribe as anarchists. But as long as
Speaker 1: we start building those systems in the places around us,
Speaker 1: people start using them, and people might start like living
Speaker 1: them out, even if they don't call themselves anarchists, right, Like,
Speaker 1: the majority of people will probably prefer some some type
Speaker 1: of state or government. Right. You can even look at
Speaker 1: ROSA and be like, yeah, it's still is state issue
Speaker 1: in some ways, but some ways not, right, Like, it's
Speaker 1: it's going We're not going to get an anarchist world.
Speaker 1: That's not going to happen, but we can make it
Speaker 1: better through the lens of anarchy. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what it's kind of trying to say. Yeah, I I
Speaker 1: think it's it's worth acknowledging that, Like, yeah, the majority
Speaker 1: of people are never going to be what anarchists are
Speaker 1: right now, which is people who comprehensively reject the systems
Speaker 1: they live in. Most people are always going to think
Speaker 1: more like well, I want to be comfortable, I want
Speaker 1: to I support changes kind of that that, you know,
Speaker 1: fix this thing that I've noticed as a problem or
Speaker 1: that thing. Most people are never going to comprehensively reject
Speaker 1: the system. But I do have hope that in time
Speaker 1: and given you know space to build things and show
Speaker 1: people other ways and improve life for people. You can
Speaker 1: get to a point where most people believe a lot
Speaker 1: of the things that I think are important. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think that's what's time. I think that's sorry. I
Speaker 1: think that's what the as specificitis UM tend to advocate
Speaker 1: for in terms of through the process of social institution
Speaker 1: in these larger movements, generalizing the ideas of anarchist ideas
Speaker 1: as a whole, making them more common throughout the population.
Speaker 1: It's only trying to get each and every poost in
Speaker 1: the world to self identify as an anarchist, communist or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's more so that you're trying to spread these ideas
Speaker 1: to the point where they are I suppose the common
Speaker 1: sentiment the popular will Yeah, like I it's it's um.
Speaker 1: That's like the point of culture jamming and and and
Speaker 1: ship like that. Like it's the the idea that like
Speaker 1: it doesn't so much matter, like like like what matters
Speaker 1: is inserting the things you think are important into the
Speaker 1: culture and getting people to identify with them and understand them.
Speaker 1: The terms that they specifically use aren't aren't as important,
Speaker 1: like that that's not really what matters. Well, Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't think they're arguing that though, because I mean, like
Speaker 1: do they have lines like this. We cannot, however, remake
Speaker 1: the entire world. There are not enough of us, there
Speaker 1: never will be. But then you know, they like they
Speaker 1: they specifically talk about the oh well, they don't have
Speaker 1: to all be anarchists, and you know, I mean, here's
Speaker 1: their line. There was unfortunately little little evidence from history
Speaker 1: that the working class, never mind anyone else, is intrinically
Speaker 1: predisposed to libertarian and ecological revolution. Thousands of years of
Speaker 1: authoritarian socialization favor of the jack boot. Neither we nor
Speaker 1: anyone else could create a libertarian or global or ecological
Speaker 1: global future by expanding social movements further. There is no
Speaker 1: reason to think that in the absence of such a
Speaker 1: vast expanse, the global transformation concurrent toward desires will ever happen.
Speaker 1: I think, I think think the keyword there is global, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's they're trying to break with that, and it's important,
Speaker 1: like they're writing this specifically for anarchists who are kind
Speaker 1: of already nihilistic, kind of already anti sif right, they
Speaker 1: are writing this for other anarchists that this isn't a
Speaker 1: book to radicalize a normy or a communist by anarchists
Speaker 1: for other anarchists to be like, hey, you already kind
Speaker 1: of think the world's kind of going to ship. Here's
Speaker 1: a way that we can still do things despite the
Speaker 1: world being shitty. Because once you're once you're disillusioned, it's
Speaker 1: hard to be illusioned again. Like it's it's hard once
Speaker 1: you give up on the idea of global revolution, once
Speaker 1: you give up in the idea of global collapse, it's
Speaker 1: hard to re enter those even if you see things
Speaker 1: happening the world, like there can still be uprisings and revolts, absolutely,
Speaker 1: but there is a distinction of between uprising and the
Speaker 1: revolts and like a global revolution right and specifically like
Speaker 1: the Marxist Leninist sounds. And I'd also like to um
Speaker 1: continue the paragraph you're reading from there. We had said
Speaker 1: that as anarchists, sweet he had said, or they had
Speaker 1: said that, as anarchists, we are not the seed of
Speaker 1: the future society in the shell of the old, but
Speaker 1: merely one of many elements from which the future is forming.
Speaker 1: That's okay. When faced with such scale and complexity, there
Speaker 1: is value in non servile humility, even for in such Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this this is just this is just giving up.
Speaker 1: This is this is the old. It's too complicated, it's
Speaker 1: too like and like I think, I don't know, like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's giving up on it's giving up
Speaker 1: on trying to do any kind of on on like
Speaker 1: humans as a whole, trying to do any kind of
Speaker 1: large scale like you know, like it's trying to do
Speaker 1: transformation of what the society. I disagree to continue that
Speaker 1: that coote to give up hope for global anarchists. Revolution
Speaker 1: is not to resign oneself to anarchy, remaining any to protest.
Speaker 1: Seaweed puts it well. Revolution is not everywhere or nowhere.
Speaker 1: Any bioregion can be liberated through a succession of events,
Speaker 1: and strategy is based in the conditions unique to it,
Speaker 1: mostly as the grip of facilitation that area weakens through
Speaker 1: its own volition for the efforts of its inhabitants. So
Speaker 1: aization didn't succeed every at once, and so it's undoing
Speaker 1: might only occur to varying degrees in different places at
Speaker 1: different times. Even if an area is seemingly fully under
Speaker 1: the control of authority, there are always places to go
Speaker 1: to live in, to love in, and to resist from,
Speaker 1: and we can extend those spaces. The global situation may
Speaker 1: seem beyond us, but the local never is. And I
Speaker 1: think that's beautiful. I think that's like a That's one
Speaker 1: of the things that keeps me alive is ideas like that, honestly.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, I also hold the opinion
Speaker 1: that none of us, including this author, is a fortune teller,
Speaker 1: you know. The desert's picture of the future is not
Speaker 1: the only possibility, you know, And I think in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways and a lot of always I believe
Speaker 1: that they can and have already been proven wrong, you know. Like,
Speaker 1: and there's an issue that I really take a lot
Speaker 1: of contention with the book. Part of the book that
Speaker 1: really pisces me off is the sort of persistence of
Speaker 1: the overpopulation myth. Yeah, I don't remember it being so
Speaker 1: consistent since I reread it um a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1: And also this sort of nonchalance the author seems to
Speaker 1: have about like mass die offs and that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: you know. I think that that's very troubling to me.
Speaker 1: That's very specific to It's a type of anti sive
Speaker 1: literature that's like we view civilization is going to progress
Speaker 1: towards Jenna side anyway, and the way to actually avoid
Speaker 1: more deaths is to kind of help the collapse along
Speaker 1: because that will end civilization quicker. So therefore less people,
Speaker 1: less people will be born, and less people will have
Speaker 1: to die. So that's the type of thinking they have.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily agree with that, um necessarily, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is that is very typical of this type of literature.
Speaker 1: So it gets because it is written mostly for other
Speaker 1: anti sid anarchists, but like, yeah, it's not like pro genocide.
Speaker 1: It's saying genocide will happen. So the way to make
Speaker 1: less of it is to actually kind of slowly start
Speaker 1: kind of help helping the crumbles along essentially and while
Speaker 1: still you know, making people's lives better in your immediate community,
Speaker 1: like with that, with that very local focus. So again
Speaker 1: not not saying I necessarily agree with that, but that's
Speaker 1: the that's the type of thought it's engaging with. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's true of some of it. But there
Speaker 1: is definitely a lot of like panic about there's going
Speaker 1: to be nine billion people and like population grows. All
Speaker 1: the over population stuff is a little iffy. You know,
Speaker 1: there is a there's a discussion to have on caring capacity,
Speaker 1: but we are not there yet. We right now we
Speaker 1: way overproduced for them for the amount of people we have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that and that I don't know. That also fresh it
Speaker 1: in me immensely. They're like, yeah, we we have consider
Speaker 1: they're talking about carring capacity right and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we already can't. We have a billion people going hungry.
Speaker 1: And it's like, yeah, but that's not about the carrying capacity.
Speaker 1: That's just that's that's destrition. Which was literally that and
Speaker 1: that idea gained more prevalence after Dessert was written. We
Speaker 1: kind of more understood, like like culturally that it is
Speaker 1: a distribution issue not necessarily a production issue. Now we
Speaker 1: do overproduce, right because and the amount of production we
Speaker 1: have contributes this tough like climate change and that is bad.
Speaker 1: So we should tone down production, but we should make
Speaker 1: the ways that it's more sustainable and ecological. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that does point towards the data nature of
Speaker 1: the text. I think Also my last like thing with
Speaker 1: it is I think I think it could have benefited
Speaker 1: a lot from like in an indigenous stewardship perspective, because
Speaker 1: the way it thinks about its particularly the way things
Speaker 1: but wildness versus conservation is just very messy, and yeah,
Speaker 1: if it falls, it falls. It does a better job
Speaker 1: of it than some other antis of things that I've seen,
Speaker 1: but it definitely falls into the like trap of like,
Speaker 1: here is the wild and then any attempt to manage
Speaker 1: it is uh, you know, is civilization and you need
Speaker 1: to go back to the wild, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: this is already stewarded and managed. That is the one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does fall on that slope of like nature being
Speaker 1: another that is sacred, which isn't necessarily a great idea,
Speaker 1: nor is it really true. Yeah, this is very two
Speaker 1: ten two ten. Yeah, right, So I think the book
Speaker 1: is critical conceitation and that sort of binary way, and
Speaker 1: I agree that indigenous stewardship perspective was sorely needed. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, I do think that the way
Speaker 1: that the book criticizes um wherever just points out um
Speaker 1: the sual conservation may have been and may still be
Speaker 1: new for some people. You know, the idea that these
Speaker 1: sorts of government conservation projects which sort of preside over
Speaker 1: this sort of static vision of nature and ecology and
Speaker 1: stuff that is supposedly threatened by humanity. UM. I think
Speaker 1: criticizing that approach to nature it's good. I mean the
Speaker 1: sort of romanticization of the wild that is very typical
Speaker 1: of anti Seve text and thought. UM is very much
Speaker 1: anti Sieve. But I do believe that people should look
Speaker 1: ah or should rather resist these sorts of conservation impulse.
Speaker 1: As I was rereading it a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: I wanted to know, UM, what you guy's thoughts of
Speaker 1: the section of the book that speaks of the different
Speaker 1: modern different the the idea of fourth and fifth generation
Speaker 1: war Oh boy, that's a UM that has been UM
Speaker 1: sort of a contributional approach to analyzing conflict so figured
Speaker 1: out as you have been in you know, actual war
Speaker 1: zoons robot that you might have a thing to see. UM.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the kind of thing that we should
Speaker 1: probably cover in in detail on because this is a
Speaker 1: lot of like William Lynde stuff. I think he's the
Speaker 1: guy who came up with the idea of like fourth
Speaker 1: generation war less at least and it's UM. It's basically
Speaker 1: the idea. It's the idea that warfare UM today is
Speaker 1: conducted through a lot of stuff that's not conventional weaponry, right,
Speaker 1: So stuff like UM, like like like putting networks together
Speaker 1: to like push social division, you know through UM, social
Speaker 1: media UM, or carrying out cyber attacks on infrastructure, disinformation UM,
Speaker 1: all of that kind of stuff, which is I think accurate.
Speaker 1: I've been reporting on what you could call fifth generation
Speaker 1: warfare since some UM. I think it's I think to
Speaker 1: the extent that it's relevant here. I think one thing
Speaker 1: that people on the left need to acknowledge is that
Speaker 1: they have UM been blindsided by the effectiveness that the
Speaker 1: far right has adapted to UM the key components of
Speaker 1: this kind of warfare. And I think nothing is more
Speaker 1: key than social engineering and disinformation UM. And they've been
Speaker 1: much more successful at it over the last release in
Speaker 1: twos and fifteen in particular, UM than the left hast
Speaker 1: by basically everywhere, every single and by I think, every
Speaker 1: single measure of of success. And I think this is
Speaker 1: something we should say in depth for another day, UM.
Speaker 1: But I think that it is worth acknowledging that this
Speaker 1: is And I also think that and this is again
Speaker 1: part of a bigger conversation. We talked about the concept
Speaker 1: of like culture jamming. When we talked about like Operation
Speaker 1: mind Fuck you know, which is Discordian idea. Um, all
Speaker 1: of which you can see is kind of pre predecessors
Speaker 1: to the concepts of fifth generation warfare. I think there's
Speaker 1: a strong argument to be made that those efforts by
Speaker 1: leftists in the eighties and nineties in particular, actually contributed
Speaker 1: to the substantial right wing victories that we're seeing right
Speaker 1: now in this space. UM. And I think maybe it's
Speaker 1: I think there's a number of reasons for that, um,
Speaker 1: including some to some extent, the idea of arrogance that
Speaker 1: um that what that we were just too smart, that
Speaker 1: they were never going to figure out how to utilize
Speaker 1: the same means we had, or to kind of judo
Speaker 1: like take the momentum for that and spin it around
Speaker 1: on us. But they were and they did, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that'll that'll lead into another or episode. We'll have to
Speaker 1: talk about this in more detail. That's something like Grant
Speaker 1: Morrison actually talks a lot about in regards to discordionism
Speaker 1: and this type of how how you know he used
Speaker 1: to work for a company called Disinformation back when disinformation
Speaker 1: was Yeah, and now it's like one of the leading
Speaker 1: castes of mass death in the world right, So he
Speaker 1: that is something that Morrison talks about a lot in
Speaker 1: terms of how they did have that arrogance and now
Speaker 1: the same forces that they used in hopes of making
Speaker 1: the world better and now being used to regress the
Speaker 1: world and make it worse. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I had
Speaker 1: a big copy of Disinformation on my coffee table when
Speaker 1: I was nineteen. I just ordered good there's some fun
Speaker 1: essays in their garret. Um, all right, that'll probably, I mean,
Speaker 1: did you have more to say on that? And yeah,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to say that, you know, regardless of
Speaker 1: the unsettent future, UM, regardless of your stands on get
Speaker 1: its message however flawed. UM here now as the minor
Speaker 1: goods in Alice Huxley's Island so often repeat UM, we
Speaker 1: can and should pay attention to what we can do
Speaker 1: to support ourselves for whatever outcome you go through, you know,
Speaker 1: projects within the spaces we inhabit. I believe that anarchism
Speaker 1: could be the seed of the new will. I do
Speaker 1: believe that we have an impact a huge impact on
Speaker 1: society and on politics, and I believe there are still
Speaker 1: many possibilities for liberty still. Yeah, I do as well.
Speaker 1: I think that acknowledging you know, failures both of of
Speaker 1: of you know ideas and of methods doesn't mean giving
Speaker 1: up hope or or ignoring the successes of those same
Speaker 1: things which which we're are also present. Um yeah, so
Speaker 1: I don't know, stay optimistic. Read something. Uh doesn't have
Speaker 1: to beat eert, but just go go read a thing.
Speaker 1: Go read yeah, back of your shampoo. B but especially
Speaker 1: if it's Dr Brauner's a lot of good stuff in there. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, that's gonna do it for us this week.
Speaker 1: Take care for today. At least it could happen here
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Speaker 1: for listening.