Kill Tobacco Fat Cats

Quotes from this essay are taken from an article published on The Huffington Post and smokefree.org.  The expose of big tobacco in The Huffington Post was written by David Winograd. 

I was once a smoker.  My addiction to cigarettes started when I was serving time in a correctional facility for assaulting a police officer.  I continued to smoke for five years after being released.  Quitting came when I concluded my path would lead either towards non-smoking or homelessness.  Here’s a fact: smoking one pack of cigarettes a day will cost a smoker $5000 a year. 

Other facts about big tobacco:  One in every five deaths in the United States is caused by smoking tobacco; every year tobacco use kills more people than HIV, drug and alcohol abuse, suicides, murders, and car accidents combined.

What is a proper anarchist stance regarding big tobacco?  Regulation would require government control which is just a more polite way of saying state oppression.  But are we prepared, simply, to go to war with big tobacco? 

Take this into account:  If tobacco farmers around the world were to grow food instead of tobacco they could feed 70% of the world’s 28 million malnourished people.

I really don’t want to be apathetic about this; people are starving because the social consciousness is so polluted by capitalism that we stand by and let big tobacco run a slave trade in the name of free market capitalism.  Are these the principles which our founding fathers had in mind when they drafted the constitution? 

Freedoms once existed in this country so that the people could have power distributed well enough that our government could keep the needs of the poor, working, and middle classes close at hand.  Big tobacco—along with big pharma—and the Pentagon—all have distorted the function of democracy into nothing more than a puppet show.  And the people of the twenty-first century need to act to re-route the disaster course of our era’s political structure.

I cannot foresee myself leading an assault on big tobacco; I’m just not quite that capable of a leader.  Cigarettes are, however, the deadliest form of slavery which has ever been conceived in the human consciousness.  And my job, as a journalist in a free country, is to be loud enough and subversive enough, to confront the social acceptability of traditional thinking regarding profit earning at the expense of the actual lives of many millions of people.

We are at war with a machine that dilutes the public mind; the intention of this war is to kill and enslave as many people as is necessary to profit as much as is possible.  It is as simple as that. 

24 Hour Fast

I’m fit.  At 6’ 1” tall I generally weigh in at about 170 lbs.  Exercise is my secret—not much of a secret I guess—but there it is.  And because I’m seemingly healthy, and because I work with a stringent budget, I’ve never seen too much reason to be very concerned about my diet.  I eat out at fast food restaurants on a regular basis, and will often have frozen pizza for dinner.

Outside of my slack diet I’m exceedingly disciplined; I even have my own code of ethics which I’ve designed to cultivate tremendous intellectual and spiritual rigor.  There have been times where my diet was very healthy and balanced.  I was working very hard at getting in better shape while I resided at one of a few group homes which I’ve had to live in.  That fell to the wayside when I moved out and had to afford my groceries on a budget of less than $1000 a month.  This amount of money included what I received in food stamps—and much of that $1000 had to be spent on rent.

Food is important to how we function and how we feel.  I’ve just realized how true that statement really is.  I have just done a twenty-four hour fast where all that crossed my lips was water.  During said twenty-four hours I had a headache, I threw up, and I was lethargic.  Throwing up was mostly due to taking a multi-vitamin on an empty stomach (oops).  The headache was mild and was probably because I drank no coffee.  But the lethargy was very seemingly linked only to my lack of nutrition.

After I finished my fast, which was less than one and a half hours ago, I felt completely renewed and revitalized.  My food cravings were different than what I’m used to; I had tomato soup and a salad to get off my fast—with just a few potato chips.  In this short time after getting food back into my stomach, my mind is functioning on another level; and I am much more mindful of my wellness and nutrition. 

Now that I’ve come to this place of heightened mindfulness for my nutrition, I will experiment with mini-fasts.  Fasting once or twice a week might be the proper course of action for what I desire to get out of mindfully eating.  I want more discipline in my life; I’m always looking for ways to live with greater discipline and simplicity; and fasting is a healthy means to frugality.  And eating healthier, 

I’m sure, will promote greater creative vitality, making it great for my intellectual practices.

What I thought I’d get out of fasting was that I’d see that there are more important things than food.  I thought it would confirm many of my pre-existing notions on living healthy, and mindfulness.  But I was wrong.

Blessed Be The Lonely

Here's a little poem I wrote.  I just wanted to give a big shout out to all the lonely people out their. You are beautiful.

of all life's beauty
a certain deed stands out
curled up and beset
a bastard world without
miscreants
ne'er do wells
louts
to the earth many blessings
shattered hearts do shout

Peace

About Writing

Unorganize is intended to be an anarchist blog—but I’m willing to deviate a little.  In this post, I’m going to write about writing.  Writing has been singular—as a practice—in influencing positive life change.  What has been challenging about writing is keeping up with the reading that is necessary to generate new ideas with consistency.  Writing is an intellectually taxing endeavor, but one with tremendous rewards.

After writing a mental health recovery blog for seven months, I signed on to write for an online magazine called Vermont Views.  I wanted to continue writing on mental health; but writing on recovery was no longer my mission. I wanted, instead, to write a social criticism on the mental health system.

By the time I signed on to write for Vermont Views, writing was very important to my feeling that I had something to contribute to society.  I needed to be successful in publishing.  For that reason, I began reading as much psychiatric history as I could.  It was the only way to continue writing on mental health while generating enough new ideas to keep up with weekly publishing.  My column at Vermont Views was called My Side of Madness; I wrote fifty-six essays in keeping with the intent of that project—for which I read about thirty books.

Quantity of writing is important—if you are going to be good in writing you will have to write a lot.  But quality may still be more important.  I approach improving the quality of my writing as I would attempt to improve my comprehension in reading.  I study the English language with as much ardent discipline as I did studying psychiatric history.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I have deviated from the anarchist theme to this blog.  But writing has been a catalyst for my own emancipation from the confines of the mental health system.  I believe that as we learn to roam the intellectual landscape, we open ourselves to a more self-directed mode of living.  And realizing individual freedom is a great first step to promoting revolution.

If I Will

Debate pervades regarding the existence of free will; interestingly, it is in this debate that science and religion share a common ground.  Faith based religions have for centuries argued that our life-paths are decided by a higher power.  Today’s neuroscience has characterized a modality of human function, which, in conjunction with understanding of complex emotional displacement, has eliminated the function of will.  Not all within psychiatry—and probably not all within neuroscience—disbelieve in the existence of free will; there are enough, however, that I feel it important to consider this debate.

Our decision making is part of a psychic make-up which is mostly decided by genes and environment.  If you were to look at the statistics regarding drug abuse, homelessness, incarceration, mental illness, suicide, and other maladies you would see an astronomical correlation to abusive childhood environments.

The factors of genes and environment influence lives with such force that sometimes people, who are charged with a criminal offense, are found not guilty because of their compromised decision making ability.  The premise is, very simply, that in certain situations, people, who suffer from a psychological disorder, or drug abuse, cannot be considered culpable for their offense.   Our minds are so sensitive to environment, drug abuse, trauma, and psychological disorder that reason may escape a person; convicting such people is thought to be a violation against civil liberty.

Less than a week ago, a friend and I had a brief but spirited debate on the existence of free will.  He is a theologian.  And he expressed a belief in a higher power which decides our life-paths for us.  I am an agnostic.  But I try to be open to the influence of spirituality in my life-path.  But maybe, I’m just stumbling along failing to have faith in a higher power.

My belief is that our genes are like a road map which we use for guidance to lead better, more satisfying lives.  And our environment might be like the directions we are given by a friend—whose house we are visiting.  We have to transform the information, given by our road map and directions, into action for our desired route to take us where we intend.  Taking in information from our genetic map, and environmental directions, are not passive—they must be interpreted.  Will is involved in receiving information, energy, strength and other such resources we use to navigate the world we live in. 

Sometimes people give bad directions; in such instances, the person driving cannot be to blame if she gets lost.  No one is fully in control of their own destiny; at times, people can be considered to not be in control in any way at all.   

There is a lot that intercedes which acts as an antagonist force to our autonomy.  Maybe this is a good thing.  Maybe I’d be better off if I had a higher power deciding how I am to lead my life.  Maybe I just need to better understand the will of this higher power to better direct the life I’ve been given.  But I continue to believe that I have at least a slight influence on how that higher power is interpreted, and thus, how her guidance is used in my directing my own life.  And I believe that cultivating self-awareness is the best means to walking an enlightened path.  I will always be curious and questioning.  But I do not believe that I will ever submit to any doctrine or dogma which is fatalistic.

Fight on Whose Side?

White people need to be willing to step aside if we are to have any true revolution.  Anti-racist movement will have to be the catalyst for any revolution which aims at social justice in the United States.  This is because the main antagonist force—in the United States—to liberation—is the white establishment.  Whatever can be done to destabilize white power will promote liberation for poor and working class people.  If our liberation is to find root it will have to come when the power structures, which have crystallized white supremacy, fall.

As people of color rally together, to fight against police violence, and racism in a broader sense, white people must do their work to lend support.  But we need not forget our own fights.  Because when the power structures which oppress people of color have been pushed back by anti-racist movement, we will all be closer to ending all forms of supremacy. 

My primary fight is for revolution in the “mental health system.”  I say that with sarcasm.  My statement is rooted in sarcasm because, I am certain, that it is the system itself which is alienating people who are said to be sick.  There is no such thing as mental illness if there is no pervasive fear that alternative mind-states cause suffering.  Mental illness has been manufactured in the United States and other developed nations. For evidence, look at cultures that give space for the cultivation of extreme states as part of spiritual rite.

I’ve been working hard to fight against the power structures which our purposed to suppress and pathologies extreme states.  And I have had success.  I was even allowed to speak out—to the commissioner of Vermont’s Department of Mental Health—but my work seems only to have constructively made me a more conscientious supporter of the mad pride movement.  And here I will say that I can choose one of two roads; I can settle on having a voice for mad pride…or…I can choose not to be a single issue radical.

To choose the latter—to choose to be a supporter of other people’s movements—I have chosen to be part of something bigger than what any revolt against the mental health system could ever hope to be.  We are, as anarchists, attempting to uproot the whole power structure which supports government, billion dollar corporations, white supremacy, patriarchy, and the list goes on.  All that divides us is the notion that although we have a common enemy, we have separate struggles.

Lie or Revolution

I lied.  Hopefully, my readership will have looked at my previous essay with a critical eye.  That was my intention in telling an untruth in the first place.  The untruth which I published was not an explicit lie, but an underlying one.  The essay was Hypocrisy 101—and in said essay, I compared discriminating against homosexuals with that of holding resentment towards evil billionaires. 

Hypocrisy 101 was intended to argue that even steps backwards can lead us towards equality and justice.  I argued that any utopia free of strife would be less than what mankind can strive towards.  However, if we attempt to take the argument that evil has its place in society; if we argue that oppression and corruption a functional part of living in a free society—we are serving to protect evil. 

What must be protected is not the welfare provided the billionaires who profit off of poverty, drug addiction, and various other absences of social justice.  What must be protected is the ability of the people—and the notion of the people—to revolt against oppression and injustice.  And in order to accomplish this we must have the foresight to see that the path to liberation will be arduous.

Things in our society, which we do not care for, do have their place.  However, we cannot allow that the place of corruption in society reside in a place which is not affronted.  Apathy is the greatest enemy to revolution.  If you read Hypocrisy 101 and found it offensive—good—if you did not, imagine a culture that supported everyone in meeting their basic needs.  Imagine a society where feeding the hungry took precedence over sustaining government.

When we can honestly say that we are serving the eventual emancipation of the poor and working classes, the revolution will have already been realized.  Right now, if I choose only to speak for myself, I am serving capitalism as much as I’m serving anarchy.  And here, I want to say, in motioning for the eventual revolution, I am living a lie.  And that is hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy 101

Hypocrisy is rampant in society.  Many liberals try to espouse that all people should be accepted as they are—or how they define themselves to be—and turn around and hate on billionaires.  On the other side of the fence, you have argument made that gay marriage will have a deleterious effect on the moral fabric of society; but these same moralists are standing for a free market economy which bleeds the poor and working classes.  All sides of the political spectrum hold bias and exert hypocrisy.

I can only imagine a culture which would fully support a non-biased society.  And I am uncertain of how excited I’d be to live in such a utopia.  What I believe, unfortunately, is that things in our society which we do not care for have their place. 

What is unfortunate is that we live in a world of terrible injustice.  Injustice that goes beyond what I myself can even grasp.  I’ve been on the short end of the stick, here in the United States, for years, battling schizophrenia—but feel as though I’m soft.  As I am sitting here, writing about hypocrisy, people in China are working for three dollars a week.  I feel that being here, living comfortably, I am part of the problem.

I believe that bias and hypocrisy emerge out of a learned response to vulnerability.  People need their vulnerabilities to have compassion for others.  But what we’ve done in our society is turn our natural instincts which once served the proliferation of our species into tactics which serve to protect our politics.  Reason has become a tool for manipulation and compassion a tool for exploitation. 

My argument in this blog post has, itself, been somewhat stilted.  I’m much more for gay marriage and freedom of the working and under classes than I am for a free market economy.  What I want is for there to be no right or wrong; but I can not feel that in my heart.  I want to know that all people are basically good—but I have my doubts.  What I can believe is that even the evil doers of society serve some good within humanity; their good may be, unfortunately, much less significant than the injustices that they create.  

Only an Outcast

Society is fucked.  All kinds of people will tell you that this is true; most of them are, however, too shielded by the economic structure of our world to have actually tasted the mire.  Fortunately, I am a schizophrenic which means I am among the most intimately familiar with the misfortune of living on the fringes of culture.

How did it come about that I would situate myself over the precariousness of madness?  Why don’t we, before I go into how I came to be an outcast, go into what madness isn’t?  A broken mind is not an event isolated from its environment—and not simply a chemical imbalance.  In many cases of diagnosed mental illness there may not even be any great disturbance of the brain at all.  Understand that psychiatry has been broadening the arena of maladies which it attempts to treat for centuries.  But let’s focus on schizophrenia, just for now.

I do believe that there is likely to be a chemical imbalance related to schizophrenia.  There are studies which suggest that it is not, and studies that suggest it is.  But scientific studies are imbued with bias.  My experience, in my own healing journey, suggests that my mind saved me from the harmful elements of society.  Waywardness—often associated with schizophrenia—is a reaction to a repressive culture.  Madness is the result of poverty, incarceration, drug use, alienation, and abuse—as it is manifest in, certain, eccentric people.

Society cast me aside and instead of rejoining I decided to go further into exploration of solitude.  At the age of twenty-two I set out to do a four year meditation; as part of this meditation I chose to remain abstinent.  Right in step with my decision to follow a solitary path to seek higher wisdom, I began believing I had a rat in my brain. 

My time of abstinence went on well after my decision to finish my isolation—my meditation.  All told I went eleven years without joining with another person in an enduring intimate relationship.  And this is where I say that I have seen, first hand, how society is one big propaganda campaign.  Because of my extreme spiritual desolation, I attempted suicide.  Because I had no hope for rejoining with the world, I acted to have myself incarcerated in both jails and psychiatric institutions.

And then I turned my life around.

After living in solitude for so long and rejoining the living world, I have seen something very interesting.  I’m working.  I’m very active in leading a fulfilling life.  But I’m still an outcast.  And it is not because there is anything wrong with my brain.  Society is one big orgy of gross misrepresentation.  Lies are perpetuated that blind us all; society claims to celebrate non-conformity, and radicalism; but in reality, all the real non-conformists are silenced; and the only form of “radicalism” which is supported is crap ass bourgeois hypocrisy. 

Not All Steps Must Move Us Forward

Steps taken towards liberation can be observed in small, grassroots, groups which revolutionize the status quo.  I see the roots of revolution in queer activism; and I see it in independent journalism; much of what goes on among artists liberates us all.  We must not be singular in our definition of anarchy, however.  Because, if we try too hard to define radicalism, or anarchy, and if we sit high atop our ideologies, hoping for a more positive future, the present anarchy will recede.

How can we all be less governable?  Society, maligned with crime and poverty, is not necessarily less governable than one that is peaceful, and egalitarian.  One could even argue that the means to liberation is through non-violent resistance.  Revolutions, in history, have taken both forms of peaceful protest, and violent upheaval. 

Exercising our liberties is a good start to uprooting injustice.  Gay pride opened the doors to gay marriage.  Publicly opposing government influence, the queer population revolutionized the public attitude towards sexuality, and choice of gender.  Now, there is a great deal of strife in this country around police violence; if we are steadfast we can revolutionize the way our society is “kept safe.”  But all of society has to act as one body, with one mind, of anti-political revolution, that disregards ideologies which slow the process of liberation.

Liberation could take the form of a society befallen by disorder.  But we could survive.  And in such a society we could make steps towards ending hunger, and rape.  Society has taken many centuries to prove that we will not arrive at a culture, sustained by government, where all people’s contributions to humanity are valued.  As long as economy runs the political spectrum, abuse and inequality will be perpetuated in the name of country, and patriotism.

I don’t believe we will see the resolution of our revolution; society will, in our lifetimes, remain unquestionably evil; hunger and all other symptoms of oppression will persist.  And it is because people are too afraid to see that we can change the world right now.  We are too afraid to make the sacrifices necessary for the upheaval of a harmful political system.

The Value of Suffering

Years of my life have been dedicated to learning how to work with added challenges that I face—as are related to my schizophrenia diagnosis.  Every now and then, no matter how hard I work to remain in a quiet head space, I withdraw from the outside world.  My seclusion, often, only lasts for twenty minutes, but sometimes as much as an hour or two.  Stepping back, away from the world, I give my internal world some attention.  I did, however, at one time, fall into a state of psychosis, where I could not see that this internal world was aberrant.

People, who I have talked to, have likened my description of psychosis to channeling.  And in my research to understand what channeling is, I have uncovered consistencies.  One way in which people channel is to use symbolism to cultivate self-knowledge as a means to heal from psychological trauma. 

Seth Farber, who is a doctor in psychology, and the author of The Spiritual Gift of Madness, wrote that he recommended to a schizophrenic patient that they look into channeling.  In his book, he writes, that he told this patient that “channels make good money.”  Now, I do use symbolism to better pursue self-knowledge; I don’t consider myself a channel; but I have for years looked to the king snake as a symbol of higher wisdom.  And I use the king snake as my spirit animal for my code of ethics which is a philosophy for life-long learning.

Aberrant realities can, if they are given due attention, open windows to our soul’s expression of who we are.  I have learned so much of myself from learning to flourish—despite having a schizophrenic mind.  I say despite my schizophrenic mind, but I would also like to add that because it has led me through despair—I’ve awakened to a brilliantly better self than I was before my psychosis. 

Freedom from oppressive mind-states opens the soul to much of the beauty within us that, otherwise, could go unnoticed.  Much of the work we need to do, in order to see this beauty, is to stop believing that our consciousness is limited to one reality. 

Psychosis is an art that expresses itself in the subterranean layers of the ego.  People suffer so that their psychosis can endure; as much, great artists suffer so they may dedicate their time to creative pursuits.  What we need, as a society, is to allow for alternative ways to explore the subconscious to ebb and flow naturally—without further trauma.  As long as we are afraid of the outcomes tied into extreme states, the people facing these states will attempt to suppress their natural tendency to resolve them.   

Where suffering is valued there is no unconquerable oppression.

Free No Matter What

My writing mentor had once said that Malcom X read the entire dictionary.  Ambitious as I am, I sat down with a grammar dictionary just about every day for two months.  The dictionary I read in that time is the rather famous Fowler’s Modern English Usage.  But upon completion of reading Fowler’s, I found out that not only did Malcom X read the entire dictionary, he wrote down every single entry in a composition book during a seven year prison sentence.    

Malcom has said that studying the dictionary opened worlds to him which he found through reading books.  Before studying the dictionary, he missed a lot of knowledge which he could later absorb.  Malcom also said that reading gave him freedom—that he did not feel imprisoned while he did his sentence.  And it is this last statement which is really important in my eyes, and to the message of this blog. 

Uprooting order, as I intend to do with this blog, has to start from within.  If Malcom X can be free while behind bars, we all can find a freedom which almost no oppressor can take from us.  Finding this freedom may be the greatest act of defiance I know.  Buddha found freedom in meditation.  Others find their freedom in leading alternative lifestyles—whether by traveling or living off the grid, and possibly in an intentional community.  But let us not devalue any one person’s path towards freedom over most any others. 

Oppression is the process of using power to direct the lives of others in such a manner to give one person’s freedom greater import than another’s.  All people have the right to be free but only in a society which grants freedom for all.  What we must do, in order to further expand the boundaries of liberation, is find our path to freedom in the face of our oppression.

I’ve found a great deal of freedom in the last month in which I’ve been working with my hands.  There is something about doing useful work which has let me unfurl myself to a state of self I’d almost forgotten.  Many years ago, I did trade work but I diverted my course for a while, mostly because I resented having to do physical labor.  But when I left the working class, I fell into a miserable state of mind which left me bereft of any feeling of freedom or liberation.  I would eventually be diagnosed with schizophrenia and in need of institutionalized mental health care for five years.

I did, however, go on to work at a social services agency where I used my life experience to be a person who could relate to and support others struggling with alternative mind experiences or coming out of jail.  But finding trade work—like the work I did when I was young—has given me new insight into how I can discover my freedom.  I no longer devalue the path that I took to get here because every step has allowed me to come closer to myself. 

It has been that the more I allow myself to be myself the freer I am.  I just so happens that my true self was hidden under the façade of many lies society had told me.

Let Us All Be Free

I do not question my anarchist convictions because I am not actively breaking the law.  Belief in the decency of doing useful work to honor my social contract—as I interpret it—does a great deal of good for the furthering of my individual goals.  And as an anarchist, I believe that individuality should reign over politics.

Although I venture to say that I needn’t brazenly defy the law, for the sake of revolutionary ideals, I do not make argument against these ideals.  People do a great deal of good for liberating the masses by opposing unjust circumstances through defiance, and law breaking.  I applaud their passion and commitment.  I believe, however, my own liberation from injustice which—thrust upon me—has given me a duty to a different path. 

I have been to jail for the fight of my own autonomy, independence, and liberation.  Jail has been home to me four times.  But I did not go to jail for political reasons.  Incarceration was my only hope at independence as I fought a battle with the strange forces of psychosis.  I tried homelessness—but did not last. 

Anarchy has to be about personal autonomy for all people.  And some of us find freedom in simple labor, or doing service based work.  Please do not isolate anarchist ideals from the people whom our revolution is to serve; if we do let this happen, we will have no revolution which will serve the people who inspired it.

Voting for Bernie

Yesterday, there was a parade that made its way through down town Brattleboro.  This parade was part of the annual Strolling of the Heifers; among participants in this year’s parade were Bernie Sanders, and Vermont’s Governor, Peter Shumlin.  Bernie took the stage in Brattleboro’s town common as the parade wound to a close.  Around him, as he made his way towards the pavilion where he’d speak was a cluster of journalists—some dressed in expensive suits.

At first, this seemed an opportunity not to miss, but as Bernie was being introduced—and the parade was still going on—I saw a friend marching with a banner which said “white silence = violence.”  I decided to join my friend, and fellow anarchist, rather than stand by in a crowd to hear a presidential candidate speak.

The parade finished just past the town common; I stayed with my friend as he took the banner he had been holding to a tent.  Afterwards, we both got root beer floats and walked back to his car talking about radical politics—and the 2016 presidential election.  Back and forth we went, with ideas like voting against the American people’s best interest with the hope to spur revolution.  I argued that the possibility of our country’s citizens being apathetic towards bad government was too great to vote for the wrong candidate.

The brief moment where I was at the town common, in the presence of a presidential candidate, disillusioned me to the electoral process.  I feel that democracy, unfortunately, sells out the best interests of voting citizens to prostituted campaigns promoting people, not politics. 

I am going to vote in 2016; and I’ll vote for Bernie Sanders.  But my politics, my social responsibilities are to uproot the conventional notions which corporatized political campaigns sell.  Voting a good candidate into office will not alleviate the discord and injustice within the global social-economic structure.   Our calling as voting citizens, within the political arena has to be, first, to each other.  Democracy cannot ever serve the people until the people align, not to serve democracy, but to fight for liberation.

Spontaneous Knowledge

Taking on learning projects has been integral to the sourcing of spontaneous knowledge required for pursuing self-education.  The cornerstone of learning projects which I've taken on in recent months has been of building my vocabulary.  As I am a writer, it would make sense that cultivating knowledge of the English language would be a means to further understanding and accomplishment.  Six vocabulary builders have been dispensed with and my command over the English language seems ostensibly close to that which came before this project.  After all, writing does not gain in appeal from big words as much as it does big ideas.

What I have gained from this leap forward in my vocabulary is a greater comprehension in reading.  And it is my belief that this development in skill will—overtime—show itself as manifest in my writing.  Good readers make good writers. 

While good readers make good writers good readers do not necessarily make great learners.  I read a book recently on self-education which was concise and well researched called Connecting the Dots.  The author of this book offered to his readership himself as an example of good scholarly practice.  He reads—as he says—100 books a year.  Please, before I go too far in this essay, do not allow me to purport an untruth—reading is fundamental to learning.  And reading 100 books a year is a great and disciplined way to attain understanding and foresight.  But what I want to say here is that reading cannot generate creativity without a base of skillfulness which allows for freedom from the knowledge obtained by immersing yourself in books.

Centermost to any self-directed learning path should be to have work which you've created to show something of your studies.  After all, as a self-directed learner, you will never have a degree and thus need something tangible which will further your cause.  A lot of knowledge will not get you anywhere unless you've used this knowledge as a venture into the creation of a body of work or carefully crafted skill.  It is here that my earliest attempts at self-education failed which is why here I address this argument in regards to reading.  There was a time when I myself would read well over 100 books in a year and ended up with very little to show for it.

Mind is a source of spontaneous knowledge which can be encumbered by too many facts and hypotheses.  Learning—if not done with the idea that we can co-create a foundation of spiritual emancipation from our relationship to our unique spontaneous knowledge—can be crippling.  Learning is a process of fleshing out spontaneous knowledge whereas reading by itself suppresses this knowledge.  Reading, can be, if not used as a means of transmission between inner and outer worlds, nothing more a means of bottling spontaneous knowledge—and this is injurious to the soul. 

Spontaneous knowledge is the ability of your mind to roam free.  Creating a learning practice should be purposed to create space for your mind to free itself unencumbered by external influences. 

How then does my studying vocabulary help me to better allow my mind to roam the cultural landscape?  Reading is to my learning practice, now, like the night sky would have been to settlers of the old west, and to early navigators of the open waters.  Reading is predictable.  It is a North Star or Big Dipper which can be seen everywhere on the horizon; reading grants my intellectual practice points from which to reference my spontaneous knowledge.  Reading grants me my bearings.  And reading on words, as I have been doing for several months now, has allowed the relationship to my spontaneous knowledge to be unfurled through my writing practice.

Writing is one of the very most expansive of places that my mind wanders.  Having knowledge of words gives my mind the ability to roam the landscape of language while staying a course which will be evidence of the insight that led to my desire to venture of in the first place.  Obtaining the tools to roam my own intellectual landscape without losing sight of the familiar night sky is how I cultivate my relationship to spontaneous knowledge.

Brotherly Love

There was a time in my life when I was a racist; I looked back on the deleterious actions of my adolescence and believed African American culture had negatively affected me.  I had joined gangs because I had been so influenced by the rappers that I admired.  And in gangs I almost threw away my chance at a really bright future.  During my late twenties, it seemed clear, that I would have been a better person if not for the influence of African American culture.  And this animosity endured until I could see the value in my struggles—and thus the value in the path that led to these struggles. 

Being in a gang was about joining together with a group of people I had love for, and showing this love by abandoning self-interest.  This was a show of love which would endure to have a profound influence on my soul.  When I came to a place where I appreciated that my friends made sacrifices to be with me, as friends, I realized how valuable the struggles which resulted from my delinquency were.  And this was a lesson in love which, now, has impacted how I perceive kinship and family.  Love must be tested in order for it to have resilience and this resiliency of love is one of the most important building blocks of character.  

Racism is the misconception that other people’s value as human beings is contingent on the color of their skin.  It results in hate.  But hate itself is only love without resiliency and empathy—that is, we hate that which we lack the empathy to have kinship for.  For a time, I considered African American culture to be a malignant influence to the person I had become; I was not strong enough to feel kinship for the people I faulted for my own actions.

I’m embarrassed to say that the lesson in brotherly love which I now so benefit from was so hard earned.  But I’m equally proud to have been able to have cultivated friendships with people of all races because these people led me to better understand loving companionship.  The contribution they made to my understanding of what it is to be human has far outlasted the struggles I faced in early adulthood.  And for that reason, I have learned to respect and admire the contributions they have made to the person I have become.  Their love and friendship taught me how to be a man.

Lovingness between friends stays with a person—and for those whose friends have stood by them—they are to pass on that love as compassion and empathy towards all people.  It is through intimate connection between friends that compassion for mankind is kindled.

My friends have a legacy in my heart; they have helped me grow and become more dedicated to leading a rich existence.  Giving back to them is necessary to the integrity I have as a human being.  I must be the person now who they all saw that I could be when I was just emerging into adulthood.  Here and now, I have new friends, and I must take what I’ve gained from past relationships, and use that well of lovingness to endow these people with the compassion passed onto me by old friends. 

Standing with friends only to better be friends is the greatest act of compassion I know.  I learned this by being with people who would follow me through hard times—and not give up seeing the good in me.  For a while, I lost sense of how rewarding some of my past friendships were; I gave up on the dignity which comes from knowing no greater thing than loyalty.  And this lapse in judgment saw me slide backwards towards having animosity towards a whole race of people.  But this could not last—because there is too much good which people of all races have created in my life.  

How to Create Your Own Code

One of the greatest exercises which I’ve ever undertaken has been to create my own code of ethics.  Here, from my years of dedication, I will summaries the most constructive elements which I have used in creating a document that encapsulates my personal philosophy.  This will be broken down into steps which may be implemented in any order.

Step 1.)  Decide what you want to be and learn how to work towards that. 

Step 2.)  Pick out a spirit animal for your code of ethics.

Step 3.)  Identify necessary skills which will aid your attempt at becoming what you want.  Learn each of the skills one at a time. 

Step 4.)  Study a philosopher whom you wish to align your thinking and ideology with.

Step 5.)  Revise, revise, revise.

When I set out to develop my own code, I wanted to be a warrior.  My code was to be part of a larger project of creating my own martial art for which I had already invented a strike.  Study of Bushido ethics served as the starting point for my work towards developing a strong warrior ethic.

The spirit animal of my code is the king snake.  When I chose this as my spirit animal I was psychotic; as a result I do not fully remember how I came to choose this animal.  But it makes my code much more awesome.

Identifying the necessary skills for being a warrior did not come without first picking a philosopher whose teachings I wanted to implement into my ethic.  I chose Miyamoto Musashi who inspired me to learn strategy, writing, and martial arts.  Until I had cultivated adequate skill in all of these disciplines the process of creating a code mystified me.  I studied chess for a year and a half and sustained improvement in my writing for about three years.  Martial arts is my area of the least skill development in my warrior toolbox in which I have only moderate amounts of skill.

My code of ethics is a fusion of both warrior and educational philosophies.  Study of military science and martial philosophy were at the forefront of this process of creating a code.  But, eventually, I came to realize that self-education was dominant in my life.  I studied and wrote on self-education for a column at an online magazine.  Writing on self-education motivated me to study educational philosophy.  And I decided that my ethic would have to incorporate life-long learning as an integral part of my ideology.

Here is my code to as an example from which you may develop your own ethic:

Virtues of the Warrior Scholar: Humility, Bravery, Frugality, Loyalty, Patience, Honesty, and Courage

Source of Sustenance for the Warrior Scholar: Life-long learning

Evils That Will Lead One Astray: Envy, Greed, Haste, Pride, Timidity, Anger, Disrespect, and Selfishness

Ideal of the Warrior Scholar:  To free yourself of worldly things

Rule of the Warrior Scholar:  Break the rules

Joys of the Warrior Scholar: Vicissitude, Friendship, and Skillfulness

Duty of The Full-Fledged King Snake:  Live simply—train in the martial arts—and persist in following a path of intellectual, moral, and spiritual cultivation.

Looking Back Stepping Forward

Thirteen years ago, at the age of twenty-two, I began believing I had a rat in my brain, and that I had been the first man in history to knock out a yoko zuna.  Today, I am at a place where I’m lucid, very independent, socially active, and connected to reality.  But I wonder where this thought of my being a great warrior who had knocked out a yoko zuna came from?  I can trace fragments of this bloated perception of my true reality, back, past the age of twenty-two. Memories stick out about my belief that I could fight really well.  But I don’t trust many of them.  Outside of wrestling in Jr. High I have no verifiable memories of any hand to hand combat which occurred before my break.

One memory of being able to fight is of a time when I was taking a martial arts class and the instructor challenged me to fight him.  I did, and won.  However, I am sure this never happened.  Still, another memory of being out on the streets of Los Angeles late at night causes me to believe that maybe in my early adulthood—and even childhood into adolescence—I had had some success in fighting.  Often there is a kernel of truth to schizophrenic delusions; often truth is hidden just beneath the surface of fallacy.

That night in Los Angeles went like this:  I arrived in the city on a bus and had two large bags with me.  After bringing them over to a pay phone, I made a call.  When I got off the phone an African American man approached me; he asked me where I was going, and if I needed any help.  I needed to find a hotel, and the man helped me with that, and he helped carry my large bags.  This man, generously, only asked for a little money in exchange—I gave him ten dollars.

Apparently, the neighborhood the bus had dropped me off in was not safe.  I realized this when I was at the hotel and told the management that I would go to an ATM to get money to pay for a room.  Upon hearing this, they exclaimed, “you’re going back out there?” and I responded that I was.  They were quite alarmed at the thought that I would go back into the streets of this neighborhood late at night.    

The walk back to the bus station is where I see that back before I was twenty-two—before I had been psychotic—I believed I could fight.  I’ll admit, however, that I was also naïve.  But, regardless, on the walk back to the bus station, I walked right through a group of guys attempting to bait a fight.  Today, I would never do such a thing, because it’s disrespectful, but also because I’m terribly frightened of groups of guys hanging out, late at night, in rough neighborhoods of urban areas.

Back then, for some reason, I thought I was either invincible (but many youths do) or I thought myself to be able to handle myself against groups of guys.  What could have incited the insanity which led me to act against my own safety?  But more importantly, before the real break from reality which I experienced at twenty-two—how far had I already ventured into a distorted perception of myself?

This look back to the past isn’t so much to try to salvage dignity from a disordered life—I already harbor a great deal of mad pride.  Looking back is a part of the search for truth which lies behind the mask of alienation which had been thrust upon me by my own desertion of sanity.  I believe the best way to conquering demons is to approach them as if they are soft, gentle, kittens.  Cradling the source of my madness, I have come to a place of deeper understanding of myself; I have opened the door to the real world and stepped forward into it.  Each step forward, into reality, seems to unearth deeper, more insightful, understanding of the windy path I’ve followed.    

Not My Ideal

Living in one of the largest economies in the world has its privileges which can be detrimental to anybody’s personal ethic.  People are starving in the world, and my work, done for a decent wage, supports a political structure which exploits this suffering.  How do I know where to draw the line?  How much am I willing to play a role in the economic system which benefits me at the expense of others?  Unfortunately, I feel I play a role in this twisted culture of exploitation more than is necessary.  But I’m not exactly an idealist—I’m a dreamer—and I’m a charitable person—but I’m not exactly an idealist.

My philosophy, regarding my source of income, is that I should not work in a position which directly exploits others.  Currently, I’m employed at a temp agency and for a while I was working in a warehouse that made home décor.  Most of the product at that warehouse was made in China or India on slave labor.  I needed the work, however.  And so I did what I had to to get by compromising my personal ethic.

However, in another circumstance this same compromise is set in a different light.  People, in the same building as where I work, are being exploited.  I’m still at the temp agency, but they have me placed at a psychiatric hospital, now.  I am, however, only working as a maintenance person.  At this hospital, people are being held against their will, even though they cannot be considered culpable for any crime.  And people are being forced medication, which I oppose.  Working for such an institution is a compromise which I make to keep my head above water.

What I will not do is participate in work where I am, myself, expected to force medication on another person.  And I’m not willing to hold a salaried position, for long-term employment, at a company which runs off slave labor.  Still, I cut corners regarding my personal ethic on a daily basis; as much as I’m not an idealist, I’m not a saint either.  I’m just an honest, hard working, young, American, trying to make a living.  Good working class people are integral to the anarchist ideologies which I attempt to cultivate into my social consciousness; sacrifices I make for the ethic resulting of my ideologies are more numerous than the corners I cut.

Each day I work towards a deeper and more profound way to live my life.  That requires that I not settle for too many compromises in my ideology.  I try not to reside in a comfortable place of feeling that going day to day is good enough—because it isn’t.  

Not A Professional

Starting a blog is always a mark that I’m about to learn a whole lot.  This is my fifth blog.  Three of the other four blogs which I’ve written were published on an online magazine called Vermont Views.  You may find the only blog which I’ve written—not for Vermont Views—at breathebrattleboro.blogspot.com.  Breathe took seven months to write; it was a blog about my recovery story; I am a schizophrenic.  In writing Breathe, I emerged into the mental health advocacy field, here in Vermont.  I spoke at the state house in Vermont and even got a job as a peer specialist at a social services agency.

Now, you might not know what a peer specialist is—a lot of people don’t.  It is a person who lends moral support to another in recover; most often in recovery from a bout with mental illness; and most often a peer is someone who themselves is in recovery from mental health challenges.  In addiction recovery, they refer to people of a similar role as recovery coaches.  But I’ve digressed.  My reason for explaining what a peer specialist is is to make argument for the consideration that professionalizing peer support—while having many good points—has its drawbacks as well.

My role as a peer at the social services agency had conflicting currents to it.  I say currents, and would like to clarify, a current here, is an influence on how I do my job.  Ideally, I would do my job so that the clients I worked with would be supported in taking strides towards leading more rewarding lives.  The relationship with my clients created an influence over how I did my job—it was a current.  But the other current to how I did my job was of keeping enough money flowing through the agency I worked for. 

Keeping money flowing through the agency makes my role as a peer more regimented.  Money flows in for each minute of face to face time.  That means I got paid to sit and talk with clients. The hope my employers had for me was that in sitting in conversation with my clients, I’d cultivate relationships.  And I did.  But sitting and talking about what goes on in a person’s life only helps things so much.

What I’d like to see out of my role in the peer community isn’t focused on sitting and talking.  I want to create movement within my community for people who have faced challenges similar to me which will create a sense of pride around facing adversity.  If I cannot make that my endeavor as a peer professional then it is not what I feel I should be doing. 

What I feel I must say before my readers go out and denounce the professionalization of peer support, is mention my own recovery, and how professional peers impacted that.  I was encouraged to start blogging by a professional peer; and I was encouraged to pursue employment as a peer—by a professional peer.  Each of these words of encouragement planted a seed for life change.  And I mean dramatic life change.  Very literally, about four years ago now, I thought the best thing I could hope for was to spend the rest of my life in jail.  I felt life was too difficult for me.  I was too much a failure.

We cannot do away with professional peer support.  We can, however, create a paradigm of peer support which honors confidentiality in all situations where no one is in danger.  We can create a paradigm where peers are independent of agencies—freelance peer support.  These, and many other steps, can be taken to make it so that professionalizing the work people do in lending support is not conflicted.

No Voice to Loud

I’ve set out to get off social security disability payments for 2015—so far so good.  I’m still receiving a monthly check but am working full time doing maintenance at a hospital.  In six months my payments will be a thing of the past. 

For a while, I thought myself to not be able to have as strong a voice for anarchy as a recipient of state funded disability payments.  I am here to say that we all should benefit from the state for as long as it is in existence.  Anarchy does not have to be about not making use of subsidiary funding provided to people for whom assistance is necessary.  Anarchy is a philosophy that suggests without centralized control of wealth and power our society would be more equitable, and less corrupted.  We could provide better care to those who need it because the care provided would be decentralized.

Working is important to me—and getting off disability will help me to stand up for my convictions.  But there should be no shame in receiving subsidiary assistance.  Communities pulling together to assist those whose lives are especially challenging is more in line with anarchist ideologies than maybe any other concept I know. 

To create anarchy we need not only focus on abolishing the state.  And we need not denounce the state funded programs which help those in need.  We need, instead, to find alternative ways to work towards social equanimity which minimize the need for governance.  Working together, as men and women of a free society, is our only means to minimizing the need for centralized control or political power.  Political upheaval will come when the people claim responsibility to each other in the global community.  

What would be better if the person who provided subsidiary funding to another person with a disability knew the person whom they were helping?  Imagine if funds provided to those with disabilities were not provided by a body of governing officials—but instead, by a father or close friend.  Anarchy is a philosophy that the people hold the power to a free state. 

I am working towards minimizing my reliance on the state for my independence.  As I make progress I will afford greater realization of my own personal sanctity.  As much as I can, I will disallow that the state influence how I am to lead my life.  But in the mean time I will know that my voice is strong because I am a human being—just like everyone else.