Grocers Do What?

For the purposes of fleshing out ideas for this anarchist blog, I’ve been reading a lot of anarchist literature.  I have to say that much of it has been focused on structural oppression.  Too much!  Yes, the individual is being marketed to themselves; yes, the environment which shapes us into the (pseudo) individuals we are has been dishonestly constructed by corporations.  Individuals are no freer in this society of fast food and Apple Computers than they are responsible of the forces which oppress us.  And that is a problem.

I will, however, not like to tolerate people clamoring over how corporate grocers are manipulating shoppers by putting milk in the back of the store.  The theory runs that milk is in the back of the store so that we will have to walk through the whole store to get to the product we so frequently need to purchase—milk.  The idea is that if we walk through the whole store we are likely to pick up an item or two while we’re at it.

I’m making reference to a lecture which I bought and have on my ipod.  Yes, I still own an ipod.  This lecture is by a man named Raj Patel.  And on a whole I found the lecture invigorating and well thought out.  But this point about the milk is really—and very simply—wrong.  It is wrong to bemoan the inner workings of the grocers, as they have conspired to have us all walk to the back of the store just to by milk, because there really are much much worse things plaguing our society.  It is wrong that when people are starving to death, here in our country, we bitch because we don’t have all that we want.

Please think about this carefully…I will.  I’m certain I’ve fallen into the privileged bitch fest role enough times to cause me to think twice before I ever say I’m being stifled by corporate politics.  There are anarchists who are walking the edge of just complaining about corporations and government.  Let us not stymie our so precious chance at revolution in exchange for a little idyllic wisdom.

We have to consider that our corporations and government have manufactured laziness and privilege in the midst of war and poverty.  And please, if you feel strongly about an issue, do not let my words inhibit you in any way.  But remember where you came from; if you are sucking the teat of privilege—represent.  Stand strong for the betterment of our society; what we need is people who are willing to take a few shots to the chin; we need them to stand for what is right—not what is better.

Working Together

Work is not necessarily demeaning.  And working for wages, disproportionately low, in regards to what a person produces, or maintains, is not by itself the root of our economic injustice.  We need to evolve, as anarchists, an understanding of our repressive culture which is not limited to monetary equality.

Collectivist work ideals would create an environment in which labor was valued as much as ownership.  This is important.  But it is important, not because workers need more money, and not because people have to over exert themselves over the course of a day’s labor.  Tough work—and making the sacrifices necessary, to be working—are themselves valuable resources for our society to be successful.

What we have in the twenty-first century is an economic structure which has defiled our social-culture.  Ownership—and technology—are more valued as a basis for the function of our society than is the basic needs of the masses.  Billions of dollars are being spent towards better utilizing technologies while there are people who are not working—and, as a result, cannot meet their own basic needs. 

People—and work itself—have gone the way of the simple nail; although the nail is a simple invention, it was once, of tremendous value.  At one time, a nail was considered so valuable that people burned down houses to retrieve the nails they were built with.  But back then nails were made by hand; and people who made nails were skilled craftsmen; their work was important to the function of their community. 

No longer is the work which is done to make nails restricted to a person who has knowledge or skill.  Nails are made by machines.  And most other things which are manufactured are as well manufactured without the need for skilled workers. 

Ironically, the nail was a beginning in the drive of mankind to be more adapted living in a larger—more structured, society.  But what has happened is that we have become so adapted to a social structure which is so complex that the simple needs of society have been brushed aside.  Globalization, from a boom in technology, which allows us to source work from all over the world, has uprooted our economic ties to our local communities.

I find most critiques of work politics to be bourgeois—buffeted by privilege—idyllic—and self-righteous.  I do not think that my work should get financial returns on par with that of ownership of the company which I work for.  I do not think that having to bust my ass to make ends meet is an injustice.   Very many workers do not need more money to get by; but we need as a society to step back away from the value misconception that more is necessarily better.

As we have grown more complex our society, too, has become less intimately connected with the needs of community—and of the individual.  Things which were once of great value—like workers—like nails—have become nothing more than commodities.  Culture has been supplanted by excess. Anarchy has to stand for a social structure which gives greater value to the contribution of useful work, but not necessarily with greater financial returns.  More money, in exchange for physical labor, will not negate the dehumanization of our economic system. 

Good Competition

I play chess.  Almost every day, at the coffee shop where I live, friends gather together to engage in battle—over a chess board.  We are not especially great players but we play with heart.  And we love the game.  Chess provides for me a common interest, which myself, and friends, come together over

Anarchist ideals may be found wherever the word camaraderie may be aptly used.  It may be idiosyncratic that I use a game—an avenue of competition—as a grounds for promoting anarchist ideals.  Anarchy is anti-capitalist at its most basic level; fault with capitalism lies, very squarely, on its competition base social dynamic.  But chess is fundamentally askew with mainstream, capitalistic, social dynamics.

I enjoy competing with my friends over a game of chess.  And I do not think that it is incomprehensible that we could have a strong competitive drive within society which would also be both peaceful, and egalitarian.  Competition does not necessarily divide people—and it does not necessarily create hostility. 

Before European colonialism, many cultures—like that of the Native Americans—were host to forms of competition.  LaCrosse was a sport invented by the Native Americans; I believe it served as a means to settle disputes between tribes.  And they lived a much more cooperation based culture than what we do, today. 

For a society to have a culture which functions from a competitive basis, but bears no ill will between competitors, there must be more at stake in the camaraderie. Between competitors, there has to be more gained through sharing an interest than what may be gained from victory.  In chess, I find a group of friends with which I commune with.  Our friendships are far more important than is any one person’s prevailing at the game. 

Competition can strengthen solidarity which exists between two people.  Losing in competition can incite a person to give greater attention to their rivalry.  And rivalry exists between people who consider themselves equal in strength or skill.

Our culture of competition could be rectified from the debased nature which it has taken on if our political system did not impose wastefulness and deceit.  Community must come before social status—sharing must take precedent over ownership—and camaraderie before financial gain.  Existing within our society are micro-cultures that demonstrate the ideals fundamental to a cooperative environment which still has space for winning and losing.

Holler Out

Holler out

Top of your lungs

Loud

And people will turn

Will look

Whisper soft

To a good friend

And your words

Will touch her heart

Souls

Find in softness

Courage

Find in whispers

Strength

Inside

Lay in formlessness

Stillness

And subtle wisdom

Be

I lost my job teaching skiing thirteen years ago; and it was this, seemingly innocuous event, which precipitated my journey through madness.  But adversity makes you stronger—and solitude makes you wiser.  All things which consumed me during my years spent in isolation—my years of emotional retreat—served to make me more capable of affecting the collective consciousness from my platform of recovered schizophrenic.

Delusions of grandeur, along with paranoia, were terribly defeating to my ability to remain steadfast to the here and now while I was suffering.  Suffering was in the shape of having a contorted ego—in trying to fit something very large into a very small space.  For ten years of my life, I thought I had been one of the greatest generals in history.  All ten of those years were spent in tremendous self-pity.

Five years went by—while I was psychotic—before I was diagnosed with schizophrenia.  After receiving this diagnosis, and responding by attempting suicide, I was placed in a group home.  And there the journey—through madness—which has planted me firmly in my most intimate expression of myself which I can muster—took a marked turn for the better.  At this group home, which was in Castleton, Vermont, I began seeing a psychiatrist.  He recommended to me that I journal about my military service. 

Beyond journaling, which I’m sure helped me to dig deeper into myself, I began to do one hundred mile bike rides, once a month.  Exercise, as my psychiatrist put it, was one of the very best things for my mental and spiritual health.

Schizophrenia is not easily brushed off—doing one hundred mile bike rides—and journaling—still left me with too many unanswered questions.  A lot of soul searching would have to be done before I could live with the challenges I faced then, and still do today.  I had to understand that it was not a result of a deficiency of my character that I was hopelessly lonely—and poor.  And I needed to see that I was indeed strong; this was a lesson that wasn’t learned until I broke; not until the self-destructive nature of schizophrenia was exacted on my soul.

I left the group home where I did one hundred mile bike rides and maintained for a short while.  But then I regressed.  I had this lingering fear that if I didn’t spend the rest of my life in jail that I’d be the most tortured man in history. 

Some things which we experience in our lives are too intricately woven into the fabric of our character to be public knowledge.  I had a moment which I so desperately lost my sanity that I had to be put in jail—and, eventually, involuntarily committed.  I do not share what occurred that resulted in this punishment with anyone but my very closest friends.  I am, however, very fortunate to be able to say that no one was hurt and no permanent damage was done.

Eventually, after educating myself about schizophrenia, and receiving treatment in another group home, I came to realize I had not been a general. 

When you manage to peek through the underbrush of an alternative reality, you get hit.  Stepping forth, out of my journey through madness, brought with it a not just a feeling of accomplishment, and not just gratefulness either.  I felt almost immediately that I had to rectify my wrong doings; I felt I had to make up for lost time.  All the years of being someone other than myself fueled a desire to be more of the person I was meant to be.  I wanted to be stronger than I had ever been.

Needing to be stronger than ever before fueled my recovery.  I began blogging on my recovery process, daily.   And I began taking seriously the craft of writing.  Almost as soon as I got started, I saw fruits of my labor.  Because of my blog, I was invited to speak at the State House here in Vermont.  I would also (in a round-a-bout way) find work as a peer professional.  Work I did as a mental health advocate culminated in 2014 with a rally I put on for mental health awareness s month.

And then I set a new year’s resolution heading into 2015.  I decided it was time to get off of disability payments.  Almost as soon as the New Year started, the universe spun me around, and I was forced to resign from my position as a peer professional at a very good social services agency.  My years of work to be the strongest mental health advocate that I could be, took a sudden hit.

Among the more radically minded survivors in the peer movement, people like to think that their suffering served a purpose.  I vehemently stand by this point.  I feel that surviving schizophrenia made me much stronger.  Basically, the idea that psychosis can lead to tremendous insight into the soul, refutes a conception in psychiatry which attempts to have people return to “base line.”  Base line is the level of functioning that preceded the psychotic break.  And for a long time, I resisted the notion that I would only be able to resume a life which held as much richness as what I had before my fight for sanity.

Stronger, wiser, and more educated, I am.  But I’m still the very same person—at my most intimate level—which I was before I lost my mind.  And that’s pretty fucking great because I had a lot going for me.

Getting caught up in being better, stronger, and more outspoken was defeatist to my being in the here and now.  Any feelings of grandiosity, whether brought on by psychosis, or by a lingering feeling that something better is out there for me, took away from the simplicity of having a truly intimate connection to the life I lead.

My years of work to recover a life, once broken by madness, have led me to great heights.  I’m thankful that my hard labor yielded tremendous fruit.  But life holds something deeper for me than to just be a leader—or advocate.  Today, I’m realizing that the life I am leading has rewards far greater than grandiosity.  And it is within the simplicity of the person that I am that my connection to my heart, and soul, and to my own innate goodness may find root and abundance.

Let the Criminals Fight

Let’s outlaw guns.  Let’s outlaw guns, not because we are against violence, but because gun toting fascists are the greatest barrier to liberation which the United States faces.

Imagine if you will, the eventual revolution becomes a reality, and it is waged in the form of violent upheaval.  If such a scenario were to ever occur, our entire red neck, white bread, patriotic, fire arms rights activists would step up, and—at least—attempt to stamp out our hard earned chance at liberation.  Therefore, I say, make guns illegal on the grounds that it is the most effective means to give the liberation minded, gun toting, drug dealing, criminals, a chance at overhauling governmental authority.

Yes.  I think—very rationally—that guns are better in the hands of criminals than in the hands of most law abiding citizens.  The fear I have of having anyone use a gun to rape me or steal from me is much diminished from the fear I have for my future generations living under right wing oppression.  But I’m just a bumpkin living up in Vermont, anyhow.

The argument I make is simple; criminals are smart; we are not protected from criminals by having our law abiding civilians carrying guns.  That is unless we are ourselves the law abiding citizens with guns.  And I guess it is here where our nation’s argument rests; every citizen should be given the right to own means of protection.

What I believe is that we are faced here with a double edged reality.  Having rights, to carry and own protection, from criminals, seems logical.  And I’m not anti-violence.  However, if we are to endure the maelstrom of fascist leadership tactics, which are employed to dismantle civil unrest, we must oppose—not only fascist leadership tactics—but those who buy into the principles of resultant right wing political propaganda.  And there, buying into fascist politics, we have our men and women who stand for the right to bear arms.

“If guns are outlawed only criminals will carry guns.”  That’s the pitch of right wing gun rights activists; my retort is simply, yes !!!, a day when only criminals may carry guns is one in which I am really hopeful that liberation is not far behind.

Nature of Friendship

The joy of friendship lasts beyond just time spent with someone you love.  Intimate union of souls is an expression of love; between friends, this intimacy lies in a form of companionship; this union yields for those who truly reflect their friends love—spiritual abundance.

At times in my life, I had no friends, I was held within a desolate existence which drove my heart through the floor boards of my home, deep into the earth.  There, all love I had for myself, disintegrated into muck.  Love has no bounds, but I found a path in this world which allowed me to hide myself from all loving energy which I could possibly contain or share with others.  This dark place did bring me to higher understanding of myself as well as the purposes of union.  Without darkness there can be no light.  Solitude is a means to deep reflection of the soul.  And deep within the soul there lies an understanding of how we are to be cultivated in the pursuit to share ourselves with others.

Union, as I believe it to be, is the heart’s expression of gratitude for living in this world.  Our hearts seek out strange paths so we can come to appreciate our relationships with others; and to appreciate our relationship to ourselves—both past and present.  Lovingness is an expression of union which allows us to cohabitate with the world.  Without love, life would be devoid of anything that gives us courage or wisdom.  As we grow into ourselves, and obtain wisdom and courage, we learn to express greater gratitude for the loving energy the heart cultivates in our souls.

Being human is the knowledge that although, at times, we do not know the love in our hearts, our time of spiritual isolation shall pass. 

Union, in the form of friendship, allows us to navigate times of difficulty and of solace.  It gives us space to share our triumphs.  It allows us to be fully human in the face of an, often times, mechanistic existence.  Love is the centerpiece to intimate friendship; it is through love that people grow together, and become stronger.  Friendships inspire us to learn and reach a more bountiful existence.  Intimacy, in friendship, is the union of hearts which have love for one another.  And to those who fully appreciate their friends comes the blessing of seeing themselves as beautiful manifestations of the love they have received—and the love they have to give.

If we are to come through times where being human is confining we must learn to love the people we surround ourselves with. Our friends must be the highest of ideals we know in this world or we will hide from any love we have for ourselves.  And in turn, if we come to know that there is no greater expression of the richness of our character than the expression of our love, we will know we do not need to hide.  We will have the knowledge that we are beautiful people with abundant souls.

Nothing can shatter a person like not receiving love from the universe.  Shattered, however, we can grow in myriad directions towards the boundaries of what keeps us contained.  In our growth, we can go beyond our pain to find love, friendship, and intimacy.  All the healing in the world gets done when a person comes to sharing love with friends whom they admire as their own greatest example of goodness. 

Not A Worthy Investment

Milton, the town I grew up in, had a strong working class culture.  Of course there were the bourgeois elements within my community; my family, in fact, was of a conservative middle class mindset.  But falling in line with principles which were purposed for eventual financial liberties seemed ominous to me.  And so I dispelled any motivation for academic achievement; I reeled at the thought of going to college. 

Among the friends I hung out with, two paths were respected as a means for young men to grow from adolescence into adulthood.  One was to play it safe—to find good physical work—to secure independence and maybe start a family.  And the other was to seek to be indoctrinated into the criminal justice system.  Both were to be a testament of your discipline; both were to embrace a common struggle.

The common struggle, within a democratic society, is to uphold working class values and liberty which a class economic structure inhibits. 

Schooling seems to me a means of having young impressionable people invest in their financial security.  Schooling indoctrinates voters, and taxpayers, into class warfare; very simply, if you take enough time to work towards financial security as a young person, you will not abandon class politics as an adult.  People who are invested in their financial security are much more likely to serve an economic structure which will secure them a return on the investment they made in getting an education.

I know, even in my youth, I saw schooling as means of coercion into a political structure I abhorred.  Because I resented the coercive nature of the mechanistic school experience, I sought to be as reckless as I could.  I would quit my first job at a pool hall and spend a whole summer stealing, and getting drunk.  I did get put in jail and this satiated my hunger for disorder—temporarily. 

After getting arrested for my first time, as an adolescent, I would find myself thoroughly implanted in the system.  And I would take until I was in my early thirties to maneuver the through the system to find independence.  Years spent in the system were hard; I questioned my sanity; and had to have assistance dealing with psychological trauma.  But taking an alternative route towards adulthood allowed me to undercut a system which poisons the souls of far too many people.

The whole system—from our schools—to our jails and psychiatric institutions—is a means of coercing people into a competition based economic structure.  In a democracy, the strategy for having people serve a political economy which they are against is to have them invest in having that economy serve them.  All of what we do from childhood, onward, is to perpetuate a lie to our friends, and, eventually, our future generations.  

Don't Change What You Love

Let’s get real.  Our world will not soon see a disruption in the power structures of capitalism.  For much longer, we will have to witness our government, use money of working class folks to better cater to the needs of the wealthy.  And this will be done while so many people around the world die of hunger.  I cannot change that.  And I do not think that in my lifetime anyone else will change it either.

What we must do, instead of spending so much energy trying to change what other people are doing to mismanage our society’s resources is see where and when the good of the world is manifest.  And as soon as we find the people, places, and things which bring health and wellbeing to our soul we must return this positivity to our universe—where it came from.

Anarchy has to be about ground-up social change; because if there is anything good in the world it must be cultivated between friends.  Top down politics, regardless of who is in charge, regardless of their social or economic status, will always seem myopic when compared to grassroots movement.  Movements created by people who are not out to control, but to contribute are what really matters.  And it is for this reason that taking power away from corporations is not my political objective. 

All I want is to get my words out to the world so that people can ponder some of the things that excite me.  All I want, in writing, is to maybe spark a really provocative conversation between friends. 

Writing is one of those things which has helped me to feel my soul emerge within in my mind.  I find peace and tranquility in writing practice; I love reading books which give me ideas for more and more things to write about.  And I know some of my work has really impacted people’s lives.  There were times when that knowledge kept me moving forward, towards writing better and better.

I do not want to incite people to think that in order to be free we must dismantle capitalistic power structures.  I think to argue for such change is to only contribute to the existence of these power structures.  What I want is to use my love for writing to capture the attention of a small but respectable portion of my global community.  I want at least a few people to be really moved by my words, and story.  All I can do to make the world a better place is care deeply about how I am to live.   

If you love what you do—and you do it for that reason alone—you are changing the world.  Right now, deep down in each and every forgotten community of society, there are others of us who live simply, and do what they love.  And it is these people who are the fuel source for radical change—be on our side.

  

Seeing Past Sexuality

For a long time in my life, I was bruised to such an extent to withdraw entirely from society.  But I’ve rejoined the world now, yet, unfortunately, I have found that most of what I was hiding myself from was, in fact, fraudulent. 

About three years ago, I discovered another side of madness; I stepped forward out of the world of psychosis, which my schizophrenic mind had bound me to for ten years.  And I have taken many steps towards recovery and independence since.  What is important to understand is that I thought I had a rat in my brain for my ten years spent in psychosis.  But there is another side to schizophrenia that cannot, I believe, be explained, simply by understanding brain chemistry…or genetics.

My bruised ego—it was the result of terrible alienation which lasted throughout my adolescence and into my early adulthood.  But I imagined, once I found that I didn’t have a rat in my brain, that my existence would no longer be imbued with madness…or…alienation.  However, in the last three years since becoming healthy again, I have only been renewed in my madness.  I am not crazy.  There is actually something really wrong with my life that I cannot fix; I’m a person who must, regardless of my own desires, live in emotional exile.

Let’s be very clear about what I mean when I say I live in emotional exile.  I have, for the last thirteen years, living in Vermont, had one sex partner.  For a month and a half, within the course of said thirteen year span, I lived in Miami, and I had three sex partners while I was there.  The one sex partner that I was with here in Vermont is now a dear friend; I must say that my friendships are very rewarding; but I also must say that to be so limited in your expression of affection for so long, is itself madness.

I am not unlucky in love because there is something wrong with my brain.  I could go on to explain all the good qualities I have which make it so much more inexplicable that I am so lacking in sexual intimacy.  I will not, because I don’t think it matters so much how virtuous, sexy, or noble someone is for finding a lover or sex partner.    

For the longest time, I felt so weak and frail, emotionally, because I had been without intimacy for so long.  I felt like there was something wrong with me; a few things have helped me to flip that coin over and see myself from another perspective.  Having had time to look deeply into myself to see that I am bright, resilient, and charming has rewarded me with tremendous amounts of self-love.  And being forced into spiritual—and emotional—desolation was the proving grounds for my self-love. 

My self-love did not blossom until I found root for it, however.  Finding this root took having some of the greatest relationships with some of the greatest friends I could imagine.  It also took being able to look at myself and know I have given my life my all. 

Here and now, I look at our sexualized culture from a very different perspective than when I first went into exile.  Sexuality is, to so many people, a thin veil which hides tremendous insecurity.  But no one is anymore at fault for their sexual transgressions than I am for being so hidden from my expression sexuality.  What is most wrong isn’t wrong within me anymore than it is within you.  When enough people see this one truth we can truly live in a culture of free love.

Straight Edge Awareness

Other than coffee, and my psych meds, there are no chemicals which go into my body to alter my mind or emotional fitness.  I stopped smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol without much attention to my actions.  It took several months of being sober before I realized that sobriety had become principal to my state of consciousness and wellbeing.  At that time, the decision to go straight edge had been made.

Despite being somewhat devout in adherence to straight edge philosophy, I’m not very knowledgeable to how it relates to anarchy.  Not everything must be intellectualized, however. Here, I will espouse my own understanding of how the straight edge lifestyle fits in with liberation and anti-capitalist ideologies. 

First, being fully present to partake in life’s simple pleasures, without augmenting consciousness with illicit drugs—or alcohol—cultivates a great deal of self-awareness.  Self-awareness is a great means towards self-reliance; in turn, as we become clearer to how we maintain resolve in the midst of tyranny, we become more in tune with the welfare of all human beings.  Movement towards feeling the feelings of injustice, and relating these feelings to other’s welfare, elevates our political relevancy.

Outside of being more connected to our political/social consciousness, remaining drug free is a great means to give added nourishment to the soul.  Our minds are one of the most connected to our soul organs which inhabit our bodies.  And freedom of the mind, which may soak in the entirety of our existence with sobriety, allows our soul to be cultivated with purer intention.  Moral underpinnings of living drug free allow us not only to rid our minds and bodies of toxic chemicals, but, ourselves, of the toxic vices. 

What we do to remain pure, in our personal practices, gives us the emotional resolve to create health and well being in our lives.  Sobriety can have importance to one’s political ideology because it connects us to our own welfare.  Being healthy, and being of an alternative mindset, produces a personal social culture of understanding, and empathy.  And in these things we may find the need for solidarity—and true, uncompromising, equality.

Rite of Madness

As I set out to be self-educated, at the age of twenty-two, I was blind to the path which would wind its way through a shadowy forest and lead me to higher wisdom.  My intention in pursuing this path—through the shadowy forest—was to go into exile—and read as much as I could.  Time spent in exile injured my soul.  Depleted, emotionally, from years of isolation, I found it necessary to seek support in the mental health system.

I would be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when I was twenty-seven; after receiving this diagnosis, I attempted to end my life cutting my wrist.  This caused enough alarm in those that cared for me that I would spend the next two and a half years in a private group home.  Mental illness is not the focus of this blog post, however.  Rather, I will like to elucidate my insight into the natural tendency for people to find meaning in things.  My path of self-education acted as a means for my finding meaning in years of suffering from schizophrenia.  In turn, finding meaning in my suffering led to my freedom from this suffering.

Between the years of twenty-two and twenty-six, I read so much to cause myself harm.  There is a type of hysteria which I succumbed to; this is a real hysteria which I learned about from a psychiatrist; with this form of hysteria you create so much stress for yourself that muscles in your neck tighten.  The muscles which tighten are around your esophagus, and nearly restrict breathing. 

Let’s jump forward a few years: I had seen the extreme stress associated with my hysteria dissipate; but I was in the private group home which I mentioned previously.  In that group home I began studying again, but with less fanaticism.  My main course of study at the group home was of chess which I devoted about an hour a day to for over a year.  Even while there—years after my initial development of hysteria—I found reading difficult because it caused a re-emergence of the tightness in my neck. 

Even though I read with such fanaticism during the years of exile, I found, while I was at the group home, that my level of education was not as respectable as I might like.  I was intimidated by the amount knowledge which my peers with four year degrees held.  This left me dismayed.  I could not foresee, then, that I would ever step out to transcend the bewildered state I found myself in.

Today, I am very happy with my level of education; the years of stumbling around not seeing how to be a cultivated intellectual were paramount to my eventual success in self directed learning.  I needed to bear the weight of futility to acknowledge the relationship I have to the innate wisdom inside me. 

Serious mental illness can be associated with what is considered a spiritual rite in almost any culture.  That spiritual rite is known as a dark night of the soul; a dark night is marked by exile and self-denial; a dark night manifests itself in emotional torment.  A dark night of the soul is the breakdown of the ego—the ego that inhibits a person’s relationship to their own divine essence.  A person can, once they have let go of their false self, the one which leads to emotional conflict, allow their true self to emerge. 

As it happens, and I state this as fact, the path towards self-education runs through self-knowledge.  Had I not endured years spent in exile—had I not embarked on a dark night of the soul—I would never have cultivated any relationship to myself which would hold so much honesty.  Not seeing far enough ahead to carefully navigate the shadowy forest is how I arrived at a place of higher wisdom.  Years of exile and reading did not yield adequate learning for me to be happy with my education; but my suffering and exile were paramount to finding my source of innate wisdom.  All that was necessary to uncover this wisdom was to let my spiritual self emerge out from under my broken ego.

Wisdom is what emerges when a person has developed a strong relationship to their emotional core.  There, in finding this wisdom, there is all the meaning you will need to endure any bout of madness.

Marked by Awakening

Beauty,

Beyond the eyes

It strikes the heart

And

May reach the skies

To not acknowledge

An aching heart

A Person

Must be stifled

Be rigid

And at once

Will lose the way

But in the night

Emptiness

Steps into the fray

Marked by

Awakening

And the break of day

Radical School Movement?

I’d like to see radical schooling as a prominent movement in the twenty-first century.  If communities got together, we could uproot the compulsory schooling system, and force an overhaul of traditional curriculum.

Emma Goldman was one of the leaders of the modern school movement, in the United States, back in the beginning of the twentieth century.  Schools, which functioned within this movement, allowed children to be uninhibited by structured classroom environments.  The kids could go outside and play at any time they chose; and reading was not imposed as much as it was coaxed.  Kids would be illiterate, sometimes, until the age of nine.

As much as I would like to extol the efforts of teachers in the United States, they are too often outwitted by our competition based culture.  Knowledge is not dependent on academia.  And it is not for the child’s soul to endure compulsory schooling from morning to afternoon—only to have homework at night.  The well-respected teacher and educational reformer—John Taylor Gatto—suggest that kids need less schooling.  He also suggests that compulsory schooling is a means of spying—not cultivating freethinking individuals.

People love to tinker with things that excite them; words and numbers are two of the more traditional avenues for teachers to incite curiosity in their students.  What if children were—with their families and teachers guidance—encouraged to develop their own lesson plans?  A young person, at a reasonable age, could develop a curriculum around an apprenticeship with a nearby handy man. 

Schooling is intended to create functional habits in learning; and we could do a lot better at instilling, in students, a life-long relationship to their minds if we let each individual set their intellectual trajectory.  Self-directed learning is a tool that provides a means to cultivating independence and creativity.  Sanctioning one building, as the place of learning, in any given community, and requiring that semi-uninterested students go to this building everyday to learn about words and numbers stifles independence and creativity.

What is encouraging is that there are alternative approaches to schooling that are practiced in a great proportion of our nation’s communities.  I am a product of one such alternative educational program myself.  What is unfortunate is that these programs are too narrow and limited.  Alternative education has to stop being an alternative and start being the norm.  Schools need to stop being centralized places to learn from books; schools need to not be schools but hubs for cultural enrichment.

Another movement in schooling which I’ve read about (I already mentioned the modern school movement) is the free school movement.   Free schools involve teachers and community members founding private schools which require no tuition in low income urban areas.  What is radical about this particular movement isn’t so much the curriculum but the organizational structure of the schools, which is far more horizontal than traditional schools.  And this allows these schools the greater flexibility in meeting each child’s needs.   

Radical schooling exists.  We just need to coax it a little so that it may flourish.

Live and Let Live

I do not believe that for the sake of others who care for a person—another should have to endure a broken life.  But, from another perspective, living life may be very rewarding, even to the most challenged individuals.  I believe, for myself, in being committed to life, because I have seen that no times of despair are so perilous to be permanent.  No matter how disheartened I am about life, I know my feelings of alienation will not last, and that I will have good times down the road.

The concept of being committed to life was brought to my attention by a friend.  She brought this topic up as a concept which she had learned of, as a teaching of Will Hall’s (a mental health advocate). 

Not all wars, which are won, can bring with them rewards which are proportionate to sacrifices made in battle.  That is not to say that we are to be fearful of fighting; in some people’s lives, the cost of perseverance is so great that no rewards could ever make up for times of so much despair; that does not mean that suicide is their best means to resolving emotional conflict in these instances.

Anarchy is about cooperation within communities to develop an egalitarian social structure.  What we must realize—as radicals—is that in our communities—there are people who are suffering of so much emotional destitution that suicide seems an answer.  All of us have to see our role in society as a crucial means to alleviate the burdens which push too many to want to end their lives.    

Too many people are too alone.  Too many people are so crushed by a capitalistic sense of morality which pushes us to alienate each other for the sake of personal gain.  And it is this that causes people to turn to drugs; and it is this that causes people to lose their minds; and it is this that is why people turn to suicide.  No one is so righteous to say that their role in society does not alienate another person. 

We do not need to wait for the government to get things right for our culture to be one of caring and cooperation.  All we need is for one too many people to recognize the beauty of individuality; and we need this person to recognize that, because they are witness to this beauty, they must return the gesture with acts of compassion.   All of us must promote the individual in all people we encounter. 

If any one person is to value their own life, to choose to be committed to life, we must all contribute our hearts and soul to each individual whom we share in love with.  Only through a culture of a collective interest in humanity can we create a society that values the hardships which influence people to end their lives.  And that is, by my estimation, the best we can do to undo the emotional burdens which are so imposed on people that they end their lives.     

My Anarchy

I’m very determined to not look at anarchy as a political system.  Anarchy does not have to be the absence of government; instead, it can be brief uprisings within oppressed society; and it can be the path which promotes individual liberation.  Anarchy exists in all societies, but it is also, in developed, and many other nations, suppressed.  As anarchists we must choose to stand in solidarity with all peoples hindered by political systems, for their pursuit of liberation, from the notion of property, from the existence of a class society, and from a militarized police force.

Choosing sides in my fight for liberation has, in my lifetime, seen me in the depths of self-doubt.  There was a time when I thought the best I could hope for was to spend the rest of my life in jail.  Earlier in life, as an adolescent, I set out to be as unruly as I could—as unconcerned with my future as I could muster.  Among the people I hung out with the most daring of us were the ones who most risked doing jail time. 

Beyond just simple mischief as a young man, I really made a concerted effort to disregard bourgeois ideals.  I wanted to buck the notion that an education was something that I needed to get ahead.  To this day, I see little need to use institutions to further my own cause; as I see it, these institutions which I am to use for my own personal gain only dilute my ideals.  By stepping forth into the professional world with the intent to wield my education as a means to raise my standard of living, I would function to sustain oppressive economic structures.

Self-education became a priority in my life at the age of twenty-two.  My intention in study wasn’t to get a better job or learn how to write.  What I wanted was to get a proper education for founding a jail gang; I studied military science and martial arts philosophy to create a code of ethics for this gang.

Eventually, I came around to see that there were much better things in this world for me than to found a jail gang.  The ground work I laid down, as an adolescent, in creating as much havoc as I could, and dismissing societal values in exchange for this misguided aspiration, has afforded me that I squander the opportunity to be well-off.  And I am far more aligned to my personal ideology for it.  The turnaround I made in life—from disheartened and defeated man—to an educated and independent individual—was necessary.  I could not have lived on—long—from having sacrificed so much from my quality of life.

All in all, I’m very happy with my decision, as a young man, to test the boundaries of the imposed political system.  Having been on the receiving end of the oppressor’s will gives you an emotional reservoir with which to forge independence.  Toughness is necessary to live with true liberty in a society composed of rigid conceptions of what is valued.  Anarchy is to me to disregard the consequences of forging your own ideal.