I've been wrestling with something for awhile.
(Well, a great many things, but I will focus it to one thing here.) That thing is how to reconcile, if possible (and it may not be), my anarchist-leaning worldview with an apocalyptic event on earth. By this I mean: as an anarchist, I believe in a world devoid of ultimately-powerful government(s) that hold paternalistic authority over its "children" citizens. I believe in
true freedom, not just the feel-good phantom freedom of democracy. I believe in
punk: put as tersely possible:
thinking for oneself. I believe that a world in which 1% of the population controls 90% of the wealth and power while the remaining 99% -- the overwhelming majority, if we want to be democratic about it -- quibbles over the remaining 10% is deeply out of whack. I believe that a government such as the United States', in which upwards of 50% of the budget is spent on military while a mere fraction is spent on alternative energies and fuels, has its priorities deeply and perhaps irrevocably misaligned. I also believe that people get the kind of government they deserve, and it is high time to rouse the American people from the complacent and uncritical slumber they have been enjoying for far too long. I believe Abe Lincoln was right when he warned against the advent of corporations; I believe Eisenhower was right when he warned against the trinity of military-government-big business. I believe we have largely failed to listen to either men, and are living, at least in the US, in a theocratic monarchy edging slowly toward a totalitarian police state, a frog sitting in slowly boiling water, while we stand in line at the supermarket distracted by the petty and ultimately meaningless dramas happening to our beloved celebrities. I believe both the political right wing and left wing have failed us, that we have lost our way.
That said, one event that largely "solves" the above problems is an apocalyptic event -- nuclear war, massive weather disaster, pandemic plague, peak oil worst case scenario, asteroid impact, etc (you know, the disaster movies we know and love) -- because such an event wipes clean the slate, creating a
tabula rasa, a decimation of the former world (with all its problems
and goodnesses). When the power goes down, so does the World Wide Web. When the government goes down, anarchy replaces it. (I'm tired of reiterating this, but it bears repeating: anarchy is NOT chaos, bloodshed, looting, destruction, rape, pillage, horror, etc. This is the "scared of anarchy" interpretation, the pop interpretation, the
misinterpretation we've been fed by the very people and forces who wish to quiet the anarchist spirit. Anarchy, literally, is lack of structure, lack of authority, without ruler -- at least structure and authority and rulers as we've come to know them and live under them, ever since the days of the Greek
polis. Government as we've come to know has meant a small group of pampered, powerful, wealthy and elite governing a massive population of the unpowerful, unpampered, unwealthy and ordinary. What anarchy
is is mutual cooperation, self-regulation, self-reliance, DIY, evolution, self-defense, ground-up rather than top-down decision making. Agrarianism. Hell, it's whatever the fuck you want it to be, within reason and (self-created) limits. It is not a hippy commune but it shares certain features and ideals. Anarchy is off the grid, off the media, off taxes. It is perhaps a more brutish, ugly, shorter-lifespan scenario, but a far more honest one. I can only urge one to read up on the long history of anarchy and how it has largely been
straw-manned over time.)
A global, or even local, apocalyptic event produces anarchy: quickly, devastatingly, thoroughly. And, yes, there are elements of extreme danger and human depravity: in the absence of a government, you will see things like rape, murder, torture, looting, might-makes-right, etc. (Not that we don't have these things now, sometimes even government-sponsored, mind you!) But you will also see the positive side of freedom, rebuilding, reorganization, renewal, the phoenix rising from the ashes of the old, corrupt, abused and abusive world. A great leveling can take place; the caste system that exists in every culture, whether openly or acknowledged or not, comes crumbling down. Sure, despots and dictators rise and flourish in such environments, but they do so anyway and often with the help, support, and resources of government. The post-apocalypse we are so fascinated with in literature, film, music, etc, is a fairly open playing field of possibility, re-creation, restructuring, cleansing, and improvement-via-destruction-of-the-old.
Consider a recent article in
Time mag on representations of post-apocalypse scenarios in pop entertainment:
Watching [Will] Smith in I am Legend
as he romps through a Manhattan blessedly free of people, you try to remember that he's supposed to be mourning the death of humanity, but it's damned hard. He's playing golf and driving a sports car. He's picking corn and hunting deer -- he's eating locally! The apocalypse is an epic tragedy, but it's also a fantasy of cleansing and regeneration wherein everything inessential and inauthentic is swept away so that we can build afresh among the ruins. ("Apocalypse New" by Lev Grossman, Time, Jan 28, 2008, p. 111-113)The writer goes on to call this scenario "a convenient untruth." But is it? Consider the source --
Time magazine, one of the major media sources for the world. Grossman calls the "epic tragedy" of a cleansed, regenerating post-apocalypse a "fantasy." But isn't it
up to us whether it's fantasy or reality? And why is it necessarily only fantasy? Grossman is in essence defending the current (pre-apocalypse?) world and its superiority, while patronizingly telling us to enjoy our fantastic post-apocalyptic movies, books, music. I find it dismissive and somewhat ill-informed.
The world I see, you're stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You climb the wrist-thick vines that wrap the Sears Tower. You see tiny figures pounding corn and laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of the ruins of a superhighway.- "Tyler Durden" in Fight Club
Now, here is the rub, my dilemma: I, of course, don't want misery, death, injury, dislocation, confusion, anxiety, ultraviolence, etc, to come to my loved ones, friends, and humanity as a whole. But I do believe in anarchy, and the/an apocalypse = "instant anarchy", in most cases. In many places, many countries, anarchy has led to misery. Look at Somalia, which has lacked a government for some 13 or 14 years, and is just a mess. The 60-year ongoing civil war in Burma. It seems as if humans almost
need that powerful authoritarian figure such as government to keep themselves from killing themselves. But government
also creates massive misery. The corruption in Filipino government and the widespread poverty of the country. Atrocities committed against Palestinians by the Israeli government/military. The US's questionable, ill-executed, and bloody occupation of Iraq (world's 3rd largest source of oil reserves, by the way). So, which is better: misery under government or misery because of no government?
All I am saying is there is a way of
thinking, being, doing, and living "anarchy" that goes beyond these either/or,
false dilemma, polar extremes. Don't look at the world as what has happened, what is possible or impossible. One cannot deny a Somalia, a Philippines, an Iraq, a Burma. But anarchy, to me, is largely about the freedom of imagination, the human mind, and the interaction between it and the physical world. I am not saying to become a Pollyanna dreamer. I am not saying "imagine." I am not saying "give peace a chance." I am a realist who takes frequent sidetrips into the dark forests of pessimism, cynicism, misanthropy, nihilism even. But anarchy is a way, by not being any particular way. It is vague and open-ended, and intentionally so. It is ill-defined. Again, intentionally so. It can jump disciplines, from political anarchy to the "epistemological anarchy" of a philosopher like
Paul Feyerabend. Hell, I even imagine "fusion" cuisine as "culinary anarchy." (Trying to lighten up a heavy topic, here, folks.)
But still I wrestle with a desire for real, actual anarchy with the non-desire to have the world undergo a painful and traumatic apocalyptic event that leads to a post-apocalypse. I don't know how to reconcile this. I welcome feedback.
May we continue to try and concur with Hemingway that this is a fine world worth fighting for.
Labels: anarcy, apocalypse, post-apocalypse
