TOTW: Political-Life Balance?

I've been accused in the past of "being too political" or too "jaded." I do think this to be true. Much of my conversations and interests are underlined by politics and critique. From running, to my job, and my lack of enjoyment in TV-watching, anti-tech anarchism is in the back of my mind. Even with not wanting to, average conversations quickly become political-esque. Is there a "work-life balance" for politics? A "politics-life balance"? Do you struggle with conversing too often or being avoidant of issues because of your beliefs? Struggle to make deep connections with those outside of your political circles? How do you avoid being "obsessed" with anarchy?

LISTEN TO THE CONVERSATION HERE!

There are 38 Comments

if you don't see anarchy as political, but how you approach life, how can you be "obsessed" with it?
politics and life are incompatible.

"Is there a "work-life balance" for politics? A "politics-life balance"? "

I am against politics, so I aspire to all life and no politics. Fortunately, I manage to keep politics to a minimum in my daily life.

"Do you struggle with conversing too often or being avoidant of issues because of your beliefs?"

I do avoid those topics with people, but sometimes it's inevitable. When I can't help but engage people on those topics, sometimes I am completely honest, but often I attenuate my views or omit them.

"Struggle to make deep connections with those outside of your political circles?"

Yes, in general, but also with those who I have affinity with.

"How do you avoid being "obsessed" with anarchy?"

By being apathetic.

"How do you avoid being "obsessed" with anarchy?"

April fools?

Why does this Nude House reject sign all their Topics with their Nude House moniker? Are they too cool to be anonymous like 99.99% of the other Topic authors? SoOoo grossly millenial.

Anews? More like ANude, rite.

Dude get over it... He's not that British po-pedo Xian fanatic con man, but the American anarchist behind Uncivilized Podcast.

...but Anudes is defifinitely something I wanna see happening!

i do think the "identity politics" slogan of "the personal is political" is true enough. However, everyone has their limits in terms of what they will discuss with others. I don't with hold my points of view on the subject matter, but the topic of "race" really sucks in general just because of all the half truths that are just boilerplate part of the left dialogue on the matter. If I were to believe that amerikkka was in a state of "white supremacy", then i would have to believe the whites were actually superior. It bothers me when people don't understand that logic trap. I don't really know why people have the problems they have, and no I'm not being evasive when I say this: I just don't know.

And I find with the right wing logic, there's nothing really to discuss at all. Yeah sure, immigrants are "bad for america": who cares? I don't want to maintain it. I have not had any experiences in my life to suggest that people who were born here are any better for my safety. People, immigrants, democrats: all fucking terrible! Let's blame "the government"!

poor reasoning 5:35. no, much like race is a construct, making it both not real and real, the u.s. being white supremacist doesn't require white supremacy, it must means that enough people for long enough have catered to and valorized "whiteness" that the system now runs on its own (and of course, is still actively maintained, as well).

you can still not know why people have the problems they do. there are multiple factors that go into any individual life, including how people like clarence thomas and candace owens or barack obama (just to mention the most obvious Black examples) get into positions of relative power, but subsuming all social trends and history and economic factors into the mysteries of an individual's circumstance is not any more liberatory or accurate than assuming that we are all merely cogs in a machine.

Implies inferiority practically 100% of the time. The "system runs on its own" pretty much describes...systems.

"People's problems" are my problems, and obviously not: so where would you draw the line, one who knows no holy mysteries?

you're making semantic arguments, as far as i can tell. people can think that a group is better than another group without it being true. people can valorize some characteristics and then associate those characteristics with a particular group without either of those things (the specialness of the characteristics or the association with a group) being accurate or valid or whatever.

but perhaps you're not as good faith as you're claiming to be? #sad #taken-in-again

Maybe you are not as good faith as you think. It is a game, because how is any argument not a "semantic argument"? There's people who just accuse others of doing same thing are doing as they do it, I don't have much patience for that. We'll see how long you last.

The important question to me is NOT what each person thinks, but can a GROUP all think the same way? Maybe thousands of years ago when people actually lived in proximity, but you are once again giving your enemies full credit for their plots where none is due. I have come back here after a few months, and it seems like the same few people are here making the same arguments over and over again.

... here. i'll point to the exact sentence where you said something stupid af

"If I were to believe that amerikkka was in a state of "white supremacy", then i would have to believe the whites were actually superior."

no. wrong. completely. showed your whole ass. do better. reread the other person's post if you need to.

and if you're trolling, fuck right off the edge of the world, k?

"responding", you are either just trolling, or you making it plane how religiously important "white supremacy"
is to you. Good luck with that! The definition of a "true white person" among Europeans has changed throughout the centuries.

so, everyone can see what they're doing, yeah? throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks? "quoting" from their responders as if that means that they're addressing the point, but mostly name-calling and changing the subject?

troll 101 lesson here, for anyone who hasn't been paying attention. learn the basics. there are way more skilled trolls out there, but we need to learn all the levels.

I just read the TOTW of the week and responded. Well, it is pretty amazing to me how easy it is to use the internet to make someone mad. The highest level, golden troll is the person who isn't even trying to do it. It's honestly a pretty amazing feeling, but aren't you doing it too? People like...totally live here for that.

... you didn't even notice when a different person responded to you... wow!

thinly veiled and not so clever way to derail the conversation into race polarization. typical of online forums

dialogue concerning all those things I mentioned, and somehow I am the bad guy for stream-of-consciousness responding to a TOTW. Oh well, I suppose being evil is not so bad. You have not taken the conversation away from the "being" aspect of politics, to return it back to the labeling of strangers does not reflect well on whatever it is "you are".

So if i was just derailing the conversation, then the start of the conversation was a derailing. That's all I can get out of your "criticism". "Don't talk about that, it's wrong."

Re: How do you avoid being "obsessed" with anarchy?

Isn't it a matter of preference whether you prefer lukewarm self-restraint or the heat of unbridled passion?
What do you balance (dilute?) anarchy with, authority?
A foot on the ground, another in the water: is this standing on the fence? Holding ambiguity?

And "lifestylist" my politics become in practice, the less it even looks like "politics".

Starting a self-sufficient backwoods homestead is my life. Laying the foundation for what can outlive Collapse. This is what I talk about, and ask questions about when I'm with people in my backwoods community who have experience/skills I lack.

Many anarchists would say this isn't even politics.

No, it's not politics, it's ROMANTIC FELINE SPOOKINESS BRAH!

I tend to find obsession comes about when there's something particularly important to me i need to address, but when people disagree about that it can become intolerable real quick.

I've had a real big problem with people who watch the news a lot over the past several years, not because I think the news is bad, but it's very unclear which of the "information" is important. Like, in the court system, what someone claims is "proof".

That’s why you’re supposed to have an analysis, sweetie, to make sense of information and events in the world. I know, most people here will surely find that very “authoritarian”… Ignoring current events is not the way to make better sense of them. What i find important is taking in info from diverse sources. This also helps to develop a sense of what the biases to are.

Advice? You even went full blown with the condescending "sweetie".

lumpy...how transparent...

i tend to say "sweetheart" and it's specifically something i say to fashy trolls, so not about gender

the joke is how they aren't sweet at all

How could individualists replace the State governments? In a democracy they ARE the government willingly or unwillingly. Sure, they can be eccentric and nonconformists, however this fantasy ( haha! An alter-ego spook ) of the gallant brave non-sectarian anarch is romantic spookiness, and is part of the anarchist ideology.

There will always be government by people presumably FOR PEOPLE! There always has been and why would it suddenly cease to exist? Individuals can't defeat large corporation or the armies they feed.

I'll try to explain this in common layman terminology, umm, be mindful, ponder upon your libidinous desires and seek a less degrading and menial method of achieving self-satisfaction. Discipline yourself to be an iconoclast and doubter of all propaganda. Embrace romantic spookiness withinmyour own orbit of associates.

anyone who talks about "layman's terms" is automatically an arrogant fuck. Where are all these specialists in anarchy you are talking about? Joe Biden, Elan Musk?

"Embrace romantic spookiness withinmyour own orbit of associates."

Now THIS i can get behind.

"anyone who talks about "layman's terms" is automatically an arrogant fuck"

Usage of the word layman makes your wormbrain go there? You have some serious inadequacy OR/AND imposter syndrome going on, brah. Who hurt you? Just because you do not have special knowledge of subjects of discussion others with special knowledge of subjects are talking about does not make them automatically and arrogantly talking down to you.

Embrace dictionaries, brah.

Romantic about your original comment.

You have gone in full curcle to bite your ass. Im sure it's tasty.

I'll put this in layman's terms so you can understand your error:

I'm a completely different commenter, little fella. You're in argument with most of us. Pee pee poo poo.

Let me put this in lameman terms so you can understand it, bruh: NO POUTINE OR MOIST ORGIES FOR YOUR ILLITERATE, AUTHORITARIAN ASS.

No it isn't. Nobody else in the comment thread says "brah", brah.

Its a warrior's life. We go where the mission takes us, we do what has to be done, and everything else comes second (but can still be part of our lives). In Summer 2022, I returned to DC for the entire month of June, just to ensure I would be in the one place that mattered most when the Supreme "Court" revoked the half-century old right to abortion: right out front of them.

First a personal victory: that 2018 post-"Unite the Right II" counterprotest grand jury summoned forth by the Daily Caller's vicious little sting operation on younger activists. When I showed up outside the courthouse with 20 supporters, stated I was refusing to enter the building, and set fire to a copy of the subpeona, I got a call from my lawyer INSIDE 5 MINUTES to report that it had been dropped. That was won by raising the stakes until they quit, "buying the pot" in gambling parlance.

Now some movement-wide victories.

People often asked what US war the antiwar movement ever stopped. I always respond by pointing to Reagan's staging of US troops in Honduras in 1988 for an invasion of Nicaragua that was cancelled after a 3 week, all-out mobilizaton by our side, and I say "that war." We also deterred the United States from escalating the war in El Salvador all the way to a full-on, Gaza-style conventional forces invasion. We didn't stop that war, but we played a major role in containing it. We also prevented Reagan from drafting people for ANYTHING. Decades later in 2004, fears that Bush would reintroduce conscription as recruiters were having a hard time (due to the 2nd Iraq War bogging down) were hurting the GOP. A bill was introduced in the Senate to bring back the draft-just so the Senate could vote it down 95 to 5.

We can also look at the anti-globalization fights that came to the Global North in the late 1990's. The all but forgotten "Multilateral Agreement on Investments" sank without a trace. In it were proposals to protect exports of US GMO crops by banning local producers from marketing their competing products as GMO-free. Next, we totally defeated what was to be the Seattle Round (late Doha Round) of WTO talks. At the climax of that fight, a South Korean farmer bankrupted by trade deals climbed up on the police barricades in the middle of a furious street battle, and stabbed himself to death. The next day, 20 African nations walked out of the talks, which never recovered. Repeated attempts to salvage to "Doha Round" all flopped. The FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) went down in flames too. All they were able to rescue from what was supposed to be a global trade deal was CAFTA, forcing governments most under the US boot to agree to US trade demands. Even there, countries like El Salvador ended up later defying "investor protection" provisions over such things as cyanide-dumping gold mining operations.

The later TPP deal was reduced to a much smaller deal excluding the US(and USTR's demands) after political pressure in 2016 forced both Hillery Clinton and Donald Trump to come out against the TPP. For all the horrors of Trump, on the single issue of the TPP, we had put a victory on both sides of the ballot. No pro-TPP candidate was considered competitive in that election.

Speaking of Trump, an all-out mobilization crushed his "family operation" of house to house ICE raids in sanctuary cities in 2019. He kept self-doxxing the attacks, giving us the intel we needed to set up on him. In each chosen city on each announced day, enough activists to overwhelm a couple dozen cops on a city block waited behind cover, in DC this was indoors. Scouts on bikes scoured the streets looking for any suspicious official activity or marked ICE vehicles. None ever appeared. ICE was afraid to raid into a prepared position it seems. I was there, riding patrols as one of DC's bike scouts. Finally came Van Spronson's Sacrifice, which threw cold water on ICE's courage and scared the crap out of them. Shortly after, Trump cancelled the "Family Operation" for good. ICE had been defeated in a head to head, set-piece engagement, netting something like 24 arrests out of a planned objective of 20,000 or more. We won, they lost.

There's a diverse array of interests, subcultures, and subject matter, and so on and so on, out there practiced and imagined by humanity. I say explore this to locate what interests you, no matter how old or young you are. But instead of avoiding the ethos and pathos of anarchism or other liberatory ideology, channel that into your other practices. Not like entryism propaganda or something, just a genuine reflection of your etymological skin. (Ideology isn't a sweater one may take on and off and easily change.)

For example that one dude who was really into city planning, so theorized about city planning from an anarchist perspective. And he had some really great ideas! Or a diehard paramedic writing about alternatives to the EMS from an anarchist perspective. (the people who remain paramedics for their career are considered crazy by most who are paramedics for short-term.) etc.

But i understand there being limits, for whatever reason, or social barriers to genuine expression. That's tough. I think that confidence or true expression without concern for others negative judgement due to your anarchist roots is a way to follow. That sounds kinda fanatical. But if done so in a reflective and gentle manner such true expression wouldn't be intrusive towards others own well-being.

/2 cents

Add new comment