Anarchy Bang: Introducing Episode 38: Group logic, pro and con

From Anarchy Bang

We'd like to hear from you, either live during the show or by email before hand on your experience with anarchist groups. When have they done a great job of whatever-your-goal-was and when have they done a crummy job. We desperately need to be in physical space with each other but rarely do our groups do what we aspire to. How can we improve our groups? Do we make them more open (to new people and new ideas) or do we make them more rigorous (think Federations and their ideal of coherence and focus)?

If we were to discuss examples it would be about scale. Do we create anarchist groups to put on events or to take on the world? Event based groups seem very small in the scale of the things we'd like to accomplish in the world. Why have we become so humble? Have we become less ambitious or has the world humbled us? If you were going to fix anarchist groups would you aspire to bigger project or a more discipline cadre? Would you make anarchism great again or just aspire to do more interesting things?

Join the discussion!

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There are 9 Comments

lol this pic

where’s it from?

tw cw rip

about the topic: that’s a lot of questions. i have no experience in that area and nothing to contribute towards answering them. but i’m interested in what others have to say, and other’s experiences with groups, so i’ll tune in enthusiastically.

to what’s possibly to the last episode of abang ever!

My 2 cents, loved the show, found it very useful on a wide range of topics although I also agree with that recent caller about how the brilliant is slightly better. If it's time to retire the show, hang the phone up and be proud! Just my opinion.

Also, apparently call-in shows are doomed by demographic shifts. Something else we learned here haha

church and being busy does sound terrible. sad you have to spend your sundays that way : (

In this abang there was a mention of this text: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-hello

I post it in case someone hasn't seen it as well, and maybe stumbles upon it.

Cue ramble, i won't edit it or refine it, it's a spur of the moment thing after reading it. It's not conclusive in any way:

I hadn't heard of it before. I read it and it seemed neat and poignant to me. Though I suspect it's the kind of thing where you need to be in sync with it in your situation for it to speak to you or else it'll sound like vague wishy washiness.
It alludes to things I've been thinking of, of a daily struggle abstracted into abstracted terms, which would be confusing if not for the coincidence of shared terms applied to things. But it also aims at a feeling.

I can relate it to the TOTW discussed on the anews podcast where mention is made of too many story tellers. Many have committed to a game of words; story making and or language. And in the editorial there's mention of hope(lessness) and horror, and about playing it like music, or something like that.

What I'm getting it, or rather what I got from it was the dwelling on the themes of friendship and commitment, as key to something. The allusions to a game (singular) confused me since many games are played simultaneously. This is not a critique, but a way in which I did not feel so close to the text. To commit to a single game in order to win it or to keep playing it (since following its logic and rules, even if the game does not have a win scenario, takes commitment) feels weird to me as a metaphor since I've never related to games in that way in my life.

I always saw games as an excuse to chit chat, get to know aspects of people, to be together, to kill time, to move around and spend energy, to test things, to see if I could get away with cheating, to play a game within a game, to distractedly forget my turn, or the rules. All this shows why I suck(ed) at winning at games. As a child I always wanted to play pretend, instead of other games with clearer win-lose scenarios, or team sports. As a child I showed commitment to an imagined scenario (the floor is lava, we're in space, we're in a shoot-out), and also a commitment to my friends (will not bore with anecdotes that would demonstrate this). Never committed to winning since there never seemed to be anything real at stake, or anything I desired.

These details don't cancel out or invalidate what's expressed in the Hello text. Commitment to commitment can still happen, there are different games you can commit to. The project of linking together moments of rupture (to use some words, and not others) can mean many things. Some might think it means a sequence of explosions on a map, others might think it's a sequence of tender moments holding hands, some will say it can be both, some none. The difference between the many possibilities is not insignificant and will cause many to disagree. Some will say one game or another does not fit into what qualifies as rupture.

If the definition of rupture varies, can the definition of the mundane Everything be the same?
A tasteless unsatisfying monotony? Here the part of making music comes into play (pun is relevant, since not only games can be played, but also music). If in this metaphor we are all players or all musicians, are we all playing for the drone cacophony of Everything, do we break from that orchestra to become duets or quartets of improvisation, or do we become composers, or soloists? Or is it the quality of the music that matters, it must move us. But we're not literally talking about music, but our lives.

We must move in our lives and be moved by our lives. If our lives leave us still and unmoved, we're stillborn. All of this just seems like a moral dictate to be existentialist romantics. It sounds of old cynics philosophy, and other thoughts of being authentic. Some would remove it from the heady baggage and grr grr chrr chrr we're wild and animal core living free from vital instinct woof woof.

Horror music is very enjoyable for me, it's satisfying holding of tension, of intense buildup and release. It's less about a catchy melody, or about a danceable beat (tho those are nice too).

Saying hello in the uncertainty of knowing if someone's there is like playing into the trap or the moment, of playing victim. The predator lurks in the darkness does not say hello, but pounces. All the slasher movie tropes, etc.
Some say whimpers and tears supposedly evolved as a way to signal distress and signal for help without warning predators so overtly. I don't know if that hypothesis holds, nor care. Should a text be called "whimper" or "crying" in a similar way of "hello"?
Crying into "the void TM" not as shouting or hollering, but quietly weeping. After all, all is lost, and ending, and death and what not. Is that what that "rebellious mourning"text is all about? or should be. should a next text be called "goodbye, cruel world"?

Joking aside, the "Hello" text did resonate (i hate that term) with the stirring of enthusiasm for an oncoming soon to be chosen commitment...the anticipation before the leap. It's a good feeling, a churning in the stomach before pouncing. But the text, and me in life, has no answers.

Go fast and commit, go slow and commit...when people commit, they're not necessarily more unpredictable than those who don't, and get swept by the currents, or blown like a leaf in the wind. There are those who increase the accuracy of their predictions by purposefully directly affecting the variables which they measure. But is committing attachment? A commitment to non-attachment, meditate everyday until you become transparent and odorless like one of those elements on the table that are not as reactive, i forgot about those. engineers and chemists can make stuffs that impresses people that like big stuff. children can make things that impresses people that like little stuff. making and being and living and dying. and a text about everything and nothing is deep and shallow.

The text that spurred this ramble is short, and that's good. I think it could be more empty than it feels right now. I don't if I got at what it got to in me.

I thought the text was an excellent read. I narrowed it to; be yourself in everything, try not to fall into the trap of hope and fear, and find some friends.
Oversimplified but I think that point was in there also.
Go outside and play.

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