Episode 8 – Liberty & Autonomy

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anon (not verified)
Episode 8 – Liberty & Autonomy

From Liberty & Logos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekdlxA6IlwM

In which A & B discuss C.H.A.Z. / C.H.O.P., explore the philosophical concepts of liberty and autonomy, and comment on the concept of 'White Fragility'

**Music by Noah Lenoir https://soundcloud.com/bookstore-pi/t...

anon (not verified)
L&L

I for one enjoyed this episode, but disappointed that it wasn't a BF solo show, like he said it would be

anon (not verified)
I know the other co-host is

I know the other co-host is not anarchist, but he makes some prodding (though sometimes annoying) that challenges Bellamy to make interesting responses. I prefer there to be back and forth dynamic, they have some chemistry going on.

With regards to the topic, summarizing it:

-CHAZ could have never been an autonomous zone, neither in the TAZ sense, nor in any other
-They changed its name to CHOP to indicate it realized this, and was just a protest instead
-Liberty: free from interference in your life that are against your consent.
-Liberty alone is not enough for a good life: a sense of belonging and intimacy with the group of people you live with is equally important as individual liberty, but how well each of these persons is doing in each of those aspects varies, so it makes sense to speak of them individually.
-Communists (like those from Inhabit mentioned as examples) tend toward claiming the individual doesn't exist. Bellamy says this is false and lends itself to authoritarianism. If there is no individual, how is there individual choice, ethics, morality.
-Amory says individuals have values and their interactions set up the values of a community. If the goal is autonomy, liberty is part of the means. The values help guide an individual towards things that benefit them.
-Bellamy says freedom is also doing what's good (what is upheld by the values of a community as good) in a non-compelled way, out of your own volition.
-Bellamy says Big tent anything, activist, protest (CHOP, BLM, ANTIFA etc.) cannot arrive at autonomy, it's politics (war by other means) and it will just end up with a small cadre doing heteronomy to other people.
-Positive of CHAZ: people recognizing sense of agency, going out routine, seeing how other things can be possible.
-Amory says the most positive way of looking at it is that CHAZ was in its own way a kind of TAZ, and there's no need to mourn it, it can be done again, in different ways and places.
-Bellamy says woke social justice ideology, examining the concept of "white fragility" that is corporate, maoistic and freudian, is increasingly hegemonic, not just on liberal campus anymore. it drives people to think in more identitarian ways.
-Amory says this ideology functions through un-falsifiable claims.

Now I'll share a comment someone left under their video:

Good episode. I think the CHAZ illustrates the possible weakness of Bellamy's rejection of world domination anarchy in that CHAZ could be viewed as one of many decentralized polities existing side by side with a more powerful and hostile one. The capitalist state 'allowed' CHAZ to temporarily have its play time, until CHAZ went off the rails. Then with a simple decree, the state ordered police to move in and dismantle the CHAZ. If a capitalist state is situated next to a non-capitalist non-state community (e.g. say, an anarchist one) in a radically decentralized yet crowded world, it's not difficult to imagine how power imbalances between the two could lead to tensions resulting in hostilities, domination, or outright annexation. In the case of CHAZ, they were encapsulated by a hostile state, and were not actually 'autonomous', as you point out in this video, so it's not exactly the same as being decentralized. Nevertheless, certain ideologies are simply not compatible with a live-and-let-live paradigm that forms the basis for a radical decentralized framework. Capitalism must grow or die, and any polities situated next to it will be vulnerable to capitalist expansion. Same with state communism, as witnessed by the relationship between China and its neighbors. Decentralization in a crowded world such as ours presents certain challenges when completely incompatible ideologies find themselves rubbing up against each other. Perhaps there are workarounds for this, and maybe Bellamy could elaborate on how he thinks these issues could be addressed.
I liked the discussion about individualism, which is such a crucial debate to have. When certain communists say there is no such thing as the individual, they would seem to agree with certain spiritual traditions like Buddhism or Advaita Vedanta which teach that 'all is one, or all is brahman', meaning that the self or individual is really just an illusion. But of course they draw this conclusion from completely different starting points. Note how this is also the mirror opposite of Margaret Thatcher's famous claim that there is no such thing as society, only individuals. I hope you can devote an entire episode to this subject sometime.

SirEinzige
What Buddhism also says

is that the collective is also an illusion. What you have as a default is individuated mindfulness.

anon (not verified)
As someone whos studied

Buddhism a lot this is correct, whereas "the sangha" is not an idea but a real group of buddhists who essentially keep you from engaging in your own delusions and troublesome desires. Buddhism is individualistic STRICTLY in the sense that any of the thought constructs associated with politics (hence, buddhisms relation to anti-state thinking) are distractions from reality. It is "collectivist" in the sense that every type of buddhism has strict rules and routines that the sangha must fallow.

anon (not verified)
Hey you in the robe talking

Hey you in the robe talking about reality, get out of "my zen way"

TheTao (not verified)
Buddhism does not say there are

No individuals, it says that there is no independence. "The self" is an odd concept i dont fully understand, but yet buddhists popularly say it does not exist. Saying there are no individuals is like saying individual humans do not exist, that we are just hive minds in groups. The study of sociology is geared towards humans as members of groups, yet does not deny individuality.

Mega-deleted (not verified)
For Margaret Thatcher to say

For Margaret Thatcher to say there was no society only individuals was to say an untruth to win votes to become a ruling figure within her regulated authoritarian society. It was classic double-speak, related to Orwell's doublethink.
Doublethink: the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct.

mu (not verified)
not really...

not really...
take refuge in the sangha.
the individual and collective are both delusion.
both are interconnected.
something something nothing at all

mu (not verified)
was a reply to SirEinzige's

was a reply to SirEinzige's comment

anon (not verified)
"the individual" vs "the

"the individual" vs "the collective"

"illusion" vs "reality"

i've come to realize that ideological thinking and binary thinking have much in common.

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