quick! cover your eyes!

This week we’re hitting the reset button and starting over. Renewing the anarchist tradition by exploring and examining ourselves, our perspectives, attributes, experiences, and actions. In this topic of the week, our aim is the sharing of insight around the idea of reflection.

How do you reflect? Where do these writings, conversations, and thoughts shared take place? Does it look like burning all your old texts in an annual bonfire while dancing around it or perhaps something more like participating in the endless stack of meetings after meeting?

Is there time to look back anymore? Or, do we just keep going full-steam ahead?

Comments

anon (not verified) Mon, 01/21/2019 - 19:47

Let's see: I still get together with old friends from my activist days, the few that were lovely human beings in spite of their activist tendencies, that is. We were young and foolish and only dimly aware of our martyrdom complexes back then! Ahh youth.

I still fuck with anarchist projects, one of the few who does in this town from before the IdPol tsunami of whiny, backstabbing bullshit.

Mostly I'm too old for the tree house and get "profiled" as a cop by clueless Facebook liberal kids or the tiny little punk scene. It's just as great as it sounds!

I certainly get why people choose the hermit life but I tried that and it bored me even more than scene drama. Oh well! I'm told reflecting with me is a lot of fun.

Le Way (not verified) Mon, 01/21/2019 - 21:04

Everyone is born in a non-reflecting state of mind, and as infants, there is no " cognitive conscience" , there no actual time/spatial reference point to initiate what we as adults call thoughtful contemplation. These come later with language, and this leads me to the task I set myself many years ago to attain, a return to the inner empty m8nd wbilst viewing the outer objective reality. without using cognitive processes to connect to the outer reality. There is touch, smell, sound, just these senses, without the clutter of words, is an interesting method of delving deeper into relationsbips with the outer world.
No words means no rules or laws, no organization, no authority.
I would like to hold seminars showing people how to gain a sensual nihilistic approach to life.

ThereIsAlwaysPizza (not verified) Wed, 01/23/2019 - 06:58

If you are a proactive person, then reflection is needed to deal with present and plan with the future. Else you may become an emotionally contracted/reactive personality and be immersed in present/future shock.

Flower Bomb (not verified) Wed, 01/23/2019 - 07:22

I reflect on my past experiences with civil anarchism; recognizing the appeal it had, understanding its failures, and trying new things beyond it.

GO3 (not verified) Wed, 01/23/2019 - 15:18

I grew up with statements like "the unexamined life isn't worth living" and "who ignores the past is doomed to repeat it" and "a business that fails to take inventory usually goes broke" etc. Which are useful concepts to me but even more interesting is the phenomenon of recapitulation in the shamanic sense of the word which happens spontaneously in times of crisis. It's a processing of all life's memories searching for mistakes and solutions and something that might help you survive. I've only experienced this a few times but the affect was dramatic. I make a point to talk about the past sometimes with my family to reconnect our affiliation because most of the time I feel hollowed out in a post historic moment.
Notes
1. Sad by Design
https://www.eurozine.com/sad-by-design/

anon (not verified) Thu, 01/24/2019 - 09:43

In reply to by gel-oberon (not verified)

French petty-bourgie shit... interesting. Or not.

anon (not verified) Fri, 01/25/2019 - 19:40

In reply to by gel-oberon (not verified)

Hi gel, I think the anon has misused the term "petite" which when used with bourgeoisie means roughly cute and respectable middle-class. (All very obsolete type of words in this modern era actually.)

anon (not verified) Fri, 01/25/2019 - 23:30

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Petite bourgeoisie. Petite bourgeoisie ( French pronunciation: ​[pətit buʁʒwazi], literally small bourgeoisie ), also petty bourgeoisie, is a French term (sometimes derogatory) referring to a social class comprising semi-autonomous peasantry and small-scale merchants whose politico-economic ideological stance in times...
So the link from Gel is nothing at all petty bourgie, so the person who wrote that is a moron troll probably.

anon (not verified) Sat, 01/26/2019 - 09:31

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Today, this signifier of social rank/status refers to the professional trades and the State bureaucracy, i.e. the Inner Party or the Nomenklatura. If Gel feels proud being part of that privileged cadre, well that says a lot about his "anarchism"... lol

"semi-autonomous peasantry and small-scale merchants" is rather scarce these days in France, or much amalgamated with the other middle-class.

anon (not verified) Sat, 01/26/2019 - 09:37

In reply to by gel-oberon (not verified)

Little next to nobody in the French entertainment industry is NOT from the petite bourgeoisie. All abused children from uppie class families.

This ain't L.A. or Berlin, where just about any poor artist can have his-her shot at fame, to some extent.

anon (not verified) Thu, 01/24/2019 - 12:35

In reply to by anon (not verified)

My read is he likes the stuff where there aren't easy answers, or any answers at all. It annoys me too but that's what floats his boat so I can go elsewhere for black and white worldviews.

Gilly (not verified) Thu, 01/24/2019 - 16:05

In my more "idealistic" days I was a proponent of anarcho-primitivism, but when I reflect on it now it would seem that a synthesis of market anarchism, Rianne Eisler and trans-humanism is the universal panacea

Farm Aid (not verified) Thu, 01/24/2019 - 18:01

All my friends are so small town
My parents live in the same small town
My job is so small town
Provides little opportunity
----John Cougar Mellencamp

Something To Reflect On...

atropy (not verified) Thu, 01/24/2019 - 18:23

Reflection requires a degree of intention and concentration that's hard to develop in a world of weaponized dopamine hits. I've tried to avoid that stuff as much as possible but there's no way to completely opt out of those experiences or the degradation of intention they cause. Personally, I find it harder than ever to really engage with a challenging book, for example.

It's also emotionally difficult because so often politics is tied up with identity. The vulnerability necessary for peeling back your character armor is not the kind of thing that 2019's political discourse encourages, to say the least. Political critique is a blunt object; it's not the best tool for digesting personal experience.

anon (not verified) Fri, 01/25/2019 - 04:54

"Cant we just start over, guys?"

People dont forget. Go engage with that.

anon (not verified) Sat, 01/26/2019 - 09:22

Is this the sequel to "Asking Questions While Walking Outside"?

Those TOTWs won't stop cracking me up.

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