nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Yeah, I just read that one a couple of months ago, it's excellent. Here's a video clip of Graeber on Charlie Rose:
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/473
Anarchism
- Thread starter nomadthethird
- Start date
Yeah, I just read that one a couple of months ago, it's excellent. Here's a video clip of Graeber on Charlie Rose:
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/473
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Well it would seem to be the idea for some people at least:
Nomad, I appreciate where you're coming from but how are you defining "abuse" here? I think I'm probably not totally deluded in thinking that most of the people I know aren't horribly scarred from traumatic upbringings. Even those I know who did have difficult childhoods still love their parents, as aware as they may be of their parents' failings. No-one has a perfect upbringing because no-one is perfect, but I think it's become this article of faith among many radically-minded people that families are terrible just, well, because. Because it's seen as the norm and therefore to be despised by default.
There is one woman I know whose dad was such a useless shit she went as far as to change her surname. But was that because of the depredations of the nuclear family unit, or just a case of one man being a useless shit? Most people who end up as parents don't fail at it entirely.
*insert Philip Larkin quote here*
Well I gathered you weren't being entirely serious, but the lyrics don't leave much room for interpretation! I get the impression I can probably get a fair grasp of what Rudimentary Peni are like from the fact they're called Rudimentary Peni (supplemented by the fact they were mentioned in the same post as Crass
). Edit: that article about Aborigines looks really interesting, I'll have a read of it tomorrow.
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padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
right but do you see what I was getting at anyway? not that any one particular mode is best, just that the way we're used to not only isn't the only way & that it's not even necessarily the most common way that human families have typically been organized.
I get the impression I can probably get a fair grasp of what Rudimentary Peni are like from the fact they're called Rudimentary Peni (supplemented by the fact they were mentioned in the same post as Crass
Yeah but Rudi P is a bit weird. You can't just relate them to Crass - Nic Blinko has had a pretty severe history of struggle w/mental illness (they actually did a concept album about his delusion that he was Pope Adrian the 37th) which has also been a big source of his creativity by his own admission I think - not to romanticize his suffering as a "mad genius" or such. But Rudi P is quite strange in the best way. W/something like that song about parents you can never tell how much is serious, how much is deadpan irony, how much is just on some other shit...
I dunno but I can only give their first 2 albums, "EPs of RP" & "Death Church" the highest recommendation...
any excuse to go off on a Rudimentary Peni tangent really.
Cosmetic Plague
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
When I say "abuse" I'm counting emotion/psychological abuse, the most common (and as some would have it the most disabling) kind. Our current normative "family" organization is bad because it's a neurosis machine, one, and secondly because it is ideologically substituted for a greater sense of responsibility to community. There's also the still-imbalanced power structure to be concerned about. In most of the world, marriage is still a legalized form of slavery.
I don't expect you to agree with this entirely, but I'm never going to think that the family is the only way, nor that it's the best one. I've thought and read a lot about this and it's not for purely political reasons that I believe it.
What many people don't realize is that the "family" in its current nuclear incarnation (one mother, one father, their biological offspring) is a rather recent invention. For the majority of human history, people lived in bands and tribes where the entire community considered itself responsible for the upbringing of its youth. This wasn't failproof either, but as we've seen with the rise of gangs, cults, political parties, and other loose "collectives", people will substitute for this lack of bigger picture involvement (something our brains and bodies evolved around for thousands of years)--even people who grew up in normal nuclear families--when it doesn't exist in their culture otherwise.
The "family" is probably the most oppressive heteronormative institution there is, and I'm happy to see that it's breaking down all the time.
I don't expect you to agree with this entirely, but I'm never going to think that the family is the only way, nor that it's the best one. I've thought and read a lot about this and it's not for purely political reasons that I believe it.
What many people don't realize is that the "family" in its current nuclear incarnation (one mother, one father, their biological offspring) is a rather recent invention. For the majority of human history, people lived in bands and tribes where the entire community considered itself responsible for the upbringing of its youth. This wasn't failproof either, but as we've seen with the rise of gangs, cults, political parties, and other loose "collectives", people will substitute for this lack of bigger picture involvement (something our brains and bodies evolved around for thousands of years)--even people who grew up in normal nuclear families--when it doesn't exist in their culture otherwise.
The "family" is probably the most oppressive heteronormative institution there is, and I'm happy to see that it's breaking down all the time.
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Something about this bothers me.
Not that I would try and defend 'the family' as perfect but this is clearly not all there is to most groups, at least not ones that aren't completely dysfunctional.
Sounds like some kind of nightmare actually, the perpetual exercise of manipulative power.
In terms of anarchism aren't these exactly the aspects of group dynamics one would aim to minimise in favour of mutually agreeable non-manipulative cooperation?
Well nuclear families often constitute an artificial kind of affinity under siege, so it's not a very 'natural' situation, certainly not the only possible situation.
Even then I don't think that coercion and persuasion is all there is as you seem to be suggesting, to me that's excessively focussing on manipulative exercise of power at the exclusion of other aspects of group existence.
You also said 'most other groups' which implies a more general observation.
Is this supposed to be an argument against the viability of anarchism or something?
I think in terms of anarchist organisation what is useful to consider is the encouragement of situations of genuine affinity out of which mutually agreeable cooperation can emerge. Not to mention things like love and respect...
Sometimes in a family the baby is boss.
Even then I don't think that coercion and persuasion is all there is as you seem to be suggesting, to me that's excessively focussing on manipulative exercise of power at the exclusion of other aspects of group existence.
You also said 'most other groups' which implies a more general observation.
Is this supposed to be an argument against the viability of anarchism or something?
I think in terms of anarchist organisation what is useful to consider is the encouragement of situations of genuine affinity out of which mutually agreeable cooperation can emerge. Not to mention things like love and respect...
Different levels yes, but sometimes they are interchangeable. Relationships don't usually work along just one axis. And anarchy isn't really about equality anyway imo. Equality and it's merits is a complicated notion.
Sometimes in a family the baby is boss.
vimothy
yurp
The baby isn't makng decisions or handing out instructions. And the parents may well be motivated out of love, but the mechanisms they use are persuasion and coercion. That shouldn't be read as a value judgement damining families as manipulative, but as a description of method, regardless of motivation.
Is it an argument against anarchism? I don't know, disproving the validity of anarchism is not something I'm interested in, but it is an observation about how groups work, particularly the most fundamental unit of social organisation, however it is constituted.
Is it an argument against anarchism? I don't know, disproving the validity of anarchism is not something I'm interested in, but it is an observation about how groups work, particularly the most fundamental unit of social organisation, however it is constituted.
But it is sending out signals, which are being actioned.
vimothy
yurp
So is everything. I might tell my boss, "I think we should do this", and we'll do it (which is pretty typical). Or he might look at what I'm doing and say, "let's do this". We both might look at the signals our case studies are sending out, and act on them. But he's still the boss. Either there is no such thing as a hierarchy, or there is. If there is no such thing as hierarchy, that's fine, even if it will make talking about certain things more difficult, but it doesn't leave a lot of space for anarchism.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
massrock - a couple of interesting ideas/points
yeh - if not so formally stated as all that.
agree with this - kind of. tho it is very much, at least to me, about taking equality as a basic premise while recognizing that there is nothing such as "true" equality, that there will be an uneven power dynamic in every relationship & so on. again, holding something as an ideal rather than a practicable goal, but making striving towards that ideal part of your praxis.
on the merits of equality - it's true, it's complicated. I do believe that at the most basic level everyone is "equal".
yeh - if not so formally stated as all that
.agree with this - kind of. tho it is very much, at least to me, about taking equality as a basic premise while recognizing that there is nothing such as "true" equality, that there will be an uneven power dynamic in every relationship & so on. again, holding something as an ideal rather than a practicable goal, but making striving towards that ideal part of your praxis.
on the merits of equality - it's true, it's complicated. I do believe that at the most basic level everyone is "equal".
D
droid
Guest
You dont have kids do you?
The baby is sending out instructions, and in a very coercive fashion... orders that the parent is biologically compelled to obey - ie change me/feed me/talk to me or else I'm going to scream my lungs out, keep you awake and wreck your head.
Babies are the worst kind of tyrants. There's no negotiation or compromise with their pudgy faced diktats.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
almost missed this one (really on the ball today, massrock!)
definitely - this is what I mean when I say that it's best to work with people with whom you share something beside/beyond supposed beliefs. or to reverse that, that it's important to create bonds beyond just your beliefs. unfortunately that's not always possible.
or thinking of the pre-agricultural peoples who are forever being cited - it strikes me that their ties are of course those of blood/kin/custom/etc. etc. - ingrained & much stronger than a learned ideology. which explains perhaps why (relatively) non-hierarchical organization works for hunter-gatherers but why Westerners have so much trouble with it.
definitely - this is what I mean when I say that it's best to work with people with whom you share something beside/beyond supposed beliefs. or to reverse that, that it's important to create bonds beyond just your beliefs. unfortunately that's not always possible.
or thinking of the pre-agricultural peoples who are forever being cited - it strikes me that their ties are of course those of blood/kin/custom/etc. etc. - ingrained & much stronger than a learned ideology. which explains perhaps why (relatively) non-hierarchical organization works for hunter-gatherers but why Westerners have so much trouble with it.
I think others have questioned whether a family in that sense can really be seen as the most fundamental unit of social organisation. A nuclear family in a fragmented society is a particular case under certain conditions, so I don't think you can necessarily say 'however it is constituted'.
But you are still assuming that persuasion and coercion are the only things going on. I don't think that's true.
When I mentioned love and respect I wasn't thinking about these as motives for getting people to do what you want. More important is that which makes it apparent what you could or should do (or not do), for others, for the group and for yourself, and why. If you imagine a situation where it is readily apparent where areas of affinity and mutuality are, where shared benefit is. I mean surely one of the prime motivations for thinking about anarchy at all is that this is a situation we are in anyway but need to recognise it?
The point about the baby is that a hierarchy isn't always just in one direction or even what it appears, that it will be context dependant and that other relations sit alongside it. At work someone is your boss, down the pub you can beat them at darts. Of course hierarchies exist but they are also not exclusive with other topologies and relationships.
D
droid
Guest
Isn't the family - or more specifically the parent an example of justifiable authority/hierarchy based on the incapacity of the child anyway?
De George:
'Ideally parents make for the child the kid of enlightened decision the child would make for himself - were he capable of doing so...
...Ideally, parental commands and rules do not constitute an alien will imposed on that of a child, but a loving help given for the child's good and in his best interest"
As mentioned already, Anarchism (as I understand it) strives to eliminate hierarchy, but where this is not possible, the hierarchies it does create must be justifiable and transparent.
De George:
'Ideally parents make for the child the kid of enlightened decision the child would make for himself - were he capable of doing so...
...Ideally, parental commands and rules do not constitute an alien will imposed on that of a child, but a loving help given for the child's good and in his best interest"
As mentioned already, Anarchism (as I understand it) strives to eliminate hierarchy, but where this is not possible, the hierarchies it does create must be justifiable and transparent.