NAZIS FROM SPACE!

As if things weren’t bad enough in our embattled world. What with people in the USA fighting for civil rights [still!] and enduring daily altercations with militarized police forces and others in a country that houses a prison-industrial complex that, amongst other things, cages children and engages in forced hysterectomies in ICE detention centres, Chinese victimization of the Uighur people which reportedly includes “re-education camps”, the ongoing apartheid in Palestine where one of the most militarized states in the world continues to wage war against the Palestinian people, and an ongoing global Covid-19 pandemic which is being dealt with, worldwide, with disparate and unequal concern and effectiveness with hope ultimately being placed in vaccines sold to the highest bidder by rapacious pharmaceutical companies, it would, perhaps, be very 2020 to conclude the year with the news that our planet has been invaded by Nazis from space. [Although, of course, it seems that we already have far too many of our own in any case.]

Yet the Nazis from space that my title refers to are not real ones but fictional ones, fictional ones, in fact, from the 1983 TV miniseries V [V: The Original Miniseries for the purposes of distinguishing it from its 1984 follow up miniseries, V: The Final Battle, the 1984-85 TV series and the 2009 reboot]. This original miniseries should be set apart from its later follow ups for while they become increasingly based in science fiction and action [and become increasingly stupid as a result] the original two part miniseries is based on an allegory and ideas. It was in fact inspired by a 1935 book by the Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Sinclair Lewis, called It Can’t Happen Here, the story of a demagogue elected US President in 1936 who is described as “fomenting fear and promising drastic economic and social reforms while promoting a return to patriotism and ‘traditional’ values.” Once elected, this president “takes complete control of the government and imposes totalitarian rule with the help of a ruthless paramilitary force”. Readers should not be surprised to learn that the president depicted in this book has drawn comparison with President Trump and the point of the book, of course, and in contravention of its title, is that the fascism it describes can always happen here because it doesn’t take much to tip over into a fascist situation.

But back to our Nazis from space for there is, I believe, several things we can learn from this fiction and that we need to pay attention to in our current lives in the contemporary world. The original, two-part miniseries V is the story of benevolent, humanoid aliens who come to Earth in stereotypical, “flying saucer” spaceships in search of various chemicals and minerals their civilisation has run out of. In return for the humans of Earth helping them out, these aliens are more than willing to share helpful technology with us as one would expect people capable of interstellar travel to possess. Initiating a first meeting with the head of the United Nations in New York, the aliens soon ingratiate themselves with the political leaders of the world but it is precisely then that more disturbing things start to happen. For example, scientists, those who naturally might have an enthusiastic interest in aliens from outer space, become an increasing target for public and media hate, both an enemy for the aliens to be wary of but also a scapegoat for the watching humans to blame. Various propaganda materials, which regard the aliens as “friends” and depict them in amicable poses with human beings, begin appearing. The aliens, termed “Visitors” in the show, deploy vast numbers of military forces in the various human communities depicted to facilitate their needs unmolested. A human spokeswoman is appointed by the Visitors so that the people of Earth may be addressed by one of their own and also, one suspects, so that the aliens can avoid interrogation by human beings directly. 

Soon enough, of course, we learn that the aliens are not all they appear to be. An investigative TV journalist, Mike Donovan, manages to sneak aboard one of the aliens’ 50 motherships hovering above various cities and discovers that the aliens have a terrible secret. They are not humanoid at all but carnivorous reptilians that eat live food such as mice or small birds - or even human beings. Their eventual plan is to steal all our water and harvest most of humanity as food. Being an investigative reporter, Donovan has a camera with him and films the alien commander eating a live guinea pig. Returning to ground, he goes to a TV studio and is about to broadcast the tape live when the broadcast is taken over by the Visitors who have now taken control of all media. In the meantime, the Visitors have instituted a “Visitor Youth” movement for young people aged 12-20 and we see one of the characters, Daniel Bernstein, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, enthusiastically joining up to this movement the members of which are actively encouraged to inform on the people of their neighbourhoods. Daniel is given a military type uniform and a laser weapon to help him perform his duties. Increasingly, we see Visitors, or their new human allies, on street corners or in public generally and those who speak against the aliens are vilified, persecuted or “disappeared” as a result. In addition, scientists begin coming forward and admitting to conspiring against the Visitors although it is noticed that, in some cases, they seem now to be right-handed where once they were left-handed and there are other dissonant things about such people as well. It transpires that the aliens have a “conversion process” by which the aliens can make processed human beings become utterly compliant to their wishes and make them say what they want. Soon enough, however, as the increased alien presence becomes more and more authoritarian, a resistance movement is begun even whilst others, including Mike Donovan’s own mother, become willing collaborators with the new alien overlords, overlords that the former civilian authorities willingly cooperate with as just someone else to take orders from. [At this point it strikes me that all the Visitors seem to have been depicted as white - although I don’t know if this was deliberate or not.]

Anyway, you get the idea, I hope, from this brief overview. V is a particularly blunt allegory of the Nazism of 1933-1945 but one in which such Nazism has come to especially the USA [the programme was American-made, after all, and was set in Los Angeles] in ways more unbelievable in the 1980s than it would be in a Trumpian context of protestors being snatched from the streets, Proud Boys’ militia roaming armed around city centres with implicit police approval and presidents using their social media presence and public appearances to vilify the press, political opponents and critics alike as traitors, potential targets for harassment and worse. And that’s before we get into the targeted disinformation campaigns and voter suppression efforts that modern technology and social interaction enables but which 1980s TV producers could not have dreamed of. Nevertheless, many of the obvious factors in a popular fascism are scarily present even in a saccharin TV miniseries presented to appeal to a family audience in the spring of 1983. We see how the fascists ingratiate themselves with the leaders before taking power themselves, how they seek to control all media, so controlling what people are told, how they vilify and arrest their perceived enemies and remove those most likely to expose them, how they perpetrate atrocities against their enemies and dehumanise them, how they encourage collaboration and propagandise their presence and intent. Does this sound very much like YOUR government in YOUR country, I wonder? 

Yet why would a slightly hokey US miniseries almost 40 years old interest me so? It is because I am an anarchist and, being an anarchist, I am, of course, extremely anti-authoritarian - and fascism is essentially a kind of popular authoritarianism. But it is not necessarily a consistent, well thought out, intelligent authoritarianism as the Italian philosopher and novelist, Umberto Eco, reminded us in his 1995 essay “Ur-Fascism” [“Eternal Fascism”]. There, amongst 14 typical features of fascism, Eco records we find:

*A cult of tradition

*Rejection of modern thinking and the experts of the day

*Acting without thinking, thinking being regarded as suspect

*Any disagreement being regarded as treason

*A fear of any difference - making fascism racist by definition

*Concentration on social frustrations [which might need someone to blame for them]

*Obsession with plots and being under threat from enemies

*Inconsistency on whether the chosen enemies are strong or weak

*Refusal to take sides is seen as siding with the enemy

*An utter contempt for the weak in an elitism of the strong

*A cult of the hero where heroic death is also eulogised

*Obsession with machismo and weaponry which devalues both women and diverse genders and sexualities

*A fixation with the fiction of “the will of the People” or “the people’s Voice” which the fascists claim to be the authoritative interpreters of

*Fascists developing their own simplified form of language, as in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four where Orwell calls such a thing “Newspeak”. 

As I regard my readers as intelligent people in their own right I am sure you are able to see some, or even several, of these features active in various governments around the world today. In many cases these are governments which deign to allow their populations to vote once every four or five years in elections which these same political actors also can’t quite stop trying to rig, affect or otherwise gerrymander. At the same time, traditional and social media are being utilised to blast political messaging into the consciousnesses of people far and wide. As an anarchist, I don’t know what this is but it isn’t democracy for it is never democracy if you are being told what to think, if people are being cheated out of their vote or if your media are 24/7 propaganda messaging conduits so far divorced from truth or reality that they are essentially free-form fiction being marketed as the truth. I had cause to remark earlier in this essay that the people of 1983 would have found it hard to imagine fascism in the USA. They would find it much easier today - and not only in the USA.

For today we find ourselves living in an increasingly authoritarian, fascist world and it doesn’t matter whether you talk about the USA, Russia, China, the UK, Brazil, Israel, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia or any number of other disparate countries with quite different political histories and traditions. Politicians worldwide seem to have decided that what they love is having authority and keeping the people generally under control in order to service their own political wills which they denominate the will of the people. Those of us on the political left are sometimes prey to this political temptation as well, mistakenly thinking that control, even a benevolent control, is the answer. But it isn’t and servicing a political agenda, one, today, often coerced by capitalist actors who worship exploitation of resources as the result of wealth and power, is always an authoritarian move which curtails freedom and denies liberty equally to all. Indeed, in much the same way as various collaborators in V put their companies at the service of the Visitors so that they might profit from their authoritarianism, we see exactly the same thing happening in our own, much more real and consequential world. What these various capitalists and people with authoritarian ideologies have in common is a desire to exploit and control and what destroys them is always genuine democracy - which is why fighting for real democracy is something the opponents of authoritarianism and fascism must always do. 

Thus, it is no surprise that even in countries that do have so-called democratic elections, in places that disingenuously bleat on about their love of democracy, we find scandals emerging from behind the scenes about ways the same people who have claimed to love democracy have tried to cheat it. It is equally unsurprising that shadowy figures have been revealed to be operating out of the limelight, putting their fortunes at the disposal of both political parties and political campaigns determined to dupe the gullible and control both trade and politics by putting them into the hands of the blessed few. Recently, in both the USA and the UK, apparent threats to such an agenda arose in the forms of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn but both were swiftly attacked on all sides - not least by members of their own parties more beholden to the agendas of authoritarianism and capital - and were despatched, once more, to the bubbles from which they had emerged. Such people the authoritarian-controlled and influenced cast as cranks, people out to take away what’s rightfully yours, and, funnily enough, authoritarians who want to impose “socialism” on you. It is, of course, propaganda. But when you control the vast majority of the media its very hard to hear someone tell you anything else and, even if by osmosis, you can be sure that certain numbers of people will come to believe it.

This is just one reason why democracy should be the chosen weapon used to defeat both authoritarianism, our political enemy of the day, and capitalism, its economic counterpart. By “democracy” I don’t necessarily mean voting for democracy is simply the factually expressed will of the people and that can be expressed at any time - for example, by protesting, by organising strikes, or by organising boycotts. All of these are democratic actions for we should not allow the very idea of democracy to be controlled by the few who, paradoxically, even want to define what “democratic” is - to their own benefit, of course. Democracy is the voice and action of real people being heard and not simply this as it is expressed through processes denominated as such. Democracy is the constant ability to “speak truth to power” and to act in pursuance of freedom for yourself and others. In this sense, fighting for such democracy and freedom is always a matter of resistance against those who would wish to exploit and control you whether these be commercial or political actors. It is a fascist impulse to want to control and to claim to speak for some fictional mass of the people. It is a democratic impulse that is expressed when people take action or speak out from the authentic experience of their own lives and ask to be heard.

As an anarchist, of course, I do not believe in any leaders or authorities and insist on my own democratic responsibility for my own life at all times. I believe in the purest democracy there is which is the uncoerced agreement of equally free people who are then at liberty to speak for themselves, make their own choices and, in mutual cooperation with others, make their own community arrangements for how they shall live. I do a lot of thinking about this for it is not, and can never be, just some utopian idea. Anarchism expresses itself as a genuine, workable, practical means of living for human beings in the real world and so anarchists everywhere must at least try to think of ways in which it can actually be lived at the same time as they employ strategies to frustrate and destroy the authoritarian capitalism we see all around us in the contemporary world which chains up and controls others. The answers, for anyone on the political left and not just anarchists, are always going to be practical. It is about doing and not just talking for it is only actions that change circumstances. So, with that said, let me close this short essay with a few suggestions in regard to things we can do right here, right now to change an authoritarian situation into a democratic one:

*Talk to friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances about your political situation

*Identify people who share social values of human solidarity and mutual aid

*Build networks with others that offer support to the vulnerable and needy

*Find ways to subvert the ongoing forms of power in your community or workplace

*Think, with others, about ways you can form your own, self-sufficient communities 

*Detach yourselves from corporate systems of provision and media so you are not reliant upon them

*Remember that together we are stronger but alone we can be picked off one by one

*Educate others about the importance of real democracy and how both capitalism and authoritarianism try to destroy it

*Train yourself to be aware of what is going on in your society and become more ready and wiling to respond to it

Taken together, these things might not stop Nazis from space but they are at least a start in working for freedom against the interests of those who would just see us as people to exploit or things to control and consume. In the end, resisting fascism, authoritarianism and capitalism is up to those who would work to oppose them and who are prepared to speak out and act for themselves and others. Without such democratic and socially libertarian voices its a free home run for those who want to exploit and control. So it is always a matter of active resistance and of those with a will to resist.

ROY BATTY, ANARCHY AND AUTHENTICITY

The pivotal, climactic scene of the 1982 film, Bladerunner, a science fiction classic some also argue is the greatest film ever made, involves the character, Roy Batty, played by Rutger Hauer, and the character, Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford. It is a dark, rainy night inhabited only by Deckard’s fear and Batty’s desire for revenge. Earlier in the film, Deckard, the titular Bladerunner, a form of freelance hitman employed by the cops, is assigned Roy Batty and his three friends, Zhora, Leon and Pris, as targets to be hunted to their deaths. By the time we get to that climactic scene, only Roy and Deckard remain. All four of Roy Batty and his friends are replicants, near perfect replicas of human beings created by the Tyrell Corporation whose head is Eldon Tyrell. But they have become unstable, dangerous, instead of doing as they are told, for replicants are in fact really only near human slaves. Some defy their human masters and then they must be destroyed. In fact, so dangerous can replicants become - in some cases they are both more intelligent and physically stronger than human beings - that they have been hardwired with a fixed four year lifespan in the Nexus 6 iteration of replicants we see in the film.

Replicants have been banned from Earth in the setup to Bladerunner but Roy, Leon, Zhora and Pris have come to Earth, contrary to the law, in search of the most valuable thing in the galaxy - more life! The latter three will die at Deckard’s hand in pursuit of this but that still leaves Roy, the most intelligent and most dangerous of them all. So smart is Roy that he even manages to trick his way into the home of his creator and “father” - Eldon Tyrell - who lives in a huge pyramid-like building accessible only by a singular elevator. Roy uses one of Tyrell’s friends and employees, J.F. Sebastian, to get access via the elevator and, in a scene full of the meaning appropriate to when a prodigal son meets his father, his creator and his God, he crushes the skull of all three in his created hands after Tyrell tells him that there is indeed no way to give him more life. What’s done is done, how things are is how things are. You are, dear Roy, what you are.

Yet Deckard is still on the trail of Roy Batty and, having followed the trail to J.F. Sebastian’s place, he is confronted by Pris - whom he kills. Roy returns to the dark, atmospheric building populated by the synthetic creatures Sebastian keeps around as friends for his amusement to find Pris’ dead and bloodied body - which he briefly and genuinely mourns over, wiping some of her blood on his face. Deckard takes a shot at Roy but fails to kill him and then Roy grabs Deckard’s gun hand through a wall, dislocating two of his fingers as punishment for the deaths of the females Zhora and Pris. Thereafter, he gives Deckard a few seconds to start running before he begins hunting him down, howling animal cries as he does and even though he begins to feel the physical effects of the fact that his own, hardwired life is nearly up. Deckard, with his fairly useless right hand, tries to get away, climbing to the roof of the building, but Roy is never very far away and constantly taunts him. Suddenly, Roy appears on the roof as well just as Deckard is about to make good his escape and, in his desperation, Deckard runs and tries to jump to an adjacent rooftop in the opposite direction. He fails to make it and is left clinging precariously to a steel girder that juts out from the roof. Roy follows him and makes the jump easily, he walks to Deckard and, standing over him, says, “Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a slave.”

Deckard, tired, injured and soaking wet through in the constant rain, cannot hang on to the girder any longer. As a final act of defiance, knowing he is going to fall to his death, he spits in the direction of Roy Batty before relinquishing his grip on the slippery metal… but then a twist! Roy reaches forward and grabs Deckard by the left wrist just in time and lifts him up onto the rooftop where he drops him down again. For a moment there is more tension as Deckard backs up to a part of the building jutting upwards from the roof - does Roy plan to kill Deckard with his bare hands as he had killed Tyrell? It seems not for Roy, bare-chested, bloodied and holding a dove in his left hand, sits down, cross-legged, on the rainy rooftop and gives one of the most memorable and meaningful speeches in film history as the helpless Deckard looks on:

“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. 

Time to die.”

And with that, Roy Batty bows his head in the rain and dies, the hard limit of his life reached. The dove, released from his grasp, flies away, a metaphor for Roy’s free spirit.

It is Rutger Hauer himself who has remarked, before he sadly passed away in 2019, ironically also the year in which Bladerunner and so Roy Batty’s death is set, that this speech Roy gives, something which Hauer himself heavily modified without director, Ridley Scott’s, knowledge, is not really connected to the rest of the film. Most of the film plays out as a film noir, “good guy versus bad guys” kind of film. But this disconnected speech, the only real insight we get into the psyche of the replicants in the film besides the necessary plot point that they want to live longer than they have been created to, fundamentally changes all that. Is it not now the case that the “good guy” in Bladerunner is, in fact, Roy Batty? Is it not now the case that, in the light of this speech, Deckard is an inauthentic man trapped in a system in which he must kill beings on someone else’s say so, an act of bad faith in the fiction of a self that has been assigned him by others that he cannot escape from? Is not the whole human system of control that creates, determines and destroys here exposed as venal, cruel and ingenuine? Is not the dying Batty’s choice to save Deckard’s life, a thing he did not need to do and which would have had no consequences for anybody since Deckard was going to die by not being able to hold on any longer anyway, the most human act in the film? As Rutger Hauer himself has said, Batty wanted to “make his mark on existence... the replicant in the final scene, by dying, shows Deckard what a real man is made of.” He does this by an extreme example of authenticity and self-actualisation, an act of anarchy in which he rebels from every expectation of him.

Batty is a replicant, a being who was created by a species to be its slave. They determined everything about what he would be even upto and including the point at which he would die. But Roy and his three friends are not willing to accept that. They are beings in their own right [a theme the later sequel Bladerunner 2049 will take up] and, as such, they have their own ideas about that, their own conscience and their own will. It was the human beings who gave them these things. But now the question that is raised by Roy in his authentic action in voluntarily saving Deckard is “What makes you most human?” and the answer comes back “acts of self-actualising authenticity” - becoming who you are. In this salvatory moment Roy Batty defines not only himself but, in the context of the film, he also defines humanity as well as his action to save Deckard is clearly the most consequentially human thing that takes place in the film. He shows Deckard what a human being is and makes the claim that, rather than a created machine, a human biology project, a mere tool and a slave, replicants are people too. This is ironic when read against the film’s script in which Eldon Tyrell, a mere commercialist, a businessman, an example of the inauthentic humans who buy and sell and use without ever knowing who they are, says that the motto of the Tyrell Corporation is “More human than human”, a slogan to sell his product, which is all Roy Batty and his friends are to him. But not so to Roy! In his voluntary and needless actions Roy proves that, without ever realising it or even caring, Tyrell was actually right. It would have been nothing for Roy to let Deckard drop to his death. It makes perfect sense in the film and no one could even blame him. Deckard was certainly trying to kill him, after all. But Roy spares his life just because he can and, in doing so, he defines with crystal clarity just who and what he really is: a being who can define himself against his creator, in spite of the narrative the species that hunts him down has given him, and over and against all expectations about him. Roy creates his own authenticity and his own identity and says that this, in end, is what real humanity actually is: the act of actualising who you yourself are as a person in the anarchy of a world we all have the power to define.

This realisation cannot be overestimated in its importance. In it, Roy Batty breaks all systems of human control and manifests a pure form of anarchy, an anarchy which comes from within - which, I suggest, is where true anarchy only ever really comes from. Beside him, Deckard, in director Ridley Scott’s mind also a replicant although he doesn’t know it, is playing the role that others have assigned him. He is the pawn, the tool, the inauthentic being who plays along with narrative boundaries others set for his life. But Roy, especially Roy, does not. In this climactic moment most of all he will not be defined by a role others have assigned him, a life others have dictated to him and even encoded in his biological make up. Instead, he will fulfill - and more than fulfill - Tyrell’s empty, commercial slogan and give it the meaning that Tyrell never even realised it had and he will do that by defining what real humanity actually is - rising above the control, the human narratives about identity and place and assigned meaning, to recreate himself anew as a being who knows who he is and who decides for himself what that will be - expectations and fictions of others and even biology be damned! Roy Batty here defines humanity because he does that thing which, as far as we know, is something only human beings can do - be creators themselves and say “I am this because I want to be this and I will be no other!”

The ending to Roy’s speech then gains a poignancy that can only be gained from recognising this realisation. “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” Roy Batty is not a thing, a creation, one of the crowd of inauthentic, generic beings many human beings regularly exist as. He is not just going through the motions of a role life has assigned him without self-awareness or his own consciousness. He is an individual, a unique being, one of a kind. He is Roy Batty. No one else is. No one else ever can or will be. This uniqueness, this precious, singular, uniqueness, is ephemeral, fleeting, temporary, contingent. It is the plaintive reflection of one who realises how important each person, whoever they are, is - but who also knows, in that same moment, that all bleeds back into a one without identity, without character, without personality. Like tears in rain: indistinguishable, unidentifiable. The moment of self-actualisation is also the moment of the realisation of one’s own annihilation. The moment of your creation is the moment of the recognition of your own inevitable destruction. In that moment in which you are most a self-defined something, you recognise that you are forever to be an indistinct part of the great Nothing. Yet this is not to be avoided, resisted, unimagined. It is to be accepted as who you are, part of that act of authenticity. And that’s why its highly appropriate that in this moment of such thorough-going definition and identification the very next action is Roy’s death. The time of such self-actualisation and authenticity is the “time to die”. For death is the eternity and life is only a brief flicker in time, an aberration. Who you are doesn’t matter at all. But if you should rise to the heights to which Roy did, overcome all the fiction of others who will try to assign you a role for you to play out, and become who you are, then the only place to go thereafter is death. And to embrace it willingly as the person you have made yourself to be exactly as Roy Batty did.

That is authenticity. That is self-actualisation. That’s the spirit!

PS The subject for this short essay came to me as I was flitting between being asleep and being awake this morning - as such thoughts often do for me. But as I was writing it it should be unsurprising to find that I found its subject matter very pertinent to our present moment in a world of global pandemics of disease, racism and prejudice. For very many people “who they are” is the defining question of their lives, one which brings them heartache, trouble and real distress. In some cases, people are even killed for who they see themselves to be or who they are. So i do not regard this essay as dealing with a trivial matter, nor is it merely an exercise in popular philosophy. For people of colour or for those who deal daily with issues of gender or sexuality “who they are” are consequential matters in ways that those who never have to give these things a second thought probably can barely understand. I stand with these people and I stand against those who want to argue for the supremacy of one kind of person over another. In many cases, these are the constricting human narratives of racial or gender supremacy that self-actualised human beings have to rise above. I believe in everybody’s ability to define for themselves who they are and for their right to do so - and for that to be respected by all others. So it is not merely an unfortunate observation that many anonymous people who have no clue who they are and have never even considered the question quite often threaten and harass those for whom such questions are all too existential. I think that being fully human, as Roy Batty shows, is about defining yourself, consciously and deliberately, but it is also about knowing and respecting who others are too. In every case. And it is also about recognising the anarchy of the void in which we all do that and how temporary, and so how precious, we all really are and could agree ourselves to be if only we had that awareness which Roy Batty had. 

Peace be with you.

Innocent?

Green grass.
Green.
Grass.
The footsteps that sink into
Green grass.

Nature’s techno
Uncovers
Gliding stones
And on into 
Infinity.

But who am I,
Falling into earth,
Without the slightest
Qualm
As trees shimmer on either side?

That I would
Take root,
Feeling the grass
Growing 
Through me.

I want to roll
In its lushness
Until I become
Green
And moist.

Woody sentinels
To either side
That watch
Impassively
Like old friends.

Nothing perfect,
Not the same,
As biology goes on its way.
Clones are never the same
Cos lived experience.

Naked,
Touching
Skin;
What’s the connection?
Naargam.

Naturel in nature
When the fingers
Caress
The naked succulence
Between them.

Kaleidoscopic emotion
And frivolous intention
Meet in the consummation
Of biological
Seduction.

A rhythmic undulation
Without any cessation
Foretells the manifestation
Of desirous sweet
Libation.

Exposed to elements
And naked
Before the world,
I take my pleasure
In the emptiness.

A glint as something
Moves; I’m spied
By probing eyes.
In haste, I flee  inside,
Giggling.

Without Words

Locked up.
A prison for myself.
Views and opinions
Exponentially increasing,
Multiplying beyond
My ability to control.

I scroll onward,
Prejudices confirmed,
Peace disturbed,
Mind not working;
The world now a hell
Of undesirable things.

There are too many words;
I wish they would stop.
It's too much to take,
My life has become
A living mass of hate and division
With no respite from the wound it creates.

Of course the world is a terrible place
But is its every problem mine to own?
Your privilege is talking,
A voice replies;
Feel yourself lucky you have the option
To avoid the problems.

I withdraw;
Peace,
Quiet,
Space,
Silence:
I am just one person made from stars.

WHOSE is the guilt for the world?
Yours?
Mine?
What does it matter?
Why should we care?
Is it as if these problems will ever be resolved?

A deep breath
In silence;
A refusal to think
Or to calculate;
No words and
No thought.

A universe of Nothing,
It's vastness complete;
Think of it -
Oh what silence!
No screams, no shouts,
No pain.

The loudest shout fades
To zero in the vastness,
All words are lost,
Their meaning evaporates;
What, then,
Is the point of words?

Sink into the vastness,
It will absorb your pain,
There is no injustice there,
Only nothingness remains,
A vast sea beyond words
And no longer any land.

Freedom is not being forced
Into any given relations,
A place where forms of words
Carry no weight;
In silence, without thought,
We spring the trap.

Language is the house of being
Someone once said
But, if that is true,
Then I do not want to be;
Words trap us in their sticky nets
And entangle us in situated lies.

For every situation
There is a fiction
And for every fiction
A circumstance;
We swap one for another, thinking our's better:
Fool! It's the same trap!

I reimagined God
As nothing,
I saw God
As a label;
An endless impossible,
A silence.

And who is to say
This cannot be
When all that is
Is words?
Take them all away
And what do you have left?

I imagine.
But might I not
Be imagining myself,
This life?
Might not a life be
An imagining oneself?

The dreamer dreams
She wakes up,
Yet still
She dreams;
No way to break
Out of the dream.

Forget the words,
Forget all the words,
No words
Anymore,
Only silence,
Endless void.

The greatness,
The vastness,
The immanence
Where there should be transcendence!
This!
I want this!

I travel in a wordless land
Without time and space?
Or is it just that here,
Wordless,
These concepts
Have no point anymore?

Silent.
Quiet.
Endless.
Wordless.
Immanent.
Nothing.

Peacefulness
That is home,
Away from words
That create misery,
Disaster,
Pain.

Close all the mouths,
Destroy all the pens,
Smash all the
Word processors!
Be silent, without words,
And be at peace!

A Single Mote of Dust

A single mote of dust
Displaying our original face.
Body and mind both drop off;
Unsure of what to call them.


Eyes shining out from the clouds,
The empty sky has no inside or outside.
Destitute of words,
Become passersby.


Mind, just mind, Original 
Nature. Body, just body, 
True Self.
Not different or alike.


An ocean wave is billowing,
The wind, it drifts along.
Movement and rest, no different,
A very natural song.


One light
Continuing from the first
Ultimately becomes
Fully illuminating.


Which does not entangle
Or distress, aside
The teachings of the world,
Clouds of doubt and delusion.


Sitting in peace
As empty as a 
Cold forest on
A green day.


Wisdom of meditation,
Practice of the Way.
Don’t think about it,
Nothing is achieved.


Business is corruption,
Money is polluting;
Throw it away
And be clean.


Some ink and paper,
Used for writing;
Don’t use them,
Forget they exist.


Abstaining from the world,
Floating on an existence,
The misleading mind extinguished
In a wordless actuality.


Fine garments and nice things
Do not a virtuous person make.
You may profit in the game of appearances
But you look like a dead dog on a dung heap.


Harmony is the playing of
Multiple independent sounds at
Once. And when you do
They all sound well together.


But that does not
Mean that there is such a
Thing as disharmony for that’s just
A harmony you aren’t yet used to.


All goes with all;
Nothing out of place.
Myriad combinations of things
That do not judge each other.


For words are just unnecessary,
Judgments give a sour face,
Things will be what they will be
No one decides the case.


Breathing in air,
Existing in a gaseous sea,
Dependent on the elements,
Part of One.


How do you feel?
How do you think?
How do you know?
Don’t create a stink.


Traditions,
You ought not to look at them,
Read them, or listen to them
In too great a measure.


Only a fool seeks disciples,
Only the disreputable seek fame;
A quite home, a peaceful existence,
These are your best friends.


There is nothing you need to know,
There is nothing to need to think,
There is nothing you need to feel;
There is nothing.


Having nothing that the body
Needs to do,
The ten thousand things,
Joyfully unhindered.


A silent metamorphosis,
A multitude of things;
Simplicity in process
What need to make sense?


A naked body exposed
For all to look at and stare, 
No shame is felt, no need to look, 
For nothing's really there. 


I'm free at last, I'm free, you shout
Into the wide abyss, 
Drop to your knees, take out the snake, 
Embrace the serpent's kiss. 


The dogs of old who wore a cloak 
Knew how to walk the way, 
Ignore the customs of the old
And, liberated, say:


Money and fame are not for me
For I would virtue seek, 
Simplicity and peacefulness, 
A harmony of the meek. 


Through dogs of clouds and heart of war
And treasure, Lust and pain, 
Repeat this pome twice after me
And ne'er say it again. 


I laugh at silly egotism, 
I ignore your gormless pride, 
I sit here in humility
With virtue at my side. 


With nature set before me
Her offspring all around, 
I fade into the background
Til no one hears a sound. 


A single mote of dust
Displaying our original face.
Body and mind both drop off;
Doesn’t matter what you call them.

SIMPLICITY: THE MOST SUBVERSIVE THING IN THE WORLD

There is a story told about Diogenes of Sinope that goes something like this: Diogenes was one day eating a meagre repast of dry bread and lentils for supper when he caught the eye of Aristippus, a philosopher who lived comfortably due to his flattery of the king, something which found him favour in the king’s eyes. Aristippus, feeling bold seeing Diogenes eating such a poor meal, said to him, “If only you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to eat such lowly meals.” Whereupon Diogenes, hearing the remark, replied, “It is because I have learned to live on lentils that I do not have to be subservient to the king.”

Then there is the following quotation from the Tao Te Ching:

“Manifest plainness,

Embrace simplicity,

Reduce selfishness,

Have few desires.”

This is offered as general advice on how to go about the practice of one’s life and so is in much the same vein as Diogenes’ acerbic riposte to Aristippus. 

Meanwhile, if we should take the time to read Henry David Thoreau’s memoir of spending over two years living alone in the woods by Walden lake in his book Walden; or, Life in the Woods, we find him espousing thoughts such as

“Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.”

“It is desirable that a man live in all respects so simply and preparedly that if an enemy take the town... he can walk out the gate empty-handed and without anxiety.”

“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.”

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”

And last but not least

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live.”

This essay is to be about simplicity, something that, it seems to me, has become something very subversive in all those parts of the world touched by wealth, civilisation, technology, acquisitiveness, banks, hoarding, capitalism, popularity [for what is more popular than “Look what I’ve got!”?], keeping up with the Joneses and taking pride in things you claim to own. I regard ALL of these things as vain and unnecessary but then I am also one who reads books that contain rural, agrarian, Daoist idylls and who looks on approvingly, seeing in such simplicity the pattern of a near perfect life. It is something Thoreau would have recognised since it is what he enjoyed for over two years in the woods by Walden lake. Alone. It is also very similar to Diogenes' solitary wandering around Athens and, later, Corinth. Diogenes, of course, had no home and so he found shelter and food, life’s basic necessities, where he could. He seems to have been unashamed to beg as well. We do not find him worrying about where the next meal comes from or where he will spend the night. We do not find him concerned for his long term future as we do many in today’s supposedly ever progressive world of property, stocks and shares, bank accounts, pensions and the like. Indeed, in a claim that cuts straight to the heart of such matters, Diogenes claims to be looking for a human being, something the civilised denizens of the cities of his acquaintance seem not to be in his eyes, and so, we must assume, he must be claiming, in some sense, to be modelling this in his own, simple hobo existence. Traditional Cynic garb was just a cloak. Possessions may have amounted to a simple bag and a staff. That’s it.

By now most of any readers this particular essay has garnered will imagine me to be nuts as this essay seems to be suggesting we ditch modern civilisation and embrace the unforgiving harshness of pre-industrial times. Just think: no cars, no trains, no planes; no TV, no Internet, no computers; no health care [that’s a big one!], no supermarkets, no public utilities. I’m not just nuts, I’m criminally dangerous, right? If I am its only because now, you having all these things, you can no longer imagine life without them. Yet have you ever asked after the cost of having these things in place [I’m not talking about money] in both relevant senses? Contemporary people are taught to expect these things as rights whilst simultaneously not being taught to question where they come from in terms of work, in terms of resources or in terms of the ongoing cost to the environment of having them [and the million other things I could have added to this list]. Even these nine things did not just drop out of the consequenceless sky as things which leave no footprint and have no effects themselves. It is not as if, having these things, they do not make us certain kinds of people, the kinds of people who think, above all else, that life is impossible without them. 

But, of course, life is not impossible without them. Its just a different kind of life. Its a life that doesn’t rely on financial gambling, being in debt or relying on some vast commercial enterprise to supply you with everything that comes into your tiny mind that has been taught to want this, that and every other thing that is advertised on TV and in your social media feeds. You want something, so why shouldn’t you have it, you think to yourself, not imagining for a second the global consequences of billions of people all wanting things at the same time in a never ending stream of wants. But it has to be this way, doesn’t it? Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, would certainly like you to think so. He makes over $8.9 million per HOUR, so I read, from making sure as many of your wants as possible can be satisfied within hours. Apparently, his company's carbon footprint is worthy of disgrace, what with all it takes to create such vast supply and delivery chains. But he is doing what must be done to fulfill a very modern mantra: consume, desire, want more! 

Yet it is impossible to discuss simplicity without questioning this mantra. We are each of us born with relatively simple needs. My Cynic and Daoist examples in this project knew this very well for, in text but also sometimes in historical practice, they eulogise them and take them up. Its a fair bet that if many of us alive today were sent back to their time we would find even living like their kings and emperors an intolerable situation, what with their lack of things we take for granted, things like electricity, powered transport, and ability to message people instantly. Yet, to my examples, the civilised way these kings and emperors live is something to be despised and avoided - certainly for the Cynics. For Daoists it is merely wise and virtuous to avoid it. But what does this then say about us who, even in the regular versions of a civilised human being, have things past kings and emperors could never have dreamed of? Yet the important thing here, from the point of view of simplicity, is not who has what or what it is worth: It is what kind of person you are and what you have and how you live your life shapes what and who you are. This, in fact, has been my whole argument all along in relation to anarchy and anarchism. This is why, even earlier in this book, I have made the claim that civilisation, anarchy and anarchism are not compatible. They tend in different directions.

One way they are different, I think, is in their focus. Civilisation tends to focus on the community picture. It wants to establish a pattern and have people as a group conform to its ways. If we all want the same things and hold the same values, civilised values, than half of civilisation’s job is already done. And, don’t forget, this net of civilisation needs to be spread as wide as possible. The problem here, however, is that civilisation, as well as things which create it, such as money and an economic system, is a social fiction. Civilisation doesn’t really exist but it is a name we give to large groups of people sharing similar ways of life or the metropolitan places where such “civilised” people live. It survives by educating those it gives birth to into its ways so that they come to accept them as normal and natural with their mother’s milk. Civilisation, of course, is neither of these things. Its only as normal as any other way of life you could imagine going on on a continuing basis and its only as natural as learning to do things and make them so is natural. In this respect, what we call natural is entangled in human cultural “advancement” - if you imagine it is an advancement. In this respect, for example, the human built environment becomes natural as human cultures learn how to build in different ways but what is now natural to us would not have been to those of the past who could never have imagined to build such things as we can. This is essentially the conundrum of asking if anything a human being can do and achieve is natural because we are still essentially clever animals. Civilisation tells us that anything human culture can achieve is good, desirable and progressive. It tells us that wanting to not progress is a moral failing. It tells us we can change nature and make it our own. It tells us human culture can control where our environment goes and can be used to make our lives better, longer and more enjoyable, something uniquely in civilisation’s gift.

Contrast with all this simplicity. This usually takes place at the personal level and this makes it suspect from a civilised perspective from the off. The person who wants to live a simple life stands out from the crowd and has done so for over 2,000 years already. The person wanting to live a simple life likely rejects the notion of civilised progress and looks beneath the shiny things it produces to fascinate easily distracted minds to ask what values such civilised life is built on. Simplicity is not about social fictions such as civilisation or money. It sees them merely as means to rather dubious ends and with a host of deleterious effects. Simplicity is an approach to life which asks what life is for, how one should go about it and what is best in what it has to offer. Simplicity asks what the consequences of living life in certain ways are and regards them as important considerations in living life a certain way at all. Simplicity is not about fanning the flames of desire as civilisation is. It does not tell you to want more and more. In fact, it tells you to want as little as possible. It does not tell you to expect or demand. It does not say you have rights, things which can then be turned into desires civilisation can provide for. It tells you to be joyful at having enough, to be happy with the satisfaction of your most basic needs which are the only needs you really have at all. Simplicity tells you that so much of modern life, as indeed of civilised life since it began becoming civilised, is burden and complexity which will rob you of a connection to your animal and biological roots in nature and will turn you into a being which thinks itself above the world in which such life is set. Simplicity is about living life as you are, as the human being you were born as, whereas civilisation encourages you out of that and into a way of living it has created of itself by means of an ever-growing list of social fictions which make life ever more complicated and subject to non-empirical human inventions. Simplicity is the peaceful satisfaction of life’s basic needs in harmony, as far as possible, with the world around you without any pretension or illusion where civilisation is the active disruption of the world in order to remake it in a created image.

Simplicity, then, is about the kind of person you are, what values you have, what you want from the life you have been cast into by your birth. Civilisation is about that too but it isn’t nearly so interested, it seems to me, in focusing on that. Instead, it would rather, by osmosis and subterfuge, mold you into the sort of person who accepts what it accepts, values what it values and wants what it wants. And what civilisation wants, not least of all, is to make people who want to reject its values and live simply seem odd and strange. Civilisation, and its products, the civilised, don’t like to be challenged. They don’t want to hear that there might be other ways to live and other values to hold. Civilised languages have even developed in such a way that “uncivilised” comes to mean base and backward, lacking in the appropriate qualities and etiquette for living the kind of life “we” should expect to live as “the civilised”. Civilisation does not want to be told that human progress, which is as Diogenes saw it, is in seeing what you can do without. Civilisation is not interested in being told, as simplicity is, that life is about the development of individual human character. Civilisation does not want to know that a machine life governed by machines will inevitably breed machine hearts and machine minds that satisfy only machine impulses. Civilisation breaks the simple human link with nature because it dreams of being in charge of it. Civilisation wants to remake and replace the world - something which has the added benefit of justifying its own unnecessary existence - whereas simplicity wishes only to live in peaceful communion with it. Civilisation is hubris where simplicity is an appropriate humility, a recognition of that which is beyond human beings and of which they are merely a part.

Simplicity is in realising that the less wants you have, the simpler - and more sustainable - things become. Why, in Daoist idylls, did “the people of old” live peaceful, agrarian lives? Because these are simple and so sustainable. Why is the Daoist mentality that of “actionless action”, a letting things be as they will be, a flexibility to all circumstances? Why is its observation that the things which bend will not break and so, consequently, that those things which set up artificial wants and needs, which harbour desires and intentions, will inevitably court conflict, distress and trouble? Daoists and Zen Buddhists, it seems to me, both seek a peaceful enlightenment as the basis of their philosophies. The Cynics, at least those in a Diogenean mold, thought that living according to nature made you more human where being what you actually are is the thing to be. For none of these people did this involve anything very much beyond the self and the satisfaction of the basic needs which keep each one of us alive. Simplicity was at the heart of their creeds and daily routines. Their example was that in each personal example of simplicity the peace in each human life was increased and the human family as a whole lived more peacefully with the environment that supported both it and all the other things on the earth - including other people. It is, I think, primarily because of civilisation and its need to push itself forward as the only right thinking way to live that we now think such ideas quaint, naive and utopian. But there was a time, not so long ago, when most people lived like that. They didn’t know any better, you will say, and they were better off for it, I will reply.

Civilisation, in this respect, goes hand in hand with the mentality that knowing more and being able to do more is “better”. But, I ask you in all seriousness, by what measure? Human beings only have basic needs and they still have the same needs now as they had before civilisation came. Before civilisation came, believe it or not, those exact same needs were also satisfied. A modern, technological civilisation was not required to satisfy them but civilisation will never tell you that. Civilisation will never tell you, as anti-civilisationist Daoist texts do, that in the past people were quite happy living out their mundane lives of peace and quiet never going beyond the boundaries of their village. Civilisation will tell of all the places you should be going to to be accounted a civilised human being and a participant in civilised society. It might not tell you the cost though and there is always a cost. Could uncivilised Man have ever threatened the planet with nuclear devastation or ecological collapse? No. A civilised human race has managed to place its ecosystem on the brink of destruction in only a couple of millennia. Even if you thought civilisation desirable no one can now argue it is without consequence. My argument is that simplicity is not only personally more fulfilling; it is infinitely better for the whole. 

Here I must point out that it is specifically civilisation that is the problem and not something like capitalism or consumerism. These latter two are parasitic upon civilisation and rely on its centralising tendency, something they can both exploit. Capitalist and consumerist societies are ones which are highly centralised and integrated, all the better to control a lot with a little. If there were no civilisation, there would not be either capitalism or consumerism, so necessary is the centralising which civilisation makes real by drawing people in to share access to common resources. Think about it; if a rural and agrarian population was made up of those who each lived scattered about where they may, in tiny, self-supporting groups, how could either capitalism or consumerism exist? To live in that way also massively affects what you want or need to propagate such a form of life. Much of the impetus and desire to want, to consume, to acquire, disappears when your daily needs are met in much simpler and more self-supporting ways. You realise that what you are told you want now in modern civilisation from every conceivable angle is a lie, an illusion, a bad dream. It is civilisation itself, the aggregation of people into ever larger groups with ever more centralised means of utilising and supplying these groups, which lays the groundwork for even greater evils to grow in its fabricated soil. Decentralise the people, however, simplify their lives, disperse their needs - uncivilise them - and capitalism and consumerism disappear like a mirage in the desert.

This book is latterly being written under the spectre of the Covid-19 virus pandemic that has spread around the globe from late 2019 into 2020. It has, in a great many ways, shone a light on the way civilisation works and highlighted many dark corners of human society. It has shown that human needs are simple - food, clothing, shelter, networks of human support and mutual aid - as well as the acquisitiveness involved in making these basic needs, which every human being has, something that is only available for the social fiction of money which serves an equally fictitious economic system which designates rich and poor. This system, in turn, says what you can and can’t do in human society judged by such measures. Yet, at the same time, this same situation has shown up how vast the inequalities are within this system, something which the system itself seems designed to create and facilitate. There cannot be a rich person unless there be many more poor ones. There cannot be a have without thousands of have nots. It cannot be that, in this system, the very means of human survival comes with a price tag attached, retailed by people who claim the right to own things and so sell them, unless the mass of the population at large are coerced to buy into the games and practices of civilisation itself. It is not only The Matrix that has chosen to see such a human civilisation as itself the actual virus. What Covid-19 is revealing in a million acts of mutual aid and human kindness, however, is that things can, even now, always be a lot simpler than the unnecessary and often discriminatory and unequal practices of an unnecessary civilisation. And, indeed, one must ask at such a time:

“If the way things are [civilisation] works against the best interests of millions of people, then isn’t it high time to change the way things are?”

This, however, is to attack civilisation on its own “macro” turf whereas simplicity exists in the tiny “micro” details. Simplicity is being concerned with yourself, your own life, the simple satisfaction of simple needs which, when multiplied, becomes the peaceful, authentic life of all. It is, I believe, at the heart of, and the basis of, the anarchism of those who, in the 19th century, created something which is today known as the political form of anarchism. But such simplicity as I here refer to never has a state of anarchism in mind. It is never simplicity’s intention. It is not politicised as the motivations of the 19th century anarchists were. It is rather what simplicity creates if left simple, naive, innocent. Simplicity is not knowing but, sadly, knowingness can infect even things which start out from the best of motives. A knowing anarchism or a socialist civilisation are not simplicity for simplicity, much as the Dao in Daoism, has no intentions. It is not concerned with how things will turn out in the long run as a result of human action. It is whole and complete within itself like the Zen attitude which says that after meditation you should chop wood and carry water. The point there is to just go about your own peaceful business neither having excessive desires nor seeking to interfere into other things. Just live your life in whatever simple, peaceful harmony is possible and things will go about their way, preserving and prolonging life, in the way they always have done. Nature itself is simplicity in exactly this sense.

So simplicity is keeping in mind John Cage’s oft-repeated statement regarding human action: “you can only make things worse”; and acting accordingly.

Go on the Internet and enter into some conversation about politics and then casually drop into the conversation that capitalism sucks and that what’s actually needed to replace it is “the economy of the gift”. You will be met by silence and imagined blank stares as I just have been when you read that previous sentence. For a start, almost no one has any fucking clue what an “economy of the gift” is. So unused to the idea are we that it has become a strange and exotic term. Even worse, for those one or two who pull the thread of you having dropped this unknown term into their conversation, once you explain to them what it is, they will retort by telling you of all the things such an economy will make impossible. This is because, in their minds, replacing capital demanded in exchange by a market for something else with “gifts” or perhaps even nothing at all - effectively doing something for free - is madness of the highest order. Or, as one Internet respondee in one of these random conversations put it:

Even if they [i.e. economies of the gift] work:

1. What standard of living (longevity, healthcare, food) do they afford?

2. How do they deal with those who do not collaborate?

3. How many people are in a gift economy before it breaks down?

These three questions, which are not bad questions in themselves, reveal a lot about the mindset of the person putting them, as questions often do. Questions are far more basic than answers, being, as they are, things which spring straight out of our guiding values. I diagnose that the person sending the above response was concerned about his standard of living [and not just living or the success or failure of a group or community of others], the need to use power and have authority to force others to live as you want them to, and the fact that such an economy might not work . . . whilst being totally blind to when, or if, or for whom, a capitalist economy works. Because, ladies and gentlefolk, I have to tell you that a capitalist economy does not work equally for all and neither is everyone benefited by its existence. It is not the best way for just anyone to live. It might not be the best way for anyone to live. And, of course, like any way to live, it is never a consequenceless way to live.

And here is the rub. Capitalism is only made possible by being built four square on the foundation on two examples of the gift economy in action. [But… what is a gift economy? You haven’t told us yet!] A gift economy, in case you are wondering [and I think the term “gift culture” is even better because then it speaks to something grown up in that becomes part of your existence] is a mode of interaction with others were things are not traded or sold but given without explicit agreement or implication of any future rewards. A gift economy is best described as a refusal to calculate. If you want current examples of this then Wikipedia is an Internet example. It is a freely shared online encyclopedia which requires many hours work by many people to maintain but, although they may ask for funds to maintain it, they neither expect nor demand anything from any given user in order to make use of it [as hundreds of millions do]. Another cultural example in our modern world, again made possible by the Internet, is couchsurfing. Couchsurfing is a gift economy in which travellers make use of the couches of those who live in the area they are travelling to stay for the night. Hosts hooking up with travellers via the official Couchsurfing website are not allowed to charge guests for their stay. It is a helping each other along without making demands. Yet there is an even bigger example of one who promoted a gift economy, one known to people worldwide. He is regularly known as Jesus and he came from Nazareth. He’s the guy who said, “Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.” In another book he says, “If you [plural] have money, do not lend it at interest, rather, give it to someone from whom you won’t get it back.” He also told people to literally give all of their money away to join him in an itinerant, ethical lifestyle. Jesus was not a capitalist regardless of how many of his modern day followers are. He was the key figure in a gifting community.

But back to the two foundations of capitalism, without which it would not be possible, which come from a gifting culture. Can you guess what they are? They are nature and child rearing. Think about it. You eat food, perhaps you even grow food to then eat it. It was free. The earth naturally grows food of many kinds that supports untold thousands of species, supplies abundant water, and keeps us alive. It requires no complication or authoritarian economic system [that is literally policed] to make that so. Provided you are happy to eat and drink whatever you come across, all such needs are freely provided for. Capitalism didn’t make this. But it does exploit and abuse it and try to drive your appetite so that it wants something it supplies. Capitalism is coercion writ large. The gift is not. And where did the capitalists get all that wealth from? From their workers, of course, or from putting other people to work [if not, often, making it so that they have to work as people co-opted into their system]. Capitalism exists to exploit and exploitation is written into its DNA. It is a system of selfishness that seeks to extract profit from a situation but never a profit just anyone can share as nature does. Capitalism is, thus, also a protectionism, a division, an authoritarianism. But this is not what every human adult does who brings up a child. In that relationship the child is given time and resources without thought of return and at no cost whatsoever to them. Just to give them a chance at life as well. Such childhood is a pure gift and there is no thought of making the child earn their upbringing. Interestingly, that believer in the gift economy, Jesus, said many times that “the kingdom of God” belonged to such as children and the economically destitute. He didn’t see that as a problem but as exactly the opportunity.

But today if your life is about watching TV, or driving a car, or going to far away places in only a few hours, or having everything ready to hand, you do not want to be told that the way of life which makes that possible has consequences; that it is destructive and exploitative and that just because you can’t immediately see the damage being done that doesn’t mean there isn't any. You more than likely want to continue in your trance believing that everything is fine and that this is the way things have to be and that any other way of living is worse [not least because more inconvenient]. Well, if you hold to the values of capitalism, then of course all other ways of living and forms of life will be worse - because holding to such values the game is rigged so that only one way of living can satisfy the capitalist urges. But what about if you change your values, what then? What about if you change to values which don’t try to distance you from the consequences of your choices by hiding them away in some remote part of the world that you will never think once about, let alone twice? What about if, when considering how you live, you take all of the consequences of that living into account?

To get to that from here will not be easy. There are many people committed to capitalism and its values and to the destruction and exploitation it requires. They will pay off dissenters or their retainers with table scraps to keep them in line or utilise their wealth in other ways to maintain a capitalist stranglehold over as many people and as many resources as they can. They have all the advantages because the way human societies have been shaped in a modern, technological world are ripe for those who are most exploitative to take advantage of. They often own the means of information dissemination or can use their wealth to fund huge ideological disinformation campaigns by means of them. So if fire cannot be fought with fire because those with the most fire will win then other ways of changing the world for the better must be employed. These are ways which rise up from below and overwhelm those things above them like flood waters which rise in an unstoppable way to quench the fire above. They are, by themselves, necessarily small things. Things so small, in fact, that no one will even see them as a threat until all the small things eventually mount up, come together, and create a vast network of mutuality and simplicity. These are our ways forward. If we have few needs, and if we can satisfy them amongst ourselves, capitalism finds itself selling things no one wants anymore and it dies, eventually, because it only ever existed to coerce people into wanting what it supplied and making us wedded to, and dependent upon, that supply. But no one really needs what it supplies. They never did. We must banish that Wizard of Oz which tells us that we do. It is only an illusion.

The future I seek is an attitude to life, a mentality, a way of living. It is a simplicity of free interaction without thought of calculation, a mutual aid that has few needs that each, if necessary, can help their neighbour to supply. It is a being a part of nature and not its willing destroyer or exploiter. It is a life without expectation and so which disables disappointment. It is a freedom from the social fictions of money, cost, price, payment and debt. It is a life in which people together, consensually and mutually without coercion, can decide on their own needs and bring them to fruition through working together voluntarily. It is the abandonment of as much artificial social fiction of human invention as we can manage in the furtherance of such aims. It is the making of a new bond with nature where no such bond is needed because we are nature - and so it is the final nail in the coffin of the idea that humans are over and above nature and not simply part of it and an example of it. It is a refound humility. The humility of simplicity. It is this very simplicity which stands as the offence to all those who would insist, often for selfish or exploitative reasons, that things need to be complicated. 

Look around you. Nature says otherwise. For free.