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1div class="md"><p>There's a lot here, but I can work with it. Each of these examples has externalities - jargon I'm sure you'll be familiar with as an enthusiast of market economics. I'll use the example of an airplane, however, it applies to the others - except the wheel, and I'll explain why in a moment.The airplane is, to its user, a marvel. I love to fly, personally, despite being an anarcho-primitivist. It is enjoyable and it is quite handy to get across continents in just hours. No one could deny that there is objective utility that <em>some</em> humans benefit from in an airplane. However, there are externalities that, when we zoom out across time and place, make airplanes a net negative to the community of living things, and even simply to humans alone.The plane is composed of many things, but primarily metal. Metal must be mined from the ground on land that, most of the time, was once the home of someone else. Thus people generally must be dispossessed of their homes for metal to be mined. Then, it must be extracted with great labor and massive machines; the people who mine it often work long hours at great risk to their physical person, and lead lives with less intimacy with their friends and family than they would probably like if all were ideal. The machines are made by people in similar circumstances. These machines run on enormous volumes of fuel which must be imported, which also uses a great deal of fuel; diesel and other petrochemicals are responsible for contaminating water which results in reduced fish populations and cancer among some humans, and when it is burned, as is required to run mining equipment and fuel transit systems, it releases Co2 into the atmosphere which is currently destabilizing the earth's climate. For the first time in the history of the human race, we've made it above 400ppm of Co2; an amount not seen since the Eocene, when algae populations collapsed, oceans acidified, and much of the earth became a desert - where it was not a desert, weather was so erratic that agriculture as we've practiced it for 8-10k years would not be feasible.Then the ore must be transported to be smelted. More burning of fossil fuels, more smog for people in cities and along highways to breathe, which is demonstrated to cause asthma. Then to smelt it, a great deal of energy is required, and more people who work jobs they'd rather not must smelt it. At the low costs of steel and iron, many of these workers are paid poverty wages in dangerous conditions. Children lose their fathers from work accidents. Then the metal must be machined, etc etc etc, planes are constructed and brought to airports and so on, where they burn even more fossil fuels.Planes also enable humans to extract resources for sale on the market at blistering speeds. African Ivory can be loaded into a cargo plane and shipped to China before anyone knows or can stop it. Entire armies can be shipped at a moment's notice to far-flung regions of the earth, and planes can carry massive amounts of explosives to detonate entire cities. Finally, to ride in a plane is certainly a joy at first, but after some time, it is rather banal. Comparing flying across the country to hitchhiking, or, say, walking or biking, the difference is shocking. Though walking takes much, much longer, along the way, I see every tree, I feel the wind, I meet people as I go, I have struggles and good times, and my body gets stronger. All of this is denied to the rider of the plane, and even stranger - an entire generation of people who've never actually physically exerted themselves become jaded to just how incredible it is to fly. They become cynical and nihilistic, and the earth becomes boring. They fly from city to city to live there, work there, disrupt the culture, and never actually interact with the world around them.The ramifications of mining, smelting, and the release of Co2 have destroyed the ecologies of a great many unique and irreplacable environments on earth. They've aided the rapid extinction of the planet's species of animals and plants. And they've destroyed the water tables in human communities. Future generations will clean up the waste and deal with the total breakdown of the climate - all so a couple generations could jet-set around, bored with the world. These are the costs of flying, and while they serve a subsection of the living today - nearly everyone else pays an enormous price. I mentioned that the wheel was not this way: That is because there is a marked difference in plain 'ol tech and <em>systemic</em> tech. I can make a wheel by hand, myself, from local materials. No division of labor, hierarchy of expertise, or extraction and importation of resources is required. Thus, the wheel and similar low technologies do not have such high costs. They are balanced by the human body, mind, and environment. They are immediate-return in that any negative consequences of the use of the wheel are something I feel in my lifetime personally. Systems of tech such as the one I described above are delayed-return because they push negative consequences out onto the rest of life and far into the future.Thus, we are anti-systemic-technology, because always, in zooming out, systemic-tech has netted the earth a negative. ------------------------------
2Ran said this:</p> <blockquote> <p>ego is holding onto a sense of who-you-are, that served you in the past, over the one that you need right now.</p> </blockquote> <p>This is the dominant concept of ego, without a doubt. However, conversely, if you have a construction of the ego which is not a frozen image of the self from the past, but is instead self-continuously-becoming, it is liberatory, I would say. Because the dominant idea of "ego" is not the only frozen image of something previous or abstract that one is manipulated by; ideology functions this way, as does morality, as does any abstract or arbitrary idea that is not derived from one's senses in the present or, to a lesser extent, in the future. And so to free oneself of "ego" without also freeing oneself from ideology, identity, authority not derived from experience, morality, and so on would be futile. What these things are replaced with could be construed as being egoistic to many people, but it is useful to differentiate between the two ego types. When ego-as-becoming is rejected, it's often an attempt to yoke the free individual to the horde. ------------------------------
3I would be curious to know, before entertaining this what if, what examples you could provide of technologies where this has been the case. ------------------------------
4lol ------------------------------
5<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>And before anyone cries "People vote not land! NYC should have more!". I am not arguing to take power away from downstate. Or give more power to upstate. I am arguing to give them BOTH more power over their own laws by separating them, this way they no longer fight each other.</p> </blockquote> <p>Yup, absolutely. But it just won't happen, for a whole huge list of reasons. I think that 33% principle ought to be applied to counties, too. For example, I'm from Oneida county, and Utica-Rome has its own thing going on, while the small towns and wilderness areas have another. It'd be useful if those two cities comprised their own "county-within-a-county". I find the urban-rural divide to be one of the most interesting contradictions in America, and unfortunately, rural folks are not conscious or getting together well enough to resist the city-driven state of affairs. They don't need power over us and we don't need power over them. Consider the difference between Singapore and Alaska. Alaska is unrestricted in tons of things, probably mostly because of the low population density, and Singapore is highly restricted because of so many people packed in. Both models make sense for their residents. But when you lump in the two types of areas into one political entity, one is always gonna get shit-canned. ------------------------------
6Right it's all status quo status quo. I get the impression that the same problems exist in other states as well, they are just so pronounced here because NYC is the largest city in the US and upstate is home to some of the most desolate rural areas in the northeast. But in general, I would prefer if all cities were effectively self-governing city states with no control over the lives of rural people, and that rural areas could be granted some kind of home rule by the feds.  ------------------------------
7would PM you but your username says I shouldnt haha ------------------------------
8pm'd ------------------------------
9all fascists who appropriate Nietzsche are scum who stole the 20th century from us ------------------------------
10And thus, the real question is one of changing culture, no? ------------------------------
11We could actually just ban roads... ------------------------------
12Not sure if it's a linux or chromium incompatibility issue, but I can't get infinite scroll to work. Thanks for the tips though and def post if you make a script that works. If I knew how to do that I would.edit: just moved a few things around and am doing the "put a weight on your spacebar" trick. Five years of very long and in-depth posts, though, and I'm assuming that it's going to take many hours. ------------------------------
13Soon. Like I'm calling on properties all the time and making connections with others who want in right now and aiming to buy anytime from early summer to late fall. I'm looking almost entirely in the rural northeast far from most cities.  ------------------------------
14I have no tears for Weyerhauser being unable to sell timber. They can go to hell. ------------------------------
15And in general keep the populous disarmed for the impending climate / economic collapse. ------------------------------
16are there reproductions? ------------------------------
17<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>mad at the Navy for drafting her boy</p> </blockquote> <p>I can understand this, but being anti-gun as a result just doesn't compute. ------------------------------
18Guilt is a worthless thing; where it constitutes a social force, it has very weird effects that are overwhelmingly negative. Guilty people by themselves overcompensate - I've noticed a lot of bourgeois anarchists not only attempt to minoritize themselves by acting as if they are poor, but also by acting as if certain minority statuses warrant special consideration for them that would outweigh the social negative of coming from wealth. Guilty people in groups become rabid mobs that enact a secularized Christian guilt-repentance-heaven system that is circular and produces nothing useful. They tend to view things through an intensely left-brain lens where all social forces can be calculated, categorized, and monetized for social capital. This is the state of virtually all of leftism in the west, and certain leftist ideas that have taken hold in the anarchist milieu like identity politics and organizationalism. To be effective in anarchist praxis, one must escape the lineage of Christianity and mob mentality (Nietzsche's <em>Genealogy of Morals</em>) and aim to transcend onself. This can manifest in a number of things; cutting ties with the economic and social passages you've inherited to respectability and comfort, for example, as Kropotkin did. Kropotkin was born into Russian nobility, said "fuck this" and gave up his cash and accepted being excluded from high society out of concern for the poor. He died in quite modest circumstances economically. One could certainly cut these ties out of guilt, but one could also cut them because "freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." Indeed, those who have nothing to lose comprise the most revolutionary segments of society when these people find the time and existential wherewithal to engage in revolt and insurrection. This is probably more rewarding than whatever benefits you'd get from retaining money and respectability among the elite. You say also that you like "things" and "travel" and "education", but note that all of this can be obtained without money, or with very little money and a no-work lifestyle. I've traveled through 46 US states by hitchhiking. Some do this all over the world, sometimes with bikes or on trains, or walking or cheap flights. We buy cheap bulk foods and cook them on portable woodstoves and sleep under the stars on beaches and in the woods, and crash at squats in the cities. We build cabins on tiny plots of land you can pick up at tax auctions for just a few grand, or illegal underground mansions on public land in remote regions. Education is an interesting bird because one can only educate themselves - thus, as Zappa said, "if you want to get laid, go to college; if you want an education, go to the library." Indeed, many of us have faked our way into appearing as normal college students to use university resources, food, and housing for free to self-educate, or have holed up in rural libraries or even purchased our own collections for use as alternative universities.And because we obtained all of this by theft from unjust institutions, or through reclaiming the waste, or through our own sweat and labor, it is worth more and is more existentially wholesome. The wealth your family has either came from exploitation of labor, or of the environment. It comes with invisible baggage that will bog you down - why do you think it is not just the poor who commit suicide? The rich are just as miserable - often, moreso than us. And another thing - you may find success not only in giving up your wealth, but in, as part of your "exit strategy", funneling some of that wealth downward to the revolutionary classes. Take the money you can on a one-time basis - never recurring, lest you should get "caught up" - and purchase an entire town as an anarchist "free town", or move those funds to prisoners, organizations, or whatever seems appropriate. (I say buying a town because that is what I am working on)Existential anarchist thought may do you more good than the anarchist body of work from the communist side of things. Renzo Novatore, Wolfi Landstreicher, Max Stirner, Bruno Fillippi, Enrico Arrigoni, these are some thinkers that may help, as well as a solid reading of Nietzsche's <em>Thus Spoke Zarathustra</em> (make sure to read the Walter Kaufmann Translations as other translations were fascist rewrites). And much of the green anarchist canon is useful as well; consider this - if you remain in bourgeois society, you rely on a system that is entering a state of ecological, cultural, and economic collapse. When oil runs out, or when agriculture is becoming more impossible, what would you do with your money? You may die, you may be targeted by angry poor people, you risk a great deal to receive a paltry sum existentially. Thus, reading some Zerzan and Jensen, Industrial Society and its Future, and the anonymously published "Desert" from the anarchist library may be useful as well. If you drop out and seize upon your own uniqueness, at the margins and in obscurity, you will find greater treasures than anything offered to you thus far, I guarantee it. ------------------------------
19What state you in? ------------------------------
20Great list. Looking at property in zone 4a that is all woods I'd prefer not to cut much of. I wonder also about the efficacy of using a system of mirrors to get sunlight into the woods in deep valleys and at the bottom of steep ridges. ------------------------------
21You've put so much weight on the bike that it is doing a wheelie straight up and down. I would try a little less weight. ------------------------------
22I like it because it's like the playground for anarchy's misfits. Most of us were banned in most of the other radical subs. <sup><sup>which</sup></sup> <sup><sup>are</sup></sup> <sup><sup>controlled</sup></sup> <sup><sup>by</sup></sup> <sup><sup>COINTELPRO</sup></sup> ------------------------------
23Without perpetuating a culture of witch hunting and cliquey stupidity, which is perfect.  ------------------------------
24Likely? It's happening.  ------------------------------
25they live in wood tho ------------------------------
26Good god.... that is a truly fine weapon.  ------------------------------
27I like your style - milsurp ponchos are great. If you're thinking this way a few other recommendations: Costco down blankets (cheap and light) and the "alpha tent", which is a lightweight and easy to DIY tent made from a military rain poncho. As far as the zenbivy goes, I haven't used it, but it is kinda heavy and I doubt it would actually sleep down to 23. But it may work, especially if you're a finicky sleeper. ------------------------------
28Hey you should try coming out here sometime and hanging out with us. Most of us don't vote and just vote republican because the democrat candidates since the 80's have been atrocious. After NAFTA most rural Americans lost any form of trust in the dems, and rightfully so. Now I think a lot of us just vote republican to get the loony fucking "safe" act repealed. ------------------------------
29lol fuck that I'd just do it.Honestly, I love the concept but I'm skeptical of some of the originators. They seem less redneck and more liberal arts.. ------------------------------
30Depends on the area. In the ghetto? Nope, no chance. In super suburban areas? Nope. Everywhere else, probably would be okay for a while, though McD's is the worst choice.  ------------------------------
31don't you just start one up and that's that? ------------------------------
32then you'd HATE upstate NY haha ------------------------------
33I know I know. Fuck I'm just trying to defend having deleted FB but not reddit. Reddit's actually enjoyable. I would make a new account and use tor for radical stuff but I have years worth of writing on this account and I can't see deleting it. What I really want is a tool that will archive all of my reddit posts for offline use.Wow I'm very hungover, apologies if incoherent ------------------------------
34Oh it certainly doesn't. But we can use this platform without photos of our faces or indications as to whom we are connected to IRL. And I certainly never put an address on reddit I was living at. ------------------------------
35"no that's untraceable and we'll need your name, address, and workplace so we can put you on our <sup>un-american</sup> <sup>acitivities</sup> list." ------------------------------
36lmao, I mean it was bound to happen. So many of the chapters use fedbook too... ------------------------------
37I carry a thermos. Fill it halfway with red lentils and halfway with gas station hot water, and in a few hours you've got a meal.  ------------------------------
38I mean, call me drunk (and I am) but you're describing New Hampshire. Honestly, those who get "manipulated" deserve it. I could not be manipulated. ------------------------------
39There are those who are rational, and they remain because they manage to work alongside others. Those who are antisocial either are reclusive, or dead. It is quite simple and is in fact a more concise version of the world as it already exists - except without a parasitic class of elites who determine how power shall be used to control the antisocial.To argue for a state and be a libertarian is to believe in a contradiction. Centralized authority breeds corruption and decadence. Chaos is preferable to allowing a class of parasites to manage "decency". I can determine decency with my own mind, with the help of a few friends and a few revolvers. ------------------------------
40Why would I steal from someone when we could be friends?This principle will take you quite far.. ------------------------------
41Just dip out and start a redneck revolt chapter lol ------------------------------
42Works for me!!Motorcycle, handgun, moonshine still.... ------------------------------
43halfway to 500ppm // end of agricultureedit: halfway from the current ppm ------------------------------
44also "raegan"????  ------------------------------
45Fucking great post. Shit like this is why I stay on the internet. ------------------------------
46I saw a talk recently at the Strand in NYC that was by this dude who is a neuroscientist. He talked a lot about the work of a thinker by the name of McGilchrist, or something like that, who wrote about the history of left-brain and right-brain dominant societies and their rise and fall. The speaker argued that we've become far too left-brained, in our tendency to analyze, categorize, and measure, and that a shift toward a right-brain-based notion of longing and holism is inevitable because of, among other things, the climate crisis. Maybe not the whole answer, but I'm inclined to believe he's reaching toward the core of the matter. ------------------------------
47Plus, anti-tech as I may be, lamination and fireproof safes can work wonders. HMU if you're in the northeast, would love to sit down and start framing the thing out.Also if you're up here next week-ish we're having a little "anarchy's misfits" gathering for post-left / egoist / nihilist / anti-civ folks to meet up in the woods up here. If you want details I got em ------------------------------
48Ha! &lt;3 likewise yo ------------------------------
49Hey, maybe. You might like a project I've got in the early stages; I've been hoping to create a repository of post-collapse-related information from the internet, with snapshots from the peak of industrial civilization, as well as historical analysis about why to not / be careful with rebuilding, and then try to get funding to get an encyclopedic volume of this info printed up and stored as a reference book in every county library in the US and elsewhere.Then, when the grid goes down, people may be like "oh shit we got that book" and that's like ground zero. What those people read at that moment may set the tone for several centuries, depending on the level of cataclysm... ------------------------------
50<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Deregulation under market capitalism, if pursued strongly enough, will almost always lead to a crash.</p> </blockquote> <p>Ha, I feel you there. It's total heresy in a lot of radical circles to say it, but I'd rather see austerity and the crash that would follow it than a weak, milquetoast Bernie-socialism that just props up a corpse for another generation or two. In terms of raw tactics, a collapse is exactly what we want. Even a general strike is a collapse that is brought about by us - and since we won't be seeing that in the US anytime soon, then collapse by any other means is something we should seek to get behind. Certain cackling geese, particularly online will deride this logic as "accelerationist", and it is, it's just most people saying that don't seem to have read much about accelerationism. I think Hegel has had a negative impact on discourse, like, anytime folks make a political statement, it's always assumed that they're saying <em>what they want</em>, as a projectual statement, when in fact, most of the time, I'm simply aiming toward a particular goal I want tactically and across the long-haul. No I don't want the shit that comes with austerity, but I think a crisis strengthens communities (talk to anyone who was around during Katrina in NOLA) and that we'd not only make it through austerity, but it would potentially push forward a pretty serious insurrectionary tendency in our culture. I saw this early on with Trump's rise in the primary, and I remember saying how I sorta hoped he'd win, because with that, the odds might be decent we'd have a few big-ass crises on the home front to work with. So far that hasn't paid out so much, but certainly, the risk there is better than certain stagnation under Hillary.</p> <blockquote> <p>I'm not against corporate welfare either, combining that with horizontally organized unions, I would like to see a pilot program where the government bails out a corporation, but only on the conditions that the upper management be replaced by the workers themselves, just so long as the union remains horizontally organized. This would, de facto, lead to a socialism for companies that couldn't survive otherwise.</p> </blockquote> <p>This is an interesting idea. Maybe in like, 2040, if "production" is even still a thing post-oil and post-climate. Interesting and maybe useful, but definitely heretical. If there's anything I'm for in the anarchist milieu, it's the elimination of the idea that anything can be heretical to the anarchist except submission to both power and the abstract... ------------------------------
51Totally. I'm an egoist too btw, I just see it as being within my interest to follow historical cycles. But, t'would be fair enough to say perhaps I am a bit spooked by history! Even still, I enjoy the "end of the world" feeling things like <a href="/r/collapse" rel="nofollow">/r/collapse</a> and prepping give me. As I always said, "motorcycle, handgun, moonshine still!"And no doubt, so long as we can secure a space at the margins of capital we're in business to do as we please and perhaps have a great deal of fun together. Good discussion, thanks for following it through!(oh but also PS - stay prepped bc things are already going south and it's prettyfuckinlikely we'll see some serious shit in our lifetimes...) ------------------------------
52Fair enough I suppose. I guess because the wild taught me everything I know and made me who I am I literally always have energy for it. I'm also unemployed and am kind of monomaniacal haha!Also it's totally cool just as long as you can forego judgement enough to show up to our events and hang out with us when you can! Which btw if you're in upstate NY next week you're welcome at the gathering! hmu for details if interested! ------------------------------
53Yeah it's ExxonMobil lol ------------------------------
54Yes; Jesus died for an abstract idea, "for man's sin" and thus allowed the authorities to murder him. This is essentially suicidal, and suicide - immediate or protracted - is what power demands of us. Satan, on the other hand, implores us to fight back and to refuse power's insistence that we destroy ourselves.. ------------------------------
55Yeah, as mentioned Jacques Camatte is the only example I can really think of. There are certainly would-be eco authoritarians, not necessarily marxist, that lurk at the sidelines, though.  ------------------------------
56<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>chance of good things happening, </p> </blockquote> <p>I mean, but then again, to me, my view of the cycles of history (and pre-history, or what we can piece together of it) determines to some degree what I hold as being generally "good". Forager peoples, for example, lived within their ecological means in general. This meant they had a minimal degree of "boom and bust" cycle of population growth -- famine -- growth -- famine etc etc and instead ran a pretty even keel. Every "bust" in civilization means massive suffering, and so it is that I would aim towards a world that does not boom and bust so I and my friends and progeny do not need to watch their friends die off en masse every few generations.Now to some this may mean cutting electrical lines, and to others it might mean taking a slower trajectory through voluntary non-reproduction and community survivalism, but it does not change the more or less objective conclusions in this line of thought. ------------------------------
57It's weird because I feel like the two-party system so deeply pervades American culture that even in circles as far-removed from mainstream politics as ours, there are certain moments where people are sorta feeling you out like "okay we're both anarchists but, if we weren't, would you be a republican or a democrat?" And I think this is because those two categories are so tied into where we're from and how people get to know one another in this culture. I'm from the sticks. I'm pro-gun and have always favored individual self-reliance. I was raised with an extremely cynical view of urban life and of large herds of people. I also think there were elements of "the good old days" that were objectively more consistent with human freedom than today's reality. This marks me in a lot of circles as an "anarcho-republican", even though I'm firmly against the republican party and have been for well over a decade. In college towns, where most anarchists were middle class liberals, I find it hard to connect with people. All too often, we take the framework we were born into, become anarchists, and just plug in a new set of objectives without freshening up the structure. All this is to say I'd probably vote Rand if you put a gun to my head and made me vote.  ------------------------------
58<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Gender has been binary forever</p> </blockquote> <p>Where do you find this? I have studied anthropology for years and have not seen much evidence to suggest that rigid binaries of gender prevailed among forager peoples. I don't know, if Marx did anything right, it was his idea of historical materialism. Reading Spengler and Toynbee, as many problems as I can find with each, it is quite hard not to see these cyclical truths of history. We can manipulate a very, very high degree of variables of the day-in, day-out cultural life of the world we live in, but the material and historical realities are determined by much longer and larger forces. Nothing wrong with getting clarity on these elements of human life. ------------------------------
59But simply foregoing the debate seems, I don't know, somewhat depressing. From my perspective, if you're here and discussing things, you're probably pretty sharp, and capable of furthering anarchic goals that strike me as necessary and fun. As the collapse further forecloses any possibility of saving this sinking ship, only those with the knowledge of survival will survive, outside of a small subsection of techno-elite (my prediction) and so I hope that others in my milieu will hear us out, so our tribe may get larger. Caricatures of those who sing for the wild have maligned us so terribly. We have a lot of work to do to spread the knowledge of resilience and survival to the right people in the next few decades, and you exiting the debate makes me sad because I think you'd have fun with us out here!Sorry if not precise, I am drunk ------------------------------
60No worries. That reddit drama was so laughable lol I almost forgot about it ------------------------------
61We're not saying "live without any morals" as a projectual, positive ideal. Stirner is simply saying that morals have a tendency to calcify into dogma that transcends its original purpose and takes possession of its adherents, which has the effect of sucking away their capacity to struggle towards the unique. And that furthermore, they do not "exist" in any way that could be compared to the relatively concrete existence of a brick or a hammer. Simply saying "it is wrong for the mother to rape her child" is useless in and of itself; it can only either create guilt in the transgressor (which is unlikely) or create a sense of moral self-righteousness in the one casting the judgement (almost guaranteed). The only determinant of human action is force. This can mean physical force, trickery, or the withholding of resources, including social resources (ostracism). While social ostracism and guilt have a lot in common, one is spooked and inherently Christian, and the other is simply a nimble, rough-and-ready means of an individual or group exercising their will against those they have disdain or disgust for. As to your second point, there is a great deal of difference between caring "about yourself" above all others, and caring "for yourself" above all others. Those who care about, care for a ghost or a petrified image of themselves that is a dead thing. Those who care for themselves care for the living essence of their uniqueness. One finds most often that in caring for oneself, the company of others is necessary and thus, anti-social behavior does one little good. Thus, it yields a similar result to morality, but without risk of cackling herds of people submitting themselves to collectivism and forgetting that individual enjoyment and liberty is at the helm of anarchist thought to begin with. And either way, you're either an egoist or you are the property of an egoist. Worse, you may be the property of a dead egoist's progeny... It is too risky to play in those mud puddles of the human mind and to instead hit the pedal to the metal and see that dynamic chaos is the highest expression of liberation and un-contrived perfection of social relationships. (that last bit is mine, not Stirners) ------------------------------
62+1 for this, far better translation ------------------------------
63Bakunin said a bunch of anti-semitic shit too. Reality is: 19th century european dudes really needed to get out more ------------------------------
64Hey some agorists are cool and most ancaps are ten pages of Stirner from becoming anarchists.I used to love Ron Paul, and assumed that less government was best. Thinking that this would result in "no government" I studied anarchism. And that took me down a long road that has caused me to turn on private property and never look back. Vitriol is usually not as useful a tool as simple debate (most of which must occur offline) ------------------------------
65The only trouble with this sort of "anarchist choose-your-own-adventure-book" mentality is when we must examine historical patterns and contradictions. History, while not entirely objective, does have objective features we can identify and draw conclusions from. When, for example, hierarchy emerges, rigid concepts of gender usually emerge as well with distinct roles - this is not something we can choose to believe or not, it's demonstrably true. And just the same, we can also see that certain elements of organized labor cause the initial spirit of their founding actions to decay; and as well, we can see that wherever domestication has existed, a desire to destroy the wild - even when it does not serve to immediately benefit the civilized - follows. All of these sorts of contradictions are where the real disagreements lie. ------------------------------
66I think left unity and anarchist unity are quite different things, tbh ------------------------------
67The difference is the diagnostics that undergird each anarchist system of thought. While I agree that most features of most anarchisms can be useful in the right place and time, the different means of describing "the central problem" of hierarchical society yield different results. I think most real arguments about the various tendencies of anarchist thought are about the diagnostic side of things; arguments which are about the surface-level what-if's are mostly sandboxing among those who are newer to anarchist thought. When someone says to me, an anarcho-primitivist, that my way of understanding the world is invalid "because I need glasses to see" without understanding the deeper critiques of anprim thought, they are effectively chasing a bugaboo. It doesn't mean much.When, however, someone contends - "ah, it is not civilization itself that is the problem, it is the commodifying tendency of capitalism, strengthened by the patriarchal tendency to read our world in absolutes and dichotomies", we have not only a structural difference of thought, but a quite interesting and engaging discussion on our hands.Actually, as a matter of fact, I kind of like this distinction. It's probably been made before, but it just occurred to me now.  ------------------------------
68Dorothy Day-Drunk ------------------------------
69With this attitude, reasoned discourse is a pointless affair. Again and again, I write, primitive thought is not about what anyone <em>wants</em>, it is about making the most of the situation we've inherited from civilization. 500ppm of co2 means game over; what will we teach the survivors? ------------------------------
70Wait I got it... how bout we limit federal gubmint to having no power and we all just carry guns and smile big?edit: I'm dead serious, not sarcasm ------------------------------
71even Bookchin said he's a luddite inasmuch as tech development comes from capitalism ------------------------------
72nice critique big idiot ------------------------------
73I heard if you hit just the right angle, you can hit the state government towers up in Albany./s ------------------------------
74Ah. Too civilized for me there. ------------------------------
75God that's evil. What part of the state? ------------------------------
76Right, it is certainly like that nearly anywhere. I would guess the further north you go, the better off you are. I'm looking at Grafton County. ------------------------------
77Hey thanks for the reply. I'm aiming toward purchasing land that is sort of a "forever property" at a cost of less than $15k. Resale doesn't bother me much. I'm a fan of semi-underground structures as well. I know I probably could get away with a great deal, particularly on hilly plots and plots larger than 10 acres, but I want to be careful. The reason I even ask is because I knew a guy in MA who bought land at a great cost to him, only to find everything he wanted to do was illegal (tiny house) and even camping on his own land was illegal. The codes officer drove by his property every night to ensure he was not there. I want to be certain I'll never have that kind of thing going on if I am to purchase property in NH. ------------------------------
78Basically true, with the notable exception that the gungrabbers up here are well-off. All of them. They live in neat little towns where there are cookie-eating jobs and they think all of us "heathens" out in the sticks are bad for property values, sacred-cow politics, and overall that we should be shipped away to Alabama. Once you get out of the bubble surrounding the larger cities, Ithaca, and some of the college towns, you find that easily nine out of ten people are vociferously pro-gun.  ------------------------------
79I hate people. If I liked them I wouldn't live here! ------------------------------
80Truthfully, I am guessing, but I am guessing because climate change is <em>the</em> crisis of the century - and it's something most of us are utterly powerless to change. It's also essentially blacked out of the media, especially relative to how radically it is affecting the planet.  ------------------------------
81Huh, looks like those evil guns come in handy once in a while. ------------------------------
82I'll just leave this here: <a href="http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-cia-reads-french-theory-on-the-intellectual-labor-of-dismantling-the-cultural-left/" rel="nofollow">http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-cia-reads-french-theory-on-the-intellectual-labor-of-dismantling-the-cultural-left/</a> ------------------------------
83keep it in <a href="/r/t_d" rel="nofollow">/r/t_d</a> ------------------------------
84Lmao, I'd take this one with a grain of salt. I had a damn good time up there, just got to watch yourself like anywhere else. ------------------------------
85I can't see how this makes business sense for them, but I'm stoked. I never fly out of Syracuse for any reason because the costs are pretty dang high - now I will actually consider it. Frontier sucks, but for the flexible traveler it can be a great way to save money. ------------------------------
86Others have said a great deal about your topic and said it pretty well. What I can add is that if you're not bound to CNY, the North Country has some <em>very</em> low-cost-of-living pockets where there are some forward thinkers; and there is no chance those areas will "go mainstream" anytime soon. Potsdam area, Saranac Lake, Keene Valley, Wilmington, Peru, Plattsburgh all come to mind. You won't find droves of hippies per se, but a few organic farms, some good concerts here and there, and lots of liberal-leaning folks in some of the best natural landscapes on earth (in my opinion). And if you want to get your city on, Burlington and Montreal are not far from most places up north. And another good thing about it up there - the forward-thinking types are mixed in with the rednecks. They all get along more or less - which is good, because it's not a self-congratulatory "bubble" like Ithaca, SF, and certain urban locales can be.Oh yeah, forgot to mention; when I mean "low cost of living" I mean you can find places up there that are decent for less than $20,000 with taxes below $800/yr. ------------------------------
87Try Truxton ------------------------------
88You may be from down south, then. ------------------------------
89Oh I'm talking about NYT, not you.  ------------------------------
90Any specific areas come to mind?  ------------------------------
91It is basically a repository for endless "not collapse related" comments because collapse is so multifaceted it's hard to pin down exactly what is relevant and what is not. ------------------------------
92They actually are a pretty good sign of collapse if you think about it. They prove perfectly that wherever the concept of "rights" exists alongside a class of forlorn individuals who refuse to overcome themselves existentially, an unhinged resentment will prevail.  ------------------------------
93So far MSM is steadfastly refusing to use the phrase "climate change" about this. ------------------------------
94It's also sad that his final headline gets editorialized to "protest of pollution". This was about climate change, not simple pollution. He said, in his note "my early death from fossil fuels reflects what we are doing to ourselves." ------------------------------
95They are destroying the planet... it is literally war ------------------------------
96<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>it is the general apathy of the American public itself that makes this act "pointless."</p> </blockquote> <p>Well said. ------------------------------
97And certainly not fast enough to turn this bitch around ------------------------------
98Clearly you're from downstate ------------------------------
99Right, I was asking if there is a third party tool to do this. Obviously it's not a good policy, but when I started here I did not foresee the changes that would happen both to this site and the web in general. ------------------------------
100I've heard of some folks who served over there use one earplug on the side of the firearm, and keep the other ear open. This seems like the best compromise, I guess. ------------------------------
101We'd get our guns back. And the economy would get worse - which means land would get cheaper and there wouldn't be so many damn people choking up the trails. ------------------------------
102Can we convince her to let upstate secede? ------------------------------
103I won't do it, as I do not speak to the media, but please do your best to avoid romanticizing our way of life. All too often, those who produce media about traveling people make it look like it's fun and free and easy. It is in some ways, but in many ways, it's weird and brutal and solitary and shitty if you're in the life out and out and forever. You never fit in anywhere and know you won't . The only way around this is if you simply travel for a short period of time, in which case, you are liable to make messes and "blow up the spot" for those of us who live out here. Also worth exploring is the fact that many travelers are simply making the most of a dead-end situation economically. Many of us have student debt or are unemployable for some reason, and of these, those who originate from a comfortable middle-class background utilize the spectacle of video and social media to obtain, if not financial capital, social capital by depicting themselves as interesting and freewheeling. In truth, were the economy structured differently, many of these would accept employment and a normal life. This contrasts with the great depression, where there was no spectacle to make use of that offered the traveler a positive view from the public. ------------------------------
104I'd take a city bus in Erie to the Mill Creek Mall area on Interchange Road and hitch south on 79 from there. It might be slow going for a while. Another option might be to take a bus to Pittsburgh and head over to 79 there. The trouble with starting at the top of a route, where an interstate begins is that traffic sometimes isn't that high. I-90 in Erie is a much more traveled route than 79. By Pittsburgh, though, 79 is a much more traveled thoroughfare. ------------------------------
105There are certain greens who seem to think we're poised this century to overcome climate change and defy historical patterns, if that's what you mean. Whatever they're smoking is some real dank light green, if you know what I mean! ------------------------------
106Olympia is great. Best food bank in the world and you can take the bus up to Evergreen and sleep in the woods. Plenty of great people and free books to read and free computers to use there.  ------------------------------
107<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Atrazine induces complete feminization and chemical castration in male African clawed frogs</p> </blockquote> <p>Wait.... you mean.... GAY FROGS? ------------------------------
108Yeah I just check everywhere! ------------------------------
109Hey when I'm hood rich all bets are off! ------------------------------
110While I'm absolutely critical of the way in which liberals discuss race, I think there's zero reason to suggest white people are as a whole are "disenfranchised". Identity politics are identity politics, and they're an idiotic and collectivist idea whether they are applied toward the ends of "blacks" or "whites" or whatever. We're individuals, not categories. ------------------------------
111Well, this is a bit like getting a ferrari as your first car... have fun! ------------------------------
112"We don't dial 911 we dial .357" ------------------------------
113<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Could that sway a lot of republicans upset over Trump and the like enough to vote D for the first time in many of their lives?</p> </blockquote> <p>Yes. Hell, I'm an anarchist and have never voted, and I would actually turn up to vote for anyone willing to protect gun rights. If that's a dem, fine. ------------------------------
114<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>They wanted to create a segregated African-American only sub-state </p> </blockquote> <p>You're using your words irresponsibly. Most of them didn't want this and didn't subscribe to this. Many of them <a href="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/c1543a_3d2f7053bf16426cb78b9696ae790500%7Emv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_630,h_371,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01/c1543a_3d2f7053bf16426cb78b9696ae790500%7Emv2.webp" rel="nofollow">worked closely with various advocacy groups for poor whites</a> ------------------------------
115I think it's a smart thing to say, though, as it turns their own concepts around on themselves.  ------------------------------
116What happens when societies enter a state of decline? They become rigidly authoritarian. Both parties are pushing agendas that further this slide into authoritarianism. They build off of one another. ------------------------------
117I'd find a mirror, perhaps in a Denny's public restroom, and fly a sign there. ------------------------------
118I'd try Staten Island. It was 81 degrees and sunny there today. ------------------------------
119I love that it says "if" Kissinger dies, as though there is some terrible possibility of him living forever. ------------------------------
120It's 81 in NYC today - up here way upstate, it's 40 degrees. The temps are usually different, but this is pretty extreme. ------------------------------
121$0-5. I spend about $30/week in food at most, sometimes less with cooking and dumpster-diving. No other expenses unless I decide to drink. ------------------------------
122<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>I must be a redneck...</p> </blockquote> <p>You got it backwards, brother. The social workers that came to my town considered it a victory when they could convince some of the people here to <em>keep their animals outside of the house</em>.  ------------------------------
123We didn't. We put on some of the largest protests in American History. Didn't fucking matter at all. ------------------------------
124eh 4 might ------------------------------
125As well as the Patriot Act and National Defense Authorization Act.  ------------------------------
126I'm gonna jump out on a limb and say any change to a neighborhood not driven by its inhabitants deserves some serious scrutiny. ------------------------------
127You've added nothing to the discussion, thanks. ------------------------------
128If all else fails, read Stirner. Honestly, that's a large portion of why I became an egoist / nihilist anarchist. Because it's far better to lose faith in workerist anarchism and revolution than to lose faith in anarchism entirely. ------------------------------
129All reports on these matters will be anecdotal, of course, but in my experience this is not true. Many anarchists I know recede into apathy. I think this is the most common path. ------------------------------
130Is it bad that I can just look at the link and I already know what it is? ------------------------------
131Probably so ------------------------------
132It is true. I suppose these things are cyclical to some degree. The SJW grievances with some of the early punk scene are not always unfounded - some punk dudes were pretty fucking nasty to their girlfriends and to women in general. They've simply overcorrected. I have high hopes for the turn back away from identity politics and towards individualism in some communities. Perhaps the right balance will thrive for some time as this move progresses. ------------------------------
133Correct. Also worth knowing is that it is explicitly illegal to hitch I-90 where it is the thruway system with toll booths. It may be worth taking a bus to Erie PA or something. ------------------------------
134Great post. I've thought and been doing similar things. The trouble can be that as a purely nomadic individual or group, you are treated as a menace. You are legislated out of places or sometimes physically removed. You do not have the benefits of being a freeholder, with pure rights to land. As opposed as I am to the notion of land ownership, it affords real possibilities; thus, to hybridize the realistic with the projectual, it makes a good deal of sense to obtain many small plots of land in regions with low taxes and a low level of governmental interference in the form of building codes, gun laws, and so on. In owning a few of these, you are free to move about as you please. (One could even purchase these with student loan money) ------------------------------
135Yes, I-79 ain't a bad idea. WV is kickass. Ohio is full of the wrong type of people. Very paranoid middle class white folks and police who are not sympathetic to hitchhikers at all. You run a serious risk of getting turned around or ticketed in OH.  ------------------------------
136I'm still kind of scratching my head about where to find that quirky smart community. College? Nope. Internet, bars, coffeehouses, BDSM parties, organic farms, I feel like all of these at some point did the job of letting weirdos roost, but now most are spectacles.  ------------------------------
137Oh shit don't go through Ohio whatever you do. Ohio fucking blows. ------------------------------
138Ha, you're showing your Reddit age. It's been quite a while since that controversy.  ------------------------------
139Here's the deal about "technology". There is a big deal between simple technologies and systemic technologies. To build a car, there must be importation of "natural resources", a hierarchy of knowledge regarding how they work, a division of labor, and intensive energy production. Because the investment costs in terms of thought and labor are high, once that system is in place those invested will do a great deal to protect their investment. They will also do whatever it takes to ensure a steady supply of steel, plastic, and gasoline comes their way. All this for a machine which makes the job of walking much faster and easier, but alienates the traveler from their surroundings - in a car, you cannot see people or hear the birds, you can't smell the air. Spend more time in a car than walking and you'll be in bad health, out of shape, and starved of time in the woods.Contrast this with a fur poncho or bone hide scraper. These things consist of items a single individual can obtain and process, with not too much specialized knowledge. It can be obtained from the very place you live, without any need to step on others territory or enlist the labor of others. When using these types of tools, they are minimal enough that they do not alienate you much from yourself, others, or the world around you. In fact, a fur poncho might keep you warm and dry - but you still feel the rain and wind, it is just not biting cold because of your poncho. In this way, the technology's minimalism actually amplifies our experience of reality rather than amplifying our reality beyond the comprehension of the human mind (alienation).The primitivist position is against the division of labor, against tool which alienate us from the world or compel us to view the creatures of the earth as "natural resources", and is against the intensive and requisite importation of nonlocal materials. We're also generally against "energy" except that which you can utilize directly from your body, the sun, the earth, and the wind - this means not solar panels or turbines but sailing and heating water by setting in the hot sun. ------------------------------
140I use the internet as much as I do (and I use it a damned lot) because techno-industrial civilization has disrupted the face-to-face communities my ancestors used to enjoy. Hell, when I was a kid people were still cordial, kids played outside, old friends went out to lunch. Now everything is so "awkward" and everybody is staring into the fucking screen, and I can't seem to convince them away from it. So I've got to log on, or accept total fucking solitude.And, the society which decimated indigenous populations means my forager ancestor's knowledge has been destroyed and obscured. The internet is where I can learn how to skin a deer or make shelter, so I should use it to learn those skills before the grid goes down. Make note of the fact that the natives in the US who did the best the longest were those who, opposed as they may have been to the society that was coming to destroy them, made use of their tools: horses, guns, steel axes, etc. This was what allowed the Apaches and other plains indians to survive for so long compared with some of their low-tech cousins in the Eastern US. I think we are in a similar situation technologically speaking. The shouting-down tactic pro-tech people use of saying you're a hypocrite is just a way to say "go be irrelevant in the woods, away from us, if you want to think this way" ------------------------------
141Well, first of all, the egoist idea is not a projective "ideal". Stirner and virtually all egoists are not saying "here's the world we dreamed of and it is egoist". We're stating facts. The world operates in the principle of the ego; the "class struggle" Marx wrote of is not one of rich and poor, but of "conscious egoists" and "unconscious egoists". A conscious egoist is the anarch (and what the monarch is to the monarchist, the anarch is to the anarchist. Get it?); she creates her own values from nothing and is not misled by anyone. He sees through the ploys of vampires who attempt to trick him into pouring out his soul and blood for nations, morals, principles, and Gods. There is, at the top of every successful ideology or systems of thought and action, a cabal of spiritual aristocrats // conscious egoists who pull the strings. Often, none survive from the first generation of a bloodsucking "cause"; are there any true conscious egoists left at the apex of nationalism? Or are those who appear to choreograph the macabre dance of nations simply spooked by their ancestors and idols? I think none of them are creating meaning but recycling it. And much the same can be said for religion and morality, perhaps with some exceptions. The unconscious "egoist" is one who behaves egoistically - but not for his own interests. The Nazi soldier is behaving in a way that benefits his master, not himself, and thus, he is the property of his master. And the same can be said of most workers, organizers, politicos, wives and husbands, and so on, always with exceptions. Each has been tricked into giving herself away and applying her energy not on values she has created uniquely, but on the recycled content of the self-righteous and self-enriching. In the case of capitalism, this vampirism makes some enormously rich; in other cases, like that of socialism and much of workerist anarchism, it simply creates a tribe of giddily self-righteous maroons who enjoy the feeling of being "in" enough to evade the bitter feeling of powerlessness. In all cases, some are taken property by the more egoistic; in the case of any ideas that stem from the Christian lineage (see Genealogy of Morals) such as democracy, liberalism, socialism, etc, all are taken property of all on a rudderless ship of fools.You aren't incorrect that egoistic behavior can lead to nations, states, etc. But generally, it is not conscious egoism, as I've tried to demonstrate above. Conscious egoists are few and far between and only seldom actually together for any length of time. The egoist anarchist realizes that the simple mastery of others by the creation of hierarchies is boring and ultimately not egoistic; it makes far more sense from the perspective of the individual, in most cases, to allow those around you to flourish into their highest form, without any fetters whatsoever. In the process, they are likely to evade you and slip away, but before they do, you will ascend into the heights with your companions. One wishes, as an egoist, that the world could spread with this joyous union of two or more who are fully engaged with their unique nature and existence, and that perhaps so many could unite under no banner but their own that the very towers of idiocy and darkness which have misled us for millennia could be torn down in a great conflagration by us outsiders and vagabonds. ------------------------------
142Ha, Canada's already doing it it seems - crossed the border lately? I got held up there for four hours - and I don't even have a record!And more than just the climate heating up, if the infrastructure that keeps eighteen-wheelers rolling changes in any real way that is not a gradual change, you're going to see the price of food skyrocket in an economy where people are already having a hard time making ends meet. Worse, you may see a day where the walmart trucks don't come, or where our very very fragile electric grid goes down, or the relatively fragile markets that keep power plants churning out the kilowatts sends us a "market correction". You get even one of these that lasts a whole financial quarter, you'll see people leave en masse. You get two or three at a time - and the dominoes may fall, we're seriously in a situation where we may need to hunker down. Even if it doesn't happen, the risks are real enough that I want several high-capacity firearms. ------------------------------
143Why? Both yield the same files ------------------------------
144We're on a runaway train to 500ppm by 2050. That will make agriculture a serious challenge, and it's already hard enough. We've got trillions in outstanding debt and a stagnant economy for young people, water crises looming in half the country, and the energy minister of Saudi Arabia seems convinced we're headed for tight oil in a couple years, despite tacking on a couple million barrels per day in demand each year. Oh, and topsoil is declining worldwide. In all this, Vermont, upstate NY, NH, and ME have the best prospects for survival in the lower 48 states. We've got water, timber, game, lots of space, and so forth. We will see a massive diaspora from that mean stretch of urban hell from DC to Boston northwards. And we'll also see the DOD make moves to keep us invested and reliant on the system they've worked to uphold and preserve. We could see economic collapse and the rise of a truly tyrannical government. We are entering a situation in which you're a fool if you're not armed, and that's not survivalist crackpot rhetoric from AM radio, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/12/1026/4605229">that's the facts.</a>  ------------------------------
145I don't think it's a "move to the right" so much as it's a "we have our hands tied between supporting idiotic republicans and even more idiotic democrats". I hate the republican party, I hate the government, and I hate capitalism, but with everything that's going on, I'd rather have a republican in office (not a RINO) than a democrat just because when industrial collapse happens, I want guns. ------------------------------
146Jesus Christ. There it goes.  ------------------------------
147Nope. I've heard they're decent on flatwater, but they ride kind of high and flex a good deal under your weight. They would suffice for paddling around slow-moving class I rivers and out to interesting islands, but as far as covering real ground, I'm not sure how well it'd work. Probably would work, but I'm guessing you'd get soaked. ------------------------------
148It's definitely true. My Alpacka cost six bills. But my Dahon only ran me $299 on Craigslist. And there's a Klymit Litewater Dinghy on geartrade.com right now for $100. So maybe? ------------------------------
149came here to say this! looks like ya beat me to it. One of my favorite ways to travel. ------------------------------
150Something I do sometimes is I have a Dahon folding bike and an Alpacka packraft, and I ride the bike to a decent flatwater section, strap the folded bike on, and float. Then, I can get to a road, deflate to boat, and ride. Finally, I can also keep the boat deflated and the bike folded and take public transit or hitchhike. It's definitely the most versatile travel system I've ever used.It's great for stealth camping too. No areas to sleep rough? At a city on the river? There are probably beaches and islands within a 20 minute paddle. I've slept on great little tiny islands all over the place that were only a few minutes from downtown for free. ------------------------------
151<a href="/r/degoogle" rel="nofollow">/r/degoogle</a>Youtube is cancer ------------------------------
152And your phone autocorrected the word "continent" to "country" when you said "countries like Africa", right? ------------------------------
153That applies to the entire state. You must fix your magazine in a permanent way on any "assault weapon" statewide. ------------------------------
154I can't speak to the upright bikes as I'm a recumbent guy, but goddamn do I know your dream. I've been thinking about it for years now and waiting for the right time. How's your Spanish? ------------------------------
155Well, you could do it. Get on I-81 and fly low. Get rides truck stop to truck stop, rest area to rest area, and you can hitch all night. But goddamn, it would be strenuous and if you've never hitched before, it would be a real challenge. One wrong move and you're stuck an extra day. A more realistic option might be either to find a way to allow yourself more time, or to find a cheap bus ticket to somewhere you could hitch from that is over halfway there. But even still, hitchhiking on a deadline is one of the most unpleasant things imaginable. It can be a fun challenge, if you're slightly masochistic. ------------------------------
156Makes sense. If you were older than about 30, it would become clear why some people (myself included) are so thoroughly against him. He was basically a TV jokester to most of us. ------------------------------
157Whew. Rough week eh? Well, here's the thing. You have a kid. If you're in the US, all of the suggestions I'd give to others - like living outdoors in a sensible and comfortable way - may not work depending on your state. But one suggestion has worked since biblical days, on through the medieval times and the great depression: Leave. $350/wk for a motel says to me you're in a pricier area of the US. Scour craigslist for a rural, agricultural area for a one bedroom that's going cheap. Like <a href="https://swks.craigslist.org/apa/d/1-bath-fenced-yard/6545973724.html">Elkart, KS</a>. Then, sell your stuff. Sell the car, even for scrap price, and grab a greyhound with as much as you can carry and start anew. Factor in the cost of the ticket when you pick an area. I don't know where you're at but you can usually score cheap-ish tickets. Better still, if you're lucky, certain rideshares (craigslist, some facebook groups, squattheplanet.com) may pan out decently well. Just watch out for your kids by carefully scoping out anyone you ride with. In agricultural areas, you can find work if you have a body that works. It doesn't pay well, but you don't need to make much to survive in areas where rent is $350/mo and lower. You can make that kind of money with a part-time job and a side-hustle or two. EBT benefits are lower in states with a lower cost of living most of the time, but if you already have EBT, it will work out of the state you got it in (it always does). Sit down with a pen and paper and calculate the value of your stuff. Calculate what cash you have. Write down a list of who you might be able to borrow from. Figure out what sources of work or cashflow you could cook up. Get the number straight, then start looking at apartments and tickets. You could ostensibly do this, if you were savvy, in a week's time. It seems insane, but it is far better than languishing in the beggary you'll be reduced to in a metro area. Someone I know well did this - my mother - and it's why I came up alright.  ------------------------------
158Enough supplies until 2050. Lol. ------------------------------
159Curious, around how old are you? ------------------------------
160It will take far longer than 300 days for you to even slightly maybe be at the risk of getting arrested at the border. They don't do a credit check or call Sallie Mae real quick as you enter. ------------------------------
161Very cool, and I respect the move. But Turning Point? I'm good. Bring back Ron Paul, y'all. ------------------------------
162"I exist in relation to those who oppose my idols instead of creating my own values independently" ------------------------------
163It entirely depends on how you go about doing it. Do you have some cash to invest in a decent touring bicycle, multi-fuel camp stove, all-season sleeping bag, rain gear, and some sort of tent? Are you going to build a clandestine underground house on a seldom-traveled beach or stream, cover all your tracks (there are more than you think!) and have a small grill, woodstove, camp shower, and library? Voluntarily being homeless, in the way that most people are involuntarily homeless, is a fool's errand. It really only works with religious conviction - Jesus taught to sell all you have and give it to the poor and many have followed him literally in that, and been successful. But it is a hard path. I suggest engineering some means of evading that hard-up life - get out of the city (or if you must stay in the city live high in the trees in a hammock and cargo net), get on a boat or a bike or walk with a cart and sleep in rural areas. Dwelling Portably by microcosm press is a great resource. Also AMA because I've done this for over five years. ------------------------------
164I think that's an easy thing to say. I don't think a man will build something like this and do the things he did for no reason. ------------------------------
165I think you have to DIY it freetekno style. Which, if you do that, I will be immensely stoked. ------------------------------
166<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Too bad this is the best us homosapiens/apes have.</p> </blockquote> <p>Not sure about that. Seems like humans did reasonably well for 200,000+ years ------------------------------
167594 Euro? Brilliant. Not what I expected. Your pictures remind me of "the most interesting man in the word" Dos Equis ads haha ------------------------------
168Holy fuck that Labour commercial is terrible ------------------------------
169Oh but I have, I've hitchhiked it. The people are incredibly nice. Like 10x moreso than folks from everywhere but Kansas, swear to god. ------------------------------
170You're not wrong at all. I think the whole "look at me with my vanlife" thing is basically middle class kids trying to make their lack of options "cool".  ------------------------------
171I am not sure what you are asking? This says "your ideology", but who is "you"?  ------------------------------
172It is native Americans - I don't think you are unaware of this. And outside of the Americas, it is the hunter-gatherer tribes who lived in Europe before Leviathan came for them - the Celts, the Britons, the Norse, etc ------------------------------
173What you say about specialization and trade isn't incorrect; for example, the Mohawk River is my mother, and here, there are seams of flint that made the southern banks of our river a huge asset. It was moved throughout the northeast and made use of since the beginning. But of course, in Haudenosaunee myths, flint is a spirit which represents the killing of the mother. It was known that flint brought problems to the Haudenosaunee, and specifically, the Onondagas and Mohawks. The Haudenosaunee were also horticulturalists and had a higher-density population than many of their neighboring hunter-forager tribes. I am not certain, but these things may be somewhat connected. This is, to some extent, why the term "pre-agricultural cultures" is something of a problem, as these cultures were so totally unique in many ways. It is very irresponsible to talk about them as a monolith of more or less similar cultures simply for the fact that they did not practice agriculture, but I find myself doing it simply because I need a shorthand to describe my aims to those less involved in specific indigenous anthropologies. I am most interested in the cultures, and subcultures within larger groups, which tended to be quite conservative in their use of tech. Where I am from was marginal even to the relatively cosmopolitan world of the Haudenosaunee in the more fertile regions of the Mohawk Valley - "Adirondack" is a bastardization of the Mohawk term "ha-de-ron-dah" which means "eaters of bark" because those who lived in the northern valley and the mountains beyond frequently enough forged south in the winter to ask for food, because their land was so harsh. We've always been marginal, but I wonder if the spirit of this land has pushed me personally toward something oblique which lay only in the deepest roots of humanity. I'm not one to know in my waking life.As for the primitivist impulse being an American affair, I am unsure. It would depend on what was meant by "American". Much of native america seems to be engaged with the idea. And many euro Americans are as well. I wonder if the tendency exists in part because it was a huge mixing ground for civilized Europeans and native Americans; in my region, there were many "white Indians" who fled Euro society to live among and fight alongside the natives. Many of these originated from 17th century plantation life, where natives, euros, and blacks were variously slaves and indentured servants alongside one another and revolted and escaped into the sanctuary of native-controlled land together. The roots of this occurrence grew into what is known today as hillbilly culture among euro-descendants. As for the macho individualist tendency, I can't deny that it exists - it does. And I myself have participated in it for much the same reasons others have joined gangs and cults. When I was alone and in pain, the river provided me with a sense of belonging, and I wished that the ugly world I escaped from would die - because I trusted that though the river's blessing, and through my own strength and cunning, I would outlive my enemies in Leviathan. But as time goes on I find that this is, like the romantic primitivists, another faction of us. Many of us evade these tendencies, and manage to value the left-brained project of pure survival alongside an effort to cultivate ourselves in a more communitarian way, and to engineer solutions for our less capable friends to live with us as the collapse proceeds.Apologies if I'm rambling or saying strange things - I am in the city tonight, and am subsequently getting drunk! Beer is the milk which allows time away from the woods to be even possible. Sober city-dwellers, I'm convinced, are another species entirely. And anyway, I thank you for discussing the matter in a calm and reasoned way. Most seem to knee-jerk offer up a boring fraction of a critique. We may disagree, but as any anarchist should know, diversity is a primary good. ------------------------------
174Well, that's definitely true. This particular civilization is totally unique in its use of oil. But in general, I think civilizations have come and gone, and that's why many cultures have a cyclical view of history. ------------------------------
175Not sure about that. I think it's pretty colonialist to uphold this obsession with life being such a cut-and-dry affair. Most cultures did not consider a human infant to be an individual until they were capable of experiencing some degree of self-awareness. Infanticide is the logical conclusion of arguments against pro-lifers.  ------------------------------
176Yup. Buy land at $1000/acre, grow a garden, hunt, and sell widgets online. Don't play that dumbass game. NYC and other cities are literally idiot traps. ------------------------------
177Actually, suicide rates in rural areas are higher because of suicidal thoughts apparently being higher. One does not need a firearm to do that. Surprised to see the anti-gun shit in this sub. ------------------------------
178What makes you certain about that? ------------------------------
179But again, I'm not sure it does; pre-ag humans also practiced infanticide, quite reasonably. If the conditions were such that a new human member of the community would put a drain on the land, they were denied life at that moment. In some cultures, it was believed that that spirit would return through another body at a more opportune time. In general, if you survived past age 8, you could expect to live into, on average, your late seventies for most pre-ag peoples.  ------------------------------
180I'm not sure; your questions seem curt and abrupt, and seem to be inadequate. I can't say with certainty that "we" "should" be doing anything in particular, as I don't know who "we" is, nor do I know much about what should happen among humans. All I know on the latter is we should live within our means ecologically and entirely forego the violent practices of domestication, hierarchy, and the left-brain-intensive process of turning living beings into "natural resources". But our action is overshadowed by climate change, peak oil, and topsoil loss. Because of these calamities, we would do well to prepare to survive them and make decisions about what we want to preserve. I am stating that I and other primitivists will not only survive, but attempt to preserve the hunter-gatherer way of life, and perhaps to a lesser extent, the gardener-forager way of life.  ------------------------------
181Actually, plagues seem to have been the result of intensive animal agriculture and high-density living situations among humans. ------------------------------
182Where in midwest? Rural Kansas looks decent ------------------------------
183I would consider myself equally opposed to their civilization. I am also somewhat critical of horticulturalists like the Haudenosaunee, though generally I support horticulture as a valid compromise between civilized and hunter-gatherer means of subsisting. ------------------------------
184Well, perhaps - but to do this, one would have to transgress a trend that is so strong, one could easily see it as historical law. Hierarchy follows surplus virtually always in human societies. ------------------------------
185Humans ------------------------------
186Ah, yes, there are certainly anarcho-primitivists with an egalitarian bent and a heavy romance for humanity's "glory days". I am not under these illusions. I think violence is a feature of the human psyche, as bonobo-like as we generally are. This needn't be much of a problem - primitive warfare was a cute and cuddly affair compared with warfare in the post-neolithic given low death counts. The key difference is that in primitive society, technologies tend to be highly localized affairs. If I have a stone axe, I probably made it from the earth I live on, and because there is stone for the taking, if I lose it, it is not such a big deal. I needed no one else to make it for me. When I use it, I see how it's use impacts the world around me. In civilized society, technologies tend to be systemic, tend to require a division of labor, and tend to demand the routine importation of rare "resources". They also tend to be more alienating. Thus, when the human impulse toward violence is intermixed with this large-scale system, its effects are massive. Would civilization be rebuilt? Probably. In fact, it probably won't die entirely. We're hitting 500ppm in a couple decades, and if the Eocene is any indicator, agriculture will not be possible and we'll witness industrial collapse - this will be the paying off of ecological debt. This will mean a remission of the cancer of civilization, but it will probably take shelter in small-scale nuclear-powered fiefdoms owned by Google and Exxon. From there, it may expand over time. But most indigenous chronologies appear to be cyclical as opposed to linear. Most of anarchism is concerned with rectifying social ills on a linear scale, "once-and-for-all", but I am more of the opinion that we've been here before, and we'll be here again. We're a forest fire that can eventually exhaust itself. The question for us today is - can we see the turn of the tide before it comes? And if we can, where will we place ourselves and on which side will we fight? I would rather preserve some tiny seed from the flames of the present - so that we may blossom in a century. Whether that blossoming can be sustained through the centuries does not matter much, only that the seed is never entirely destroyed.  ------------------------------
187Not sure about the Ethiopia part. I tend toward thinking that to say "humanity peaked" indicates a linear conception of history, and that the reality is more cyclical. We've been here before, and we will return to the wild, if we listen to the wisdom of those who inhabited North America before europeans came. ------------------------------
188But there is, as we are saying it, much more to the story. It seems the state and private property originate in civilized society - it is hard to argue otherwise. ------------------------------
189I wonder if suicide rates among young people are lower in rural areas? Here, dropping out still is an option. You can get lot rent for a trailer for $200/mo and a travel trailer for $1000 on craigslist - money you can make even with the worst jobs, like shoveling shit at a dairy farm. You just gotta be able to stay sober enough to make it to work seven days a week. Once you got that, a 30-30 and a fishing pole can do you pretty well.  ------------------------------
190Interestingly, if I try to live in the woods, I am hauled in as a squatter, or tried for killing deer without a permit. If I resist arrest, I am killed. So it appears that the civilized need me dead for their dystopia. Certainly, we don't want to kill people so much as we want people to approach climate change, peak oil, and topsoil loss realistically. We're fucked. Population will drop this century. How can we brace for it? What ideas would we want to preserve for those who survive? Should humans ever rebuild what we're losing?  ------------------------------
191nice critique comr8 ------------------------------
192It's not that we want to "start killing people", it's that we recognize that topsoil loss, peak oil, and climate change are going to severely reduce the population. It's basic ecology. And it sucks for most of us. I would argue that rather than denying these facts, it makes sense to admit that we're totally fucked, so that we can begin propagating a culture of survival among those we care about. Teaching folks in the inner city how to hunt and fix bikes, starting foraging collectives out in the boondocks, working with chemists to figure out a locally-sourced and created HRT that will work even if the grid goes down. This way, we don't just help people here and now, we "save the seed" of an ecologically sane culture so that the next generations, when faced with the question of "should we rebuild"? Receive their answer from us. None of this is a choice; civilization has already set into motion a chain of ecological events which will bring us damn fucking close to extinction. No amount of screaming into the void will fix that, and Ray Kurzweil ain't gonna upload you onto the cloud before that collapse occurs. ------------------------------
193like bent as in drunk / crossfaded?already there beat ya to it ------------------------------
194Thanks for the balanced and respectful consideration of opinions other than your own comrade! ------------------------------
195plz no drone videos of these people ------------------------------
196Seems generally to be the opposite; civilized peoples force themselves onto the rest. ------------------------------
197There is no telling, honestly. ------------------------------
198ha! maybe ------------------------------
199Unfortunately I have no information on it. It does make some sense; the only portrait of him known was drawn by Engels, and of course, it would make some sense that the Marx-Stirner debate would have actually taken place between Engels and Stirner - why would Stirner, an egoist, find it in him to reply to Marx? How is it that his ideas incensed Marx so thoroughly that Marx actually wrote more pages in reply to Stirner than Stirner ever wrote? I have no evidence, but honestly, I just want to believe that because if that was true, perhaps Stirner would get a signal boost. ------------------------------
200Right, when Debbie snuffed his whole movement out because he attempted to go against the DNC's political machine?  ------------------------------
201Yeah actually lol. Gonna reach out to the Abenaki and deed them in, head down to Brooklyn and see if any black folks want their "40 acres" (okay maybe more like 4 since my plot isn't that huge) and if any illegals need a spot to hide from ICE I got them. ------------------------------
202Both were without purpose ------------------------------
203A spook is an idea which takes control of an individual's unique essence. When someone believes in private property rights, they could be starving, and they would not steal food to survive - even though that would serve their interests. When someone believes god hates gay people, they will stifle every homoerotic desire they feel - even though gratifying those desires would feel good.The basic structure of these examples is present in nearly every social construct and ideological edifice; morality, rights, the revolution, anarch<strong>ism</strong>, identity, race, gender, nationalism, God, even the idea of "the individual" can if not consistent with the momentary self, stifle the individual. The common reply to those who haven't read Stirner is the idea that "avoiding spooks is a spook". The counterargument here is that if one can live entirely in each present moment, and maintain the creative individual force to <em>create their own value and meaning from nothing</em>, without precedent, they will achieve the highest state of <em>ownness</em> conceivable. For Stirner, ownness is superior to mere "freedom" because freedom means so little if one is unable to articulate their own unique essence and meaning. To some extent, it is inevitable that students of Stirner will inflect Nietzsche's ideas into the mix, simply because they are so similar. Whether or not Stirner influenced Nietzsche is indeterminable as it stands today (and whether or not Stirner was the nom de guerre of Engels is also debatable). ------------------------------
204This thread is a shithole ------------------------------
205Of course, a lot of people can't survive in a cold climate. They would have no idea how to live up here without oil, cars, etc. ------------------------------
206Right, we saw how that worked for Bernie ------------------------------
207There is some truth to this, however, many many pro-gun people are not individualists in any real respect. They may claim to be, but inasmuch as they believe in duty, convention, patriotism, and any sort of "rights", they are collectivist as each of these demands the individual alter their behavior in the name of "the common good" and other nasty ghosts. ------------------------------
208Redneck revolt y'all!! ------------------------------
209How many are feeding you by having picked and grown the food you consume? ------------------------------
210Where's the democracy in this system? I can't afford to run for office. ------------------------------
211unfortunately ------------------------------
212Oh I know, I've been there and was impressed at how fertile a lot of the northern side of the state is. But I don't know - you can't beat 60 inches of rain a year out here in the northeast. AZ can be freaky too because of how intense the far-right culture is there even in rural areas. In the deep rural northeast, there's no political culture to speak of except that of individualism - and I'm an anti-collectivist before anything else.  ------------------------------
213Time for sleeves and nets ------------------------------
214<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Now I stock up when I travel, which is ridic.</p> </blockquote> <p>Which makes you technically a smuggler, no? ------------------------------
215Wow, that's insane ------------------------------
216yup, that's what I did. Plugging for <a href="/r/snus" rel="nofollow">/r/snus</a> the shit is awesome and like $2 a can in most of the US ------------------------------
217Seems like such a dumb battle for Cuomo to pick ------------------------------
218Then move to Norway. Which, by the way, these "free, safe nations" that disarm their citizens are still governments - they have militaries and police who will use force to abduct you and put you in a cage if you don't live by their laws. And if you resist this abduction, they will use lethal force. The state is a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and the second amendment is our only recourse to distribute this monopoly and decentralize it. ------------------------------
219By this rationale, many soldiers such as those exposed in wikileaks should be in prison - but most aren't. As I said elsewhere in this thread, I think it is wise to be skeptical of the "lock him up and throw away the key" mentality, even in these extreme cases. The ideal scenario is for this man to live life again without destroying others. ------------------------------
220I see that now, thanks for the correction. Nevertheless, I can't easily judge whether or not time in prison has done anything for him - but I can certainly say, 34 years in prison fundamentally changes a man most of the time. Though the crime he committed was horrible, the world of 1980's Brooklyn is long gone, and it is entirely possible he will use this chance to turn his life around. It is the business of the system which sentenced him.And, I an generally skeptical of the punishment mentality, even for heinous crimes, that most Americans participate in when they say "lock someone up and throw away the key!" Sometimes that is the right course of action, but I think any correction system that does not aim to make that the exception does not represent much of an improvement from a medieval dungeon. ------------------------------
221Pretty harsh. I don't think I'm quite so confident in my ability to play god, personally, but I do understand.  ------------------------------
222Ohhh yep ------------------------------
223I mean, if he's 68, it means he went in at 18. Going in at 18 and spending 50 years behind bars would change a guy forever. He may be alright. I only say this knowing a few who've done sentences of 20+ years. ------------------------------
224<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Talks like Tuco Salamanca"Where's my debate, clown?"</p> </blockquote> <p>Like I'd actually expect a decent discussion out of someone who talks like a bully on the internet. Go to hell. ------------------------------
225I mean on a deep subconscious level, maybe, I guess, but to be honest having a philosophical position that causes you to be lonely is nothing to brag about. It actually kinda sucks a lot of the time. ------------------------------
226Alaska is really looking good right now. Maybe Maine as well. ------------------------------
227I used to run away from home up there when I was a kid for months at a time. It's pretty well off the beaten track. ------------------------------
228Yeah but no water. Totally shitty prospect as a prepper. ------------------------------
229I would like to see a map made up of all the states that are keeping their laws sane. As someone looking at buying land at the moment, I need to monitor this stuff so I know what state to invest in. ------------------------------
230Not to mention when your government goes full tyranny mode ------------------------------
231We're currently on-track for 500ppm by 2050. This would mean 3 degrees of warming and weather conditions and events that would be extremely unstable by historical standards for the last 10,000 years. If you expect cool, wet summers, and you find suddenly one year it is a drought at 20f above average, and the next it is cloudy and cold, you will find that agriculture on the scale required to feed megacities would be impossible, yes.  ------------------------------
232Also I'd be interested in hearing a refutation of my other points, just out of curiosity. ------------------------------
233I don't want to farm at all; I'm arguing against agriculture and for a vastly lower population.Either way, it's not about what we want, as agriculture will be impossible within the century due to climate change. ------------------------------
234I just wrote a response to this above <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/hitchhiking/comments/88am35/upstate_ny_april_28th_gathering_for_antitech/dwjot3m/" rel="nofollow">viewable here</a>. I invite you to reply! I've been involved in this line of thinking for over a decade, and while I'd like to be optimistic, I find absolutely no reason to be. And anyway, I wouldn't want to preserve civilization anyway; pre-agricultural peoples generally did not commit suicide, they did not destroy their landbase, and rarely did they erect social hierarchies on such a massive scale as the civilized have done since Mesopotamia. ------------------------------
235Well, first, thanks for having a discussion instead of dismissing the idea entirely. Seems common that folks do that. Second, let's define terms. When I say "tech" I'm using shorthand for technologies which are <em>systemic</em> and large scale. Using fire is technology, as is using bone and stone tools. Why would a bone knife be acceptable to me, but cars would not? Well, a bone knife can be made by one person easily, from local materials. A car requires massive importation of minerals and plastics; each system within a car requires a lifetime of study to understand and countless man-hours to construct. Even the machines used in these processes take many years to understand and to build. With a bone knife, there is no hierarchy or division of labor. There is just little old me in the woods. If I lose the knife, I don't care much generally, because I can make another one. I also work entirely for myself in creating it, rather than selling hours of my life for money to purchase it. With the complex systems involved in automobile production, there is a hierarchy of experts over the users of the car - mechanics, petroleum engineers, etc etc - and there is a hierarchy implicit within the trade of the materials the car is built from. If I need iron to make steel for a chassis, I am reliant on whomever is trading iron, and must comply with them. If I need oil to refine into gas for my car, I must comply with those with the oil. If as a nation America invests a massive sector of its economy on cars, that nation will go to war if necessary to ensure access to steel, oil, and other components necessary for cars. And if an individual invests a large proportion of their wealth and time into owning a car, and builds their life around owning a car (commuting), they will be likely to react intensely against anyone who threatens their car ownership at any cost.And when I say at any cost, I mean even at the cost of the entire biosphere, evidenced in peoples steadfast refusal to adjust their lives accordingly to the climate crisis. So while yes, cars do useful things - I love riding fast in a vehicle, and having the journey from NYC to Chicago take 12 hours instead of a month - it comes with an enormous lot of baggage, most of it negative. In other words, the individuals of this generation and a couple before it find a net positive, but the whole of life - future humans, animals, plants, the health and freedom of current humans - finds a net negative. The same can be said about nearly all systems of high technology. Further, these systems of tech alienate us in many ways. When I walk somewhere, I hear the birds, I feel the air, and I see other people walking near me and stop to chat. I feel my body move and my muscles get stronger. And even though it takes me longer, I net a positive for my health, and for my wallet - it's free - and everyone around me nets positive too, or at least nets neutral. When I do the same journey in a car, I am moving too quickly to notice much of the world around me, and I cannot see or interact with those who I share the road with. I may hit animals or people, or I may wreck myself and die or become seriously injured. And usually, if I'm in a car, I only need to get where I'm headed fast because I have limited my free time because of work - and I have to work to pay for the car. And even more; I may find myself transporting ticks, germs, and invasive species to new places, which has a negative effect on the ecosystems of faraway places. Notice that people are wildly cynical in the younger generations? Many young people won't read a book, or visit a friend, and many of them have no interest in the ecosphere that supports them. I believe it's because high tech is enabling us to live at a pace which is too fast, too global, and subsequently demands too much of us in terms of attention span, labor hours, and removes us from our communities. It gets people addicted to the speed of light; notice that rural areas are depopulating and kids are moving to the city. Notice that the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/29/us-wildlife-extinction-species-report">rate of extinction is increasing</a> in a way our pre-civilized ancestors did not manage to carry out. And the indians were not stupid; they simply understood that one must live within their means ecologically. Now, tech is causing it's own demise. Civilization will no longer function as we surpass 500ppm of co2 in the atmosphere. Agriculture will be impossible. Now, I am making use of the internet to network with others so that I can help people survive this collapse, and not only survive, but thrive. And more than anything, I find myself lonely in my perspective, because even though scientific fact proves my statements right, technology breeds a culture of make-believe that causes people to think more technology will fix it. Solar energy, for example - for all the hulabaloo about it, this year it cross the threshhold to comprising 1% of global energy use. And that doesn't include the energy that will be required in 20 years to make new panels when those die off. At this rate, it will be several centuries before we manage even a significant partial transition toward "sustainable energy" - and we're slated to hit 500ppm around 2050.  ------------------------------
236Wow, that looks insane. Never thought about having a chainless system like that. ------------------------------
237If we get enough on the RSVP list I'll either call the DEC or we can move over to some private land I have access to. ------------------------------
238No schedule, but I think a few folks coming have some ideas. Might bring some hides to brain tan or hike down to the willow grove to make aspirin and baskets. Might also just hang out and enjoy the company of others who are likeminded.  ------------------------------
239I get the question all the time. This is somewhat like asking "what are Native Americans doing fighting off the English with English-made rifles?" Or asking "why is that little kid complaining that his dad is abusing him when he <em>lives in his dad's house</em>?" I use technology because my traditional communities and the face-to-face interactions they were once comprised of were destroyed by techno-industrial society. Now the kids don't even go outside anymore. I have no choice - I can be lonely, or I can utilize tech.Ideally, as is the case here, I could utilize tech for the sake of being less lonely, by using it to orchestrate gatherings and build community among those who share my views. ------------------------------
240FSP does not endorse this asshole.... ------------------------------
241Muh white genocide!!!!!!!!! ------------------------------
242<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Syracuse/comments/88aoqw/gathering_for_antitech_anarchists_in_the_southern/dwj6jlh/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/Syracuse/comments/88aoqw/gathering_for_antitech_anarchists_in_the_southern/dwj6jlh/</a> ------------------------------
243I don't know about that. I don't like how consumed with PC culture he is (not to say anti-racism and anti-sexism aren't important, just that the way he goes about it is annoying sometimes), but for the most part I've found it to be a great forum. Over here, there are too many googly-eyed voyeurs who don't travel and a lot of chest-beating surrounding "hobo code" and basically historically re-enacting depression-era culture. Each community has its problems, the best is to skim both and take what you need. ------------------------------
244<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Syracuse/comments/88aoqw/gathering_for_antitech_anarchists_in_the_southern/dwj6jlh/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/Syracuse/comments/88aoqw/gathering_for_antitech_anarchists_in_the_southern/dwj6jlh/</a> ------------------------------
245This is somewhat like asking "what are Native Americans doing fighting off the English with English-made rifles?" Or asking "what are feudal serfs doing eating the lord's wheat at their meetings?" I use technology because my traditional communities and the face-to-face interactions they were once comprised of were destroyed by techno-industrial society. Now the kids don't even go outside anymore. I have no choice - I can be lonely, or I can utilize tech.Ideally, as is the case here, I could utilize tech for the sake of being less lonely, by using it to orchestrate gatherings and build community among those who share my views. ------------------------------
246If you go to a restaurant where smoking is allowed, then expect to inhale smoke. At this point, if people were free to utilize their businesses as they chose, most places would not allow smoking. And of course, people will complain about smoking while they sit there drinking whiskey and eating bacon. Is that what's next? Repealing the 21st amendment? Banning fatty foods? State-mandated veganism? ------------------------------
247It certainly can be. Some of the more dogmatic primitivists, or eco-maoists like DGR, are definitely spooked to hell about "nature". Hell, John Muir was spooked. But first cultures very seldom even had a word for "nature" - the word implies a separation between human cultures and the natural world, which never was the case. To me, egoism and the wild appear synonymous so long as you can evade having this specific idea of "nature" being a separate entity to protect, cultivate, and shepherd. Wild animals tend to have a high degree of self-sufficiency because their means of subsistence is quite simple, and does not require alienating tech or division of labor. Thus, when people come together in the wilderness, they have a much higher level of individual freedom to choose whom they associate with and how. When you are reliant on the farmer and the baker, someone can deprive you of bread because you are too unruly, or are gay, or are a pagan, or whatever. When you hunt and gather just the same as everyone else, you can be as eccentric as you please, and thus, feral life strikes me personally as the most egoistic move.  ------------------------------
248Again, you're not "forced" to inhale people's smoke. You are free to leave and go elsewhere. ------------------------------
249Imagine being forced to go to Denny's! The horror! "No, no, not another sausage link! Not another pancake!"The reality is - you people used the government to force private businesses to play a certain way, because it isn't about us and our freedoms, it's about using our lives in the global keeping-up-with-the-joneses called health statistics. All my favorite bars, we smoked in them. And we didn't care. And no one who went to them cared - anyone who didn't like it went elsewhere. And so other bars existed where there was no smoking at all. The market created the demand, and someone rose to the occasion of fulfilling it. And they did quite a business. Then the freaks came through and said it's time for Big Bully to use his health code mafia to shut everyone down. I hate capitalism and I don't believe in private property, but you gotta admit - the market would've fixed that one. But liberals jumped to the conclusion that we need Daddy Government to spank us if we're bad. Like I said, keep that kinky freak shit in the city. ------------------------------
250Because nuclear requires human civilization for 50,000 years - and the tradeoff is, if we fail in that, everything dies.Also, nuclear is not an option in much of the developing world. Getting the financial and political will even in much of the West is hard for that, and to do it globally in the 50-ish years we've got left? No way. A few silicon valley types will surely erect their tiny little dystopias, but that'll be something to launch diseased cattle corpses into with a trebuchet.  ------------------------------
251I'm not a capitalist by any means. Even private cops and courts are still gangs and rackets. I believe in self defense, and I believe in the community - not the business, not the nation, not the parliament, etc. Representative democracy? It's a crock of shit and always has been. Nietzsche got it right: Christianity gave birth to democracy, and democracy gave birth to socialism. The entire lineage consists of an absurd lullaby that tells the most base and existentially compromised that someday everyone will be as bleary-eyed as them, and strength and brilliance will die entirely. I go over and against that by embracing intense living and ascension to my highest form. I affirm the existence of an elite class of spiritual aristocrats, who fly high above civilization and out into the wild - and give a helping hand to those languishing in idiocy or torment who aim to plot their escape. In my quest for this, not a damn soul can represent me, even my own words from my own mouth can't represent me - it's only the look in my eyes as I take action that will show you who I am and where I'm headed. Now I don't disagree about the more-native-than-thou bullshit, I get it. I only wanted to demonstrate my own take on why certain transplants piss everyone off in rural areas. I don't believe we should string 'em up, eat 'em crispy-fried, or deny them Vermont-ness, but like you said, it's adapt or die, and they should adapt to the New England tradition of keeping to themselves generally. If they need to make a ripple, they can go ahead and become an eccentric - but not so eccentric they try making laws that limit the general freedoms of everyone in the state. Let them run for Burlington city council! (And let them stay there). But if you're saying "adapt or die" to me, and to those of us who like our outhouses and AR's and chewing tobacco, I just can't let that one slide. I don't think I need to adapt to what a bunch of city chickens think I should adapt to. Certain things, it just so happens those chickens are correct about - driving cars all the livelong day, for example, climate change is taking us straight to hell in just a few decades, and we might as well get ready for the day the oil runs out. But that's just coincidence that the city chickens have figured that out. On guns, there's no validity in what they're saying, and I mean zero. On coffee, their "coffee" is terrible and costs a fortune. On quality-of-life issues like smoking a cigarette in Denny's, driving an ATV down the road, or homeschooling your kids in a treehouse with no permit and no state officials testing you, like I said, they can keep that right in Chittenden or else go back to LA or Tribeca. Sometimes I think of it this way: I'm not better than urbanites because I'm from the country, I'm better than those who think they're better than me, because I don't think I'm better than them. You follow me? It isn't being from LA or Denver that makes me have a problem, it's that so many of those people I have a problem with because they seem to think that they're better than me. Or if not this, then they seem not to show much interest in understanding the state they're trying to change before changing it. Get a good idea in Burlington? Great. Now head over to Essex County and chat with some farmers and pill-poppers and Trump people and see what their problem is. And if you don't do that, not only will ya fuck up the situation worse, but you'll ignore the demographic that slowly and surely, the far right is claiming. Fuck, I gotta get coffee. For some reason this topic has me real firey and I'm having fun writing to ya. Soon I'll be buying a cylinder press and publishing a Rural Herald of sorts. God bless. ------------------------------
252Uh, the land's already been colonized, which makes it different from land where there are currently only indigenous people.  ------------------------------
253Hey, here's hoping some of the cracks in the system will get folks to move and shake. If you haven't read <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=desert+anonymous&amp;oq=desert+anonymous&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.2013j0j1&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8">the sand book</a> yet, you might find it interesting. ------------------------------
254I judge them when they tell me how to live, that's for sure. And I judge them when they extend their views on life out further beyond their communities. Hell, I judge anyone from anywhere for doing that. Like I said, urban and rural can't have the same interests. They never really did anyhow. And, to be honest, I judge anyone who seems so craven and subservient that they prefer a centralized authority to uphold rules at the threat of gunpoint and abduction. Their whole system is built around the threat of the state putting your ass in a cage, robbing you blind, taking away your land, defaming your character, and if you don't roll with that, putting a bullet in your ass. They make it sound a lot nicer than that, but that's the reality. And anyone who would jump right on board with having an organization like that - a violent and authoritarian organization - legislate the most inane shit, yeah, I'm worried for them, and I'm worried about a world where people like them run the show. All that aside, what you do at your house and in your town is your business, and I don't judge. I'd smoke a blunt at your gay wedding and put Bird Dog in my frappuchino. Whatever! We can get along - as long as we leave each others turf alone legally. ------------------------------
255It is true, we hit a pretty major landmark for solar energy this year - it's now 1% of the global power supply. And that doesn't include all the energy they'll need to use in 20 years when the panels start burning out, so after all is said and done, you're left scratching your head while the co2 levels just get higher and higher. We're gonna see, at these rates of coal and oil use, 500ppm of co2 by 2050 - aka game over - so essentially, it was the period of the 1970's to then that really was crucial. We're not gonna get the whole planet even close to switched to "renewables" by the time shit is straight up crumbling.  ------------------------------
256Fuck Phill Scott, and fuck all these liberals. I'm not here to shill for anyone at all. What business is it of yours how people live? Why is the solution always to get the government involved? (And conversely, conservatives are always saying instead of the government, let's get the corporations involved. I say fuck 'em both - let's get the damn <em>community</em> involved, and I don't mean local government - I mean your neighbors). Fundamentally, there needs to be a division between cities and rural areas legally, everywhere. I'm from upstate NY and moved over to VT because I can't take the horseshit from Cuomo and his city buddies. City people get off on getting bound and gagged with red tape from a bunch of loon-eyed bureaucrats - they can keep their kinky little games right down there in the rats nest where they live. If I build a house, and I live in it, it's no one's business - period. Property taxes ought to cover roads, libraries, and basic facilities for the public good - $20/acre/year. If I want a fucking howitzer, I should be able to own it. And anyway, where's the line between tyranny and freedom? I know those words are "antiquated" among the latte crowd, or whatever, but the point stands. What the founding fathers didn't think of was that sometimes, people <em>prefer</em> to live under tyranny. These people thus offer consent of the governed to give license to all kinds of insane shit, and as it becomes normalized, you find you live in a society of adult babies, leering over the fence, sneering at your roosters and your outhouse, and in general, telling others that if they don't live like them, they're endangering themselves or lowering property values or whatever, and you'll get a fine or worse for it. And where are we gonna go? If you enjoy your freedoms, and you find people like you judging you because you're simple and plain, and regulating you into a nightmare, where are you gonna go? Out west there's no water. Vermont, NH, ME, they're good states. But by the time I'm on my deathbed, everything I love will be illegal, I swear to god. Not allowed to smoke at Denny's? Go to hell. At a bar? Even worse. That opened the door. Seatbelts. Helmets. Square footage requirements, permits, re-assessments, zoning board meetings, taxes up and up and up. God I hate this shit. I'd rather give you a neat-and-tidy academic-looking set of reasons for why basic freedom matters, but after doing that ten dozen times this week, I'm done. I'm not even a fuckin conservative - I'm an anarchist - and I just don't know where the hell this world's gone to. And by the way, if you like living in the neat-and-tidy, zoning-enforced, taxed-and-spent kind of places, by all means, go for it - <em>locally</em>. Don't make the state and federal governments get any more bloated, just because you think I can't compost my own shit or whatever. Seriously, have fun, I got no judgement.  ------------------------------
257I mean, was this not the thinking of the first colonists in the Americas? I doubt they were thinking "yes it should be nice to destroy ten thousand cultures and millions of people" - they were likely more along the lines of thinking "imagine all those souls to save, and to put to useful work instead of laying about like heathens!" And they probably thought this with similar fervor as you and I think our ideas. ------------------------------
258I mean, the statement isn't wrong. Alternative energy just isn't a viable solution. Demand must be reduced radically.  ------------------------------
259<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>his dad CIA</p> </blockquote> <p>oh fuck didn't realize thisedit: former FBI actually ------------------------------
260riseup info: <a href="https://pad.riseup.net/p/StringerBrookGathering" rel="nofollow">https://pad.riseup.net/p/StringerBrookGathering</a> ------------------------------
261link here to riseup pad: <a href="https://pad.riseup.net/p/StringerBrookGathering" rel="nofollow">https://pad.riseup.net/p/StringerBrookGathering</a> ------------------------------
262Hey if we're going full Abenaki I'm 100% in. No suicide or depression, far less work, no climate change.... ------------------------------
263Worse, it will be run by Burlington, which seems to attract countless hordes of folks from NYC, Boston, and Caifornia ------------------------------
264Very important question. Otherwise, this seems less like a step on the slippery slope of rights erosion and more of a sensible measure. ------------------------------
265Which says a great deal about the nature of industrial civilization, given how disruptive it is. Clean as it may seem, this should not distract from the reality that demand for energy must be reduced radically if we are to keep the planet habitable. ------------------------------
266David Hogg, the kid from Parkland CNN and the libs are propping up for the anti-gun shit ------------------------------
267? no ------------------------------
268Haha I thought you were gonna say that instead of having the right to own firearms, they were treated as a right like water or housing - the state would issue firearms to every citizen whether they liked it or not ------------------------------
269Also the government protecting the heroin industry in Afghanistan doesn't help ------------------------------
270been saying it for years, the DWI crusade is totally insane. ------------------------------
271Yes, absolutely. Great example: <a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/renzo-novatore-toward-the-creative-nothing" rel="nofollow">https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/renzo-novatore-toward-the-creative-nothing</a>This piece lit up my life forever. None of my friends seem to be able to read it, and if they do, they have no fucking clue what is being said. ------------------------------
272<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>What would be a present real-world example where oppressed groups could use guns in self-defense to protect their rights? </p> </blockquote> <p>Not trying to be rude, but isn't it obvious? If I am attacked by someone with a gun, and I do not have a gun, I will die or be seriously fucking wounded. Therefore, to keep ourselves safe from <a href="https://youtu.be/RIrcB1sAN8I?t=19m13s">our enemies with guns</a><span class="res-freetext-expando"><a class="expando-button toggleImage video collapsed collapsedExpando" title="" data-host="youtube"></a></span><div class="res-expando-box" style="min-height: 20px" hidden=""> <div class="res-expando-box-inner"></div> </div>, we need to carry, own, and be skilled with the use of firearms.Black folks are attacked in the street by racists routinely. If you've ever carried a firearm daily - which I'll assume you haven't - you know, walking with concealed heat, that no matter <em>what</em> goes down, you've got your own ass covered. When some beefy fash come up to you looking to start racist trouble, simply having that "Plan Z" in your coat pocket makes the interaction easier. It helps people be more confident - especially women and queer folks. Maybe a person would never use their firearm, but the boost to one's capacity to take care of fucking business if need be is 100% empowering.And even if it wasn't, giving away more rights to the state is always a bad idea. And I mean always.  ------------------------------
273If no one had guns at all in your country, people would plunder it. Likely, your government has the guns, and would utilize them if need be - invasion, murder, etc - but keeps them out of public view to allow for a facade of "peace". Nations like this are not an honest portrayal of the nature of the state. But at the same time I see your horror; most people are absolute slobs. The idea of most people owning firearms is frightening simply because most people are so stupid. ------------------------------
274But if we just say "that works" then people can't get tenure in big uni philosophy departments ------------------------------
275Uh, if you need objective truth, try your own existence in the present. That's as good as it gets, and it's definitely good enough for virtually everyone. ------------------------------
276Scary indeed, but that article was terribly written ------------------------------
277Sorry, I'm just fired up this week because of the volume of idiotic liberals who've been getting a platform in the media. Guns are an everyday part of my reality. I have one next to my bed, I hunt, and if I lived in a "free" state, I'd carry. And I think this school shooting thing is mass hysteria.Mao wasn't wrong when he said "political power comes from the barrel of a gun". Our enemies are armed - <a href="https://youtu.be/RIrcB1sAN8I?t=19m13s" rel="nofollow">and very well armed.</a><span class="res-freetext-expando"><a class="expando-button toggleImage video collapsed collapsedExpando expando-button-duplicate" title="duplicate link" data-host="youtube"></a></span><div class="res-expando-box" style="min-height: 20px" hidden=""> <div class="res-expando-box-inner"></div> </div> When shit <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2ro7U_Yoc4" rel="nofollow">pops off</a><span class="res-freetext-expando"><a class="expando-button toggleImage video collapsed collapsedExpando" title="" data-host="youtube"></a></span><div class="res-expando-box" style="min-height: 20px" hidden=""> <div class="res-expando-box-inner"></div> </div>, what are you going to do? If you are unarmed, you risk not only giving up your ideas, but giving up your capacity to defend those you stand with - and perhaps you even risk losing your life. Communities need self-defense against the police and national guard, as well as against fascists. For this, we either own guns, or we rely on the state - which has guns - to defend our communities. The most direct means of keeping a community free and safe is open access to "the great equalizer" - the handgun. Most people can learn how to clean, operate, and carry a handgun regardless of their size or physical strength - meaning each person can defend themselves and does not need to rely on anyone for their defense. Reliance on large institutions with the capacity for violence is IMO absolutely inconsistent with any form of anarchism.  ------------------------------
278<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>people who jerk off to ideological purity</p> </blockquote> <p>Who the CIA attempting to shill resistance into the ground? ------------------------------
279like yankee doodle dandy or a rainbow confederate flag with Fred Hampton's portrait on it ------------------------------
280I might sound like a statist but isn't there a good amount of statism needed? ------------------------------
281<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>"Too bad there's no legislation for any of that, man"</p> </blockquote> <p>This statement really shows your hand ------------------------------
282hell yes ------------------------------
283yeah cities are awesome /s ------------------------------
284Copypasta:Stringer Brook Gathering details:</p> <pre><code>Meet April 28th at sunset Map of area: </code></pre> <p><a href="https://www.google.com/maps/@43.3659629,-75.3456171,15.43z/data=!5m1!1e4" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/maps/@43.3659629,-75.3456171,15.43z/data=!5m1!1e4</a><span class="res-freetext-expando"><a class="expando-button toggleImage video-muted collapsed collapsedExpando" title="" data-host="googlemaps"></a></span><div class="res-expando-box" style="min-height: 20px" hidden=""> <div class="res-expando-box-inner"></div> </div></p> <pre><code>Directions: Head to Buck Hill State Forest, north of Rome, NY Heading north from Rome on Route 46, take a right onto Buck Hill Road Continue up this road until you see a hairpin turn onto a dirt road and a state forest sign Drive up this road and park somewhere (be sure not to block traffic) Then walk back down to the paved road, cross the road, and head downhill to the stream. Head upstream, to the confluence of Cyrus Brook and Stringer Brook. This is the rendezvous point: From here we'll hike up Stringer Brook at 6pm to the campsite. For latecomers, simply head up Stringer Brook (NOT Cyrus Brook) It is unlikely we'll go further than the three brooks join together. Bring your camping gear and provisions for however long you plan to stay. No rules except: If you bring guns, don't plan on drinking alcohol. I'm probably going to stay for at least a week. If the turnout is good, perhaps we'll all migrate somewhere else. If you're thinking of doing this, bring a bike if you can. Nearest public transit is the Amtrak station in Rome. Nearest hitchhiking offramp is exit 32 on I-90 near Rome. Nearest railyard is Utica, although it's pretty bereft of traffic. </code></pre> </div> ------------------------------
285Besky letters ------------------------------
286info here: <a href="https://pad.riseup.net/p/StringerBrookGathering" rel="nofollow">https://pad.riseup.net/p/StringerBrookGathering</a> ------------------------------
287That's lit. Too bad you didn't shoot the bastard - oh wait, you gave your guns to Mr. Nice Policeman so the fash could take over and you could make spicy self-righteous memes in protest. Ah, I gotta say, I usually don't engage in this kind of cynical banter, but this week has my willingness to engage in civic discourse absolutely fried. Mass hysteria and liberals really ain't my cup of tea.  ------------------------------
288You'll see a clear difference in how the police behave, how the courts operate, and what material conditions are like there and how they correlate with cyclical poverty and problems. I'm not even saying it as a bleeding heart liberal - I'm not - but just to speak the truth of what I've seen. Getting a jaywalking ticket in East St Louis and realizing that everyone else is at the courthouse for the same jaywalking charge - and all from a neighborhood where there aren't any zebra stripes for legally crossing roads. With jaywalking tickets, those who get fed up, don't have an address to receive court information, or are at work making a living 80 hours a week they have a reason for the cops to haul them in for any reason at all. Get pulled over for a seatbelt ticket? Get arrested for your outstanding bench warrant from a jaywalking ticket - in a neighborhood, again, with no crosswalks. That's just one quick example of a structural set-up that appears to function entirely for the continued imprisonment and policing of black folks. It's shit that you just don't see in white neighborhoods, and when you start digging deep and hanging around these areas which are traditionally not frequented by white people, you start to see it. That's why I'm saying, we could fire back and forth on the internet, and that could be alright, but go see for yourself.  ------------------------------
289Lol what's funny is <em>I'm</em> the antifa supersolider. Like actually. ------------------------------
290Honestly, folks could try to explain this to you via written word, but try this: Head down to the ghetto and live there, on the street or in a low-rent apartment for a year or two.  ------------------------------
291tell that to these ten-foot high snowbanks lol ------------------------------
292Rupies maybe? ------------------------------
293shill level 1000% ------------------------------
294April 28th in Oneida County NY seems to be it: Information is here: <a href="https://pad.riseup.net/p/StringerBrookGathering" rel="nofollow">https://pad.riseup.net/p/StringerBrookGathering</a> ------------------------------
295absolutely ------------------------------
296A rare thing to find while homeless is fresh vegetables and fruit. Tough greens that will last a few days - collards come to mind - would be helpful, along with some bananas, berries, and radishes. Seeds for sprouting are nice, sprouting can be a calming way to spend some time that yields some good nutrients. Beef jerky is also expensive but excellent when living rough. ------------------------------
297Sounds great. Any time or location preference? ------------------------------
298Sounds great! How early would you need to schedule? ------------------------------
299Sounds good. The EF Rondy is apparently in OH this year (weirdly enough) so if we time it right we all could roll through to that afterEdit: When is best for you? ------------------------------
300Maine could be worthwhile - though if you need gas money, we can probably get it covered! ------------------------------
301I'm in the Mohawk Valley region, but I'm nomadic and run a range from Buffalo to Montreal to NYC to Maine. Colton is pretty random! I used to live up in Clinton County not far away and it can get desolate out there. Colton is also near Akwesasne - definitely some interesting folks on the rez. Sounds good though. Would the Southern ADK's or Tug Hill / Lewis County work for you? In April or later? ------------------------------
302<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Contrast this with the approach favored by some in the academic-guilt-creation complex, which is to focus exclusively on the horrors of white supremacy. That method is very useful for academics fighting to make tenure, because by inflicting guilt they enhance their power in faculty meetings and journal review boards by silencing their opponents. What they’re really doing is making sure that their opponents can’t advance within the capitalist power structure and access resources, with of course state violence standing behind the entire edifice.</p> </blockquote> <p>OUCH!!! Fucking spicy analysis. Love it. You are doing some heavy-duty thinking with this post and I'm quite impressed. If you write anywhere else, or do podcasts / radio, share that with us, as I'd be interested in following the content you produce.  ------------------------------
303Upvotes for "survivalist egoist-anarchism"Thatsme.jpg ------------------------------
304I remain a part of the collapse community because I think our hope lies not in how well we can look away from the truth, but in how well we can accept the facts and learn to live with them anyway. There may not be hope in the immediate-term future, but there is hope in preserving a seed of something that may crop up in 500 years. I want to compile an encylopedia of post-collapse knowledge and information about why industrial civilization was not all it's cracked up to be and survivors shouldn't rebuild, and then make sure durable physical copies are available in every local library.  ------------------------------
305I was under the impression that permaculture is more a survival strategy on a local scale and that something along the lines of <a href="/r/collapse" rel="nofollow">/r/collapse</a> is just a given.Anyone with any utopian ideas about "permaculture saving the earth" has a lot of learning to do, IMO ------------------------------
306Upvoting because though I absolutely disagree that handgun rights should be fucked with (at least as long as this "democracy" is dysfunctional like it is), you're telling the truth, and we need more of that. Banning AR's is <em>absolutely fucking loony</em> and completely based on the "wew scary black gun" thing. ------------------------------
307I literally do not have the energy to sift through this right now. I read it, tasted that nice whiff of utter horse shit, and now, I've just got to go to sleep.I cannot imagine dismissing all of the arguments for 2a with the statement "yeah our plutocracy sucks" with no further reflection. Tyranny? "Yeah it sucks - now gimme more! And anyone who disagrees needs a therapist!" ------------------------------
308Judged by whom? The culture which has defoliated the planet. ------------------------------
309<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>right to recreational shooting</p> </blockquote> <p>Lol, that's not what 2a is for. No one is saying what happened isn't a tragedy, we're simply saying that it is quite random given that the death toll from so many other preventable things is much, much, much higher. And to fix those things, we would not have to give up the basic right for self-defense against individuals and against tyrannical governments.Yet those issues are not getting support. Where were all these people during Ferguson and Black Lives Matter? Where are they when people are dying everyday from heroin and fetanyl? Worse, you're asking us to give up the most basic right that would aid us in defending ourselves from the state - when the state currently is corrupt. It is not a democracy, it's pay-to-play plutocracy. So when you say you want a few nice regulations (of which there is zero reason to carry out, since regulations on these matters which might work in Japan are totally ineffective in the US) what you're really doing is opening the door up to violating the bill of rights with zero recourse. We have no good political choices, and what really matters in this game is what the rich want. The only reason your "movement" is getting coverage is because a few rich people thought it was nice and paid for it, and allowed it to be covered in the media. Further, the school shootings issue has so many other sources. It isn't simply guns. To ban guns is to say "don't kill other people, kill yourself, kid". Because that's what these people will do. The kids are existentially desperate, they're depressed, they're abused, and their run through a shit school system with zero outlook for a decent future. The number one thing we could do right now is radically alter the school system, mental health, and overall reform society to feel more livable - but the issue seems to be entirely about the tools I use to feed myself with, defend myself (because the police don't come out here), and when some despot seizes the state and decides we've got to comply with whatever shit-brained ideas they have in mind, I can come up shooting hollowpoints, 30 rounds at a time. The reality is, we're heading toward a climate change nightmare world, and if you force us to give up our guns, you're investing 100% complete trust in a sham democracy and a collapsing empire. When the shit hits the fan, you'll want a gun - if you don't have one, you're stuck with FEMA, the National Guard, and basically begging those in power for some bread. With a gun in that situation I can protect my community, feed myself, and ensure that we are as free as possible.Last, your ideas mean nothing now because of 3D printing. We can 3d print guns and ammo now, and the tech is only improving. No serial number. Legal or not, people will do it - so when you ban guns, people will get them anyway, like they always have except it'll be even easier. Unless you're talking about registering CNC machines, lathes, drill presses, and basic industrial equipment. I'm sure that will make the already struggling industries in this country even more strained.  ------------------------------
310<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>new accountalt-right rhetoric complete with smugness</p> </blockquote> <p>dontfeedthetrolls.png ------------------------------
311so what? doesn't mean elements of what they did weren't admirable. ------------------------------
312They also did not manage to commence with the largest extinction event in human history. ------------------------------
313No way, the NRA blows even from a pro-gun perspective. ------------------------------
314<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Nobody wants to discuss the actual issue</p> </blockquote> <p>Because it is statistically insignificant, and this minute number is being used to strip us of our rights. ------------------------------
315I wonder which "grassroots organizer" took a check from Dick's for coining this slogan ------------------------------
316Sign me up, I'd do this too, as a pro-gunner. ------------------------------
317What do you mean? The parkland shooter wasn't drunk. ------------------------------
318<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>It's about choice. These young people choose not to die by gun violence.</p> </blockquote> <p>What about the young people who die by the gun violence of the police in inner cities?Oh wait, they "chose" to be "criminals", just like addicts "chose" to become addicts. If I'm 12 with no parents and no future, and I decide to steal some shit to gain the acceptance of a gang, or I decide to get high to escape my shitty life, then I am to blame. The kids at Parkland didn't make any bad decisions, so they're a really good, cut and dry, very "pure" political objects - despite being a statistical outlier. They're easy to get behind - it's activism for the sake of being active, with no thought in the direction you're headed.Methinks that heroin, police violence, and school shootings are related: That this "modern world" thing ain't all it's cracked up to be for kids. They sit under fluorescent lights, feeling like shit, wanting to play outside, given no real reason to participate in school. Cliques develop, and outsiders are bullied and excluded. Down in Mexico, all the villagers get together in the evening to dance and play ball every night, old and young alike. Up here, there isn't much community in a lot of places, from the wilderness to the burbs to the inner city. If any of the kids complain of feeling sad about this, we give them pills. Parents are busy working, drinking, or popping xanax. Stepfathers beat their boys to make them "tougher".Then, when they pick up a gun, we say it's the fault of the guns.  ------------------------------
319How about the winters and blackflies? And loneliness / distance from anyone else in the rest of the US? If I could deal with these things easily, I would be more apt to head up there - especially if we picked a town/plantation and made it the primmie spot. ------------------------------
320Great, we'd love to have you. My partner is from suburbs and has had a similar struggle with overcoming the conditioning that goes with that life.  ------------------------------
321You statement does not make grammatical sense ------------------------------
322<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Native Mainers are suffering once again because of those from away.</p> </blockquote> <p>You're penobscot, right? Or Mik'maq? ------------------------------
323Damn, VT woods squatting eh? Nice. I may buy land up there.Probably state forest land, there's tons of it that can be pretty remote and gorgeous. ------------------------------
324<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>I'm up at the tip top of Maine.</p> </blockquote> <p>Damn, Aroostook? I've been thinking of heading up there. Land is certainly cheap.  ------------------------------
325Hey, I've enjoyed chatting with you in venues like these for the last couple years. I've learned a lot from your perspective and have been touched by simply knowing there's someone else out there with a perspective like my own. Though death is beautiful at the right time, don't leave us out of loneliness alone. I say we move off the internet, you and I and all the others - <a href="/u/autumnleavescascade" rel="nofollow">/u/autumnleavescascade</a><span class="RESUserTag"> <a class="userTagLink RESUserTagImage truncateTag" title="set a tag" href="javascript:void 0"></a> </span>, <a href="/u/thedignityofstruggle" rel="nofollow">/u/thedignityofstruggle</a><span class="RESUserTag"> <a class="userTagLink RESUserTagImage truncateTag" title="set a tag" href="javascript:void 0"></a> </span>, <a href="/u/carepolice" rel="nofollow">/u/carepolice</a><span class="RESUserTag"> <a class="userTagLink RESUserTagImage truncateTag" title="set a tag" href="javascript:void 0"></a> </span>, a few others over the years and others I don't know as well. Not to engage in actions together, nor to revive the ELF or anything that would attract FBI, but simply to live amongst kindred spirits and make our exit. To lay alongside one another by the fire, to wake up to snow on the river, and to carry the seeds of wilderness through the conflagration we're currently in. I'd like to get some cash together by working, investing, getting student loans and so on, and choose a region to settle around. Squat a shitty house in some small, depopulating city, and buy some cheap land not far away in a wilderness area. I've got some ideas. None of us have ever seen one another - with a few exceptions; I have met a few people from Reddit who became good friends of mine - but this is the closest thing we've got to a community of anti-civilization folks; on <a href="/r/anarcho_primitivism" rel="nofollow">/r/anarcho_primitivism</a>, <a href="/r/collapse" rel="nofollow">/r/collapse</a>, even <a href="/r/completeanarchy" rel="nofollow">/r/completeanarchy</a>. And as the megamachine commences with shutting down the last of the "wild west internet" we've come to know and even rely on, it's critical we make a graceful move toward building IRL communities. There are hubs for workerist anarchist culture in some of the major cities, but roundly there, my perspective is rejected and I am a pariah because of my stance on tech. It's time we utilize our analysis to reskill and share these skills with others, to create a successful and resilient culture that may stand to tell others, after the fall intensifies - do not rebuild! ------------------------------
326<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>if we disarm everyone</p> </blockquote> <p>How? You would need to utilize force to get me to disarm myself. In which case, the cops would disarm us <em>first</em>, and then <em>promise</em> to disarmed themselves after. ------------------------------
327The thing is, a bear's a bear. They use their claws and teeth and nothing more. Alienated, depressed, nihilistic youth with absolutely nothing to lose? They'll use a semiauto now, but take it away, and they'll use nitrogen fertilizer in a Dodge Neon next. Or they'll buy some gasoline and a match, available everywhere for about $5. Fentanyl in the water supply, machetes. Or perhaps more insidious, they'll take their sick revolt to a less public area - and become rapists, pedophiles, and addicts. Guns help me and my family eat, stay safe, and preserve our political power. If I thought giving up guns, or allowing them to be regulated at all would help, I'd consider allowing that to happen - but only if the government was a real democracy first. Presently it's a pay-to-play plutocracy with no regard for its citizens whatsoever. Puppeteers use the media to manipulate public opinion in a cold war between various elites and three-letter agencies. Guns are political power. Yep, they have drones, but it's better we have something rather than nothing, even if only for the principle of it. AAnd particularly when the police, military, far-right terrorists, Pfizer's legal heroin (pills), and automobiles kill far, far more people each year than mass shootings ever have, I think we're just caving to the demands of a bunch of terribly traumatized children who don't need a "movement" yet (paid for by Hollywood elites who are rich enough to buy their way into democracy - so what do they care?) but need a few months to process what happened to them. I think those kids are being groomed and their weakened emotional state is being utilized to shut down dissent. Now, instead of being a reasonable 2a supporter, I want to murder children. Some powerful people want us disarmed, and they're using bombproof methods to do it. ------------------------------
328Which is funny, because purity is a distinctly civilized concept. Most of us are of the view that diversity is a primary good, and thus accept a lot of different viewpoints.  ------------------------------
329Or, you'll march against gun violence in schools, but not against war? ------------------------------
330Were you there in Afghanistan or is this secondhand information? I don't doubt your claims, I am just curious. ------------------------------
331<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Kaczynski</p> </blockquote> <p>lol fedbait is fedbait ------------------------------
332Sheer ignorance in one measure, a deliberate campaign among christian-plebeian-progressives and their ilk - including social anarchists - to smear the name of egoism.  ------------------------------
333Where can I buy one ------------------------------
334Yeah, it's definitely dying.  ------------------------------
335Excellent response. I'm always a bit curious about the viewpoint other pro-gunners are coming from, and it's a relief when someone can bring up a group like the Pink Pistols. Trigger Warning is another interesting one, as is Redneck Revolt, and Black Guns Matter. If these groups, and others like them, could be aligned toward a larger movement, I'd like to see that. The trouble seems to be that their interests outside of gun rights are simply incompatible with the party leadership of the two parties - which isn't the groups' problem, it's the parties'. Many folks with these views on firearms are entirely anti-federalist, aiming toward localized governance - a reasonable aim, but one that does not jive with the realpolitik of the current gun rights issue.Unfortunately, to change public opinion, one must have a great deal of cash and connections, and one must be prepared to play the long game. It seems the pro-gun movement has already invested in a strategy that is seeing itself be outmoded. The NRA and its folks seem not to be affirming gun rights as a continued tradition that is compatible with growth in other areas, they seem to be latching onto it as part of a package deal where we pine wistfully for the days of Archie Bunker and Andy Griffith. I'd be interested as well in coming at the issue from a Second Vermont Republic perspective. I get the feeling that a lot of SVR types are pro-gun, but may sympathize with gay rights, black liberation, class struggle, and resistance / resilience for climate change.  ------------------------------
336A few things help. Not from VT, but from a low-population-density, aging rural area in upstate NY. Be active in the community; be in groups that meet each week or month, visit the bars (without overdoing it), and do interesting and eccentric things in public that garner interest from passers-by (this is a new england tradition). When you don't see the groups you want to join, make them. And let time do its thing. In the city, six months is a long time to be single for many. In the country, I find that it can take a couple years. And there is also the option of traveling to cities often and dating there, commuting for the sake of romance, and eventually seeing if your partner will move in with you out in the boondocks. All of these strategies have done me well over the years. ------------------------------
337Well, the NRA appears to be doing that by utilizing emotional fears about black people, antifa, and dangerous coastal liberal elites trying to take away our freedoms, and it seems effective. The trouble with it is much of their narrative is to some degree complete fiction, facts twisted or stripped of context, and valid truths, all mixed.One way that strikes me, that is different from the classical right's approach, is to play into people's fears about civilization collapse. People - including liberals - are worried, quite rightly, that climate change, peak oil, topsoil degradation, overpopulation, and the collapse of fisheries and oceanic ecosystems will lead to devastating ends. What our local communities will want in the conditions that we're threatened with is to be armed - and not just armed for the sake of being armed, but armed alongside a larger program to become more self-sufficient and to decentralize our economies in the name of resilience. Without guns, this is an exercise in lunacy - see the light green "solar panels // priuses // veganism" narrative posed by some of the Burlington types. With guns, it's a balanced and reasonable way to maintain the strength of our communities - and it is also an emotional appeal rooted in scientific and historical fact. ------------------------------
338Ah, thanks for the correction.  ------------------------------
339I do not know. Things are in the hands of the media now. Reason literally is out the window. Show the gungrabbers statistics, show them safety information, show them the realities about gun ownership - and they still have nothing but an emotional response. It is really sad.And it's sad because I'd like to live in VT (I'm from upstate NY and I'm sick of the government here) but I don't know, I'd hate to invest in the state only to see things get more and more restrictive. Maine may be the answer. ------------------------------
340Ghost guns and aluminum CNC's?  ------------------------------
341<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>arm more teachers</p> </blockquote> <p>User did not suggest this ------------------------------
342Yeah it definitely is good to have to pull a bolt when you've got a mam bear on your ass. Semi-autos saved my life when I was a kid. ------------------------------
343Nietzsche does talk about slave morality, it's an important concept in his works. I'm only mentioning his fascist sister because any connection you may see between Nietzsche and fascism would come from his scumbag sister mistranslating his work. </p> <blockquote> <p>Still social anarchism ain't slave morality.</p> </blockquote> <p>You can say words as much as you like, but it does not seem to do much good in this case. <em>Ressentiment</em> is the key concept in considering slave morality. For <em>ressentiment</em> to occur, a class of people must be subject to the will to power of a minority of individuals; in this case the slave class loathes the master class, and regards them with envy, but because they do not have the power to depose of them, they turn their jealous hatred inward and practice self-abasement. When a revolt of the slaves occurs, either by brute force or by the sheer impotence of the aristocracy, rather than transcending the masters entirely - they simply engage in what Nietzsche called "priestly vindictiveness", where they attempt to make the former masters "slaves like them". Now, Nietzsche did not imply, by leveling this critique, that master morality is "better"; only that both must be transcended. His real argument was that the lineage of slave Morality could be traced soundly through Christianity (the meek shall inherit the earth), through Democracy (where it is assumed those who comprise the collective of society are fit to govern), onward to Socialism. And thus, social anarchism has emerged from slave morality, complete with priestly vindictiveness and a refusal to transcend the tendency to remain in the jealous slums of the collective, and a refusal to transcend the morality of the old masters. Don't take my word for it, though; go ahead and read Nietzsche - perhaps I've gotten it wrong. I was a social anarchist for over a decade before reading Nietzsche and Stirner and finding that, yes, it is not a coincidence i went from being a seminary student to being an anarcho-communist. Only through Nietzsche have I found the capacity to embrace the Satanic "no" to all vampiric social forces. ------------------------------
344<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>None of these are bans: licenses, waiting periods, felon restrictions, air travel checks, training, insurance, taxes, tons of other policies.</p> </blockquote> <p>Slippery slope ------------------------------
345Except when I'm old I'll have to wake up and shoot a deer to eat ------------------------------
346uh, no, Nietzsche's sister was a fascist. Read the Kaufmann translations. ------------------------------
347I do not dismiss them in this way by any means, I am only stating that the divide between rural and urban societies is not overstated. I am actively interested in building coalitions between urban and rural poor people. ------------------------------
348Oh, but those who have created those lobbies are often urban themselves. I see them when they come around. National politics is not worth a trifle anyhow, not to me. It is entirely bourgeois. ------------------------------
349100% correct. We need a gun movement that is not far right. ------------------------------
350That hasn't been how things have played out in the US, at least not for quite a long time. And when what you say has been true, it is only the urban working class that may have some common interests with us. Those with money and political power have always been our enemies. ------------------------------
351Lol, keyboard cowboy ------------------------------
352The ignorant uneducated minorities thing is just racism, which they've tried to feed us for years. But city white people who are reasonably well-off? Yeah, they're actively trying to run our lives and don't know anything about rural life or farming - and yet we feed them. They've got more money and political power than rural folks, and they are morally self-righteous and pompous most of the time. When they do pay much attention that appears positive to us, it's to exploit the natural beauty and "peaceful farming life" of our areas - but never offer us anything like solidarity when the time comes to make decisions about trade, regulations, taxes, and gun laws. ------------------------------
353And adding this to an incredibly alienating world where children are oppressed and denied basic freedoms and cycled through a bureaucratic school system with arbitrary rules and expectations ---&gt; you've now created a pressure cooker for young men to lose their shit. They could act out with guns, they could act out with bombs, they could act out with alcohol and drugs, they could act out by raping. Not seeing many gungrabbers offer up much analysis of this. ------------------------------
354Not sure, but I know the media will cover this - when we marched for climate action a few years ago with similar numbers, NO ONE covered it. ------------------------------
355I can't give details regarding locality lest some of the folks I've worked with should find their housing threatened (after the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland and the subsequent 4chan kids narcing on radical spaces it's not worth risking), but essentially we did the following: The main core of the group consisted of about a dozen people, sometimes as many as 25, who squatted buildings in rural areas and "dying cities". We renovated spaces and got them established, reached out to the neighbors and made sure they approved, and then brought folks who needed housing in. Sometimes, this was all that was required, and it was eventually up to the occupants to file for adverse possession. Usually, the city or town would question what was going on, and we'd do a few things. We'd turn up and block the eviction, if one was slated. Then, we'd bargain with the city, offering back-taxes in exchange for legal ownership. Most often, the local government would allow this. The challenge is to find properties which are owner-abandoned, foreclosures no one purchased at auction, and city-owned properties. The intricacies of these options depend on the area. We had a legal team that was good at this - I was just a squatter remodeling the place and getting it (roughly) to code.  ------------------------------
356Ha!...boy wouldn't a yearlong velomobile tour be something crazy. I may eat out of the dumpster, but I'd drop $10k on a velomobile. ------------------------------
357They said it couldn't be done! ------------------------------
358I'm quite useful. Instead of waiting for someone to get elected who'll solve the problem of rising housing costs, I've had a great deal of experience squatting homes, obtaining adverse possession, and giving the homes to families who can't afford one. When OD's and Hep C were starting to become common I was handing out needles and harm reduction equipment - since I knew it'd take a century for any of these slow-paced reformist liberals to give a fuck about the people dying in the streets and take action. Because that's the thing - most things that need change just need you to change them, sometimes in defiance of the law, sometimes at great financial risk, but they need to be changed now and you can do it yourself. It's better you do it yourself, too, because it strengthens the community you live in instead of allowing a faceless bureaucracy to do it. When you place your faith in electoral politics, you start a long waiting game that only someone with a few bucks and some food in the pantry can play. The rest of us can't wait. And when you play that waiting game, you're giving the state and the rich a nice break, as if to say, "we'd revolt now and change everything, but we'll wait until next election - then things will change" and they never do.  ------------------------------
359Absolutely. And interestingly enough, climate catastrophe can be easily swapped out for nuclear war. Green Posadism is real. I'm holding out for collapse. ------------------------------
360Actually, if voting changed anything, they'd made it illegal. ------------------------------
361That's yet another reason I tour on a recumbent! Haha. It's fun to be gassy on a bent. ------------------------------
362Absolutely! It's an old sailor trick I learned up north. Great thinking. It doesn't work with rice and other grains very well, but beans and lentils are a definite success. ------------------------------
363I don't have to, I want to. I can afford food. But why waste?  ------------------------------
364This is a question that will have a lot to do with both class, and how much you like / are stuck working a straight 9-5 and saving up. I'm not rich, and I don't have marketable skills. I also hate working. So I spend very little on tour, and tend to tour for months at a time. I think you could spend $20 a week and have lots of fun.</p> <ul> <li><p>Learn to stealth camp. Paying for camping has nearly always given me an experience I could get for free without any hassle at all. Barring periods of my life where I was drinking heavily, I have never had any interactions with police or property owners because of lowkey sleeping somewhere. A few raccoons, maybe, but always a great time. </p></li> <li><p>Cook all your own food. Buy rice, beans, and red lentils. Carry bananas, bagels, peanut butter, and when you can, buy cheap meat and cook it in the parking lot while it's still cold. Carry a multi-fuel stove. Use a thermos to long-cook beans - add beans 1/3 of the way, fill with hot water, cap off, and let it sit for 10 hours. </p></li> <li><p>Obtain food by other means when possible. One tip that some are, without good cause, very squeamish about: Dumpster-diving. It's a great thing to do while touring. If, for example, some milk is discarded from a grocery store which went bad at midnight, and you find it in the dumpster still cold at 12:15am, it stands to reason that it is still good to consume - given that you might have paid for it just 15 minutes ago. Use your senses. I've consumed months worth of food strictly from dumpsters for ten years and have never gotten sick. Good in the US: Aldi, Trader Joe's, Dunkin Donuts, Einstein Bagels, most pizza shops, etc etc. Bread products are especially common. There are also times when you can gather food. In Maine during blueberry season, on the coast of Oregon where wild Fennel grows, on beaches with clams to dig, learning simple wild greens (even dandelion is good to eat) you can find cheaper food.</p></li> <li><p>Don't buy water. Get a gallon jug and fill it at the soda fountain at a gas station. </p></li> <li><p>Check all bike shops for cheap flat fixing kits and stock up when you find a good price. Then, check the bike shop dumpster (or ask) for old tubes - often enough, they've only got a hole or two and a patch kit is cheaper than a new tube. It's usually worth the time and is a good social opportunity to make frugal bike friends. </p></li> <li><p>For gear, don't put any more cash into the bike. You can tour on a $20 craigslist bike and I've done thousands of miles on them - and if I lose it for some reason, I just buy another one instead of stressing about my million dollar machine. Don't buy an expensive tent or sleeping bag - get the costco down blanket two-pack, a US army poncho liner, and a US army poncho. Make an "<a href="http://www.alpharubicon.com/prepinfo/ponchotent.htm">alpha tent</a>" with the poncho for rain. Cheap, effective, and simple. If you splurge on any gear, a thermarest z-lite is great, and a decent set of drybags are worth your while. For stoves, multi-fuel is great, but woodstoves are decent too depending on your fuel budget. </p></li> </ul> <p>Don't take my tips as gospel at all. I'm a very opinionated kermudgeon bike hobo and these are all things that work for me. But take what I am saying and know you can bike tour for as long as you like, with basically no money. If you establish these habits for a month or so, then letting yourself spend money on meals out, nights at the bar, and hotels will feel so much nicer - and you'll know you can get by without them no matter what happens.Have fun!  ------------------------------
365Show up to any city with an anarchist bookstore and ask around, tbh.  ------------------------------
366Migrate to zeronet! ------------------------------
367Yeah, I'm optimistic about zeronet. I'm really hoping it catches on.  ------------------------------
368Guess some of us just don't go looking for it ------------------------------
369Zeronet might be cool ------------------------------
370Idk, voat and raddle sorta suck. Can't we just start a BBS ------------------------------
371Well, not only the agriculture problem. Agriculture's already getting tenuous in a lot of the world because of desertification, droughts, and extreme and unreliable weather. But more than this, most humans who live today are so utterly reliant on the techno-industrial system that in the event of any "shocks" to that system, each shock will kill millions. Oil goes up by $50/bbl in one quarter, millions die. The ensuing economic collapse causes millions more to die. That collapse starts a large war in which millions die. Cities are cut off from food supplies because of this war and millions die. The feedback loop scenario regarding Co2 and methane is already at work, but what many forget is that the structure of these molecular loops will probably be at work socially - there will be feedback loops of human death. And they may exponentiate as they loop.Now if so many weren't reliant on the deathsystem, the simple fact of agriculture as we know it being improbable / impossible would perhaps be a surmountable issue. The few who make it (outside of the insanely rich, maybe) will be those who at the outset of this catastrophe were well-armed, secluded from civilization in small self-reliant communities, in areas with a great deal of water. They'll probably be people who've prepped seeds from USDA zones 2-9 so as to be ready for whatever, and have learned to regulate growing conditions with earth-sheltered greenhouses, compost heat, and advanced venting techniques. And they'll probably be hunters and gatherers as well.  ------------------------------
372<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>If you say, "but it would be better for me to enjoy what pleasure there is to experience," then you're placing a moral value on pleasure, defining "good" as "what pleases".</p> </blockquote> <p>I would dispute this as being a totally mechanistic conception of the human experience. It's not a computer program where "if:pleasure, then:good"; pleasure of the highest caliber transcends the word and defies categorization. It's the fusion of the understanding that though we may live to seek pleasure if we like, the experience of pleasure is only momentarily "good"; because it is ephemeral, and because greater levels of pleasure offer a contrast against which greater levels of suffering can be felt, it blasts the dichotomy of "good" and "bad" apart. I think Taoist thought is the most succinct expression of this, and I rather think that Taoism and Stirner have a great deal in common that, unfortunately, is not explored by many. One can live merely to smirk tearfully and nothing more. The moment the experiences which bring us to this paradoxical point are given definite signifiers, they become fungible commodities to be measured, and each moment loses its essence. To me, this is a feature of morality, and its logical conclusion points toward a neurotic condition where everything is judged on an absolute dichotomy before it can even come to fruition. As an anarchist I dispose of all devices which limit possibility, and from here, can only conclude that the fabric of human action is built around force and cunning - and these are only means to the end of the the great human paradox. I respect, however, anyone who has explored a wide range of ideas on these matters, and though we may disagree, I absolutely wish you the best. </p> <blockquote> <p>And perhaps if something is good, then it deserves to be defended through force</p> </blockquote> <p>No; I defend myself and my interests with force, and whether they are thought to be "good" or "bad" is only a function of how much the one judging the case finds their own interests to align, or not align, with mine. ------------------------------
373This is definitely true. I only mention this deal for those who are looking to cross the ocean blue with as little money as possible. The one-way is actually $99 from SWF. ------------------------------
374I did it for a few months once in a warehouse space. It was great, I was living for $100 a month as my rent. I kept a low profile, but I was eventually caught by a landlord that walked in unannounced one morning and threatened with having my business shut down. What my problem was was that my space had big windows into it and was in a main thoroughfare for the whole building. And, when I was caught, we were in the process of moving to a new unit, and the landlord was showing our space to some new clients who wanted our current unit. It will depend on your space greatly. If you don't have a space yet, look for areas that are low traffic, low visibility, and maybe an entire building or floor to yourself. Barring that, build a small structure just large enough to sleep in that looks like storage or something unsuspecting and make it seem to anyone important that you're a tortured polymath who is obsessed with your work. If anyone ever asks, you sleep polyphasically - and most offices could not ever ban napping.  ------------------------------
375Even better is the SWF (Newburgh) to Dublin for $246 roundtrip.  ------------------------------
376Right. How one can be pro gun and pro patriot act at the same time (and also anti NDAA because Obama did it) is a mental clusterfuck beyond any rational law. Really, at bottom, you have people who are pro-government, and anti-government, and it seems both the dominant political worldviews are very, very pro-government in different but complementary ways. ------------------------------
377Moral nihilism isn't "bullshit", it's simple reality and even if you believe in morality, you should accept you're simply believing in something you personally prefer. If I have the force or the cunning to obtain a thing or carry out an act, and I can evade anyone who would attempt to force me to do otherwise, the act simply is what it is. It is not right or wrong, it's a thing I did. A good example is the conflict between communist morality and classical liberal morality regarding property. To a communist, it is a moral wrong that the capitalist owns property and can extract profit from the worker. Additionally, it's also a moral wrong that the owner of property can deny their items or space to those who need it; i.e. I can own a granary during a famine and choose not to share it with starving people. To the believer in property rights, it's immoral if someone steals from them, or forces them to contribute their wealth to some organization via taxation etc. But the state does levy taxes effectively. People do steal without problems. And bosses do exploit workers quite efficiently and all the time landlords and owners hoard supplies during disasters. In every case, you have people serving their own interests, and a gaggle of weaker parties saying "what you are doing is wrong". But their simply saying it is wrong does nothing. All that matters is force.  ------------------------------
378Some of those people literally say "healthy at every size" though. ------------------------------
379In general, it seems this sub is a political package deal. I'm pro gun, but I'm also an admirer of Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, and the radical unionists of the turn-of-the-century who used firearms against the state. I think the "war on terror" is a ploy to remove our rights and keep us in an endless war as well. All ideas which I've received downvotes for here - not even criticism or argued replies, but downvotes. ------------------------------
380I hate that that movie, and others like it during that time spawned a reaction among feel-good liberals that managed to declaw a very powerful line of ideas. A few things stuck; Durden was "edgy", the whole "sheeple" and "red pill" ideas are now associated with a bunch of losers, and any idea that revolves around an aristocratic minority of superhumans exiting an absurd society is now dismissed. Instead, they favor an absolute crackpot "let's all get along equally - except me I'm better than you". Now if you read Nietzsche or think people need to live as though YOLO is more than an idiotic catchphrase, you're "edgy" and everyone can just go back to work, put on a Bernie pin, and smoke another spliff. ------------------------------
381Oh I'm also a moral nihilist lol. Read Stirner and buy a handgun and a motorcycle! ------------------------------
382Mine? Boy, the list is long. My entire anarchist worldview makes me an oddball even among anarchists. My observations and unpopular views come from over a decade in the anarchist milieu.</p> <ul> <li><p>Agriculture was a mistake, overpopulation is real, and cities can never be sustainable. We're fucking totally out of time and civilization is in mega-freefall collapse.</p></li> <li><p>Anarchism that is ideological demands a hierarchy of the abstract over the sensual, and requires a colonialist "scientization" of thought, where the world is reduced to manageable "units" rather than distinct myth objects comprised of feeling and spirit - and, uh, fuck that.</p></li> <li><p>We each owe "society" nothing. Forever.</p></li> <li><p>Reality is deterministic by default for civilized humans. Most people are existentially asleep at the wheel - pushed and pulled by the blind forces of history and power. It is only the few who manage, by their own cunning or strength, to claim their free will that ever experience anything remotely like freedom: This is the existential aristocracy, and the human world is their blank slate. </p></li> <li><p>This existential aristocracy will by its very nature seek to expand itself, because making friends and gathering the like-minded insurgents is the highest existential call imaginable.</p></li> <li><p>The tendency of anarchism I am describing, if most anarchists could step beyond their ideological frame of reference, is the most relevant to the present social conditions of the postindustrial west. Suicide, atomization, depression, and the breakdown of even the ghastly spectre of "community" civilization once offered means that our only option is to jiu-jitsu the nihilistic ennui of folks today into joyous revolt. This doesn't happen by presenting a political program or concrete moral goals. It doesn't happen by offering systematizing explanations of history and the world. Our only real prospect for spreading a successful anarchist culture will be to curve back to the interwar years and revive the individualist tendency and attempt to create a culture of hyper-individuals and superhumans who join together to create field-expedient micro-societies that are actually worth struggling for. </p></li> <li><p>COINTELPRO and other elements are actively working on the internet and in our IRL communities to prevent the spread of these sorts of ideas.</p></li> <li><p>We can't take ourselves too seriously, ever. </p></li> <li><p>Monogamy is inherently not anarchist IMO, but so is enforcing nonmonogamy. So, uh, no real good ideas there.</p></li> <li><p>The CIA and FBI are at war with each other via manipulating online political opinion; the FBI is fueling the alt-right, and the CIA is fueling SJW's. </p></li> <li><p>As an extension of that, identity politics is to be looked at skeptically. Even aside from my CIA conspiracy theory, it's shit anyway, and seems to just be a hobby of college-educated, silver-spoon white people and those inoculated with their shitty little culture.</p></li> <li><p>Humanity is fucked, and there will be less than 10,000,000 of us by the end of 2150. </p></li> </ul> </div> ------------------------------
383It's a racial slur from the 1800's the liberals are working to keep alive ------------------------------
384absolute drivel, and by no means an unpopular opinion.  ------------------------------
385Woah, where is there info on this? ------------------------------
386Bespoke: I am the feral creative nothing, the existentially vibrant <del>ubermensch</del> uberfrau who transcends all societies in a state of continuous insurrection ------------------------------
387Allowing? To allow, one must have the force to stop it if necessary. One does not allow their garden to go without weeding in the same way one "allows" the government to collect taxes. One is tyrannical, the other is freedom.  ------------------------------
388I'm totally anti-civ. I mean, think of it this way: Cities are loads of humans in one place who do not farm, but continue to eat. When you're eating, you're fucking and popping out kids. Then the city's population grows, and like a parasite, sucks the nutrients out of the soils surrounding the city. Once the population increases enough, more farmland is needed - as well as conquest, deforestation, and a social hierarchy between farmers and non-farmers, landowners and farm workers, etc. This keeps going until empires come into existence and utilize the form of transit that is most efficient to facilitate large-scale interregional or global trade (and warfare) until either the central government collapses or the farmland turns to desert and ecological collapse ensues.Our age is an interesting one because oil has sped both the political and ecological collapse up to the point where both are happening simultaneously at some of the fastest speeds recorded.  ------------------------------
389<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>everything has to travel further to get to you,</p> </blockquote> <p>unless you grow it ------------------------------
390<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>tribute to Ted Kazinsky</p> </blockquote> <p>It'd be a real shitty one if that was the aim.  ------------------------------
391US Military usually uses three-round burst, if I'm not mistaken. ------------------------------
392It's already happening ------------------------------
393Ha, you're absolutely right. I've definitely come across .exe's in particular that are titled that way. Digital illiteracy is an easy weakness to exploit. ------------------------------
394Tixati is good. ------------------------------
395Ah yeah, this is why it's sensible to go into the folders and uncheck everything but the video file and subs. Though I could imagine malware in subs, I suppose. ------------------------------
396Directly in the video file? Seems unlikely ------------------------------
397Which, granted, was and is most people. ------------------------------
398Denver isn't that great anyway, IMO.  ------------------------------
399Jesus Christ.... I knew shit would get real after they banned ar15's from google shopping. Not that I use google shopping, but it shows their hand. ------------------------------
400<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>I think realistically we as the human race need to be putting more time money and effort in to developing vertical gardens within factory type buildings to keep mass amounts of farming close in to the growing cities.</p> </blockquote> <p>Come on, you can't be serious.  ------------------------------
401<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>"He dissed liberals so that means he's pro-republican!!!"</p> </blockquote> <p>No. The entire system is fucked, and liberals are just as bad as conservatives. My time living in New England showed me that. ------------------------------
402Uh, no, user is making a point that obviously both parties are idiotic about AGW, but particularly egregious is how liberals - usually urbanites - think they're exempt from scrutiny on their view of AGW, and how self-righteously they utilize AGW as a political tool for other projects, willfully denying science to do so. For all of the ways in which you are correct about "capitalism" (modern shorthand for "civilization"), this posturing liberals engage in is fakery of a different sort than conservatives outright denial, but it is fakery nonetheless. ------------------------------
403<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>From what I understand, the gangs that inhabited this area were eventually absorbed into the Mafia in the early 20th century.</p> </blockquote> <p>Right, and then onto Cuomo's associates. ------------------------------
404Ouch. Spicy analysis, compadre. ------------------------------
405Then you ain't from where I'm from.. ------------------------------
406<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>socdems</p> </blockquote> <p>lol ------------------------------
407bad bot political reformism is an ahistorical fake "solution" designed to keep us working and spending instead of building alternatives to the central government ------------------------------
408You know, people are downvoting you, but the rich-kid instagramming-my-van-life types need a dose of reality. They've got these $10,000 setups that are quite nice, and I think that's awesome for them. But the fact that there is surprisingly little solidarity towards those who are involuntarily living the vanlife is fucked up. Try asking <a href="/r/vandwellers">/r/vandwellers</a> for info about a van buy with a budget of $700 and see what they say.  ------------------------------
409Uh-oh NYT gon get sued like Oprah did ------------------------------
410<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Is it not hypocritical to take advantage of government programs while refusing to contribute to them? It seems wrong to mooch off of stolen money.</p> </blockquote> <p>The idea is to "suck the beast dry". If taxation is theft, it is not incorrect to reappropriate stolen resources. ------------------------------
411Can second the robberies on Westcott ------------------------------
412<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>I would say it starts to get a little sketchy between East Genesee and Erie as you get closer to downtown</p> </blockquote> <p>Will say though I've had a lot of fun down there. Lots of people on porches, Barbeques you may randomly get invited to, and some cool parties. Drugs and unemployment, sure, but if you're respectful you're alright most any time of day in my experience. Now, South Salina at night, that's sketchy. ------------------------------
413Why are so many moving to Syracuse? Is this simply because of the "in and out" nature of the colleges and hospitals, or is population actually going up? ------------------------------
414You're speaking vaguely and in a way I don't understand. Can you clarify what your point is? ------------------------------
415But the confederate flag is already one of the most widely-used symbols, and it's currently getting used by white supremacists. The same way Americans appropriated "Yankee Doodle Dandy" from the British, who used it to make fun of them, I think we could make humorous use of the flag to fuck with racist scum. ------------------------------
416It's true it could be interpreted as being a statement like "I'm a gay white supremacist", but I would be willing to amend that by altering it. Maybe including a black power fist would get the point across.One of the core underlying views here is, however, the idea that it's good strategy to appropriate the symbols of your enemy, and I think "culture jamming" the confederate flag is a smart way to do that. Maybe not rainbow, maybe with words on it, or two fists breaking a chain (to represent freedom for slaves), but something. ------------------------------
417Why? Black people need to practice self-defense, in many cases, <em>more</em> than whites. Their communities are more dangerous, sometimes because of a lack of police presence, sometimes <em>because</em> of police presence, and often because poverty drives people to do some nasty shit. I think the same way about the women's issue. Women get raped more than men. That's why we should be teaching women how to shoot and carry. Usually when shit gets emotional and polarized, the best answer takes elements of both sides.And yeah, obviously they don't know how to load a mag. ------------------------------
418Hey, now I'll accept a rainbow confederate flag, maybe even with a damn black power fist on it.Figure I'll piss everyone off. ------------------------------
419Just an old hillbilly hijacking the top comment here to say everyone ought to check out <a href="https://www.redneckrevolt.org/principles">Redneck Revolt</a>. I've got some problems with it here and there, but overall, they're on the right path. Never forget that the word "redneck" originated in the red bandanas of coal miners who fought the national guard for better working conditions. They're trying to dupe us, and more of us are standing up to this shit than the media would have you think. ------------------------------
420Well, most people have had some experience with large corporations fucking with their lives. Wal Mart shutting down small businesses by out-competing them, big pharma pushing drugs in poor communities / driving up costs in tandem with the state of medical care, etc etc. It's good to say, well Jim Regular is a good guy who owns the gun shop down the way, and he probably would never be evil, but what if his company goes public, is legally required to give the shareholders a profit, he's created a headless beast, and when he dies or retires, his successors with either be increasingly ruthless, or die.This drives home that we're not saying super tiny business owners are the evil people inherently (though they can be) but that the system will turn good people and their decent businesses into monsters. ------------------------------
421No shit, eh? Any information on this? ------------------------------
422It also says the government is allowed to make you a slave as punishment for a crime, which is equally fucked. ------------------------------
423Important is to remember that the NRA supported gun control when the Black Panthers were arming themselves. This is one of the many reasons why I don't support the NRA. ------------------------------
424same ------------------------------
425Great question. I think that it's a good idea; it also reduces the chances of getting caught by the state, as white-market purchases and their records in legal banks are what gangs like the IRS use to take you down. The exception would be white market purchases with government money and grants. Make no legal income on paper, conduct all purchases in grey or black market in cash, and collect all government benefits you can. Many of these benefits can only be used for white market purchases unless you want to take a serious loss. Another exception would be to make white market purchases for the sake of liquidating an account that cannot be liquidated in cash, by buying items with a high resale value.  ------------------------------
426Maybe in some areas, but one is free to move.  ------------------------------
427Who cares? In a society with a free market, there's nothing stopping this. That is, unless you're one of these nationalist, authoritarian "libertarians" in which case gtfo. ------------------------------
428Alright, does this mean we'll be getting some cheap rifles over here? ------------------------------
429To be honest, I don't know. Not only do I generally disagree that anarchy can contain "rules" - Agreements-between free individuals, certainly, but rules tend to outlive their followers, and I have a problem with that.But more than this, I used to know several Somalian refugees who told interesting stories about what we would understand as being forms of mutual aid employed there by the people. There is war and violence, but there's also, from what these old guys were saying, a great deal of sharing and systems in place for knowing who to trust. I can't speak on it too much, but I would imagine the media plays things up to some degree.  ------------------------------
430I mean, as idiotic as Maddow is, yeah this sort of thing just shows the extent to which true misogyny lurks beneath the surface - and how in a collapse scenario, it would become prevalent and actually acted upon with far greater frequency. ------------------------------
431<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>accelerationism</p> </blockquote> <p>This is such a buzzword. Are you referring to Nick Land? Paul Mason? Most who use the word outside of a philosophical discussion, or without further explanation, seem to use the word as a convenient package for arguments that don't have much content.And no, generally I am not concerned with "workers". I'm concerned with individuals and the communities they form. I found, when on welfare, and in communities where everyone was on welfare, I and those around me were more likely to coast through another day. It was when people were unable to get EBT and Medicaid that they actually got mad enough to take action, either for their own self-sufficiency, or against the system that denied them those benefits. I've seen it as much in subsistence hunters as I have in criminals, and I have reason to believe this effect would be exponentiated by happening on a larger scale. Luckily, being that most anarchists would posit that diversity is more or less "good", and homogeneity destructive, we may have a difference of opinion. ------------------------------
432lol yeah the biggest parody of nihilism I've ever seen if I remember correctly ------------------------------
433Absolutely, agreed.I suppose most "cafe anarchists" are less clinically depressed, and more apathetic and just generally soaked in ennui in a way that seems more like posturing than a mental health crisis. Any way you cut it, it's a bummer. PORCfest, conversely, was great fun. Liberal arts college anarchist meetings, not so much. ------------------------------
434Right, and though many libertarian types don't associate capitalism with being a negative social force because they're middle class suburbanites who've benefited from that system, many - and the bulk of rural and poor - libertarians have this view simply because the examples of capitalism in their small towns are relatively harmless. Often enough they haven't seen that small-scale, relatively innocent affair extrapolated into a larger scale and thus have no real basis or reason for critiquing capitalism.I say this as someone who voted for Ron Paul before I was an anarchist. Also, despite the ideological purity of some "class struggle anarchists" - you may know the type - individualist and egoist anarchism is an excellent bridge between the two camps, and it's wiser to not reject it.  ------------------------------
435tis why I post in <a href="/r/libertarian">/r/libertarian</a>. They're like anarchists who are property-spooked but like, build stuff instead of drinking coffee and being depressed. Just pop them the Stirner Pill and I've made friends ------------------------------
436let's make it a copypasta meme lol ------------------------------
437<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>naivety</p> </blockquote> <p>naivete, loser ------------------------------
438Why's that? ------------------------------
439I think you're correct; it's why women should be carrying. ------------------------------
440? ------------------------------
441No problem! ------------------------------
442Yep was just going to post this. I read a book about it called "The Optimism Bias" and it was pretty interesting. I think it's probably a genetic trait that was a shitty one and the mass cullings that are about to occur are going to seriously reduce its prevalence. ------------------------------
443<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>We're going to see blue ocean event soon. By soon I mean within 5 years, probably within 2 years.</p> </blockquote> <p>You think so? I mean, I think it may be possible, but fuck..Also, what's the sea level rise of BOE? ------------------------------
444<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>The society we live in inevitably invites collapse.</p> </blockquote> <p>Every civilization has a collapse. Agriculture (required for cities) mines nutrients from the soil, which turns forests into fields, and fields into deserts. ------------------------------
445fucking brilliant, laughed aloud ------------------------------
446Not sure about that one. A lot of Black Panther literature explicitly states that the nature of welfare is to pay the working class to not revolt. Obviously, the two factions have disagreements, but both could recognize an objective good in fostering self-sufficiency in things like, for example, food production. ------------------------------
447It's true. I mean, I'm white, and I "stockpile guns", but mostly because when SHTF I'd much rather be well-armed. These guys who stockpile but aren't collapseniks are a very strange bunch. I think they're scared of their inheritance. Victims of racial hierarchies the world over - historical and present-day - are sweeping upward to force the beneficiaries of those systems to reap what their forefathers have sown. While some of these have a realistic approach - maybe a "Black Panther-esque" stance that aims to build multi-racial coalitions struggling together - others, hyped up on the dopamine crack of the news and social media, pose an almost psychotic threat to certain types of white people. ------------------------------
448The user didn't say that. Also, if you're from Ottawa, why do you care? Obama added 9 trillion both because he inherited the mistakes of his predecessor, and because he didn't particularly mind bankrupting the US to bail out the bankers. ------------------------------
449Listening now. Wow. By the way, great show. Keep it up.  ------------------------------
450Sure, but that ignores global dimming, non-co2 equivalents, and feedback loops from frozen methane and permafrost.  ------------------------------
451I mean, to be fair, do you know many homeless folks? ------------------------------
452Let's not get too puritanical. <em>Some</em> of these guys are alright. I disagree with them, but they're relatively harmless. I mean, granted, I'm an egoist, but hey ------------------------------
453Surprised they didn't post a picture of an "assault shotgun" ------------------------------
454<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Trump said something like:" I know, we are going to deal with it but we must keep it from the people. We must keep them shopping".</p> </blockquote> <p>Uh, source? That seems like it'd be a golden soundbyte if we could get it ------------------------------
455It originates from the work of Max Stirner, and to some degree, Friedrich Nietzsche. It is essentially the idea that epistemologically, one's self, and more particularly, one's <em>ownness</em>, roughly translated as one's "essence", is one's greatest certainty. This being the case, egoism is quite simply the acceptance that all ideas and concepts not originating from one's ownness are like ghosts - they have no meaningful basis unless they threaten your existence. To take private property as an example - probably the place where I'd disagree most with libertarians - the idea that "within these lines on a map, I am the sovereign owner" is a useless idea without force to back it up. This is because force would threaten my life - my only certainty - if I chose to cross that property boundary. Without this, if a weak person makes this statement about property it is absolutely worthless.From this, I infer that I am free to do as I please. A "spooked" believer in private property would say it is immoral to steal, or a violation of someone's "rights". But to me, rights are a social fiction invented by weak people, and I am free to steal whatever I am able to if I want. Generally, I do not - because people are more valuable to me as friends than their stuff is. This analysis would apply to nearly every social construct; rights, morality, gender, the state, society, ideology, theology, and so forth. In short, I live to amplify my ownness, experience higher levels of pleasure, and as a means to protect these, to aim to strengthen myself to the maximal degree. That is why I am a gun owner, and that is what I have in common with libertarians - limiting the state's influence over my life. I also share commonalities with certain anti-state anti-capitalists, atheists, nihilists, hunter-gatherers, and some criminals. ------------------------------
456Yup, similar case here. I'm a ramp tramp and find that train hoppers have a tendency to be wary of hitchhikers for being "bourgie" or whatever. To be a hitchhiker, you can't take pride in being filthy and drunk and looking insane - or you won't get rides. Obviously, there are plenty of exceptions, and these elitist types may comprise a minority in some places. The hitchhiker's life is lonely by nature. You don't really fit in anywhere, you pass through people's cars like shit through a bird, and you seldom encounter other hitchers.  ------------------------------
457Ahh, I see. ------------------------------
458NY sucks. Was raised there. Taxes are as much as rent in some cities. ------------------------------
459And only come once, or it will be depressing as hell to see your favorite bars and restaurants turn into Duane Reades. ------------------------------
460Saw a billboard once that had been defaced to say "This used to be a forest where everything was free" reminds me of this ------------------------------
461xpost to <a href="/r/lostgeneration">/r/lostgeneration</a> lolwould be curious to see their reaction ------------------------------
462Absolutely, they need one another to survive. My only contention is that where the crackhead can be manipulated into being addicted in the first place, the cartel must take advantage of people to access the level of power they have. ------------------------------
463You're not wrong. I'll say though, there's a difference between the cartel and a crackhead. ------------------------------
464<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>The problems are massive immigration from affected regions so long term it might get bleak.</p> </blockquote> <p>This. Once LA, and SF are depopulating, you'll want to be at least ten hours away from each. ------------------------------
465Where are you getting this idea? ------------------------------
466Other users in this thread are saying it may already be 490ppm, and I'm guessing that's because of global dimming and immediate-term feedback loops with trapped methane in the arctic.  ------------------------------
467490? Is this because of global dimming? Seems like it could be a high estimate, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't. ------------------------------
468Weird, doesn't have my favorite place on it in my area: Sitting on the john in the outhouse. Nothing better than bagging a squirrel while you're taking a dump. The circle of life. ------------------------------
469It does if you live on the margins. Most of rural America is economically depressed, with a few exceptions mostly in the south. And among young people, wages are way down. I'd say the whole "millenial" generation is pissed, from what I can tell.  ------------------------------
470Oh dude hell yeah. I grew up in the boondocks and had to be on the bus for school at 6:20am. Would sleep on the bus, get to school, smoke a joint, and be essentially useless until the period before lunch. Then after lunch I'd be thinking "damn isn't it time to get out of here?"It wasn't until I dropped out of college and started to self-educate that I figured out what learning really is. It's something entirely self-driven, and American public schools seem hell bent on scaring you away from driving yourself to learn. Then again, a nation of idiots is easier to govern / control, so it may be deliberate... ------------------------------
471xpost this to <a href="/r/completeanarchy" rel="nofollow">/r/completeanarchy</a>! ------------------------------
472ACAB ------------------------------
473Exactly. It threatens their system, and will only continue to do so as this century moves forward with scarcity wars and the general collapse of civilization. ------------------------------
474Ha, that's true ------------------------------
475Why? <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/612710/" rel="nofollow">Here</a> is some info on the report they released. It's not a stretch to think that these same observations would apply domestically, particularly given that the police have received large amounts of milsurp, armored vehicles, etc. The economy sucks, people are pissed, and when the power goes out or hyperinflation sets in, it's better from the perspective of the government that we're disarmed. Angry people with guns are bad for the state. ------------------------------
476Among other things, they only have around 3.5 hours of instruction daily, no mandated standardized tests, school does not begin until 9am, 15 minutes of playtime in between classes at the elementary level, no compulsory schooling until age seven, very little homework. Students have the same teacher for years at a time instead of changing every year and have more one-on-one time. And yet their PISA scores are through the roof.This article goes into some more detail: <a href="https://fillingmymap.com/2015/04/15/11-ways-finlands-education-system-shows-us-that-less-is-more/">https://fillingmymap.com/2015/04/15/11-ways-finlands-education-system-shows-us-that-less-is-more/</a> ------------------------------
477Among other things, they only have around 3.5 hours of instruction daily, no mandated standardized tests, school does not begin until 9am, 15 minutes of playtime in between classes at the elementary level, no compulsory schooling until age seven, very little homework. Students have the same teacher for years at a time instead of changing every year and have more one-on-one time. Yet they consistently outperform the US and the rest of Europe on PISA scores.This article goes into some more detail: <a href="https://fillingmymap.com/2015/04/15/11-ways-finlands-education-system-shows-us-that-less-is-more/">https://fillingmymap.com/2015/04/15/11-ways-finlands-education-system-shows-us-that-less-is-more/</a> ------------------------------
478Surprised WaPo published this. Good on them. ------------------------------
479And depresses kids, because it is not engaging, interesting, or rewarding to participate in school for most learning types. You'd think this issue would push huge bipartisan support for reforming schools and adopting a scandinavian model of education.. ------------------------------
480And because the DOD has admitted that climate change is a national defense issue, and knows that an armed populous in a climate-induced shitstorm would threaten US empire. (edit: downvotes for what?) ------------------------------
481Oh absolutely, I don't think occupy was anti-troop. Plenty of vets involved. But most in occupy subscribed to some kind of critique of the "support the troops" culture, where "supporting the troops" means being pro-war. Say what you will about Chomsky in general - I don't tend to be a fan - but his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7DdWmWUa_8" rel="nofollow">insights on this culture</a><span class="res-freetext-expando"><a class="expando-button toggleImage video collapsed collapsedExpando" title="" data-host="youtube"></a></span><div class="res-expando-box" style="min-height: 20px" hidden=""> <div class="res-expando-box-inner"></div> </div> struck me as useful and interesting, and I think they were striking a chord with most occupiers. ------------------------------
482I only encountered these "prank videos" last night for the first time, and wow, some of them are hilarious (MabeInAmerica's drone witch was hilarious) but some were downright evil. Digging a sandpit on a beach, and then waiting for someone walking towards it and tossing a fake bomb behind them, only for them to run directly into the sandpit? Dude should have gotten punched out for that. Or the "pranks in the ghetto" where they basically just harass people and try to get them to throw punches?  ------------------------------
483Hey at least you conservatives manage to get some kind of an outlet. You want to talk about isolating? Try being an egoist anarchist. It is objectively the most compelling system of thought I've ever encountered, and yet absolutely everyone I meet is repulsed by it, usually with the exception of critically-thinking libertarians and anarchists.  ------------------------------
484<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>All it encourages is non reporting of mental illness.</p> </blockquote> <p>Great argument (edit: not sarcasm) ------------------------------
485How could they not? That'd be like "occupying" the school in 2011 to support the troops. There's no way their action couldn't get interpreted as being in-step with every similar action lately. ------------------------------
486I can absolutely concede the point there, you're not wrong. I suppose I am thinking primarily about how civil liberties work; they tend not to be taken away "just for now", but to erode significantly the moment they are breached, without a track record of returning much. I am thinking here of measures like the Patriot Act, NDAA, etc. In the case of the Patriot Act, civil liberties infringements were deemed acceptable for the purposes of "fighting terror" - but it appears the war on terror is an endless war, and as such, we won't get our rights back. A more realistic approach, and certainly less risky in terms of allowing the state to restrict our freedoms, would be to make a gun safety course mandatory to all highschool students. I've thought this for many years, well before the mass shooting problem started cropping up so heavily. It makes sense; we teach our kids the danger of crossing a busy road, because we live in a world with dangerous roads. If parents started to fail in teaching these risks to their kids, intervention via the education system would be a sensible course of action. I think similar arguments could be deployed regarding alcohol, sex, and drugs - they're dangerous and they're out there, and kids need to know how to do it safely.And of course, in addition, a complete re-do of our schools has been necessary for decades. If we employed a Finnish model, with broad freedoms for students, long breaks and lunches, with a high respect for the students and a heavy focus on getting them what they need to be successful in their own way, we would see improvement on all levels. The number one factor, I'm convinced, in the misery of young people in the US, stems from schools being prison-like and rife with arbitrary authority, stale teaching methods, and rote and repetitive schedules and course matter. This doesn't work for kids, makes them fail to take it seriously, and makes them more interested in violence, bullying, and so forth - because they have nothing more positive to focus on because their educators are not meeting them where they're at. In addition to this, earmarking a large chunk of federal money for revitalizing communities would be useful. The atomized nuclear family suburban wasteland produces misery - most mass shooters are from suburbia, and a lot has been written about how these towns and cities do not constitute functional communities in any anthropological sense of the word. Long-standing friendships, interactions between young and old, time in nature, time spent engaged in productive and dignified work (but not overwork), common spaces where people routinely meet to relax and have fun - these are all features of communities throughout the world. There does not appear to be a depression/suicide crisis in some of the poorest parts of the world precisely because these elements are present in the everyday lives of their inhabitants. The suburban experiment has failed.And last, approaching mental health not with the mindset of saying "you're sick for being depressed, let's give you drugs and make you normal", but to <em>get real</em> with these kids and say, "yep, you're right, this sucks - let's make it better by speaking together as equals and assessing what doesn't work about this world; and then let's make it better". I'm from a small town where this mindset was practiced.... until we got internet service. Now the kids stay inside, and the same problems are brewing. It's given me a perspective that differs considerably from mainstream urbanites, and I think my town taught me some important stuff. ------------------------------
487"You make yourself stupid forever"Yes, I suppose I would be stupid forever if I attempted to defend myself against an armed attacker with a 2x4, as my brains would be splattered onto the floor. ------------------------------
488Right, precisely because someone with significant influence on the media would have their interests served by gun restrictions.Call me crazy but I bet ever since the DOD acknowledged climate change, they're of the opinion that an armed America would threaten US Empire in the event of infrastructural / agricultural failure. When the shit hits the fan, from their perspective, it's a lot easier to deal with a disarmed populous than a lot of people with guns.  ------------------------------
489<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>something we can do much more easily which we could then undo </p> </blockquote> <p>This is not generally how any regulations work. Once you give the government an inch, it takes everything and keeps it. All this gun control talk seems to assume that we have a functional democracy in which we have political recourse when things get out of hand. That's just not true. ------------------------------
490Nothing, unless the protest is given media time. So the media decides for us which public displays of concern / opinion matter. Notice the climate march with 100,000 people at it was not on any news channel.So when protests that don't constitute a "riot" are on TV, follow the money and see who's interests are at the bottom. ------------------------------
491<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>pepper spray and blunt objects.</p> </blockquote> <p>That'll work when someone enters with a handgun.... ------------------------------
492Aren't the tunnels frightening on a bike? ------------------------------
493<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Denver airport is quite nice</p> </blockquote> <p>And very creepy lol. Those murals... ------------------------------
494<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>You're right that desperate violent people will find a way, but this is an incredibly cherry-picked example, isn't it? In general, knife attacks have far lower death tolls. When I was living in China there was a spate of eight school stabbings, and the death toll averaged out to about 3 deaths per incident.</p> </blockquote> <p>Knives is not the best example. IED's or car-bombs might be a better one. </p> <blockquote> <p>Guns are a lovely safety blanket, but they're not going to be an effective defense against tyranny in the US at this point.</p> </blockquote> <p>Maybe so, but when the robocops close in, I'd rather have a trusty 1911 with me.</p> <blockquote> <p>edit: that said, I saw your other comment about <a href="/r/collapse" rel="nofollow">/r/collapse</a>, 5c warming, etc. That, I think, is a very valid reason to own and know how to use guns, and it's a big part of the reason I am a gun owner as well (but fuck the NRA). Shit could (and probably will) get very ugly. I need to stockpile more stuff....</p> </blockquote> <p>I'm with you there, my friend. Maine's a good place for it.  ------------------------------
495<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>One of the benefits of living in a capitalist, non anarchist society is that i dont know how to hunt, farm, or gather. </p> </blockquote> <p>And what happens when farming becomes impossible, or the oil required to run the machines which transport bacon or bread to you becomes impossibly expensive? Then, you're fucked, and you'll sign up for the first warlord-racket you can that will feed your ass - since all you ever learned to do was ride on the top of the cream. Anarchy in inherently anti-technological. And by "technological" I don't mean a butterknife, I mean <em>systems</em> of technology which are far more vast than a single human mind could comprehend, manipulate, or create with their hands from local materials. Because these systems have taken a life of their own which discards any human notion of freedom or dignity by nature. Warm showers and never having to feel the blood squirt out of the hogs you eat in your hot dogs is not worth the tradeoff that always seems to happen historically. </p> <blockquote> <p>If i grow corn and my neighbor grows corn as well, whats to stop me from killing him and taking his land?</p> </blockquote> <p>Well, because he's more useful to your as a friend than as a corpse. And probably because if you go around killing people in a society that practices self-defense on an individual and a community basis, you'll wind up dead sooner or later. An armed society is indeed a polite society. </p> <blockquote> <p>on the national level it cant work.</p> </blockquote> <p>No? What happens when the entire "national level" collapses entirely? Then it either must work, or stock up and lay low.  ------------------------------
496Learn the same stuff from former green berets. I believe some do teach these skills to civilians for cash. ------------------------------
497I mean, if you go special forces and get SERE training maybe. But that is not easy to do. You essentially have to have a career in the military to obtain that training.  ------------------------------
498I wasn't highlighting Obama's murderous activity to pick on him or imply that's why I wouldn't vote for him. There are plenty of reasons why I didn't vote for him or Bush (or Hillary or Trump). I was merely saying that liberals are not free of cognitive dissonance - they close their ears when the candidates they like do reprehensible things. This is as much a feature of liberals as it is of conservatives, despite what one crowd my tell you about the other. In both crowds, you have people who vote entirely around one or two issues and close their ears to all the bad that comes along with their favored candidate. I'm offering no excuses for any party; I'm simply describing how most individuals tend to think politically. Realistically, we've got to get priorities straight as individuals thinking politically. Obviously, the EPA and Paris Accords should trump everything, but unfortunately, they won't. Neither party did much in terms of what is required to slow climate change to a "we'll maybe survive" level - reduction of demand for energy. Obama paid his lip service, and the republicans close their ears. IPCC has set a <em>very</em> conservative outlook for AGW, and both Paris and Kyoto set very meagre and ineffectual goals even for this conservative outlook. Modern capitalist nation states have succumbed to the multi-billion-dollar denial industry, so we can scrap the idea that we'll stop the runaway effect. So, with that in mind, we've got one hell of a shitstorm ahead. 500ppm, 5-7c warming, Blue Ocean Event / Greenland melting and the subsequent sea level rise. Not to speak of peak oil, desertification of breadbasket regions of the world, and acidification of the oceans. So in my order of priorities, my next priority would be survival. Guns are important for doing this, both for hunting, self-defense on an individual basis, and self-defense on a community level. This means being prepared for low-intensity localized warfare. Giving guns up to the government, particularly when that government is a billionaires-only plutocracy in which we have no influence (except where that system allows us to feel like we're influencing it), is suicidal. Thus, whatever candidate allows me to stock up on weapons - including "assault weapons", whatever the hell that means - is marginally better than any other. They are generally the same otherwise, regardless of what Fox or NPR tells you. More austerity measures, more robocops (Obama dumped a helluva lot of milsurp on local police departments - so that's not a republican thing), and no meaningful action on climate change. If you're concerned about deaths, anyway, I'd say you'd have a better shot at organizing against the police. They murdered 900 last year alone - many times the amount killed in mass shootings or by CCW holders. That or organize to ban cars and fund mass transit - cars kill many thousands each year. Oh, and don't try to tell me "I perceive the left wants to take my guns". They <em>do</em> want to take them. NYS made AR's illegal unless you chop them up into the most ridiculous weapons. MN and other states is trying to ban semi-autos (try defending yourself against a bear with just one shot). Hell, when my grandpa died, the police took all his handguns. And anyway, y'all aren't "the left". Leftists are communists and socialists - you're center-right neoliberals. ------------------------------
499<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Either way, I respect your viewpoint and appreciate your candid yet civil response. It really sucks that there has been so much hate surrounding this issue instead of calm, intelligent, and transparent debate.</p> </blockquote> <p>Thanks. I fully agree, the mudslinging has gotten out of control. One of the most interesting posts I've found on Reddit this year was over in <a href="/r/collapse" rel="nofollow">/r/collapse</a>, which if you couldn't tell, I'm a frequenter of. The post is <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/6udh1u/social_justice_the_alt_right_and_the_collapse_of/dlspxzp/" rel="nofollow">here</a>, and describes the rise of modern American outrage culture, brought to you by Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes. I think this phenomenon has a lot to do with how this issue is being discussed - because politics is emotionally charged as all hell anyway (to get views for big media / big internet outlets), but with guns, you have a lot of people who have real emotions about the issue in addition to those drummed up by a predatory media - and not just Fox news. As far as the safety of the family goes, I understand the feeling entirely, I simply believe it's been misdirected by the media and the politicos - usually on both sides of the fence. Republican types are just as bad about generating pro-gun sentiment by scaring poor white people with the "threat" of black crime. The liberals do the same thing when they're telling us to be scared of gun enthusiasts and those who carry everyday instead of the police, driving in cars, and drinking liquor - all of which are far more deadly than school shootings or CCW-holders. Either way, they're keeping the people passionate about <em>something</em>, which gets folks to vote, and that's what matters to the plutocrats.Me? I just want to be ready for when shit hits the fan and you can't get discount chicken at Wal Mart anymore. When people start going apeshit because their AC doesn't work, gas is $15/gallon, and there isn't any more kingsize Mountain Dew at McD's, the federal government will be cracking down and shit will get real. A few AR's won't hurt when those days come around. See you at 500ppm, $300/barrel, and 5c warming! ------------------------------
500I mean, the system is designed to turn people into single-issue voters. The liberals voted in a war criminal who murdered an American Citizen under 18 with a predator drone, often, because they wanted gay marriage or affirmative action. The republicans vote in these complete assholes often simply because they don't want to turn their guns in to a corrupt state in which they have no democratic recourse if gun restrictions get out of control.I mean, shit, I'm an anarchist and I'd rather see a republican in office if only it means that I get to keep my guns. And if liberals decide to disarm the police and the military entirely, actually took action on climate change, and reformed democracy so that it's not a billionaires-only game, I might support them and their desire for gun control. ------------------------------
501Listen, I hate the NRA and I own more guns than I know what to do with. The NRA was instrumental in bringing about gun control laws when the Black Panthers armed themselves - which is a crime against freedom. But the fact of the matter is, I'm not handing my guns over until the US government is a functional democracy. The only way government restrictions and red-tape work is if there is an accountability process for rescinding those restrictions if the powers of the state are abused. And since I'm not a multi-millionaire, I have no recourse when the state gets out of hand until the system changes to be genuinely democratic. It would be insane for us to hand our rights over to a plutocracy. And anyway, the mass shootings are a mental health issue. Which I'm sure you've heard people say, but I've got experience. Tried to kill myself in highschool. Luckily, because my family was educated in gun safety, the guns in the house were out of my reach and I attempted to die via opioid overdose, which was thankfully unsuccessful. My life was miserable because of school and an abusive stepdad. This means families are breaking down and schools are dysfunctional. Take the guns away and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/world/asia/knife-japan-stabbing-sagamihara.html" rel="nofollow">someone desperate will use something else to do themselves or others harm.</a> Nitrogen fertilizer, xanax, knives, alcohol, and cars are legal, and no one is telling us we've got to ban them. The gun issue is a state power issue - they want us to be as easy to govern throughout the duration of the coming shitstorm, when climate change and peak oil threaten US empire. Notice that the police murdered 900 people last year, and no one is talking about disarming cops. And the anti-gun crowd will use any tactics they can to cover these realities up in service of the plutocracy. They'll create garbage words like "assault weapons" when none of them know the difference between a semi-auto and automatic and none of them have ever seen a gun except on a police officer. And from recent events, they're not above using children as pity props to get their agenda furthered. I won't deny that the pro-gunners do similarly deplorable shit, but both crowds aside, one idea has historical merit, and the other is simple blind submission to tyranny that ignores the facts.  ------------------------------
502That would probably make your time spent on the internet much more useful, to be honest. I'd try it. See if I clicked on less idiotic shit people post on the internet. ------------------------------
503I mean, it's not like these kids aren't groomed and put up to making a show for the media, but saying shit like this is out of line. It distracts from the point that the US government and its friends in the media will do anything to work to disarm the people.  ------------------------------
504bugout location ------------------------------
505Yeah, the figures on some of this stuff tend to be pretty conservative, because if the real terror of this situation is made clear, there's no chance for political action and people will just freak out. We're guaranteed - locked-in - for 2-3c this century. If feedback loops are a thing, and it seems like they are, we could head for 5-7c.... in which case, goodbye y'all... ------------------------------
506I'm with you. But first - let me get my BOL set and stocked up. After that, it's back to traveling.  ------------------------------
507<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Work and hierarchy could not be more irrelevant to people who find themselves in these situations, and it goes to show how fabricated and imposed these values are; that is, they're the furthest things from any sort of supposed "natural" inclinations.</p> </blockquote> <p>This is why we are not simply worried about collapse, but many, many people actually want it. And though when that moment of collapse comes, there is an initial moment of relief, I should think, mixed in with the terror, it seems the predominating emotion of anyone experiencing collapse is one of complete terror. Many want to escape, but the bitter struggle that ensues upon being released from hierarchies, work, and the comforts of civilized life is not all it's cracked up to be - at least, until the dust settles. That struggle will kill most, and leave the rest horribly scarred.That's why the future may lie in those who learn to thrive on it, who "collapse themselves" individually here and now. Who can say. What I know is that politics in an age of collapse is impossible at a distance - and by the time that distance shortens, it will be too late for most to bridge the gap between terror and idealistic aspirations.I need to go to bed lol. ------------------------------
508<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>not doable in a western society</p> </blockquote> <p>Then drop out lol. Western society blows. ------------------------------
509<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>many here are hopeless ie. take no action</p> </blockquote> <p>The only thing I dislike about this community. We should have a weekly / monthly thread about what we're doing to survive (without turning this place into a prepper forum) ------------------------------
510Just don't change the zoning and the gun laws and we're good. No libs north of Portland please. ------------------------------
511Jesus Christ everything is science. No, it's just whatever's easiest to think. Stupidity's been around forever. ------------------------------
512sTiRnEr AINT a LeFtiSt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ------------------------------
513<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>I'm against people carrying guns around on their persons everywhere</p> </blockquote> <p>Then I can't see how you're an anarchist, TBH. Sorry to say it, sorry if it's divisive, but if you're support an armed group of people threatening people who carry every day with violence or imprisonment - the only know ways to get people who carry to stop carrying - you're a statist. If you personally prefer not to carry, good on you, but please don't act like it's consistent with freedom to tell others they cannot.I believe in carrying because you never know when the shit's gonna hit the fan. The grid goes down, a rabid dog attacks me on my bike, a pack of coyotes, methheads, or police - you name it.  ------------------------------
514Transhumanist feminism = city sci-fi fans saying to third world mothers with toxic breast milk from mining pollution, "shut up we need your metal for our outrageous techno-sex parties" ------------------------------
515especially for those of us who have to live next to the nuclear reactors and aluminum mines required to build these robots ------------------------------
516holy jesus this is goldeny jesus this is golden shh..jesus this is golden shower ------------------------------
517<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Anarchism is not incompatible with "social order" or "collectivized groups".</p> </blockquote> <p>Absolutely; and this is the difference between "anarchism" and "anarchy". Anarchy is individualistic, it is a state of living for an exemplary individual. Anarchism is the attempt to collectivize the anarchic state of being by individuals who are neither exemplary nor existential aristocrats; and thus, anarchism is a self-devouring snake that attempts to yoke the wild few with the interests of the reptilian "collective". ------------------------------
518I virtually always reject any positive legislation of any sort. When I favor the legislative activity of the state, it's only when it protects my capacities as a free individual. When, for example, the state of Arizona became a constitutional carry state, I supported it. When the government purchases private lands and makes them public, I support it (because even though public management of lands is usually a scam, at least I can camp and hunt there without getting shot). If the government legalizes marijuana, I support it. But when the government says, let's make a program, let's build some new system or bureaucracy, or let's erect some grand project which will require me to pay more taxes, I'm against it. I wouldn't say other anarchists who would disagree with me are more "libertarian", I'd say they're collectivists. I'm an individualist and absolutely against any kind of "society". ------------------------------
519Absolutely true. The internet is useful generally only inasmuch as it allows you to obtain primary sources, opinions to take with a grain of salt, and to potentially meet people IRL.  ------------------------------
520I mean, if he's roped in.... ------------------------------
521Mostly, anarchists who are in support of government legislation and programs are either former liberals, raised by liberals, or middle class in origin. Rare is the anarchist in support of government programs and laws of any sort who has ever been dealt direct blows from the state, paid taxes, or seen the ways in which the state uses a "helping hand" as a "neat trick" to induce people to not only not revolt, but to keep their heads down thankfully, vote democrat or republican, and keep "reforming". ------------------------------
522Lol coal is going to be massively important this century, when oil supplies drop. See the recent HSBC report on the medium-term oil outlook. ------------------------------
523Exactly. But while <em>agri-</em> means "field", <em>horti-</em> means "garden". Small scale growing could occur with the right preps. Though I'm USDA zone 5a, I'm stocking up on seeds for zones 2b through 9. When things change, I'm stocked. ------------------------------
524Ha, I managed it for a couple years at a liberal arts college in New England. Squatted in dorms, stealth-squatted in unused college buildings, sneaked into the dining hall, sneaked into classes, used the library every day nearly all day. Nothing illegal about it. When sleeping in the dorms, I was "staying with friends" legally. I was eating on a "guest pass" in the dining hall if asked. And at classes, I was "informally auditing". No problems ever. Just pick a low-security school and fake it til you make it. No one ever even asked me for ID. ------------------------------
525Thanks! Will be posting it up everywhere. <a href="/r/collapse" rel="nofollow">/r/collapse</a> meets redneck revolt meets Max Stirner and the FAI is what I want to put out lol ------------------------------
526No shit, I'm in. ------------------------------
527Interesting, thanks. ------------------------------
528You go to rainbow? Never would have guessed. I never went because I hate hippies but maybe I'd try it.. ------------------------------
529Ha I had a bridge once in Truckee CA where I had wifi, and a cafe 500 feet away with a girl barista that liked me and let me take books from the cafe and gave me unlimited free espresso every day.I stayed for two weeks! ------------------------------
530These are huge meals, right? 2000 calories daily still? What if you hike or cycle a lot? ------------------------------
531Are your kidneys worse off if you were ever an alcoholic? ------------------------------
532You know, I almost wonder about local governments experimenting with "sex licenses". To get your sex license, get tested once every 3 months. Not a legally binding thing - still legal to fuck anyone you like - but a local program to give people some peace of mind. If someone showed me some sort of card like this before we fucked, I'd rest easier. ------------------------------
533Was just gonna say, great for hiking and camping! ------------------------------
534Or a shitload of seeds, a greenhouse, and bullets ------------------------------
535There are a few places but I'm not telling ------------------------------
536From upstate NY, never saw a tick here until maybe three years ago.  ------------------------------
537Horticultural if we're smart about the descent. I'd like to dedicate my life to offering information to the surviving generation that would give a strong critique of agriculture, cities, and industrial tech.. ------------------------------
538Having the flair on this post set to "brigade in process" is unecessary. Moderate the comments and move on, no? ------------------------------
539Uh, hopefully not on Svalbard. The last thing I'd want to do up there when a polar bear is coming at me is reload. I want to dump the mag if need be... ------------------------------
540<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>school has no first amendment obligation to provide multiple views.</p> </blockquote> <p>Disgusting ------------------------------
541It's a tough choice. ------------------------------
542I mean, let me first state that the idea of imposing a given way of life on the rest of the country / world is not something I would do generally, but more importantly, it's not something I or any of us can do. I am an individualist because I begin with myself - my only certainty. From there, how societies and subcultures form or disband is a process I can only participate meaningfully in on a local basis. But anyway, to entertain the idea, sure, I think the Slabs has a lot to offer the rest of the world in terms of weathering the coming shitstorm presented by climate change / peak oil / etc etc. The Slabs is an American shantytown. It's Americans figuring out for themselves, voluntarily or semi-voluntarily most of the time, the same things that many slum dwellers in the third world have been forced by dire poverty to figure out. They're all learning skills there that translate to an apocalypse scenario - use and reuse of waste materials, very low water use, conservation of resources, handy ways to folk engineer your way out of the problems presented by a harsh landscape, etc. If more people had these skills, and the understandings inherent to them regarding things like technology and politics, we'd be better off when the shit hits the fan, and creating anarchy day-by-day would be easier for many. My main critique would be to include skills associated with gathering food along with these skills. The Slabs does not farm, hunt, or gather. Without these skills, one perishes. I would also advocate that this sort of culture be exported to a place with <em>water</em>! The desert is a dangerous place to be for the fact that water is not there. One long drought would end life there.I would say the Slabs are an individualist anarchist society. Each is there to look out for himself, alongside others who are looking out for themselves individually in similar conditions. This creates a field-expedient communism that expires the moment conditions change for different individuals. It's like "we're communists for now, but once we part ways, we still have ourselves and no debts to one another". ------------------------------
543Well, there are some big differences that I've already covered a bit. Where Catalonia had a reasonable degree of ideological unity, as well as organization in the form of councils, assemblies, etc devoted to managing production, tactics, etc, the Slabs has none of that. Every individual is there to do their own thing, and each person's path is united with the others only through negative freedoms - "we don't want regulations" and "we don't want bosses or the rat-race" etc. There is not much in the way of positive projects, save for the positive project of recovering from whatever former lives as workers, prisoners, hard-time travelers, or whatever people led up to the point of arriving at slabs, and having a good time at it. There have been attempts at erecting organizations in the Slabs, but none seem to have been successful - and, in fact, it's probably better they haven't, as organizations in non-war conditions tend to create ideological homogeneity, and, in the present-day US, a "scene" with a usually self-righteous in-crowd.Catalonia had the "luxury", to use a maybe dubious phrase here, of wartime forcing people to choose a side. Though much more complex than this, to put it curtly, if you weren't an anarchist, you were a fascist or a communist. This makes questions of unity a lot easier to answer, because the situation is - unite or die. The Slabs is not at war. The option of ducking out and simply leaving, or remaining and patently ignoring whatever councils have been designed and put in place, always remains and has been exercised by many in the past. Thus, no attempt at organizing would be successful unless an existential threat to the community was looming, and even then, as transients, most would find somewhere else to gather again. This does not make it bad, just different. In fact, it seems to be a positive thing. Nomadic cultures, as the anonymously written anarchist text <em>Desert</em> states, are always flying in the face of organized societies. They disregard borders and disperse whenever a central power attacks. They are resilient because of the demands of a life in constant motion. And in the case of the Slabs, they are diverse because no one present attempts to enforce their ideological worldview. Each is out for himself, alongside others who are out for themselves in similar conditions. I wouldn't say it's a stretch to call it egoist communism in action. Last, the Slabs is not organized around production, where the CNT was. They are simply subsisting, and usually subsisting off of waste and natural materials. In this way, they are not primitivists per se, but could be called "post-civilized". They do not tend to erect new means of production, and most seem opposed to the idea, generally; however, they readily make use of automobiles, solar panels, various internet apparata, and so forth, and when they break or fall apart, they either find another one for free or cheap, or they go without. So, TL;DR, they're a nomadic egoist-communist, Mad Max-ian version of the CNT, in a post-industrial nation that is not experiencing a domestic war.  ------------------------------
544I ask myself this question all the time, when vehement anti-primitivists (who seem to get off on divisiveness) condemn any stance that is not expressly pro-tech. Most natives I have met and read are very skeptical and often outright against industrial civilization and the culture of cities more broadly. Most seem to be making demands for ecological justice that would not be compatible with any industrial system imaginable. I think most pro-civilization anarchists have an extremely naive view of alternative energy that clouds their worldview into thinking it would be possible to resolve the conflict between indigenous self-determination and the techno-industrial system. As though one could smelt stainless steel with solar energy or something. And even if technically possible, to manage to change the entire global system over to alt energy before industrial collapse - which strikes me and many others as likely within the century, if not the next few decades - worsens exponentially would be a herculean feat. I think mostly, people want to have their cake and eat it too. They're addicted to comfort. They want their AC and pineapple smoothies in wintertime and their comfy beds and meat they don't have to kill and to never see carrying capacity corrections in the human population - and they want these impossibly tall orders alongside their ideas regarding justice and what is morally right, even when these two sets of desires are outright in conflict. And if they conflict, they look away and convince themselves that something is different - the denial stage of grief, writ in a distinctly first-world manner. It's as craven as it is absurd.  ------------------------------
545<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Agriculture</p> </blockquote> <p>Even this is a big "maybe". Evidence of <em>horticulture</em>, certainly. One does not find "field" culture (<em>agri-</em>) until one heads to the SW United States and Mexico. ------------------------------
546Looks really good, thanks for this. Curious, what equipment do you need to do something like this? I am thinking of starting an online radio / podcast sort of affair myself. ------------------------------
547No problem. Any questions feel free to ask. Didn't live there too long but got a pretty good grasp on the place in the two seasons I stayed. ------------------------------
548Yes, absolutely. Idealists may beg to differ, but the truth of what anarchy can be sometimes requires us to take the good with the bad and the ugly. There's meth use. There's some (limited) theft. There's sexism and domestic disputes. But out and out, there is a community that swells to 2,000+ people each winter coexisting without any form of centralized government. People even raise their kids here. People practice self-defense generally - which starts with proactively avoiding conflicts when possible - and when someone does something super egregious, and talking them into being sensible is not possible / doesn't work, they physically remove them and/or burn down their camp.People there share a lot. If you're broke, (or just a scumbag who mooches), you could eat a couple decent meals a day, drink coffee each morning, use the internet, and smoke cigarettes and weed, drink alcohol and water and drop acid occasionally, all without money. If you're so inclined to help people out in lieu of money, you could get nicer meals, more booze, books, and materials and equipment to build a really nice camp. Help the right people and you may find yourself getting a truck, a gun, or something really nice. Bathing is free (in the canal and in the hot spring). Also, the police do not come there often. When they do, they do not get out of the vehicle unless rolling deep and usually keep their hands on their weapons - because they're outnumbered and subsequently try to stay the fuck off what is clearly not their turf. There is also some production of useful goods. There are people who refurbish bikes, cook and serve food, build solar panels, fix cars, even raise animals with some success and limited amounts of trade. There is a trade circle every week in the winter where you can get some great deals on anything under the sun and almost always without much money. Mexican Cigarettes are sometimes currency there, as is weed, acid, and a few other commodities. One problem, long-term, is many people there are on food stamps - which, if the state goes under, I'm not sure the community could farm its way to self-sufficiency. That's why I don't live there anymore, in case SHTF.The main problem with slabs, from the perspective of sustaining anarchy, is that its occupants leave in the summer. (It might be cooler if we could obtain some free land up north in Oregon for the summer or something) This is something of a boon, as it "resets" the community, opening up camp spots and abandoned materials for building each year, and can shake up the social order of the place. Very few people live there all year - but the ones who do occasionally get on their high horse about having seniority which can lead to shitty consequences. I once met this kid, who had claimed to have lived there for 9 years, after he picked me up hitchhiking to the place; we proceeded to get drunk and head to the library, where a guy was watching over the spot for the woman that runs the library while she was away. She had instructed this guy to turn away drunks and partiers to keep things low key, but Mr. Seniority decided his standing in the community trumped that, and decided to physically assault the dude standing watch at the library. Folks at the sidelines decided to let them scuffle it out until Mr. Seniority picked up a pipe. Then I and several others tackled him and removed him to his van. The next morning, Mr Seniority decided to head to the other guy's camp, tie him up, trash his camp, and drive him - tied to his van roof - into town to be banished. So there are several takehomes. This guy, who was so high-and-mighty, was a drunk, first off, so booze can fuck things up a lot. He also was the sort of guy at the margins of society who has only lived in survival mode, and thus, has a hard time functioning in a community of equals. Education would help this, as well as making the area hostile to people who do not add to the community. Last, self-defense is paramount. Had we not been there, that kid at the library might have taken a 2" pipe to the skull and bled out - he should have been armed. The reason slabs ultimately succeeds, however - and this will make some types of anarcho-purists cringe - is because it is such an individualistic place. It supports a diversity of folks. Some people are religious fundamentalist libertarians, some are anarchists, some are apolitical acid-heads, some are just retired and want some cheap peace and quiet. Everyone gets along and is brought together by a desire to not be fucked with by Big Bully / Uncle Sam or anyone else. The area was pretty instrumental in my tending toward individualist anarchism, because there I saw it was not formal organizations or collectivist idealism that aided people in resisting governance, it was the establishment of informal social norms. If ever you want to or get the opportunity to create an autonomous zone, silently engineering these social norms is fucking <em>key</em>, as is allowing diverse individuals to do their thing side-by-side. Think of the Taoist teaching that the "best leader is the one who does not govern at all". You might see and hear some shit you don't like, but that's just you're opinion that you don't like it until they cross a line and actually do someone physical harm. When physical assault comes, it's go-time. If you think this way you may find yourself entering relationships of mutual respect with everyone from other anarchists, liberals, and dropouts to republicans, racists, murderers-on-the-run, and general creeps, where you can help educate and influence them to be better - and run them off if that's not possible. You can see what's good about them, interact with that, and make it a long-term effort to help them out instead of rejecting them outright for not looking the right way or saying the right thing. I remember drinking whiskey with a guy there from Alabama with a confederate flag tattooed to his chest, who after one season of hanging out with some illegal immigrants, tattooed underneath his flag "Rebel Sons for La Raza". He was a cool guy who showed a capacity to learn and take his mistakes and own them even into the point of reclaiming them in an impossible-seeming way. Shit would make a lot of folks heads spin and their neat-and-tidy theories blow the fuck up.And the last thing I'll say regarding the slabs is that it is not exempt from gentrification and safari culture. All the time when I lived there LA people in Bentley's would roll through taking photos of me half-naked drinking coffee in the morning, because Chris McCandless went there and it's "hip" and "boho" and like a "long-term burning man". And weird bourgeois art kids would show up - some of the East Jesus crowd, from what I could discern - and make themselves at home, bringing their self-righteous baggage with them. Luckily, the desert heat, lack of water, and the rough, armed crowd generally keeps the place free of this sort of shit. If you're thinking of going there, and you aren't already on the ragged margins of society / a dropout / poor and ratchet as fuck, I personally recommend you don't seek it out, but find your way there as you drop out of polite society. If you've still got ties to polite society you intend to maintain, stay the fuck out. That's my opinion.  ------------------------------
549Absolutely. If there is a good middle-ground, it is to drop out and remain at university to use the facilities to self-educate. ------------------------------
550That's actually good to know. I may send my agent a lower offer for the property I'm looking at than I had intended. Some of these properties near the coast at ~$1200/acre with no power or amenities have been sitting on listhub for two years. Might be able to dip down to $700-$800/acre. ------------------------------
551Fair, probably not. Nevertheless, rejecting opportunities to decentralize strikes me as a bad move. Smaller states are easier to topple, historically. ------------------------------
552For the record, not all drop-outs leave because of financial reasons. I dropped out because as an anarchist, I am absolutely opposed to an institution which makes arbitrary demands of students in the form of assignments and calls it "education". As Frank Zappa said, if you want to get laid, go to college; if you want an education, go to the library. ------------------------------
553<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Because youtube is mostly a reactionary shithole</p> </blockquote> <p>Which is our fault. We need to be making and maintaining youtube channels more actively. ------------------------------
554I mean, by this logic, one could argue pretty easily that liberals are anarchists. Their arguments stem from a patent lack of understanding of how civilization works, and the far right is correct that Enlightenment idealism is a death knell for Western Civilization. One needs brute authoritarianism and arbitrary hierarchies to maintain civilization, and that liberals reject those, or at least make the appearance of rejecting them would mean the consequences of their ideas will lead to a breakdown of Western Civ and the spread of anarchic revolt, regardless of what they say. From the perspective of the state, anarchists should be rounded up and killed. The state would survive longer if it used force to make us afraid to act and speak. But it doesn't, because of the conscience of liberals, and thus, by their half-assed "egalitarianism", we find ourselves as anarchists in a position to grow. I'm no Sargon of Akkad fan, not by any means, but to confute the matter in the way you're suggesting is borne entirely of a desire to "draw the hardest line". It's a purity politics that ratchets up the militancy of discourse for aesthetic reasons and has the long-term effect of splitting language in two. If we accept your argument, "fascism" means one thing to a tiny enclave of "true believer" anarchists, and another thing to everyone else. This is irresponsible to me, because ensuring that the meaning of words retains some constancy is the best way to avoid violence. I'm strapped, I'm tactically trained, and I believe violence is necessary, but if we can use discourse to avoid it, we should. What you're suggesting limits the possibility of discourse by saying "which side are you on" in too black-and-white of a way. We need to be flexible with our language for the sake of reaching out to others and building networks of mutual aid. ------------------------------
555Yeah but EU is neoliberal as fuck tho. It's like, I think Brexit was good for none of the same reasons most Brits who supported it did. ------------------------------
556Wait, isn't trainhopping lifestylism? I know the anarchists would tell me it is. If marxism is pro-trainhopping I'm switching ------------------------------
557If you're username is an indication of where you're located, let me tell you, the difference between Texas (where I believe many counties have no codes for owner-occupied structures) and, say, Massachusetts is night and day. In a lot of the Northeast, codes make it so you can't even legally camp on your land. Want to fix your porch? Get an architect to draw up a plan for thousands of dollars and pay a few hundred for the permits - you'll have to submit them and re-submit them over trifles at a board meeting and it will take months. Want to have a chicken coop? Zoning forbids it. Want to try experimental building styles or alternative greywater and waste disposal systems? Illegal. So if you're committed to the northeast, you've got to do your homework and make sure you're clear of all that bullshit.  ------------------------------
558$2000/acre or less, if you're willing to be pretty remote. Landlocked way less. ------------------------------
559Roughly, yes.  ------------------------------
560Yeah, you are not wrong by any means. Monotonous and dangerous seems to be just the word. That's why the land there is so dang cheap. I considered Aroostook but Down east is more my flavor. A little monotony, a little danger, but the ocean's there. You can't beat the ocean. ------------------------------
561Wow I have used Reddit for years and I never even noticed that function. Thanks for the tip lol ------------------------------
562Yeah, they're definitely out there. And they run a full spectrum, from hardcore urban squatter women riding freight trains and blackout drinking, all the way to women living in vans with rottweilers and sticking to wilderness areas. From what I understand, it's a matter of sticking to the right regions and the right modes of travel. Hitchhiking can get a bit sketchy obviously, but there's a difference between hitchhiking in rural New England and urban Missouri or California. I think, from what I can see, that long-term bicycle touring from Pennsylvania to Newfoundland would be the safest bet. Perhaps the same could be said of the stretch from Alaska to Oregon. Rural areas are the safest, with the exception of Indian Reservations, the Southeast, and areas with a lot of methamphetamine. As a woman, you've got options no matter where you travel or how: roll with another woman, with a dog, with a man you trust, or with a weapon. Of course, I'm only talking about the US and Canada. Much of Europe is incredibly safe from all I've been told, but I don't have experience there. ------------------------------
563That's true. This guy in particular seems pretty yupped-out. But I'd say the sentiment isn't untrue. I've spent plenty of time as a barefoot sinner (not so sure about being a saint) ------------------------------
564<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>This isn't the 1400s any more with barefoot saints.</p> </blockquote> <p>Why not? It's free to sleep outside, rice is cheap, and a bicycle can get you pretty far. ------------------------------
565<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Oh I know; but if you’re poor enough to qualify, you aren’t traveling the world.</p> </blockquote> <p>Maybe, but I've done it. And hell, even better is to save an extra few hundred and head down to Mexico when you need a fix-up. ------------------------------
566You'd have to be third-world poor to be unable to be afford to travel, to be honest. Not saying it to be rude. It just requires an adjustment to your standards. You won't be staying at the Wingate; you'll be camping, couchsurfing, squatting, or just plain sleeping where the sleeping's good and free. Nor will you be taking taxis, trains, etc. Try riding a bike, hitchhiking, canoeing, or simply walking. Cook your meals outside on a camp stove, buy rice and beans and bananas and peanut butter. Pick wild berries and greens. If you can, carry a .22 and bag squirrels and rabbits. Fish if the water's clean. Whatever cash you've got, use it on the occasional restaurant or bar when there's friends to be made.I've done this shit for six years with usually between $1500-2000 a year. No inheritance nor silver spoon. Take work when you can get it, or try to find an online job. And another thing, don't expect to take a week off from flipping burgers to do this. Expect to quit your job and get another one after a few months (or years) of travel. Just about anyone from the US, Canada, or Europe can afford it. ------------------------------
567Boy would that be a project - and it'd be tough to keep it updated! But well worth it. I bet someone could run a pretty nice site doing that. I'd pay a few bucks to see a map like that. ------------------------------
568Absolutely. I figure if I paid less than a grand to build it, I don't need insurance. More than that and yeah, that probably makes sense. ------------------------------
569It's true, though a few of them seem to be down east. I like remoteness anyhow. They call The County "east Alaska" and that sounds about right to me. ------------------------------
570I'm not certain, honestly. If anything, this list of towns would indicate which ones are most relaxed just for the fact of being remote and small. But it does seem that since MUBEC went into effect, bringing remote areas up to code has been a process, and it seems possible that these areas listed have been exempted. Hopefully someone who knows could let us know here if this list is meaningful or not.Edit: found this <a href="https://www.maine.gov/dps/bbcs/Chapters%201-6/MUBEC%20Chap%201%20Jan%202015.doc">https://www.maine.gov/dps/bbcs/Chapters%201-6/MUBEC%20Chap%201%20Jan%202015.doc</a>which says "These Codes shall not limit the use of non-traditional or experimental construction, including, but not limited to straw bale and earth berm construction." Which is promising. ------------------------------
571Definitely. Hamilton, St Lawrence, and Lewis counties strike me as the best, if not simply for their remoteness. Best of luck. It is gorgeous land. Were it not for the government, I'd spend my life here. ------------------------------
572Weird, never heard of that. I'm a luddite who's been homeless for six years and lives in the woods most of the time. ------------------------------
573Ha, good luck. I'm from NY and let me tell you, I don't think there are comparable towns here. Now, if you have a good amount of land and keep a low profile, making sure your structures can't be seen from the road, you may get away with it... but someday, disaster may strike. That's why I'm hoping to leave (that and the restrictive gun laws and taxes) ------------------------------
574Why are you in this sub lol ------------------------------
575Why not a discord? ------------------------------
576Absolutely, was not aiming to imply a non-consensual procedure by any means. ------------------------------
577I must assume that simply consuming pregnant mare urine without some other processing would not only be inadequate, but disgusting? ------------------------------
578Thanks for the reply!I have poked around <a href="/r/transDIY" rel="nofollow">/r/transDIY</a> and even found a couple folks who seem to know some seriously hardcore chemistry and have messaged them regarding this. Will be interested to see if they reply and will definitely update in this sub if I get any good information. I may post a thread in that sub too.You mentioned orchiectomies; I wonder how having this procedure done would affect hormone intake and dosages and if it would limit negative effects. While obviously women are not sheep, I have seen sheep castrated with rubber bands and anti-biotics on farms I've worked at. While painful for about a week, there may be a way to home-brew this procedure safely? Garlic and honey are exceedingly useful in eliminating infections of wounds. Maybe far-fetched, but if it could be a possible jumping-off point, maybe useful. I've also come across some information regarding the use of both pregnant mare urine, as mentioned in this thread, as well as the consumption of bovine ovaries. In my bioregion, one must hunt deer to survive, and in this case, it would be a simple matter of cutting out the ovaries and distributing them to trans members of the community. Gruesome, maybe, but a simple fact of survival in the Great North. For FTM, perhaps the testicles of bulls could be consumed.Of course, as you said in your final paragraph, food, water, safety, and a community of understanding people is paramount. Perhaps the best prep for a bad situation is simply continuing the work of spreading a culture of support and respect for trans people. And even more than this, without appropriating Native American cultures, there is a pretty vast history of gender-fluid and, from what I can tell, transgender norms for some members of those communities. It could help matters greatly to develop a set of rituals to celebrate these folks and give them a sense of belonging, so that they feel important and loved.  ------------------------------
579This argument is absolutely sound; for more on this read the book by Peter Gelderloos called <a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state" rel="nofollow">How Nonviolence Protects the State</a>. ------------------------------
580<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Left wing politics is about wanting more from the government </p> </blockquote> <p>Not so sure about this one. Many anarchists are left-wing and believe in giving power to local councils that organize production and distribution democratically. ------------------------------
581oh cool, just curious ------------------------------
582Sorry, what'd you say? I couldn't hear you over the sound of me chopping wood, building an earthship, and doing target practice exercises. Microflora in a dying human don't grieve - they fight to become something new that can thrive in a rotting corpse. ------------------------------
583Am interested in who made this. I like that there are sources, I just am careful to not delve too deeply into over-the-top collapse media. Some of the Guy McPherson-esque types can get loony ------------------------------
584Good god... This in combination with the Student Loan Bubble, the Chinese version of the American 2008 housing crash looming, things could get interesting economically. Buy bullets, buy seeds, and get hunting and gardening y'all! ------------------------------
585There's some evidence that these sorts of distractions were planted into radical leftism by the CIA a few decades ago. <a href="http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-cia-reads-french-theory-on-the-intellectual-labor-of-dismantling-the-cultural-left/">http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-cia-reads-french-theory-on-the-intellectual-labor-of-dismantling-the-cultural-left/</a> ------------------------------
586Oh yeah I burned my hand bad after heading down the hill into Bullhead City AZ from NV once. Was very shocked for some reason lol ------------------------------
587Not if you invite others to live with you on your land ------------------------------
588More if you include the US government, which is essentially a gang ------------------------------
589not ironic ------------------------------
590Nah, just cash out your student loans, use it to buy land, and then get on Income Based Repayment and keep your income low. Might as well take it while you can. ------------------------------
591Not sure who thought this was a good idea.. ------------------------------
592Their counter-argument is "I'm scared, both by scary black guns and by scary hillbillies and gangstas" ------------------------------
593Not sure, Hitler was very creepily interested in Native Americans. I believe he thought they may even be genetically superior to whites. ------------------------------
594I think we need to retire the term "lifestylism", to be honest. In earnest, Bookchin meant it in bad faith, and the strain of anarchism he was describing was not entirely based around a change of lifestyle. It confutes the matter greatly that he painted with such a broad polemic brush. One almost hopes he was drunk when he wrote Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism; an Unbridgeable Chasm. What he really meant was an individualistic approach; he's firing off this shitty essay at every anarchist who is not aiming to build a collectivist "rank-and-file-movement"; Primitivists, egoists, individualists, insurrectionists, post-leftists. These ideas were emergent at the time - the seeds of a movement within anarchism that is just now solidifying. Because they were not based on union-organizing and a strict obsession with class struggle, he thought the only thing one could change but organzing tactics was one's "lifestyle".This is because, in the mechanistic and alienating worldview of one who views the human individual so scientifically, the human individual is not so important. They can eat different things, wear different things, say different things, but they're essentially just one granule of the big picture; society and history....In earnest, the "lifestylists" he describes had no idea of an "anarchist society" so much as many of them did and still believe that one's own existence is their highest certainty, and above all, each much defend his own uniqueness by any means necessary. If, in this individual struggle, others are found, all the better - but where collectivist, leftist organizing, the sort that so enamored Bookchin, demands we put the abstract ideas, the collective, and society first, and follow each with our own life, the "lifestylist" tendency states that we would be well-served by doing just the opposite - using ourselves and what we want as the point of departure and the most solid thing to hold onto, and going from there.Instead of saying "it is a moral wrong that workers the world over must work such long and harsh hours - and so we've gone on strike!" the individualist says "I've worked enough 12-hour days and burnt my hands enough on that stupid sewing machine - that's why I've quit and set the place on fire!" ------------------------------
595<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>violent SHAC protests.</p> </blockquote> <p>SHAC was nonviolent.... not sure who died other than the animals Huntingdon killed ------------------------------
596Oh whoops, did not see it. Thanks! ------------------------------
597Shit, really? I clicked the link on the thread from a couple weeks ago and it told me it's expired. ------------------------------
598Give them an inch, they'll take a mile. If anyone should know this, it's anarchists. ------------------------------
599People will piss and moan about the snow, but I'll tell you what - I've been everywhere, and I mean everywhere in the US, but nothing beats the great white north. The land pulls you back to reality and forces you to realize that you're a little piss-ant on the face of the earth. From there, you either work yourself into a tizzy of misery to ignore that call, or you succumb to it and let the land tell you the whole story. After leaving and returning, you couldn't take me out of the snow. Never. ------------------------------
600Jesus, I missed this. Thatcher? Try Stirner. ------------------------------
601<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>One social relation is replaced by another. In order for the social relation to cease but not be replaced, the people would have to cease to exist or be sent to opposite ends of the planet.</p> </blockquote> <p>It's interesting to see how you're discussing people and their social relations in such an abstract manner, as though these sorts of things were mathematical. Are you so certain that human individuals are so feeble-minded that they cannot escape a "code of conduct" or an essentialized image of themselves and what they "ought" to be doing? To me, this is remarkably cynical, not to speak of alienating; as it requires, like Marxism, a class of historical experts to manage human life. A few things I might add to the interaction y'all are having here; The trouble with a positive direction, the sort of thing you're arguing for, is that for this to be effective and genuinely liberatory, there must be some sort of functioning democracy in determining what that is and how it will change. To me, each anarchist space I have been in that was "democratic" was an utter shitshow. I've worked at worker-owned businesses, I've lived collectively for years, I've been a part of organizing efforts, and all were remarkably inefficient, patently unable to represent the interests of all, and generally resulted, over time, in splintering over concerns of ideology and action. This splintering could be viewed a few ways. By someone like you, and correct me if I'm wrong, it's simply a reason to delve even further toward perfect democracy. Keep trying, keep the faith, keep reworking things. Well, I've done that for many years, and it hasn't yielded anything. Another way to view that splintering is to think that "the problem is the solution". Rather than continuously resisting a perennial problem with the same means, you simply find creative ways to make use of that tendency. This might mean adjusting one's perspective - often quite radically. And so, roughly termed, "individualist" anarchism has seen a resurgence. It's much more popular than it seems you're imagining. In a great deal of Europe, South America, and (though less so) the United States, individualism is strong. I often find it to be a majority opinion, albeit packaged differently in each person. The individualist perspective is an excellent balm against the head-against-the-wall feeling collectivist organizing seems to yield. Rather than maintaining an artificial sense of unity, and ostracizing those who disagree, one simply embraces a multitude of individualities and begins to live for themselves rather than a cause. Often, I find that collectivists reject individualist thought simply because it's a scary thought to imagine creating oneself from nothing, unattached to some "higher meaning". I know for me, a former Catholic quite comfortable with the idea of service to God, I swapped God out for the revolution all too quickly, and loathed egoists for the longest time over what basically amounted to my own existential fears and little more. It wasn't long after reading Stirner that I found myself remodeling my very spirit by casting out every fetter. It changed my relationships, it changed my activism, and it changed my priorities, to simply say -- "I am myself, and owe nothing to anyone. Now, I will attack what I find abhorrent, and indulge in whatever I please, both without remorse."The last thing I'll add is this: Those with a rigid, theoretical, and programmatic conception of anarchy - which we could call <em>anarchism</em>, in juxtaposition to anarchy - tend not to remain anarchists quite as long as individualists. This is simply my observation. Most people who, at 21 identified with collectivist anarchism, are not anarchists any longer by age 40. This is especially true in the US. However nearly all anarchists I've met and seen who remain anarchists staunchly at age 40 or older are individualists of some stripe. Granted, I'm from appalachia, and use the term "individualist anarchism" somewhat loosely, but perhaps these observations would be interesting.Ultimately, "fringe" or not, we're all on the fringe as anarchists. No need to use the word to sling mud. And at the end of the day, the differences between us cannot be reconciled - and that's a good thing.  ------------------------------
602<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>That's an ahistorical opinion which isn't shared by most anarchists. </p> </blockquote> <p>Curious, what country are you in? In most of the world, I would totally disagree. The exceptions are a few bubbles in the US, composed primarily of college-educated white youth.  ------------------------------
603<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>for almost all of recorded history, humans have lived within some sort of hierarchy</p> </blockquote> <p>That's because the only ones who record history tend to be hierarchical. Those with oral histories have far more informal hierarchies, if any. ------------------------------
604Moreover, "anarchist society" is an oxymoron. ------------------------------
605I can see how this could be a defensible point of view in normal circumstances; but with the unfolding climate catastrophe, peak oil, and the whole list of ecological collapses, I'd say ownership of guns seems to be of paramount importance.I also would argue that from a minority perspective, gun ownership can be a matter of life and death. During Ferguson and ever since, I've consistently heard black folks and occasionally, latinos discuss the necessity of being strapped for self-defense. I could never advocate for anything that would deny them that.  ------------------------------
606Reasonable if you're living full-time on this setup. Just move some weight to the front to balance it out. ------------------------------
607Politics in America ------------------------------
608Idiotic, and probably a manufactured "movement". Anarchism is anti-gun-control, full stop. These kids have been tricked into thinking that the government will save them. Police killed over 900 people last year.... ------------------------------
609Are you an anarchist? ------------------------------
610It isn't about what anyone wants. None of us have a choice. Industrial Civilization is going to collapse. Read this journal entry by John James Audubon in 1813 about the Passenger Pigeon;</p> <blockquote> <p>I dismounted, seated myself on an eminence, and began to mark with my pencil, making a dot for every flock that passed. In a short time finding the task which I had undertaken impracticable, as the birds poured in in countless multitudes, I rose and, counting the dots then put down, found that 163 had been made in twenty-one minutes. I traveled on, and still met more the farther I proceeded. The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse; the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow, and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose... I cannot describe to you the extreme beauty of their aerial evolutions, when a hawk chanced to press upon the rear of the flock. At once, like a torrent, and with a noise like thunder, they rushed into a compact mass, pressing upon each other towards the center. In these almost solid masses, they darted forward in undulating and angular lines, descended and swept close over the earth with inconceivable velocity, mounted perpendicularly so as to resemble a vast column, and, when high, were seen wheeling and twisting within their continued lines, which then resembled the coils of a gigantic serpent... Before sunset I reached Louisville, distant from Hardensburgh fifty-five miles. The Pigeons were still passing in undiminished numbers and continued to do so for three days in succession.</p> </blockquote> <p>The Passenger Pigeon is now extinct. No longer do these wonderful birds black out the sky. If industrial civilization is collapsing, we now can ask, with the tools it has given us - why? We can look at other tragedies; the extinction of indigenous peoples, languages, and traditions, the toxification of our waters and mass die-offs of fish, the radical decline in topsoils in the last century, the sweeping depression epidemic, heroin addiction, child suicides, the breakdown of basic decency, the collapse of stable and lasting friendship among Westerners: <em>all of these things are connected</em>. Now, we are at 408ppm of Co2 in the atmosphere. We were at 308ppm in the 1960's; <strong>we have risen 100ppm in sixty years</strong>. This means we're headed for 500ppm this century; perhaps only in a couple decades - the last time this happened was the Eocene, and at 500ppm, algae populations collapsed, removing a massive source of oxygen and setting the climate down a path of seemingly endless feedback loops which lasted quite a while even on a geological time scale. People who think we can reverse this are in the denial stage of grief. They are medicating themselves with thoughts of a widespread change to nuclear power, with "climate engineering" fantasies, or with thoughts that the situation isn't as bad as it is - or that there is no situation at all. State communism proved it would burn up the ecosphere just as radically - sometimes more radically - than capitalism; to say that a decentralized Bookchin-esque green anarchist world would avoid it is moot - we don't have time. Already, even keeping capitalism and the state intact, to change anything at all, or to increase survival prospects would demand an all-hands-on-deck WWII-style plan of action, but even more intense than that. We would need to be univocal in our demand that we make ourselves resilient for the coming storm, and yet that isn't happening. To add a global revolution that builds democratized, decentralized communism to that - an already nearly impossible goal, realistically - would be an overdose of action for a world that is currently asleep. People don't care; they are apathetic and depressed. They are nihilistic and empty. Our communities do not work well enough to even begin to consider these possibilities. And so, like it or not, theoretically possible to escape or not, time has run out, and we're headed down the dark downslope into a primitive means of living.This can go a few ways. People will, as it currently stands, attempt to rebuild civilization again. They will be continuously thwarted as the climate will not be hospitable to civilization. It would be a bloody and Sisyphean project that produces endless suffering for those who manage to survive. Anarcho-Primitvists propose an alternative: That we can use the resources presently here because of industrial civilization to get a bird's eye view of the multitude of human societies that have existed and select characteristics of different societies that are most conducive to survival and the avoidance of once again producing an ecocidal society. This means change cannot, because of collapse, occur on a here-and-now basis, but instead must occur on a multi-century basis. <em>What seeds will we plant for a future world, knowing that the game has changed so radically?</em>We find, in looking back via the wealth of information on these subjects in libraries and the internet, that immediate-return societies consistently had mechanisms in place for avoiding human-created ecological catastrophe. If, for example I subsist on Cattail and Squirrel, and I damage these populations, I find that I have no food. And thus, I know to tell my children - do not take more than is absolutely needed, lest you should find yourself starving. In contrast, when a people's means of subsistence is delayed-return, like agriculture, it takes many lifetimes to see the damage created. When you grow wheat in a field, it removes nutrients from the soil, and after so long, you've made a desert. Once, Iraq was a lush cedar forest. Now it is a desert. When this surplus of wheat is grown, populations can artificially rise, and once it turns to dust, you have a huge population of people that are faced with a choice - do we starve? Or do we conquest our neighbors, to get more farmland? The same is true with any sort of technology that cannot be sourced with purely local tools and materials. If I require guns to hunt, because it is not normal or known how to hunt with a bow made from local trees, then I and my people will do anything to obtain more guns and ammo when we run out. Consistently, the way to create a balanced society that is non-hierarchical, and, as it were, anarchist, we need to meet our needs for the long-haul locally, and avoid artificially increasing our populations beyond carrying capacity. This sounds, to the here-and-now idealist, like I would have it that ideally, we cull the population down to carrying capacity. I don't think we need to do that ourselves - the earth has plans for us that make here-and-now idealism impossible. What we can do now is help people survive, and build a culture today of near-to-the-land living that will allow our children to have a more anarchic life.  ------------------------------
611<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Where are you getting this shit from? I have literally never met a primitivist, anarcho or not, who is a eugenicist. That's garbage-tier thinking.</p> </blockquote> <p>I genuinely want to know where this shitty meme began... ------------------------------
612I always get a kick out of the vehement anti-primitivists; they'll go on tirades like OP's but if you ask them "do you support indigenous self-determination" they'll say yes - never realizing that a majority of indigenous people are "anti-civ" because <em>civilization literally dispossessed them of their land and traditions</em>. Highlight that cognitive dissonance and people get real mad. ------------------------------
613Hijacking top comment to say:Do the following for a retirement; Live with zero income for a year, or at least &gt;$10,000. Then apply for Community College, preferably the cheapest one in your state. Take the full value of loans and grants offered to you - as someone who is "poor and homeless", you'll get the full effect. Make sure you pay only the absolutely required tuition and fees with no add-ons. Once this is done, the remainder of your loan and grant money is disbursed to you by the bursar by money order, check, or <em>cash</em> at some schools. Rinse and repeat until they just won't let you have any more money. Take courses that will be useful for survival. Then take all that money and buy LAND. Cheap, remote, rural, in a place with water, far from cities, in a state that has lax laws regarding guns and zoning. Buy enough, ideally, that you cannot be seen from the road, or better yet, on an unused or un-traveled dirt road, so that no one can snitch on you for having un-permited structures. Buy a small game rifle (.22) and a large game rifle (30-30) and a hearty supply of ammo for both. Buy some tools. Buy a bike and perhaps a motor kit. Build a structure that can withstand the winters and summers, build a greenhouse and water catchments. Print out as much of the internet regarding survival skills (hunting, foraging, gardening, permaculture, medical care, etc) as you can and read them all the time. Laminate and store on the property. Buy a HAM radio and learn to use it. Once you've done this, you now have your insurance. Finally, get on Income Based Repayment and keep your (legal) income below $10k a year. Your monthly payments will be $0 and your loans are forgiven in 25 years. Do this soon, before the loophole is closed. ------------------------------
614lol, you mean "the FBI and CIA are waging digital war on one another by manipulating public opinion and are blaming it on Putin"? ------------------------------
615What worries me additionally is that generally, northern regions have the cold as their primary mode of protection against massive influxes of people in a SHTF scenario - most people could not survive without modern tech in below-zero temperatures. As the climate warms in the arctic, I fear that folks from the lower 48 - namely, California, which is currently in a state of freefall - will migrate there en masse. I wonder if, due to the way the arctic is changing the jet stream, if the northeast and atlantic provinces of Canada aren't the better bet in terms of long-term survival because of this possibility. ------------------------------
616Ah, I know. I got family though. I want a piece of land the kids can enjoy as well. ------------------------------
617<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Great Lakes</p> </blockquote> <p>Not sure about that, what with chicago, detroit, I-90... it'll be crawling with people ------------------------------
618You have to butcher most "assault rifles" to make them legal in NYS. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdEy2vQipAs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdEy2vQipAs</a><span class="res-freetext-expando"><a class="expando-button toggleImage video collapsed collapsedExpando" title="" data-host="youtube"></a></span><div class="res-expando-box" style="min-height: 20px" hidden=""> <div class="res-expando-box-inner"></div> </div> ------------------------------
619Absolutely, surveying is a no-brainer. If a property is listed as having been surveyed, am I to trust that it has been surveyed well enough? Is there a way of knowing they aren't pulling one over on me with that? ------------------------------
620I've been there and actually lived there for a while once. It was certainly interesting, and I learned a lot. But what I learned there was that the Northeast is the ideal place to be when industrial civilization falls apart - because up here, we've got <em>water</em>, and we've got raging winters that will weed out the city people quicker. In the desert, there's no water, and there's LA. No thanks. ------------------------------
621Done it since I was a kid ------------------------------
622<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>West Virginia about 70 minutes away from Pittsburgh</p> </blockquote> <p>Shit, nice spot. Sounds excellent. Thanks for the tips; will definitely check out WV. When I hitched through Boone county I was impressed - poverty, yes, but the people were strong and had real history. When SHTF these guys are gonna make it. And drinking shine with Hank iii now and again is alright too. ------------------------------
623It's not bad at all (thanks for sharing it). My only issue is NYS and their outlandish gun laws. I'm from NY and after the SAFE act, it'd take a pretty serious land deal to convince me to stick around - and even then, I'd be on the sleuth ducking from the sight of codes in some parts of the state.  ------------------------------
624Thanks for the information, glad to hear it. Remote is what I want, and low-key is what I keep it. ------------------------------
625The trouble I've found with this is that most of it is geared toward the super rich. Nothing for ~25k in the Northeast yet. ------------------------------
626I work online, so recurring tax fees are no issue. So long as I can head into a public library or somesuch one or two days a week, I'm solid. Even better if I can get internet of my own, but that's a bonus. ------------------------------
627<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>If you want to build a wall the zoning may have something to say about that as well</p> </blockquote> <p>Jesus, no way. That's wild as hell. </p> <blockquote> <p>financing</p> </blockquote> <p>I'm cash up front, all the way. No debt.</p> <blockquote> <p>sewage</p> </blockquote> <p>Not sure where it's legal or if most off-gridders are just outlaws, but I've been to a whole lot of places with outhouses. </p> <blockquote> <p>insurance</p> </blockquote> <p>Not a bad idea at all, thanks for the heads up. Hadn't considered it. ------------------------------
628Fully possible, honestly ------------------------------
629shit, not bad ------------------------------
630Hell yeah, good to hear it.  ------------------------------
63137 states? How much money have you spent on this? ------------------------------
632Not sure what you're saying. "My Doomsday Thing" is 500ppm of co2 in the atmosphere and the collapse of industrial civilization. I'm not creating it, it's happening on its own. ------------------------------
633Any information regarding time limits for how long one can legally "camp" on their own land? Wouldn't mind bouncing around between several camps ------------------------------
634It's winter where I'm at. When I find it, it's frozen, so it's as safe as meat from your freezer. That or it's warm and still fresh, in which case it's even better. ------------------------------
635So wait, militaryheritage says that these are in unfirable condition - is this just said for legal reasons? ------------------------------
636No shit, eh? Even in remote Maine? I understand that unorganized Maine is, codeswise, a pain in the arse, but it seems that Plantations, the smallest organized entity, are generally permissive. ------------------------------
637Absolutely right. Now is the time to adapt to the coming storm, shameful as it is. ------------------------------
638Will check it out, thanks. ------------------------------
639Oh, I've absolutely encountered these people when I used to sneak into Liberal Arts college in New England. They would present a completely hackneyed cornucopian vision of the future; with a 100% urban humanity feeding themselves with solar-powered urban agriculture in 350ppm utopian bliss. This stems from the same sort of wishful thinking conservatives engage with when they close their eyes and imagine it's 1950 forever and the earth can be abused for profit forever without repercussions. It's all the psychology of people who are in the denial stage of grief.The reality would result in a hellish dystopia of soylent-drinking, irradiated nuclear-powered xanax-poppers who would have wished they were never born. And that's only for some of the US and Europe - everywhere else, Mad Max...  ------------------------------
640Ah, interesting. I was just reading that article, I believe on Scientific American, about how the carbon (acidic) in the atmosphere may be causing anxiety on a much higher level that previously known. I have to assume that if it continues, other health risks would exist. ------------------------------
641<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>To me it just seems like one party is at least trying while the other party seems to be against everything sensible.</p> </blockquote> <p>"Trying" is a pretty huge overstatement; To reduce the odds of getting to 500ppm by 2050, global humanity would need to engage in what would basically be a WWII-era, all-hands-on-deck level of effort. Entire industries - some of which constitute the most influential cartels of power on earth - would need to be radically restructured. Democrats propose nothing remotely to this effect. True, their hand is forced by republicans, but moreover, their hand is forced by a headless system of continuous consumption and addiction to the comforts of an oil-intensive lifestyle. It is not as though Democrats acknowledge the absolute recklessness of the industrial system, and understand the level of change that would be required to preserve human life on this planet, only to be thwarted by the republicans - they simply have a willfully weak understanding of the risks, and as such, propose the most milquetoast reforms, which they can't even abide by. They, like republicans, also do not want to bear the psychological burden of knowing how damning this situation is, while simultaneously realizing that there is not a political solution to this problem. To accept these realities, in their naked truth, would crush the psyche of any normal human being. The simply allow a tiny fraction of this reality a glimpse as an offering to Reason, where Republicans cannot even do <em>that</em>. ------------------------------
642But even A1FI Minicam suggests 1000ppm at the end of the century; not in a few decades. I'm more of the inclination that in a few decades we'll see 500-600ppm. Not that that's very reassuring; massive algal die-offs occurred at 500ppm in the Eocene, from what I read. And yes, "lifeboats" mentality is legitimate. Extremely rural homesteads with lots of guns, greenhouses, and libraries. Probably with a nice hilltop stone tower or two. ------------------------------
643lol people downvoting don't know what ecology is ------------------------------
644aw dude but she was hot/s ------------------------------
645Thanks for the info regarding bees. I know very little about how they work, but me and my buddies noticed this and wondered if it might have contributed to the collapse of the bee populations.  ------------------------------
646True, but he would have been in a quite a bit better position to do more outside supermax. ------------------------------
647Ah, I see. ------------------------------
648<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>headed for 1000ppm within a few decades</p> </blockquote> <p>Woah, I'm pessimistic, but this is not something I've found evidence for. Curious how you're coming up with this prediction. As for the second thing you said, you're not wrong by any means. ------------------------------
649"Active shooter" situation at Utica College, no shots fired, no suspect in custody, just a "threat". All K-12 schools in the county on Lockdown. They've succeeded in scaring the shit out of all the kids for absolutely no reason. Soon, new gun control legislation will be pushed through and the overreaction to these sorts of events will drive political will to disarm citizens. Cousin's friend working on her 4th baby to a 3rd man, no money, living at mother's house. Got fired from her job at an old-folks home for sleeping on the job (while 9 months pregnant).Was 70 degrees one day, the next, we got three feet of snow in 48 hours. Power outages all over the place. Beehive near my workplace was abuzz with bees during the warmer weather, but after the snow, the bees have died.  ------------------------------
650Absolutely, I see it. And no doubt it's all throughout historical socialist symbols. I guess, with fascism on the rise yet again in the West, complete with bundles of wheat on axes, it may be sensible to fight the strong cultural bias against communism by using another, more updated symbol. Just observations from an outsider (not a leftist) I thought may be worth discussing. ------------------------------
651To be fair, as valid as the links you've provided are, that screens have replaced human interactions - playing cards with mom, running in the woods with all the kids from town, ice-fishing with your cousins - is frightening, and it seems likely it could have a pretty strong effect on kids. Some of the same research done on children who were not held or touched as infants may be relevant. As usual, most of these problems have not a single source, but a compounding shitstorm of factors working together. ------------------------------
652pretty soon: the McD's $10 special menu ------------------------------
653Real money like <em>wheelbarrows full of it</em> ------------------------------
654<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Homie</p> </blockquote> <p>lol white nationalist using black slang. You probably listen to rock music too. ------------------------------
655Hell, who <em>wouldn't</em> be on EBT? I say take what you can get before SHTF (and quit paying taxes while you're at it) ------------------------------
656Isn't the parent comment about politics as well? ------------------------------
657This does seem to be the case. They really take it well, which is why even though much of West Africa has way, way overshot their carrying capacity, they'll probably survive more adeptly than many Westerners. When their latte is too cold Westerners have a convulsion. People were on suicide watch this week in the northeast when the power went out for a day. Nigerians can have a plague, no water, no money, and only gloomy prospects and dance a lot and have a real "NBD" attitude. ------------------------------
658It's very well done. My question would be, and maybe this is a more broad leftist symbology question - don't the stalks of wheat look like <em>fasci</em>?  ------------------------------
659I remember this feeling. TK gets it right on the head. I read this when I was a young kid and it helped me through my lonelier days! ------------------------------
660My answer? Zoom way the fuck out and think not in terms of the now - that would be either too painful, or too risky in terms of imprisonment or death - but in terms of the multi-century view. As the collapse progresses, and we pass important landmarks - the power goes out, the oil price rises, the floods get stronger, food is harder to come by, money is experiencing hyper-inflation - there will be migrants aiming to find a more stable scenario.The question of the day is, to me, how can I make a permanent culture, that not only survives the collapse but thrives from it - without succumbing to external pressures through weakness or spiritual idiocy, and without bulking up into another civilized empire? What needs to be done? How can we build this so that there is room to grow, that others could enter the picture without stressing out the carrying capacity of the land or demanding the use of anything but localized, small-scale appropriate tech?A smart move is this: Go north. Far north. There's water up north, and the harsh winters will filter out the weak ones. If you set up a permanent human survival culture in Mississippi or California, you'll be inundated with refugees, and few of them will have much to bring to the table because the climate won't demand much of them (relatively). In Alaska, or BC, or Labrador, anyone who makes it that far will have proven themselves to be reasonably skilled at survival. They'll be self-sufficient to some degree. And self-sufficient types integrate well into a remote northern community. This would also have the effect of reducing the number of people who attempt to survive in a given climate. Note that the Cree, the Miqmaq, the Inukitut, and other northern tribes have fared the best of other native peoples of North America - because the cold made it challenging to wage war against them. Not that they didn't suffer greatly - but they were not wiped out, many of them. We'll need to aspire toward similar aims.In much the same way libertarians are staging a takeover-by-moving-in in Coos County NH (the Free State Project), collapseniks would do well to select a similar region, so that we can live in proximity to one another and support ourselves. Importantly, it would be wise to develop a culture of semi-nomadism with some degree of infrastructure scattered about different regions that are a good fit for our aims. A small handful of micro-castles with greenhouses, guns, wells, and walled-in stone structures in North Dakota; and another in northern Manitoba, or whatever. Go into the cities and channel out those who appear to need a way out but lack the resources, and make sure they're the types who have something to to bring to the table. I'm way too caffeinated, I'm rambling, but these are some of my aspirations. As for tearing the sucker down, I'm over the ELF-style resistance because I don't want to be locked up next to TK in Supermax - and I think the earth will do the job for us. We've just got to set up our lives and subsistence to be able to weather the storms that she's got coming for us. ------------------------------
661As <em>The Coming Insurrection</em> says, "mainstream society has now reached the consciousness of the first punks." ------------------------------
662<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>His reaction to this was of course quite extreme.</p> </blockquote> <p>His reaction stemmed from being a mathematical genius with no awareness of tactics, strategy, or how to build successful counterculture. (Correct as he was and still is) ------------------------------
663It wasn't worth his life, though. ------------------------------
664Ha, the soy calories thing is so real. I'm reading Lovelock's <em>Revenge of Gaia</em> right now, and while his insights regarding climate are interesting - if outdated - he goes into some wacky shit, talking about the necessity of nuclear, and how we can synthesize food from nitrogen and sequestered carbon and ensure that most people eat this shit and live in cities...They'll never take me. I'll eat venison in the wilderness until I die. ------------------------------
665Godspeed. I'd help, but unlike a hurricane, they can prosecute and imprison me.  ------------------------------
666neigh mother, I shan't have another doughnut ------------------------------
667DSA president original photo ------------------------------
668100% ------------------------------
669Definitely not as long as they did upstate, where we're all poor. My cousins still have no power lol ------------------------------
670I hope not, Bass Pro sucks. So much Chinese shit.  ------------------------------
671Yup, sorry, this ain't hunting. This is "pay money to get a boner over killing some shit" ------------------------------
672I just subbed here, and I get the feeling this is not a community that gets into the ethics of hunting much. Seems more about "killin' shit".  ------------------------------
673Actually, gopher meat is pretty fuckin good. ------------------------------
674A good start, especially considering the extremely short attention spans of the anti-hunter-gatherer peanut gallery, but does not go in-depth enough nonetheless. Few of these answers would satisfy the opposition.  ------------------------------
675<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Ancient Egyptians, or the Aztecs.</p> </blockquote> <p>This was civilization, and gave rise (or would've in the case of the Aztecs) to the same megamachine we presently live within. ------------------------------
676You might like to read Atassa and read up on eco-extremism. Some of them use Clastre's info on the Yanomami to justify things along the lines you're saying. I don't buy it, personally. DGR is also basically full-blown eco-Leninists, maybe that'd suit you. Pentii Linkola is an eco-fascist as well. And Uncle Ted himself is pretty authoritarian these days (I guess supermax prison life has gotten to him).Of course, you might also consider the fact that we're at the apex of human civilization, facing a steep downslope, and can now select the traits of previous societies we find to be the most advantageous - so long as historically, they've resulted in ecologically and socially sane arrangements. This is a fancy way of saying - why not try giving up on authoritarianism? Moreover, if you insist, why not try practicing population reduction on a small scale, by self-euthanasia? ------------------------------
677Any sources on exactly what these mistakes are? ------------------------------
678And from this, it is not hard to see the possibility that there can be little use of systemic technologies without hierarchy, based on a few features that appear insurmountable. Again, with the example of the automobile (apologies for wall of text, I simply enjoy writing about these topics);</p> <ul> <li><p>The fabrication of automobiles requires importation of metals, petroleum products, plastics, and machined parts and tools from all over the world. There does not seem to be a means by which they could be fabricated from local materials; thus, two parties who do not know one another must interact at a minimum, and usually these relationships stack onto one another ad infinitum (the miner of ore and the smelter; the machinist and the manufacturer, the mechanic and finally the customer). Each time this happens, no safety against negative behavior is in place - because the only proven safety against things like ecological destruction, profit-driven exploitation of customers and workers, etc consists of both parties of a given exchange inhabiting the same social and ecological milieus. Usually in a manner that promotes mutual reliance; at worst, in a manner that makes it clear that physical combat is a possibility. Removal of this localized familiarity is required by systemic technologies as they have existed thus far. Conceiving of <em>local</em> systemic technologies is definitely possible, but I have reservations about this, seen below.</p></li> <li><p>The fabrication, design, and maintenance requires a class of elite experts. Though this information could be democratized and it could become socially normal to study it, it seems it would require a society that revolves around automobiles almost entirely, leaving no room for a democratized and widespread understanding of the other technologies required by automobile production, such as mining, smelting, machining, cargo transit, and the production of electricity, let alone facets of life that do not involve automobiles at all.</p></li> <li><p>As as addendum to the above, the labor required by automobile production, because it is so extensive, requires a division of labor. A division of labor on a local scale can emerge in a non-hierarchical way, and there is historical precedent in it inasmuch as the necessity of each's unequal labor is roughly equal in its utility (the town blacksmith is not much in conflict with the town farmer or the town shoemaker - because they are all reliant on one another). But when division of labor is made to interact with systems so large that local familiarity of all parties is impossible, large-scale hierarchies develop by a few means. For example, because some middleman must enter the picture to move things relevant to production across vast distances, and they have no stake in any community but their own, they can easily seek out advantage, and will do so, pinning the workers and ecologies of diverse areas against one another to benefit himself. This was the story of the Merchant class in early Europe, dating back at least to the Silk Road and following history into present day neoliberal trade moguls.</p></li> <li><p>Last, it seems that for a few reasons, complex systems of technology require conquest, or expansion of their spheres of interest due to the scarcity of resources. Resource scarcity is not really a daily feature of the social realities of those who live locally and close to the land, if the ratio of living animals to available sources of food is kept in balance (this balance can be augmented by human action with success), but it is when specific resources are required by an entire human community for subsistence. For example, if the price of oil shot up to $1000/bl, virtually every major industrial city and town in the world would be instantly out of work. Thus, regions of the earth with a lot of industry, or a heavy stake in foreign industry will do anything necessary to ensure that cheap oil continues to flow. I worry that even if systemic tech was employed on a local scale, in what would appear to us to be a reasonably low-key fashion, that it would drive another round of this type of behavior on a smaller scale. For example, one can use car alternators to produce energy via wind, muscle, and water. Seems harmless to use on a small-scale, and no doubt, when the grid collapses, people will do it - but what happens when the alternators eventually burn out? They won't produce enough power to manufacture new ones for their entire life as generators. Thus, when they burn out, localized warlord-style conquest might be required inasmuch as communities are reliant on the energy they produce in this fashion. I think it is not unfair - if using history as a metric - that many other resources that originate from any materials that are not strictly local and produced by the human hand, as well as the sun, water, and wind of an area (without industrial equipment) will produce warfare and hierarchies. I concede that it could be possible to develop systems of technology very carefully designed to avoid this course of things, but each system would have to be developed by and for local inhabitants of a given region, probably quite a small one hovering around Dunbar's Number of 150 people, and no two systems would be the same. But to advocate for this is not the same as advocating for industrial tech as we have ever known it; tech of this nature would change our lives very radically. Note that not all primitivists would concede this point, but I think there's a strong case for it.</p></li> </ul> </div> ------------------------------
679ha, right. absolutely.  ------------------------------
680<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>BFD</p> </blockquote> <p>? What's this ------------------------------
681I haven't seen snow like we just saw in a good long while. 36 hours of total whiteout conditions, getting nearly an inch an hour on average. Some hours it was more like three inches. Power out still in a lot of my township. Spent half of yesterday pulling people out of the ditch, and the other half of the day skiing. Everyone was freaking out - I'm thinking, y'all live in the north, don't you know what the weather does here? ------------------------------
682Add to that that the stuff stays in water supply for a ridiculously long period of time. Most of us are on it. I'm not a hippie who freaks out about this sort of thing much but honestly, I'm sticking to well water. ------------------------------
683Honestly, Westerners are the least equipped for any type of breakdown. Power outage for two days? Time to freak out to the point of shaking for some, and for others, time to see what you can get from the situation.  ------------------------------
684You may find a lot of peers doing similar work in the northern boreal forests, where there are a lot of spruce trees and geese maintaining traditional knowledge that can be shared to anyone willing to listen. There are also a few in the swamps of the southeastern US, the Sahara Desert, arctic islands, and more. I'd actually say departments that match your description are the most common in any of the schools worth going to, and luckily, all of those schools are free to attend. Though it can be something of a language barrier - most crows and coyotes steadfastly refuse to speak English, or for that matter, any other verbal language - it's worth the work to try and understand them. ------------------------------
685It makes a lot of sense. The flame of a lighter and the smell of smoke can get you and your entire unit killed. The two reasons dipping is huge in America is because of farmers doing hay (where a tiny fleck of fire can light your entire farm aflame) and soldiers.  ------------------------------
686<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>you see an extremely wide array of weapons,</p> </blockquote> <p>Which is actually a testament to the dedication of some of these forces; I can speak from experience that having to have a dozen types of ammo floating around and organized just at your house can be a confusing pain in the ass. In a combat situation, it would be a serious pain, both for those using the weapons and for whomever is tasked with keeping a steady supply of ammo no matter what. ------------------------------
687It can be, if the "individual" and "collective" are viewed in the abstract. Collectivism seems particularly gruesome when abstract (see USSR, nationalism, and their respective death counts). The synthesis of the two must begin with ourselves, individually though, IMO. On the spectrum of epistemologically "true" statements, I know I exist presently more than I know anything else. Others come after this, because they inhabit separate bodies with separate experiences. So I do what feels most enjoyable to me - which for nearly everyone will consist of getting together with others who value freedom and ownness. So I become a communist of sorts out of my own self-interest - and the moment a collective situation ceases to serve my interests, I withdraw, having rejected "duty" and ideology. I tend to think as well that this progression of things is inevitable because of the decay of simpler societies. Modernity was a corrosive which ate up traditional societies for better or worse, and did not stop until everything was consumed and we're today, after a century, left with an asphyxiating nihilism in which we find we're still alive as individuals. We've got to start with what we've inherited and build up from there rather than blithely imagining there is still a capital "C" Collective to be revived. All of this is my opinion, after having been an anarcho-communist for years and in the last several years reading Stirner (and for that matter, Lyotard). ------------------------------
688Make Anarchism Individualist Again ------------------------------
689I see what you're saying and don't disagree. The difference is the size of the technology and what it can do. There is virtually no primitivist I've ever seen who is arguing that we should actually refuse to use stone tools, fire, language, etc (though critiquing them is useful); and that's because the use of stone tools, for example, differs greatly from , say, the use of an automobile. In the case of the stone tools, you both build and use the tool from local materials that are replaceable, often easily replaceable depending on where you live. As you use them, you see their effect directly in front of you, with no filter, and no possible alienation. It's quite simple and frankly, innocent compared with industrial tech.In the case of an automobile, it's been built by someone you never met, designed by someone you've never met, and consists of materials from likely dozens of different corners of the earth. How to build one is not something we can understand well, much less ever actually do it, so it is a thing which is valuable and must be protected. Then, it runs on juice they suck from the earth. You don't likely know much about the physics of it, what that juice does to the planet, or where it comes from, but you know that you've got to keep it flowing, or else your valuable thing won't work, and you won't be able to commute to work anymore. An entire class of experts exists to do everything associated with the car. Worse, when you drive in it, you're moving so fast you can't smell the air, you don't notice the ants crawling along the road - nor do you notice the motor oil streaming into the creeks near the highway. Everyone you pass is a stranger, because you are all alone in big metal boxes that could kill one another, so you don't get close, and you certainly don't stop to talk as you might while walking or biking. And this device can allow humans to cross continents with great speed - making warfare more terrifying, making goods move around faster, and intensifying the speed of the market. Speed is, I'd say, inherently alienating. Our species figured itself out at 2mph, with calloused feet. Now you may not agree of my quick rundown of why I hate cars, but you certainly could admit that there is a big difference between cars and stone tools. Yet both remain under the umbrella of "technology". I only hate technology inasmuch as it is alienating; whether it alienates because it heightens my ability to do things far beyond my bodily capacity (I could not run to you wherever you are to tell you this message) or alienates us from a pace that is easier to understand by making things move with intense speed, I'm against it and use those technologies only as a compromise-under-duress with the techno-industrial system. And these <em>systemic</em> technologies have a history of being utilized by power; their benefits are the seductive fruit that lures us into a life of forced labor. I've fallen for it as much as anyone, and I want to break free of it with others. The moments I've succeeded in leaving it have been delightful, and I theorize they would be sustainable for lifetimes and generations, and would not destroy the planet quite as fast as industrial tech has. In fact, they may not destroy it at all but allow humans to be minimalist stewards of their bioregions and local lands. Anyway if you got through that, thanks for reading. I'm just writing as I drink my coffee, which was picked by someone I don't know, and shipped to me somehow, by someone. I couldn't ever grow it, and yet I'm addicted to it. If it was a bit stronger - like gasoline, or heroin, or electricity - and I was a bit more alienated from myself and my land, I might go to war over it if it ever disappeared. On some level I'm a "hypocrite" but really, I'm just trying to heal and make strategies for change.  ------------------------------
690I don't have to admit it, because what you're saying is a meme that appears to exist only online. IRL, I've never seen it to be true, and even online, it doesn't seem true either.  ------------------------------
691<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>I just think that it is possible to separate technology from that exploitative history and use it solely for the good of the proletariat. </p> </blockquote> <p>I'd be more likely to believe this to be possible if there were a historical precedent for it, and I'm not aware of any. ------------------------------
692Right? Shay's Rebellion, anyone? ------------------------------
693Who?(Derrick Jensen is not an anarchist) ------------------------------
694I'm not sure, but I believe the way we're going, it isn't about what any of us want - industrial collapse will occur either way. What we can do now is start prepping and start having a conversation about how to help disabled and trans folks get what they need, and make sure we create resilient communities that will last - even after the power goes out. ------------------------------
695Nah, am too busy writing about ways to support the lives of the disabled that don't require strip mines, oil, and species extinction. Unfortunately, you won't read it, because you've already made up your mind (despite no anarchist anti-civ thinkers being anti-disabled or anti-trans) ------------------------------
696This honestly says it all. "Post-truth" ideas were spread into our milieu by the CIA in the 70's, y'all. And collectivism brings out the worst in humans - you'll know that from a strong critique of nationalism and state communism.  ------------------------------
697Not to sound too sharp here, because I mean it in a helpful way, but you'd do well to read some anti-civ writings. There's a very in-depth historical case to be made for the argument that tech and power are intertwined. ------------------------------
698Curious, where have you found in any anarcho-primitvist writings that anyone is making this argument that trans and disabled people don't matter? I'm been a primmie for 15 years and still haven't seen it (minus DGR - but they're really eco-Leninists) ------------------------------
699fuck off ------------------------------
700Wow almost downvoted and then I got itwew ------------------------------
701angry? ------------------------------
702I don't see how you can make these two statements alongside one another; what gives? ------------------------------
703likely historical re-enactment something something but who can say.  ------------------------------
704<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>'Anarchy means I can do what I want' does sound like a mischievous joke to our ears.</p> </blockquote> <p>And it sounds this way only because of the way religion, the state, and capitalism have utilized spooks to groom us into being self-loathing, but not so self-loathing we suicide. That way we can keep working - and use our compartmentalized resentment to fuel our pursuit of ends that would seem totally banal in any other context. ------------------------------
705This is a legitimate post. I raised an issue this week when in honesty, I spend most of my time lurking here rather than posting interesting or original content. Definitely something to consider. ------------------------------
706<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Ideally, I want to live in a society where peace is maintained through mutual respect and trust.</p> </blockquote> <p>Good luck! This century is sure to disappoint ------------------------------
707true ------------------------------
708Tough thing to stock up on / recharge as a prep ------------------------------
709By indigenous I mean hunter-gatherer, not "born there". ------------------------------
710Abolish schools, stock up on guns. We'll need them when industrial civilization collapses in a few decades.  ------------------------------
711This is to say you'd give your guns up to the state, despite being opposed to the state? ------------------------------
712<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Not the descendants of indigeonous peoples</p> </blockquote> <p>oof, despite being the most ecologically sane peoples to inhabit the land? ------------------------------
713Ha you ain't kidding about the midwest heroin problem. It's all over - that's what the afghanistan war was all about. Hell, <em>Vermont</em> has a heroin problem.  ------------------------------
714A fair bit. Crack seems worse in the deep south tbh ------------------------------
715What are they powered by / how much energy do they use? I'd assume it'd be reasonable, but sometimes these fancy doo-dads can use a lot of juice. ------------------------------
716<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Southwest</p> </blockquote> <p>Not sure about this one. The meth problem can make many SW areas feel sketchy. ------------------------------
717To be honest, the advice "don't walk around after dark" is only worthy of considering based on one factor: Is the person you're hearing it from white? If so, disregard it - unless you're also white <em>and</em> look wealthy / square / Abercrombie and Fitch + iPhone suburban normie. I am visibly haggard and dressed poorly because I don't buy clothes or wash mine every day, and anytime some suburban goofball said to stay in at night, I've found they were full of it. The only exception was in areas where meth use was rampant.OP is 100% correct. I've hitchhiked, often at night, through 46 states and have had no problems from anyone but the police. ------------------------------
718Don't like taxes? move ------------------------------
719Don't underestimate stupid.. ------------------------------
720Agreed ------------------------------
721Nationalism, then, is not something you support? ------------------------------
722Look at the user's post history ------------------------------
723Cool, sounds good. Consensus can get sketchy in the long-haul, as I learned from /r/@, as the sockpuppeting levels get higher and higher based on how many factions have some stake in controlling a sub. But for now we'd probably be able to swing it, especially if we're able to discern the obvious trolls etc.  ------------------------------
724Glad to hear it. Thanks for starting the discord room. If you need any help keeping the place reasonable and free of <a href="/r/t_d">r/t_d</a> brigading etc, let me know. I did the same sort of shit in /r/anarchism</a> until the PC police kicked me out for being an individualist. ------------------------------
725Uh, don't listen to this wingnut. SRA, John Brown Gun Club, and Redneck Revolt all mostly consist of people who are advocating for community defense against the state and fascists, as well as SHTF skills for their towns.  ------------------------------
726thx comradekeep it 100 ------------------------------
727Nor is glorifying an ideology which necessitates the mass murder and/or forcible removal of individuals based on some shit as spooky as their race. ------------------------------
728all alive and hoping not to get jumped by skinhead pieces of shit ------------------------------
729Why not head over to survivalistboards.com? ------------------------------
730Not incorrect - but still results in a lower quality of a forum to keep them around. ------------------------------
731Ah, neat, you can use Google. There are many egoists who believe the act of sharing is a self-serving behavior, and I tend to agree sometimes - but I don't believe in forcing others to share as a matter of principle. That's why I'm not a communist - communists believe they have a moral duty to use force to ensure others pool their resources.  ------------------------------
732Uh, Nazis (and Stalinists for that matter) have a track record of blood, historically. Yeah I'm probably good on letting these types of people attempt to enter discussion spaces to sway the narrative toward their ends.  ------------------------------
733If this were true, I <em>would</em> be decrying the return of 20th century leftism - but it's not true by any means. You only wish it was true, because it would fit into the ever-present self-victimization that the right uses to build strength. "We're under attack by the jews / the blacks / the liberals / the communists" etc etc is a great way to strum the endocrine systems of disaffected young men and make them fight en masse, often for nothing in particular but pure ideology.  ------------------------------
734Defense of communists? No; defense of intellectual honesty. You simply cannot call people "commies" - and for that matter, "fascists" - without a reasonable definition of what those words mean to you. If I believe that words should have meanings, this makes me a leftist. Quite interesting.  ------------------------------
735<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>implying "left-right" spectrum is at all meaningful at this point</p> </blockquote> <p>lolAm by no means a leftist. Both leftism and the alt-right are fraught with collectivist nonsense - and I am a rabid enemy of collectivism of any sort, whether it's workerist or nationalist. I simply find that the right has found great success online, and manages to infiltrate discussion spaces and make their genocidal opinions acceptable. If an individual said they were a pedophile that would be unacceptable - yet if someone claims the holocaust didn't occur, or that western culture is worth mass slaughter of other races to preserve, this is "good discourse". In my view, these ideas, <em>because of their - quite bloody - historical track record</em>, are as anathema to human freedom and dignity as pedophilia, and should be treated similarly. ------------------------------
736Right? Far-right types are not here, or usually anywhere, to "discuss" anything. They're there to convert, and they're there to manipulate public opinion anonymously. They're socially engineering their own rise to power. It's brilliant - but a definite sign of collapse. ------------------------------
737Aw, poor little victim. Absolutely worse than when I saw five of your comrades stomp out a Mexican 14-year-old in Anaheim. ------------------------------
738I'm an individualist anarchist along the lines of Max Stirner, and an anarcho-primitivist. You also type like an angry italian uncle on a youtube video. ------------------------------
739Oops, looks like the cockroach deleted his post.  ------------------------------
740<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Hillary's daughter</p> </blockquote> <p>oh hell no ------------------------------
741Even the eco-fascist route would have a tough time, though, in the US, where climate change denial is so integral to the politics of the right.  ------------------------------
742brilliantly said ------------------------------
743It's actually interesting regarding <a href="/u/eleitl">/u/eleitl</a><span class="RESUserTag"> <a class="userTagLink RESUserTagImage truncateTag" title="set a tag" href="javascript:void 0"></a> </span> in particular; he appears to have made his post history obscure enough to where there are not any markers of his politics that would be obvious to anyone but those with a trained eye for nazis (unless you read German). Thus making it tougher to discuss his nazism to anyone reasonably mainstream.The detached thing is frankly pretty smart; in juxtaposition to the SJW type, or the "whiny leftist" archetype, being cool calm and collected and making it appear as though your position is thoroughly normal and reasonable and perhaps even "cool" in a subdued way makes you seem like you've got the calm in the storm. I would imagine it would seem very alluring to someone young, unemployed, and undesirable to women. It's a hell of a drug, though - because the long term effect is not at all consistent with maturity, employment, or stable relationships.  ------------------------------
744Authoritarian Left: "Our ideology is shit"Authoritarian Right: "Turn Windows ME on yourself - use your OS to let the NSA spy on you!"Libertarian Left: "Actually this butthole trick we learned from the marxists feels pretty good!"Libertarian Right: "I want that butthole toy in me so badly but I was raised Catholic" ------------------------------
745Not at all, there have been far more, though not yet on the scale I've seen in other subs. Seeing that guy's username today simply reminded and prompted me to ask the rest of y'all if you're seeing the same thing. ------------------------------
746View his post history. National Socialist metal bands, Nazi rhetoric, anti-jewish shit. ------------------------------
747Right - "let's fight for the white race - so that we can inherit the wasteland!"  ------------------------------
748All totally true facts. Decent moderation is critical, and even with this, after a certain point, the quality of the discussion simply decreases. We're actually at a quite high level of subscribership, and I'm consistently surprised with the quality of the dialogue here, and the frequency of new posts.  ------------------------------
749<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>DSAextremist</p> </blockquote> <p>OnlyinAmerica.jpgBut you are right though. ------------------------------
750Hammer is not a National Socialist band then, eh? Necroholocaust's Black War Gestapo is just good old black metal, right? I know you when I see you. You're why I have AR-15's. ------------------------------
751Looks like the fash have swooped in just like they did in <a href="/r/lostgeneration" rel="nofollow">/r/lostgeneration</a> and <a href="/r/libertarian" rel="nofollow">/r/libertarian</a>. Fuck off "prayforwar88".For those not in the loop, the "88" in this user's name stands for H, the 8th letter of the alphabet, or "HH" for "Heil Hitler".  ------------------------------
752Interesting research. I wish you both the best. I've always had a structural outlook about things; that humans are basically automata, pushed and pulled by the blind and indifferent currents of history. "If X, then Y" sort of thinking, which I still would maintain is relevant. And regarding marriage, the three kickers I got from it that seemed to make it unstable have been - marriage's origins are intertwined with old customs in violent, patriarchal cultures, now forced to change by western feminism; the possibility seen from primatology and anthropology that humans are 'hard-wired' for nonmonogamy; and the intensifying pressures of gendered monetary expectations under capitalism - they're nebulous to begin with, and unmanageable for some given dropping wages and increasing work hours. With no disrespect, I think you and your husband have a LOT of biological, economic, and cultural forces operating against you. As for me, my observations regarding monogamy and marriage have only led me to aim toward something resembling a "tribe" more than anything.  ------------------------------
753<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>We’re not traditional, we regularly attend orgies and date other people. Writing your own rules is fun.</p> </blockquote> <p>This sets you apart. I think a marriage of this nature would be livable, for the fact that our species is probably is wired for nonmonogamy. I've been poly for years and have found great success with it. I'd say what marriage has been for people for a few generations, building a "tribe" is for me.  ------------------------------
754Not even a communist, just intellectually honest. ------------------------------
755Never saw a single example of that through most of my life. The only happy married people I know are rich. ------------------------------
756<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>About a third of millenials are</p> </blockquote> <p>? really? I guess I'd believe it but holy shit, didn't we see enough suffering stem from divorce and the failure of the socially enforced monogamous nuclear family unit?  ------------------------------
757If you can't define your terms, you've proven yourself to be an idiot and your arguments to be empty. Easiest Reddit debate of my life - thanks! ------------------------------
758This can be a fine list of resources, but be careful you're not just getting off on it.  ------------------------------
759<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>communism</p> </blockquote> <p>How would you define this term? ------------------------------
760He's getting downvoted for saying that antifa are communists and implying they're the sort of communists that read Mao. They're overwhelmingly not - virtually all of them are anarchist communists. The sort of comment he's written displays a classically American ignorance of the political system as it has emerged from Western thought, both in Europe and the United States. A deliberate campaign has been waged to erase libertarian communism from history, and this sort of comment just keeps this ahistorical nonsense flowing. ------------------------------
761Move to Europe ------------------------------
762I will definitely give you that, no question there. My main point is that guns aided her and others like her to survive - and gun ownership, in my view, is primarily about survival. Movement-building etc is a lot tougher. Possible, maybe, but tougher. ------------------------------
763Can't blame you at all. Where'd you head to? ------------------------------
764Oh that's definitely true. Of course, if I had a job in LA I'd probably quit it because LA sucks. ------------------------------
765I can't see why you'd want to vandwell in a city at all, personally. Not that cities aren't fun and great (so long as you don't have to pay their robbery-level rents) but because of the hassles, the tickets, the law, the crackheads, the noise, etc etc. A visit is nice, but you can't beat national forest, BLM land, and in the east, state forests, from the limited experience I've had with it. ------------------------------
766I think you mean <em>civilization</em>, not society. A great many pre-agricultural peoples were non-monogamous and their societies were quite stable.  ------------------------------
767Depends on how you'd measure it. If you only ask city-slickers, then maybe. ------------------------------
7681937 or 2037? ------------------------------
769<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>"we"</p> </blockquote> <p>nope ------------------------------
770<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>I have a hard time taking bravado on this subreddit considering that most people here could never bring themselves to kill and eat a dog.</p> </blockquote> <p>I don't disagree with this at all. Most people who talk about radical politics are physically weak, with no real understanding of tactics. Many of them have never handled a weapon or been in a physical confrontation of any sort; yet they advocate for a violent revolution they would never succeed at even in the best conditions. I am not a revolutionary in any meaningful sense of the word. Insurgency does not appeal to me because in order to participate in an insurgency, one must have some conception of "society" that is able to be saved or worth improving. There is no case for an assertion like that. Anthropogenic Climate Change, combined with a laundry list of ecological crises that stem from industrial civilization's malignant growth, mean that the future is uncertain in most regards, but that it's certain we'll see serious, if not extraordinary "shocks" to the supply chain in the near-term future. As powerful as the US military is, shocks to the industrial system on the scale I would expect this century will put a great deal of stress on the state, and it will have an increasingly harder time enforcing its hegemony in the rural US. In these conditions, I want a gun. That's without factoring in that in emergency conditions, tyrants spring up, and an already flagrantly corrupt democracy may give way to something more pernicious. There is absolutely no telling when, why, or how the state may decide that those who remain self-sufficient, provide alternatives to their system, or oppose it in any fashion are criminals. In which case, possessing and training with small arms does help each of us as individuals inch closer to the sole aim of survival.Insurgents want to inflict their vision of the world on society at large, and I'm reasonably confident that the US Government is good at nipping this sort of thing in the bud. Hell, I myself have seen FBI surveillance in communities that in the scheme of things, anarchist or not, are of no real consequence - lord only knows how they'd react if you actually threatened the system. There is not much of an argument for these sorts of projects for the reasons you state. Anyone who wants a better society at this stage of the game must be thinking in terms of centuries and reading Toynbee and Spengler - not reading Mao and playing red soldier in their backyards. American society will be gravely fractured this century, and whatever segments remain that offer a sustainable and free life for its participants will see some limited success - but only after each of us individually manage to weather the shitstorm. That's why I cache ammo and firearms, that's why I hunt and train with my weapons, and that's why I live in a deep rural location with a complete library. I'm hedging my bets, and I'm hell-bent to tell anyone who would take my guns away to fuck off. ------------------------------
771Absolutely, I don't disagree. But as an individual, if citizens are fighting the state, and the government is cracking down, would you rather have a .357 in your coat or not? If you would not, you're either suicidal, extremely naive, or you'd actively join / submit to a tyrannical government out of fear and/or lack of tactical ingenuity.  ------------------------------
772More people should know this quote. And should know that for context, Orwell took a bullet for the anarcho-syndicalists in the Spanish Civil War. A bullet in the <em>neck</em>. ------------------------------
773It's not lol.  ------------------------------
774<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>I didn't see who their sample was.</p> </blockquote> <p>And you probably won't. Yellow journalism has infected NPR. They aint immune to it. ------------------------------
775<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>"hundreds of people"</p> </blockquote> <p>Nice alternative facts. Got a source? The Black Panthers used self-defense, particularly after Fred Hampton was murdered by Chicago PD in his sleep. Either way, agree or disagree with the Panthers - you never know when the state will suddenly label you a criminal for opposing or resisting their power, and because of this, you need every advantage you can get tactically if you value your freedom. ------------------------------
776Obviously. My point is that the principle remains. Power cannot inflict itself onto every moment in every geographical location at a moment's notice. There is a space-time of possibility; some places, one could remain nearly indefinitely without being discovered. Others, you'd be seized immediately. Survival, evasion, resistance, and escape is a high-stakes engineering problem. They have advantages from their size, funding, technology, and capacity to act unilaterally as a body. We have advantages for the fact that we can remain diffuse, anonymous, and flexible. Giving up is not an option - and if you insist, don't poison the well for the rest of us. ------------------------------
777That's IF they get their shit together quick enough before you get your ass into whatever Plan B you've got. And that's also IF you're Bin-Laden status, big time, all government agencies actively want to hunt you down and are authorized to do so, which generally doesn't happen overnight, and generally doesn't happen across all borders globally. It's a strategy game that individuals acting in a diffuse manner can play to win. ------------------------------
778Uh-oh, here we go. I've been doing this all week. The government has wanted to get Assata Shakur for decades. She was smart. She escaped prison and fled to Cuba, and was almost certainly armed at many points during her escape. Had she had an individual or group of individuals in her way, a high-powered weapon with a high-capacity magazine would have served her well, and she may have had one. Today she lives in Cuba, and cannot be touched by those who pursued her. You may or may not support her aims as a Black Panther, and may consider her to be a mere criminal, but the point still stands - this is an example of an individual who needed the most absolutely solid insurance that she would survive and make it to where she needed to go, and that insurance consisted of a weapon. One never knows when their government will decide they're a criminal. Ask a Hungarian, or a Russian, or a South African, or an environmental activist or anarchist. Of course, you didn't see Assata's success story on the news anytime recently - because the news media likes to pick up the low-hanging fruit and hold it up on TV as proof of the godlike powers of the US Military and police, and tends to ignore their failures. They want to pound it into our minds first that we should be afraid of everything - immigrants, muslims, black folks, guns, survivalists, rednecks - and that we can trust them. Then, they want to make sure we understand what will happen if we do not trust them - or worse, go against them. And the strategy, conscious or not, it works. At a more basic level, there is a tactical spectrum of efficacy when considering different weapons. Against an attacker with a .357, I have different odds at different levels; on foot with no weapons, I have no chance. On foot with a high-capacity .22 magazine, I have a big "maybe". In a vehicle with a high capacity .22, my odds are actually decent as I am a moving target. In a wheelchair with a pencil I'm a dead man. On a motorcycle with a full-auto AR, I have good odds. In a bullet-proof deuce-and-a-half with double mounted Roosevelt .409's converted to full-auto, I'm unstoppable against an attacker with a .357. In thinking this way, one realizes that though the force of the US Military is considerable, and our possession of small arms may not increase our chances of survival by much in <em>some</em> scenarios, not only are these scenarios unlikely, foregoing our one most odds-increasing tool just doesn't make sense. Especially when death counts from school shootings are so comparably low compared with the amount of people the police murder. ------------------------------
779Damn right, whether you're pro-freedom or anti, we all know the NRA fucking sucks. Hell we knew that after they were talking about how the Black Panthers shouldn't have a right to carry. 2nd amendment for whites only my ass! ------------------------------
780Because we know "our democracy" doesn't work. The only way gun control could work is if democracy is even somewhat reliable; in a straight-up corrupt state, it's idiotic and would only give way to tyranny. Add AGW to the mix, peak oil, peak topsoil, and all of the other compounding calamities of industrial civilization to the mix, and you've got a long list of damn good reasons why we should not be giving up our rights to own firearms and other weapons. Sure, there are a few college-town born and bred, Twitter-fed nincompoops in every generation at this point, and maybe more of them among millenials, but most of us aren't like that. Hell, most of us aren't alt-right, aren't SJW's, aren't Hillary supporters, but are somewhere economically slightly left of Bernie, and in terms of liberty, right into the Ron Paul let-me-smoke-weed-at-my-gay-wedding-with-a-rifle-in-my-truck world. NPR just doesn't get it because they consist of wincing New England boomer liberals who are out of touch as hell. I used to live in Mass and can say these people are in a <em>BUBBLE</em>. They're in such a bubble they don't even realize just how many pro-gun kids are in the classes they teach in the colleges. Most of them have never seen a gun anywhere but on a police officer - so obviously they're going to be scared. And a steady diet of CNN and Rachel Maddow adds to it - all that combined and you see some good old boys shooting skeet one time and you're blubbering about moving to Switzerland. This is the price of tech. The internet + urbanization means you can live in a bubble, and never interact with us weird dirty aliens from the country. Everyone just views the "other" as a cartoon character from hell. The real winners here are the ones way out, in a cabin, with a shitload of bullets and no cell service. Reading, sipping coffee, playing with the dog, and playing lawn-darts over a damn vennison picnic.  ------------------------------
781Yes it's currently -1f as of this morning at Morris Jesup. Nevertheless, frightening event that likely may indicate emergent trends. ------------------------------
782Absolutely. I find that discussing egoism with libertarians is a great way to find comrades who are actually down to build some shit. I wonder if it wouldn't be smart for some of us PLA's and Egoists to move up to the Free State Project in NH to represent an anti-property and anti-rights position. ------------------------------
78310/10 great post ------------------------------
784Get a piece of land. Hunt, fish, grow, and have a plan for getting the hell out of dodge if need be. Take what you can from whomever you deem deserving of theft and share it with those who need it.Everything you need, there is a way to get it with less or no money. Use time instead of money - cut out the middleman. ------------------------------
785Which distro? Out of curiosity? ------------------------------
786<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>I find it hard to imagine a sequence of events that would lead to global civilizational collapse over a duration of less than 12 months.</p> </blockquote> <p>Even that would be <em>staggering</em>. Hell, anything under a decade would completely surprise me. Much more likely is a segmented future. The collapse is already going down in Yemen, in the Arctic, in Bangladesh, and it's going to creep into the West. Even when it's generalized here, there will be billionaires living in secured, gated, nuclear-powered communities, and their collapse may never come. Just as aboriginal human society has been forced into a 5,000 year hiding, now the tables will turn, and the civilized will be hiding. ------------------------------
787I have actually considered this style of a Bugout shelter... it could be quite interesting. Maybe on Devon Island - the largest uninhabited island on earth, up in Canada ------------------------------
788That's interesting. Why is this? ------------------------------
789<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>has nothing concrete backing it</p> </blockquote> <p>this is where you're objectively incorrect.  ------------------------------
790<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>punish</p> </blockquote> <p>ooh kinky. To me what's right is right, no matter who's elected, or for that matter, who's the boss. ------------------------------
791Jesus that shit looks like Blade Runner.  ------------------------------
792People who are anti-kneeling also usually like shit like the Boston Tea Party... "as long as the rule-breaking is strictly historical, and carried out by people who I assume are a cartoonish version of me did it, it's okay." ------------------------------
793Looks the same, ha! ------------------------------
794Damn, that's insane. What general area are you at? ------------------------------
795Honestly, I found <em>Ecology of Freedom</em> to be stale and anthropologically way off base. It's been a few years since I read it, so perhaps I could revisit it, but from what I could tell, Bookchin's departure from the anarchist position probably had a lot to do with a shaky and somewhat colonialist view of aboriginal life. And after the "unbridgable chasm" essay, I just couldn't take Bookchin seriously.  ------------------------------
796This piece does a decent job of the question:<a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jason-godesky-thirty-theses" rel="nofollow">https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jason-godesky-thirty-theses</a> ------------------------------
797<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>If I could wave my hand and erase all guns, I would. Absolutely.</p> </blockquote> <p>Agreed, absolutely. Barring that, I'd rather create a solid revolutionary gun culture than turn my rights over the corrupt state. ------------------------------
798Sorry that I've lost friends and family to the police. ------------------------------
799Hey good to see you in here! Yeah, I'm feeling much the same. Something has shifted greatly; we saw a spark of hope in the last couple centuries that perhaps reason could rule without destroying - but instead cold and calculated reason has destroyed a great deal, and that's only where it has survived. In general, reason has faded to dust - an unending horde of highly suggestible adult babies have come to enact a brutally absurd rule, inflicted, bizarrely, tweet by tweet. Here's to land, water, and bullets! ------------------------------
800Oh it's totally awesome we're even speaking right now - anonymous person who could be on the other side of the world. Eating pineapple, drinking coffee, cars, all of that, it's enjoyable. I'm simply convinced that all civilizations collapse, and the bigger they are, the harder they fall. And in addition, for all the nice things about civilization, there's a lot of horrid baggage that often outweighs the good from a utilitarian ethical perspective. Factory farms, sweatshops, pollution, etc etc could theoretically be phased out and overcome, but only if population decreased. This would require massive wealth redistribution (as educated and economically-secure folks tend to have fewer kids, as in Singapore and Sweden), and for this, we'd require full communism - aka, we'd have to take on the combined forces of the global military-media-prison-industrial complex. And we'd probably have to do it this decade. Best of luck, but neither of us should hold our breath much either way. There's no telling how this shitstorm ends - but having water, land, bullets, and a HAM radio can't hurt. ------------------------------
801Absolutely. I just get super sore about guns because the anti-gun arguments are driving me crazy this week. I do cache ammo, and I'm interested in making my own black powder and musket balls for flintlocks, but ultimately, you're right - we've got to master the skills required for sustaining life in primitive communities with absolutely no resources originating from the industrial system. I'm always learning and it's a long road. Best of luck in your endeavors, see you when the party starts. ------------------------------
802<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>the militias we have are mostly reactionary.</p> </blockquote> <p>Then it's up to us to change it. Ball's in our court.</p> <blockquote> <p>And it’s frustrating to see left wing people automatically take the reactionary position of framing the debate around disarmament or doing nothing</p> </blockquote> <p>Absolutely agreed there. ------------------------------
80320 miles? Nice. Try 200+. When I lived in northern Maine, I was 350 miles from <em>Portland</em>. Out west it gets further out. I'll tell you this: that "country kid bullshit" is integral to doing anything like real working-class organizing. Without the rural folks, you don't eat. Straight up.  ------------------------------
804<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>But until then, we have far more to gain from non-violent community organization (that could potentially form the basis of future militias) than from stockpiling military hardware and bringing that kind of destructive power into our communities.</p> </blockquote> <p>So long as by "we", you mean urban folks, I can respect this. From a community autonomy perspective, you absolutely have the right to decide how your communities are run. My problem stems only from the fact that most of the time, laws written for whole states, comprised of both rural and urban areas, are written by and for city people. When they aren't, they're written for corporate farmers, mining and oil companies, and big industrial projects in our areas we didn't ask for. A good example, as I'm from upstate NY, is the NY SAFE act. That act might have made sense in NYC, I don't know because I don't live there. But up here, it doesn't matter. Vermont has a low rate of gun crime, yet there, you can walk around with a pistol on your hip, a gun rack in your truck, and a big 'ol magazine. All of that is well-suited to life in the sticks. To force us to live by city rules is a crock of shit. it's bad for politics, it's bad for making alliances, it's bad all the way around. It doesn't reduce crime here - hell, it helps biker gangs make a buck by bringing in the shit that's illegal, and they've usually got heroin with them. If that's a compromise those invested in the gun debate could reach, I'd be glad. Keep it local, whether you're rural or urban. Let us keep our guns - which as you say, you'll be glad you did when SHTF - and we'll let you keep your taxes, red tape, and killer cops too. Hell maybe we could make a change and <em>help each other</em> fix our respective issues, but the liberal gun control arguments I'm seeing here are NOT the way to do it.Sorry if I'm ranting, this issue just gets me sore as all hell. Both the gun issue and the rural-urban divide. Just because the US is majority urban does not mean we, way out here, need to back down and accept the restrictions you city chickens have. We're out here for a reason, a lot of us. Anyway thanks for keeping it cool and constructive. ------------------------------
805Honestly, good luck to y'all living in cities, unarmed, with no preps. I don't need luck - because I have remote land, guns, and water. ------------------------------
806Yeah I'm straight-up anti-civilization. Working toward the future primitive by building collapse-resistance culture in rural areas. Pigs go feral if they escape captivity in about three months, I find that it's about three years for most humans. I think right now is an exciting time because we can accurately take an account of pre-history and make historically informed decisions regarding what elements of various human cultures we'd like to retain, and get schooled in what elements we're forced by nature to expunge. Looking at a future of tribal hunter-gatherers with hydropower systems made from car parts, running meshnets and using HAM radio to communicate, etc. You may see, given this understanding of history and the future (which I view as non-voluntary - we <em>will</em> collapse), why gun ownership is wise in my view. ------------------------------
807100% ------------------------------
808Sorry for your loss. It's a shame your friends associated with people who did not know how to handle their weapons. And similarly a shame that you'd have the state, an institution that has killed over 150 people just this year alone with guns, regulate our capacity to make a better gun culture. I'm curious, how do you find yourself in this sub if you're anti-gun? ------------------------------
809I'm an individualist anarchist. Lost faith in Syndicalism for the same reasons I oppose the state; so I'd say we agree. I'm also absolutely convinced we'll see the collapse of industrial civilization, particularly after the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/12/1026/4605229">Warning to Humanity Second Notice</a> published by the American Institute of Biological Sciences. I took the rose-colored glasses off a long time ago. ------------------------------
810<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Yeah how you do it is to shit all over your grandfather's memory re: Blair Mountain as the generations after them do nothing but LARP out historical fights as meth addicts and pills rip apart your communities and your teachers are striking. Rather than address the problems, it's just an endless reaction sequence that never asks why your folks decided to stop fighting and hope coal will be around forever to save you</p> </blockquote> <p>ha, if you come around here and say that, you'll be* more toothless than we are real quick. I'm done with you city yuppies. All that shit we're dealing with is from capitalism, and from city pricks like you acting like we're fucking aliens. And I'm still on the ground, doing work in my community, helping people get together and fight. There are plenty of us who don't give a rat's ass about coal, and don't you forget it.  ------------------------------
811<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain</a><span class="res-freetext-expando"><a class="expando-button toggleImage selftext collapsed collapsedExpando" title="" data-host="wikipedia"></a></span><div class="res-expando-box" style="min-height: 20px" hidden=""> <div class="res-expando-box-inner"></div> </div> ------------------------------
812Oh holy shit, yeah if you think this you'd definitely put trust in the state. I think it's historically demonstrable that what you're saying is of no merit, but that's another argument. Full disclosure, I'm an anarchist and have been such for fifteen years. ------------------------------
813Ha, no doubt. It's hilarious. ------------------------------
814<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>liberals don't want guns at all</p> </blockquote> <p>But the crazy thing is that even the "dirtbag left" seems to be completely consistent with the Hillary democrats on this issue. I was straight up excited about ChapoTrapHouse, but <a href="/r/chapotraphouse">/r/chapotraphouse</a> right now is all anti-gun shit. If you argue in favor of firearm ownership there's a horde of folks ready to pounce you.I will say, after moderating /r/anarchism</a> for a few years, I am completely convinced that someone is playing with these forums and manipulating them. Not Russians, maybe USG, I have no idea. Maybe it's wishful thinking - I'd really like to think that people aren't so ridiculously irrational, I guess.  ------------------------------
815<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>they literally do nothing to protect you right now</p> </blockquote> <p>Where did you get that from? My aunt got robbed by a dude on meth last year and she scared him off with a shotgun, straight up. The police don't come up here. Objectively, having a firearm improves your chances of survival in a combat situation. That means when the national guard closes in, instead of having a zero percent chance of resistance, you've got a chance. Maybe marginal, but better than nothing. I'll take likely death over rolling over and letting them send my ass to prison because that's how we do it out here. Hillbillies have been fighting back for years, regardless of what you see on TV. I had great uncles in the Battle of Blair Mountain, and for us to give that tradition of resistance up, there's nothing you could do. I guess I just don't have it in me to give up and consign my fate to a dysfunctional "democracy" I can't afford to change. ------------------------------
816What is to say that we wouldn't let the state - which is rife with authoritarianism, as you say - take our guns, only to find that they were going to function as an authoritarian state either way? In which case, we've just made our lives harder by limiting our capacity to resist? ------------------------------
817Shame I didn't mock anyone ------------------------------
818It's not that I'm not concerned, it's that the solution they're presenting coincides directly with the interests of the bourgeois state. It's a mental health issue - and I'm aware that the right is only paying lip service to this concept. We need to take that issue very seriously. Hell, I was a disturbed kid when I was young and I wish that something had made it easier for me. ------------------------------
819<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>American gun owners use firearms as tools to repair fragile egos and feelings inadequacy.</p> </blockquote> <p>I don't disagree, but the solution is to rehabilitate gun culture to be revolutionary, not to let the corrupt state restrict our access to weapons. ------------------------------
820Alright, let's start over. I'm willing to listen. Nothing you are saying makes sense to me and I want to understand it. I'm from a place where everyone has a shitload of guns, I got my first rifle at age 8, and we hunt for our food and make use of weapons for self-defense because the police won't come out here. I've also read Mao, Fred Hampton, and all of the standard pro-gun leftist shit, and have believed vociferously in it for my entire life. The first thing I'd ask about is why is this a gun issue and not a mental health issue? Obviously the right-wingers are just paying lip service to this argument, and I'm aware a lot of them are shills for the gun industry. You're not talking to someone who supports the NRA or the consumerist gun culture by any means at all. But the argument does appear to have some merit; mentally healthy people use guns responsibly. They're fun, first of all. They're often historical (I grew up shooting a percussion cap muzzleloader from the civil war). They help us hunt. They give poor people insurance for when things go wrong and get frightening. And at a basic level, in any sort of confrontation, a reasonably-well-trained individual with a handgun or rifle has an edge toward preserving their life (and you only get one). This also translates on the community level: it's a lot harder to break down a community, evict whole neighborhoods, and enact regimes of political repression when people are armed and organized. All of this seems like a tough thing to give up just because a handful of mentally disturbed people - people disturbed by the harshness of life under capitalism, the failure of schools, and the death of anything resembling a functioning family unit - have used guns in a horrific way. These instances get the press, while the vast majority of the use of guns - which has been positive in nearly all rural communities - gets no press at all. The solution seems to be helping families survive despite capitalism via communitarian action, and fixing these prison-esque schools to be less unforgiving, mentally disturbing environments - not taking away guns or letting a corrupt government manage our capacity to obtain weapons and ammo.I'm also convinced that whatever power exists in gun ownership is something the state actively wants to strip us of - to make us easier to govern. The parent post you've replied to is written tongue-in-cheek as a means for me to express my frustration that so many leftists seem to agree with the Clinton-style democrats on gun issues, despite a long and rich history of pro-gun leftism. I'm not exactly waiting for the emergence of the American Viet Cong, but I am aware that I'm better off with the insurance I've got in gunpowder than in blindly trusting the state. Lord knows the pigs will still have their guns, and that reforming the police meaningfully is not really a possibility because democracy is over with and has not been functional in generations. What is it, in all this, that I am not seeing? ------------------------------
821Tell that to the Black Panthers, Viet Cong, Zapatistas, Greek Antifa, American socialists and anarchists in the 30's, etc etc. I am responsible for the present: for taking action to ensure that, as Orwell said, the rifle on the wall in the homes of socialists remains there. Giving up and letting the pig state disarm you - while they remain fully armed with the best weapons on the planet - is objectively stupid from a revolutionary perspective. While they far outgun us, community self-defense is still a solid goal. And with the vast majority of the working class, particularly the rural working class, being absolutely pro-gun, you won't have a successful working class movement without guns.Especially when they focus on guns - and not on the tens of thousands of even more dangerous means of killing large amounts of people. Hell, after Charlottesville, where was the outcry for mental health checks for people seeking a driver's license? ------------------------------
822Damn I bet she wish the Nazis didn't take away her right to defend herself with a pistol. ------------------------------
823<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>be American kid in 2045climate change has rendered agriculture impossible, industrial civilization is in decaytrump has been president for nearly four decades, is now married to Hillary Clintonnational guard has been deployed in my small midwestern towncartel is running guns in and out of Tulsa murdering anyone in their wayI had my trusty 30-30 my great great grandfather used against Pinkerton strike-breakers taken from me by Hillary Clinton herselfComplain about it on <a href="/r/ChapoTrapHouse">/r/ChapoTrapHouse</a>, everyone there says I'm mentally unstable because I believe the workers should defend themselves from the bourgeois state and use guns for self-defense in climate apocalypseNSA sees my post, sends national guard to my houseDie happy knowing that homicidal, miserably depressed kids are still miserably depressed, but they now use fertilizer in cars to kill mass amounts of peopleDie happy knowing they'll ban cars and fertilizer next year</p> </blockquote> </div> ------------------------------
824I bet he never gets pulled over.. ------------------------------
825Also, enjoy your coffee and good morning! ------------------------------
826<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>it's not the avoidance of spooks, but the acknowledgement that they're spooks and your choice of action irrelevant of their spookhood that empowers you.</p> </blockquote> <p>Neither, really. To engage actively with a spooky idea is to take a great risk that you'll look up and at some point find that you've been alienated from yourself - and potentially been used as a pawn in some kind of power game. Therefore, the egoist limits the spooky ideas to only one - the avoidance of spooks for the reason I've just stated - but does not ever let it rest as a static concept. The egoist breathes life into the idea by keeping that idea as a sidearm in action and never resting in an endless pursuit of maximizing his existential possibilities. In short, you're talking theory, and egoism is inherently anti-theory, save for a tiny sliver of forever-elusive theory that only we ourselves can find individually.It might sound like I'm on some kind of strange trip here, and at one point I fully rejected these ideas and was an ideologist - but I can say with certainty that this ultra-minimalist, present-oriented framework has not only improved my life, it has heightened my freedom and owness in a way that "politics" (that kinky, kinky game) never afforded me at all. Politics was always renunciation and the grinding of life lived into a mechanical, scientific affair, where egoism instead adopts an ero-poetic disposition toward life and its possibilities. And that's just plain more fun - and never results in "activist burnout". ------------------------------
827but WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN????? ------------------------------
828Anti-Gun leftists? Never heard of it ------------------------------
829Whatever that means. If you'd let someone overpower you and force you to do their will, injure you, or kill you in the name of "not sounding reactionary", that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. You only get one life - protect it. ------------------------------
830I have no idea where this complete misconception comes from other than from folks sounding off about Stirnerian thought without actually reading Stirner. Egoism is somewhat similar to Taoism in a sense; it's a paradox in which there is no solution but remaining in the present. Try to name the unnameable with enough focus and you'll find yourself in a meditative state purely rooted in the present. When we say something is a spook, we're not meme-ing, we're saying that it is a "sticky" idea that may remain in our minds long enough to distract us from ourselves and our present mind and desires, and that this all-consuming distraction is a device used by power to entrap us. The practice of liberating oneself, from the perspective of the egoist is also the practice of liberating oneself from the perspective of the egoist (notice the sentence means one thing with a comma and another thing without). This is a spook if you sit there and think about it and purely theorize, but if you let this train of thought pass through your mind as you act, you find your body and mind in total accordance with your uniqueness, and you experience true freedom. When you do this alongside others, you amplify your ownness. This is an experience that religion has tried to create and seldom succeeded at, that politics has used as the carrot to the collective of asses to make them do what the vanguard says, but the egoist siphons these golden moments away from power and claims them for herself. This framework also makes the theoretician wince because it simply does not make sense on paper. It only makes sense as a side-dish to <em>doing</em>. This is the genius of Stirner. We'd do well to focus the intent of our Stirner memes to communicate this, because it is genuinely liberatory. ------------------------------
831Self-Defense against any threat, with a badge or otherwise. Don't care if it's a goddamn rabid chihuahua, whatever is coming my way to harm me that I can't get away from, I'm going to come up shooting. ------------------------------
832Lifestylism for lifeYOLO ------------------------------
833Correct. When the police come to kill you, let them./s ------------------------------
834Yeah, I mean the vitriol from (urban) anarchists regarding the word "primitivist" is enough to make me seldom use the term. It also seems pretty funny that some defend the word so intensely when we're mostly <em>opposed to symbolic culture</em> or at least have very conflicted feelings about it! ------------------------------
835Stock the hell up and batten down the hatches. ------------------------------
836Right, absolutely. It's totally fine to have serious issues with local organizing efforts, but actually <em>do</em> something else then. I see this sometimes as well from fellow post-left anarchists and myself was guilty of it for a while. It takes quite a bit of effort to overcome nihilism and, if you can't find your niche, to create it from nothing. ------------------------------
837<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>I'm just having a chuckle at it. Same way I've already made fun of socialists and egoists and ancaps before. I don't need to dislike or fully disagree with something to make fun of it.</p> </blockquote> <p>Self-crit is critically important, we've just got to make sure that the jokes don't fuel the ridiculous assertions made by proponents of civilization and domestication. ------------------------------
838<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Those who desire to revert back to a time that never existed and who ignore problems of those with medical conditions,</p> </blockquote> <p>These people don't exist (other than Pentii Linkola and a tiny fraction of primitivists in the 90's). Going back into the annuls of fifth estate it becomes clear virtually no primitivists insisted on a complete return or even thought it possible. Even Zerzan acknowledges that the future primitive will look different from OG forager cultures. ------------------------------
839I don't disagree entirely but holy shit did I laugh and I'm at work ------------------------------
840A large volume of "socialist" and "anarchist" politics stem from people seeking a tribe, and aiming to establish themselves in that tribe through aesthetics and posturing. Notably, many of the people who participate in this farcical sort of thing are not particularly poor. Then, when they encounter actual poor people agitating for better conditions, they usually find something to grumble about. The action described in OP is what we need to focus on, I'd say - with far less emphasis on keeping up with political "trends" and "fashions".Source: Went to Hampshire College ------------------------------
841this exactly ------------------------------
842From Ridding Anarchy of the Leftist Millstone's description of post-left goals and aims:</p> <blockquote> <p>The rejection of identity politics. The recognition that, while various oppressed groups experience their dispossession in ways specific to their oppression and analysis of these specificities is necessary in order to get a full understanding of how domination functions, nonetheless, dispossession is fundamentally the stealing away of the capacity of each of us as individuals to create our lives on our own terms in free association with others. The reappropriation of life on the social level, as well as its full reappropriation on the individual level, can only occur when we stop identifying ourselves essentially in terms of our social identities.</p> </blockquote> <p>Viewable here: <a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/wolfi-landstreicher-from-politics-to-life-ridding-anarchy-of-the-leftist-millstone">https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/wolfi-landstreicher-from-politics-to-life-ridding-anarchy-of-the-leftist-millstone</a>Essentially one post-left take on identity is that while the initial aim of identity politics was useful - to cross examine the specific modes of oppression we experience together - the long-term effect is to reduce individuals with their own infinite possibilities to the set or category they've been forced into by power. The black man is able to be oppressed because power has designed the category of "black" and forced him into it - all oppression that is racially based flows from this. it is the same for other identities. Post-leftists generally reject any form of collectivism because collectivism is concerned with individuals-as-members of the collective, and have the long-term net effect of reducing the individual to a category. This can even invert power structures, or allow for the creation of a parasitic class of gatekeepers to emerge - a "vanguard". Consider the ways in which this vanguard effect have been exploited by power; workers vanguards become hierarchical and corrupt, BLM was infiltrated by wealthy democrats and NGOs, Gloria Steinem worked extensively with the FBI, The Gay rights movement yielded a class of yuppies who gentrified cities, etc etc. We can circumvent this by affirming our individuality <em>first</em>, and working with others as we see fit, or as we see they are categorized by power in a similar way to us - but we would do well to avoid collectivist politics inasmuch as the collective is a "spook" or spectre, to use Stirner's concept, where there is considerable risk of a bloated bureaucracy of people who may attempt to preserve the categorization of humanity that makes identity oppression possible. ------------------------------
843Imagine a crack dealer grooms a little kid into trying crack at age six. Then he continues pushing it on the kid until he's an adult. I'm not saying people aren't responsible at some point, but people are addicted to an oil-based lifestyle, and oil companies have been exceptionally adept "pushers". ------------------------------
844<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Make an example out of acouple morons amd that shit will stop.</p> </blockquote> <p>I highly doubt it. Kids are doing this shit because they're fed up with something. Their suicide rates keep climbing. ------------------------------
845your flair plus this statement is arousing combination ------------------------------
846<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>I'm pretty sure that in general, rural areas take in more government resources than they pay for, at least compared to cities.</p> </blockquote> <p>This could definitely be true; but only with regards to things like SNAP and EBT, which tons of us are on. Hell, I was on it before. Half of that is us saying "fuck it, taxes are so high we'll take what we can get" and the other half is that we're poor as hell because those taxes dis-incentivize new businesses setting up shop in our townships, keeping jobs away. That latter argument I'm not as much a fan of - I don't think we need to beg the rich for jobs so much as we need to increase community self-sufficiency - but that's definitely a reality. And there is definitely a "wal-mart-ification" of rural America. Less of us are hunting and fishing and growing and more of us are buying shit at the store, using the damn cell phones, TV, and so on. Hell, I'm on the internet! All of that, plus poverty, means EBT. I say you guys gotta lower the taxes, and in turn, it's our job to build self-sufficiency in our areas. That would be the best deal for everyone.Anyway, I'm rambling! ------------------------------
847Then let us secedeedit: I also believe most of that money is going toward the wealthier areas of the big 5 cities up here. It just doesn't make it to the rural areas. ------------------------------
848<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Port Authority income from tolls in NYC is diverted to pay for road maintenance in upstate New York</p> </blockquote> <p>Funneled through some of the most corrupt bureaucrats in the country first, then into wealthy areas of Albany, Syracuse, Buffalo, and Rochester first, and then whatever is left is managed by corrupt county and city governments. Not much finds its way out here.Poor people should be armed, but I'm aware white city folks cannot be convinced of the historically demonstrable necessity of that, so I don't think there's much use arguing the point. Lines have been drawn.As for moving to the city, how do you figure? For one, die-hard backwoods types can't function in a city. Everyone thinks you're a dumb hick, a lot of us have no high school let alone college, and few of us have even ever made a resume or anything like that. Cities make us all anxious as shit. Hell, I tried to go to college in <em>Plattsburgh</em>, and couldn't do it. I missed the freedom of the woods and was surrounded by over-sexed, xanax-popping jackasses who were all about chasing a buck and concerned about keeping up appearances. I like the country and I'll never leave it. Why should I have to move and work my ass off just because taxes are high? Lower the fucking taxes and leave us alone, that's how we feel. Not to speak of the damned rent. Hell, rent's high in Utica and there aren't jobs there. Rent will straight up leave you broke in NYC and there aren't decent jobs there even if you have a masters degree.. You can get lot rent for a trailer up here for $150, split your own wood for heat, and hunt (with those evil guns) for a lot of your food. Plant some potatoes and do your own mechanic work. Life is easy here except for the fact that the government insists on making you pay rent for your fucking land. ------------------------------
849lol that sub banned me.  ------------------------------
850Very true stuff. While some of the anthropology and science has been dis-proven, much of the material in the book Sex at Dawn is on-point. ------------------------------
851It almost made it better in a way ------------------------------
852Maybe not quite, but the standard of living is way, way lower here than elsewhere. That report that the UN just released about MS and AL being third world is just as relevant throughout a lot of rural America. And I'm not even from St. Lawrence county where shit can get even more ratchet. Same with some of the cities like Troy and Buffalo. The Hollow is a documentary that goes into some of this stuff. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy0M0SzsGNI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy0M0SzsGNI</a><span class="res-freetext-expando"><a class="expando-button toggleImage video collapsed collapsedExpando" title="" data-host="youtube"></a></span><div class="res-expando-box" style="min-height: 20px" hidden=""> <div class="res-expando-box-inner"></div> </div> They're near Gloversville I believe.  ------------------------------
853The only way to stop hyperinflation....  ------------------------------
854Relative to income, it's worse than NYC. My uncle makes $15k a year and has to pay taxes on a rural home that are somewhere around $380/mo, or one third of his income. For this he gets to drive on an un-plowed dirt road full of potholes, the local hospital is a deathtrap, and the police continuously profile him for drunk driving because his truck is rusty - even though he's been sober 12 years and they know it. Meanwhile, the politicians make it harder to farm, harder to exercise our 2nd amendment rights, and harder for new businesses to come in to provide better jobs. And then people in the city have the nerve to call us inbreds, low-IQ, losers, etc and act like we're aliens because we hate Cuomo and we hate the government. And they explain to us why we're wrong, we've got to bite the bullet and pay our fair share. It sucks all the way around. ------------------------------
855<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>but a foreign state or states.</p> </blockquote> <p>or the US government. Maybe you don't think it was an inside job, but the fact that basically everyone where I lived did made shit even more insane, and no one has trusted the government since. ------------------------------
856Oh absolutely, that's why I didn't kill myself! But it is not hard at all to reach abysmal conclusions at a certain point. Virtually every means of changing anything is fraught with serious roadblocks. We're up against a totality that is immeasurably hard to resist. By no means am I encouraging suicide, I'm only saying I understand, and that no one is bad or wrong for feeling those feelings. Often people return from these sorts of episodes to find friends and loved ones talking to them as if they are crazy, or having doctors and therapists try to put you on drugs and try to make you "normal", and I think it's very misguided.  ------------------------------
857It doesn't work out if you live upstate, I'll tell you that.. ------------------------------
858Nah 30-30. But when shit hits the fan, knowing I've got an AR-15 is the best insurance I can buy. I believe that while most people would rather pay taxes to pay police to defend them, I'd rather defend myself - because I don't trust the police. They don't show up, when they do they make things worse, and even if you reformed their way of doing things, you've still got to place trust in democracy, their institutional norms, and their accountability processes - all of which have a terrible enough track record to suggest they're flawed. There's no historical reason to think reform is possible - unless you're of the wealthy demographic whose property values they work to protect.Guns are a class issue. They're a race issue too. Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, they all advocated black self-defense. They even did work on that front with rednecks, with the Young Patriots Organization and the Rainbow Coalition with Hy Turman. The American Indian Movement carried guns. Guns are what the oppressed use to defend themselves when the systems fail (like they always do) to protect them.Believe you me, I hate the gun culture of paranoid right-wing white people. That's been cooked up by the NRA, the Koch Brothers, and the republican party, and it's used as a tool to keep us all down. Fuck them. But the answer isn't to give your guns up - it's to build a culture of community self-defense, to carry the traditions of those who resisted the state before us. Not to whitewash them with a bunch of nanny-state horseshit. Hell, even the revered MLK had a shitload of guns, he just didn't want to use them. It was all that gun culture that the state has been trying to suppress. But the hunting / local self defense issue is real too. The SAFE act didn't do shit for anyone - that was NYC overstepping their turf. They made a LOT of our guns illegal, and that law was written by people who are totally out of touch and know nothing of rural life. When your neighbor is a methsmoking son of a bitch whose known to steal and to kill, who's fresh out of prison, you want to sleep easy with an AK or an AR next to your bed - because the cops are an hour and a half away, and don't come to your trailer park anyway unless it's to "take out the trash" and haul your family to prison. ------------------------------
859Yup. Nuclear-powered gated communities run by silicon valley types and former oil tycoons on the one side, and essentially a return to a nomadic forager lifestyle for the rest of us (providing we survive). ------------------------------
860Oh no, it's actually literally impossible. I'm fully aware and preparing for the total breakdown of industrial civilization, this century.  ------------------------------
861<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Its just not worth it. I cant keep paying into a hobby that in my eyes, funds a PR campaign tgat white washes domestic terrorism.</p> </blockquote> <p>I mean, this is only true if you give the NRA money. I'll say the NRA blows, and I'm a gun owner and constitutional-carry supporter. They were against the Black Panthers arming themselves in the 70's, they are basically a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g0dnxLGW8M" rel="nofollow">propaganda mouthpiece for the arms industry</a><span class="res-freetext-expando"><a class="expando-button toggleImage video collapsed collapsedExpando" title="" data-host="youtube"></a></span><div class="res-expando-box" style="min-height: 20px" hidden=""> <div class="res-expando-box-inner"></div> </div>, and then after vegas they opened the door for the libs to run hog-wild by supporting the bump-stock ban. The NRA is absolute trash, but that doesn't mean we have to let the government break us and strip us of our rights. Personally, we need to stand strong on guns and make these incidents about what it's really about: mental health. When I was a kid I was miserable too. Tried to kill myself. It wasn't until I started living in the woods and focusing on meditation and solitude that I got myself straight. I got resources for myself that most kids never get, and if we were able to show these kids that life ain't all grinding it out under fluorescent lights eight hours a day, doing bullshit assignments and getting your ass whooped by your stepdad , things would change.Not to mention, they want us to give up our guns, but no doubt the police (who've killed over 150 people this year alone, already) will keep theirs. We've seen this shit happen before. I respect that you're flexible and willing to change your opinion, but with the collapse of industrial civilization looming this century, and the general instability and intense divisions in the US, it'd help to be well-armed. Opt out of gun culture if you want, but please don't help them disarm the rest of us. ------------------------------
862Wow, absolutely incredible piece. Thanks for sharing. ------------------------------
863Hah! I'll be the one throwing spears at Musk from my tipi ------------------------------
864Indoor farming without oil-based production of machinery or materials, built in the next 20-40 years, that is able to not only meet present demand, but to anticipate increased demand from increased population.Mission Impossible: Climate Change ------------------------------
865He also could be bulking up after he got his shit wrecked by that awfully-executed and frankly weak punch the antifascists gave him. That was an embarrassing punch to be so affected by and he probably wanted to make sure that couldn't happen again. Though stress eating is just as likely.  ------------------------------
866megadeath in one blow vs. constant suffering that keeps billions alive and enslaved... the choice is easy. I'd choose the first - even if it killed me. ------------------------------
867You'd probably enjoy a lot of writings on anarcho-primitivism. Derrick Jensen, John Zerzan, Feral Faun, Kevin Tucker, Baedan. Your take is precisely where I'm at and have been at since I was a young kid. We're built to be hunter-gatherers, nomadic, usually non-monogamous. Right now those who "collapse themselves" or rewild are poised to do quite well in the coming days. Get some land, a shitload of guns, and create a tribe out in the middle of nowhere.  ------------------------------
868RIP planet stable enough to support human agriculture ------------------------------
869Best of luck. Just remember he's not the crazy one - he's responding in a perfectly rational way to a society that is destroying the planet to maintain an unfulfilling and ultimately unliveable way of life. You may disagree, but nearly anytime I've dealt with suicides (including my own attempt), this was at the root. I'm not the praying sort, but I pray that he finds his way back home.edit: what did I say wrong?  ------------------------------
870you're full of shit. Come upstate and take a look at how we live... we heat with wood, we can our own veggies, we hunt instead of going to walmart. There aren't any jobs, so we've got to get by how we can. It's the same in West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Maine, Pennsylvania. Rural poor folks are everywhere and city liberals seem to get off on making our lives harder. ------------------------------
871<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>from PAsays "lorrie"</p> </blockquote> <p>??? ------------------------------
872Just to add to what has been said, the history of the American idea of police has its origins in runaway slave patrols. ------------------------------
873Right, like how do city liberals convince broke subsistence hunters to give up their way of life?? ------------------------------
874it seems to be a thing amongst anarchists in general, with a few exceptions. no real reason to pick on anti-civ. I've met a few trans anti-civ types who're making hormones from kale seeds and shit like that. they're definitely out there. ------------------------------
875Yeah, it is a bit strange, mostly because they are of so little political consequence and can easily become anarchists. ------------------------------
876can we please just put this argument to rest? literally no anti-civ people are saying "kill the disabled" ------------------------------
877no historical precedent for this though? ------------------------------
878Most legitimately non-civilized communities don't even have a word for "nature" because they do not see a divide between the world and themselves. ------------------------------
879Who are generally from the city ------------------------------
880Yeah, I don't know. I know I've been an ideological anarchist, and a post-left / egoist / anti-ideological anarchist (as I currently am), and ideology just makes you miserable and doesn't seem to yield results in the way of organization anyhow. I'm not doing any gatekeeping regarding who actually is and isn't an anarchist on this topic, as I think the rigid types are in the right place in terms of where their hearts lie, but what I do know is that the egoist position needs to return to the helm of the anarchist cause. ------------------------------
881Some of us get pretty damn close ------------------------------
882I believe that he would have been anarchistic, but would have scoffed at the rigid and dogmatic view many anarchists have of their ideology. He probably would have clowned on our more scowling and stultified counterparts, and he most certainly would have been banned from /r/anarchism</a>. Anarcho-Cynicism? It would be an interesting project. Novatore comes to mind. ------------------------------
883Guerilla warfare baby ------------------------------
884literally this is what anti-gun people are arguing ------------------------------
885Yeah well when the national guard sets us up with martial law, I'll be glad I'm armed. I didn't learn that from the republican party, I learned it from the Black Panthers, the YPG, and the Zapatistas. "That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”― George Orwell ------------------------------
886Not in SF lol. Wouldn't want land there anyway because it's a bad place to be when SHTF. Somewhere rural. ------------------------------
887To grab what they can in terms of resources from the megamachine, plan their exit, and utilize those resources in a way that offers something tangible to those in need, like land.Barring that, I don't know. The photo is interesting primarily because it highlights a system where such a disconnection is even possible.  ------------------------------
888<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Maybe if you count among the homeless people couch surfing or living in a van and showering at 24hr fitness. I have seen no evidence that the people living in tents on the streets are working, other than collecting redeemable bottles and cans and selling bike parts and other stolen items.</p> </blockquote> <p>How long were you homeless for? ------------------------------
889<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>In reality we have no clue what to expect.</p> </blockquote> <p>everything but consistent or mild weather, that's what we can expect ------------------------------
890Woah wait... don't tell me Chapo is anti-gun ------------------------------
891I've done it while hitchhiking. Whenever we'd pass a Denny's, I'd say "ya know, I've never had that Denny's before...." and have gotten a few meals like this when I was hard up. ------------------------------
892Uh, Shay's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion were absolutely legitimate and necessary affairs. Shame on you for suggesting otherwise. ------------------------------
893Yup. Buy land with student loan money, stay poor, grow a garden and a tiny semi-underground house, hunt, and get your land classed as forever wild so your tax bill is nothing, and invite as many people as you can to do the same. Dropping out is the only viable mental health solution from the perspective of the individual, in my opinion. ------------------------------
894our job was to keep the spam comments out, mostly. It was a few fools who went beyond that. ------------------------------
895Uh, the "18" number is used by liberals to take our guns away. That's actually the case. They trump up numbers to suit their agenda - which is an agenda to make us reliant on the state and incapable of self-defense. As anarchists, we've got to be strong against gun control.  ------------------------------
896<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>keep these guys in mind (that includes when you're stuck on the subway)</p> </blockquote> <p>yeah definitely not the rich folks who don't pay anything on incomes orders of magnitude larger ------------------------------
897Got to say, I would consider a name change. ------------------------------
898<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>The U.S. just calculated that the outcome of giving required effort for Vietnam campaign wasn't worth at all which played the main role for stopping the operations.</p> </blockquote> <p>That is literally the goal of guerilla warfare. ------------------------------
899as a former mod of <a href="/r/anarchism" rel="nofollow">/r/anarchism</a>, I'm gonna just back up what you're saying with a huge "hell yeah" ------------------------------
900because "wee-woo muh social contract" just shouldn't be a thing ------------------------------
901Or nuclear duel with NK ------------------------------
902Upvoting because it is good for discussion, however, the sort of ranching they do in MT is the least of our worries.  ------------------------------
903<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Defense against those engaging in violence is self defense</p> </blockquote> <p>So if you slap your cousin, and you're in Nebraska and I'm in California, it is in my best interest to use force to stop you from engaging in violence? No - it is your cousin's job to defend himself, and it's my job to defend me. What others do elsewhere is not my concern unless I make it mine. And because of this, using force to end violence generally does not inhere in libertarianism. ------------------------------
904User was implying the state would do this.And your statement is incorrect; libertarians believe in <em>self-defense</em>. ------------------------------
905Absolutely. Following Sandy Hook we would have done well to start teaching gun safety in schools and providing free trigger locks and tax rebates for the purchase of gun safes.  ------------------------------
906excellent insights, <a href="/u/RectoVaginalFistula_" rel="nofollow">/u/RectoVaginalFistula_</a><span class="RESUserTag"> <a class="userTagLink RESUserTagImage truncateTag" title="set a tag" href="javascript:void 0"></a> </span>! ------------------------------
907My reply was regarding the sourcing of the numerical figure I quoted.  ------------------------------
908didn't know you posted here, fuck yeah. But yeah Denver is a police-state nightmare if you're homeless. ------------------------------
909I mean, yes if you can only think in terms of this generation. You could feed everyone with the resources we have. But what happens when you do? Everyone has more kids. Even if you aspire to the 1:1 birth/death ratio of Singapore, Sweden, etc, that requires education and a stable economy with a high level of wealth - we don't have time to bring this about before shit hits the fan. There's no way. ------------------------------
910Crickets are delicious. Take a fifty gallon drum with ten gallons of water in it and put it in a field with a large white background that curves into the barrel. Shine a light on that background all night and crickets will fly into the white light fast, fall into the water, and in the morning, you'll have enough crickets for a decent meal. ------------------------------
911I mean, I can certainly imagine this. I myself am more of a <a href="/r/darkfutorology" rel="nofollow">/r/darkfutorology</a> sort, and very anti-tech, and to even interact with a lot of people who drink the Elon Musk / renewables / transhumanist kool-aid is challenging for me. They often don't know what it's like to live in the woods for months at a time without internet or electricity, or why anyone would care about our paleolithic roots. They've never killed an animal or grown anything. Our priorities are absolutely different, lines are drawn, and if industrial civilization really can overcome entropy, a schism will crack even wider and we will be doing totally different things, different priorities. And surely, as civilization has always done, this next advancement in the civilizing process will be more hell-bent and more equipped than ever to aim toward the complete destruction of the animal in man, and of anyone who would stand to remind the allies of the machine of their own animality. Civilization always aims to destroy wilderness and wild humans. They will have their nuclear-powered, walled-off dystopias - Google fiefdoms - and there will be those of us who remain "outside the walls". They'll send detachments of super-soldiers out into our areas to either kill us or force us to work, and to extract whatever resources the fiefdom needs. We'll become masters of high-tech hide and seek. Hopefully they just leave the planet so the rest of us can inherit the wasteland and start over.  ------------------------------
912It sucks but you're probably right. ------------------------------
913I mean, that's the true function of welfare, and the Black Panthers themselves even said it. It's a payment to keep the poor from revolting. Hell, even when I was an ancom I rejected welfare for this reason. ------------------------------
914"libertarian" /s ------------------------------
915<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>90% of the people on it don't need it, and the 10% that do need it could absolutely exist on 1/2 of what that are receiving.</p> </blockquote> <p>That's pretty extreme, IMO. Where are you getting this number from? ------------------------------
916<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>While solely blaming the poor is not the answer, solely blaming society is not the answer either. The truth is somewhere in the middle.</p> </blockquote> <p>I tend toward thinking that out-of-the-box, human beings are absolutely products of circumstance; that they are basically automata unconsciously being pushed and pulled around by society - however, they obtain their free will the moment they enter a state of existential revolt. Once we're conscious of our circumstances and the extent to which they've governed us, and we reject them and demand more, suddenly we're able to surpass ourselves and become superhuman. If this were how both sides approached the matter, the bickering could cease, and we could all focus on the question of how exactly to precipitate a complete existential revolt in those who come from poor or unlivable circumstances. The reason we won't see this is because on the one side, liberals need victim mentality to secure votes and foster reliance on the state, and the corporate class needs the "bootstraps" myth to keep disgruntled employees (whom they extract a great deal of wealth from) in line by giving them something unlikely to hope for. ------------------------------
917Northern New Hampshire - go there ------------------------------
918You didn't sign anything, and if you have the physically overwhelming force or the cunning to steal from anyone under capitalism, you're absolutely free to do it. I may not advise it all the time - sometimes long-term friendship is more profitable or enjoyable than whatever is obtained by theft - but that doesn't change the fact that you're free to do it if you're smart or strong enough.Case in point, when I was a kid a man robbed a bank near me. We've got ATV trails that go all the way to Canada through the mountains, and this bank was situated directly in front of those trails. He robbed the bank in the usual fashion, then hauled ass on his ATV to Canada and laid low in the woods. He was never caught. Sounds to me that the most reasonable way to understand this is he forcibly exerted property rights over something another party could not maintain control over. You may not <em>like</em> this way of doing things, but it is factual irrespective of our preferences that might is right. ------------------------------
919Eh, I disagree (kinda). Property rights stem from the capacity to defend them. Self-defense is the essence of self-ownership and the only meaningful basis for private property.  ------------------------------
920I'm gonna have to think about that. I just remember hearing that from some anarchist kids in West Virginia and corroborating it with wikipedia history of the banjo. ------------------------------
921no way ------------------------------
922Yeah, I absolutely get it. There are definitely folks doing this kind of music who aren't racist, but it's a lot of work to find them.What's funny is how music <em>is</em> common between cultures, even when there is racism. Tell the origins of the banjo to any redneck or country music lover (I'm from the backwoods) and their heads will spin. It's like, yep, your ancestors used to hide runaways in the appalachians and that's where you got bluegrass from. The real histories have to be forcibly obscured by power structures in order to maintain the intense cognitive dissonance a lot of racists have about music, art, and really anything cultural, especially in the US. ------------------------------
923It looks like an island on a frozen lake. ------------------------------
924yeah but if you say "vagabondage" people make sex jokes that distract from the point. It is definitely the correct word, though. ------------------------------
925<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Professionals, businessmen. CEOs. Plenty of them vagabond. </p> </blockquote> <p>Was actually seeing your point til you said this ------------------------------
926This is sort of like heavy post-workday alcohol consumption without destroying your liver. Smart. ------------------------------
927This is how you get a date.. ------------------------------
928This is the million-dollar question. As pro-hunting as I am, I don't see much of a reason to kill these animals. ------------------------------
929Aw, come on, the music's not bad, there's just no real reason - historical or genetic or any of the shit they say - that it should be used for a white supremacist framework. ------------------------------
930This is true for nearly all popular American music. The exception I see among white supremacists is the "Nordic Resistance" types who'll listen to old Viking flute songs and chanting. At least that's culturally consistent.  ------------------------------
931Nope, it's just what happens when I drink a shitload of margaritas and then log onto reddit, ha! ------------------------------
932Nice van, terrible operating system. <sup><sup>try</sup></sup> <sup><sup>linux</sup></sup> ------------------------------
933Ah, of course!Thanks so much /problem solved ------------------------------
934Thanks for the tip, didn't think about going into the files.When I do that, and save the edit to the file, it says permission is denied and now the file on disk may be truncated. What gives? ------------------------------
935I don't advocate much of anything; but it seems like a feasible means to obtain skills for insurrectionary activity. It certainly would give you an edge that the college / punk house / cafe environment wouldn't give ya. ------------------------------
936Bunsenlabs is superior IMO ------------------------------
937Yeah, I've done this. Traveled around the US for years, hitchhiking and bike touring, and felt a strong desire to return right around the time the alt-right started becoming popular and the KKK was recruiting in towns near where I was from. Decided it was time to return and teach my people their own history and to fight the resurgence of hard-right politics in upstate. Also realized that where I'm from is one of the best places to be if the grid goes down. I also am in love with the Mohawk River and don't want to be away from it. It's the most important living entity in my life. ------------------------------
938Because it's hard to meet women there. ------------------------------
939Russel Shoatz said it first. He's been right for a long time. Not to mention, we've got the luxury of the Coast Guard. Save motherfuckers from insane situations, and if you really wanna turn up, join the DOG's.  ------------------------------
940Seems to be a sound analysis. I'd think the fact that US involvement in Africa is so light-duty would speak to your point somewhat. ------------------------------
941And meanwhile people criticizing the YPG are.... oh wait ------------------------------
942I read it quite a few years ago, so my perspective on it may be somewhat murky, but from what I remembered it was a fairly straightforward book about the subject in the title. From what I understand, Spengler was not exactly a hard-right sort of guy; he critiqued nazism and was not the biggest fan of Hitler, and was actually isolated and had his books banned because he didn't believe in the cause. Apparently ten years before the third reich collapsed he said "in ten years the reich won't exist anymore". I think the alt-right likes to make use of him because his view of history fits really well with their whole "see, whites are the victims" narrative. That's their spin, not his. In actuality, he seems to state in plain fact that societies collapse, and this is quite simply what the collapse of ours it shaping up to be. Again, I read this when I was a kid and really should revisit it if I am to provide much commentary that is really useful. ------------------------------
943<a href="/r/digitalnomads" rel="nofollow">/r/digitalnomads</a> is pretty helpful. Otherwise, be computer literate and get lucky, tbh ------------------------------
9444 hour workweek, remote digital labor and low-cost living in the tropics or in an off-the-grid living situation... you just can't beat this formula ------------------------------
945Nihilism isn't what you think it is.... ------------------------------
946Why? ------------------------------
947<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>The magnetic pole is reversing and earth's magnetic field is weakening, and while pole reversal can take a thousand years, it can also happen in less than 20 years. The deleterious effects will be felt almost immediately.</p> </blockquote> <p>Any good reading about this? This sounds a bit far-fetched, to be honest. ------------------------------
948True, but we should also acknowledge that no other animal commits suicide (with a few exceptions), and pre-civilized humans rarely commit depressive suicide. In fact, a number of anthropological texts state that when anthropologists embedded themselves in primitive cultures, they found that hunter-gatherers often laughed at the idea, thinking it was a joke. It makes us ask, what have we lost? Or rather, what has been stolen from our humanity and who stole it? ------------------------------
949What about coal? ------------------------------
950My recommendations:Derrick Jensen's <em>Language Older Than Words</em>Jack D. Forbes' <em>Columbus and Other Cannibals</em>Oswald Spengler's <em>Decline of the West</em>Sue Rosenthal <em>Tending the Wild</em>Anonymously written essay <em>Desert</em> (available free on the anarchist library website)Miles Olson <em>Unlearn, Rewild</em>Bert and Holly's <em>Dwelling Portably</em> series, from the 1980's to 2010, for sale at Microcosm Press. Excellent compendium of folk-engineered solutions to nomadic dwelling. Great resource.While I have not read it yet, <em>1491</em> is supposed to be a great book on the Americas pre-contact. For probably the best survival manual I've found yet, Mykel Hawke's <em>Green Beret Survival Guide</em> is out of this fucking world. Most survival manuals rehash the same shit, this one adds a whole lot to the usual slew of stuff you'll find in survival books.Ardent Press has a great collection of writings by the Italian individualist anarchist Renzo Novatore that gives a pretty good picture of an individual philosophy that would best suit a post-collapse scenario.John Zerzan's <em>Why Hope?</em> is decent, as is <em>Future Primitive</em>.If you like these, I have others if I really sat down and thought about it. ------------------------------
951Or many of the cities in TX. The Ogallala aquifer is straight-up fossil water. ------------------------------
952Steven Pinker = "Peevin' Stinker" ------------------------------
953Crosspost this to <a href="/r/nyc">/r/nyc</a> - they could use a real look at this kind of thing.  ------------------------------
954<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>"Wetiko is an Algonquin word for a cannibalistic spirit that is driven by greed, excess, and selfish consumption (in Ojibwa it is windigo, wintiko in Powhatan). It deludes its host into believing that cannibalizing the life-force of others (others in the broad sense, including animals and other forms of Gaian life) is a logical and morally upright way to live."</p> </blockquote> <p>This is a decent summary I found online. I began to use the word after reading <em>Columbus and Other Cannibals</em> by Jack D. Forbes, which is a wonderful book everyone raised to be civilized and white should read. That's where I first saw the word, and I've used it ever since. ------------------------------
955<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>There are no overland train journeys from Turkey to India.</p> </blockquote> <p>Trans-siberian railroad? A bit out of the way on both ends, but could be feasible, no? ------------------------------
956<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>vaginismus.com</p> </blockquote> <p>Went to site and it said "unconsummated couples".... gross ------------------------------
957Because the right has taken over Youtube and there are very few anarchist youtubers to counter him. ------------------------------
958Unless you keep the property in the name of someone you trust, or make sure there is a lien on the property from a foreign bank (there is a service which does this) ------------------------------
959This is the piece-de-resistance of the collapse in the West that few seem to be discussing much. ------------------------------
960Then it's time for us to drop out en masse. Start taking out the max student loans and using them to collectively buy up land in rural areas where land is cheap, taxes low, and zoning nonexistent. Then get on income based repayment and keep your income low - never pay the loans back legally. Start reinvigorating small towns with subsistence hunting, gardening, and a revival of the artisan class. Make ourselves resilient for survival of major depressions or the potential failure of the industrial supply chain. Turn off the phones and start making real-world friends and having weekly or even daily gatherings of people of all ages. Turns out "progress" was a huge fucking scam; got us some good shit but cost us a whole lot - made us reliant on the wealthy. We can turn the sucker around on a local basis.  ------------------------------
961Top quality ------------------------------
962<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>you can fight the unjust charges and possibly get out of prison. </p> </blockquote> <p>If you're reasonably wealthy or have a lot of public support. Otherwise, defending yourself and getting the hell out of dodge is preferable. There are motorcycles capable of 140mph+ and the Mexican border is essentially open. Not that I'd go to the trouble, my main point is that these things are flexible. ------------------------------
963Generally, I agree. I'm only saying what I'm saying because there are definitely situations in which self-defense applies as much to the state as to anyone else. The only thing that would change that is if there was a social contract, but there is no social contract but my contractual obligation to myself for self-defense. If you tried to put me in a cage for the rest of my life for simply living a free existence which did not hurt others, I'd shoot you. The simple fact of your wearing a badge would not change that, and something similar to this argument led to the founding of the United States.  ------------------------------
964You can get a Canadian license to carry? Holy shit, did not know. Gotta be hard to get, eh? I've wanted to cruise around Labrador and the Arctic on a fatbike tour for a while, but I'd really want a gun to do it, and I get the feeling they'd rather you get eaten by a polar bear than carry a scary "assault weapon". ------------------------------
965Not arguing one way or the other, but have you been to prison lately? I'd do some pretty extreme shit to stay out of there. ------------------------------
966It's hilarious. In the 80's, it was the rightwingers who were always crying about "the russkis". Tables have turned. Nation of crybabies all around who need a scapegoat when their paranoid delusions fall apart, don't care if you're conservative or liberal, it's the same psychology.  ------------------------------
967My Side of the Mountain, anyone? ------------------------------
968great username ------------------------------
969<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>edit: actually if anyone tried it DM me</p> </blockquote> <p>fate worse than death ------------------------------
970It is straight-up illegal there? As in, if you are caught with it, you face a penalty? ------------------------------
971Username says you got this one up north around Malone? Hell yeah ------------------------------
972<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>A terrorist attack happens. </p> </blockquote> <p>Or if it doesn't, they make sure one happens. <sup><sup><sup>9/11</sup></sup></sup> ------------------------------
973Jesus... that's some nasty shit. Reminds me of the opposite of it, which is the gun going around which has been engraved near the safety to say "so much for the tolerant left". I dig that. ------------------------------
974In a pinch I absolutely agree - but I'm always aiming for the woods / desert / beach when I can. ------------------------------
975I suppose I can see how that could be the case. Even still, bleak. ------------------------------
976This effect is called "hypernormalisation". The Adam Curtis documentary goes into it perfectly. ------------------------------
977It's cool it can be done, but damn do I hate camping at Wal Mart. Something about it. ------------------------------
978All on steroids and PCP in successive one-on-one football games televised on every American TV ------------------------------
979Seems it already has, to be honest. ------------------------------
980thats me ------------------------------
981Simply offering up insights on how people treat me when they pick me up. Pretty simple and says very little about my character. ------------------------------
982The way that huckstah is viewed in this sub is very weird, and very endemic to the areas where disaffected collegiate suburbanites and vagabonds intersect. And absolutely, these types - the ones who live vicariously, readers of Into the Wild etc - pedestal the fuck out of me and ask me for advice as if I'm a saint whenever I'm hitchhiking. It's weird and I think we as a community should avoid it. ------------------------------
983I like that it pisses off statists, tbh. Don't want to be hit by drunk drivers? Live in the woods. ------------------------------
984Yeah fuck the state. Always a nanny state. Self defense and reason are enough. ------------------------------
985Some guys can't handle their booze, what can I say? Others can. ------------------------------
986Income Based Repayment ------------------------------
987<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>The most rational response is to take the issue seriously and to take all necessary action</p> </blockquote> <p>But what is this? It is not legislative, as the state protects the system that is defoliating the planet worldwide at all costs - sometimes on pain of, at worst, death or at best, media slander campaigns. It's not via business; no business appears to be technologically capable or often motivated in the least to design, construct, and popularize solutions that would address these cataclysms within the narrow timeframe we (maybe) have. It's not via people's movements as the people are declawed and powerless by a massive prison-industrial complex, god-like military, and media that will make them look like fools or terrorists overnight if they threaten corporate profits. If we take direct action as individuals, we can only do so much, and if we are successful, we risk massive prison sentences. Necessary action on this front would demand nothing short of an international guerilla underground which sought to disrupt the operations of the worst offenders on earth, in tandem with a movement toward localized survival efforts and community self-sufficiency. Both of these things require giving a fuck and being willing to take risks, neither of which are consistent with constant smartphone use, pill-popping, 70 hour work weeks, or any of the other distracting facets of life in this system nearly all of my peers experience. It is not like those of us with climate and ecology related depression simply learned of the existence of climate change and peak oil etc and got depressed, we made assessments regarding what action to take and found massive, debilitating roadblocks at every turn. This is when the depression begins. Worse is the experience of the mass delusion that accompanies these problems - that when we speak this way, we're greeted with aggressive and wholly unjustifiable optimism that is essentially the manic stage of the grieving process en masse. I'm not saying I don't try, I do, and I succeed within my tiny world, but regarding the global future, there is not much to do but travel, huddle together with the victims, and chronicle their stories, maybe to put in a time capsule for some future humans to find - and try not to weep too much.  ------------------------------
988old as hell ------------------------------
989<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>I'm just here to live vicariously through all of you</p> </blockquote> <p>please don't. It puts us on a pedestal and a lot of travelers can't handle it. Seen a lot of dumb ego trips from this. We're just people who decided to get our money's worth at the buffet of life - join us but don't make us a damn spectacle. Said respectfully and without any animosity. Ever since Kerouac shit's gotten weird.edit: I actually cannot understand why this is being so heavily downvoted.  ------------------------------
990I'd probably skip automotive homes personally. At that income level, I'd buy a sailboat. ------------------------------
991read this as "pooped the 9/11" ------------------------------
992A pretty huge challenge, given that the tensions between rural and urban communities have raged since the dawn of civilization. There have not been many times when the two worlds shared much commonality or mutual respect. ------------------------------
993Not sure what LCOL means; I'm guessing it means "rural and cheap" ------------------------------
994<div class="md"><blockquote> <p>Self-sufficiency is overrated. </p> </blockquote> <p>Until the grid goes down and the trucks stop coming to Wal Mart because oil is $300 a barrel, eh? ------------------------------
995<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas" rel="nofollow">???</a><span class="res-freetext-expando"><a class="expando-button toggleImage selftext collapsed collapsedExpando" title="" data-host="wikipedia"></a></span><div class="res-expando-box" style="min-height: 20px" hidden=""> <div class="res-expando-box-inner"></div> </div> ------------------------------
996Your username may suggest that you're asking a loaded question, it seems. But yeah, Hamas strikes me as anti-imperialist; with the caveat that their anti-imperialism carries with it the baggage of islamic fundamentalism. Their victories may prove useful tactically to make way for a broader struggle against apartheid in Palestine that is not characterized by some of the more sexist and homophobic elements of fundamentalist religion. ------------------------------
997Protectionist as in viewing their nation's trade as being benefited by heavy tariffs, highly restricted immigration, and state tampering with the free market's interaction with their nation. I say hybridized because they have this idea that a free market in their own nation is a positive good, but that when it comes to allowing their nation's free market to interact with the outside world, they are squeamish and often - to be frank - a bit racist about it. It's an idea that requires an obsession with the arbitrary ultra-collectivism of nationalism.