onoira [they/them]

not the GP, but i did voice frustrations that were probably uncalled for.

i resonated with the image after this specific comment:

[…] assuming that all people are not going to be petty and antagonistic is even more utopian that post-scarcity.

this brought to mind thousands of conversations i’ve had before which would have effectively ended there — with the words ‘utopian’, ‘idealist’ or ‘unrealistic’.

OP got some good answers which they seem satisfied with. this was all a reaction to the state of the discussion at the time.

I get that anarchists probably get tired of answering questions, but it also seems like an important part of getting people who aren’t already 100% onboard to better understand anarchy?

i think this works best thru sharing anarchistic (not specifically anarchist) books (to add perspective), and praxis (to experience/internalise anarchist organising principles).

hypotheticals can be amusing among likeminds, but it’s usually just deconstructive otherwise.

in most places i’ve lived, my physical neighbours did not want to be known, and did not want to know anyone else, either. granted, most of them really only used their apartments/houses as a very expensive sleeping place and nothing more. they didn’t really live in their houses; it was just where they usually slept between working.

even when the neighbours were friendly, there were no common spaces and the housing too small to accommodate get-togethers, and no third places to go to. and the friendly neighbours were always apart of the conspicuously racist pensioner cabal.

my two favourite types of questions from nonanarchists:

• ‘how would anarchism handle [insert consequence of capitalist conditioning]’
• ‘how would anarchism work in [insert description of a group of capitalists]’

you can’t reject the premise of the question, because their eyes gloss over and they call you an idealist.

this article covers the Mexican side a bit: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29052024/la-otra-disputa-fronteriza-es-sobre-un-tratado-de-aguas-de-80-anos/

tl;dr: severe droughts means there’s no water to give, and nationalists want to use this opportunity to assert Mexican sovereignty.

the US still expects Mexico to give up whatever water is there, tho, which is just- typical.

It was a revelation to me: to have flat structures, you not only need to make it possible to organize without hierarchy, but you also need a process to constantly weed out emerging hierarchies.

i’ve noticed this is a common source of disagreement i keep having with nonanarchists.

where someone thinks that i’m advocating purely for the organisational aspects of anarchism, but not also materially, socially, culturally, and politically. they’ll dismiss my criticisms of the current system or proposals for alternatives as ‘that would never work today’, and instead cite monolithic, mythological essentialisms like ‘human nature’ at me which is just their opportunity to mansplain capitalist logic to me and throw down some ‘might makes right’ moral argument. people who think tool libraries would never work because one time their underpaid coworkers kept stealing other persons’ food from the breakroom fridge or something and well that’s proof of the greed inherent to all human beings and no we will not interrogate what leads them to stealing food. material conditions? what’s that?

anarchism to me isn’t simply a worldview or a form of organisation: it’s a lifestance, a lifestyle, a way of being, a way of thinking and a way of acting — and i believe it works best when it is all of those things. social change is cultural change is political change. when i advocate for change, i’m advocating to change both the system and the people who recreate it.

‘but how will you prevent [insert consequence of hierarchical conditioning] from happening under anarchism?’