User loginNavigationUpcoming events
Anarchy 101
|
Get ready for a General Strike May 1
Some of the calls for action circulating as Slingshot goes to press that try to explain why there should be a general strike need additional thought and work. For example, the call to action issued by Occupy LA reads, in part, "The goal is to shut down commerce worldwide and show the 1% we will not be taken for granted, we will not be silenced, WE WILL NOT MOVE until our grievances are redressed." Now is not the time to reduce the beauty of the occupy phenomenon to protesting-as-usual in which we organize events for the sake of organizing them -- without really believing our own rhetoric or aiming to succeed -- or in which we beg our rulers to redress grievances for us. This concedes that those in power are legitimate and have a right to retain their power. Why should we beg them for crumbs rather than uniting to topple them? We have to ask whether we really want any of the things those in power can give us? The reason so many of us occupied across the country is that the political and economic systems are broken. Our votes, our job searches, our compliance with bureaucratic rules, our passive acceptance of corrupt power structures -- none of it got us anywhere. Within the occupation, we dismissed our faith in the failed system and instead built our own solidarity, community and power to begin to redefine what is important in the world and destroy the structures of power that stop us from living the lives we really want. In a redefined world, the capitalists, the bankers, their politicians and the whole modern power structure will be as irrelevant and ridiculous as the kings, serfs and slavery of 200 years ago seem to us now. Occupy is, fundamentally, about class struggle. The wealth gap between the majority of people who work for a living and the tiny fraction who skim off most of the money by virtue of owning stuff, not by working, has reached a breaking point. Anything the rulers own was created by us -- those who work. Yet decades of propaganda have sold many people on the idea that we need the rich as "job creators" and that if they get richer, their wealth will eventually "trickle down" to those below. The first phase of the occupy movement has been about gathering strength, recognizing our numbers, grasping community, and liberating a wide-ranging critical discussion of the existing power structure. The crucial role of opening up dialog cannot be overstated. It is hard to remember how unfashionable and difficult it was to talk about class inequality and economic injustice just a few months ago. Slogans like "we are the 99%" articulated something everyone knew, yet few wanted to openly discuss. We have to start by killing the businessman in our heads. But as powerful as standing up against gross economic inequality felt last fall, the occupy movement can't succeed by just being against things. We are for a new kind of world and while part of it is about money and a fair distribution of wealth, our real power comes from something deeper. Being for something new brings us creative, courageous, passionate juices that arise from love. That is one reason why our occupations felt so meaningful -- we were building a community and creating libraries, kids villages, medic tents, general assemblies, rather than just being against something. The key to a new world is not just re-distributing money in a more reasonable fashion. Rather, the key is exposing the big lie behind the corporate rat-race that the 1% are pushing -- that our lives are mostly about money and things and that a pay increase or a fatter bank account will give us satisfaction. Capitalism requires constant economic expansion, which means the system has to constantly psychologically manipulate us to want more, buy more and work more. The list of material goods and services that defined a "good life" in 1950 would be considered poverty in 2012. And the things we want now won't seem like enough in another ten years, unless somehow we step off the hamster wheel. In developed economies like the US, we're way past the point where more stuff improves our lives. The typical suburban house keeps getting bigger, cars and electronics keep getting more sophisticated and super stores are stuffed with products. Many people are always seeking the next new thing or experience but when they get there, it always feels somehow empty. The system expands by transforming things we once did for ourselves, our families or our communities into services provided by industry -- entertainment, cooking, grooming, healthcare, childcare. The economic machine expands voraciously, addressing its own needs for growth rather than human needs for freedom, connection and engagement. Psychologically, many of us suffer fallout from these economic imperatives and assume that bigger is always better, leading us to try to improve the size and scale of our protests and actions, rather than concentrating on the quality of our actions. So if an occupation or protest is good, the next action has to always be bigger, more disruptive, louder. The most important aspect of the early days of the occupy movement was not size, per se, although it was important that the moment spoke to people and that a lot of people plugged in. Rather, the novel thing was the way we felt at the occupation -- the amazing sense of engagement, agency, community and dialog. Those days and those experiences were so powerful to so many of us that now, our attempts to re-create those feelings may paradoxically make it more difficult for us to move forward. Feeling so good is like crack -- we want that feeling back. But you cannot organize the surge of excitement that was present at the birth of the occupations -- it happened because conditions were right and we were lucky enough to be there to experience it. That doesn't mean we can't keep things moving, but there is a danger in trying to simplistically re-create the particular tactics or symbols of particular moments rather than staying aware of the mood now and letting that be our guide as tactics change and evolve. Calling a global general strike can be a reasonable tactic to respond to social conditions, but for it to be relevant it has to be part of an integrated struggle -- it has to evolve organically from our lives and our communities. It has to be big but also deep, touching grassroots and hearts. We have to go beyond making big actions for their own sake if by doing so the exercise feels alienating or meaningless. To avoid that, we have to figure out how our actions will keep us present, build community, encourage critical thinking, create dialog, while discrediting and de-legitimizing the system. How can we point out the absurdity of a system where a handful of people control everything because of a few numbers on a computer screen? Billionaires and their fortunes are the modern equivalent of the divine right of kings. Engaging and changing minds is way more crucial than providing "colorful visuals" for media consumers. Our actions have to avoid becoming just another part of the modern media spectacle -- we are not faceless numbers at a protest. How can we avoid getting distracted by traditional traps -- endless ritualized struggles with the police or boring engagements with election year politics -- and instead focus on creating an alternative narrative outside of the currently available categories? To keep the scene moving in a positive direction, we have to focus on as big a picture as we can conceive and bring up ideas not currently on the table. While autonomous action has been a key strength of the occupy movement, and the original Wall Street occupation came out of an autonomous call from Adbusters magazine rather than consultation with the community, we may now be suffering from too much of a good thing as many occupations, organizations and individuals all simultaneously call ambitious, sometimes national actions like the multiple, simultaneous calls for a general strike. There is a fine line between an autonomous action and an adventurist action. It is probably impossible to get a good balance between autonomous action and actions designed by committee that, after going through too many general assemblies and quasi-bureaucratic hoops, become mushy, watered down exercises that appeal only to the lowest common denominator. Still, we can think about the tension and try. As Slingshot goes to press, there are three months left to build a national general strike. That's not long for a traditional gradual organizing campaign, but an eternity for a wildfire or an idea whose time has come. Resistance can easily take off if it tastes delicious in everyone's mouth. This has to go far beyond the relatively small pockets that occupied last fall, and that only will happen if we keep our mind on the quality of the process and the feeling of engagement and participation. We can make the general strike if we do it for ourselves and the world we are creating and if we do it with love in our hearts. |
PollRecent comments
Active forum topicsAnarchy Planet |
Comments
no, try not. do, or do not.
no, try not. do, or do not. there is no try.
don't you ever tell me what
don't you ever tell me what to do
Am I the only one who thinks
Am I the only one who thinks a general strike at this point in time is totally not going to happen, like no hope in hell? I'm not trying to be a cynic, but shouldn't time be spent organizing something else? For instance: actually forming rank and file unions?
http://stealfromwork.crimethi
http://stealfromwork.crimethinc.com/
It's interesting that you
It's interesting that you mention unions. There are actually a lot of unions world-wide, and they've been involved in an escalated campaign in recent years. There are currently general strikes underway in Greece and Israel, as well as labor actions underway in many other countries, from Chile to Egypt to Indonesia to India. I think it's not so much building a trade union movement, it's a question of whether or not trade unions in this day and age represent a way of achieving the goals we would like to see achieved. Which of course has been an age-old question in communist/anarchist circles.
you know whats more useless
you know whats more useless then an attempted general strike failing? wasting time parading around the decayed corpses of unions as if they hold any hope for us.
the old union can not exist under the precarious conditions of post-industrial capitalism. i think their modern incantation makes this clear.
proletarian organization is finding a new form.
FUUUUUUCCCCCKKKK
FUUUUUUCCCCCKKKK YYYEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!
that's right, motherfucker
that's right, motherfucker
I'm not opposed to a general
I'm not opposed to a general strike occurring on May 1st, but there may arise more natural dates (with more immediately inspiring them), when I would also support a general strike. I think it's good to be open to such possibilities and not be quick to immediately shoot them down. A benefit of preparing for a general strike on May first is that many people around the world will, indeed, be having the same thought -- and working simultaneously for it -- because of the historic nature of the day.
One thing which I feel will help propel a general strike, or even a simpler protest, is more agit-prop. Newspapers and blogs are nice, but leaflets, spraypaint, wheat-paste, and stickers might actually get the word out better. Just a thought.
One of the good things about
One of the good things about May 1 is that it helps get the anti-anarchists in various movements to STFU for a day because it's a day created for anarchists and militant labour, which means less likelihood of us getting assaulted by pacifists and decried as outsiders.
I kind of think you're
I kind of think you're overstating the level to which liberals/pacifists know/care about that sort of thing.
in speaking about
in speaking about ‘organizing’ people as in a ‘global general strike’, one needs to be aware that there are two very different ‘organizing forces’ that can bring people together; (a) common need as when a watering hole draws a crowd of thirsty people together, and (b) common goals that people share the desire to achieve [e.g. the dream of getting rich as in a ‘goldrush’].
as nietzsche pointed out, darwinism differs from lamarckism in that darwinism reduces both of these ‘organizing forces’ to the same thing; i.e. to a force within the organism that is the source of its inside-outward asserting action to achieve some result [acquire food etc.]. this is the standard ‘doer-deed’ model of organizing of Western civilization.
lamarckism credits the environment itself with having ‘organizing power’. for example, when green areas migrate due to shifts in climatic pattern and green rolling hills transform into sand dunes, the transforming distribution of green and dry zones keeps attracting human settlers to the green/fertile zones like ants to honey drops. darwinism, meanwhile, sticks with its newtonian, ‘machine-made-of-meat’ view of man and continues to claim that the re-organization of human settlement is inside-outward driven, from out of the intellection and purpose [goals and objectives such as ‘survival’] of men. of course, the animals, birds and insects are all ‘organized’ by the shifting green zones as well, but science handles this by defining all organisms as machines whose behaviours are fully and solely internal process driven [inside-outward asserting].
lamarckism/nietzschism, on the other hand, together with Machean physics, would give credit to the ‘habitat’ as a transforming source of nurturance with the power to organize the ‘inhabitants’, ... not just to organize their behaviour as whole organisms into groups but to organize their cells into their organismic form; i.e. to evolve their form as well as their coming into collective groups. as relativity and quantum physics contend, “space is a participant in physical phenomena” [-Einstein].
modern biological science is finally figuring out that ‘epigenesis’ (outside-inward organizing influence) is real and it works in complement with ‘genesis’ (inside-outward organizing influence); i.e. that ‘genesis’ and ‘epigenesis’ are dual aspects of the single dynamic of ‘evolution’. lamarckism, which was mocked for its notion that the environment could pull an organism into shape (leaves on high tree branches could pull on and stretch the neck of a giraffe) is coming back into vogue. but of course, not in terms of the simple mechanical neck-stretching example, but in the sense that cells with identical DNA develop into muscle-cells, or bone-cells, or fat-cells depending on the chemo-physical environment they are situated in. likewise for the plumage of birds in winter etc. the bird does not have a summer and winter cell DNA set. the same DNA can associate with the production of over 30,000 different proteins depending on the outside-inward signalling from the environment it is situated in.
nietzsche applied this more ‘complete’ view of organization to people in his anti-Darwinist writings. the darwinist view sees people ‘competing’ for ‘scarce resources’. thus in case of people chasing after the green belts, darwinism would see this as ‘competition’ for the achievement of some RATIONAL [appolonian] GOAL, which darwin assumed was ‘survival’. nietzscheism would see the same dynamic phenomenon as having an outside-inward orchestrating drive; i.e. a NON-RATIONAL [dionysian] quest for fulfilment. kind of like in the eagles song ‘take it easy’, ... “Come on, baby, don't say maybe I gotta know if your sweet love is gonna save me”
did people flood into Tahrir Square because of something missing in their lives, or did they flood in because they had a common rational goal they wanted to achieve? in the nietzschean view, there is always ambiguity here because the outside-inward orchestrating dionysian influence and the inside-outward asserting appolonian influence are not two things but conjugate aspects of a single dynamic, ‘transformation’ of the relations amongst the inhabitants of a common habitat.
in the darwinian view, there can only be one force responsible for the organization and it is the locally originating, internal process driven and directed force because that’s all that the biological science’s model of organism as ‘machine-made-of-meat’ that runs about and interacts with other ‘inhabitants’ in an absolute fixed, empty and infinite [Euclidian] space, WILL ALLOW. darwinism and the biological sciences do not allow ‘space to be a participant in physical phenomena’. in biological science and darwinism, there are only 'inhabitants' separated by an insulating emptiness so that 'what things do' is 'all she wrote'.
the organization that is inside-outward assertively driven by an email announcing in advance the date and time of a global general strike is, to begin with, at least, all ‘genesis’ and no ‘epigenesis’. ‘epigenesis’ is where the signals come from the environment, where the organization is ‘situational’ [spatial-relational], as with mohammed abouaziz' self-immolation in sidi bou said, tunisia. by contrast, a ‘global organized in advance event’ is purely rational and inside-outward asserting in nature. it is driven by the appolonian rational mind, rather than induced by the dionysian spirit. it doesn’t have the same ‘fire’ in it. it is ‘political’ and goal-oriented. it is like re-writing the eagles 'take it easy' lyrics without being fired-up by 'something missing in one's life', e.g; “Come on, baby, don't say maybe, it’s time for me to get my jollies so don’t delay me”
in the lamarckian/nietzschean view of organization, the ‘global’ inside-outward asserting aspect has to be conjugate with the outside-inward situational orchestrating influence. when a group is in trouble, anywhere in the world, the rest of the globe has to come to its aid. that is the sort of 'global organization' that needs cultivating to facilitate the transformation of society in a non-theory-controlled manner. a pre-organized, 'global general strike' rips the spirit-aspect out of ‘organization’ and reduces it to a humourless rational-mechanical construct.
lol
lol
Your musings on science
Your musings on science always strike me as those of someone who reads a lot about it, without ever quite understanding it. Though it could just be your interpretation is slightly different than my own, thus making it all the more contestable.
Your notions of darwinism and lamarckism are reversed. It is lamarckism that is doer-deed, goal oriented, while darwinism is almost purely environmental. Lamarckism, at least in all the texts I've read about it (though pretty much all of these were almost anecdotal comparisons to darwinism, treating it as a historical backdrop for darwin's ideas) consists of the species making changes to itself, then passing those changes to its offspring. These changes are exclusively goal oriented. To use the ever common example of the giraffe, lamarckism states that giraffes, too short to reach the leaves of a tree, made their necks longer and longer till they could reach the leaves. That is, they had the specific goal of reaching the leaves, so that they could eat. How exactly these wills translated into modifications of bodies, who the hell knows, but neither did darwin know of genetics so it's really not that big of an issue.
Darwin's theories on the other hand remove the goal aspect of evolution, which is why they were so controversial, and one of the most common misunderstandings of evolution today by many people. Darwinsm has little to do with what the species wants. There is no inherent goal of survival. The reason that darwinism (in this case, taken to be synonymous with natural selection, since that's really all that matters in this particular instance imo) occurs is that it is the most likely thing to occur, almost obviously so. Let's say you are given two boxes of Things. Things come in all varieties, but they have one attribute in common: finite existence. In box one of your Things, they do not reproduce. The Things live out their existence, then cease to be (or more accurately, turn into something that in no way resembles what they used to be). In box two, however, the Things make almost identical copies of themselves before they die, that have a lifespan roughly equal to the original Thing. You leave the boxes closed for a few days, then come back. In which box are you more likely to find some Things? Obviously, the second box. Well, there are no separate worlds, and since we have such diversity, we have both type of Things in the same box. Because the box has been around for a few billion years, Things that make rough copies of themselves are more likely to exist than Things that don't. Then obviously, Things that are better at making copies of themselves are more likely to exist than Things that aren't as good at doing that. So to return to the example of the giraffe, while lamarckism says it is the goal of the giraffe to grow its neck long enough to reach the leaves, darwinism states that it's simply that giraffes with short necks (box one Things) aren't as likely to exist as those with long necks (box two Things), since they can't eat, so can't live, so can't reproduce (i.e. make rough copies of itself). This is controversial since it says humanity is not here for some purpose, we are simply more likely to exist than not.
For the example of lush hills turning into sand dunes, lamarckism would state that the species in the area would want to move to where the green grass is, so the species would move over there. Dariwinism states that the individuals of the species migrate in all directions, but those that didn't move to the green grass died, so you don't see them. Therefore, it is more darwinism that has some sort of environmental pull to it, while lamarkism is more about the push of the individual.
As to your conclusions about the call for a general strike, I would say that yes, sudden bursts of emotion are far more powerful then concretely planned events, yet there is no reason to bide our time idle. Must we make martyrs of ourselves to accomplish our goals? Does the general strike not provide a break from the monotony that is our daily existence? And if not, then perhaps a means for that break?
thanks for leaving me a
thanks for leaving me a little space in your critique; i.e. you say; it could just be your interpretation is slightly different than my own
few people have actually read any lamarck (1744-1829). that’s partly because he does not seem to be broadly translated from french into english. most of the stuff written about his work, in english, is bullshit, and you don’t have to look very far to see biologists who have tried to set the record straight and have said exactly that.
if you go to what he actually wrote, you will find that his idea of evolution started from physical forces [which darwin totally ignored by starting from a species as a logical ‘thing-in-itself’, a ‘machine’]. lamarck’s evolutionary process applied generally, to the organic and inorganic realms AND TO THE ORIGIN OF ORGANIC LIFE, like nietzsche’s, rolf’s, roux’s and rudimeyer’s, and has the same general conjugate space-matter relational geometry as relativity and quantum physics.
in the french literature you will find comments like this;
“L’évolution, qui pour lui est le produit d’une tendance à la complexification et d’une tendance à la diversification des organismes vivants sous l’effet de leur dynamique interne et des circonstances qu’ils rencontrent, est une conséquence logique (et non le point de départ) de sa conception dynamique de l’être vivant. L’être vivant est pour lui le produit d’une dynamique de fluides et de forces physiques... »
Evolution, which for him [Lamarck] is the result of a tendency of complexification and a tendency to diversification of living organisms under the effect of their internal dynamics and the environmental circumstances they encounter, is a ‘logical consequence’ (and not the point of departure) of his dynamic conception of the living organism. The living organism, for him, is the result of a dynamic of fluids and physical forces.”
his major work on evolution, ‘Recherches sur l’organisation des corps vivans’/ ‘Investigations into the organization of living bodies’ is freely available but evidently only in french [i.e. i can’t find it in english and ‘answers.com’ say that only two of lamarck’s works have been translated and that isn’t one of them.
so, i am not interested in an evolutionary theory that starts off assuming that organisms are machines that run about and interact with other material objects/organisms/systems in absolute euclidian space, and neither were nietzsche and rolf and roux and the rest of the anti-darwinians. but it is simpler to start with the organism as a machine for the same reason that euclidian space is simpler than other spaces because it is an absolute space in which space is a non-participant and therefore the inhabitants are all ‘material beings’; either objects or machines. and so it is simpler to go with darwin and write off lamarck and tied up in that is our fucked up ideas about ‘organization’; i.e. there must be a control center since space is a non-participant.
if you skim the above work by lamarck and search for ‘fluides incontenables’ (subtle fluids that can contain but which cannot themselves be contained); i.e. such as thermal field, electromagnetic field, gravity field, you will find the section where he presents the very basics of his evolutionary theory. there you will find that he already anticipated ‘epigenetics’ and that’s why his name is coming up again, in connection with ‘the new science of epigenetics’ as in cell stem research, reproducing needed cells etc.
lamarck’s organism was not a machine as darwin’s is and as modern biology’s is. lamarck’s organism is like a storm-cell in the atmosphere or a ripple in the spatial plenum as a david bohm or ernst mach or erwin schrödinger would have it. since i have been through this before with others that had the same ‘education’ as yourself wrt lamarck, you can search this anarchistnews.org site for 'lamarck' to get more on this.
re the reversal of darwinism and lamarckism. as already mentioned, darwin assumes the organism is a machine, a doer-of-deed that is mutually exclusive of the habitat. as you say, these machines that are independent of the habitat live out their lives [and do better or worse than their neighbours at replicating]. but where do they get the force that makes their life persist. where is the ‘soul of the machine’? well, you know as well as i do that biology has never answered that question, but lamarck never had to answer it because evolution to lamarck applied to the universe so the organism [inhabitant] in lamarck’s case is not mutually exclusive of the environment [habitat]. the relationship is like a convection cell in the flow of nature. that’s where he’s going with his ‘fluides incontables’ and that puts him in the same non-machine camp as nietzsche [and rolf, roux, rudimeyer], mach, poincaré, bohm, schrödinger; i.e. on the base level, whether you want to call it ‘quantum potential’ or ‘energy-charged spatial-plenum’ or whatever, the energy-flow-medium is where it all starts and it is what evolves, not organism-as-machines.
darwin was not interested in the question ‘what is life’ which is where lamarck’s inquiry started from. in lamarck’s theory, the habitat participates and changes in the habitat orchestrate changes in the organism. it is not that the change is coming one-sidedly from the organism. that is an artefact of confining one’s thinking to euclidian space which is the default of our Western civilization/culture. again, lamarck was interested in the nature and origin of life and proposed a physical theory. darwin, showed no interest at all in the origins of living organisms; e.g. in the origin of species [2’nd edition] darwin, at the very end, makes brief mention of where the first organism/s must have come from; i.e. ‘the Creator’;
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
and if you don’t think that’s important, putting that machine archetype and its necessary cohort, absolute Euclidian space, into mainstream science, then you are missing the point that we live in a machine called the sovereign state, and we work for machines called corporations and we view ourselves as machines, like the rest of the organisms. so that this ‘machine paradigm’ [mutual exclusion of habitat and inhabitant] is what is royally screwing us up. the Amerindians predicted that the colonizers were going to blow it with their machine views and so they/we have; we spit on the earth and we spit on ourselves, so no wonder there’s anti-civ and anarcho-primitivist movements.
usually i pass your comments
usually i pass your comments (tl;dr) but this was interesting. thank you
j/k!!!!
j/k!!!!
fuck you.
fuck you.
fuck you.
fuck you.
Your comments are like
Your comments are like someone screaming "Scroll Down"
that 'someone' is presumably
that 'someone' is presumably you, ... unless your mouse needs oiling.
Wasn't it being proposed as a
Wasn't it being proposed as a political GS, rather than a sustained strike (like a one day GS)? That's how I understood it.
I've been on strike for 13
I've been on strike for 13 years now...
So for me, this is called "Monday" lol
I agree with at least one or
I agree with at least one or two other people here who have said that this is likely too soon for a general protest. I think our next step at this point is threefold.
1 - Stop feeding the corporate empires. There are several huge industries that need to be toppled. These include the banks, the credit industry, the tobacco industry, the alcohol industry, the pharmaceutical companies, and the Goliaths of the commercial sector. We need to encourage people to wean themselves from their dependencies on alcohol and tobacco (at least from big corporate entities). The government collects a great deal of tax revenue from these sources, and to remove that source of income while also shutting down the exploitative corporations that encourage the abuse of these substances would strike a huge blow at the system we wish to eradicate or at least overhaul.
We also need to stop relying on the banks and begin supporting smaller, privately owned and run credit unions. The large banks clearly have our nation by the throat, exercising a great deal of control over even the federal government. In addition, we have corporations, including banks, trying to sell us credit cards in order to force us into economic slavery. For many people, once they fall into the cycle of debt encouraged by credit card companies, it's almost impossible to get out. Breaking the power of these entities and starving them will be a strong first step in returning financial power to the 99%.
We need to break free of the modern dependence upon expensive drugs and health care by learning to better care for our bodies, to not rely upon pain killers and other medicines for minor problems, and
Lastly, we need to break the power of the big commercial corporations that have created a society that believes that happiness comes from things. Shop from businesses that produce their goods domestically rather than buying products made in large factories overseas. Shop for food at local grocers and farmers markets
pure lifestyle anarchism
pure lifestyle anarchism YEAH. huge blow.
don't strike, don't re-think
don't strike, don't re-think your shitty ethics - buy a fucking organic avocado, plastic shoes, quit doing drugs, and put your money in a credit union. all better!
I didn't realize save meant
I didn't realize save meant to finish typing >_<. I was hoping just to save my writing in case something happened to my post.
I'll copy what I didn't finish and continue it:
We need to break free of the modern dependence upon expensive drugs and health care by learning to better care for our bodies, to not rely upon pain killers and other medicines for minor problems, and to turn first to holistic and other natural health care before the solutions offered by "conventional medicine." The pharmaceutical companies encourage reliance upon their products and declare anything going against their control as being risky or fake medicine. They have created a medical monopoly, trading lives and health for money, realizing that treating a disease over years is more profitable than curing it. When we break the current medical industry's hold on our society, we'll allow for innovators with true cures to step forward.
Lastly, we need to break the power of the big commercial corporations that have created a society that believes that happiness comes from things. Shop from businesses that produce their goods domestically rather than buying products made in large factories overseas. Shop for food at local grocers and farmers markets. Buy used goods as often as possible from small businesses, yard sales or similar places, or friends. Don't buy things unless you know that you have a need for them or that they will sincerely increase your quality of life. Toppling the commercial giants will assist in the rebirth of smaller businesses and help make new, good jobs.
2 - Encourage people to follow your example. One or two people cannot make a movement alone. We need to go out and spread the word anywhere we can. Explain your position to friends and family. Help them break free of their addictions and dependencies. Show them shopping alternatives. Anything you can do to encourage them to follow the path you are taking is helpful. By passing the message along, you can reach enough people to really make a difference and start changing things.
3 - Find ways of privately communicating with people within your own business. In this day and age, people are looking for any job they can find. If you work in one of the huge mega-corporations, you know how tough they can be on employees. They know that you're desperate enough for a job to put up with a lot of shit, and they'll take advantage of that. People can get fired over comments made on social networks or for things they say to their fellow workers. They try their hardest to discourage dissent and keep people from organizing in order to bring about change. If people speak of the protest on their social networks and try to spread the word now, many of them will be fired in advance, so that the businesses can bring in new workers who won't put the company at risk. We need to find new ways of speaking and organizing in such a way that our employers can't track us and penalize us. We're the 99%. We're all struggling and doing what we have to do to survive. They know that they have the power as long as we aren't able to work together, so they'll do whatever they can to keep us divided.
If we can do these things, we have a chance of bringing about real, lasting change.
the basic problem is
the basic problem is 'psychological'; i.e. the collective psychology as associates with the dominant worldview in terms of doer-deed, cause-affect' which in turn 'sets up' majority vote 'democracy'.
all of these suggestions of ‘opting out’ of support for big business, banks etc. and the carrying out of general strikes are great as ‘protests’, but the established system that we call ‘democracy’ [which is not democracy] just floods back in like the tide and effaces almost all of the gains.
What has to be either ‘brought down’ or ‘subsumed’ [by decolonization or occupy type initiatives] is ‘democracy’ in the warped manner that it operates today, all over the world.
Democracy by ‘majority vote’ is a warped view of democracy since ‘the majority rules’ and the minority is under the thumb of the ‘leaders’ who steward the proxied power of the majority [of votes]. The minority group of 18-25 yr olds may be sent to war to die or be crippled or be psychologically traumatized by the ‘majority’, most of whom continue to live in comfort while all this is going on, but do take time out to salute the flag, and sing the praise of the heroes that have given life and limb to preserve the good old democratic system and to keep the free world rocking on.
'democracy' has very often had to struggle to fend off threatened global economic disaster, and this requires stern measures. Like a ship in a storm, it may have to take on more ballast to regain stability by flooding the bilge and lower decks. The people who are unable to climb up out of the lower levels have to be sacrificed to keep the good ship afloat. This is the way ‘majority vote democracy’ works. It not only pisses on minorities with impunity and turns off its hearing aid to their screams, it prides the entire collective on having ‘the courage to make difficult decisions’.
What is the root source ‘design fault’ in this system?
Ernst Mach put his finger on it with his ‘Mach’s principle’ wherein the dynamics of the participants/inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the common ‘living space’ at the same time as the dynamics of the common living space are conditioning the dynamics of the parts. Bush’s war on Iraq stirred up trouble that affects everyone in the common global living space. This is like ‘taxation without representation’ that generated the Boston tea-party, but on a global basis. Stephen Harper’s hell-bent initiative to develop Alberta tar-sands (China is stepping in bigtime as a buyer) is going to have a global effect, politically and environmentally. Meanwhile, Harper is warning that the protest movement in canada is being ‘radicalized’ with the help of ‘outsiders’ and he is not going to let ‘outsiders’ hijack the democratic process in canada, just as bush would not let the democratic process in the US be hijacked, as the leaders formulated a plan to deal with Saddam Hussein’s WMDs.
What is obvious here. the lives of ordinary people who share inclusion in this common space on the surface of the earth are being screwed by ‘majority rule democracies’.
This is because these systems are top-down driven by ‘scientific thinking’ or ‘logical reasoning’. as Nietzsche pointed out, ‘reason’ incorporates a ‘doer-deed worldview’ and the doer-deed worldview fails to take Mach’s principle into account; i.e. that the more comprehensive view of dynamics is in terms of the transformation of conditions in our common living space. Calculations of the economic value of tarsand production is a ‘doer-deed’ calculation that does not take into account how the living space that we are all included in is transforming. Today, first nations bands living on the Athabaska river [where the wastes from tarsands production are being dumped] are feeding themselves and their kids on deformed fish infused with carcinogens because, how else can people living in monetary poverty (in a formerly rich and healthy environment) get the healthy foods they need?
I’m not talking ‘environmentalism’ per se here, i’m talking about the ‘architecture’ of organization that dominates in the world today because what also dominates in the world is the ‘doer-deed’ world view which does not take into account ‘the participation of space’ as in Mach’s principle and as in McLuhan’s ‘the medium is the message’ [our reasoned plans and skilled engineering that goes into the operationalizing of production facilities is where our focus is, but as he says, it matters little whether we build a Cadillac factory or a Cornflakes factory, what matters is how, in the living space these things are interventions into, our relations with one another and the habitat are transformed.
In other words, there is a ‘disconnect’ between our doer-deed based ‘majority vote democratic system’ and the real nature of the world dynamic. The Obama’s and the Harper’s will back one another up on the right of the majority rule democracy to make their own doer-deed decisions, and to flood their respective lower decks if that is necessary to re-stabilize and save their ships, just as Greece is being encouraged to do at the moment.
The only practical way out is through the power of a global web of relations that ignores the decision-making of local sovereign state governments with their dysfunctional doer-deed worldviews and their corresponding ‘majority vote democracy’ that puts scientific thinking [logical reasoning] based on doer-deed models of dynamics, into an unnatural precedence over sensory experience, which is of the conditions of the living space we are each situationally included in [e.g. what it feels like to live on the lower decks that are being flooded to ‘save the ship’ and keep the feet dry of those on the upper decks as they up the stakes on pissing on those on the lower decks.]
a global general strike is kind of like a ‘sulking in the bedroom’, a refusal to eat your meat as a requisite to eating your pudding. by contrast, a global rejection of pipeline construction and/or tarsands development actually over-rides the power of the local sovereign state government and much-vaunted ‘democratic process’ based on the bullshit doer-deed worldview. in other words, it defines the problem as being ‘top-down scientific and logical reason directed doer-deed governance’ [by dictators or by elected majority representatives or whatever] which fails to acknowledge that we live in a relational space whose dynamics are beyond the scope of the simplistic, Euclidian space based doer-deed model of dynamics.
what stands in the way of improving the social dynamic is 'democracy' in the warped sovereigntist, implementation of it which is based on the collective psychological 'belief' in the 'doer-deed' world view, and thus in the [unnatural] dominance of scientific thinking/logical reasoning over sensory experience.
If you want to stop feeding
If you want to stop feeding the corporate empires, yer gonna need to do a lot more than the above mentioned buddy. First- the computer your on? Chuck it. Second- the food you eat? Chuck it. Third- the clothes you wear? Chuck'em. Fourth- the oil you consume? Chuck it. Everything that we currently depend on is part of this system. Unless you/I/we reach total self-sufficiency, you/I/we are always feeding the system.
I don't mean to rain diarrhea on your parade, but one can't single out bogeymen of the system and imagine that with them gone, things will get better. Sure *some* of the things you mention are the least bad option, but each is futile still. Sure shopping a local grocer/farmers market feels good, is *possibly* better for the environment, is more about the 'little' people, etc. But it's still feeding into a system. Even the super giants started off as local grocers.
Also- Who the fuck wants financial power?
A general strike for one day
A general strike for one day may or may not succeed in shutting down certain industries for that one day, after which lots of people in the 99% suddenly find themselves likely out of a job with no income and the usual bills to pay in order to survive. The very next day will be business as usual as the corporations continue to rely on their loyal sheeple and hire new ones who are desperate for work, leaving us worse off than we started.
The only way to begin fixing the problem is to bring about a permanent change in society's expectations and attitude. Enlightenment is the first step in causing a movement large enough to succeed in doing such a thing. When people learn to buck the current super-giants, they'll recognize and quash the up and coming ones when they're starting, before they have the chance to become what we have today.
I'm not saying that we need to destroy all the businesses. We as a society need to promote those companies that act responsibly and punish those that act reprehensibly. We have the power to do that by choosing where we shop.
Today the world finance is controlled by a small group of big companies. They have financial power. No one person or small group should have that much control. In giving financial power to everyone, everyone has a share of that wealth. I'm not saying that in a communistic sense, but coming from the position that the majority of the people have the majority of the wealth, rather that a minority having more money that most people.