TOTW: Animism

And it's me you need to show
How deep is your woo?!
..is your woo..How deep is your woo?
I really mean to learn
'Cause we're living in a world of fools

No thanks OP, I don't think you'll ever psyop me into believing in shit like forest spirits just because I have a concern or two about the environment. Like, who is this written for? It just sounds like preaching to the neopagan choir up until the bit about secular anarchists. Is this, in social media parlance, "engagement bait"? So many questions and no foreseeable answers...

biggest hurdles and patience: get the entire anarchist federation together in the middle of nowhere and eat some magik mushrooms. have some more magical adventures with your friends.

not recommended for everyone, but experimenting with psychedelics was one big doorway into animism or whatever.

Probably strange, but one of the first things that come to mind for me is the music (if you can call it that) of Dave Phillips. For a little context, Dave is generally understood as a noise artist of sorts. But I believe he came from a punk background and is generally focused on field recordings. Ultimately the sounds are being filtered through him in the final result, but he does have an attitude of minimal tampering with the sounds that he records. This kind of engagement with place and environment can easily and obviously be critiqued along certain lines, like maintaining a relationship of capture and employing recording technology. Whether or not such criticisms are well-placed -- putting them to the side -- there is still something notable about the activity and of interest to me. The activity requires travel, it means dealing directly with place, with listening, it requires patience and often a long-term commitment, and entails becoming familiar on some experiential level. And in the end, people are *listening* to these things and it is very meaningful to them.

I bring this up because I can see it as an example (of paying attention to the world) that doesn't feel full of shit to me. It's not a total revolution in subjectivity, but, as a person who was raised in this world, it's an act that really makes sense to me, it actually seems approachable and genuine. Unlike how I feel when I hear most people talk about animist(-adjacent) spirituality, which usually makes me feel in some way distrustful or pessimistic (especially when that talk is for the sake of, or subjugated to, a political agenda). But what do I know? ...

Will link to Dave Phillips for some context: https://dave-phillips.bandcamp.com/album/to-death
And if anyone is interested, an interview: https://www.noisextra.com/2022/02/16/in-conversation-with-dave-phillips…

There are lots of threads to follow. One that comes to mind is something about tradition, being a part of an actual living tradition. Maybe I've just had too many interactions with self-described pagans who strike me as disinherited internet-dwellers who really want to believe that they believe something. I'm just saying... I want to be open, but sometimes that gets difficult.

Anyway!

Animism is impossible but as anarchists this makes the idea irresistibly compelling. No dead matter, no transendental spirit, just a ubiquitous aliveness. Surrounded by social and material structures of human-making, animism is experienced as fleeting moments of sensuality eclipsed by a symbolic ordering. Animists in the mileau are simply reinterpreting ethnography into new religions, reiterated symbolic vocabularies, mistaking belief as a mode of life. Pursuit of animism comes from a pursuit of new modes of life, meeting the ecstatic earth, rejecting the human, the material and the spiritual as baggage.

on my view "animism" is an anthropological term first and foremost, a way of trying to essentialize a set or category of belief systems that were/are perceived as other, primitive, indigenous, whatever. which is to say it is a colonialist term of art. i think my own belief system that i've come to over the years could be described as animist despite the fact that i do not take any specific set of beliefs as a reference point of any kind, i do not pretend to belong to any such system, i do not want to recover or restore one, and i do not want to invent one for the sake of proselytization. its largely on this basis that i am leery of any "neopaganism," and generally think it's a mistake to try to juke whichever linguistic system one finds oneself speaking within rather than fighting through it, both affirmatively (this is what i have) and ruthlessly (i will neither use it as intended nor seek to maintain it as such)

that being said, i find the distinction between "materialism" and "animism" to be useless. at heart, they are one and the same. our understandings of ourselves and each other and the world come from the tensions and relations that arise from our navigation of each other, whether as companions or as food or the rocks we walk on. there is no word external to that dynamic that can cut through it from beyond and determine for us what life means when restricted to me or to you or to a calf or a corncob or a rock, whatever. for me, the point is that kind of coextension and consonance on the one hand, wherein we are continually capable of sensing our need of and within the material circumstances we ever find ourselves in, and cruelty and difference on the other, wherein we consume each other and produce various forms of growth or possibility or horror. consciousness is the force that shapes these dynamics of things that seek one way or the other to hold on to themselves. my belief is that when we alienate our words and social practices from the material facts of those dynamics, when we try to enforce a norm over, beyond, or distinct from them, we, at the very least, in the context of this topic, commit ourselves to a cycle of failure and deprivation driven by the futile and feedback-prone attempt at maintaining that illusory distance; at every turn the things we think we've captured will still be real and already other than what we thought, when we decided they were nothing but ours.

Every day I wonder how this site’s comment section is so vile compared to every other anarchist hangout. The amount of antitheist racism,, what the fuck?

I worship the pig and it's wild boar and warthog relatives, and I am a JEWISH STIRNERIAN WITH A DISDAIN FOR ZIONIST-COLONIALIST SUPPORTERS OF GENOCIDE!!

Oh fuck off with these distractions. We need fewer imaginary diversions from our attack on the existent, not more! You are merely replacing one worldview for an other(s). Stop this at once or I will pee on your poop until you leave crying.

Animism is a term originating from anthropology (i.e., colonialism) which sums up the idea, in its contemporary context of eugenicism, that “primitive” societies are essentially stuck at a “childlike” state of development in which an inability to properly understand the world leads to a globalized psychological projection (the incorrect, instinctual, primitive paradigm assuming the world is made up of sentient, personal, or at least living beings).

Frazier didn’t originate the term, but iirc most of it is there in The Golden Bough and his notion of primitive people as obsessed with “magic” as ritualized attempts to control a mythologized world, constituted by the failure to properly distinguish science from religion. The critiques of Wittgenstein and Durkheim who traced out more concrete social and psychological accounts of the efficacy of ritual should I think be of more interest.

For years I considered myself an eco anarchist with an inclination toward animism, even trying for a while to compose a sort of anarcho-animist manifesto. I saw value in the idea that we ought to at least try to live as if animism were true. I abandoned this project for a number of reasons. Part is that i had to admit, as much as green anarchists/primitivist/anticiv tendencies like to talk about drawing inspiration from indigenous cultures and rejecting colonial scientism, they don’t seem able to think about them without a deeply colonial mindset, the use of both science and philosophy to romanticize “tradition,” even to the point of disparaging most currently living indigenous people as corrupted modernizers - or on the other hand to accepting the authority of reactionary elements in Native communities.

So yeah I don’t really care about animism now ; I mean don’t get me wrong I still think it’s a fascinating question whether rocks, stars, trees, etc have feelings and personalities - whether consciousness is a pervasive characteristic of matter in general, whether there’s another layer of reality that helps make sense of what life and consciousness even are, etc - but I don’t think it’s necessary to actually believe that, or to dabble on any kind of mysticism, to understand stuff like, we shouldn’t destroy the planet, we shouldn’t torture animals, we don’t need most “advanced technologies”, etc.

It’s a fun idea but we should be wary of trying to make much out of (even an inversion of) colonialist ideas about primitive infantile peoples and their mythopoetic cosmos. I do think a lot of indigenous communities, traditional or not, deserve support; that doesn’t require acceptance of their culture’s pre-colonial belief system, however “ancient and authentic” it may be.

What might animism offer anarchists as a contrast?

Translation: can we use this to accessorize our place in the alternative scene?

"just as formerly secular anarchists donning “No Gods, No Masters” tattoos now wonder if smooth river rocks breath and dream."
Do they!? What!? Who!? But where?

Pretty sure you got irate about some anarchist you know from IRL and you're just generalizing to the entirety of the world's anarchist population. What a feat!

as has been pointed out, animism is a somewhat pejorative term from anthropology. it does not accurately reflect the lifeways of Indigenous peoples. not to mention, there are as many distinct lifeways / belief systems as there are (were) Indigenous peoples.

so, there is that.

for me, i wonder how anyone can, with an open mind / eyes / heart, look at the world and think "oh, yeah, Western modes of thinking are the proper way to think about the world." western / scientific / rational / binary thinking is not the one and only proper way to make sense of the world.

but, i am not suggesting those of us raised up in such modes abandon them wholesale and take up any other mode, you know, just because. i would, though, suggest de-centering the certainty we might still have about the efficacy of such thinking. because, clearly, something has gone terribly wrong.

also, let's talk about the framing in the prompt, shall we...

"It’s unsurprising that the pioneers of society opted for a worldview ..."

who, exactly, is meant by "the pioneers of society" ? of the concept of society? of all societies? or, is there a word missing and this should read "pioneers of *this* society"?

and "opted for" ?? was there a smorgasbord of society bits lying around and these intrepid pioneers picked a few nasty ones and viola SOCIETY! was it like that, do you believe?

and that is just part of the first sentence....

Good Aragorn! essay on this topic:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/aragorn-nihilist-animism

All the so called "anarchists" are philistines ( the poetic term) and are materialistically unaware of the course the present Weltanschaaun is taking in global politics! Wake up! Randian dictators have all made you minions to their corporatist doctrine! OooOooh looOook at yOu All, pItifUl sERvants!

"From Paganism to Christianity" from "Nihilism as Egoism" from Keiji Nishitani from the Kyoto School of Japan by way of Heidegger

According to Stirner, the ancient pagans and the Christians after them had completely opposite ideas of truth. For the pagans, things and relations of this world and this earth were true, whereas for Christianity truth resided in heaven. While the pagan held ties to homeland and family as sacred, to the Christians these were so many empty fictions. For the latter the earth was a foreign land, and their true ho e in heaven. Under the influence of Hegelian thought, Stirner viewed the development from paganism to Christianity dialectically, insofar as Christianity was the inevitable unfolding of the opposite standpoint of paganism.

"For the ancients the world was a truth," says Feuerbach, but he forgets to add the important proviso: a truth whose untruth they sought to discover-and eventually did discover (15-16/16).

Like the young boy who naturally wants to get behind things, primitive peoples were possessed of a drive to discover the untruth of things within the very perspective that regards things as true. This dialectical irony is typical of Stirner’s historical perspective.

The first signs of this dialectical progression appear, according to Stirner, with the Sophists. Realizing the power of intellectual understanding, they grew progressively critical of established authority. Socrates internalized this criticism further and brought it deep into the heart. In Socrates the efforts of the heart to purify itself came to term, and this purification grew more and more rigorous until nothing in this world was able to meet the standard of the heart’s purity. Out of this developed the standpoint of the Skeptics, who refused to let themselves be affected by anything in this world. What began with the Sophists, Stirner said, was carried ahead by Socrates and completed by the Skeptics. With the Skeptics the human individual was liberated from the bonds of life, grew indifferent to the world, and developed a posture that refused to have to do with anything-a state of mind that did not care if the whole world were to collapse. Karl Jaspers considers the skepticism represented by Pyrrho as a kind of nihilism.[8] In any event, this mentality paved the way for Christianity, since for the first time the self had come to be experienced as “worldless” (weltlos), as “spirit”: “That one became aware of oneself as a being that is not related to anything, a worldless being, as spirit, was the result of the enormous labor of the ancients” (19/20). Christianity was in this sense the “result” of the development of paganism.

For Stirner, the standpoint of spirit in the true sense is not one of passive negation and refusing to relate to the things of this world, but an active standpoint of choosing to relate to spiritual things, and to spiritual things exclusively. Initially, these spiritual things are the thoughts grasped in reflection, but the spirit goes on to create a spiritual world really existing behind things. In Stirner’s view, “Spirit is spirit only when it creates spiritual things.” Spirit is regarded as spirit only over against spirit; it takes shape only through continued positive interest in spiritual things. This is the difference between the worldless standpoint of the Skeptics and the standpoint of true spirit in Christianity’s creation of a new spiritual world. And only in this kind of creation of a world unique to itself is spirit able to become free. In contrast, the pagans remained in the standpoint of being “armed against the world” (24/25).

While attempting to find meaning in this ending time of the perpetual piling up and collapsing onto itself, this dystopian data-bank, this genetically-engineered pig with photo-shopped make-up, this superficial collage of surface material and undigested rhetoric, it is helpful to avoid shallowly trending movements in spiritual and philosophical realms. It has become quite fashionable to pay lip-service to primitive, animistic, astrological, taoist, and mycologically-metaphoric understandings, but typically the depth leaves much to be desired and often becomes a rationale, an excuse, a cheap nod, a method of temporary philosophical virtue signaling, or just plain empty rhetoric. These understandings cannot just be read about online, but need to be experienced and lived over time in context.

It seems all the rage these days to fancy oneself an animist, which I am fairly sure will not last more than a few seasons, like most counter-cultural trends superficially mimicked from more authentic realities via cyber-culture in these painfully-prolonged ending times. This newfound “missing piece” is usually exclaimed proudly by some urban dwelling scenester with an iphone permanently attached to their very opposable thumbs (except for maybe on pathetically-performative gestures like “Phone-Free Fridays”) or their not-to-dissimilar rural hipster counterparts pretending to homestead for a few years. I am certainly glad that some folks are turning in the direction of more integrated meaning and living-connection and away from the cold and clinical dispirited realms of science, atheism, and rationality. I sincerely hope they go further and deeper in, more than just hobby-like dabbling, wearing it as a costume, regurgitating sound-bytes, putting it into a zine, etc. My experiences have shown me, however, that most will simply glean from the surface to add to the collage of their integrated intersectional identity. Then, most will move on when their performance is over, fashions have changed, and the newest platform, jargon, and pedestaled hero comes along to use as hip sugary icing on their more embedded and programed ideologies.

This opportunistic and shallow spiritual overlay especially feels to be the case when some newer converts to animism need to consider the question as to “if AI is alive”. It reveals their general post-modern, superficial, dislocated, non-internalized view of an animist understanding and life-way. It seems, for many, the adoption of animism is often used as a catch-all to fill in all the gaping holes in their perspectives and to keep feeling positive and hopeful about their trajectory and scene. I do not specifically use animism as a way to describe my understanding of reality, but I feel very close to it as a way of being. I deeply understand and appreciate that I live in the infinitely animated world of life, and that all things in their most free forms are spirited and alive. Clearly, for me at least, this does not include the cold and artificial mechanizations of technology and ideology, nor the walking-dead slave-reality they produce.

i too have found the trend-driven approach of many anarchists to be very disappointing. also, the quick and surface way almost everyone these days approaches ideas, concepts, and meaning. spirituality is the most obvious, but it is apparent all over. it seems technology and social conformity are most to blame here. one is left with a very bleak outlook, even among most anarchists.