A Treatise of the Spiritual Aspects of Anarchism
by Peter Ostrowski
excerpts con't:
We follow those who ensure that we believe we need to follow by reducing all human endeavour and aspiration to a simple choice between right and wrong. But is it right to deny one's own self and follow blindly? Is it right to lead? Is it wrong to believe that human worth lies beyond the making of money or mere survival? No one declares what the difference between right and wrong actually is.
So is it then 'right' that in our schools there exists such an extraordinary and profound dichotomy in what is taught as the basic truths of Creation? For science and religion are both presented as such truths. The purpose of compulsory state education was, ostensibly, to educate all our people, so that the fetters of superstition and ignorance would be removed and truth, that is, knowledge and understanding, would prevail, and thus free-thinking and our spiritual awareness of the world and our place in it would grow in all of us. But our chosen minister for education, responsible for the teaching and popularisation of science, declares that schools should be institutions where these undefined terms, right and wrong, are taught and explained. He tells us this can only be achieved through the teaching of religion to our children. Thus they will believe it right that the world was created in six days. That supernatural creating entities spoke to men, before murdering them all in divine deluge. That decaying corpses can rise and live again, that there is a world just above the sky to which they then levitate and enter. That it is right and preordained that we will destroy ourselves in a final battle and be judged good or evil, right or wrong, holy or irredeemably damned. Thus we are taught that the responsibility for our survival and progress and for our Armageddon does not lie in our collective hands, for if the blame for total and final genocide were held by all mankind, then who would be holy, who would be good, who would be right?
The lessons for life which are taught and learned in schools are inculcated through lies, intimidation and hostility; the last people in the world who should be teachers are teachers. We learn that respect is something to be demanded, and that it may be commanded through violence. We learn that, if our strength is sufficient, assault is to be used for coercion, that others will obey our orders if we kick and punch them. And then we take our lessons with us, scars proudly borne, into our solitary, final journeys. This is how we are building our future.
Hence we despise, fear or ignore true science and the highest art - our only means of progress and, indeed, survival. This is why we speak of employment and work as we do; they are to us the infrastructure of our conservative, stagnant world, and we are but epiphenomenal to it - sentience is seen as being no more than machinery. Those whom we regard as working are said to be employed, that is, the labouring are used - we regard labour as exploitation, something with which to be graced by others, and then regard it as our personal strength. But what of the unemployed? Do they not live? If so, why must we labour? Would we too not live without employment? It is possible that we would, but we must realise that those whom we term unemployed live only through a trick of language, because the unemployed are not the dead. In any case, we must conclude that we keep people alive who do not keep us alive. For the criterion for accusing those who do not earn money of irresponsibility and non-contribution to society is whether or not they need more money to stay alive than they already own. Inactivity, sloth and greed by the financially independent is at best envied, at worst lauded, while the unfunded professional is seen as a parasite in the world he loves and whose future he is fighting to work for, for such work is adjudged meritorious solely by the practitioner's financial solvency, and not its intrinsic value. The activities which people who have professions (in this sense of the word) demand to do are not just for their enjoyment or to alleviate boredom - theirs is anarchist work, which mankind must do because capitalism is murdering millions daily and for that reason alone has to be eradicated. Capitalists claim that we should let the unemployed die, for mankind has no future anyway and that there can be no social progress.
The Babel brought upon us by this inhuman force, the creator and annihilator of words, is its life blood. If the intangible remains nameless then it will not exist within our confounded language, and so will be unspoken, invisible, untouchable and perfectly armoured. Hence to name it would be to speak of it and to begin to understand that which cannot survive in our sight. We name it Mammon and expose it.
Mammon must defend itself. Its greatest strength is in knowing that human spirituality is the one force which would destroy it and so must be kept in perpetual twilight - capitalism ensures that anarchism and revolution do not pay and are therefore very difficult work for most people to do. Mammon's greatest weakness, and the reason why its own murder is inevitable, is in not understanding at all what the soul is, what it means to touch the numinous.
Then we must name the forces of Mammon which, like puppet strings, bind and violently repel us, keeping us as fractured tribes, strangers before our own people. This we name nationalism.
No comments:
Post a Comment