A Treatise of the Spiritual Aspects of Anarchism
by Peter Ostrowski
excerpts:
1. OUT OF DARKNESS
... Who will endow our words with meaning if not we? We speak of work, of god, of society, yet have no common understanding of their meaning, nor even acceptance of their existence. Our words are chosen for us and inhuman forces decide on what they are to mean. So when these shells of language are finally passed down for us to use we find them to be but empty sounds. In fear of losing language and returning to darkness and not knowing, we look to the word-maker to lead us to their meanings.
From upon our tower, high over Babel, we see a land imbued with confusion. Some of us manipulate the chaos to create meaning for those who wish to believe; for for them to refuse to believe in that which is not true would be to believe in nothing. But what is truth? Can the absolute and the subjective both be truths? Cannot the allegorical and metaphysical be truth?
When meaning is taken away from our words, they will become the tools of the word-manipulators. Words with which we cannot communicate are not needed; they will become intersynonymous and then be lost. We must reclaim their meaning, for only then can we use language to speak of building mankind's future. New words will be needed and created as our understanding grows and new questions about our universe are asked.
We speak of jobs and professions as pertaining to purpose in existence. What are these things? Are they what we do to obtain money which we need to stay alive? If so, then we claim that survival is the purpose of our survival. In thinking of professionalism we vaguely acknowledge a tenuous divide somewhere between unskilled labour for money only and jobs which require skills or qualifications; something somehow higher yet still paid. So in a world with no money, will people cease to have professions? We face a plethora of ambiguity and non-definition and a paucity of words themselves. But to define the profession as vocational work towards revolution and, moreover, towards the realisation of humankind's highest potential, is to envision a money-less world in which all have professions; a world in which work becomes that which is chosen by the individual, and choice is truly choice, not submission to necessity, not the coercion of poverty and death, as all the paths of option will be leading away from the heart and mind and will of the individual.
I believe that there can be no political mechanism to act against famine, war, material and spiritual poverty and the daily murder of millions which is perpetrated by nationalism and capitalism. The revolution, when it comes, will be a spiritual one, for change can only be born of a new way of seeing the world, a new consciousness. A profession is, immediately, work towards such an end. It is work which is internationally illegal, for all governments actively stifle or legislate against its facilitation. But it also has a greater purpose. There will come a time when we no longer need to fight against our self-imposed oppression, and professional work will then become pure art and science, pushing us towards achievements we cannot even contemplate today. We will no longer be burdened by mere survival, but be free to explore Creation in any way we can, elevating ourselves ever onwards towards ultimate truth.
It is a lie that more than a very few of the labouring and administrative tasks set for us are necessary, for it is a lie that money exists, and without imagining money all but one in many thousands of the jobs that are being done today would be inconceivable. We tell ourselves that employment should be exploitative to have value, that to labour out of the greed of others is to have a job. Let us not belittle the worth of our lives so. Even accepting capitalism's compromises, that to work pragmatically and selflessly we need funding for food, shelter and materials, let us believe that one can only be said to be employed, to have a job, if one is financially able to live and work professionally, alone if need be. Self-funding through unrelated labour is unemployment if the work suffers, as it inevitably must, through the time that is thus wasted. We must reclaim all that which has been stolen from us by exploitative labour.
Even for those who want for nothing other than survival, labour, day after day, year after year, which merely supplements another's income, must be named, for surely then it does not provide a 'living wage'. Furthermore, if the supplemented income is insufficient, then it also cannot be funding for a job. Thus we must question how many 'jobs' (in the lower sense of the word) actually exist. How small a minority of people do this thing which is ostensibly compulsory?
To speak of 'earning' a living is surely mankind's greatest self-deprecation. It is as if we are stating that some people, through their own sloth or fecklessness, do not deserve to live. In this way we belittle art and science, which exist to benefit all mankind, not merely to provide the artist or scientist with money for survival. Yet we perpetuate massed fear and resistance of these highest of human activities, our only tools for realising our future, our common destiny.
No comments:
Post a Comment