About Me
As an anarchist who believes it is possible to live in a world without rulers, I often write about abuses of power, hierarchy, oppression and social control.
Don’t be scared by the word anarchist. I believe in rules. What I don’t believe in is coercion. Cooperation is possible and preferable.
And I won’t be throwing molotov cocktails at you. In fact, I’m a pacifist. (There goes another one of those scary words.) Violence is the ultimate form of coercion and so, naturally, I’m against it. Not so scary really.
Now, perhaps, you think I’m naive. No. I go through the world with my eyes wide open. In fact, those who know me best say I’m quite cynical (a “cold dose of reality”).
I am a student of history and an observer of people, focused mostly on the Americas. I’ve spent many years learning about the darkest parts of our past and present – genocide, slavery, racism, criminalization, war, imperialism, and every other human rights abuse twisted human brains could think of. I often write about those things too.
Here comes another scary word – atheist. I don’t believe in god. It just isn’t rational. And I’m a rational girl. Religion is a topic of many blog posts. Religion is, after all, one of the ultimate forms of social control. I think religion does more harm than good, so I write about religious hypocrisy and abuse. But I also try to understand where religious people are coming from. I do, after all, believe in democracy (the direct kind) and religious people aren’t going to disappear.
And while I mostly spend my time pointing out what I think is wrong, sometimes I use my blog to ponder what could be or should be. Those are the posts that I especially love comments on. When you spend a lot of time focusing on bleak realities, you need to make a little time to think about what is possible.
Hi there
Just a few thoughts: rules without coercion? What about those who would inevitably refuse to follow rules, and would interfere with other peoples' rights and harm others?
Being against violence is sweet, but then what about defense? Or dealing with those who would want to steal and rape, ect.?
A thought about atheism: individuals should believe whatever they want – but isn't it true that most religions provide a reason to express the better side of humanity, doing good for the purpose of good, or even doing good and being honest in hopes of an eternal reward – without which many people would revert to their base human instincts – survival of the fittest – putting ones own interests above doing what is good? Not to mention moral relativism – doesn't religion give humans an idea of absolute truth and absolute good?
Like many people I think radical Islam is a harmful religion and is a fascist movement. I also think cults (such as the one led by Jim Jones) are harmful. But I think most religions promote ideas of right and wrong and absolute truth, whether or not there is a god. Maybe humans need religious ideas to bring about the best of humanity? Just some thoughts!
1Hi eagle007blogger,
Being a pacifist does not mean that I believe all people will get along always and sing kumbaya together forever. It means I do not believe violence is ever justified, especially state sponsored violence. Howard Zinn says it much better than I could http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1109-01.htm
And being against coercion does not mean that I do not recognize that there will be antisocial behavior. It means I believe that behavior is most often a result of mental illness. There will be sociopaths and there will be mental health facilities. But you must recognize that the more power a person has, the more damage they do. You are afraid of the occasional outlier and in response are willing to arm thousands of enforcers who are responsible for far more abuse.
As for religion – There have been some individuals in the past who have expressed an admirable side of humanity using their religion as a jumping off point, but they have been rare. I believe they would have been equally admirable, and equally philosophical, had they not had any religion. And it is precisely religious claims of absolute truth that are so damaging. Irrational beliefs – that leave no room for evidence, no room for contradiction, no room for adaptation – are terribly destructive.
Human beings cannot survive without one another. That is an essential truth. Our personal interest is the same as our collective interest. I believe that morality comes from that understanding. And morality comes from empathy – from recognizing others humanity and pain. You don't need dogma or hierarchy or a vengeful god or the threat of burning in hell.
2Do you have favorite history books? Or favorite history book authors? If you would not mind, I would love recommendations.
3Hey Kevin,
It's really hard for me to pick favorite books, but…
My favorite author is James Baldwin. Although he didn't write history books, his understanding and perspective on American history comes through all of his essays. Price of the ticket is a good place to start.
A couple good general history books I read fairly recently are The Prize by Daniel Yergin and Africa by John Reader. The Prize looks at history through the lens of oil. Africa is really about the history of humanity as much as about the continent.
I've read a lot of books on Native American history. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is undoubtedly the most compelling. If you can get your hands on German Arciniegas's book America in Europe: A History of the New World in Reverse, you'll get a whole different take on the "discovery" of the Americas.
Harvest of Empire by Juan Gonzales is an easy read and a good intro to fairly recent American history from a Latino perspective. The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era by Micheline Ishay is a great intro to HR in the world. And, of course, there is Howard Zinn's book A Peoples History of the United States.
Are there any specific aspects of history you are more interested in?
4Thanks, Broadsnark.
I find it difficult to express my interest in history in such a way as to pinpoint specific aspects or time periods. Perhaps it may help, however, if I list my favorite history books.
Walter Karp, The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars Which Altered Forever the Political Life of the American Republic 1890-1920.
Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome’s First Emperor.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. My favorite history book so far. If you have not read it, I think the young miss Sofia described it best in a PM to me:
“It’s really quite good. So far it’s more of a broad portrait of that time period and the major players than a biography of Lincoln, but there are lots of delicious quotes and anecdotes and the author occasionally pulls you in to a more intimate sphere. It’s very well-written, also. Zips right along.”
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Pathfinders: A Global Hisotry of Exploration.
Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason.
Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism
Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation.
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.
Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson
Reading history books have been a great way of finding out about other interesting history books. Those last two, for example, have introduced me to a wealth of other food related history books, such as Near A Thousand Tables: A History of Food, another book written by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, a historian I mentioned above.
Pathfinders and Guns, Germs, and Steel stuck out to me by being, say, a sweeping portrait of humanity on an evolutionary scale. The latter book, for instance, talked about how civilizations developed on all the continents, and the many effects upon them through the resources available to them. Even the shape of the continent, the author pointed out, would have a huge impact on the people who live there. It was one of the most eye-opening discussions of a workable theory on why certain cultures come to dominate others after progressing faster. Both books, also, informed me that the Muslim and Chinese cultures used to be the elites in the past while the Europeans were, at one point, the equivalent of the ghetto. I found all of this — from the talk on the domestication and uses of a number of berries and grains, to the influence of environment on all the cultures of the past in all the continents — fascinating.
Miss Hecht’s Doubt made similar points to the last two books I mentioned above. For example, the idea that the philosophical ideas of the ancient Greeks and Romans traveled to the Muslim and Asian cultures after the takeover of the Christian religion and eventually made their way back to Europe never occurred to me. Making connections about ideas such as these in the books I have read that give a sweeping portrait of humanity have been most entertaining to me.
Going back to Pathfinders and Guns, Germs, and Steel, I remember this point I made in a topic in my forum titled “Most interesting historical ‘what ifs’?“:
…What if the Chinese government had not chosen to adopt a policy of isolationism in the 1400s? I read in Armesto’s Pathfinders that the Chinese had a grand fleet that made history by arriving at ports of novel distances, or just by its size and strength. However, China’s government, upon changing hands, managed to stagnate the entire country. Armesto notes: “Chinese disengagement from the wide world was not the result of any deficiency of technology or curiosity [p. 116].” Indeed, as pointed out in Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel,
“Until around A.D. 1450, China was technologically much more innovative and advanced than Europe, even more so than medieval Islam. The long list of Chinese inventions includes canal lock gates, cast iron, deep drilling, efficient animal harnesses, gunpowder, kites, magnetic compasses, movable type, paper, porcelain, printing (except for Phaistos disk), sternpost rudders, and wheelbarrows [p. 253].”
Might we today be looking at a much more Chinese-influenced Western hemisphere?
I am interested in three things: what “what if” scenarios you would most invest in if you were presented the chance to find out, why they interest you, and if you have your own hypotheses on how the “what ifs” would have affected the proceeding time line if they came to pass.
This interesting point in the book has gotten me interested in picking up a book by Louise Levathes titled When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433.
Finally, as I do not want to bore you any longer, but as I want to help give as good an idea as I can where my interests lie, here are a few history books I very much look forward to reading:
Lucio Russo, The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why it Had to Be Reborn.
Max Hastings, Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45.
Nancy C. Unger, Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer.
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War.
Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence.
William Woodward Hartpole Lecky, History Of The Rise And Influence Of The Spirit Of Rationalism In Europe.
Seymour Martin Lipset, It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States.
A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783.
Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.
Jules Archer, The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking True Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow FDR.
This out of the way, I was hoping to bother you with one more question. In your profile on this page, you briefly talked about your thoughts on the foundation of morality. My question is this: What have you read on the influence of evolution on morality? Have you ever read any of the essays on the subject by Paul Toben? How about Micheal Wong? Regarding Mr. Toben, he has written several essays that touch on the issue. The one that seemed most thorough and relevant is “Evolution and the Origins of Morality.” That essay was taken from his “Atheism: Frequently Asked Questions” page. I am confident that you would easily be able to pick out what other answers in the FAQ link to relevant essays.
Regards,
Kevin
5Heh. I noticed several errors. I wish I could edit. I am sure they are not too great, though.
6Hey Kevin. Sorry for the slow reply.
I think you just added a whole lot of new reading to my piles. Too bad this work thing gets in the way of my reading.
I also am fascinated by food history. Once you learn anything about it, all ideas about societies being separated or untouched or "authentic" really start to go out the window.
I had not read anything on the influence of evolution on morality, but I read the article you linked to. Interesting. I'm going to have to think on that one for a while. Being adopted, I have some pretty strong feelings about how much genes determine behavior, but much of it makes perfect sense.
7Hadn't dropped by in a while – I like this explanation of your viewpoint a lot.
You've captured the essence of something I believe strongly and don't see often as a coherent perspective in one of your replies above:
"But you must recognize that the more power a person has, the more damage they do. You are afraid of the occasional outlier and in response are willing to arm thousands of enforcers who are responsible for far more abuse."
Great response.
Also, I'd second the motion that you check out some of the new work regarding how we've evolved into culture and morality. Moral systems supporting cooperation and shared culture can be, and have been, a pretty enormous survival advantage for our species, and evolution is all about survival advantages.
Our challenge is how to pass through the transition of applying our cultural/moral framework from the localized systems that they evolved for, to the global meta-system encompassing our planet. What systems gives our entire world the best chance to survive and thrive?
8Thanks. Glad you liked it.
That is the conundrum isn't it. I know one thing for sure. It is not going to be our political "leaders" who manage to bring us to the other side of this transition.
9Your blog has some brilliant thought provoking and convincing articles. Keep up the great work…
10Thanks!
11oh. my. god.
Pretty AND smart? Equal parts of both??
I think I'm in love.
12Umm. This is awkward. Thanks?
13Wow I'm glad I found your blog. You remind me a lot of Emma Goldman, in the most positive ways possible of course. Not that I ever met her, obviously
I just happen to find your words profound and powerful and I also happen to agree with them.
Thank you for taking the time to write your blog. It doesn't go without notice and gratitude.
Take care,
14Rick
Wow right back. Is there any not positive way to be compared to Emma Goldman? Thank you.
15Great point! And you're welcome.
16Hi.
I'm Tanapangarap from the Twitter. It may seem silly following up on what I said on Twitter (mostly because it is), but I don't know where else to post it. Anyways, speaking of "divert," Mr. Greenwald wrote an excellent article titled "Who are the undeserving 'others' benefiting from expanded government actions?" In that article, he quotes Matt Taibbi, who said
After all, the reason the winger crowd can’t find a way to be coherently angry right now is because this country has no healthy avenues for genuine populist outrage. It never has. The setup always goes the other way: when the excesses of business interests and their political proteges in Washington leave the regular guy broke and screwed, the response is always for the lower and middle classes to split down the middle and find reasons to get pissed off not at their greedy bosses but at each other. That’s why even people like [Glenn] Beck’s audience, who I’d wager are mostly lower-income people, can’t imagine themselves protesting against the Wall Street barons who in actuality are the ones who fucked them over. . . .
This brings me to my point: There's a reason you don't see a Sen. Robert M. La Follette, Sr. in the spotlight today. At a time when outrage by the people was so great that it threatened to pull the Democrats and Republicans down from their pedestals and tear them asunder, a Progressive party rises overnight.
… But just as quickly disappeared. Just as happened to the Populist party, an even bigger threat to the status quo, before it. Anger so great that even a vastly unfair but powerful system that protects the two parties and enforces the status quo was threatened. But didn't fail, of course, because the masses lack the superhuman power to change the system unless a cataclysm assists them.
Anyways, Mr. Taibbi said that the populists "can’t find a way to be coherently angry right now…because this country has no healthy avenues for genuine populist outrage." What is there to wonder? The masses/non-elites have amnesia. Even the least experienced puppeteers in political power can pull enough strings most of the time.
17Hey Kevin/Tanapangarap – I don't think it's silly at all. I like twitter, but I have a hard time expressing my thoughts in a few words.
Taibbi is spot on (as usual), but I'm not completely without hope. I think that Americans are finally beginning to develop a class consciousness. I expect that we will see a lot more "far" left/right alliances in the future.
18Right. Oddly enough, seeing the world this way gives me solace. It's not this apocalyptic struggle with one side winning against the other, but a constant shuffling and shifting with progress mixed in. If that makes any damn sense. Changes happen, many of them not the kind of changes we want, but many of them are. We constantly compromise, and even revolutions do not bring about all that was wished for. But there's the progress, and there's the constant battle to make life better and more opportune for more people more of the time.
19In other words, I don't mean to be so pessimistic. I don't view the world as something not worth fighting for. Quite the contrary. I just try not to look at it with rose colored glasses, as I think viewing the present that way may be just as misleading as viewing the past that way.
20Agreed. And I would argue that people who avoid seeing all the negative aren't really being optimistic, because you can't change anything without being honest about it first.
21I like the anarchism, but I think, so far it is not possible to realize it on this earth. On the other hand it is not possible to build a perfect society. Once a great Pope said whoever want realize the Paradise on the earth will bring only the hell! Life is life, neither good nor bad. It is just life. You have to live it. And, by living the life, it will teach you the right way of living.
22As regard to the religion, I agree with you, not only the fear of the death draw the people to the religion. Also the traditions are important factors. Nevertheless, in my case, the fear of the death triggered my spiritual journey, in search of God, the immortal soul or mind, the life after the death.
The book I have recently written may help in this direction and I want to draw it to your attention. The title is “Travels of the Mind”. It is available at http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/TravelsOfTheMind.html
If you have any questions, I am most willing to offer my views on this topic.
Ettore Grillo
Just because you don't think something can be perfect, doesn't mean you don't try to get it as close as you can.
Thanks for stopping by.
23The issue to me is whether something can work out in reality. If it seems awesome "in theory," but it fails to conform to reality, it's not something that strikes me as a good theory. That is one reason I do not support communism. As for anarchism, I've not read much about it, and do not consider my understanding of it good enough to pass judgment. Being an occasional reader of this website may help educate me, however.
Anyways, it just occurred to me that, since you're a fan of politics, Broadsnark, that you might be interested in reading a political essay I submitted for my English 015 class last year, "The Elected President: A Case Study": http://theinfinityprogram.com/showthread.php?t=35...
24Interesting paper, Kevin. I can't argue with the electoral college being a bad idea. But then I think the president is a bad idea. Why have one at all? Do we really need a king?
And I have to strongly dispute the idea that the senators reflect the will of the people. Senators consistently vote in ways that are at odds with their constituents, as do reps. They rarely get voted out of office once they have gotten in there, not because they represent the people so well, but because they have the party machine and money behind them.
Anarchism is simple, it is a belief that people are capable of governing themselves. We don't need coercion. And we definitely don't need corrupt "representatives" who don't really represent us.
25Thanks for the response, Broadsnark.
I hope I did not appear to be endorsing the one man presidency as a good idea; I meant instead to simply accept that as an axiom. I only meant to claim the presidency as superior to the Senate in a certain respect.
Also, I agree with you about the Senate. For the longest time, they've been answering to special interests and corporations, and the people are just a nuisance to them that they have to maneuver around, keep calm, and manipulate. When I compared the answerability of the Senate compared to the Representatives, I only meant in regards to that comparison; i.e., even if they're more answerable, that doesn't mean their degree of answerability to the people is decent.
Anyways, regarding anarchism, I chanced upon an anarchist writer named Peter Kropotkin. I'm wondering if you're familiar with him, and if you would recommend his work. At this point, I have his books Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings and Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution on my to-read list. Of course, only the former book is relevant here, though the latter does hint at how I came across his work: a science history book by Carl Zimmer titled Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life. Apparently, according to Zimmer, he was the counterpoint to the argument by Thomas H. Huxley, who was not as optimistic about what evolution means for life.
Well, that's my intent, but I think my paper would be reasonably interpreted otherwise; in other words, a fault of my own writing.
26You should most definitely read Kropotkin. I would highly recommend him. And the book on mutual aid is actually very important to many (maybe even most) anarchists as it shows that cooperation (as opposed to competition) is natural and an important part of surviving and thriving for all living things (us included). Many anarchists believe that mutual aid is the fundamental core of what society should be.
Love to hear your thoughts after you have had a chance to read them.
27Erm, I somehow got the paragraphs of my response mixed up; obviously, the last one should be above the one starting "Anyways…" Also, you did not see me used the word "compared" or a variant of it three times in one sentence. >.>
28Hi: Love your ideas. Ckeck my blog. It has much the same intent as yours. Riverschihouse.blogspot.com or riversphotos.tumblr.com
Waking up to what is happening within and without is a lot of well worth it work. Than you for helping.
River
29Thanks River. Nice blog.
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