Crow, you know I liked this very much. What would you think of me making a slightly shortened version of it to publish on To The Root? You could also repulish on Nevermore.
The reason I suggest this is that this idea is something I'd like to share with others, but the introduction is a bit lengthy and, as you yourself say, "rambling." I'd like to tighten it up a bit to make it more accessible and reader friendly.
Maybe this would be a good place to say something about my philosophy of writing: I am a big believer in not second-guessing myself when I am writing too much.
My general attitude is "Say what you have to say. Once you've said it once, you can always say it better in the future. Alternately, someone might take what you said and express it in a clearer way."
So, to anyone reading this, I encourage you to borrow, steal, pilfer, and paraphrase my ideas... They say that imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but for a writer translation is the greatest form of flattery!
I enjoy my own writing but I know that it would be better if I had an editor. I know that because I have had editors in the past (my editors Rabbit and Onion at the Earth First! Journal stand out, as do members of the Slingshot collective in California, especially Jesse). But I no longer am in communication with any of them.
Dec 14, 2023·edited Dec 14, 2023Liked by NEVERMORE MEDIA
I think this is really where it's at! How can we foment and create bit by bit a new culture, an ethnogenesis?
I write about what are, in my opinion, peripheral matters. But there's a reason for that. I want to reveal current cultural values as naive and irrelevant as they inherently are. How can we walk away from society as it is currently structured if we are under the spell of the myths of modernity? For example, how can anyone walk away from the medical system while holding on to institutionalized narratives about disease, while believing in rogue dangerous "viruses", and bioengineering. In order to walk away and create a new culture, such things must be thoroughly debunked, just like value of technocracy, institutionalized labor, welfare, etc.
I read Cudenec's article on the David Graeber debate between Crow and Darren Allen and watched the imbedded video of Graeber. It's disappointing that an anthropologist with the kind of insights Graeber had would also be a technophile and a state socialist(?!). We can of course do better. We need to forge new kinds of association and livelihood that are not dependent on established institutions. When we see the medical/pharmaceutical, financial, government, military and educational "necessities" of today for the blatant farces they are, it is easy to conceive of walking away from these. More difficult, for us who have been so long weaned from our natural place of dependence and interrelatedness with the earth, is developing some kind of sustainable self-sufficiency for our basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter. We must rediscover these aspects of basic knowhow so that we can pass them on to a coming generation. Our challenge is consequently qualitatively greater and more complex than that of the Mayans or the peoples of Madagascar.
At the same time as we do our best to recover lost arts, if we are to survive we must also keep up with the latest in geopolitics and technical domination. So our efforts must be strong, agile and focused on many fronts at once.
Crow asks in another place how we can give appeal to anarchy. I feel that harmony with the natural world has its own appeal. Let us highlight it and live it. And as the threat of the immense technological, military and propagandizing apparatus of the world dictocrats grows, so too the appeal and urgency of finding and living alternative ways of life and of uniting our efforts toward them grows in response.
First off, let me thank you for engaging with these ideas!
Recently, I switched from writing about current events to political theory, and the engagement on my posts has dropped significantly. I guess there’s only so many people who are interested in how Mythos relates to political struggle!
To be fair, I think I have entered into quite an esoteric area. But I think it’s important! I agree with David Graeber that we are limited primarily by our own imaginations…
Martin Prechtel is probably more useful than Graeber in this space, bc he has lived a Mayan ethnogenesis. ‘Long life, honey in the heart,’ is a seminal text for those reimagining and rebuilding land bonded anarchist-peasant settlements. This, for us is not utopian or puritan, but started in the unintentional neighbourhood sphere mixing with permacultural neopeasants, not ideologically but in a step by step expansion of a flow of gifts between households. While Prechtel isn’t for everyone in the street and broader community the spirit of gift, gratitude and flow of gifts his books inspire has become infectious, and a slow burn movement (permaculture has been described as revolution disguised as garden agriculture) is deepening all the time.
Prechtel has been criticised by modernist and post modernist literary types for being too flowery in his language, but it is this return to love for a flowering, fruiting abundance world, and away from modernist scarcity and alienation is why his form is worth opening too.
I’m probably going to skew your survey but I don’t think I could really bullshit a convincing story on any of the ten. I’m probably quite knowledgeable on some of the theories but I have never really digested the named compartments. That’s my story and I sticking to it. Once I was drinking with a Mexican guy and a Mayan guy and I discovered that the word for handcuffs in Spanish was the plural of wife After gleefully ingesting that significant piece of information I asked the Mayan guy what they called handcuffs and he slowly considered and answered that they didn’t have one. We three decided that by the time handcuffs were needed the problem had already been dealt with in Mayan culture
Is the "text" you mention a book or an article. Of what length?
I read a book by Pretchel many years back. I couldn't be sure about it or about Pretchel's integrity, but I'd be willing to look at your "text" if it's fairly short.
Well, I do live somewhere where I'm on the only white person, so you might be on to something. It's true that I feel anger towards people where I'm from, but it's a little more complicated than hating white people...
I take it that you are referring to Lupus Dragonowl's comment about "becoming non-white"? Yeah, doesn't land too well in 2023, does it? Kinda seems like white self-hate racism now, doesn't it? I know what the author meant... that we should abandon the dominant culture and form a counter-culture, and "white" is used to refer to an artificial identity created by statists through the magic of nationalism, but yeah, it sounds bad now.
Crow, you know I liked this very much. What would you think of me making a slightly shortened version of it to publish on To The Root? You could also repulish on Nevermore.
The reason I suggest this is that this idea is something I'd like to share with others, but the introduction is a bit lengthy and, as you yourself say, "rambling." I'd like to tighten it up a bit to make it more accessible and reader friendly.
Yes, I would certainly appreciate that!
Maybe this would be a good place to say something about my philosophy of writing: I am a big believer in not second-guessing myself when I am writing too much.
My general attitude is "Say what you have to say. Once you've said it once, you can always say it better in the future. Alternately, someone might take what you said and express it in a clearer way."
So, to anyone reading this, I encourage you to borrow, steal, pilfer, and paraphrase my ideas... They say that imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but for a writer translation is the greatest form of flattery!
I enjoy my own writing but I know that it would be better if I had an editor. I know that because I have had editors in the past (my editors Rabbit and Onion at the Earth First! Journal stand out, as do members of the Slingshot collective in California, especially Jesse). But I no longer am in communication with any of them.
Published!
totheroot.substack.com/p/walking-away-from-cahokia
I think this is really where it's at! How can we foment and create bit by bit a new culture, an ethnogenesis?
I write about what are, in my opinion, peripheral matters. But there's a reason for that. I want to reveal current cultural values as naive and irrelevant as they inherently are. How can we walk away from society as it is currently structured if we are under the spell of the myths of modernity? For example, how can anyone walk away from the medical system while holding on to institutionalized narratives about disease, while believing in rogue dangerous "viruses", and bioengineering. In order to walk away and create a new culture, such things must be thoroughly debunked, just like value of technocracy, institutionalized labor, welfare, etc.
I read Cudenec's article on the David Graeber debate between Crow and Darren Allen and watched the imbedded video of Graeber. It's disappointing that an anthropologist with the kind of insights Graeber had would also be a technophile and a state socialist(?!). We can of course do better. We need to forge new kinds of association and livelihood that are not dependent on established institutions. When we see the medical/pharmaceutical, financial, government, military and educational "necessities" of today for the blatant farces they are, it is easy to conceive of walking away from these. More difficult, for us who have been so long weaned from our natural place of dependence and interrelatedness with the earth, is developing some kind of sustainable self-sufficiency for our basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter. We must rediscover these aspects of basic knowhow so that we can pass them on to a coming generation. Our challenge is consequently qualitatively greater and more complex than that of the Mayans or the peoples of Madagascar.
At the same time as we do our best to recover lost arts, if we are to survive we must also keep up with the latest in geopolitics and technical domination. So our efforts must be strong, agile and focused on many fronts at once.
Crow asks in another place how we can give appeal to anarchy. I feel that harmony with the natural world has its own appeal. Let us highlight it and live it. And as the threat of the immense technological, military and propagandizing apparatus of the world dictocrats grows, so too the appeal and urgency of finding and living alternative ways of life and of uniting our efforts toward them grows in response.
First off, let me thank you for engaging with these ideas!
Recently, I switched from writing about current events to political theory, and the engagement on my posts has dropped significantly. I guess there’s only so many people who are interested in how Mythos relates to political struggle!
To be fair, I think I have entered into quite an esoteric area. But I think it’s important! I agree with David Graeber that we are limited primarily by our own imaginations…
Martin Prechtel is probably more useful than Graeber in this space, bc he has lived a Mayan ethnogenesis. ‘Long life, honey in the heart,’ is a seminal text for those reimagining and rebuilding land bonded anarchist-peasant settlements. This, for us is not utopian or puritan, but started in the unintentional neighbourhood sphere mixing with permacultural neopeasants, not ideologically but in a step by step expansion of a flow of gifts between households. While Prechtel isn’t for everyone in the street and broader community the spirit of gift, gratitude and flow of gifts his books inspire has become infectious, and a slow burn movement (permaculture has been described as revolution disguised as garden agriculture) is deepening all the time.
Wow! Very interesting! Thanks!
Prechtel has been criticised by modernist and post modernist literary types for being too flowery in his language, but it is this return to love for a flowering, fruiting abundance world, and away from modernist scarcity and alienation is why his form is worth opening too.
I’m probably going to skew your survey but I don’t think I could really bullshit a convincing story on any of the ten. I’m probably quite knowledgeable on some of the theories but I have never really digested the named compartments. That’s my story and I sticking to it. Once I was drinking with a Mexican guy and a Mayan guy and I discovered that the word for handcuffs in Spanish was the plural of wife After gleefully ingesting that significant piece of information I asked the Mayan guy what they called handcuffs and he slowly considered and answered that they didn’t have one. We three decided that by the time handcuffs were needed the problem had already been dealt with in Mayan culture
Accurate!
Is the "text" you mention a book or an article. Of what length?
I read a book by Pretchel many years back. I couldn't be sure about it or about Pretchel's integrity, but I'd be willing to look at your "text" if it's fairly short.
Well, I do live somewhere where I'm on the only white person, so you might be on to something. It's true that I feel anger towards people where I'm from, but it's a little more complicated than hating white people...
I take it that you are referring to Lupus Dragonowl's comment about "becoming non-white"? Yeah, doesn't land too well in 2023, does it? Kinda seems like white self-hate racism now, doesn't it? I know what the author meant... that we should abandon the dominant culture and form a counter-culture, and "white" is used to refer to an artificial identity created by statists through the magic of nationalism, but yeah, it sounds bad now.
Did you ever hear that "I would rather die than hook up with another straight white guy" song? That was the era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsAnEP31N1Y