WELCOME BACK...we've been saving your spot on the battlefield.
One creates because one must - to feed the soul - our divine essence that the predators are trying so desperately to destroy. Creatives do it for the sake of doing it.
And some tough love - IMO, anyone who goes behind a paywall in the midst of a mass extinction event can shove it. Anyone with an ounce of compassion and who is aware of the dire situation we are in, is happily sharing anything they know of to mitigate the carnage and suffering and the trauma and the economic toll these endless assaults have taken on all of us.
We can either put our big panties on and throw some flames, or we can whine about not being compensated, which is always seriously off-putting, to me, anyway. I learn just as much from my subscribers as I do from my own relentless research. I am grateful for anyone who even puts some eyeballs on what I have to share and takes the time to offer more information.
So, I'm glad you're coming out of your self-induced comas, but our only sword is the keyboard...pound it like you mean it - with passion - and share like mad, anything that might be helpful for the preservation of humanity and all biological life on earth. Or not...your choice.
I hope I didn't offend. You're a great writer and I'm still raging through ice pick headaches...without meds, so I can come down hard right now...don't mean to...
But...
We need all claws on deck for this war...stay with us...! Time is short.
The FIR is not because the the elite broke shit and figured they better consolidate power before the revolt happens-🤔 they are breaking shit on purpose because they know that we are claiming our true heritage and seeing through their BS hierarchy.
I will mention that I'm ten years deep into my activism career and have poured tens of thousands of dollars into this project (mostly early on, printing the magazine, shipping it around the world, etc).
I genuinely never understood it until just recently. David Graeber helped me figure out.
Basically, most university-educated people (who likely constitute the bulk of my readership) belong to the managerial class, which has been thoroughly infected with the mentality of bureaucrats.
(Even if you don't have a bullshit job, if you rub shoulders with bureaucrats, their mentality has likely rubbed off on you to some degree.)
Bureaucrats, as we all know, as a parasitic class of people who suck the life-force of the working class through taxes, fees, insurance, lawsuits, etc. Deep inside, they feel horribly guilty for squandering their souls day by painful day. Human beings want to be useful. We crave meaningful work.
Perversely, over time these people come to see the misery they endure at work as the value of their labour. Certainly, it makes sense to think this way when your work has no intrinsic value.
Their paycheque become their reward for slowly pulverizing their souls day by painful day.
Guess what that does to your mind? It makes you jealous of people who are living their dreams.
Let it fester long enough and jealousy becomes hatred.
That's why Canadians hate artists and think they're despicable "entitled" lowlife scum who should "get a real job".
Such people despise artists precisely BECAUSE they nurture their creativity and develop the potential that was innate in them as children. It makes them more aware of the pathetic superficiality of bourgeois existence. It makes them feel like leaky buckets allowing the essence to drain out of them with each pointless meeting and useless form.
To a bureaucrat with a bullshit job, it is downright offensive that an artist should enjoy themselves and also think that they deserve to be compensated..
Imagine! Artists want to get paid! The audacity! They enjoy making art! The pleasure they experience in expressing themselves would be reward enough for any reasonable person. What disgustingly egotistical prima donnas they are! They want to pursue their dreams AND make a living? Perish the thought!
NON-ESSENTIAL! NON-ESSENTIAL! NON-ESSENTIAL!
Perhaps this is a hard concept for people to wrap their minds around, but my art is for you. If you have gotten anything of value from my work, it means that you consider my labour valuable.
Value doesn't necessarily come from suffering. Believe it or not, it can come from pleasure.
If I was able to make money doing this, I could afford to do it more.
Know what my most valuable possession is? The laptop I'm writing right now, and my mom bought it for me. I'm 36 years old. How many people are crazy enough to do what I'm doing? Not many. Is it so crazy for me to think that my labour has value? I don't think so.
And for the record, believe me, I have suffered to produce my art. My suffering isn't the type a bureaucrat could easily understand, but it pains my soul just knowing that some people think art is non-essential. I hate having to peruade people that art is valuable, because what in the world is more valuable than creativity in its purest form?
I agree with Nietzche when he said that art is what makes the truth bearable.
I like to offend people because this world modern world offends me, but no one cares what I find offensive.
Value has been inverted. Useless suffering has become a perverse virtue in the reverse morality of late capitalism. Excellence is frowned upon, and a false modesty masking vanity and narcissim prevails. It's hideous, and I hate it.
But if I'm honest, part of my intention when I wrote the Motorcyle Diaries was to rub people's faces in the fact that my life is awesome. While most people were hiding from the air, I was exploring the world, expanding my mind, making friends, getting high, and living life to the fullest. So I kind of get why people don't want to give me money. They don't want to reward me for enjoying my life. Fair enough. It would be nice if they wanted to encourage me in the hope that I might inspire others, but whatever. What I do definitely isn't for everyone. In case you couldn't tell, I want to piss people off. If I piss them off, that means they're feeling something. And people are so goddam numb and apathetic these days it takes a lot to get a rise out of them.
Another factor in my thinking is that it's unignorable that MAAAAAANY anarchists have died in recent years, either from mysterious causes, drug overdoses likely caused by despair, or suicide (often after being banished from their activist communities). Premature death is an occupational hazard of being a revolutionary - everyone knows that - but it would be nice if the people who have means to support people like me before we die. The chances of me dying of old age are not great. That's why I speak my mind so freely. I want to say what I have to say before I die, I don't know how long I'll live, and I've got a lot to say.
That said, I like what I'm doing for work these days, and I like to look on the bright side. The good news is that I'll be fine with or without your money. I'm always fine. Thanks for asking.
Anyone that is reading this, though, please do consider become a paid subscriber. Your money's about to go poof anyway. And trust me, I grew up in Ottawa. I know all about the managerial class. Deep pockets, short hands.
Y'all ain't broke. I'm guessing that 80% of the people reading this have disposal income. You could support independent journalists. You just can't be bothered, because you don't want to send the wrong message. I get it. I know you don't, but I do. So don't give me your money. Spend it on something nice for the pet that you treat like a child.
Okay, I'm done. Any questions?
Seriously, though, we need to do away with the idea that all activism should be uncompensated. If we're actually trying to create a real revolutionary movement, activists need to be working full-time, and that means that there needs to be a base of support.
I'm not a Marxist, but I am certainly a communist in the sense that David Graeber uses the word. From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.
If you have the ability to donate money to the movement, you should do so. We need it. If you don't, I could think of 25 other ways you could contribute energy to the cause. Please feel to get in touch for ideas if you're looking for ideas of ways you can volunteer time instead of money.
I'm a regenerative farmer in Australia mate, I'm struggling to fight the system too. I subscribe to none on Substack because most that I follow are writing about this battle for humanity and frankly I think every mind should be on board with that and doing it for free- because this $!@# show wouldn't have made it past the pilot episode, if everyone was obsessed with making a buck from it. So I pay none, connect others where I can, and get on with putting food in the shops, incase there's battle weary starving artists around😉🤣😂🙏🙏
When peeps start growing their own food,I can take a break and look at some non-covid reads and pay then.😉🙏
I'm glad you didn't take offence. It would be have been awkward if you were a management consultant or something!
To be fair, I'm not currently a paid subscriber on anyone's substack. I consider my writing my contribution to the movement. Plus, I'm poor.
This is the first time I've ever described myself as poor, but the fact is that I'm 36, I don't own anything, and I'm selling my labour for $24/hour.
My mom has money, but I don't. My brother owns a house, which she helped him buy, but he has a business and he's worked his whole life. Why shouldn't he be able to own a house?
There should be a word for someone who grew up privileged but is now poor.
Here's my proposal - DIGGER.
Yuppie is Young, Upwardly-Mobile Professional
Digger is Downwardly-Mobile Intellectual Gig-worker. Many diggers will have university degrees. Many probably have more student debt than assets.
If your parents were comfortable, but you're part of the precariat (precarious proletariat), you may be a digger.
Probably won't catch on, but I like inventing new words. What do you think?
Anyway, I've been to Australia and I know that wages are higher there, and the standard of living is better, but I suspect similar things apply. We've been shamed for our "privilege" while we've been getting poorer and poorer.
If you know what true wealth is, the Zapatistas are much richer than working class Canadians are. They own land, they have strong communities, they don't pay taxes or insurance, and they're not in debt.
We need to have a frame shift about what wealth is.
No spells. The story is already right there. And here. And here. Here it is again, just in front of me. As soon as I put down the phone or walk away from the desk and re-enter the world, it is. What do we really do all day? We are with the world. This is the story. Paul has already told it. Crow here as well. Countless others before, most did not write it down. Siddhartha did a pretty decent job telling it. We know what to do because we are already doing it. We also know our story, deeply. Every day I tend the land and make food and care for the creatures who depend on me and on whom I depend. And talk about it w others. And sing and dance and make music and art and write stuff down. And get angry. And high. And low. Y’all do some version of this too. The rest is fluff. We already know our real stories. We’ve always known them. We just chose to play along w someone else’s story for a while. That’s free will for ya. Nuff said.
Sometimes I feel that the hegemony that we freedom fighters are resisting is actually worse than global (financial) capitalism. I think that we are struggling against an evil worse than the bankers and the corporations.
I actually intend to stop using the word capitalism to describe the system I oppose because the term is now used in very different ways by different people.
In this article I succumbed to force of habit. I do intend to phase out using the word capitalism though. Paul Cudenec has started using criminocracy.
What did I mean by the term “essential psychopath”?
Essential Psychopaths
<quote>Defect or Alternate Evolutionary Strategy?
Well, the most basic approach simply views psychopaths as mutations or aberrations of the normal human being, who, as reviewer Martha Beck put it, "lack scruples the way someone born blind lacks eyesight." Advocates of this perspective would explain that, just as some people are born with damaged eyes or hearts or kidneys, psychopaths suffer from a birth defect involving the moral and emotional processing centers of the brain. In the book “Political Ponerology”, Andrew Lobaczewski informs us that, at one time, psychiatrists often used to describe those whom he calls "essential psychopaths" – people with a form of psychopathy that he believed to be inherited and most centrally involved in catalyzing pathocracy – as "Daltonists of human feelings and socio-moral values," thus making the analogy between them and people with a form of color blindness known as Daltonism.
However, other experts hold a more complex view of the psychopath not as a "broken" normal human, but rather as a different type of human entirely. They believe that, just as humans of conscience were naturally selected for via the pressures of their environments, certain environments may also, in parallel, have naturally selected for the survival and reproduction of a certain number of humans without conscience. In this paradigm, psychopaths are seen as a subset of humanity, wired to enact an alternate evolutionary strategy that - though perhaps reprehensible to many of us and possibly dangerous to our long-term sustainability - has nonetheless served them relatively effectively within the context of our recent history.<unquote>
The ultimate enemy of all decent and (so-called) “normal” people are essential psychopaths. Therefore, the rule by psychopaths (or pathocracy) is ultimately the worst and most evil form of government possible. See https://pathocracy.wordpress.com/definition/ if you are interested.
What's worse than bankers and corporations is bankers and corporations colluding with the state. The difference is, we need bankers and corporations, as they produce useful things from whom we can choose to buy or withhold our funds, while the state produces nothing except the quick destruction of everything private people have produced.
I think they are kind of two sides of the same coin... Anarcho-capitalists seem to think that you can keep the corporations and do away with the state... but wouldn't the corporations then just acquire private security forces?
Not-so-fun fact - did you know Putin gave Gazprom a licence to operate a "Private Military Company"?
The age of corporate feudalism may already be upon us.
My plan was to wait for some business genius to come along and realize that we could make a ton of money together. But given that it hasn't happened yet I might have to start thinking of this as a business.
Do you think I should stop insulting my audience? I don't know if I can do that...
WELCOME BACK...we've been saving your spot on the battlefield.
One creates because one must - to feed the soul - our divine essence that the predators are trying so desperately to destroy. Creatives do it for the sake of doing it.
And some tough love - IMO, anyone who goes behind a paywall in the midst of a mass extinction event can shove it. Anyone with an ounce of compassion and who is aware of the dire situation we are in, is happily sharing anything they know of to mitigate the carnage and suffering and the trauma and the economic toll these endless assaults have taken on all of us.
We can either put our big panties on and throw some flames, or we can whine about not being compensated, which is always seriously off-putting, to me, anyway. I learn just as much from my subscribers as I do from my own relentless research. I am grateful for anyone who even puts some eyeballs on what I have to share and takes the time to offer more information.
So, I'm glad you're coming out of your self-induced comas, but our only sword is the keyboard...pound it like you mean it - with passion - and share like mad, anything that might be helpful for the preservation of humanity and all biological life on earth. Or not...your choice.
That's what the Ravens tell me, anyway...
Thanks for sharing. I'll take this as a message from the universe. I appreciate your eyeballs too.
I hope I didn't offend. You're a great writer and I'm still raging through ice pick headaches...without meds, so I can come down hard right now...don't mean to...
But...
We need all claws on deck for this war...stay with us...! Time is short.
Bravo!! I knew there were peeps like you out there😉 👏👏👏👏👏 well said, thought and I shall go look for your stack now.🤗.
Crow, you had a tantrum, and that's cool, glad to see your a fully functioning adult who can acknowledge it and get on with the business.
https://odysee.com/@januszkowalskii1979:e/Very-Old-Technology---Sound-Resonance-Magnetics-the-Nature-of-Reality-%28Michael-Tellinger%29:8.
The FIR is not because the the elite broke shit and figured they better consolidate power before the revolt happens-🤔 they are breaking shit on purpose because they know that we are claiming our true heritage and seeing through their BS hierarchy.
Watch this and you'll understand everything😉
What can I say? I'm passionate.
I will mention that I'm ten years deep into my activism career and have poured tens of thousands of dollars into this project (mostly early on, printing the magazine, shipping it around the world, etc).
I genuinely never understood it until just recently. David Graeber helped me figure out.
Basically, most university-educated people (who likely constitute the bulk of my readership) belong to the managerial class, which has been thoroughly infected with the mentality of bureaucrats.
(Even if you don't have a bullshit job, if you rub shoulders with bureaucrats, their mentality has likely rubbed off on you to some degree.)
Bureaucrats, as we all know, as a parasitic class of people who suck the life-force of the working class through taxes, fees, insurance, lawsuits, etc. Deep inside, they feel horribly guilty for squandering their souls day by painful day. Human beings want to be useful. We crave meaningful work.
Perversely, over time these people come to see the misery they endure at work as the value of their labour. Certainly, it makes sense to think this way when your work has no intrinsic value.
Their paycheque become their reward for slowly pulverizing their souls day by painful day.
Guess what that does to your mind? It makes you jealous of people who are living their dreams.
Let it fester long enough and jealousy becomes hatred.
That's why Canadians hate artists and think they're despicable "entitled" lowlife scum who should "get a real job".
Such people despise artists precisely BECAUSE they nurture their creativity and develop the potential that was innate in them as children. It makes them more aware of the pathetic superficiality of bourgeois existence. It makes them feel like leaky buckets allowing the essence to drain out of them with each pointless meeting and useless form.
To a bureaucrat with a bullshit job, it is downright offensive that an artist should enjoy themselves and also think that they deserve to be compensated..
Imagine! Artists want to get paid! The audacity! They enjoy making art! The pleasure they experience in expressing themselves would be reward enough for any reasonable person. What disgustingly egotistical prima donnas they are! They want to pursue their dreams AND make a living? Perish the thought!
NON-ESSENTIAL! NON-ESSENTIAL! NON-ESSENTIAL!
Perhaps this is a hard concept for people to wrap their minds around, but my art is for you. If you have gotten anything of value from my work, it means that you consider my labour valuable.
Value doesn't necessarily come from suffering. Believe it or not, it can come from pleasure.
If I was able to make money doing this, I could afford to do it more.
Know what my most valuable possession is? The laptop I'm writing right now, and my mom bought it for me. I'm 36 years old. How many people are crazy enough to do what I'm doing? Not many. Is it so crazy for me to think that my labour has value? I don't think so.
And for the record, believe me, I have suffered to produce my art. My suffering isn't the type a bureaucrat could easily understand, but it pains my soul just knowing that some people think art is non-essential. I hate having to peruade people that art is valuable, because what in the world is more valuable than creativity in its purest form?
I agree with Nietzche when he said that art is what makes the truth bearable.
I like to offend people because this world modern world offends me, but no one cares what I find offensive.
Value has been inverted. Useless suffering has become a perverse virtue in the reverse morality of late capitalism. Excellence is frowned upon, and a false modesty masking vanity and narcissim prevails. It's hideous, and I hate it.
But if I'm honest, part of my intention when I wrote the Motorcyle Diaries was to rub people's faces in the fact that my life is awesome. While most people were hiding from the air, I was exploring the world, expanding my mind, making friends, getting high, and living life to the fullest. So I kind of get why people don't want to give me money. They don't want to reward me for enjoying my life. Fair enough. It would be nice if they wanted to encourage me in the hope that I might inspire others, but whatever. What I do definitely isn't for everyone. In case you couldn't tell, I want to piss people off. If I piss them off, that means they're feeling something. And people are so goddam numb and apathetic these days it takes a lot to get a rise out of them.
Another factor in my thinking is that it's unignorable that MAAAAAANY anarchists have died in recent years, either from mysterious causes, drug overdoses likely caused by despair, or suicide (often after being banished from their activist communities). Premature death is an occupational hazard of being a revolutionary - everyone knows that - but it would be nice if the people who have means to support people like me before we die. The chances of me dying of old age are not great. That's why I speak my mind so freely. I want to say what I have to say before I die, I don't know how long I'll live, and I've got a lot to say.
That said, I like what I'm doing for work these days, and I like to look on the bright side. The good news is that I'll be fine with or without your money. I'm always fine. Thanks for asking.
Anyone that is reading this, though, please do consider become a paid subscriber. Your money's about to go poof anyway. And trust me, I grew up in Ottawa. I know all about the managerial class. Deep pockets, short hands.
Y'all ain't broke. I'm guessing that 80% of the people reading this have disposal income. You could support independent journalists. You just can't be bothered, because you don't want to send the wrong message. I get it. I know you don't, but I do. So don't give me your money. Spend it on something nice for the pet that you treat like a child.
Okay, I'm done. Any questions?
Seriously, though, we need to do away with the idea that all activism should be uncompensated. If we're actually trying to create a real revolutionary movement, activists need to be working full-time, and that means that there needs to be a base of support.
I'm not a Marxist, but I am certainly a communist in the sense that David Graeber uses the word. From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.
If you have the ability to donate money to the movement, you should do so. We need it. If you don't, I could think of 25 other ways you could contribute energy to the cause. Please feel to get in touch for ideas if you're looking for ideas of ways you can volunteer time instead of money.
I'm a regenerative farmer in Australia mate, I'm struggling to fight the system too. I subscribe to none on Substack because most that I follow are writing about this battle for humanity and frankly I think every mind should be on board with that and doing it for free- because this $!@# show wouldn't have made it past the pilot episode, if everyone was obsessed with making a buck from it. So I pay none, connect others where I can, and get on with putting food in the shops, incase there's battle weary starving artists around😉🤣😂🙏🙏
When peeps start growing their own food,I can take a break and look at some non-covid reads and pay then.😉🙏
I'm glad you didn't take offence. It would be have been awkward if you were a management consultant or something!
To be fair, I'm not currently a paid subscriber on anyone's substack. I consider my writing my contribution to the movement. Plus, I'm poor.
This is the first time I've ever described myself as poor, but the fact is that I'm 36, I don't own anything, and I'm selling my labour for $24/hour.
My mom has money, but I don't. My brother owns a house, which she helped him buy, but he has a business and he's worked his whole life. Why shouldn't he be able to own a house?
There should be a word for someone who grew up privileged but is now poor.
Here's my proposal - DIGGER.
Yuppie is Young, Upwardly-Mobile Professional
Digger is Downwardly-Mobile Intellectual Gig-worker. Many diggers will have university degrees. Many probably have more student debt than assets.
If your parents were comfortable, but you're part of the precariat (precarious proletariat), you may be a digger.
Probably won't catch on, but I like inventing new words. What do you think?
Anyway, I've been to Australia and I know that wages are higher there, and the standard of living is better, but I suspect similar things apply. We've been shamed for our "privilege" while we've been getting poorer and poorer.
If you know what true wealth is, the Zapatistas are much richer than working class Canadians are. They own land, they have strong communities, they don't pay taxes or insurance, and they're not in debt.
We need to have a frame shift about what wealth is.
Ps keep PO peeps with your work. You doing good 👍👍👏👏🎩
No spells. The story is already right there. And here. And here. Here it is again, just in front of me. As soon as I put down the phone or walk away from the desk and re-enter the world, it is. What do we really do all day? We are with the world. This is the story. Paul has already told it. Crow here as well. Countless others before, most did not write it down. Siddhartha did a pretty decent job telling it. We know what to do because we are already doing it. We also know our story, deeply. Every day I tend the land and make food and care for the creatures who depend on me and on whom I depend. And talk about it w others. And sing and dance and make music and art and write stuff down. And get angry. And high. And low. Y’all do some version of this too. The rest is fluff. We already know our real stories. We’ve always known them. We just chose to play along w someone else’s story for a while. That’s free will for ya. Nuff said.
Sometimes I feel that the hegemony that we freedom fighters are resisting is actually worse than global (financial) capitalism. I think that we are struggling against an evil worse than the bankers and the corporations.
I actually intend to stop using the word capitalism to describe the system I oppose because the term is now used in very different ways by different people.
In this article I succumbed to force of habit. I do intend to phase out using the word capitalism though. Paul Cudenec has started using criminocracy.
I think that the criminocracy is a pathocracy.
I like kleptocracy and usurocracy... What do you mean by pathocracy? That doesn't quite compute to my brain.
What did I mean by the term “essential psychopath”?
Essential Psychopaths
<quote>Defect or Alternate Evolutionary Strategy?
Well, the most basic approach simply views psychopaths as mutations or aberrations of the normal human being, who, as reviewer Martha Beck put it, "lack scruples the way someone born blind lacks eyesight." Advocates of this perspective would explain that, just as some people are born with damaged eyes or hearts or kidneys, psychopaths suffer from a birth defect involving the moral and emotional processing centers of the brain. In the book “Political Ponerology”, Andrew Lobaczewski informs us that, at one time, psychiatrists often used to describe those whom he calls "essential psychopaths" – people with a form of psychopathy that he believed to be inherited and most centrally involved in catalyzing pathocracy – as "Daltonists of human feelings and socio-moral values," thus making the analogy between them and people with a form of color blindness known as Daltonism.
However, other experts hold a more complex view of the psychopath not as a "broken" normal human, but rather as a different type of human entirely. They believe that, just as humans of conscience were naturally selected for via the pressures of their environments, certain environments may also, in parallel, have naturally selected for the survival and reproduction of a certain number of humans without conscience. In this paradigm, psychopaths are seen as a subset of humanity, wired to enact an alternate evolutionary strategy that - though perhaps reprehensible to many of us and possibly dangerous to our long-term sustainability - has nonetheless served them relatively effectively within the context of our recent history.<unquote>
https://www.systemsthinker.com/interests/mind/psychopathy.shtml
The ultimate enemy of all decent and (so-called) “normal” people are essential psychopaths. Therefore, the rule by psychopaths (or pathocracy) is ultimately the worst and most evil form of government possible. See https://pathocracy.wordpress.com/definition/ if you are interested.
What's worse than bankers and corporations is bankers and corporations colluding with the state. The difference is, we need bankers and corporations, as they produce useful things from whom we can choose to buy or withhold our funds, while the state produces nothing except the quick destruction of everything private people have produced.
I think they are kind of two sides of the same coin... Anarcho-capitalists seem to think that you can keep the corporations and do away with the state... but wouldn't the corporations then just acquire private security forces?
Not-so-fun fact - did you know Putin gave Gazprom a licence to operate a "Private Military Company"?
The age of corporate feudalism may already be upon us.
Private security forces, or private armies? Big difference.
The private military company you describe is a government sanctioned one. That is not entrepreneurial free market capitalism.
Ain’t that the truth about the Leviathan, what Thomas Hobbes also called “the mortal god”, being a destroyer
I think you're right. I'm well aware that I probably shouldn't be insulting my audience if I want them to give me money.
Do have any other book recommendations?
My plan was to wait for some business genius to come along and realize that we could make a ton of money together. But given that it hasn't happened yet I might have to start thinking of this as a business.
Do you think I should stop insulting my audience? I don't know if I can do that...