Nick Montgomery
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Participating in bigthink is clunky because of the 'quick thought' / 'response' distinction. Ironically, the idea of 'joining the conversation' and contributing something substantial is more difficult than making a quick, uncritical 'quick thought'. Regular Web forums work better because they have all of the responses (re/re/re) displayed in a text-based branching map. Bigthink pages could do this, but make it better with less text reliance and more graphic based design. … Read More
February 5, 2008 |
Nick Montgomery commented on Re: Can a country in the western world support an anarcho-communist government? on February 1, 2008, 12:02 PM
from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism): Anarchist communism advocates the abolition of the State and capitalism in favor of a horizontal network of voluntary associations, workers' councils and/or commons through which everyone will be free to satisfy their needs.Anarchism has often been revolutionary like Marxism, advocating that we 'get rid of' the state, whatever that entails. However, a lot of anarchism is moving away from the idea of 'overthrowing' the state WITHOUT giving up on being anti-statist.This current is what stimulated my interest in anarchism. "We simplly dont have the compacity to manage ourselves without a stick above our heads."Actually, anarchists (and others who don't identify with the anarchist tradition) are proving this statement wrong every day. People live in squats, they set up cooperatives, they create communes, and they reorganize workplaces. The key is to understand these trends as a CURRENT within the broader system. Of course it's unlikely that everyone in a country will radically transform the way they relate to each other, but that doesn't mean anarchist ideas are naive or impossible. It's probably true that has the capacity for self-government at this historical juncture. Governing yourself and participating in your community takes practice and it requires a refusal of norms that have been drummed into us for a long time. It's hard to cooperate and govern our own communities when we've had a whole succession of laws that restrict autonomy: religious laws, capitalist laws, moral laws, governmental laws, etc.Setting up alternatives to the state and to capitalism is deeply subversive because it shows exactly that: another way is possible. The most interesting thing is that this isn't a theory; people create these alternatives on a daily basis. Often they're destroyed by corporations and governments, but they keep popping up.
What are the sensuous aspects of various religions?
I would like to know (from religious people, or people with experience in a particular religion): what are the sensuous aspects of your religion? How does participation in the ceremony influence the participant? I am not a religious person but I would like to gain an appreciation for religion. I am less interested in what religions say is true/false/good/bad, and I would like to have more discussions about other important aspects of religion. I am particularly interested in the 'physical' aspects of ceremonies, including: touching, tasting, moving, praying, etc. As an example, I was struck by the sensuous aspects of Buddhism when I went to a meditation. The meditation leader emphasized a consciousness of our bodies and our muscles. It seems to me that this type of awareness--an activity that centers awareness and relaxation on the body--is something that is lacking in the secular, middle-class community where I was raised. What experiences have you had with the sensuous aspects of religious ceremonies? … Read More
February 1, 2008 |
Re: Can a country in the western world support an anarcho-communist government?
Short answer: No.Capitalist liberal democracies have a very specific organization, and it has been shown that their institutions actually function to reproduce the capitalist system in important ways. The whole apparatus of taxation and the services it provides (police, healthcare, roads, highways, schools) all reproduce the necessary conditions for capitalism in various ways. Schools create a hierarchicalized environment where students are increasingly evaluated and trained so that they will be useful for the capitalist workforce. This helps sustain control and conformity as well as create a workforce ready for capitalist exploitation. Many of the other services provided by government function in similar ways. I think part of the difficulty of thinking about the problem of anarcho-communism is that it gets lumped in with other 'political philosophies' and we consider them all in the same way. Political philosophy tends to assume that a system of organization is going to be implemented by government, usually in a top-down way. This is what I would call hegemonic thinking. To simplify a little, hegemony is a word for the dominance of a particular system of thought or government. So thinking about anarcho-communism hegemonically means thinking about what it would mean for anarcho-communism to become hegemonic (dominant) in the way our society functions. This doesn't really mesh with anarcho-communism. Anarchism has often dedicated to pointing out the ways in which government and capitalism are linked and help to reproduce each other. Anarchism has always been a counter-hegemonic movement, meaning that it struggles to point out the problems with any hegemonic system. It struggled against state communism in the USSR and it continues to struggle against neoliberal capitalism today. This means that it's often problematic to think about anarchism (or anarcho-communism) in a way that assumes it will all-of-a-sudden be implemented in one country or another. Thinking in terms of 'all-of-a-sudden' presupposes a revolution (violent or not) which I don't think is very useful for contemporary society, especially in the overdeveloped West. Most people are attached to capitalism and government. Anarchism, by contrast, requires the willing participation and cooperation of people. It can't be imposed like capitalism or state communism. This means that it's often more productive to think about how anarchism can be mobilized at a smaller scale to chip away at (or present small-scale alternatives to) existing systems of domination, including capitalism and government, as well as racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, etc … Read More
January 29, 2008 |
Nick Montgomery commented on How do we increase the length of attention span of every person? on February 5, 2008, 3:37 PM
A website like this does not necessarily represent the enlargement of a person's attention span. It still allows you to flick around to very short ideas without necessarily requiring any sustained engagement. Not that this is a bad thing, but a lot of other text-based media (i.e. books/essays/etc) are probably stronger than Website browsing.