Anarchism, Mysticism, and Anamnesis

The other day James of that veiled gazelle and I were having an interesting conversation about the curious disconnect between anarchist philosophy and spiritual practices, and the handful of authors who write about both.

Anarchism comes from the Greek for "without archons (rulers)," and is defined by The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics as "the view that society can and should be organized without a coercive state." While this idea has divided into many (often conflicting) schools and sub-schools of thought, some general trends in belief emerge that are what originally attracted me to the ideal: Instead of meaning chaos and destruction, living without rulers, if it is to work at all, requires autonomy (self-rule/ DIY), equality (mutual respect for all others), pacifism (responsibility of getting along with oneself/ other/ the environment, etc), and not a small smattering of wide-eyed wonder. Of course, these are ideals, and like all social philosophies actual practice often falls far short of how people are expected to live (though it doesn't help that there are infinite negative interpretations on anarchism portrayed by the media and youth market). One of the main points where anarchist belief conflicts with itself is over what to do with religion and spirituality. For the most part, anarchists follow the creed of "no gods, no masters," rejecting religious behavior as no better than the opiate of the masses (probably a result of some of anarchism's roots in 18th Cent. Russian Communism). For example, a friend of mine considers herself both an anarchist and a Christian, which she does not see as being a conflict. However she has gotten an extraordinary amount of shit over the years from her anarchist friends because of her religious preferences, a kind of knee-jerk dogmatism that at times rejects anything remotely spiritual or mystical in favor of the pragmatic, rational, political, and all too real.

The irony being however that in its current incarnation, as a modern American youth movement drawing on its resurgence in the punk subculture, Anarchism has come to take on the trappings of a religion itself. A system of beliefs, a mode of dress (black, dirt, patches), a series of ritualistic practices (from train hopping to protesting), and a teleological doctrine (drawing on the Communist worker's uprising) that aims toward some utopia after the Revolution when everyone can take care of themselves and each other. Another common phrase: "Who will build the roads? We will!" It strikes me that even before this paradise is reached, it would be necessary for anarchists to apply their open ideals not just to themselves, but to everyone, drawing on a much more interesting belief that "nothing is true, everything is permitted," that all beliefs, even spiritual ones, are subjective and potentially valid. If one doubts the socio-political, revolutionary force of religion, look at Liberation Theology which in Latin America has attempted to do just that.

There are of course certain contemporary authors who have been somewhat successful in trying to unite principles of anarchism and spirituality (at least for a handful of people like James and I). The first one that comes to mind is Hakim Bey (full writings beyond link), whose tenets of Ontological Anarchy, and the Temporary Autonomous Zone find a direct correlation to certain occult ideas like the magic circle. In his more academic role as Peter Lamborn Wilson, he is an authority on the darker side of the Islamic mystical sect of Sufism. While criticized by anarchists for his mystical and individualist leanings, Bey is also openly a pederast, which is essentially waving a stick in the face of anyone who claims that they don't live by rules.

Another text that had a similar appeal was Days of War, Nights of Love. As an anarchist organization, Crimethinc. has gotten a lot of flack with the years, both at first for being too individualist and lifestyle, then for promoting irresponsible scrounging, and finally for becoming just another protest-centered anarcho-webpage. However, what first impressed me in their earlier writings, beyond the beautiful and often-times personal prose, was the sense of mystique they weaved around their organization: here were anarchists handing out secret invitations, discussing magic as direct action, and in fact weaving their own mythology in an effort to make it into their real world, which for a time actually seemed to work, and hopefully inspired countless other children to do the same.

Take for example this excerpt: "This world, the so-called “real world,” is just a front. Pull back the curtain and you’ll see the libraries are all filled with runaways writing novels, the highways are humming with escapees and sympathizers, all the receptionists and sensible mothers are straining at the leash for a chance to show how alive they still are. . . and all that talk of practicality and responsibility is just threats and bluffing to keep us from reaching out our hands to find that heaven lies in reach before us."

Perhaps one reason for Crimethinc.'s reliance on such mystical and utopian imagery was the involvement of one Mark Dixon, a friend of James, and a self-professed "folk scientist" most infamous for his use of think tanks (like highly focused temporary autonomous zones) for accomplishing all sorts of zany acts, like turning a bike into a record player. Most of the truly interesting, magical, and revolutionary writing in Days of War, Nights of Love seems to be credited to him. Among the many zines that he helped pen and pass around were two that I and others have come to call Anamnesis I and Anamnesis II, being absolutely chaotic and fun-house style (yes that is how the zines were originally formated) enquiries into many esoteric, yogic, and metaprogrammatic practices that are absolutely essential to anyone trying to live outside of even one's own rules (Anamnesis being the Platonic doctrine of psychic memory or the eternality of knowledge, an idea later articulated as the Theosophical Akashic Records, Hebrew Book of Life, or Sufi Khafi, and according to Wikipedia is "the closest that human minds can come to experiencing the freedom of the soul prior to its being encumbered by matter").

I am sure there are others writing about spirituality and anarchism in the same breath, though I am yet to find them. Any thoughts?

Quick Update

Some goodies to tide you over until an upcoming, larger post...

A new issue of Arthur Magazine, featuring an excerpt from Alejandro Jodorowski's new book! (downloadable PDF)


And the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative, which should be an interesting read (when I ever get the free time), as I am currently reading the Richard Burton translation of the "Tales of the Arabian Nights," and though there are certain trends that can be traced through folklore at an international level, many of the stories Westerners are familiar with are descended from a smaller group of Germanic/ Jewish stories.


Coming soon... the anarcho-mystical "Anamnesis" (when I can figure out how to make a PDF from a bunch of images of different sizes).

Crimethinc.net/work 2.0

"After years and years of failed attempts and results so horrendous as to boggle the mind, we open for public participation the newest attempt at a CrimethInc. networking site, CrimethInc.Net/work 2.0. There are a lot of bells and whistles here—an events calendar, a cell directory, user blogs, a recipe database, art galleries—all of which are begging for content created by you. This site is only as valuable and useful as y'all make it, so let's work together to make this an indespensible resource for ambitious lunatics all over the world. A good place to start after registering is the .net owners' manual."

choose your own life

Sublime coffee shop chaos. Wet weather’s so thick I’m still picking up the wifi single from my house several blocks away. I finally slept, and dreamt last night dreams that seemed almost innocent and pulled from life compared to the others of late; sneaking into festivals, playing music with gypsies on rooftops, saving lovers and loosing them again, swimming through piles and piles of books. Dreams that don’t have to mean anything.

Last night finally watched "I Heart Huckabees." Someone’s been snooping around in my subconscious again. I thought my life was the existential detective comedy. Wait, or was it a tragedy? I can’t remember anymore. The meaningful interconnection of all things, vs. the inevitability of human drama. Does it even matter what is true? Only if we want it to. My dreams, the deer and the helicopters, picking up my collapsed bookshelf and finding that the two most prominently in the spot where everything fell apart were Crimethinc.’s anarchist cookbook "Recipes for Disaster," and a book on chaos theory, playing viola on the roof of that party and remembering that the first major role I acted in high school was in Fiddler on the Roof as Perchick the student revolutionary who upsets everyone’s simple lives and is banished to Siberia before everyone flees the pogroms, my family fleeing the pogroms in Russia centuries ago and me becoming an anarchist, the growing police state here and the war everywhere else, people asking for prayers that Hurricane Katrina doesn’t destroy New Orleans and everyone’s lives there but no one mentioning that it could destroy the oil and gas pipelines in the gulf that supply thirty percent of the country’s fuel, making new friends and wondering what their lives are like when I’m not around. Do these things matter, is their some subtle thread that connects them? Yes. No. Maybe.

Nothing is true unless we want it to be, everything is sacred unless we choose to ignore it, we are the only ones who can give ourselves permission to think or feel or act in any certain way. We are the authors of our own lives after all, and as some famous writer once said, what makes a story is not the plot or characters but the specific details that the author finds important enough to include, and the connections they make between them. What is important to the party and festival hoppers whose faerietale lives consist of getting drunk and laid as often as possible? What is important to the middle class Americans caught up in working to survive and wondering how come they are not rich and famous and important like all the politicians and pop icons? What is important to the artists and revolutionaries and all those who pay enough attention to the world that they feel driven to change it, even if in some small subtle way? What is important to you? Are you the hero of your own epic world-shaping story, or just a minor character in someone else’s cosmic barroom joke told so many times that it’s not even funny anymore? There is no such thing as fate, only giving up control and succumbing to random external events as if they mean nothing.

What adventures do you choose to live, what dreams do you choose to make real? When you reach that dark night at the end of your life will you be able to look back in satisfaction and say that it was the greatest story ever told? What about at the end of the day when you lay down to sleep, will all the trials and triumphs of a lifetime be crammed into those waking hours, crammed into just one hour, crammed into every single moment? This is your life after all. Are you living it?

on the books

and just because I approve of this meme going around, the 20 books that have most impacted my life (in no particular order):

1. Carlos Castaneda - Journey to Ixtlan
2. Crimethinc. Collective- Days of War, Nights of Love
3. Hakim Bey- The Temporary Autonomous Zone
4. var.- The I Ching
5. Octavia Butler- Parable of the Sower
6. Douglas Hofstadter- Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid
7. Ayn Rand- Atlas Shrugged
8. Joseph Campbell- The Power of Myth
9. Jorge Luis Borges- Collected Fictions
10. Jalaluddin Rumi (Coleman Barks trans.)- Essential Rumi
11. Rainer Maria Rilke (Stephen Mitchell trans.) Duino Elegies
12. Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea- The Illuminatus! Trilogy
13. Jean-Paul Sartre- Nausea
14. George Orwell- Nineteen Eighty-four
15. Victor Hugo- Les Miserables
16. Kurt Vonnegut- Cat's Cradle
17. Lewis Carroll- Through the Looking Glass
18. Jostein Gaarder- Sophie's World
19. John Clellon Holmes- Go
20. Marshall McLuhan- Understanding Media
and though there are countless more books I want to include I honestly can't leave these two out in shaping my approach to living:
21.Bill Whitcomb- The Magician's Companion
22. John C. Lilly- Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer

It pleases me greatly that most of these books are fiction. There's nothing like a good story to really affect one's outlook on the world. Especially if your attention span for nonfiction is virtually nonexistent.