Anarchism and Social Ecology
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A community about anarchy. anarchism, social ecology, and communalism for SLRPNK! Solarpunk anarchists unite!
Feel free to ask questions here. We aspire to make this space a safe space. SLRPNK.net's basic rules apply here, but generally don't be a dick and don't be an authoritarian.
Anarchism
Anarchism is a social and political theory and practice that works for a free society without domination and hierarchy.
Social Ecology
Social Ecology, developed from green anarchism, is the idea that our ecological problems have their ultimate roots in our social problems. This is because the domination of nature and our ecology by humanity has its ultimate roots in the domination humanity by humans. Therefore, the solutions to our ecological problems are found by addressing our social and ecological problems simultaneously.
Libraries
Audiobooks
- General audiobooks
- LibriVox Public domain book collection where you can find audiobooks from old communist, socialist, and anarchist authors.
- Anarchist audiobooks
- Socialist Audiobooks
- Social Ecology Audiobooks
Quotes
Poetry and imagination must be integrated with science and technology, for we have evolved beyond an innocence that can be nourished exclusively by myths and dreams.
~ Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom
People want to treat ‘we’ll figure it out by working to get there’ as some sort of rhetorical evasion instead of being a fundamental expression of trust in the power of conscious collective effort.
~Anonymous, but quoted by Mariame Kaba, We Do This 'Til We Free Us
The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.
~Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.
~Murray Bookchin, "A Politics for the Twenty-First Century"
There can be no separation of the revolutionary process from the revolutionary goal. A society based on self-administration must be achieved by means of self-administration.
~Murray Bookchin, Post Scarcity Anarchism
In modern times humans have become a wolf not only to humans, but to all nature.
The ecological question is fundamentally solved as the system is repressed and a socialist social system develops. That does not mean you cannot do something for the environment right away. On the contrary, it is necessary to combine the fight for the environment with the struggle for a general social revolution...
~Abdullah Öcalan
Social ecology advances a message that calls not only for a society free of hierarchy and hierarchical sensibilities, but for an ethics that places humanity in the natural world as an agent for rendering evolution social and natural fully self-conscious.
~ Murray Bookchin
Network
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What makes you think that a "psych ward" would be an acceptable solution in an anarchist society?
confinement would still be involuntary and an imposition.
A worse imposition that being murdered by a serial killer?
most anarchisms (again the plurality) have problems with the community imposing choices over individuals.
justification of this or that as "better" or "worse" are personal or communal choices (and it shouldn't surprise you to find an "anarchist community" with despotic tendencies. Unlike theory, flesh degenerates with time 🤷
I think that more anarchisms have problems with individuals (serial killers) imposing harm over other individuals.
Collectivist anarchism doesn't really have a problem with establishing rules, to my understanding.
why go to extremes? Let's say a thief? An alcoholic who gets aggressive every time they're drunk? A man who beats their companion? Or a woman who beats their companion? A dog that shares the same space and bites your friends. A woodchuck in your garden?
"collectivity" may establish rules but people who are sharing the same spaces, with or without similar world views, have no obligations to follow these rules. Solving these kinds of problems while trying to respect anarchist ideals are not as easy as you think.
Communists are more comfortable with these kinds of solutions. One shouldn't confuse the two (while there, of course, is an expansive common ground called anarcho-communism)
Extremes are interesting sanity checks for theories
I'm currently not interested in these examples. You're whataboutising my point.
You have an obligation to follow the rules of a community if you are a part of that community. Also, a community has an obligation to their members. That can include protection.
I'm an anarcho-communist myself so... thanks for the explanation, I guess?
you're welcome
anarcho-communists were always too communist for my anarchist tastes. Let's part ways, nothing would come of our pseudo conversation.
You're entitled to your opinion, but don't confuse that with "most anarchisms", please. Individualist anarchism is fine, but collectivist anarchism makes up a lot of the theoretic field.
Because the alternatives are:
Prison
Execution
Exile, which offloads your problem to some other community
Letting someone who is a danger to themselves and others continue to be a danger
I think there are far more alternatives and also ways to mix them.
One more alternative would be constant care taking by one or more people. In case the community cant/doesnt want to provide that full time, it might be possible to mix this with other options that might reduce the persons autonomy.
Reasonable idea. Thank you.
you're writing that in your anarchist society there would be a "psyche ward" where people deemed dangerous by the society would be incarcerated.
Is that correct?
Not really incarcerated, per se. And only a subset of the dangerous people.
If someone commits murder in a fit of rage and regrets it afterwards, they would not need any obligation or coercion to undergo psychiatric treatment.
are you familiar with Foucault's work?
Not much, but I am aware that some of it had to do with psychiatry.
psychology, psychiatry, hospitals and of course what you may call "psyche wards" (among many other subjects)
the question of when we started to establish psychiatric institutions; who did we incarcerate in them and with what justifications. If this and similar subjects interest you, there you have a person who spent their life examining them.