Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 19:15:32 -0400
Reply-To: thelema93-l
Originator: thelema93-l
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From: bantik (The Sinister Minister)
To: bantik
Subject: Politics, Apocalypse, Chaos, and Thelema (LONG)
X-Comment: Discussion of Magick in general
Status:


There was a great response to my mention of evolutionary anarchism,
including several requests to go ahead and post an explanation to the list
at large. And there's quite a bit of noise-- discussion, I mean, about
politics in general at the moment, so at the risk of offending our
moderator or others, I'll try to answer your questions, and comment on the
current discussion as best I can.

First of all, I want to point out that democracy in its pure form is not a
system that is in use anywhere in the world. Most people equate the
American form of government with democracy, and this is a grevious error.
What we have is an elective plutocracy, that is, rule by the wealthy.
Somewhat less than 500 members of the ruling body of this country are
popularly elected, and these members are selected from a very specific
socio-economic class which is vastly separate from the class of the
electors. You see, all Senators and Representatives must be wealthy enough
to first of all afford to run a campaign (or influential enough to get the
money from those who have it to give), and secondly to own two homes: one
in their native state, and another in or near Washington, DC. This is
mandated by the Constitution itself. Individual Americans who can afford to
own a single home find their numbers on the decline, and those who can
afford two such homes are rare indeed. Presidents are not elected by
popular vote, nor are the literally tens of thousands of other civil
'servants'. And as the gap between the upper and lower classes widens, with
the steady decline of the middle class, the country's governing body gains
more power and draws from an increasingly smaller representative sample of
the population, until finally culminating in what political theorists call
Anarcho-Capitalism; that is, rule by the laws of economics (i.e. corporate
government).

So, what are the alternatives?

Evolutionary anarchism presents one option.

Evolutionary anarchism is to its counterpart, revolutionary anarchism, as
Isis is to Nephthys. It is half of a great indivisibility. Simply put, as
revolutionary anarchism seeks to violently overthrow EXISTING forms of
government and replace them with NO GOVERNMENT, evolutionary anarchism
seeks to do the same, either by nonviolent means over a much longer period
of time, or in response to the violence of revolution, and replace the old
forms with smaller, more functional, and more flexible EXPERIMENTAL forms.
It is the perfect reply to the statement:

"It's not a perfect system, but it's the best one we have."

Evolutionary anarchism asks, "But how can we create a more perfect system?"
Most are content to sit back, accept the good with the bad, and hope for a
little liberty. Or, perhaps, to work within the system as it is for
positive change. EvAn strives for something a bit more radical. Self-rule,
either organized or unorganized. Community-based government. Small,
independent nations. Electronic communalism. Anything other than
centralized, large-scale federalism. It proposes no particulars, save this:
'citizens' should have the strongest possible sense of individuality,
combined with the strongest possible sense of brotherhood/sisterhood with
other individuals.

Individual (and independent) communities would arise or assemble around a
combination of a common language, sense of morality, and set of values and
traditions-- this is a 'nation' taken in its sociological sense. These
communities would be free to set up mechanisms for enforcing the common
values (and laws, if they chose to make laws). Individuals who felt that
their own values or morals were incompatible with those of the larger
community, would either try to make a change in the larger community
(bringing on a societal paradigm shift) or move on to/form another
community. Each community would decide its own form of government, if it so
chose. Thus there could be a community of Capitalists, with its neighbors
being Communists or even Neo-Luddites. Anything would be possible. New
experiments in forms of government would be not only conceivable, but
almost commonplace. (I advise re-reading Liber OZ in connection with this
paragraph.)

For myself, the only way that I can conceive of a paradigm shift of this
magnitude occurring, aside from random events over hundreds or thousands of
years influencing human psychology dramatically, would be if almost the
whole of humanity were to vanish from the earth. Actually, 50 to 75 percent
of them would do quite nicely. This could occur as the result of a man-made
or natural/supernatural event, in essence APOCALYPSE. Now, I certainly do
not wish for the deaths of billions of people-- I'm an idealist, damn it,
not a sociopath. But I do wonder at how things would be if they were gone.
In the best possible scenario, they could all ascend to heaven or something
and leave the rest of us here to clean up centuries of short-sightedness.

Too perfect? Unrealistic? Yes, of course it is-- humans being what they are
today. But what about tomorrow, or 500 years from now? That's where the
evolutionary part of this political theory comes in. Just as I, myself,
have outgrown the need to be governed by a federal system that will make
sure that I'm (somwhat) moral and (somewhat) responsible for my actions,
evolutionary anarchists hold the outside hope (or possibly the belief) that
it is POSSIBLE for the rest of humanity to develop to this extent as well.
I doubt that any individual evolutionary anarchist alive today will live to
see this dream come true. But that doesn't matter. The important thing is
that the idea is being conceived, thrown out into the void, spoken about
and considered.

As Emerson, I believe it was, wrote: "The most noble cause is a lost cause."

I do hope that this will serve to answer your questions, and perhaps get
you thinking about your possibilities and your responsibilities.



Doing it for the cookies,
Rev. Dr. Corey Bantik


`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'
Postscript:

A simple math problem, taken from my unfinished draft of the
_Anarchist's Coloring and Activity Book_ :

Achilles lives in the Gargantuan Republic, an absolutely honest (and
therefore completely hypothetical) democratic society of 5 million people,
wherein every person has an equal vote on laws that affect the population
at large. His distant friend, the Tortoise, lives in the Free Township of
Atomia, an absolutely honest democratic society of 100 people, wherein
every person has an equal vote on laws that affect the population at large.


a) Expressed as a fraction, how much of a say does Achilles have in the
policies that govern his existence?

b) How much of a say does the Tortoise have in the policies that govern his
existence?

c) Where would you rather live?

`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'