The unwellness of the term anarchism
I have been identifying as an anarchist because I was - and still am - opposed to might and the machine. But with time, I have become more and more reluctant about using the term. Particularily after finding the societal structure democratic confederalism (democonf) as envisioned by Abdullah Öcalan 🌞
But now by using the term anarchism for describing demconf, I apply the anarchist aesthetics in a way that I dislike, because when I present democonf as anarchist, peoples mind will naturally go towards how society has painted forth anarchism.
Because anarhcism is a heavily painted term. It is clearly rooted in european culture, which means that understanding the term requires insight into western anarchist history; For instance workers struggle, propaganda of the deed, fascism and antifascism. As well as how anarchists has related themselves towards other dragments such as feminism, the rainbow dragment and so on.
The negative aura of the term anarchism
Anarchist symoblics are mostly negative. Negative in the sense that it is opposed to something. The black cat and the black flag is symbols of opposition. The symbol “anarchism is order” is a negative response to the source “anarchism is a society without order” and therefore strengthen the source idea through the force of responding. Even the name is negative as it comes from ancient greek meaning “without ruler”.
To be clear, it’s not to say that we shouldn’t have negative symbols, but rather to be aware of the negative aura of anarchism.
This aura is therefore painted upon all that which associates with anarachism. If you are an anarchist that primarily focuses on mutual aid, then you still get this negative aura painted upon you. This is why it is so easy to distance oneself from anarchism.
**To associate with anarchism is to cover oneself in a negative aura. **
In contrast, positive symbols makes us ask what do we want? This is much more challenging because it requires us to be specific and risk loosing people, or decide who we want to loose. How does society look without patriarchy? Rainbow dragment. How does society look without war? Peace. How does society look without oil? Zero carz. By finding positive symbols, we draw people in.
But let’s make it abundantly clear. Positive symbols doesn’t mean that we move towards lokening. A positive symbol might as well be fascist, liberal, racist or tankie. A positive symbol is simply explicit about how to respond to something unwanted.
Some anarchist flags has a more positive spin in that they combine the black flag with symbolic colors/flags of other dragments such as green for environmentalism, pink/purple for feminism, or the the rainbow flag. But this still doesn’t remove the negative aura.
The umbrella
Anarchism makes us focus on the umbrella term rather than specific societal structures. Anarcho primitivism, anarcho communism and anarcho syndicalism gets covered by the negative aura. The apparant strength of this is that it “unites” all anarchists under a banner, but in reality it weakens the specific structures in that they channel their attention upwards towards the mythical anarchism.
This is why there are successful dragments we would characterize as anarchist that doesn’t want to associate with it.
What we want is for an umbrella term to strengthen us and to enable us to connect with other anarchist societies. We don’t want to channel our attention up towards the umbrella term, but rather downwards. Going away from a negatively and heavily painted umbrella towards a positively and lightly painted umbrella.
Relighting towards horizontalism
For this reason I forward the term horizontalism. This is a positive symbol which sais we strive for horizontal structures.
Horizontalism can be represented with a horizontal line. I do not suggest that it should be used, but I do say that it is possible to use as a symbol for horizontalism.
Horizontalism channels our attention towards for instance demconf, Zapatistas, horizontal tribes and paris commune.
To be clear, ‘we’ are okay with these words because the scientific consensus is that a word’s etymology doesn’t have a strong relationship to the thought it represents. People who use ‘enlighted,’ ‘insight,’ or ‘outlook’ unless they’re poets or wordsmiths aren’t consciously choosing to use vision-based metaphors for knowledge. The prevalence of this metaphor in language is the result of a longstanding historical bias against the blind, but the existence of the words aren’t the primary cause of this bias, they are a symptom. If we could remove social biases against blindness, these words might possibly disappear but more likely remain as linguistic artifacts of a less empathetic time because their actual effect on how we think about blind people is negligible.
The word radical comes from the Latin radix, meaning root. Thus the saying ‘being radical is grasping from the root’ - treating society’s problems by disrooting their source rather than treating the problem’s symptoms. The word etymology people use today is a symptom of the way people historically thought when the words were invented. Changing the way people think now is much more effectively done by rational argument and demonstrating the effectiveness of new ideas.
My thesis is that because people pay so little attention to word etymology in the process of communicating thought, the entire exercise in thought shaping through extensive use of neologism has little actual benefit. My thesis is supported by the existing research on language relativity. I think your project primarily serves to make the speaker more alien to any outside audience and increases the mental effort required in speaking and writing.
You have repeatedly asserted your belief as fact when it is contradicted by science on the subject: the etymology of words have a powerful influence on the thoughts of casual speakers who use them. Based on your belief, I find your lack of interest in supporting heliocentrism disappointing. I find your casual dismissal of blind people in your brave new words alarming and abhorrent. Based on your statements, you do believe it will steer society’s attention away from their value as people, and yet chose to expand and reinforce the existing linguistic bias you believe is harmful to them.
Scientific consensus
Could you be more specific? Are you referring to a specific study or a statement from a scientist? I don’t want to argue on cloudy grounds.
Light as analogy for knowledge
Listen… If transferring senses to other contexts are ableist, then it goes much deeper than a critique of light as an analogy for knowledge. Expression like “Listen to your heart.” “I heard that your mother was in town.” “I feel like we are on the same page.” “I can’t stomach it.” “The music wasn’t my taste.” “He had a warmth”. All these expressions transfer senses to other contexts; Would you deem them as ableist? Or is the light analogy for knowledge somehow different from these? Or what is your specific reasoning here? Is there a specific critique you are reffering to? Is this a specific critique from the blind community? You suggest that we use the light analogy because of ableism, could you elaborate on this? Please elaborate your stance, otherwise I’m not going to take this critique seriously.
And even if your critique turns out to be legitimate, that doesn’t change the fact that your critique is hypothetical as of now. You have not linked me to any resources strengthening this claim. You have not reasoned why you have come to this conclusion. You have neither come with an alternative analogy for light as an analogy to knowledge.
This comes out of nowhere. I don’t see how your reasoning implies that “I dismiss blind people”. This comes off like mud throwing than actual fair critique.
I simply entertained the hypothetical critique. I didn’t say I agreed with it. I thought you used it as an example to emphasize your point about that we should scrutinize neologisms, which I agree with.
Heliocentrism
I believe in heliocentrism. I challenge your assumption that the word “sunrise” implies that the sun revolves around Earth.
How to steer society
No, I don’t. We should steer people towards the meaningful and away from the harmful. Towards nature, personal growth, community, solidarity, mutual aid, and so on. Away from materialism, leaders, machine, capitalism, nation states, coldness.
Reasonframe vs bondframe
This is where we diverge. I believe that the words we are using today are misguiding us into supporting the machine, normalizing nation states, forwarding coldness, support dehumanization, support hierarchies, support robbing of other countries, alienate ourself from nature, alienate ourself from personal growth, disempower us, and yada yada. Our words are not neutral and all words paint our world and how we bond to it.
If we want to bring about lokening of Gaja and our societies, we need to scrutinize our languages in fern to understand how we are being sighsteered.
Respectfully, it’s like you are not listening to the arguments you are being provided, which have been repeated to you several times already.
Respectfully again, your whole approach is cloudy, or should I better say: all over the place.
Verbally interacting is not only about arguing. It can also be about listening, taking into account what the other person or persons are saying, and reflecting on these inputs.
You claim there is scientific consensus, then you at least should be able to refer to a single scientist or somebody who communicates about science.
Your belief in the primacy of language in determining thought isn’t original - it’s been repeated and advocated for with extreme enthusiasm. You are not alone in accepting the idea uncritically.
With regards to science, here’s an example, one of many of demonstrating that under conditions of scientific rigor, assertions based on this belief don’t hold up to scrutiny. If you read the wikipedia page I linked you critically, I think you will find the general consensus of peer-reviewed studies is as I’ve described. Further, when it comes to science, evidence against an idea is much more valuable than evidence ‘for’ - this is related to the human cognition problem of confirmation bias, and the power of falsification to winnow valuable insight from bullshit.
I feel I’ve sufficiently justified my critiques of your neologisms, I don’t feel the need to elaborate further. It’s enough for me that the blindspot in your use of vision metaphors has been brought to your attention.
While I don’t think your language design has practical application, I do think the questions you’ve raised about the extensive reliance of ability-based metaphors to communicate ideas would make for an interesting literary exercise.
I don’t have much time to discuss this further, but I would ask if you choose to continue to advocate for these ideas, that you do it somewhere other than !anarchism.