November 23, 2023
A starting note: I read some tweets and the blog posts of Ryan Yang (from SPARC) recently and his spirit of curiosity is incredibly wholesome. It encouraged me to write this and finish the book that I scribbled these notes on - A Coming Insurrection by the The Invisible Committee.
As I start the book, I notice how this seems like something I would write in my journal if I kept one. I notice that there’s something pretty about persuasion as the aftermath of having well-articulated conviction and a worldview you can imagine, describe and transmit.
By page 37, I think of my friend, Uzay, who takes a lot of pride in being French: what his country represents and the aesthetic appeal of living the life of its people.
This is a French, anarchist, leftist book that reads how I wish this blog sounded. To clarify I mean this in reference to the style of writing. It makes me not even question the personhood of who wrote it. It’s human.
It feels like I’m consuming ramblings, but I’m not mad. I’m not bored of it either.
Overall, I would recommend reading it. It’s around 100 pages long and it’s hard to be apathetic about; it has too many strong takes.
I picked up the book from the library of the research house. The back cover copy is vague. The very last page discusses protests against police adminstration and it calls for liberty. It’s not a narrative, it’s a manifesto. It shares how the Brazillians (restored) their world order and Argentinian people rised from the Junta. It alludes to the themes of the “Narrow Corridor” by Acemoglu which claims that freedom exists at the intersection of authoritarianism and lawlessness. This seems contradictory but my summary is that such states have high coup-likelihood, weak internal links, extreme ideologies or at least punishment to those who seem to diasgree and little care for the daily life of citizens.
The author quotes, “crisis situations are so many opportunities for the restructuring of domination”. These are inflection points when militia can be uprooted by democracy with the power of the people.
The Greek Junita ruled from the mid 60s to the mid 70s and they were overruled by what was basically rioters but they had a weaker state?
These stories are intense and a contradiction to the ivory. Personally, as much as I love the romance, our boring is better than a war-ridden state anyday, but this is how you write pro-anarchy, I guess.
“It’s useless to wait for a breakthrough, for the revolution, the nuclear apocalypse or a social movement. To go on waiting is madness. The catastrophe is not coming; it is here. We are already situated within the collapse of a civilization. It is within this reality that we must choose sides.”
---- From a quick skim before choosing to read it, I got the impression that I would learn about some infamous French protest. I briefly thought this could be interesting, but as you can imagine, it alludes to the rejection of such displays. Nothing matters except your humanity (nothing more and nothing less). Take care of the land that you step on because it doesn’t belong to you, but don’t tend to the object more than your soul. Our creations have introduced unnecessary complicities and we’re being lead astray and away from our agency.
I’m happy I chose to type notes out because I can capture my raw reactions to political ideology coded in what feels like a poetic diary.
I think back to my answer to the question of what I would do if I could actually do anything; it’s funny because I think every time I’ve had to answer this question it was for an application of some sort. I would amble, but gladly?
Apparently, the French hate work, or rather an obligation towards it. Vacationing is the norm, because of the classic trope “we work to live” and not the other way around. Some legislation made young worker rights less protected in the 80s and so the informal tenure that is the European career was gone. If you wanted to keep your job, your work… you had to care.
I don’t know why this felt so abrupt and kind of out of place, but the end talks a lot about environmentalism and ecology, even proposing “the commune” as the ideal societal setup.
Our environmental dillemas are from a lack of asceticism. The root of the catastrophe are unaligned values. It mentions malthusianistic thinking, that we should just let the reserves run dry: those and what survive are what could and should? Speculation is described as a sin. Let it all happen.
I learn about the Kyoto Protocol and how the only ones that have fulfilled their commitments (at least relative to when this book was written) are Ukraine and Romania. The Kyoto Protocol is a UN treaty for reducing emissions. In crisis we reconvene to understand how things are different and it’s interesting because you have to take the time to understand how things were as well. Basically we should have empiric strategizers, "learning by doing" when you're forced to.
“In a single century, freedom, democracy and civilization have reverted to the state of hypotheses...All means to the end are acceptable, even the least democratic, the least civilized, the most repressive.” It’s safe to say that it’s here when things got a lot less palatable.
The next page references France and their literature and I think to my Canadian Literature class. Canada is sparse and for many reasons lacked good artistic infrastructure and so whatever Europe has been able to build with their artists is something we just don’t have, at least to the same degree. The free-existence of the artist is an institution that models what government could be? It’s a stretch but I appreciate the argument in isolation.
“The West has sacrificed itself as a particular civilization in order to impose itself as a universal culture.” Christianity sacrificed it’s radicalism to become a transmitter of vague virtue (kindness, honesty, etc.) - once again not many words, but damn.
So the commune was more in reference for turning an eye to bureaucracy and fake structures for a well-governed, laissez-faire approach that actually does what it sets out to accomplish and leaves its members, just be.
Overall, it was an interesting read. I enjoyed the writing style. It gave a little more insight into what a French anarchist sounds like and what a world with said beliefs could be.