The real story of money & power

https://spectra.video/w/uncRVbqD65LDcUpxy3THpL

I think about this David #Graeber quote a lot:

> [S]tructural inequality—what I've been calling structural violence—invariably creates highly lopsided structures of the imagination. Since […] imagination tends to bring with it sympathy, the result is that victims of structural violence tend to care about its beneficiaries far more than those beneficiaries care about them. This might well be, after the violence itself, the single most powerful force preserving such relations.

Came across this in a post about #SolarPunk a few weeks ago (post may be gone)... Anyhow, I've been reading #DavidGraeber and #DavidWengrow's book, "The Dawn of Everything," and thought the question posited by #Graeber was relevant to #SolarPunkSunday...

Are You An #Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!

"Every time you treat another human with consideration and respect, you are being an anarchist. Every time you work out your differences with others by coming to reasonable compromise, listening to what everyone has to say rather than letting one person decide for everyone else, you are being an anarchist. Every time you have the opportunity to force someone to do something, but decide to appeal to their sense of reason or justice instead, you are being an anarchist. The same goes for every time you share something with a friend, or decide who is going to do the dishes, or do anything at all with an eye to fairness"

David Graeber, The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World, p 243, published 2009

"Chances are you have already heard something about who anarchists are and what they are supposed to believe. Chances are almost everything you have heard is nonsense. Many people seem to think that anarchists are proponents of violence, chaos, and destruction, that they are against all forms of order and organization, or that they are crazed nihilists who just want to blow everything up. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion. But it’s one that the rich and powerful have always found extremely dangerous.

At their very simplest, anarchist beliefs turn on to two elementary assumptions. The first is that human beings are, under ordinary circumstances, about as reasonable and decent as they are allowed to be, and can organize themselves and their communities without needing to be told how. The second is that power corrupts. Most of all, anarchism is just a matter of having the courage to take the simple principles of common decency that we all live by, and to follow them through to their logical conclusions. Odd though this may seem, in most important ways you are probably already an anarchist — you just don’t realize it.

Let’s start by taking a few examples from everyday life."

Read more:
https://davidgraeber.org/articles/are-you-an-anarchist-the-answer-maysurprise-you/

#SolarPunkSunday #BuildingCommunity #BuildingResilience #NoKings #NoRulers #Inequality #PowerCorrupts

A theme that keeps returning in my political and philosophical reading and thinking is the lack of #imagination.

I just read an essay about Günther Anders, a philosopher who wrote about living in an age where our capacity to imagine thing is dwarfed by our capacity to act. For exemple: we can't imagine tackling climate change because it's so big, but at the same time, we are causing it.

There's a link here with #Graeber his critique of #neoliberalism as a system to suppress imagination. Any attempt to go beyond the limits it constrains us in, people are ridiculed (at best) or violently repressed. There Is No Alternative - by force if necessary.

#ClimateDiary