Who needs the Devil, when humans have proved so capable of creating hell on Earth? Who needs God, when humans have proved so capable of breaking open the gates of heaven?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/13/immigration-detention-center-new-jerseySo often we pass through life without truly encountering other lives. We ricochet off of one another as we go to work and shop, keeping ever more busy doing what we tell ourselves we must. How lovely it is then to encounter life again, to be reminded of all it can be and become.
The Test of Anarchy
Notes on Jasper Bernes' “The Future of Revolution”
https://thefrozenseainside.com/the-test-of-anarchy/
The true nihilists of our age are not those who abandon institutions, fight police, & don't vote, but those who remain invested in a society where cruelty, suffering, insecurity, & death are the norm. If any meaning survives it can only be found in the abolition of such a society.
Among the unfolding contradictions of our time is that AI will facilitate the mass facial recognition and tracking of protestors just as it will deliver flammable Waymos for barricades.
Society would have you believe that a beautiful life can only be bought in the form of luxury condos, self-driving cars, and smartphones with AI assistants, but in truth a beautiful life lies everywhere in the streets, awaiting anyone with the courage to live it, free for all.
The desire to live a life that is not predicated upon the multiplication of domination, suffering, and death grows synonymous with a desire to live a life at war with the entire order of the present world.
"No Projected Above the Pope," Santiago Sierra, 2011
This is my favorite poem from Joshua, which burns like a slow fuse until it explodes on the last line.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/91901/i-want-to-read-at-the-white-house
I Want to Read at the White House
I want to read poems at the white house with all the pomp available. I like Belgium and one day I might like to read poems at the palace of the nation but for now I want to read poems at the white house. I want to read poems at the white house and then like any house reading we will all clean up…
"It is things that are the real subjects. They impose their own rhythm of life and ensure that people are confined to the level of their own single existences."
