On a psychological foundation for anarchism.
zine, politics (2021)

Artist: Molly Costello // Work: Repair

deconstructing inner hierarchy: atheism and spirituality

“you can’t be neutral on a moving train”

Behind the material consumption of our society stands the shadow of anguish
It stands behind the menus of our restaurants, the doctor prescriptions, the number in our stock market

The well-being of one side is achieved through the murder, displacement and suffering of the ‘other’.

For those who have benefited from this system, we must be cognizant of the moral implications
We are part of the world in it’s ongoing intra-activity.

There is nothing biologically inevitable about the cultural conventions and forms of social organisation that we know of as capitalism.
There is a general assumption that there is a realm of ‘truth’ existing prior to and independent of its representation through linguistic and historical form.
We are assessing and referencing these ‘truths’ (which are really ideological principles) in every act whether we recognise it or not.

Atheism has ‘truths’ built into it,
Through building ideology
It attempts to answer:

What is reality?
metaphysics

Why are we here?
existentialism

What can we truly know?
epistemology

What is the ultimate end purpose?
ontology

Atheism’s answers are historically dependent on a Descartes,
it is that dualism, a story of origin
a split between mind + body, spirit + matter, animism + naturalism

Helping to replace natural symbols (sun, soil, air) with artificial ones (commodity, capital, technology),

It’s dismissal of ‘truths’ found outside modes of validity rooted in Empiricism
Assisted in the classification of ‘primitive’ belief systems
This positioned as superior, Western science

A dismissal that treated every living thing as an object.

Here, the legacy of colonialism,
An objectivity found not only in capitalist ideology and scientific methodology but also within the personal and existential foundations of our understanding of what does and does not exist.

The consequences of such ideas affect the very nature of our being.

If we are to approach an understanding of the world, must we suppress the fundamental inclination to relate?
that of which is found
in the tales of animism

Feelings of loneliness replicate when we break away from each other in search of ideology
The objectification of matter + the accumulation of resources over intangibles such as
‘friendship’, ‘solidarity’, ’emotional security’
increase insensitivity
Where developmental fatigues, scapegoating and domination/submission complexes reside

The monetary profits from British Imperialism intensified an asymmetric transfer of embodied labour and land from the periphery to the core of the colonial world system,
the undertones of such exploitation
was a glorification of material wealth and whiteness that marginalised knowledge found elsewhere.

As human relations are anchored in language, symbol, object and story
Why must we denigrate the ‘magic’ in developing alternate origin stories,
In favor of ‘objectivity’
Found on knowledge borne of blood and war

Anarchism (as a rough estimate) necessitates
an understanding of the structure of power
consent to rules they themselves have legitimated
conscious choice to live within communities according to shared principles and values

Reading between the lines,
it’s as if its about how we should live..

In a world of do-it-yourself, pick your own adventure,
Perhaps we could acknowledge the hubris it takes to make claim as to the nature of existence,
and instead of psychologically evaluating the claims of others through a ‘validity’ founded in colonialism

We could look towards an acceptance of variance
Where all grow tall in the presence of creative explorations
over standardised explanations.