Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2002 17:31:01 -0800 (PST) From: "a. curious monkey" <atman@...> Subject: the law of trust
So Jeremiah's email got me thinking about a perennial question for me, namely: am I an anarchist? Or at least, is there a point in talking that way?
Maybe. I am, in any case, a Thelemite, meaning here that I affirm and try to live by the maxim "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." I wouldn't fill 'Thelemite' in as a religion on a questionaire, though (or if I did I would do so in the same spirit I might write 'discordian'); Thelema is a philosophical stance with ethical, cosmological, and ontological implications. There is probably a sect of Buddhism that is compatible with it; I know there is a sect of Shaivites who consider will (iccha perhaps?) the primary 'bhava' of Shiva.
Being thelemic is something more than anarchy, from my current vantage point. Anarchy, taking apart the name, says "no kings" or "anti-kings". The essence of thelema is "there are no kings anywhere." People like the President and his gun-toting minions are sadly deluded, and we all suffer as a consequence; in reality, everyone is perfectly free to do whatever they like and cannot avoid the consequences that will proceed from those choices. Although this is not a license for the impossible, truly realizing what it means can often produce it. To oppose the power those deluded people wield over the planet like a black cock of doom is one option among many and anyone who truly feels that this is their role is welcome to take it when and how they see fit.
>From a certain perspective it is easy to see humanity as a progressive liberation of the lower centres of exchange from malevolent forces that have seized them. This was a consequence of self-awareness, and all evolutionary impulse pushes us towards purging ourselves of those automatic ccontrol structures so we can achieve something like adult sentience.
It begins with fear, of course. We become aware of ourselves and discover fear of death. Any animal can feel fear; it takes us to obsess about it, to build it into our posture, to let it ride us day in and day out. As monkeys with crops, fear was our natural state.
The next great phase, and don't think it's over yet (for this is a cyclic/helical movement) is freedom from sexual repression. This emerges as jealousy, anti-life sentiments and emotions, destructive rages, weird religious obsessions (think: spear that pierces the side of christ, foreskin mutilation).
The people I was calling the 'cultural creatives' have moved beyond body-level fear to a considerable degree. They tend to live in countries where war, privation, and malnutrition are not the normal condition, and can generally feed themselves even if they can't make rent. Let me emphasize that body-level fear, like all the other supression instincts, is a rational response to certain circumstances and we must never lose it. But if you've ever known someone who suffers from chronic anxiety you know what I'm talking about.
In addition, we tend to be relatively sexually free. Not done with this one by a long shot! But, jealousy and weird ingrained gender dynamics are much much looser than, say, in Egypt or India, or 19th century America, or contemporary Christian Youth movements. What we find ourselves deeply enmeshed in, as a culture, is the dominance/submission dynamic, or the question of authority.
This expresses itself in a lot of ways. One is a hatred for dominance; this leads to dominant behavior in a dynamic any Buddhist or indeed Pavlov could explain. Another is hatred for submission, weakness, passivity or some other synonym; this can lead to submissive behavior but is more likely to manifest as an extremely intolerant dominance reaction, with spanking on the side. Yet a third, and anarchism probably belongs here, manifests itself as distaste for the entire dom/sub relationship, and the reaction is to magnify it all out of proportion.
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" is an expression of ultimate trust. Trust foremost in one's self; a trust that, if one can only access that which is authentic, present and aware within oneself that it will never lead you astray. Trust also in everyone, for it is as "thou" wilt; it is extending this same trust to the world, to assume that if everyone were to act from this place of aware will that things would get better and not worse. "Love is the law, love under Will": Love because in that aware place our every action is taken with love, under Will because that love is not a blind force to which we owe obedience but a choice we are elected to make.
The Law claims to be not just necessary but sufficient. Anarchy, ultimately, is another Law on top of this, "An ye Kinge not, do what thou wilt." This can easily allow tyrants to prosper; that's just how third-chakra dynamics work. It provides a safe, morally-defensible place for people to enter into the dom-sub game, where all the choices one must make are defined ahead of time by rules.
Fing the voting anarchist knows all about this of course :-> Emerson's "consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" is most applicable. In the end, perhaps, we can consider anarchism a 'skillful means' for bringing up and discharging certain of the harmful control structures embedded in the collective third chakra: a means to be transcended before the "People's Anarchist State of Wherever" starts making people go to revolutionary meetings...
cheers,
- -@man.
"Never frighten a little man. He'll kill you. -Lazarus Long."