Showing posts with label Alan Watts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alan Watts. Show all posts

Tuesday, 25 September 2012

TOWARDS AN ANARCHIST SPIRITUALITY.

        I believe that anarchism is not merely an economic system, it is a way of life, a way of interacting on an individual level and a community level, it is a value structure that is based on love and respect, surely, somewhere at its heart must lie "spirituality". 

PINNACLE OF EVOLUTION.
There’s a crazy ape, who
by means of incredible intransigence
has mastered the art of carnage;
through dogged determination
in a ruthless rampage
raised the body-count beyond belief.
This crazy ape
creates the human chronicles
as a cruel callous calendar,
transforms our indulgent earth
into a primitive barbaric abattoir.
He struts across the land
with bumptious pride;
he’s destructive, he’s devious,
demands dominion
planet wide.
His claim to fame,
history immortalised in rivers of blood.
Even so,
this crazy ape called man, believes
he’s the GODS’ sublime solution,
progress’s perfection,
the pinnacle of evolution.

 

This from This is Primal War:

Towards An Anarchist Spirituality...

     “They therefore invented an idea of "primitive man" as a being whose total intelligence was supposed to consist in some rudimentary fumblings towards the kind of wisdom monopolized by Western civilization. Hardly dreaming that there are other and highly developed types of intelligence and wisdom, as well as different life/goals, than those contemplated by Western man, these anthropologists found only what their prejudices enabled them to see. Their premise was that their own culture as the "latest" in time represented the height of evolution. Earlier cultures must therefore be elementary forms of "modern” culture, and their degree of civilization and intelligence had to be estimated by the degree to which their values approximated to modern values.” – Alan Watts Myth and Ritual in Christianity

        To begin with, this quote by philosopher Alan Watts is in reference, immediately, to Christianity and it’s origins, it’s colonialist imperative but also applies more broadly to modern culture as a whole. I would find it hard to not relate critique of modern culture to Christianity, being that it has been, if not the most dominate religion of the past 500 years,could be called the most dominating with it’s imperative of conquest and control. We have seen in our lifetimes alone, a massive amount of repression, genocide, ecological devastation and oppression under the flag of divine right. From the conquest of the west to the colonization of the east (read Phillipines, South Korea, Australia, etc.) at the hands of not only the Church as an institution, but the force of will of “good” Christian missionaries, paving the way for development and providing reformist cleanup after genocide wrenches it’s deadly claim.
Read the full article HERE:

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