this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
28 points (91.2% liked)

Anarchism and Social Ecology

1356 readers
90 users here now

!anarchism@slrpnk.net

A community about anarchy. anarchism, social ecology, and communalism for SLRPNK! Solarpunk anarchists unite!

Feel free to ask questions here. We aspire to make this space a safe space. SLRPNK.net's basic rules apply here, but generally don't be a dick and don't be an authoritarian.

Anarchism

Anarchism is a social and political theory and practice that works for a free society without domination and hierarchy.

Social Ecology

Social Ecology, developed from green anarchism, is the idea that our ecological problems have their ultimate roots in our social problems. This is because the domination of nature and our ecology by humanity has its ultimate roots in the domination humanity by humans. Therefore, the solutions to our ecological problems are found by addressing our social and ecological problems simultaneously.

Libraries

Audiobooks

Quotes

Poetry and imagination must be integrated with science and technology, for we have evolved beyond an innocence that can be nourished exclusively by myths and dreams.

~ Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom

People want to treat ‘we’ll figure it out by working to get there’ as some sort of rhetorical evasion instead of being a fundamental expression of trust in the power of conscious collective effort.

~Anonymous, but quoted by Mariame Kaba, We Do This 'Til We Free Us

The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.

~Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.

~Murray Bookchin, "A Politics for the Twenty-First Century"

There can be no separation of the revolutionary process from the revolutionary goal. A society based on self-administration must be achieved by means of self-administration.

~Murray Bookchin, Post Scarcity Anarchism

In modern times humans have become a wolf not only to humans, but to all nature.

~Abdullah Öcalan

The ecological question is fundamentally solved as the system is repressed and a socialist social system develops. That does not mean you cannot do something for the environment right away. On the contrary, it is necessary to combine the fight for the environment with the struggle for a general social revolution...

~Abdullah Öcalan

Social ecology advances a message that calls not only for a society free of hierarchy and hierarchical sensibilities, but for an ethics that places humanity in the natural world as an agent for rendering evolution social and natural fully self-conscious.

~ Murray Bookchin

Network

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I often see mentions of the disunity in the left and it being a real show stopper for achieving anything meaningful. Whats your take on that and also do you have any reasons(experiences, arguments etc) for that?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] exocrinous@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'd like to explain it to you. Not as an attack, but because she failed to explain it to you and you deserve to know.

Whiteness is a fake race. All races are social constructs, but at least some of them point to a long history or a common culture or whatever. Not whiteness. Whiteness was invented by slave traders to separate Europeans from the slaves and the indigenous in the new world. Before then, Europeans did not think of themselves as one race. Look at the Balkans and you can still see that isn't the case anywhere. But in America, the identity of whiteness was invented as a justification for slavery.

If you are white, then you have ancestors and a culture and mythologies and a history, and they are not whiteness. Whiteness is the last 500 years of oppression, not the things that came before. You should learn those things if you can, and value them more highly than the racist "white" identity. If you don't have access to your history, or don't value your history, then it's time to invent a new culture to replace whiteness. Because having the cultural identity of "coloniser" just sucks.

[–] M500@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Can you give me an example of what you’re talking about in the last paragraph? I don’t really get it.

My ancestors are from like 7 different countries around Europe and one country from the Middle East(light/white skinned).

[–] exocrinous@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, so you'd be (as an example), french-german-italian-hungarian-swedish-portuhese-irish-syrian. Or whatever. Why do we call the first 7 of those, or the first 7 of your ancestries white? Because a bunch of slave traders said those 7 things are the same thing. If you were haudenosaunee-vietnamese-scottish-maori-jewish-kenyan, we wouldn't be reducing all that complexity to one label. Yes, certain commonalities exist to a greater degree in your ancestry than in my pancontinental example. Yes, it may be fair to call you european. But white? That word is a racist term. It's as fake as the word aryan. Your skin isn't white, it's probably somewhere around a beige-tan-olive. That's not white. If white were a colour, Asians would be white. It's not, it's just racism.

[–] M500@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What I don’t understand is what some people would want me to do about it.

I understand what you’re saying now, but I’m not sure what the call to action is.

[–] exocrinous@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Change the lens with which you frame your position in the world from "I am a white person" to "I am a person who racists claim to be white".

It's a very subtle and subjective change and I wouldn't be surprised if you've already done it.

[–] M500@lemmy.ml -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Great, so a second person complaining about someone calling themselves white without suggestion as to what souls be changed.

I think you’re just racist against white people.

[–] punkisundead 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

without suggestion as to what souls be changed

because that is really dependend on your context and location. whiteness is differently constructed and maintained in different places and what you should / can do also is different.

One starting point for inspiration might be !landback@slrpnk.net, another one might be just talking with someone irl about this

I think you’re just racist against white people.

I dont think this is helpful for anyone and I dont get why you would say that to someone, especially someone who from my perspective tried to engage with you in good faith

[–] M500@lemmy.ml -1 points 9 months ago

"I am a person who racists claim to be white".

This can’t be a real suggestion.

Is a little frustrating talking about this as so far, people have either said that in a colonizer or not tell me how this issue can be resolved.

So far it just sounds like complaining about something with offering a solution.