After the revolution

G20 Protests April 1 2009
Originally uploaded by noeldouglasflickr

I’ve always been nagged by this idea.
Just wondered if any other members of the disaffected have envisaged the UK during and after 'The Revolution' or some similar catastrophic breakdown of the infrastructure?

A lot of people (me included when I was young) appear to rub their hands in glee at the prospect of the collapse of the banking system and society supposedly being transformed virtually overnight.
I was more of an idealist then I guess. The passion of youth.

But I wondered about the psychological and physical effects of this on a population who have been embedded into aggressive capitalism for decades.
After being informed by a ‘comrade’ recently that ‘Anarchy’ comes in lots of different flavours (do they do blueberry?), and apparently has ‘no rules or morals’ I am curious as to the practicalities of a revolution and the romantic dream of The Revolution.
What’s wrong with staying an outsider?
Does long-term freedom lie with the individual, the group or mob rule?
Can you help me with the brass tacks I'm writing a sci-fi novel sort of.

If you imagine the UK, a population hardwired to technology and consumer culture for decades attempting to adopt anarchy, won’t they suffer from acute fear of hierarchical structures syndrome. They’ll have to be ever vigilant against the first intimations of anything that smacks of coercion or bullying if the purity of the anarchist ideal is to be implemented.

Surely a ‘self-sufficient’ anarchist commune must employ some kind of practical and moral infrastructure. Even in the most primitive society they start with the incest taboo and some kind of social contract. Anarchy isn’t about ‘no rules’.
How will food be distributed? Sanitation and clean drinking water? What kind of energy and technology will be allowed? Even the Luddites used spinning looms.

If you use wind and solar panels, who is going to manufacture and maintain these objects? Won’t there have to be skills training and how do you guard against the inevitable black market? How much technology, organization and policing do you allow before you start to mutate into a nation state? Maybe some kind of ‘amnesia drug’ will be required to induce a collective forgetting – hell is other people without broadband and disposable nappies.

There are so many presumptions about human nature in the revolutionary ideal.
The most arrogant idea is that large swathes of the population are living under a false consciousness and need to be educated.
We have the most literate, information drenched population in history, most people just like to moan, maybe they’d like to work less and spend more time with their kids, but they would be terrified if they were confronted with real freedom and the lack of modern conveniences…wouldn’t they?

We are all imbedded in so much ‘stuff’ that we take for granted.
If you think about it, there is a screaming irony in the idea of discussing back to nature ethics and the downfall of capitalism while using a system (computer and broadband) that is available to most people because of the industrial process of human exploitation. Some poor bastard in the third world flogging their guts out for a dollar a day so you can talk about’ worker exploitation’ because of your inexpensive IT technology. No one is innocent.

There have always been outsiders or’ Bohemian’s, people who go against the grain in every society in history. What’s wrong with that? Why not celebrate not ‘fitting in’ (your in good company) instead of attempting God like transformations of society?

The Milgram experiments and history itself has shown that most people are almost hardwired to hierarchical structures. They don’t like to think too much - they want and need their bread and circuses.

Zygmunt Bauman in ‘Modernity and the Holocaust’ showed how Milgram’s 7 out of 10 were complicit in that genocide, but he ends on a note of hope too: its that other 3 who spoke up and/or resisted that is the most important thing to hold on to. There is never a crowd on the leading edge as someone once said. Are the outsiders the most ‘evolved’ in any society at any point in time? Isn’t the great refusal (just saying fuck off!) the one thing that makes us most human, most un-herd like no matter how ‘wonderful’ and libertarian a society could be?

Do Anarchists believe in the reality of evil or biological mental illnesses? Psychopathology, sociopathology, depression? Or are these merely symptoms of the greater malaise of hegemonic oppressive Capitalism?
I recoil in Vincent Price-like horror at the thought of aggressive libertarians doing a ‘Bastille job’ on the prison’s and psychiatric hospitals.

Oh what joy to go dandelion picking with the Yorkshire ripper, or watch the psychotics torture the bunny rabbits when their medication runs out. Imagine the hilarious food fights we’ll have…like actually fighting for food with machete’s and garden forks.

Maybe its only art, poetry music and literature that benefits from the inevitable boom and bust of social and cultural revolutions? I think humans have an inbuilt need for drama and conflict and any utopia would get a little bit tedious after a generation or so for the inevitable outsiders – maybe quicker.
Perpetual insurrections or what Hakim Bey calls Temporary Autonomous Zones appear to offer sanctuaries for those who can’t or refuse to fit in. Poetic terrorism.

Isn’t it the artist/outsider as an alien observer and chronicler of his times who has the most fun, and leaves the best behind for the next generation of insurrectionists and cultural explorers to learn from?

Isn’t it more Idle and honest to say bollocks to the mob and save yourself and a few fellow travellers rather than get frustrated and stressed by trying to make everyone the same as you?
Why does everybody have to ‘join in’ to make humanity better behaved, when humanity has had innumerable chances to heal itself and has failed every single time? I think we are very much still animals under this (clichéd I know) veneer of civilization.

We try to deny this part of ourselves all the time. I guess I'm a bit of a Darwinian really and a Freudian. We repress, sublimate and project all those aspects of ourselves that remind us of our animal natures into culture. We need art and culture to remind us that we're supposed to be human rather than humanity being something that is born with us. Something we just are.
We have to practice being human all the time - its an adjective not just a noun.

I may appear 'cynical' but I can't deny history and the society around me, by pretending that all the shit that happens and has happened since man first walked upright is merely because of a system of governance or control - and by changing the rules a bit people won't hurt each other anymore.

I Have a lot of trouble with this idea believe me. I don't want to think its true, but just look around you. You can't blame the system for everything, its people each doing their little jobs that make the system.

Maybe I’m just disillusioned with age. I should have knuckled down more when I was younger and buried my head in the sand. Or gone to live in South America?
People have always said I’m too sensitive…