The refusal to obey is the sole universal obligation in the face of an unjust order. The form of the refusal depends on my personality.
— Han Ryner, Mini-Manual Of Individualism
The peace police may as well work for the state right at the beginning of their militant liberalism. There really should be a special program. Although there are far more hoops to jump through in activism than there are in the police academy, I think it would suffice for them to get good government bread… so their asses can get got of all they have.
The excruciating sorrow of life under complete tyranny lends itself to a unique clarity of oneself and this terrible matrix: “I will never be genuinely satisfied unless I play an active role in the Death of this way of life.”
But then people become stagnated by fear of imprisonment, ostracization, damnation. They don’t yet know what it actually is to develop a cohesive practice and critique that undoes the sorrow we are sworn enemies of in our heart of hearts. They conceive of defiance as merely a single, total throwing oneself off of a cliff in order to be free for once and never again. We are to demonstrate a need and a way to assert oneself in all situations, to think for oneself utilizing a helpful toolbox of questions and diagnostics, to choose one’s forward steps carefully, in such ways that reflect who they are.
This project is a project of disseminating anarchist thought. It is not a perfect weapon against our masters. Books don’t feed people or stop fascists from entering our communities. But it is a receptacle for what we see as only the most cutting edge rationale against total submissiveness. Our embrace of the most dastardly thought, making it unavoidable, the experimentation of it overwhelming the business-as-usual of this way of life, is a totalizing hostility toward being under rule. It is not divided up into intersecting issues. It is one, monolithic concern around which thousands of hordes of unruly individuals will converge on.
Let there be no more need for “solidarity” to interlock our spheres of sorrow. Let our need for unruliness be stark and obvious as it already is!
As long as we hold to the understanding that no society, no civilization, no identity, no static group of friends can ever aptly represent the perfection that rests in each of us, we are gladly at odds with everything fed to us.
It is the single most wonderful real-life adventure we will ever embark upon: To rescue our dignity and agency, leaving some beautiful fireworks behind in our trail.
Happy Pride Month, Everyone!
Co-Authored by the Effrenatum Collective