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Title: Against Community Building, Towards Friendship Author: ziq Date: 23 March 2021 Language: en Topics: community, friendship, society, individual, individual and society, individualism, critique of leftism, critique, authority, post-left, decentralization Source: https://raddle.me/wiki/friendship
As long as I've been around other anarchists, I've witnessed an
unremitting reverence for the sanctity of community.
The idea of community is held in such high regard by anarchists that
it's eerily reminiscent of USA liberals paying fealty to the "sacred
ground" of their nation's capitol. Community is something consecrated
and unassailable to anarchists. It's the bond that binds us to our
fellow true believers. It gives us belonging, direction, purpose,
safety, all those good things.
But does it really?
The more time I spend amongst anarchists, the more I find the "anarchist
community" ideal to be inherently unattainable and isolating. It seems
every attempt at building an organized egalitarian community ends up
enabling gross misconduct by certain members and the end result is
always demoralizing burn-out for everyone involved.
The attempt to group disparate strangers who barely get along, based on
an imagined affinity (typically ideology, but painted in such broad
strokes so as to be rendered inconsequential) inevitably manages to
crash and burn every time.
A gentle, alienated soul's deep pining to build community will often get
exploited by abusive people so they can insert themselves into their
target's life. By attaching themselves to a community, virtually anyone
can gain instant access to the minds and hearts of people that would
never have associated with them otherwise. Anarchists are so dedicated
to maintaining the ideals of egalitarianism, openness, inclusivity,
mutuality and fraternity, that they'll put up with a whole lot of shit
from people that demonstrate over and over again that they don't share
the same values as them. Abusive people are tolerated and even accepted
by us so long as they identify as belonging to the anarchist movement,
because of course anarchists aren't fond of gatekeeping or erecting
barriers to entry.
When a person announces they're a member of the anarchist community, we
immediately hand them a black cat badge to pin to their shirt (usually
metaphorically, sometimes literally) and welcome them with open arms, no
questions asked. Predictably, parasitic abusers are able to swagger into
our spaces flashing that official membership badge, and they get to work
preying on vulnerable, empathetic people who are looking for fellow
travelers who share their ideals.
Again and again I've witnessed these entitled parasites take advantage
of the compassionate anarchist spirit and they'll often spend years
tearing people's lives apart until the community becomes so toxic and
unbearable that everyone abandons ship to try and preserve their mental
health and physical safety. In the end, everyone seems to end up more
exploited and traumatized by the anarchist community experience than
they would have been without it.
Due to my experiences both managing and participating in various
anarchist spaces, I'd really like to throw out the entire idea of
anarchist community and re-imagine how anarchistic interactions can be
manifested going forward.
Much like the related ideologically sacred institution of democracy, the
whole concept of community is insidious and underhanded, an ideal
seemingly designed to manipulate people into associating with bullies
and dickheads by whittling away at basic human needs like autonomy,
self-determination and consent.
Too many times, our dedication to building unfettered communities open
to all people lowers our guard and lets cops, rapists and assorted
authoritarians infiltrate our movements and inflict lasting damage to
both our collective and individual psyches.
A community in its current form almost requires everyone involved be
socialized in extreme docility, forced to exist in a perpetual state of
submission to everyone around them. Otherwise, the community would
almost certainly implode.
Without that docile meekness being forced on all the community members,
the billions of people living boxed up and piled on top of neighbors
they're barely able to tolerate would inevitably sharpen their fangs and
rip each other apart to reclaim the personal space every living being
needs in order to exercise their autonomy and individuality.
If our sharp claws weren't meticulously and regularly yanked out of our
fingertips by the upholders of community, to forge us into obedient and
pliable little shits, the entire concept of community would be rendered
unworkable.
Both the metaphorical and literal concrete walls that contain us and our
egos would quickly crumble into rubble without the authority of the
community to hold them up.
There’s a word that describes how we feel when we need time to ourselves
but can’t get it because we live in these vast interconnected global
communities, surrounded wall-to-wall, block-to-block, nation-to-nation
in every direction by other people and have no way to tune out their
vociferous voices and energies. It’s the mirror image to loneliness -
'aloneliness'. This innate state of being was surprisingly only coined
recently, in 2019, by Robert Coplan, a Canadian psychologist.
If loneliness is the yearning to connect to others, being aloney is the
deep-seeded need to disconnect from others and retreat into the self.
This is something that becomes harder and harder as the communal
collective is centered and the individual is increasingly diminished and
cast as a villainous foil to the precious community ideal.
Also in 2019, a study of nearly 20,000 people (Scientific Reports volume
9, Article number: 7730) established that we need to spend regular time
immersed in nature to maintain our well-being. Too often, our proven
need to embrace these solitary experiences is discounted because so much
reverence is placed on the building and expansion of society and
community by the authorities who shape our world.
Someone posed this question to me recently about my frequent critiquing
of democracy:
"If you're against democracy, how would you propose consensus be reached
among an anarchist community?"
Before I can answer the question, I should point out that most
definitions of 'commune' wildly conflict with anarchy. Take this common
definition, for example:
"organized for the protection and promotion of local interests, and
subordinate to the state; the government or governing body of such a
community."
So like a lot of the authority-based concepts certain anarchists feel
the need to appropriate, a community is assumed by polite society to
come with a certain expectation of authority.
To avoid the inevitable confusion that comes with the strange urge some
people have to redefine preexisting concepts, I'd really like to bypass
this loaded word completely and instead try to instill a more anarchist
bent to the concept of community as anarchists presumably mean it...
So let's just call it 'friendship', since that's essentially all we
desire from what we term an 'anarchist community': Trusted friends we
can live with, play with, learn with. It's a simple and effective word
that only has positive connotations, and isn't going to make anyone
think of all the glaringly authoritarian communities held together by a
state's threat of violence and built and maintained by exploited workers
who most often can't even afford to live in said communities.
I think it's important we use clear and concise language to describe our
objectives as anarchists, and too many of the words we lean on when
outlining our desires for a domination-free world have hierarchical
baggage permanently weighing them down.
Okay, now let's rephrase the question in a way that leaves no room for
misinterpretation...
"How would I suggest you make decisions when you have disagreements with
your friends over which course of action to take?"
Well, I wouldn't suggest anything.
People really don't need me or anyone to direct their interactions with
their friends or dictate to them how they should define and fulfill
their relationships.
If you and your friends need me to prescribe you a program to adhere to
in order for your friendship to function, you're clearly not interested
in practicing anarchy.
Why even put the effort into maintaining the friendship if you need to
involve an external body to create systems, laws and processes to ensure
the friendship remains equitable and fulfilling? If your friend isn't
being fair to you, why are you still their friend?
Anyone who would exploit you, diminish you, neglect you or deny you your
autonomy isn't acting as a friend and doesn't deserve to be considered
one. A friend cherishes and respects you. A friend encourages you to
fulfill your desires and does everything they can to help achieve your
needs.
And if you're not friends with the people you're in disagreement with,
why do you care to reach consensus with them? Why share experiences with
them and tie your fate to their desires if you don't even like them?
Is your idea of 'community' (friendship) a suffocating debate club where
people who don't even get along have to endlessly negotiate with each
other and reach some arbitrary consensus in order to continue to
co-exist?
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just not enter into formalized
relationships with people whose values so conflict with your own as to
provoke such intractable conflict?
If you truly desire anarchy, it's important to make your own decisions
unhindered by the decrees of lionized authority figures and their
taped-together social systems. Only you and your friends can decide how
to best maintain your friendships and how to commune with each other in
a way that benefits all parties.
Unless you're disabled in a way that affects your sociability, it's
unlikely you need formal rules of association to be directed to you
before you can form bonds with other humans you wish to commune with.
That's all social systems are really, a set of rules someone decided
everyone should have to follow, regardless of whether or not they share
the same values. It's fundamentally defeating to anarchy when self
determination, freedom of association and autonomy are overwritten by
someone else's values. Upstanding citizens of the nation might prize
free speech, democracy, morality, free markets, peaceful protest and
community, but that doesn't mean you have to.
No authoritative body should presume to possess the power to tell others
how to solve disputes they have with their friends. If you can't get
along with a friend without ordinances from above then you should
probably question why you remain friends with them and if the
relationship is worth the emotional toll it exerts on you, your friend
and those around you.
This all of course assumes you're adept at socialization, which
admittedly a lot of us aren't, due to a diverse array of disabilities
and emotional traumas, but that's just more proof that no one can or
should prescribe exact instruction to people for creating social
relations amongst themselves. Every relationship is different, and the
only real prerequisite should be a desire to share experiences and
support and nurture each other.
Like I've mentioned, there are a lot of abusive, exploitative people who
enter our spaces, create a world of hurt, sap everyone of their energy,
sabotage our projects by creating constant conflict and division without
actually contributing anything, and then when someone finally objects to
their behavior, they assert their supposed democratic right to continue
to force themselves on everyone because "you have to reach an
understanding / consensus / agreement with your fellow community
member".
Fuck that.
If someone is abusing or exploiting you, just eject them from your
orbit. You're not under any obligation to kowtow to the desires of a
person who has demonstrated they have little respect for you or your
values. Once they've shown you they're not your friend with a pattern of
selfish and harmful actions, it's not your responsibility to protect
their ego and keep shining their black cat badge.
You have to live your own life and can't pour all your energy into
making some random bully feel included in your social circle because
they've announced they're some stripe of anarchist. Anarchy isn't a
numbers game, it won't matter if there's one less member in your anarchy
club, especially when that person has demonstrated they don't actually
give two shits about doing anarchy.
We need to know our limitations. We need to stand up for each other when
we see abuse and not allow the abuse to be tolerated and normalized
under the guise of community, democracy and inclusivity. It's important
to set clear boundaries with people and cut ties with them when they
cross those boundaries and begin to damage your mental health and sense
of safety.
As for what those boundaries should be? There are so many disparate
personalities and unique circumstances that can occur in a relationship,
so as always it's not realistic to set universal metrics. There's really
no fail-proof program for human association, which is why it's so
important for each able individual to be aware of their own boundaries
and be ready to enforce them. But generally, if you no longer feel safe
in a space because of a certain person's presence, feel you're exerting
too much energy to satisfy their unreasonable demands and getting little
back in return, or frequently feel anxiety due to their words and / or
actions... It's likely time to cut ties.
When you're in an organized community with someone, you're denied direct
control over the relationship. Instead, your interactions are dictated
by whatever social norms and rules have been developed by those who
formed the community, often long before you were born. If you don't want
to be around someone any more, you have to wrestle with the system's
checks and balances, essentially pleading for permission from the
community and its decision-making mechanisms to disassociate from the
person.
In any community, a communal divorcing is a time, money and energy
consuming social affair involving the proclamations of multiple people
both familiar and unfamiliar, public hearings, and an exhaustive
bureaucracy.
On the other hand, ending a simple friendship is much simpler because
you directly control who you choose to spend your time with, without an
entire community body inserting itself into your private life. No one
can force you to be their friend and devote your time and energy to them
everyday, but communities constantly force you to negotiate with unkind
neighbors, relatives, coworkers, landlords, bosses, teachers and others
who you'd never spend time with if you had the autonomy to choose.
Freedom of association is an anarchist principle that always manages to
get undermined and maligned by the fiercely un-anarchist principles the
assorted anarcho-democrats, Chomskyists and Bookchinites insist on
bringing to the table. I'd argue there's no anarchist principle more
important than being able to choose who to spend your time with. I'd
much rather choose a few friends than amass community members.
People protect people.
We tend to put a lot of faith in the systems that govern us, and assume
they'll protect us from harm when more often than not the systems fail
us at every turn with tepid half-measures and bureaucratic meandering.
Building our own systems to live by can be a worthwhile pursuit, but if
we try to extend those systems to a wider sphere of people, they'll
inevitably break down as an increasing number of those people find the
system doesn't serve their diverging needs and begin to rebel.
The bigger a community and its bureaucracy grow, the more disconnected
from people and their needs the community gets, until the point where a
community becomes devastatingly isolating and dehumanizing to everyone
forced to exist within its towering walls.
A lot of anarchists have reacted to me speaking ill of community with
fear and anger because they've internalized the idea that "community
support" is something necessary for their survival. But if they're being
honest with themselves, by community support, they really just mean
welfare from the state. This fear of losing access to healthcare,
unemployment / disability insurance, and a pension doesn't really have
anything to do with their concept of community, and is really just a
form of cognitive dissonance.
As an anarchist, I know the state doesn't work for me and never will. If
a community is a collective bureaucratic body that assigns duties and
resources to people depending on prefigured factors, it's acting as a
state, regardless of whatever fancy new tag is affixed to it, and it
will no doubt grow increasingly isolating and destructive as the years
wear on and the power of its architects and benefactors is cemented.
We already have authorities that decide who gets how much and when, and
it's brought us nothing but suffering. We already have community and it
treats us like trash every day of our lives. Pretending this
disconnected forced grouping of disparate peoples with wildly diverging
values, needs and desires is somehow capable of serving us equitably and
with care and respect is mournful.
Community always seems to be the spark that ignites an inferno of
hierarchy and domination. So much horrific oppression and death has been
justified in the age of Leviathan by attaching it to "the good of the
community". I've seen so many people, including anarchists, sweep all
manner of abuses under the rug in a desperate attempt to "protect the
integrity of the community". Somehow the community is always put before
the people who inhabit it, as if a precarious eidolon drawn from thin
air and held together by nothing but collective resolve is more sacred
than life itself.
Arranging people into societies and communities and nations and cities
and suburbs and civilizations that have wildly varying resources only
serves to separate us and creates permanent warfare among us, with those
lucky enough to belong to the more resource-rich communities getting
every advantage over those in more barren, parched lands.
Community is an ever-expanding wave that washes over the land, leaving
its salt in the soil and forever amassing momentum until it morphs into
its final form: an impregnable global civilization with no chink in the
armor, no weakness we can assail in the hopes of containing its immense
authority... Until finally the wave collapses under its own weight,
adding a thick layer of blood to the salted land.
Friendship can't scale up to swallow the planet. Friendship remains
forever small, personal, intimate, deliberate, voluntary, decentralized.
This is a feature, not a bug. Friendship allows you to associate and
disassociate with others at will, while always maintaining your
individuality, the sanctuary of your headspace and the clarity of
knowing who you are and what you need. The dictates of anonymous wider
society and the supposed common good needn't cloud your mind when you
form friendships rather than build communities.
Community is division. It's nationality, it's borders, it's imperialism,
it's haves and have nots, it's cruel, brutal, unending warfare against
the sacrificial out-groups to benefit the blessed in-groups.
Your friends don't exploit you. If they do, they're not your friends.
Communities exploit everyone, both within and outside their very clearly
defined borders, every minute of every day of every year and they have
for centuries. Draining the most underprivileged community members of
their blood, sweat and tears to chiefly benefit the most privileged in
the community: the bosses, the academics, the desk jockeys, the
landlords.
The potholes in the neighborhoods of the working poor are always as deep
as canyons, while the privileged classes who work and sweat far less can
commute in the comfort of their air-conditioned Teslas bump-free on the
smoothest of asphalt.
European welfare states and other 'progressive' communities exist on the
backs of the poor of the colonized global South. Resources and intensive
lifelong labor are stripped from billions of people who receive only
basic sustenance in return, so the residents of those hallowed Western
communities can lounge in comfort with their wide assortment of
state-granted privileges.
I've heard some wannabe world-builders say friendship is a weak bond to
base a life on, that friends are as unreliable as the anonymous
community members they so revere. But those same people will always
extol law, order and democracy no matter how many times those houses of
straw blow up in their faces. And honestly, is anything more
insufferable than utopian communists critiquing someone else’s supposed
idealism?
Bureaucrats and their communal systems won't give us anarchy. Maybe a
little social democracy as a treat, at least until the system collapses
back into fascism when enough wealth accrues at the top.
So what is the purpose of building an anarchist community? If the
difference between a community and a group of friends is that the
community is bigger, more impersonal, more bureaucratic, more policed,
with highly diverging values and a centralized concentration of power...
Then what use is community to a group of people who seek to decentralize
everything in their path, dismantle systems, negate authority and become
as ungovernable as possible? What use is community to anarchy?
I really feel we should be making friends rather than building
communities.