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Identity and oaths

Welcome to this new “headache” note, it's been a while. It's a confused mess but I think the output was worth it!

David Graeber put these lines in his Twitter bio (comma added):

I see anarchism as something you do, not an identity so don't call me the anarchist anthropologist.

Twitter account of David Graeber (RIP)

I do not like the identity concepts found in politics, often because it is used as an oppressive tool such as the ideologically shallow “identitarian” movements, but also in more progressive places. When you say “I am a feminist” or “I am an ecologist” or whatever, you affirm an identity as a political statement, but it serves little practical purpose, beside maybe starting a conversation about those ideas. This is what David means here: telling the world that you are an anarchist, or that someone else is an anarchist, has little value for a variety of reasons that we're going to see.

Stating an identity

Stating your identity does not make you embrace its consequences. This is something we all experienced, sometimes from our communities toward hypocrites, but also from snarky commentators against ourselves. How many “feminists” constantly interrupt women when talking, make jokes about them or even commit atrocities against them? How many “socialists” hold mostly economically liberal values? How many “anarchists” have control issues, turning horizontal organisations into very hierarchical structures? The issue is not that it's a major or minor proportion of each group, simply that their presence make the identity statement shallow. If you tell me you're a communist, I'll be happy to hear it, but I will need a lot more time to see you as a communist. It may sound like a lack of trust but this is sane, just like feminist groups simply can't accept any guy in their circles just because they smiled and said they were one of them: the trust has to be built, not merely uttered.

If you want to refer to someone who has been notorious for his anarchist activities — if you manage to clarify what that would mean — then it makes sense to call this person an anarchist. But do that once they are dead, or at least there is sufficient time passed and evidence gathered to ensure that it is an appropriate label.

It is also possible, while not acting against your said identity, to simply not do anything about it. In the David Graeber example, it is common to meet people who say they are anarchists, but do not do anything about it beside reading left-wing books. I'm not judging, reading books about anarchism is great, but anarchism is about the praxis, the journey and the constant struggle along the way, so merely holding an anarchist identity without taking action is kinda self-collapsing.

Stating your identity does not make much sense in a materialist view (in the marxist sense) of the world. An adult man can suddenly decide that he's a feminist, that does not teach him how to wash the damn clothes. The surrounding world makes you what you are, from the day you're born, and conscious decisions are just a part of the equation. You do not get to change that because you simply say so! If you want to tell people that you are an “-ist” to push yourself in that direction, that's fine but you have to admit that the statement is objectively false: you're an “-ist” novice with a lot to learn and do.

Finally, those identity-defining words can have different meanings or subtleties for different people:

Feminism? There is the white, bourgeois feminism, there is afro-feminism, etc.
Communism? Are you anti-authoritarian or a Stalin nostalgic?
Ecologism? Are you anti-capitalist or did you buy a disgusting Tesla?
Socialism? This word has absolutely no commonly understood meaning now.
Anarchism? Even worse.

If you want to be precise about what you mean, you will have to develop a lot more, so why not do that first? Of course, this is still OK to say that you're an “-ist” to introduce ideas and thoughts while *roughly* positioning yourself in a debate, to create social contact with allies (or enemies), for pride and courage against hostility. But can we do better?

Before moving on, I like how in the early hacker movements — can't find a source on that one — you did not get to call yourself a hacker: other hackers had to say that you were one. The identity was not created by its owner, but given. Interesting!

Taking an oath

There are a lot of reasons why stating an identity is not convincing and one of them is that it's such a low effort. Three or four words, that's it. How easy to forget them in moments of weakness, or to say them just for the show! If you are serious about supporting an ideology or reaching a goal, you can create something that you will be able to refer to now and in the future, whenever you're in doubt or vulnerable, something that you can give to your future self so that they will remember why they were serious about it and why it is not something to ignore lightly. Something you may want to show others so that they know where you stand. The simple act of creation can put words and feelings on unconscious things and push you forward.

My idea is to take oaths, like in years of yore. An oath is a text that you choose to write and that you will respect. You pick the conditions, the height of the bar, the tone either solemn or goofy, the support you write it on, the ink or the sound or the paint or the font, it's your own creation. An oath can be broken, but as it is now something very material you need to take direct action to mark its end: you have the choice to keep that now false document, destroy it like it never existed (it did!) or amend it to reflect what happened.

An oath is something personal, that you create yourself, for yourself, so you make the rules, but here are some I think could work:

Write them, on paper or in a file. It can be a spoken text but you lose the benefit of having an easy access to it, unless you record it.
Give them a fancy title.
Date them.
Sign them.
If you break them, update them with your most honest explanation.
You can take them against your God, yourself, the universe, whatever is the entity you want to prove something to.
Make them public or keep them private, your choice.
You can share oaths so that other people may take them but they would probably benefit from creating their own, inspired from yours.
Put a non-free lic- JUST KIDDING

Of course anyone can write a silly document and forget it the next moment, but hey, at least you wrote it, it is a tiny bit more than the 4-word sentence.

To try to make this note a bit more useful, I'll take the test and write a few public oaths. Some come from old reflections, but the tobacco one is a decision I'm taking while writing. Sorry if it looks like virtue signaling or something like that, I just want to illustrate my ideas.

Oath of anarchy — an alternative to the boring “I'm an anarchist”

Oath of the fresh lung — or stop smoking because of Gemini

Oath of the fresh mind — or TMI

Do you want to write oaths while listening to dungeon synth? Did you already do that? What do you think? Let me know and have a nice day! 🌃📜✍