Men (or Women if you are one) Are Not Machines.

There are benefits to understanding and applying science. They are innumerable – medicine for the body and mind, understanding of nature, predicting storms, peering into the stars. But I think science has a limit when it comes to the essence of what it is to be human. Such questions can only be pondered dialectically, philosophically, with the mind. Love, compassion, hate, greed, ambition, jealousy.

I don’t think psychologists will ever pick apart the physical brain enough to ever understand why we fight and hate, or why we love. Ultimately the physical search is futile. I’m finding it hard to explain this at the moment. I’ll just finish off with a quote:

… Although the workings of the world never contravene mechanical considerations, they only make sense, and become fully intelligible, in the light of metaphysical considerations; that the world’s mechanics subserve its design.

If this were clearly understood, no trouble would arise. Folly enters when we try to “reduce” metaphysical terms and matters to mechanical ones: worlds to systems, particulars to categories, impressions to analyses, and realities to abstractions. This is the madness of the last three centuries, the madness which so many of us – as individuals – go through, and by which all of us are tempted. It is this Newtonian-Lockean-Cartesian view – variously paraphrased in medicine, biology, politics, industry etc. – which reduces men to machines, automata, puppets, dolls, blank tablets, formulae, ciphers, systems, and reflexes. It is this, in particular, which has rendered so much of our recent and current medical literature unfruitful, unreadable, inhuman, and unreal. (Awakenings, Oliver Sacks; Vintage Books 1999)

The Duty of Revolution

Oddly enough, as an anarchist, I seem to support a good number of my arguments with the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and writings from American revolutionaries such as Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Samuel Adams, et. al. I also love a cold pint of Samuel Adams now and again, but I’m pretty sure the beer and the man are in no way related. Today, while reading the Declaration of Independence once again, I found a few lines to be of particular importance, considering President Bush and his never ending hubris and quest to expand the executive branch to the point of dictatorship.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

It is a shame, I think, what has happened to this country. It started out with some pretty good ideas, equality for all, power of the people. But when one looks at American history we can see that these documents have been ignored completely since the beginning. There has always been, in America, the right and the left. Today there are those still in vehement support of Bush, the ignorant willing to passively submit themselves to tyrannical rule; there are pacifists, folk who simply don’t care – they are distracted by the society constructed to distract them – then there is the left. When speaking of Democrats, the left is just as ignorant as the right in that is supports subordination, and restraints on freedom. Then there is the far left, the revolutionaries, the free-thinkers, the anarchists.

I just can’t take living in this absolutely outrageous fascist state anymore. I hope Vermont splits from the union, they have far better ideas for government than what is happening in our sorry state. Free thinking is so pre-9/11. These days any criticism of the president is taken as treachery. To this I would answer with another figure from American History, Teddy Roosevelt:

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Think for yourself. Question authority.

If a Democrat wins the Presidency, and the US military pulls out of Iraq…

Source: urban guerrilla

If a Democrat wins the Presidency, and the US military pulls out of Iraq…

I don’t want Iraq referred to as a war. Viet Nam isn’t a historical war; it’s a country of eighty million people.

I don’t want Iraq to be forgotten. The effects of war continue long after the pull-out of one side. The same goes for Afghanistan and anywhere else.

I want to see pacifists who hold weekly anti-war vigils to continue weekly vigils, but against the prison system and police brutality.

I don’t want liberals to be allowed to think that corporations have suddenly become ethical, transparent, and pure of heart.

I don’t want liberals to be allowed to think that the age of state surveillance and repression is over, and maybe they’ll learn to realize that it began centuries before Bush II.

I want to continue to see hundreds of thousands protesting in the streets, just like we saw in New York in 2003 and 2004, in Chicago and Los Angeles in 2006, and in Washington D.C.

I don’t want people to suddenly forget about Palestine.

I want to see liberals decrying poverty in the United States with the same passion that they decry the possibility of an invasion of Iran.

I want this many people to continue total mistrust of the government.

I want to see liberals resisting racial profiling of Blacks and Latinos with the same gusto that they have opposed harassment and deportation of Arab and Muslim men.

I want to see annual national demonstrations on the anniversary of Katrina.

I want to see people who thought that Bush II was the beginning of everything bad to read some history.

I want to continue to see pacifists getting arrested in civil disobedience actions at government offices, over the prison system, privatization of services, or, well, there are plenty of options.

I want us to be creative enough to figure out how to continue to bring people in.

I want to see us be able to retain some of these folks who joined us in the streets because they just found Bush II “so damned arrogant.”

I want to see those folks who claimed that they believe in revolution, but that we just need anybody but Bush first, quit working on elections.

I want to see tens of thousands mobilize annually to oppose the IMF, the World Bank, and other organs of imperialist capitalism.

I want to see liberals stick to their frustrations, and not to ignore Democrats who do the same damn things. I want to see these liberals become radicals.

I don’t want to see most of the groups that have been formed at different levels in the last six years fall apart. I want to see them develop.

I don’t want people to start thinking that it’s okay to join the military again.

I don’t want anyone to vote and feel that they’ve done something.

I don’t want anyone to see a Democrat elected and think that we won.