How do you all deal with society?

Question

Hi, I'm just asking this because my current living experience isn't working. I try to be about as understanding and patient with people as much as I can and I never just flat out try and preach to people because I feel like that would be kind of stupid. I interject my opinions on things when they are appropriate. However, some of the idiocies of modern life are just extremely intolerable that eventually exposed to them enough you'll inevitably lash out. I'm now just going to limit practically all of my social interactions to good friends and family, and certainly delete my facebook.

What are your experiences?

Answer 1

I think this is actually a pretty good question.
But as an individual with a somewhat limited tolerance for the human race, i answer with a large grain of salt proffered to the reader.

I think we all (and most people in general) have times in our lives when we have had enough of the people around us, be they nearer or more distant to us.  We all have times when we seek solitude and quiet contemplation.  There are times when we seek out novelty and stimulation and potential conflict.  Staring the ugliness of our life in the face and seeing it for what it truely is, while all those about you blithely cling to their delusions, only accentuates the downside when it comes around.

I think we need to listen to our minds, as we listen to our bodies.  Just as we listen to our cravings to tell us what nutrients we are lacking, and when we are dehydrated, and when we need stress that needs to be released, etc...  So we need to listen to our own minds, and accept when it asks for peace, and when it asks for turmoil, and when it asks to be set free (for awhile).

Personally, i prefer the company of weeds and worms, flowers and bees, trees and birds; they tolerate my company, and accept my words with no ill feeling.  I treat people as i would any other dumb animal, with kindness where i can, with brevity and my safety where i can't.

Comments

my biggest issue i think is finding ways to express that need for turmoil, and that was the whole thing that led up to this whole thing that caused me to write this was that.....some moron almost beat the shit out of me even though he wasn't even involved in it. Do you have any advice on the expression of turmoil?

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Don't get the shit beat out of yourself?  :)
(don't, if you can help it, it kinda hurts.)

In other words, no, i don't have any good advice.  That need for stimulation probably equates to the psychologists' manic phase*, and in my experience is accompanied by a decreased awareness of risk.  So we walk into shit we normally would avoid.  Unless you've got an anchor with you to grab you by the scruff and pull you outta harms way - it sometimes doesn't end all that well.

*[typical of the bastards to take a normal behaviour and declare it a pathology, just like grieving, or sexual curiousity.]

Answer 2

in all honesty, i deal with "society" by avoiding it as much as i possibly can. and by fucking with it whenever an opportunity presents itself. avoiding it is much more difficult in an urban context, and that is a major reason why i now live rurally.

it is probably difficult (or impossible) to be a thoughtful anarchist (maybe even any kind of critical thinker) and NOT have a certain amount of misanthropic tendency. i find most people to be boring, uncritical, and with priorities so disconnected from my own that i usually see very little common ground.

but i also have learned to tune into specific areas of commonality with folks i would otherwise find intolerable. for example, i happen to love music; dancing to it, listening to it, even making it in the severely limited ways i am capable. so music is an area where i can interact with more mainstream members of "society" in ways that can actually bring me pleasure.

i guess a followup question might be: is there such a thing as "society" that is NOT "mass society"?

Comments

when i say "society" im talking about everything involving humans including the culture that we as anarchists complain about, and since no humans can escape the grips and influence of society that means every single person including us is part of "society". However, i recently did learn that there is aactually a community of people who live primitive lifestyles in north carolina, haha

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are you by chance referring to "wild roots" (in north carolina)?

there are many rural, "radical" communities that are able to exist *largely* (of course not completely) outside of society. but in my experience with several of them, they have not let go of societal norms and behaviors. you can take the human out of society, but you can't... (at least not very easily)

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yeah that's what i was referring to

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i know a few of the folks from there. don't get your hopes up about them having left the mindsets of "society" behind. though i will say, they do have some serious primitive skills. and it has been quite some time, so things may be different there now.

also, there are folks doing similar stuff in the pnw. at least there were when i was in that area.

Answer 3

My partner tells me I complain too much. My friends tell me I'm against everything. It's not true!, but maybe it says something about what my focus is on. Maybe it means I haven't put enough effort into creating beauty in the midst of all of this madness. To create a madness of a different kind. This shit is serious, but it's also not so serious, and maybe a little more humor is due. I'm a traveler, so I deal with police constantly and they make me furious, even when they do it with a great big friendly smile, and reading your question and writing my answer has got me wanting to write/perform a little street theater about cops a la the Wobbly hobos. (PS does anyone know where to find any accounts or screenplays of Wobbly theater? Or the Little Red Songbook?)

Of course then there's always acts of revenge, or just getting drunk and yelling at people.

Re: Facebook, I've been clean for over a year now-- do you need a sponsor? Haha. I realized my time was better spent cultivating my ideas rather than arguing with people about them. It was a pretty negative thing for me and it sounds like you're having the same experience. Deleting my account was the only way to end the habit.

Comments

One of the best stories i've heard is about some kids and travellers camping on a friend's land, and the cops trying to intimidate them by sending over a 'copter in the night.
  The kids all went running to the spotlight, dancing madly in the circle of light, chasing it from place to place, until the cops gave up and fucked off.  Beauty in the midst of madness.  Humor in the face of impending violence.

You may be on to something.  ;)

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Hahaha, that's a great story, clodbuster. I've been to a few 'actions' (spectacles) with cops desperately chasing clowns encroaching on their invisible lines. I could watch that all day.

I need to say that I'm just speaking from my own experience-- there are a lot more serious things going on then cops fucking with me. I don't get shot when cops fuck with me, for example. I also want to say that actions one might take to free oneself emotionally from these burdens aren't necessarily going to be actions that actually do anything to end them.