Mutuality feat. Andrew

basis of our society. And then we took that definition and we broke it down a bit further. You go back to the episode if you want to hear how but I left my explanation a bit incomplete. I didn't get into the positive side of the definition. So today I am joined once again.

create systems that produce better outcomes and greater anarchy. It's a continuous redevelopment of the value is necessary to maintain anarchy. To never get complacent and understand that this is a species level project. The idea of anarchy being a world without rule is actually something that gets some pushback from some anarchists as well. There's this sort of rules not rulers, a version of anarchism that has a lot of sway in some circles.

not into this whole theraph democracy thing. They want to really into any form of democracy, as in the rule by majority or the rule by some abstraction called the people. Anarchism is really about. It's not just no rulers, also no rule. I've been brought into this understanding by the efforts of the translator and sort of scholar of anarchist history Sean Wilbill, who, in my opinion, is putting forward

some of the best historical analysis of anarchism today. He's actually who inspired a lot of my definition of authority and anarchism, and so I'll have his work links in the show notes, of course. But in this get into this sort of no rules staff A SHAVANARKI, A lot of people might ask, you know, but we still need rules. But of course enforceable rules are just really a full of laws that are backed by authorities, which I guess what I pose is, and unenforceable rules are not really

rules at all. They're close. It's a norms of behavior. And if living in a society tells you anything, you should know that norms should be as open to question as the most rigidive rules. In fact, norms can be even more dangerous if we let them slide. It's just the way that things are and the way we do things around here.

what is right and wrong. There's no virtue in being a majority, and there's also no virtue in being a minority, because you can see within instances where there are minorities such as the elite, the rich, who obviously have asvo all the time and their instances, the majority is that does exist to reinforce a lot of the rules and norms and authorities that are keeping all of us down. So oligmus test is not a majority use what a majority votes for, what the majority wants, or what minority

use desire. It's really the absence of authority, the sons of this sort of power over others at all. And it's also inevitably the absence of permission and probisu the ability to permit things, the ability to prohibit things. When a thing is allowed and the thing is disallowed. Yes, people can do what they want, but every el khols do what they want, and so that creates the incentive to be thoughtful and responsible in what you do, and to be thoughtful and responsible in how what you do

affects other people. You do things, and your things are open to any number of consequences, and so if you want to avoid negative consequences, you can't get informed. You have to learn about how your actions might affect others through communication with individuals and groups, and you have to find compromises and solutions to points of conflict. You're not an island. Your part of a web of mutually interdependent relationships, and that's something that exists in every kind of society

at mutual independence. The problem with hierarchy is in a hierarchy society, to access that web of mutual independence, you have to obey authority, you have to take part in the authoritaian systems, so we have access to human community. So in anarchic society, you don't have as well be an authority, but our behavior is still regulated quote unquote in a sense that we are dependent on other people and we want to have as much as possible a

harmonious relationship with those other people. Perhaps controversially, I could say that it's actually the absence of rules and rulers that makes anarchism work, because, for one, harm can ever be fully captured by rules and rules cand of capture all the possible circumstances where harm could occur. Because of the two, the existence of rule often provides protections for authority. This is something we talked about in our definition of

authority in the last episode. This idea that the authority is there's a right that grants it privileges and protections. You know, the idea that the police officer can beat you up, but you cannot raise a hand in defense of yourself. You know, the bank can evict you from your home, but you can't be throwing all its alveaus into the bank. You know, that sort of thing is a very unequal relationship that is enforced and defended by rules,

by the rights granted by those rules. And so rather than approaching society with a one size fits all approach to rules that are enforced by some type of authority, we can instead create solutions that are tield specific problems. And yes, you might approach concepts like best practice and solving problems in conflicts, but I'll be different from rules. You know, that's something that that's not enforced, and then

that's constantly in in negotiation. So then it's constantly taken into practice and developed and shifted, and it's far more flexible. And I know that it can be difficult to break away from the idea that we need rules and that the rulers are essential, but it's necessary that we can conceptualize anarchy from that angle. With that implication. It's difficult because of how we've been socialized how we tend to

view human nature. You know, it take time to develop these ideas, to join them food that I'm still grasping some of these things and trying to understand them. But you know, between this episode and the next, and all the books and all the work that is being put out there to sort of develop anarchism, to bring it to more people, and of course through practice, we can get a clearer sense of how anarchist organization can work

in all of its harmonious complexity. And I say organization and complexity specifically, because it is often assumed that the presence of anarch is the absence of organization or the absence of complexity, because those terms are often associated with are synonymized with hierarchy and authority. But you can have

organization and complexity without them. So on the next part of the definition, we get into the idea of anarcheb You know, well, where self determination, mutuality, and free association

form the basis of our society. Self attimination is probably the easiest to explain it for three terms that I use to define such a society, because it's just the idea that individuals can define and pursue their own paths is the belief that people individually and collectively have the capacity to live and organize themselves in ways to reflect

their own needs, desires, and values. It rejects the notion that others, whether they be states, corporations, religious institutions, or other elites, should have the power to dictate the lives of individuals or impose structures exploitation and control. Self detimination is the basis of autonomy, which is necessarily followed by free association. The first and foremost I want to get

into the idea of mutuality. Mutuality is feeling an action in a relationship that is based on shape benefit between individuals and groups in a society. There is reciprocity and its communication. It's a shar enough sentiment and an exchange of positive actions, and it's not unique to anarchy. Weutral into dependence, which is a component of mutuality, is also

not unique to anarchy. It can be free found in pretty much every society because we rely on neutrality to survive and progress through our day to day life, whether we're working together to clean the house for Christmas or troubleshooting a problem in the workplace, or taking part in a club or sport, or sharing resources follow in a natural disaster. Mutuality happens constantly, informally and often without recognition. This is something that Creator talks about in Debt of

First five thousand Years. He says, this is the glue that who will society together? Not contracts or power, but solidarity, empathy, and the natural human inclination to care for others. All world is so divided, and we still find ways to care. Are there obstacles that care? Of course, you know the various presuences, propagandized mindsets, socio economic systems, and material conditions that limit our practice of mutuality. But these are problems

that he seeks to rectify. Obviously, it's used like cluialism and white supremacy are fractured societies along racial lines and create a distress and competition where mutuality could flourish. The propaganda perpetuated by states and corporations also limits our capacity to imagine mutuality and create this sense of ssty in this competitive mindset that creates an unnecessary dichotomy between the

success of the individual and success of the collective. Because of the very nature these hierarchical systems are forcing us intexplosive relationships. Things like mutual aid and are being replaced by transactional exchanges. Care and community become commodities, basic human needs become profit driven markets, and the state takes on a lot of the role that was formerly filled by mutuality.

Just the idea of disaster response, for example, is dominated by bureaucratic agencies that monobilize and direct the resources that could be used and more effectively used by people addressing their own needs locally. And of course, with the implementation of the property regime, with privatization fencing off the commons that once supports at communal life, it creates that sort of scarcity that the limits or interpersonal practice of neutrality.

And when people are poor, when they're struggling intermediate will needs, they often lack the resources or energy to extend help to others. Food and secure families may not have the capacity to engage in community support networks. Or you know, if you look at how cities are often designed their structure to isolate people, they make it harder people to

form balance of trust. The existence of all these non places like highways, the absence of third places, and the prevalence of civil and sprawl or make it more difficult for us to form bonds of trust and solidarity. And then, of course you have the intervention of the state into people's efforts to engage in mutual aid. You know, the states punishes and criminalizes mutual aid efforts for migrants or

for homeless people. You will often see the police or border authority is preventing people from helping those people, charging them with criminal penalties just for trying to help their fellow humor and all these are things that limits the free and full flourishing of mutuality. Or we shouldn't look to the limits of mutuality in our current system as an indication of how it might be limited in another system.

In fact, we can look at these limits and see what ways mutuality could flourish even further when they no longer exist. So by taking the time to dismantle prejudices, to challenge propaganda, to build alternatives, and to create abundance, we can start to recognize the potential of our mutuality. And so really getting from zero point A to point B, it becomes a matter of expanding our solidarity, which would expand our capacity for mutuality to drive our social organizations.

Solidarity is about establishing and recognizing the bond between all people, understanding that I center gain from you doing well and vice versa rememother. Our system incentivized selfishness that acts to the detriment of others. So anarchy doesn't need perfect people,

it just needs systems to have better incentives. So anarchic systems would incentivize generosity and selflessness, of course, But the real trick is really in creating systems that utilize selfishness to the benefit of others, making it so that even the most self interested and self absorbed people are a net positive or at least a net zero on the impacts of the rest of society, because they will find themselves acting in ways that are generous and that are

selfless in order to get the gains that they desire for themselves. You can call it to kind of a selfish selflessness.

So the practice of anarchy is a way of creating a society where no one stands above another, and where lives are built in cooperation instead of domination. Reshape and how we practice mutuality why building new habits of cooperation that work without rulers. And that's what social revolution is all about. It's an ongoing and intentional transformation of our society for economy and culture and philosophy and technology and

relationship and politics. It's the ongoing indication of all forms of authority and prejudice and the ongoing affirmation of freely associated equals. There is, in many ways a reconstitution of our natural initiative or capacity of mutuality and our responsibility for ourselves and each other. And that starts here and now, not at some distant points in the future. It won't be easy, but it's necessary to unshackle our mutuality to create a society where it can flourish. And this is

where we get into things like mutual aid. It's confused with charity very often, but it's a manifestation of our mutuality. It's a voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange of services and resources in a society. And so it's not about tit for tat peedback or measuring each person's contributions. It's what taking responsibility for one another as members of a society and building social relations that sharpen our ability to collaborate

and share. To part phrase Peter Creputkin, practice and mutual aid is the surest means forgiving each other into all of the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress bodily, intellectually, and morally, but mutually. Like I said earlier, it derives its basis from our interdependence, which is another component of mutuality. Mutual independence is the very basic idea that we rely on each other for various aspects of

our lives. In every kind of society and an he our mutual interdependence is unrestricted by authority and instead guided by complementarity, so we are all approached and appreciated as unique equals cooperated on that basis. Mutual responsibility is another manifestation of mutuality, as the idea that in the absence of legal order, in the absence of authority, when society is no longer guided by laws that are binding and enforceable by some authority, we must be guided instead by responsibility.

But actions are pre authorized or pre judged by an external rules, but that each action is undertaken freely and subject to any number of responses positive and negative. Are you curious about this idea of legal order and permission, prohibition and unusual responsibility? I recommend Sean Wilber's and new glossary on the Libertarian Labyrinth, as it offers the exploration of that concept and a lot more to synthetic anarchism.

So anarchy demands a high degree of self awareness, care, and reciprocity from individuals and communities, not through coercion or enforcement, but through voluntary continue us and conscious negotiation. Incentivized by the nature of the system itself, with its basis in cooperation and the desire to prevent annecessary conflict. In hierarchical systems, humans of justice often escalates conflict. Imprisonment, for example, tends

to breed resentment and resistance and further criminalization. In anarchy, the absence of preauthorized retaliation encourages us to find that dialogue and to create restorative practices. If a conflict arises over a resource, people have an interest in reachion and resolution that benefits both rather than escalates and things and prolonged disputes. So, such as society, you will necessarily require responsibility.

They're both responsibility for the environment and responsibility for other people. You know, if you are costing the ecosystem its resources, it can just offload that cost onto everybody else, As it's common in captive systems. You have to be in dialogue with other people to ensure your actions are balanced by replenishing the resource, by mitigating harm, or by securing

so kind of collective agreement. And if somebody is creating a disruptive situation, if they're blasting out music at night, we kind oft rely on an external authority to mediate, but we have to mediate in some way. We have to find ways to ensure that they bear the costs of disturbing others, whether involves apologizing or making amends or just in their behavior, or if they don't want to take on other people facing other consequences as necessary. So

social revolution really aims to prepare us for that responsibility. It's, as Wilber describes, a basic principle for encountering, recognizing, and engaging with others. It's our beefed up and extremely demanded version of the Golden rule. The organic emergence of this responsibility and the incentives of this system could create a sort of a mutual understanding, which is another aspect of neutrality. As people will necessarily form norms of behavior that will

guide the interactions between them. They'll facilitate consultation and negotiation

to restrain the escalation of conflict. They'll maintain the viability of shared commons and libraries of thiths, and similarly, our desire to prevent the escalation of conflict, to prevent threat to our being and prevent threats to our social harmony or society's integrity with thus developed a sense of mutual defense it's in all of our interests to minimize the potential Hoever, our actions to proctively seek out solutions to potential and actual conflict ensure that we won't get flack

and pushback and negative consequences to the things that we do and threats to the sustainability of our society and our lives I. Thinyet. Another manifestation of mutuality become to the idea of mutual interests, which are what make free association as the basis of an arctic social organization possible. Free association is the founding principle of an archic social organization, and it refers the ability of each person to move around to association disassociated with others as they so choose,

without being subject to authority. Free association is free from the impositions of wage labor, from the boundaries of citizenship, and from all other hierarchical relationships. This is different from the sort of liberal idea of freedom of association, where under capitalists that freedom of association is the freedom that

comes with signing contracts and control in private property. So being free from authority, we still have to do what we have to do, because we're still muchly interdependent, but that free association empowers people to connect with others and to form groups based around shared interests or as add actions to pursue those interests. Of actions. So interest maypy as broad as onet and to eat, or as niche as wanting to maintain the traditional Japanese art of wood joinery.

Or they might span the globe or whatever unique to a particular interest, such as those who are interested in the mantia and the cleanliness of a local river. So groups don't just exist for the sake of existing. They don't exist to perpetuate on existence. They exist with a particular goal in mind, whether that is mintian roads, producing a distributing food, or building housing. And then such groups may exist for a long time, or they may dissolve frequently.

They may split, or they may emerge. They may overlap or come into conflict, and the spaces where they interact could be called spaces of encounter, taken place in factories or in gardens, specifically to at online platforms or some sort of community center. So free association may occur on the level of networks of individuals or federations of groups. But I need to explain the commune and the federation, because those are things that can be interpreted in a

few different ways. You know, federations people who might think of government, communes people might think of well, local government or con geese or something of that nature. Yeah, be cult too. So i'm a key is about funding ways to cooperate in ways that are not bound by the traditional boundaries of authority, and that includes didditional boundaries of shared territory. The Anech's commune has been confused very often

with things like intentional communities or administrative divisions. But if we're going by Kropotkin's description in Words of a Rebel Chapters Tend to eleven, he makes it clear that commune describes any group forming on the basis of free association. In fact, he juxtaposes the free commune with traditional conceptions of the commune. He says, for us quote, commune no

longer means a territorial agglomeration. It is rather a generic name, a synonym for the grouping of equals, which knows neither frontiers nor walls. The social commune soon cease to be a clearly defined entity. Each group in the commune necessarily be drawn towards similar groups and other communes. They'll come together, and the things that federate them will be as solid as those that attach them to their fellow citizens, And this way they will emerge a commune of interests whose

members are scattered in a thousand towns and villagious. Each individual find the full satisfaction of his needs only by grouping with other individuals who have the same tastes but inhabits one hundred other communes end quote. Scropotkin's commune is essentially a fluid collective of individuals and groups wherever they find themselves, coming together their own volition and according to their shared interests, projects, and activity, without being bound to

territorial designations. So I expect to see a bunch of like mini governments all over a bunch of mini community governments or over energy. Because an abstract group in the community may not even necessarily share many real interests in common, as trying to put them all into one body, one polity that is responsible for identifying and enacting their will, it tends to be dominated by the group's most dominant voices.

It tends to subordinate individuals to the will of a nebulous collective nebulous majority as The alternative to this sort of polity form, as Willard describes it is the federative principle understood in its most radical anarchic sensus, So not in the sense of networking conventional static polities like a confederation of city states, but instead bringing together the information and perspectives necessary to facilitate the dynamic process of free association.

We could look to antionomies of democracy. Another bit of writing by Wilbur which fud explains how the federative organization is the process by which we identify specific social cells as an interests or needs and establish the involvement in large scale collectivities that are formed on the basis of those conversion interests. So these collectivities might exist on a sort of a consultative basis as they seek out and

disseminate information or advice. It relates to interests, but the recognition we're relevant of expertise, so there might be such associations based on armed defense or cohousing construction or agro forestry. The RepU consultative associations with a journalistic focus or with a rewildin focus or an accessibility focus. They may exist on any scale, depending on the specificity of the information needed, from as the locals an apartment building to as far

reaching as a consonant or even the entire globe. Consultative associations could create bluepference. They could document the viewable label and expertise, They can source resources, and they can share feedback. Also that interested and affected individuals and groups can easily

access everything they need to make informed decisions. So in anarchy, we'll see a variety of individuals grouping together and interacted in ways that are perhaps illegible from our top down view of society, but in ways that work to accomplish

their goals, resolve their conflicts, and maintain social harmony. It can be difficult to imagine this possibility due to how thoroughly our disempowerment in dovestigation has been We live under a global order that seems to deny any alternatives and extors its understanding of human nature as the only valid interpretation.

The propaganda of our education on mass media and our inherited understanding as subjects in hierarchical society has limited our consciousness of our situation and thus our drives and powers to transform our situation. There are those of us who can overcome this through theoretical and historical study. But there are others who can only overcome this condition through demonstration. Some are not convinced by intellectual anarchist arguments. They have

to be transformed through experiences. So to borrow the terminology of innovation adoption, it is up to us early adopters, those who are into the revolution before it becomes cool, to convince the majority of the possibility of freedom by example.

And furthermore, as William Gillis wrote in The Distinct Radicalism of Anarchism, quote, to reach a moment where we sit back entirely satisfied would be to abandon anarchism to the radical of It is no alitmus for due diligence, no final finish line, no moment where we pat ourselves on the back. The vigilance of the radical is never as satiated. End quote. And that's it for me today. We'll get more into revolution, powers, drives, and consciousness and more in

future episodes. In the meantime, you can check out my channel Andraism on YouTube. I took all things like this all the time I've been ondre siege. This is it could happen here. All power to all the people peace.