Oryx and Crake

  

      Oryx and Crake is a disturbing epic that takes place in a post apocalyptic wasteland just a few weeks after a devastating man made plague has nearly extincted humanity. A lone survivor by the name of Snowman struggles with a wildly fluctuating climate as well as a menagerie of genetically engineered animals. The biggest threat are the pigoons, giant pigs originally farmed for human organ transplants. Some of them even have human brain tissue, originally developed by none other than Snowman's scientist father.     

      This isn't what most of the story is, however. Most of the story takes place in Snowman's flashbacks, when he still went by Jimmy and the world is separated into sprawling mega-slums called pleeblands and heavily militarized corporate city-states where the world's ruling class lives. Jimmy grew up in one of these compounds to a genetic engineer father and a mother who eventually becomes so disgusted with the compound that she escapes to join the environmental resistance. This environmental resistance is largely made up by a naturalist Christian religion called the God's Gardeners. But more on them later.

      By starting Jimmy's flashbacks in his early childhood, Atwood makes the reader analyze Jimmy's psyche from adolescence all the way up to his present self. A lot is revealed about his unhappy childhood and the effects his mother's absence has on him in particular. Combined with all the weird sexual stuff, it gives the book a Freudian feel.    

      Snowman isn't actually totally alone. He shares the wasteland with the ultimate genetic creation, a race of perfect, aesthetically pleasing humans called the children of Crake designed and created by his childhood  friend and genetic prodigy Glenn, who later takes the name Crake. They look like humans, but they mature to adulthood in just 7 years and die at age 30. They are herbivorous, living off of plants, roots, berries, and their own poop. The poop thing lets them get as much nutrients from a sparse diet as possible, and that ability was given to them by Crake from certain real life rabbit species. They are born with totally random skin colors in part to prevent racism from building in their tribal society. Also, they all emit natural insect deterrent sweat that makes them smell like citrus. Their most important attribute is that female children of Crake go into heat once a month and select multiple mates at a time. That way the children of Crake aren't constantly occupied with sex and experience none of the complications and pain caused by romantic love.


    The relationship between Jimmy and Glenn was one of my favorite parts of the book. It is tense and painful to read because Jimmy desperately wants companionship, but Glenn is basically a sociopath. He uses Jimmy as a pawn in his plot to extinct humanity with his engineered 100% fatal disease so that the children of Crake can inherit the rapidly re-greening Earth. Jimmy is hired as the advertising manager of a combination birth control/STD vaccine/aphrodisiac super drug, which is what Crake uses in secret to disseminate his plague. This is what keeps Jimmy occupied, but in reality Crake's plan is for Jimmy to become the protector of the children of Crake. Snowman fulfills this role and leads them across the wasteland to the coast, where they settle.  

     Glenn and Jimmy spend a lot of their free time together watching porno and public executions online, which at this point in the future is basically a normal thing to do. Sex and violence has become the ultimate commodity and the sex trade is a massive industry with an entire corporation devoted to it called SeksMart (dumb name). Watching child pornography together one day (I told you, its a very disturbing book) Jimmy first sees Oryx, who he later falls in love with after Crake finds her in the pleeblands and employs her to help with his genetic projects.    

   Snowman discovers that Crake's plague didn't kill everyone however. Snowman is told about a group of people that the children of Crake saw wandering the wasteland and he sets off to find them as he struggles with a severely infected foot. The book ends on a major cliffhanger as a feverish and starving Snowman reaches a group of three survivors gathered around a fire, the first humans he has seen since the plague.
   

Year of The Flood

    This book is told from the perspective of  two women who both were members of a religious cult called the God's Gardeners. Like Jimmy in Oryx and Crake the character's life story is described all the way from early childhood in the same flashback format of the first book.   

God's Gardeners

     The God's Gardeners are a new religious movement founded by Adam One, spiritual leader of the group and charismatic street prophet. Basically they are a super-hippy version of a Tolstoyan commune. They begin on an expansive rooftop garden in one of the most poor pleeblands and squat nearby abandoned buildings. All of their food is grown on the garden and everything else they have is dumpstered. Members are all strict vegans who try not to harm any animal life, even of insect pests. This element was an interesting take on Ahimsa from the Jain religion of India. The book follows the progression of the religion with short chapters that begin with a speech by Adam One and ends with a hymn from The God's Gardeners Oral Hymnbook, which was actually put to music. We learn in the final sermon by Adam One that although the God's Gardeners survive the initial epidemic, which they see as a biblical "waterless flood" sent to purify the Earth, infected survivors later bring them into contact with the virus and kill them all.

     Ren was brought to the Garden by her mother, who like Jimmy's mother left her comfortable life in the compound. Unlike Jimmy's mother she left for personal reasons. She had fallen in love with Zeb, a hardened but dashing eco-warrior who later causes a schism in the God's Gardeners as those who push for more active resistance split off to strike civilization with engineered bio-weapons. After having relationship problems with Zeb she decides to go back to the compound with Ren. Ren has at this point spent most of her life at the Garden and resents her mother for taking her away from it, and also misses her best friend Amanda, a Texan refugee who also survived the flood.

      Ren's family later moves her again to another compound and is put in the same high school as Jimmy and Glenn. Although Ren's relationship to Jimmy is only briefly mentioned in Oryx and Crake it was an extremely important part of Ren's life and she keeps thinking about Jimmy and if he has survived throughout the whole book. I thought that discrepancy was pretty strange and even thought that maybe Margaret Atwood hadn't even planned that from the beginning. At this school she also spends time with Glenn, but he remains just as mysterious as in Oryx and Crake.

      Toby is much older than Ren, and was one of her teachers back at the Garden. After being ruthlessly exploited by the corporations she joins the God's Gardeners out of desperation. They first kill her mother by using her as an unknowing guinea pig for freshly made microbes, which drives her father to suicide. At this point she is destitute and is given a job at a disgusting burger chain called SecretBurger (because the meat is secret) where she is preyed upon by her mafioso boss. This is where Adam One storms in and gives Toby a chance to join the God's Gardeners.

      Although they did save her and she is grateful, Toby never really made any decisions to stay in the group entirely on her free will. Not only did she not have much of a choice to leave SecretBurger, but the group emotionally manipulates her into becoming a full fledged member. She realizes it though and the reader can tell she holds a lot of deep down resentment of the group for it, even though she loves her fellow gardeners. 

     

     Adam One

        Now, I realize that they are kinda culty, but I would totally join them if they existed. People always hate on being a hippy, but it looks like loads of fun. Farming and gathering is a blast, you get to meet lots of pretty hippy girls, everybody is pretty healthy in general, and regular social standards of hygiene and nudity are relaxed.

      Year of the Flood seemed way more plausible than Oryx and Crake, solely because in the 6 years difference between the books so much real world technological "progress" has been made. For example, video cell phones are used in this book all the time while they weren't in Oryx and Crake. Overall the science they have is more in line with the trajectory that technology is taking today. The fact that it can be so different in just 6 years is an implicit, unintentional message in itself that this future really could happen. That is in line with Atwood's assertion that the novels aren't really science fiction, but speculative fiction.
 
      Despite being about religion, YoTF lost a lot of the biblical feel that made Oryx and Crake so good. I think what made it lose its epic qualities is its focus on the God's Gardeners community rather than a single individual. The brutality of Snowman's loneliness and diminishing sanity gave Oryx and Crake an edge that YoTF couldn't match. That isn't to say YoTF wasn't brutal. It was just as full of awful violence and crimes against nature as Oryx and Crake was, if not more so.

     A warning to those who want to read the trilogy: It will make you pretty miserable. And its not just because of the non-stop violence and tragedy, because you can expect that in a book about a biopunk corporate dystopia leading to total environmental collapse. What is most depressing is the complete lack of emotional depth in the characters. I can see why a lot of people wouldn't like the series for this reason, but I loved it. The lack of emotion was a very conscious decision by Margaret Atwood to put the focus of the story on morality.

     Overall, I enjoyed these books and im pretty excited for the last of the series, Maddaddam. I'm most interested in the story line's present and what will happen to the children of Crake. I also hope that the pigoons will play a larger part in the story, considering we don't know how smart they really are.What I would love most of all is for the third to have some parts from the perspective of Crake or at least anything that digs more into his motivations. Realistically though, it will focus on Zeb (who goes by the codename Maddaddam) and the other active resistors. I loved the kinds of bio-attacks they were mentioned using in this book, like microbes that cause asphalt roads to swell and puff out like marshmallows all over the southwest and mice that are compelled to chew through the engine belts of cars. I'm definitely most sympathetic to the Maddaddamites and can't wait for the new book.

My Feed

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     Choice is not liberty.They certainly have a lot of correlation, but to conflate one with another is extremely dangerous. The characters in Feed have a ridiculous amount of choice. They can take weekend trips to the moon, alter their appearance in drastic and scary ways, and design their own babies. But they live a vapid lifestyle based on oppression of others and the natural world. Part of the problem with thinking choice is the same as liberty lies in the bourgeoisie understanding of freedom. From that point of view freedom is thought of as a positive existing condition rather than a negation of any form of coercive authority.

    Although this book is the most likely scenario for our generation that we have read it reminded me most of 1984, which was probably the least likely. The big similarity is that in both dystopian worlds society has reached a point where resistance is impossible. The authors of both of these books seem to believe that once the trajectory of society down any authoritarian path has been followed through, be it state socialism or industrial capitalism, you reach a point of no return where nothing can stop it. It can either end in horrific collapse like Feed or it can reach an equilibrium that could possibly just go on forever, like 1984. I don't know how realistic the whole "point of no return" thing is, but it is always something to consider.

     Would I resist the feed? It wouldn't really be my decision. With the exception of Violet the young characters in the book didn't choose the feed. Considering that public school has been privatized and no longer teaches reading and writing or any other non-feed skills, there would be no way to get information outside of what you get from the feed. Although resistance movements are mentioned in the book none of them pose any real danger to the social order.


     I don't think that any significant resistance to the feed was meant to be possible, just like any attempt to resist the Party of Oceania is useless. But does resistance have any value if it is in the end entirely futile?  I think so. Many of those who have lost their lives resisting oppression think so. If an oppressive society follows a disastrous path that ends up destroying the natural world like in Feed, then those that survive (if any do) will know that at least some tried to fight back. 

Choose your own-cultural heritage

     The idea of cultural heritage is a tricky one. At its most basic, it is an extremely important and positive part of society. Indigenous cultures of any geographic location share the same qualities of communal values and an ecological mindset. Literally every primitive human culture developed a distinct shamanistic spiritual sphere based around both professional and lay practitioners alike that have in-depth knowledge of their people's culture and mythology.

     Sadly, cultural heritage has been largely appropriated by nationalists. What began as shared traditions based around unique and autonomous communities has been institutionalized. Having just ended another holiday consumptive cycle, Christmas is a perfect example of this. I could talk for a long time about why I hate Christmas so much and you probably know what im going to say anyway, so ill condense it into one short sentence: it is a holiday based on materialism. I don't care if you think that it is actually about family or love or Christ or whatever, the main focus of it has been consumption for a long time. And for those who rather would spend the day in church or some alternative way of celebrating from the standard tree-sacrifice gift-ritual the social pressure from the dominant culture is tremendous. So tremendous that it has spread far beyond its original home in white Western European Christian culture. Now Hanukkah, which had traditionally had never been a gift giving holiday, has basically become the Jewish analogue to Christmas. It is probably the only Jewish holiday most Americans know anything about and it isn't even a High Holiday.

     When culture is institutionalized like that it becomes something totally different. It becomes "national identity". Nothing disgusts me more than it.
   


     The novels 1984 and Feed depict a future where heritage has been completely washed away by the cultural hegemony. In 1984 society has been stripped down to its most bare, utilitarian functions leaving no room for cultural heritage. The power of culture to create affinities that lie outside of, and contrary to, state power can be compared to the sexual, romantic, or familial bonds that The Party also despises. 

      Feed shows a culture that had become so ridiculously capitalistic and industrialist that culture has become a commodity and nothing more. In this way culture loses its deeper emotional meanings. So basically everything is like Christmas. 

     Handmaid's Tale shows an America where the cultural heritage of Christianity and even some elements of European paganism have been co-opted by the state and used to form an extremely powerful national identity based on white supremacy and patriarchy. This is much more realistic than 1984 or feed, because why would an empire reject culture if it can instead make it into an immensely powerful tool of social control?
   
     Cultural hegemony doesn't just affect traditions and oral history or less tangible concepts like morality, but it is just as important to look at actual geographic locations. Nationalists love to strip monuments and historical sights of their original histories and meanings so that they can turn them into bland patriotic symbols.

     Stonehenge is an example of the kind of alienated state "protection" of "national treasures" (vomit) that I hate. I saw it a couple months ago and was very disappointed. The whole thing is roped off and the closest you ever actually get to it is like 50 feet! It should be treated like a living part of cultural heritage (and even worship) rather than something to be viewed and analyzed from a distance. When people can't have an actual connection with the site itself and cant communally value it as a LIVING site, what is it really besides a big pile of old  rocks? Its like the difference between looking at the Dome of The Rock at a distance and actually taking part in a procession around it.

Blindness

      Blindness is a book about what happens when society is dissolved nearly instantly. Personally, I think that the concept of an epidemic of blindness is the best part of the book. Combined with Saramago's strange writing style it succeeds in creating a more chaotic atmosphere than any of the other books we have read. This is ironic because it also has the least physical destruction of any of the books we have read. A lot of cars crashed as a result of spontaneous blindness and every surface is quickly being covered in a layer of poop, but otherwise everything has been left alone. It is fitting because the focus of this book is not on larger society, but on the relations of smaller groups. First the group of a few hundred in the asylum and later an even smaller band of about ten people. I didn't like that aspect of the book at first, but I started to like it after the asylum had burnt down.   
     
      About the style. It was brutal. I had to read this book in very short spurts of 15 minutes at a time. The only other book I have read that was written like this is One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude is also written with very long run-on sentences, but it does use quotations and paragraphs. I wonder if this is partly caused by tricky translation from the original languages. Maybe Blindness is a lot less harsh to read in its original Portuguese.

     Frankly, I had no idea what this book was all about or what Jose Saramago was trying to say. I know this book had a lot of statements about humanity and society and stuff but it all went over my head I guess. After I learned Saramago was a hard-core anarchist communist I really wished I had understood more of it. In the part of the book that takes place in the asylum Saramago seemed to take a very pessimistic view on humanity. This changes when the people being terrorized by the criminal element rise up together and revolt. This micro-revolution marks a redemption of the characters pride. From this point on the book becomes more optimistic. The smaller group led by the seeing woman may not be much better off materially, but the solidarity of the smaller collective gives them back their humanity. Saramago makes the fundamentally anarchist point that small groups based on affinity are far superior to the kind of forced collectivity of the asylum. At least I understood that part.

Llamaggedon

Why does The Apocalypse take up such a massive part of popular culture? It seem like at any given time at least one hit movie is apocalyptic, World War Z being the current one. Personally, I have always hoped that it is because deep down people are sickened by the overwhelming monotony of capitalism.

A large portion of any modern Apocalypse movie is the imagined destruction of everything that is culturally familiar. In early apocalypse movies this usually meant the destruction or abandon of iconic monuments, like the Statue of Liberty in Planet of The Apes for example.Recently, the poor victims of these Micheal Bay style explosions has changed. Today, transnational corporations are a lot more familiar to a global audience than any monument could be. The best example of this is the Time Square scene of I Am Legend. The abandonment of every McDonalds and Starbucks in Manhattan is a lot more unbelievable than the abandonment of The Statue of Liberty I guess.

This fascination for shiny shiny explosions kind of reminds me of the Ow My Balls scene in Idiocracy at times. Being treated to at least an hour of over the top CGI stuff-smashing in the horrendous movie 2012 this weekend certainly reminded me of it, especially considering it was the fifth highest grossing film of 2009.
But I like to think that really it is all a sign of a deep seated disgust at the status quo. I also hope that the popular appeal of post-Apocalyptic films reflects an inner desire for autonomy and the independence granted when all previous social relations have been destroyed and humanity has a clean slate for recreating society. If this is the case, then I can't for the Alpacalypse.

Gileadan Empire

 Every state is evil. And if I am going to personify them, then it is fair to say some states are on another level of evil.  If the average state is petty and cruel bully then an empire is a malicious and ingenious sociopath. The empire has no limit to its hunger for power and size. It not only wishes to exert as much power as possible over its subjects, but it wishes to have as many subjects as possible as well.

This book, undeniably, had a lot to do about the nature of power and the state. We can tell from the historical notes part of the book that Margaret Atwood was thinking about empire consciously when it is stated "no empire imposed by force or otherwise has ever been without this feature: control of the indigenous by members of their own group". This is one of the necessary strategies of the imperial state. The early American empire used it against the Native Turtle Islanders, the British Empire used it in India, And the Roman Empire used it on barbarian tribes on every possible border. It was even used by Akkadian Empire of Mesopotamia, arguably the first empire ever, against the city-states of Sumer.
   
In this section she also stresses the importance of the cultural impositions of the regime. Part of this cultural dominance is the aesthetics of day to day life. All of the costumes that each social class wears was carefully planned out to highlight the role and position of each. More importantly though is the neologisms, as well as the slang, created by the regime. The vocabulary created is even more closely analyzed than the costumes. The naming of the Aunts, for example, to pleasant sounding brand names is a great tactic that Gilead uses to make the first generation of women not fear them. The slang that arose from this society is even more important at normalizing the state's behaviors than the imposed vocabulary of Gilead itself. The term "shredders"  is used as a way to cope with the horror of the empire's infanticide but in the end might also end up being used to rationalize the practice.

Children of Men

When most ecological disaster based dystopian book or movies see a rampant population as one of the main contributors to an environmental apocalypse, Children of Men goes in the opposite direction and envisions a world where an unknown virus has sterilized everyone on Earth.

The main source of anxiety and suspense in most apocalyptic media is the struggle for the characters to preserve their own lives and the lives of their loved ones. Children of Men is such a radical departure from that because the main character starts of in a relative position of comfort and safety compared to most of the world. The main focus of fear is not for the lives of the characters, but for the survival of the human race itself.

Unlike Life As We Knew It I can actually understand why someone might question the point of continuing to live in the face of total extinction.But this movie isn't depressing at all. The characters are likeable and their is a lot of pleasant and even light hearted interaction between them.Nobody in this movie ever has any lack of passion to live. On the contrary they fight for survival of the species.

Eating Your Cat

"It's possible Horton's been killed," Matt said. "For food." (pg. 130)


Environmental catastrophe is inevitable. Their is plenty of evidence to support that this collapse is coming sooner rather than later. I'm sure their are plenty of climate change deniers and "progress" minded people that would disagree with me on this point, but I have no interest in arguing it. It is such an inevitability that I can't see how anyone could deny it.

Therefore, we should all start supplementing our meals with pet food and other less desirable foods so that we are prepared for when that really is all that we have. A little kibble in your brown bag every day might end up saving your life.  Theirs no reason why you shouldn't, cat food is scientifically proven to be healthy and delicious. I'm not ashamed to admit that some of the more upscale all-organic canned dog food brands I have seen look a good deal tastier than many meals I have at one point eaten. Hell, meals I have eaten in the past week probably have less nutritional value than them. And if people think this is gross, then I will rejoice, because that only means more cans of Alpo and chihuahua roasts for me. 

This book never really was an apocalypse novel. The vast majority of it is the main character and her family trying to cope with a drastic change in lifestyle. The difference between the apocalypse and a sudden change in environment and living situation would have caused the same emotional responses from the family members. No element of their post-apocalyptic life is quantitatively worse than what countless of generations have had to face before them. People living in Gdansk or Leningrad during WWII were facing famine and violence far worse than Miranda's family sees. Those people weren't constantly having existential crises, they were too busy trying to survive and even fight back.

Social Consciousness

"But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies."


     One of the main goals of revolutionaries is to spread awareness of how social relationships function to people of all social groups. Socialism in particular stresses the importance of class consciousness. Class consciousness can be described as the collective understanding of the working class, or proletariat, that they are being exploited and that the ruling classes survive as leeches off of the fruits of their labor. Winston constantly laments the fact that if the proles were to become conscious they could destroy the Party immediately, and yet, they never will.
      In this passage Orwell (being the classic socialist as always) sees class consciousness as the most important aspect of social awareness. For 150 years this has been the anguish of socialists the world over.
For example: Zinn on class consciousness. As a Libertarian Socialist Howard Zinn shares the same exact class based views and mindset of Orwell more than 60 years after 1984 was written.
      But if class consciousness could create a successful proletarian world revolution in practically no time at all, then why has it never happened? Even in so called "communist" revolutions the working class has flocked to the same old nationalistic cult personalities that have always run things sooner than realize their own potential for creating change and order.
       I believe this is because the dull politics of class consciousness is only one facet of a greater social consciousness that includes not only class; but race, gender, sexuality, and countless other aspects. Socialists like Orwell insist that the proletariat can be seen as a unified body with the same interests. But their are countless other social divisions that must be addressed. For example, a poor indigenous community in Mexico has entirely different concerns and battles from a radical gay community facing heterosexism in Chicago. As groups that are in opposition to the dominant culture of Western hegemony, their enemy is one and the same. However, they are different in practically every other way. 
      The ignorance of these divisions, and sometimes even downright refusal to acknowledge them, is what is really hindering a revolutionary social consciousness. Paradoxically, when we do acknowledge them we create an environment in which disparate social groups can build connections and common struggles.

Privacy

      Government's oppressiveness change based on the material conditions of the time. State power is a constant variable that is in direct conflict with popular power. You could look at history analytically and pick apart the reasons why some states are more powerful at different times, but for the individuals that live in those nations it just boils down to luck. If you are comparatively lucky you might live in an orderly and peaceful Patagonian Gaucho town, far away from any authority. But if you lived just 40 years ago during the Guerra Sucia period in an urban center of Argentina or Chile you would be under the thumb of American backed dictatorships responsible for the disappearance of thousands. It can be hard to predict when a government will decide to crack down on its people, or when a capitalist economy will reach one of its inevitable crises.
      The one thing that is inevitable and can be predicted is that the state will develop and use new technologies to spy on its population. This leads to the creation of the surveillance state. I would define a surveillance state as a nation that uses surveillance as its main deterrent to crime. By this definition the Party of 1984 is an obvious surveillance state. America and other industrialized nations are frequently called surveillance states, but surveillance today is far from being more than marginally effective. The problem is that cameras and audio recording technology is not cheap yet. The cost of the labor it would take to actually have an omnipresent surveillance state is even more expensive than that. The real world cost to create the kind of surveillance seen in the Truman Show would be astronomical, and that level is really what would be needed to create a surveillance state.
      Every year that cost is decreasing. At some point in the future it might actually be viable to abolish privacy. Computers could advance to the point that people wont even need to monitor the video cameras that have become omnipresent. Voice recognition and comprehension software could one day be able to understand a phrase like "lets go on a country-wide shoplifting spree" and alert police.
      The only thing that could keep this from happening is if people fight back for their privacy before it is too late. Instances of privacy being violated should be exposed and fought in every battlefield possible. This means legal obstruction and suits, protest and disobedience, and vandalism and destruction of the equipment itself. If we don't act quickly a panopticon will be built that will be as hard to destroy as the Party of Airstrip One.

Civil Rights

       I don't think it is ever necessary to give up "civil rights" for the "greater good". I put both "civil rights" and "greater good" in quotations because I do not believe that either of those things exist. As we creep into the third great Red Scare this only becomes more clear. 
      In late July dozens of anarchists from all over the west coast were subpenaed to a grand jury in Seattle. Unlike a regular trial, a Grand Jury determines whether a criminal indictment will be issued. These anarchists were indicted based on a bank vandalism that occurred during Seattle's May Day protests. However, because it is only a preliminary hearing they need practically no evidence at all to put them on trial. Even if nothing is ever found on them, they can still be kept subpenaed for a maximum of 3 years. In essence, its a modern day witch hunt.   
      The concept of rights is based in authoritarian thinking. One of the first and most famous examples of the concept of "rights" is the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi. In this code and its surrounding mythology the Babylonian gods are the ultimate authority and law is passed from them to the priest-king class. For the next 2000 something years, this paradigm would barely change from Babylon, to the pagan Roman empire, to the Europe-wide dominance of the Catholic church. The creation of the secular state built up the myth of rights even more.
      The worst thing about civil rights is that it lulls people into a false sense of security. The danger of this cannot be understated. History has shown that no government has ever really believed in rights on a moral basis. The state reverts to rights based justifications when they want to do something like "liberate" a third world country, but throw them away when accused of torturing citizens of that same nation.
      It can even be so bad that when the state blatantly ignores the "rights" that it is assumed to be protecting people will ignore it or not even ever see it happening. Luckily, there are still many that can see past the fragile veneer of civil rights that protects the secular state and know when to resist. 

Handicaps

My biggest handicap would be a hideous mask to cover up my dangerously exceeding good looks. That way, I don't get the special treatment, free dinners, and modelling offers that always follow me wherever I go. I would also be given a mandatory uniform so that I cant use my impeccable fashion sense to be better dressed than anyone else. That way nobody will feel insecure when they see how good I look in the same 2 black hoodies and single pair of combat boots I wear basically every day. This would be good because I wouldn't have to constantly feel bad for those less privileged than me. Also, I would finally be free from the constant jealousy that is so often directed at me. Handicaps would be very liberating.

Propaganda

         In this age people see more propaganda on a day to day basis than they have ever seen, but its presence generally goes unnoticed. However, it isn’t the kind of upfront and explicit nationalist propaganda that was so popular in the last century. Most propaganda we see today is of a subtler and more insidious form, and because of this it is more dangerous. The reason why it is less obvious today is that it deals with and enforces political and social subjects that the vast majority of people never question.
          Take for example two different advertisements for a line of deodorant. One of the commercials is for a deodorant “for women”. In this commercial the deodorant is pink and fruit scented, and the actresses in it go shopping and clean their houses. In the other commercial a deodorant “for men” is advertised. The deodorant is blue and more musky smelling, and the actors in the commercial play football and go to sports bars. Most people wouldn’t think anything is strange about these two commercials. But why is their two different types of deodorant at all? What makes the pink one inherently more “feminine“? How has gender preference been decided? And by who? Are men genetically inclined to the color blue? Are women genetically inclined to fruit scented deodorant? The obvious answer is that they are not, and that gender is an artificial binary.
           Reinforcement of the gender binary is in my view the most harmful side effect of propagandist advertisement. A few commercials like this are probably not harmful, but thousands and thousands of them in print, on TV, online, and on public display eventually ends up parceling almost everything in our culture into “male” and “female” boxes.
            Propaganda created by the current regime or social order will always be in struggle with dissenting propaganda that directly challenges it. This type of propaganda has been called Agitational-Propaganda, or agitprop. Some examples of this would be spray painting a slogan like “bash back” over a anti-gay religious billboard or handing out anti-capitalist fliers in the middle of a city’s financial district.
           I support this kind of subversive propaganda because it is created through the direct actions of individuals. I hate the propaganda of the government and corporations because they claim the authority over what people see on a day to day basis. Why does Axe deodorant have the right to cover an entire billboard with their advertisement? What gives them the right to subject me to their blatant sexism and consumerism but condemns the graffiti writer who wants to make that billboard into a mural just for the sake of making something beautiful? 

Utopia

      The concept of Utopia has always been used as a tool of the established order to justify its own existence. Thomas More’s Utopia is a perfect example of this tool put in action. He explains his Utopia as a peaceful and productive place where everyone is happy, but this Utopia relies on external factors to keep it stable, like geography and the esoteric pseudoscience of “human nature”. By doing this he tries to show that a society that has a high standard of living and a high degree (at least for its time) of individual freedom is impossible on this earth. Therefore, strong leaders like More- the lawyer, priest, politician- are needed to keep inherently flawed individuals in line and to control nation’s resources in a scarcity based economy. This is simply a reassertion of the thought system that kept and still keeps the power of the state, capitalism, and patriarchy safe from the people.    
       In the grand Western techno-centric tradition civilization is seen as a linear progression of endlessly improving technology and increasing productivity.  In this view the world 100 years ago was “behind,” simple, and ignorant.  30,000 years ago we were primitive subhumans whose lives were brutish and short. Similarly, 100 years from now are lives will be infinitely more complex and wondrous. Time is a great big dichotomy, with complexity and future being “forward” and “good”, while simplicity and past being “backwards” and “bad.” This is the great myth of Civilization.
       This myth is just that; a myth. Many people like to view society as an organism. And if it is an organism, that means it is constantly evolving. Any biologist can tell you that evolution doesn’t mean animals get larger or smarter over time. Sure, simple fish can evolve into sharks the size of buses, but once proud dinosaurs can also shrink over the course of time into chickens and turkeys. Evolution doesn’t ever make any species “better”, it only makes them better suited for their environment. If you were to put a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the middle of Illinois today, it would be dead within a month from starvation in a biosphere that no longer has the calories to feed it. Really, that’s what civilization is. A monolith that continues to use up a dwindling amount of resources while growing larger and larger. It is ironic that in a society based on the supremacy of science and technology people are so unscientific and downright naive in their basic perceptions of civilization.
      Despite all of this, I truly believe that a world Utopia on earth is not only possible, but realistic. The failure of every previous Utopian is that they never thinks outside the box. They take what they see as the “good” parts of our civilization like technology, industrialization, and productivity and envision a world where these factors are as powerful and prevalent as possible. In reality the end of industrial civilization is the only way Utopia could be possible. By this I mean a dismantling and population shift out of population centers, workshop based production, and hunting rather than farming for meat. 
       When I talk about politics a question I am frequently asked is what my Utopia would look like. This is a hard question to answer, not because I cant think of what one could look like, but because that question misses the point entirely. Anarchism is not a specific political program like capitalism, feudalism, or socialism, but an entirely different way of organizing literally every aspect of society. Anything or anywhere can actually be anarchist if it is free from hierarchy, centralism, and dominance. This can be an entire revolutionary commune the size of Hinsdale or just a couple of friends getting together to hang out after school. Most of the time anyone spends outside of work, school, or any other institution based on hierarchy is spent in anarchy. The key is that there is no leaders or power, but the total freedom and true democracy that free association brings.
       What I have always fantasized a world anarchist society would look like is based around the commune. The commune should be the basic form of human social interaction. This commune would be small in population, anywhere from 50 at the smallest and 500 at the absolute largest. The commune would be based on mutual aid and gift economy, with communization of all capital. If you were a shoe maker for instance, you would give the shoes you make to the Hinsdale commune, and in return you would receive all of the resources and support the rest of the commune offers. This means food, water utility, and anything else needed. In such a small community it is within an individuals self-interest to provide their goods because benefiting your comrades directly helps you. If the shoemaker increases productivity and quality, the other producers in the commune can increase their own productivity. For example, shoes made for the apple farmer means that he could increase his own productivity. Maybe by next harvest the shoemaker, along with everyone else in the Hinsdale commune, will notice an increase in their apple stores.
        Real world examples as well as logic prove that mutual aid based economies work very well. People have an increased motivation to work hard and do their jobs well when they themselves as well as the people they are close to depend on it, even if they aren’t getting the direct recuperation that the capitalist wage system gives them. However, if there is ever an able person who refuses to contribute to the group while still using the group’s resources, the commune can peacefully and easily remedy this solution. They can do this by simply refusing to work with that person or give him their surplus. Since you can’t live on your own with only the skills of a shoemaker or farmer, they would have to learn to cooperate or go their separate way. The basic framework of the commune is the backbone of my anarchist society.
       A commune needs more than what it can provide for itself to thrive. The people need schools, libraries, roads, parks, and theaters. All of these things the Hinsdale commune wouldn’t have the resources to provide for itself. The commune can create all of these things by cooperating and federating with the other communes around it. The Oakbrook and Downers Grove communes could cooperate and build a high school that all could attend. One of the great benefits of an egalitarian anarchist economy is that when people are not in a mad dash do accumulate as much capital as possible collective democratic and consensus decisions always favor the creation of more public goods. This would lead to a much higher standard of living.
       For even larger projects the union between the Oakbrook, Hinsdale, and Downers Grove could federate even further by joining other unions to form a syndicate. This could be the top third of Illinois for example. They could complete projects like large roads or canals. This syndicate could federate even more into a bioregion. This organization would be based around the productive capabilities of each environment and then resources could be shared within them. The Great Plains bioregion that Hinsdale would be a part of can export corn and wheat, while the Cascadia bioregion could export salmon and lumber. Internationally, a desolate bioregion like the Sahara could export glass and salt while importing food from more fertile lands. All of this is possible without capitalism.
        Utopia for me doesn’t mean a perfect world, because as people who doubt my political views never cease telling me, nobody is perfect and everyone is inherently. My Utopia is a society that in spite of that has a basic framework that offers racial, sexual, and economic equality and a complete freedom from any form of domination. I want total anarchy.