Introducing amor et licentia
I recently stepped down as a community organizer for some social movement that sort-of-manages to bridge a truly ridiculous amount of political and sociocultural backgrounds in service of doing as much good as they can.
I believe that social movement to be an essential puzzle piece for humanity to survive this century and reach its potential. At the same time, I have fallen out of sync with its utilitarian foundations, and can write more freely if I’m not in a public-facing role within that movement. But first and foremost: There are other puzzle pieces to humanity’s survival and flourishing that I want to signal-boost just as much.
So from now on, I’m just some random hobo with a blog. And this post is all about what this blog is all about.
Why “amor et licentia”?
Because Geoffrey Allison already uses loveandanarchy.substack.com to keep his family and friends updated about his whereabouts. First come, first serve.
Why “amor”?
Because this blog is about love in all it’s Greek meanings:
agape, or metta, or loving-kindness. As a parent’s love for their child. As the Christian love of god. As my friend Nico’s love for all the posthumans not yet born. And, first and foremost, as the love of the Bodhisattva vow: To not leave this earthly realm before all sentient beings are free from suffering.
philia, as love among equals. Because I want these posts to become letters on eye-level to whoever among my human gender-nonconforming siblings, sisters, and brothers may find them entertaining. Letters about how we might get the world out of the pickle it is in. And, letters about how to collectively develop and sustain the adaptive insanity that can help us stare into the abyss every day without losing our softness and humor.
And sometimes, maybe, about eros. As the passionate longing that binds us together while we raise to the task at hand. And, as the art and craft of engulfing one another in ecstasy so boundless that even I sometimes stop thinking about work for an hour or two.
Why “licentia”?
Because it’s a reasonably good Latin approximation of the word “anarchy”. Both in the sense of abundance and freedom, as well as its sometimes slightly messy character.
Throughout all my philosophical adventures, anarchism is the base I touch on time and again, the one thing that never breaks in my hands, howevermuch I avoid associating with it. Because by “anarchism”, I don’t mean the playful anger of teenagers mooning cops or spray painting the walls of villas (though I have some whimsical fondness for even pointless and destructive acts of rebellion).
I mean the Taoism of the West. The anarchism of Martin Buber, who describes in “I and Thou” the boundless aliveness that springs into existence when we start treating each other as people rather than instruments for our respective own pursuits. The anarchism of Simone Weil when she denounces in “The Iliad, or the Poem of Force“ how violence and coercion disfigures and alienates the perpetrator as much as the victim.
By “anarchism”, I mean the unordered yet orderly self-organization of Burning Man: Filling the desert with beauty and wonder and ecstasy for one week, guided by nothing but ten principles, lived experience, and boundless creativity, and then leaving nothing behind, just because you can. I mean the maxim of plucking out the roots of coercion in myself and the systems I’m part of so they turn into fertile hummus. I mean calling power hierarchies into question while acknowledging and honoring competency hierarchies. I mean developing and spreading the social and psychotechnologies to help people self-organize and grow into independent adults.
And finally, I mean the anarchism of Paul Goodman to whom I dedicated a bachelor’s thesis in a different lifetime. This quote from “Reflections on drawing the line” might be a good approximation of what his anarchism is all about:
“The free spirit is rather millenarian; than utopian. A man does not look forward to a future state of things which he tries to bring about by suspect means; but he draws now, so far as he can, on the natural force in him that is no different in kind from what it will be in a free society, except that there it will have more scope and be persistently reinforced by mutual aid and fraternal conflict. Merely by continuing to exist and act in nature and freedom, a free man wins the victory, establishes the society; it is not necessary for him to be the victor over any one. When he creates, he wins; when he corrects his prejudices and habits he wins; when he resists and suffers, he wins.“
Unsurprisingly, his biggest claim to fame is not organizing protests or filling up potholes the state doesn’t care to. Instead, he was a key theorist of Gestalt therapy, a school within humanistic psychology that aims to create an emancipated society by means of helping individuals emancipate from their own neurotic bonds.
So, these and other things are what this blog is all about.
Welcome to my lair.