Reflections on the Anniversary of Occupy

Watching the science fiction series Sense8 recently, I caught a great line: “Your life is either defined by the system, or by the way you defy the system” (spoken by character Nomi Marks). 

The anniversary of the beginning of the Occupy movement came again this past 17 September (2018), and I think the occasion is appropriate to point out that Occupy was not about occupying physical space so much as it was about changing the conversation in the United States and the world from one based on a passive, if grudging, acceptance of neoliberalism to one based on providing for the needs of the many rather than serving the greed and ambition of the few.

Complaints from the Establishment and its mainstream media about the seeming amorphousness of the Occupy movement included that there were no stated goals; that there were no designated leaders; that the movement did not want to work within the system.  They seemed desperate to find some way to deflect, to undercut, to coopt, to diminish, to reduce the outraged masses to the status of a loyal opposition within the system to serve the capitalist Behemoth and the conformist Leviathin of the global neoliberal order  with the labor of their hearts and minds.

But entering the system in order to defeat it from the inside is a lie, because becoming part of the problem is, well, becoming part of the problem.  Working for change within a corrupt system is self-delusory because that requires acceptance of the very thing one wishes to change.  To attempt to correct injustice while maintaining a status quo is utterly futile.  That’s why I believe that leftists in the UK, and the rest of Europe, who support the EU are like progressives in the USA who supported Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party establishment.

All too often, people want someone to save them, when they have the power within to save themselves. They somehow believe that their “betters” will take care of them if they obey their rules, and don’t have the self-possessed awareness to realize they have a right to their fair share of the pie, that it is their natural right as humans born on this planet to have enough even if they have to fight for it.  And we know it.  We all know it.  It’s ingrained in us by evolution to make sure each and every member of the tribe has enough and that no one gets a second trip to the table until everyone has been through once. 

I believe in the the dignity of humanity, not the sanctity of property.  Political democracy, without concurrent social, industrial, and economic democracy, is meaningless.  You know what happens when fewer and fewer people have exponentially more wealth and exponentially more people have less and less?  A shrinking economy.  Because the only thing trickling down in capitalism is piss from the mountain of shit.

National borders are merely the lines between territories held by different elites.  Patriotism is nothing more than Stockholm syndrome submission to the owners of the territory in which lies the land upon which you live.  These elites are not your peers; they are your masters, your rulers, your gods.

The desire for peace and freedom, for all humans to be treated fairly and with dignity, does not recognize any artificial borders created by the avaricious and ambitious elites which govern the world and are the cause of most conflict and deprivation.

True leadership is not about wielding authority; it is about empowering people (paraphrasing Becky Brodin slightly).  Never have faith in in people who put themselves forth as “leaders”; they will always betray you.  Gods are more trouble than they are worth; destroy them.  Don’t look for a messiah or a prophet or guru to save you; everything you seek is within yourself.  If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him, and be your own buddha.  Worship no gods, serve no masters, follow no leaders.

Anarchy does not mean ‘without rules’, it means ‘without rulers’.  What most refer to as anarchy is actually chaos, the opposite of cosmos (which is Greek for ‘order’).  Anarchy is, in fact, voluntary order, the social contract of Locke and Rousseau, human-to-human, as equals.

The ability of a minority to dominate the majority depends primarily upon the consent, whether passive and acquiescent or active and willing, of those who make up that majority. All the dominated need to throw off their shackles is to stand up and abandon the creeping meatball, knowing that that single act is only a beginning, but still a beginning.  You can’t abandon the creeping meatball if you don’t first rise up.

To paraphrase Angela Davis: Instead of accepting the things that you cannot change, change the things you cannot accept.  Tell the impossible to go fuck itself.

In response to Sasha Grey posting on her MySpace page (remember MySpace?) a photo of herself with the caption “Why am I scared?”, I replied, “I’m scared because I’m alive.  The trick is not to not do things because we’re afraid, but instead to do those things specifically because we ARE afraid.  If we ever stop being scared, then we’re dead, and if we are still moving around it’s only because we don’t know it yet and are just animated bodies walking around in a permanent vegetative state of mere existence, with our souls already outlined in chalk.”

Religion is like looking thru a pinhole in a stone wall and describing what you see as the ultimate truth.  In order to see the whole truth, the wall must be destroyed.  To protect its view thru the pinhole, religion guards that wall with every power in its arsenal.  Imagine that: guarding a wall separating humanity from truth in order to protect a pinhole.

For some people life always looks better in the rear view mirror.  Then they drive into a brick wall.  All of us are living under a sentence of death that cannot be revoked or overturned.  No one gets out of here alive.  And sometimes you have to die in order to survive.

The Upanishads say that the path to salvation/liberation is difficult, like walking along the sharp edge of a razor.  But I say this: Don’t walk along the razor’s edge; be the razor’s edge.  Be the darkness that illuminates, the silence that resonates, and the stillness that agitates.

And remember: Your life is either defined by the system, or by the way you defy the system.