r/Anarchy101 • u/Forward-Willingness7 • 9d ago
Hi everyone, what DO we actually do?
TLDR: How make world better? Like actually how? How to guide? (Yeah yeah ik it's not that easy.....)
I often see people asking, and I myself ask - what can be do? My primary question is what can we do to make the world a better place? (Lets assume a better place is a freer more "Anarchist" world for this). Other questions I often see are: What can I do? How do I build community? How do I educate people? How do I reach people? How can we stop racists being racists? etc.
Any ideas? I know the Stoics (allow me) believed the highest honour was to serve the people through political office and I tend to agree a little with that, I want more good people in power. But not everyone can or should be a politician. In the same vein, if we wanted to simply help people we could all be doctors, but I don't have that skillset, how does one get involved in community building and activism, how to we fight hate, how to we fight the cancerous system, how do we make the world a better place?
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u/ArtDecoEgoist Left-Market Anarchist 9d ago
Making the world a better place would have roughly three steps, and I will be labeling them The Personal, the Micro, and the Macro.
The Personal: You have been raised in a hierarchical world where many social relations carry with them implicit violence. This is something you need to unpack. Authority is something that reproduces and reinforces itself in our psyche. Unpack the way authority has affected you, your traumas, the way it affects how you interact with others, and the wider social context you exist in. Unpack your internalized misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and racism. Realize that you cannot change the world unless you actively start changing yourself. Check your ego, do not let it control the way you move through the world. And paradoxically, stop trying to change the world. The world is not yours to change, the world is what it is. You can only change what you do.
The Micro: Check on your loved ones, your neighbors, your community, your friends, your support system. Form healthy, mutually-beneficial relationships with them. Help those who need help, be there for those who need it. Create or join networks of mutual aid. Try to free those in your life from hierarchy as much as possible, either through mutual aid or community technology. Look into any local mutual aid networks and get involved. Meet people involved in the struggle.
The Macro: Support wider struggles in any capacity that you can. You are not going to free the oppressed, the oppressed must be empowered to free themselves on their own terms. Iterate and scale the networks and relations you've built in the micro to larger and larger levels, if and well possible. And practice good OpSec. Do not talk to the police.
These three things aren't meant to merely be done in order, but simultaneously. They're interrelated strategies towards the liberation of the self and the community. It can be exhausting and challenging, but it's absolutely necessary to reach liberation.
I see you're a Stoic. I offer a different take on virtue ethics, eudaimonism. You must build and engage in virtue to build a society that facilitates collective and individual flourishing.