Responding to a mostly disagreeable partly agreeable William Gillis text

 Responding to the above by William Gillis https://c4ss.org/content/51209

I'm actually a big fan of neoteny and see it as an indispensable expression of anarchy. I do agree that domestication plays a role in neotony as well as other de-aggressive tendencies. I think a Jekyll and Hyde view needs to be taken of Domestication beyond the more one sided 70s based analysis. You want to select the aspects of it that promote de-aggression(think of those cute animal vids of Lion and Lamb friendships) but avoid the Paris Hilton purse poodle problem. Of course a certain amount of wildness and aggression needs to be left to be(leave the feral child alone).

Gillis never considers the Clastresian hypothesis that stateless nomads saw something building up that they did not like and could conceive of something like the state happening even though they didn't have the full frame of reference. There's also all the examples of built up compulsions that come with the settled societies that bring out the worst of reifcation and recursion based control. There's the whole problem of terror management and death denial. There's also the fact that the early settled societies may have been bicameral minded consciousness which lacked a certain amount of individuated rationality. Civilization represents the controlled concentration of culture not the dynamic diffusion of it. Then there is of course the problem of knowledge itself which is divorced from will(Stirner)

Here's the thing Gilly, I'm actually sympathetic to the orange/blue alternative that you are trying to set up against the red/green establishment. I've pointed out several times that red and green have constricted libertarian and anarchist discourse. The way you are going about it however is all wrong. You want a market form to replace an abstract communist-need form and you want transhumanism to replace primitivism. You're on the other side of the coin Gilly. Why not simply take a market agnostic position-as opposed to market-that edges towards individualism and association not communism. Why not take a post-civilized position against concentrated knowledge and culture but still retain a vision of excess where you make diffuse cultures serve you and not the converse. Transhumanism and market anarchism don't do this, transindividualism on the other hand...


To end I agree with you on Neoteny, I think it's essential for actualized anarchy and because of that I take a more nuanced view on domestication and taming. However to actualize neoteny it's time to break away from cityficated culture to something morpho and bioregionally diffuse. You can still have cosmopolitanism and pro-stranger(outgroup) attitudes. Civilization and universality is not the way to go about actualizing anarchy. Power and place diffuse elective affinity is.

The Problem with Peter and Proudhon

The prince and the producer both propose a mono system which necessarily effaces individual free association. The answer to mutualism and exchange is not communism but individualism and free association.

The other problem with the Prince is that he wants to preserve material abundance. Unfortunately for him there’s no recorded way of doing this without some type of exchange scheme to go along with work and compulsion. Pierre’s scheme is at least more workable though even his scheme would lead to some amount of material wealth contraction relative to what’s been built up by capitalism.

As a tapering off point it would make more sense to start with Proudhonian orange and black-skip the Russians-and the go straight to Émile Armand who has the better idea. OBVIOUSLY the Western Feudal born Manorial mono market must be abolished, even Tucker who’ slightly to the right of Proudhon would probably agree. Markets at the margins however may not be the worst thing in the world. Better them then some organization heavy bottom up ancom scheme.