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Re-reading this book from my younger years. The premise is that so much left-wing environmentalism treats humans as “viruses” whereas Bookchin says, no, humans are uniquely creative and rational. Humans’ domination-mindset over nature, he says, “stems from” humans’ domination over fellow humans. He emphasizes “stems from” instead of “involved with” or “requires.” So far, so good.

prime numbers

“What would it be like, she wondered, to live on a world with three suns in the sky? Probably even hotter than New Mexico.”

“Because of the inseparability of opposites…you realize that they always go together, and this hints at some kind of unity that underlies them.” (p. 37)

From “The Great Vision”: “…and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.”

Important not to forget: “ In the 1950s and 1960s, the most important beneficiaries newly expanded free-speech protections were participants in the civil rights movement.”

Terrifying.

Nathan Robinson recommended this book in his “library of radicalism” or some such list. I had read some Kropotkin in my youth. He is not hard to read. But all the mentions of “the coming Revolution” and “when the Revolution takes place” make it hard, so far, to take him seriously. I share his outrage at gross inequality—who would disagree? But the ancom Revolution is only a dream. I’ll read on.

Kropotkin’s basic idea: “But ours is neither the Communism of Fourier and the Phalansteriens, nor of the German State-Socialists. It is Anarchist-Communism — Communism without government — the Communism of the Free.”

“The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets.”

“The idea that mindfulness is in the head feeds the current mindfulness mania. It reinforces selfish individualism—all you really need to deal with is your own mind, not the larger social setting” (p. 131).

“The idea that mindfulness is in the head feeds the current mindfulness mania” (p.131).

One basic premise of the book: Buddhism is “just like other religions” (p. 50).

So far, even better than Faceless Killers.

Taking another break!

Taking a break!