Reddit reviews Elements of Resistance: Violence, Nonviolence, and the State

thanks for the thoughtful reply.

"It seems like you're transitioning away from logical thinking because logic has failed you." Correct.

"Did you finally run up against nihilism, realize the futility of making those arguments, and decide to simply follow the plan nature gave you?" thats one way to lok at it. I have spent the past decade as a wilderness guide, and have found meaning and happiness for myself in engaging with wildness. I have also discovered that putting very sick and unhappy humans in a wilderness context with a few other humans is incredibly healing and meaningful for them as well, and I am simply interested in why that is so. I am not saying that this is the case for everyone or that everyone should do likewise, I am just exploring my own experiences with wildness by using various philosophical methods and approaches to explore this dynamic.

"Because of this, no one is wrong in that visceral, evil, disgusting way we tend to cast things. " I totally agree. While I will spend my life fighting against destructive ideas and the people who carry them out, I never delude myself that I am right and they are wrong. As a therapist (and as someone who had a really fucked up childhood), I am intimately familiar with the conditions that create what one might characterize as "evil actions." These people are simply passing on what they've been taught, they are playing out their trauma in the world around them. Why did I chose to take my trauma and turn it towards resisting civilization while others use it to reinforce civilization? I have no idea, I just know what I love and gives me meaning. Obviously, a cop does his job because it gives him meaning, as well. It gives me meaning to resist the cop and everything he stands for, i see no need for morality here.

"I think your views here are coming from the idea that what humans do is somehow different from nature." Not exactly. I understand civilization to be the biotic community (Life) experimenting with self-consciousness. Every manifestation of life on this planet can be seen as an outgrowth or experiment that is taking lace within the larger body of Life. I experience this self-consciousness to be a destructive and anti-Life adaptation, and I am consciously choosing to oppose it, out of my awareness of and relationship to the rest of the biotic community. If one was trying to create a moral framework out of my project, they could feasibly make civilization/domestication the Bad and wildness/chaos as the Good, but thats really not how I look at it and I try very hard to break-up this reductionist narrative in my essays.

"There's no escaping nature. No matter what you do, you're a wild animal." I totally agree, and reading some of my other essays would give you some context for this. I dont think that humans have separated themselves from nature at all... if I thought that, there would be no base for my rewilding project. Rewilding is predicated on the fact that we are wild animals who have been domesticated, which explains why we do the things that we do , and why we feel the way that we feel.

"I don't think you were right in saying social movements stem from thinking in abstract, objective terms. The people who join a social movement are the ones who have been wronged." I would say that social movements tap into a very real sense of injustice and then co-opt that feeling into fueling a movement which has nothing to do with their initial sense. When someone exploits, coerces, or uses violence on me, instead of immediately confronting them or the situation, I am encouraged to think about structures and ideas, which are valid, but they have nothing to do with my actual situation. Another way of saying this is that "racism" doesn't exist, but individual acts of racialized aggression do exist. I am attempting to de-reify these concepts which Leftism has erected, is order to return agency to oppresed people.

"the pacifism of MLK and the other activists in the 60's was actually very calculated. They wanted to put the brutality of their oppressors on display." yes, I adress this at length in the actual book, but this essay was a critique of the book. It sounds like you might actualy apreciate the book, you can find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Resistance-Violence-Nonviolence-State/dp/0991313623/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1452381042&sr=8-2&keywords=jeriah

"I think by understanding people for what they are you can learn to manipulate the world more effectively - and this is the niche humans have filled." I completely agree, I just dont feel like participating in it anymore. I find more meaning in authenticity and relationship.