Somewhat On The Vibe Of "your Glorious Revolution Doesn't Exist," I Want To Talk To You All, Especially

Somewhat on the vibe of "your glorious revolution doesn't exist," I want to talk to you all, especially the young folks, about effective anarchism.

Spoiler alert, it's not blowing stuff up or arson.

I am considered the most anarchical person of all among my friends. Granted, most of my experience has been wreaking anarchy against the systems present in my high school and college, but the principles are the same.

Practical anarchy is not the big, flashy, romanticizable thing people online make it out to be. It's more about the long haul - digging in your teeth and just being a menace that no one can really get rid of.

Everyone's "Why vote when you can firebomb a Walmart" posts (that they don't follow through on) are just not pratical because this is a surveillance society. With CCTV and DNA testing and cell phone cameras and GPS tracking, if you do something big like that, you are GOING to be caught; then that is the end of your anarchical career. And, keep in mind that you might get caught while you're setting up this big event - it's a crime to blow up a Walmart and also a crime to conspire to blow up a Walmart, so your career in anarchy might end before it begins, and then you are permanently out of the game. No matter what causes you were working for that inspired you to do something big and violent that you thought would get someone's attention, you now can't help at all ever again in your entire life. What you did will be a passing headline on the news, and then everything will go back to exactly what it was because big, acute actions can't compare in effectiveness to small, constant actions (just being a thorn in the side of the system, poking and poking, but unable to be dislodged).

This is just the practical side of it too: think about the risk of hurting innocents if you really advocate for doing things like that. You think blowing up a Walmart would really make a dent in that big of a corporation? But if you intentionally or unintentionally kill a bunch of Walmart shoppers, that's going to devastate families that had nothing to do with whatever your cause is.

So all that big talk about violence and destruction: not practical, not effective, not ethical.

The only way I've started to change oppressive systems around me is by justing chipping away from within the confines of the rules of these systems, and/or only stepping just outside them (never breaking rules in a big way that could have allowed said system to easily and "justifiably" get rid of me).

So if you're going to be an anarchist, you need to consider:

Having the longest career in anarchism possible (i.e. being careful enough and judicious with your actions so that you don't get expelled from the system you wish to fight).

And then for any given anarchical plan:

2. Potential consequences.

3. Insurance.

I'll give you an example. I had serious beef with the culture of my college's science department. Students were constantly overworked, and if they expressed their misery outloud or reached out to any of their professors about their struggles, they got apathetic responses if not direct insults to their abilities or dedication. I had too many similar disparaging interactions with professors in one week, and I realized a lot of the responses I was getting were just the result of professors not really knowing how they sounded when they said certain things to students (ex: If someone says they're struggling with a course, don't IMMEDIATELY respond with "change your major," - you can give that as an option, but if you make it your first suggestion, the implication to the student is that if they're having any trouble with the course, they're not good enough for the program).

So I wrote up a flier of examples of good and bad ways to respond to students having anxiety with explanations and distributed it to every professor in the department. Everyone who knew about this perceived it as a great personal risk - that I would get in some kind of unspecified trouble or piss off an important professor, so before embarking on this project, I considered...

Potential consequences: I couldn't really think of any specific college or department rules I could be violating. People postered and handed out fliers in the department all the time. What I was doing fell pretty clearly under freedom of speech. I just shoved the fliers under professors' doors, so I didn't trespass in anyone's office. Worst I could think is that individual professors would get mad at me and make my life difficult, or I'd simply be told to stop fliering in the department.

Insurance: Just in case there were any consequences that I didn't think of and to insure me against the ones I had thought of, I didn't put my name on the flier. It was typed in Word, something everyone had access to. I came in to do it after professors had all left for the day but before I needed to use my ID to get into the building (no electronic record of me being there). I took the elevator to the first floor offices because the stairs require ID swipe after 5pm, but the elevators do not. I found out the building had no cameras by asking about it on the grounds that something of mine had been stolen a few weeks prior. I shoved the flier under the doors of dark offices and left it outside offices with lights on (so that no one would come out and spot me). And here's one of the most important pieces of insurance: I put up a few of the fliers on public bulletin boards in the building. This was important so that if I slipped up and said something that conveyed that I had knowledge of the content of the flier, I would have an excuse for that, i.e., I read it on the bulletin board before class this morning.

And then I did the thing. And surprisingly, it was incredibly well-received by professors. A few who knew that the flier must have been mine (because of previous, similar anarchical actions rumored to be associated with me) told me that everyone was RELIEVED that they finally had an instruction manual from the student perspective on what the hell they're supposed to say when one of their students is panicking. It sparked a real change in the vibe of the department and student experience. Had it instead pissed people off, I would have simply said I could not claim authorship of the flier but had read it and thought it contained good ideas then gone on creating more anarchy while angry people grasped at the zero straws I had left them to pin the action on me.

That's an example of a single action I took that was part of a much longer (~3 years) campaign of mine to change the culture of my department. Everytime I did something in that campaign, I made that consequences vs. insurance calculation to make sure they couldn't expell me from the program, the department, or the school before I succeeded.

Tags

More Posts from Synth-ab and Others

2 years ago

It's a tough choice, really

It's A Tough Choice, Really

I've been loving the podcast so far, almost done with season 4 🥲 can't wait for more trauma

5 months ago
Spidey Says Lgbtqa+ Rights
Spidey Says Lgbtqa+ Rights
Spidey Says Lgbtqa+ Rights
Spidey Says Lgbtqa+ Rights
Spidey Says Lgbtqa+ Rights
Spidey Says Lgbtqa+ Rights
Spidey Says Lgbtqa+ Rights
Spidey Says Lgbtqa+ Rights
Spidey Says Lgbtqa+ Rights
Spidey Says Lgbtqa+ Rights

Spidey says lgbtqa+ rights

Free to use with credit! If your flag is missing, just send me an ask and I will make it :)


Tags
1 year ago

What a year this week has been.


Tags
5 months ago

This witch bitch won’t leave my head. Somebody DO SOMETHING

This Witch Bitch Won’t Leave My Head. Somebody DO SOMETHING
This Witch Bitch Won’t Leave My Head. Somebody DO SOMETHING
This Witch Bitch Won’t Leave My Head. Somebody DO SOMETHING

BOTH of them 🐍⚡

This Witch Bitch Won’t Leave My Head. Somebody DO SOMETHING

(I love drawing Loki’s hair so muchhh 😭)


Tags
7 months ago
*doom Music Starts To Play* I Actually Kindof Like Scheduling These Kinds Of Appointments Now...
*doom Music Starts To Play* I Actually Kindof Like Scheduling These Kinds Of Appointments Now...
*doom Music Starts To Play* I Actually Kindof Like Scheduling These Kinds Of Appointments Now...
*doom Music Starts To Play* I Actually Kindof Like Scheduling These Kinds Of Appointments Now...
*doom Music Starts To Play* I Actually Kindof Like Scheduling These Kinds Of Appointments Now...
*doom Music Starts To Play* I Actually Kindof Like Scheduling These Kinds Of Appointments Now...
*doom Music Starts To Play* I Actually Kindof Like Scheduling These Kinds Of Appointments Now...
*doom Music Starts To Play* I Actually Kindof Like Scheduling These Kinds Of Appointments Now...
*doom Music Starts To Play* I Actually Kindof Like Scheduling These Kinds Of Appointments Now...
*doom Music Starts To Play* I Actually Kindof Like Scheduling These Kinds Of Appointments Now...
*doom Music Starts To Play* I Actually Kindof Like Scheduling These Kinds Of Appointments Now...
*doom Music Starts To Play* I Actually Kindof Like Scheduling These Kinds Of Appointments Now...
*doom Music Starts To Play* I Actually Kindof Like Scheduling These Kinds Of Appointments Now...

*doom music starts to play* I actually kindof like scheduling these kinds of appointments now...

but seriously Fellas, don't forget to schedule a pap smear every couple of years just in case. If you still have a cervix you can still get cervical cancer. ilu

this has been a psa


Tags
1 year ago

hi I'm from your pseudo-medieval fantasy city. yeah. you forgot to put farms around us. we have very impressive walls and stuff but everyone here is starving. the hero showed up here as part of his quest and we killed and ate him


Tags
1 year ago
A Little Comic About A Little Creature. I'm Starting A New Notebook With This !

A little comic about a little creature. I'm starting a new notebook with this !


Tags
Loading...
End of content
No more pages to load
  • wailing-whaler
    wailing-whaler reblogged this · 6 days ago
  • wailing-whaler
    wailing-whaler liked this · 6 days ago
  • redthreads
    redthreads liked this · 1 week ago
  • zenithbemusement
    zenithbemusement liked this · 1 week ago
  • faceted-tourmaline
    faceted-tourmaline reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • glitchtechscience
    glitchtechscience reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • petaltail-dragon
    petaltail-dragon liked this · 1 week ago
  • fawnspotsam
    fawnspotsam liked this · 1 week ago
  • chupacabrasgay
    chupacabrasgay liked this · 1 week ago
  • sugarhand
    sugarhand reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • pterriblepterodactyls
    pterriblepterodactyls reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • rednaelo
    rednaelo reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • azorawing
    azorawing reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • azorawing
    azorawing liked this · 1 week ago
  • isleofthings
    isleofthings liked this · 1 week ago
  • lumpysnail
    lumpysnail reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • lumpysnail
    lumpysnail liked this · 1 week ago
  • doilooklikepeople
    doilooklikepeople liked this · 1 week ago
  • starlit-chaos
    starlit-chaos reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • snoring-starfish
    snoring-starfish reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • snoring-starfish
    snoring-starfish liked this · 1 week ago
  • sevinohl
    sevinohl liked this · 1 week ago
  • ultimateog100
    ultimateog100 reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • samathekittycat
    samathekittycat reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • rachicolate
    rachicolate reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • leo-regulus
    leo-regulus reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • allthenunbelievers
    allthenunbelievers liked this · 1 week ago
  • collector-of-myst
    collector-of-myst reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • thedogmanscave
    thedogmanscave reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • placeholdernr57
    placeholdernr57 reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • dancing-tiefling
    dancing-tiefling reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • dancing-tiefling
    dancing-tiefling liked this · 1 week ago
  • nemjun
    nemjun liked this · 1 week ago
  • supermira247
    supermira247 reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • supermira247
    supermira247 liked this · 1 week ago
  • jointed-custody
    jointed-custody liked this · 1 week ago
  • ultrarebelheart
    ultrarebelheart reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • ultrarebelheart
    ultrarebelheart liked this · 1 week ago
  • casinocircus
    casinocircus liked this · 1 week ago
  • curiobjd
    curiobjd reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • cookie-nom-nom
    cookie-nom-nom reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • lieutenantsparkles
    lieutenantsparkles reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • lieutenantsparkles
    lieutenantsparkles liked this · 1 week ago
  • goddessofknittingandcake
    goddessofknittingandcake liked this · 1 week ago
  • l-dot-k-2
    l-dot-k-2 liked this · 1 week ago
  • harukonowichi
    harukonowichi reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • hobbitpunk-dreamer
    hobbitpunk-dreamer reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • salekinj
    salekinj reblogged this · 1 week ago
  • salekinj
    salekinj liked this · 1 week ago
synth-ab - Synth_Ab
Synth_Ab

Eternal Lurker, finally here - they/them - art only account : @synth-art - 🔵blueskye account : synthab.bsky.social

154 posts

Explore Tumblr Blog
Search Through Tumblr Tags