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Lovely piece!

Personally, I can't describe myself as an anarchist, much as I tend to generate anarchy. I do think hierarchy is very important - the natural hierarchies of competence and ability, specifically. There need to be rules, and rulers can't be above them - chieftains and kings must be bound by conventions and constitutions. But at the same time, coordination for collective action generally requires someone to be in charge, to delegate, to assign tasks. This isn't just ideology, but experience - I've been in organizations operating according to consensus-based decision-making, and it was impossible to get anything done because no one ever agrees; and of course, when everything is voluntary, the classic collective action problem, 'someone else will do it', is perennial.

Yet at the same time, it is absolutely crucial that those who achieve or are granted higher positions act from a place of reciprocal responsibility towards those in subordinate positions. I believe the problem now is that too often those in power are parasitic. There's no sense of noblesse oblige, and philanthropy is too often philanthropathy (stolen from Tessa Fights Robots). Further, subordinates must be able to withdraw their fealty when these responsibilities go unmet.

Finally, thank you for bringing our essays to Charles Eisenstein's attention. I've been reading him for years, and have an immense amount of respect for him. He's had a huge impact on how I see the world.

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Thank you, John!

All the good words have been stolen from us and made to mean their opposites. It's one of their oldest tricks and applies to demons, zealots, anti-Federalists ... We can't talk about ideas we have no words for. So when you tend to generate anarchy, rather than chaos, think of that as community self-rule, direct democracy, small-scale sovereignty--in fewer syllables.

In TOTAL agreement on consensus-based decision making. Just cut off my arm. It would be less painful than going through that again.

Donella Meadows, btw, agrees with you about hierarchy, which she says is everywhere in nature because it's more efficient. I quote from her Thinking in Systems in my book. But she says that it's upside-down and the larger serves the smaller, where the important functions go on.

I use parasitic also for the PTB ever since Gavin (who alerted me to all you) pointed out that predators serve a useful function. Tessa sent me a great piece she wrote on parasites, that I haven't yet written the article to use. Maybe when I respond to Harrison, since it's in line with the nature of evil. Oh and Tessa took philanthropathy from Margaret Anna Alice, although swapping and swiping seems to be all the rage ;-)

And yes! I was so excited that Charles responded. Of course right after that they set loose the sex-bots impersonating him, so we must be on to something.

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"All the good words have been stolen from us and made to mean their opposites. It's one of their oldest tricks and applies to demons, zealots, anti-Federalists .."

This is pure FIRE, Tereza, as is your post itself.

On the question of anarchy, I admit that my face screwed up in confusion and horror too, at first. But when I reread the statement and its context, it made perfect sense. The lingua franca we are all (however haltingly and imperfectly) developing through our "theft" of each others ideas will include many moments of discombobulation just like this, I wager. But discussions about them such as you and John are having will serve to transform them into something like a new vocabulary, rooted in an epistemology that serves the human condition in a way that's been (in some cases, literally) lost to the sands of time.

As an aside, your analogy of Jay as the Mad Hatter strikes me as apt. He's equal parts mercurial charmer, intellectual powerhouse and silent string-puller (who manages to pull the best strings, for the best reasons).

Just want to say again how glad I am that we've found each other across this smoking, putrid battlefield. You can steal from me anytime (and indeed I hope you do).

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Your kind compliment means so much coming from you, Mark. Somewhere I say (and probably stole) that words are fossilized metaphors. At one point, they captured an essential idea better than any other. When we agree with Humpty Dumpty that words "mean just what I say they mean, neither more nor less" we've ceded ground on the ideological battlefield--leaving it smoking and putrid. But I'm going to bite my tongue here and save my discussion for the episode on John, because this is juicy stuff. Here's my episode, though, where I used that Wonderland quote:

https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/nina-jankowicz-the-warbling-warmonger.

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Feb 8, 2023Liked by Tereza Coraggio

Anarchy is one big heck of a loaded word, it lugs centuries worth of junk baggage. I'd be outright skeptical about humpty-dumptying it with your preferred meaning 😏 Nationalism likewise might be beyond the point of reclaim 😟 [Oh how I wish it weren't! Dammit these f@<king oldest tricks 🤬]

All the more power to Tonic Masculinity (TM™), a term born perfectly pristine! 😁

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Very true about nationalism, although the right has been doing it's level best to rehabilitate it, the normie brain still hears 'nazi skins' when those syllables are uttered.

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deletedFeb 8, 2023·edited Feb 8, 2023
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Canada falls into this category as well. From the beginning it was an awkward marriage between the Quebecois and the United Empire Loyalist anglos. The prairies were largely colonized by Ukrainians. And of course, there's always been a large Amerindian population. If anything Canada was more multiethnic than the US, which (Africans aside) was largely colonized by different flavors of Brit (Albion's Seed and such). Hence, both adopted a pluralistic federalism model to enable the different component nations to cooperate.

The problem in both countries as I see it is the fetishization of multiculturalism, which has come to mean nothing more than denigration of founding peoples, and has produced widescale resentment for that reason. That isn't how a multiethnic imperial project is kept together, it's how you shatter it. Which may well have been the long range intent of the forces that pushed the extreme version of pluralism we know as 'anti-racism' or DIE.

Then of course you've got the imposition of multiculturalism on European societies that are historically far more homogeneous (there are usually trace minorities, historically, but generally there's a supermajority of a given ethnicity, in most countries or regions at least). Which is producing a reaction of a different sort.

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deletedFeb 8, 2023·edited Feb 8, 2023
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I might have gotten that wrong, actually - I think it was Margaret that I got that term from.

Apex predators serve an absolutely vital function - see the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone (an example something tells me you're well aware of). They're the capstone for the ecosystem (just one reason I think veganism is misguided). There's a reason kings have traditionally been depicted as lions, I think partly in implicit recognition of this. The problem now is that we have hookworms where there should be lions, and the worms see their only role as feeding.

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Haha. I'm picturing Klaus as a hookworm and it's all too fitting.

I noted that 'veganism being misguided' was another pet rant we shared. You put it more colorfully in the Martian Wonderland but I'm being circumspect. I started my YouTube responding to Russell Brand's interviews and did this one on Animal Husbandry is the New Vegetarian: https://youtu.be/O9nBRJobk60.

In it, I talk about Lierre Keith's book, The Vegetarian Myth, which will add more fuel to your fire, if you need it ;-) As a long-time vegan, she writes like no one else can about coming to the realization that it was bad for her health, bad for the environment, bad for animal rights, and that she was kidding herself on the ethics that she wasn't killing.

Ages ago, I also interviewed Nicolette Hahn Niman, author of Righteous Porkchop, in this radio episode called Love 'Em & Eat 'Em: the Art of Animal Husbandry: http://thirdparadigm.org/3p_017.php. And then Novella Carpenter in People Are Animals Too: http://thirdparadigm.org/3p_036.php. This is from the intro:

"The point that I'd like to make is that being a vegan animal–rights activist in hemp sandals isn't necessarily a more ethical choice than being a chain–smoking beer–guzzling carnivore. Ethics, like the devil, is in the details."

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I actually met Lierre Keith several years ago at a book signing; it was for another book, a deep ecology militant manifesto cum manual she'd written with someone else that ultimately left me a bit terrified. But I read her on vegetarianism and she made excellent points, all of which I agree with.

My other point of disagreement with veganism is more metaphysical. In my view, consciousness is something common to all life, plants very much included. The evidence for plant communication and pain is overwhelming at this point, and the bias that says they can't possibly feel pain simply emerges from the same mechanicalism that terminates in humans being meat robots. Given that, life therefore inevitably feeds on life, and seeking to keep one's hands clean by eating only plants strikes me as childish and very much missing the point. It isn't how an organism dies, it's how it lived, that matters.

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Way to one-up me on name-dropping, John :D I could see Lierre taking that turn. And my metaphysical objection to veganism is in one way eerily similar to yours and in another opposite.

I think that the religion, which is what we should call it, of veganism is an attempt to make oneself innocent, to pretend that you're doing no harm. I think it has an odd relationship to anti-abortion activists and those who fetishize pets. It Bambifies morality. And yes, the ancient contract to domesticate animals is a good life and a quick death. To live is to be complicit--own that and take responsibility for it. I've never met anyone who really got that point before, John!

Where I differ is that I entertain the possibility that we're One Mind and the world is our collective dream, so that plants, animals, other people are all figments of ourselves in the dream. How you treat them all still matters because it's you. But it also doesn't matter ... because it's all you.

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Feb 16, 2023Liked by Tereza Coraggio

Tereza, regarding that “ancient contract” in which animals were given “a good life and a quick death,” remind me not to use whoever negotiated for the animals?

I think it is not accidental that this ancient contract conforms to the creation story in Genesis, which gave humans dominion over fish, birds, cattle, wild animals, and over every other “creeping thing that creeps upon the earth”. (Genesis 1:26) Objectively, I think that ancient contract seems much more of a religious statement than the simple vegan ethic of not exploiting animals.

BTW, in the primordial world before the “ancient contract” existed, people would eat some animals and animals would eat some people. That was a much fairer arrangement.

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"And yes, the ancient contract to domesticate animals is a good life and a quick death. To live is to be complicit--own that and take responsibility for it. I've never met anyone who really got that point before, John!"

Precisely so.

And yes, it's rare to encounter someone who's figured this out too. People usually look at me very strangely when I tell them that even atoms have a form of elementary consciousness.

Nothing I said above should be interpreted to mean that there is not one mind weaving it all together ;)

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deletedFeb 9, 2023·edited Feb 9, 2023
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“All the good words have been stolen from us and made to mean their opposites.”

Yep. Mostly on the fringe left side of the cultural-socio-political side.

Michael Mohr

‘Sincere American Writing’

https://michaelmohr.substack.com/

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Looking forward to reading you, Michael, and thanks for subscribing!

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Oh and you're under the microscope next!

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Looking forward to it :)

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I think anarchy is the distant future. I see anarchy as the way of nature, self-organizing ever toward diversity. For humans, hierarchy then is leadership not rule. There can be no evolution in a society of artificial equity.

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Feb 8, 2023·edited Feb 8, 2023Liked by Tereza Coraggio

Yet another Charles (Haywood) sure belongs with the fully-fledged Neon-Gonzo operation 😉

🗨 success and progress require sacrifice and differentiation that depend upon and reinforce hierarchy.[...] society has determined it no longer is willing to do what it takes to achieve, trading it in for safetyism and an egalitarianism that pretends that there is not a strict hierarchy of inborn ability that dictates that tiny percentage of men can really achieve great things.

--

PS Philanthropathy is of Margaret Anna Alice's coinage; she's been been working for a while trying to get it off the ground. Earnestly, as behoves her very brand 😇

ETA A rule to follow: read comments before commenting yourself. Success so far: zero zilch nada. Odds of future success: negligible. Sheer Dire Straits of a situation 🤦

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Charles Haywood is an absolute boss. Big fan of his work (and he was one of my first paid subs, which really made my day!)

Sounds to me like MAA is successfully pushing philanthropathy into the lexicon, given that my misattribution got corrected not once but twice 😂

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Feb 8, 2023·edited Feb 8, 2023

Widely known within narrow circles <-- [arguably] à propos in both cases 🤔

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HELL YES JOHN ❤️❤️❤️🔥

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Looking forward to all the future directions this will go! And the many tonic generations to come.

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I'm very much looking forward to responding to your Political Ponerology, Harrison. It's a topic after my own heart. And I loved the analysis in your piece--and that original definition you found. So many directions to go! So much ponerology to ponder!

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Had to look up ‘ponerology.’ Interesting!

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Feb 8, 2023Liked by Tereza Coraggio

" you can’t see the other hand, which has a little plastic murder knife in it."

Occam Razors!

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Thanks for the links! I have sat in many men's circles the last 15 years. A great many men are hungry for an ongoing conversation on what it means to be a man, and for the fellowship with other men doing good work in the world. Thank you for helping with that conversation.

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I was really touched by your Second Christmas post, William. The role of adult son is not often considered in all the aspects of masculinity. It took me 57 yrs, when my dad went into a skilled nursing facility and my mom was living alone for the first time in 88 yrs, before I developed an adult relationship with my parents. I'm glad I was given that chance. I'll be following your continued journey with interest.

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The proud Idea Momma :D

I am really pleased to see these ideas get concept handles and start to become a real part of the conversation. Our modern ethics discussions have been flattened down from discussions of how to be better versions of ourselves to a dull list of rules that must be followed to be an acceptable mediocrity, I think due to a distaste for gradations in virtue. Heavens forfend some people be deemed better at some virtue than another, or even someone to be looked up to! That might make someone sad, and more importantly would upset the dominance hierarchy! *gasp*

Your contributions are great, and I am waiting for your distaff band's tonic femininity work to share with my little ones some day.

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Idea Mamma: 🔥🔥🔥❤️

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Feb 8, 2023Liked by Tereza Coraggio

Thank you Tereza for writing this up. You are bringing in some very good (and suprising) angles. I think we all agree that this PTB-induced meddling with the sexes and their relationship must absolutely be worked through if we are to have any hope for the future, and that mere reactions are not enough and merely entrap us in that unholy dialectic that can only generate spiritual mayhem.

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You put that so well, Luc! 'Unholy dialectic'--stealing that, as a great mind I know once said. I'm very much looking forward to delving into your thinking on this topic and more, which I found quite intriguing on first read.

Yes, there's something vital here that feels like it holds the key. 'Spiritual mayhem'--another gem.

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Feb 8, 2023Liked by Tereza Coraggio

Tonic Masculinity: a wonder concept momentarily conceived by a Wonder Woman, brought to birth through the competent labour of Wonder Men with initiative. Excellent^2 🤩

Now in human commons, to be further nurtured by the whole village. For a 1G version, it's both enticingly raw and impressively well-cooked, and it gets only better from here 🤸 In many a direction, on many a dimension. Onward & upward!

PS I’d much fancy to see @Theophilus ‘things work best when there’s a place for everyone and everyone stays in their place’ Chilton welcomed into the exquisite fold. Along with Charles E of course 😊

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I love the way you put that, daiva: "Now in human commons to be further nurtured by the whole village. For a 1G version, it's both enticingly raw and impressively well-cooked, and it gets only better from here 🤸 In many a direction, on many a dimension. Onward & upward!"

I'm very much looking forward to your further comments on this TMP (Tonic Masculinity Project)!

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Fascinating topic! I'm going to try to use " metanoia" in casual conversation at least once this week! :)

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Atta boy! Your third grade teacher would be proud--use it three times and it's yours forever ;-)

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Ah, third grade. Best 2 years of my life! :)

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Tonic masculinity is my new favorite phrase! I hope to join the contingent of folks who use this tool to turn our world upside-down. When I do I’ll make sure to give you (and probably this post!) a shoutout.

I write on gender, sex, and family as part of exploring how anarchy can unfold here and now. Love the vibe of your newsletter, and the breadth of your engagement. I’m just starting on Substack, but it’s never too early to put down seeds and make some connections!

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Hi, Peter and thanks for reading! Your topics are right up my alley since anarchy is the social system I'm advocating with the family as the smallest unit of society that every other level of organization should protect and serve. I'll be very interested to hear your thoughts on it.

My phrase of tonic masculinity has become very contentious in recent posts. Before you wade in, you should read the other posts I've written about it and also the comment threads. Because the concept is one that I believe is critical to healing the world, I've reacted very strongly to protect my meaning of tonic masculinity from those who've taken the phrase to mean whatever they want it to mean, particularly a nice phrase to deny the existence of toxic masculinity without addressing it. It's not really credit I want so much as to keep it connected to its meaning. Here are the other articles, in reverse order:

https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/toxic-masculinity-by-any-other-name

https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-twisting-of-tonic-masculinity

https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-tonic-gnostic

https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-sacred-masculine

https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/men-and-women-and-the-tonic-tilt

Welcome to Substack and I'm excited to read your articles!

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thanks for getting back to me! i'll add these to my reading list. it's certainly frustrating when language coined for radical or liberating purposes gets twisted into precisely the thing we mean to critique or challenge. when i use this phrase i'll be sure to point readers to its original history so its meaning is clear.

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Yes, good way to put that!

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deletedFeb 8, 2023·edited Feb 8, 2023
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I wanted to give this eight hearts. I really haven't had this much fun in ages. What you did, Jay, was give me a place at the table where this very interesting conversation is going on. I'm loving your philosophical rants and rambunctious fiction. And I need to develop a whole new vocabulary to read Mark and Harrison, which I welcome. Thank you again for sharing custody of this newborn with all of you!

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