Category Archives: Survivalism

Financial Freedom

By Joel Salatin

Originally posted May 19, 2020 on Manward Press

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I remember like yesterday the conversations and conundrums surrounding Y2K. Pundits were all over the map, from Nothing will happen to Were going to be living in caves and whittling cooking utensils with pocketknives.

Sorting out the proper response occupied hours of reading, seeking, praying and late-night discussions.

Back in Y2K, the issue was internet failure, grid failure, microchip failure. It was a technology malfunction that would bring the world crashing down to something resembling the 1940s.

Today, the issue is not really COVID-19; its a complete collapse of what some call the Everything Bubble.

We all follow certain thinkers who earn our respect because they have a track record of good decisions. One of my guys says the pandemic enabled governments that were bankrupt to blame something else for economic collapse. Its the perfect scapegoat.

Whether it was contrived or not, it certainly bailed out our spendthrift politicians from having to own their financial chaos.

Most wise people realize by now that the pandemics issue is not sickness; its money.

It begs the question If by December were in postapocalyptic times, what will you do?

Too Late

Last week I spent an hour on the phone with two bright, middle-aged couples who were looking for the proper survival response to a cultural cataclysm.

The husbands in both of these couples were ex-military and believed things would be dire over the next few years. Their question: What is our best avenue to create security for our families during cultural chaos and collapse?

Steeped in survival lore, they looked first at hermit mountain man strategies.

The word survivalist conjures up the thought of a lone existence sequestered in a cave or cabin in a remote wilderness living on edible wild plants and backwoods cunning. Deadfall traps, cordage made from sinew and clothes made from buckskin this life certainly has an appeal, especially for introverts or people who have been abused and hold a strong distrust of neighbors.

The problem with this scenario is that it requires massive amounts of self-reliance skills. You dont just step out of your computer job and know how to set a deadfall trap to successfully kill a rabbit.

And you have to figure out where youre going to go to survive. People who create survival podcasts and YouTube presentations eat, drink and sleep survival techniques. And they do it for a long time.

If you wait for things to start collapsing before you head for the hills, youre too late. Youll never learn the skills fast enough to survive.

If this is your option, you have to do it now, way ahead of the collapse. But almost no one is willing to do that. Were all enamored by the skills these survival gurus have, but few of us are willing to spend the years building to that mastery. For a lot of reasons, this survival trajectory is simply not practical.

Whats the other option?

Invest in Connections

Its on the opposite end of the spectrum, what I call communal survivalism.

In that scenario, you invest in relationships. Ive always said Id like to be Amish without the costume. If you surround yourself with an eclectic blend of expertise, youll collectively have the knowledge and skills to weather the chaos.

That is something you can do without actually jumping off a cliff. It will take time, to be sure, but it can be cultivated while youre still enjoying the benefits of a quasi-functional culture.

Im not talking about a cult; Im talking about something far more basic than an insurance policy and far more long-lived than a stockpile of food.

Interestingly, in the last couple of years Ive helped several people find property near us as a bunker for hard times. Some moved here and some didnt. They realized that our farm, with its low carbon footprint and our team that can grow, build, and fix things, is as secure as just about anything. And so they bought land nearby that we manage for them while securing a haven in case of ground zero.

I have no idea if the monetary system will collapse or if savings will be wiped out. I do know that realtors report skyrocketing interest in rural properties right now. But nobody is listing because of uncertainty.

The properties listed prior to the pandemic are on the market and not being taken off. But no new ones are coming on yet. They will once the dust settles a bit.

Building Your Fort

In times of uncertainty, people head to the fort. In todays world, the fort is not a physical stockade; its a knowledge and skill stockade. The physical part is simply a land base with resources to support the people occupying the property.

Goals for preparing, then, revolve around land, expertise and as much independence as possible.

When people start talking about not being able to get electricity or not being able to buy gasoline and grain, they must realize that in such a postapocalyptic world, we wont be techno cherry-picking. Well be eating herbivores and growing seed-saved vegetables, and society will be in complete breakdown.

Thats an extreme scenario and probably wont happen.

But hiccups in supermarket supplies are quite likely. Hiccups in your 401(k) are certainly possible. Restrictions to commerce, nationalization of business and other key disruptions could happen.

The pandemic has awakened a new sense of urgency for personal security in uncertain times.

But rather than casting off from society and heading for the hills, I suggest a more prudent and practical course of action is to develop a relationship with a place and an outfit, or community, that exhibits principles of resilience. That investment might yield a better return.

Like what youre reading? Let us know your thoughts here.

Joel Salatin calls himself a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer. With a room full of debate trophies from high school and college days, 12 published books, and a thriving multigenerational family farm, he draws on a lifetime of food, farming and fantasy to entertain and inspire audiences around the world. Hes as comfortable moving cows in a pasture as he is addressing Fortune 500 CEOs at a Wall Street business conference. A fierce defender of personal freedom and choice, he brings an unorthodox viewpoint that readers of Manward Digest cant get enough of.

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Far More Valuable Than a Stockpile of Food and Money - Investment U

Photo by April Fleming

Making bread at home conjures romantic images of flour-dusted aprons and satisfying bready smells wafting through the house. You have the stuffflour, water, even a little bit of much-prized yeast thats been sitting around for probably years since the last time you tried this. You mix, you knead (or turn the task over to a mixer), rise, and stick it into the oven. You are awesome. You are excellent at endless stay-at-home survivalism. It even looks like halfway decent breadand you did it yourself!

Then you cut into it oh. Thats why we dont do this. Girl, this bread is DENSE. Gummy. Thick. Gluey. Tasteless. Gross. It is plain bad, but it will (probably) get eaten, somewhat miserably. Half will go to the dog. Gratefully, there are still bakers out there doing their thing, and thats where you (I) will go next time. Ibis Bakery, the king of KC breadmakers, is offering curbside at Black Dog Coffee and at Messenger Cafe. Farm to Market, also excellent, is available both at grocery stores and via their website, and if youre so motivated, you can pick up James Beard-nominated Taylor Petrahns bread at 1900 Barker in Lawrence if you order online. Go with theirs. It is much better than yours. Yours sucks.

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Eat this Now (Because You Have to): Terrible Homemade Bread - Kansas City Pitch

With Survivor: Winners at War coming to an end and the series 20th anniversary (20th!) just weeks away, theres no better time than now to honor the revolutionary reality TV competition. Welcome to Survivor Week, a celebration of the shows best moments and characters.

Curiously, Survivor doesnt claim to be a part of the genre it helped to invent. Producer Mark Burnett, who spent four years peddling the concept for the show alongside partner Charlie Parsons before finally finding a buyer in CBS, has long claimed his signature product isnt realityits unscripted drama. The latter term is more flattering to figures like Burnett, making visible their efforts to manipulate real peoples actions into a narrative just as satisfying as any fictional construct. Unfortunately, its just not as catchy.

Its almost too easy to commemorate Survivor on the eve of its 20th anniversary, in the midst of its 40th (winners-only) season. Not only did Survivor premiere at the start of a new decade, one its format and tropes would come to define; it arrived at the start of a new millennium, making its titanic influence even easier to peg to, and conflate with, a historical inflection point. Then, unfortunately, theres the matter of Burnett himself, whose future hits would include Shark Tank, The Voice, and most consequentially, The Apprentice, a seed planted when Survivor shot its fourth season finale at the Donald Trumpowned Wollman Rink in New Yorks Central Park. Survivor leads to The Apprentice leads to Trump as nationally recognized public figure leads to Trump as president leads to America in 2020. My work here is done.

But Survivors impact isnt as neat as a world-historical domino chain set off by an entrepreneur from East London. In its comfortable middle age, Survivor has settled from record-setting smashsome 52 million people watched its first-season finale, a figure that amounted to more than a sixth of the U.S. population at the timeinto dependable background noise. The current season is averaging around 7 million viewers an episode, itself an all-star-assisted boost from a steady audience in the 6 million range throughout Season 39. Those numbers are impressive by 2020 standards, especially for broadcast TV, but theyre on a different scale from the eye-popping omnipresence of the early aughts. Then again, even if Survivor the strategic competition is no longer a piece of monoculture, Survivor the concept still is, and will remain so permanently.

When Survivor does break through into the zeitgeist, it tends to be for controversies uncannily reflective of the national mood. In 2017, one contestant outed another as transgender during a tribal council, a move that was swiftly condemned and then guided into a teachable moment; last year, Survivor took the unprecedented step of ejecting a competitor off camera for repeated non-consensual touching. There are notable distinctions between the two events: the first was carefully managed, with the participation of outed player Zeke Smith, into a demonstration of Survivors enlightened stance on trans issues; the more recent controversy spun out to engulf Survivor itself, prompting questions as to why Dan Spilo was sent home after another contestant whod been a target of the nonconsensual touching outlined his behavior on camera. Both, however, occurred as transgender rights and sexual harassment in the workplace had escalated into subjects of widespread concern.

Survivor is so integrated into the fabric of American culture its become an extension of the society it helped to shape. You cant talk about America without talking about television; you cant talk about television without talking about reality, which long ago crossed over from novelty to fact of life; and you cant talk about reality without talking about Survivor, which showed how much resonance and profit there was to be found in the field. Imitators were inevitable, and arrived in such numbers that they now make up a substantial share of modern-day programming.

Survivor remains highly specific in its structure and terminology, a chess game thats grown only more intricate in strategy as cast members and audience members alike grow more savvy to how it can play out. Yet the idea sprang from a simple, infinitely applicable insight from Burnett, which he laid out in his 2001 book Survivor II: The Field Guide. Burnetts main takeaway from his production debut Eco-Challenge, an Amazing Race prototype that ran on multiple networks from 1995 to 2002, was that team dynamics and interpersonal skills mattered more than any other attribute. Therein lies the blueprint for all of realitysorry, unscripted drama. The context is almost immaterial, and at the very least highly versatile. What matters are the personalities and the chemistry, preferably friction, between them.

The list of concepts popularized by Survivor doubles as a list of what viewers have been trained to understand as the stylistic trademarks of unscripted, and sometimes scripted-deliberately-invoking-unscripted, TV. One-on-one testimonials where cast members add context and conflicting perspectives to previously recorded footage. Villains who arent here to make friends. (Relatedly, iconic catchphrases that make villains into memes.) Action thats massaged after the fact so that it more neatly fits an agreed-upon story line. One-time gotcha moments, like Burnetts admission that some scenes from Season 1 were reshot, would sink like a stone with contemporary viewers who now take for granted that their entertainment is far more mediated than not.

Its possible many, if not most, of these conventions would have been arrived at independently if Survivor had never made it to air. The show hardly arrived into a vacuum, building on vital precedents like The Real World; the director of the recent documentary Spaceship Earth compared Survivor to the media frenzy around the 90s curiosity Biosphere 2, both inviting everyday people to gawk at the physical feats involved in living off the land. (Latter-day Survivor is less focused on, well, survivalism, but let us not forget the age of Fear Factor.)

Nevertheless, Survivor is the obvious ancestor of not just every competitive reality show with one elimination per week, but every show thats learned to shape lay people into memorable characters. That means The Bachelor and its many spinoffs, plus unofficial ones like Love Is Blind. It means Real Housewives and Vanderpump Rules. It means Project Runway and its flashier new sibling Making the Cut. It means 30 Rocks MILF Island, which would presumably look something like Love Island or Too Hot to Handle. Producers can swap out the setting, the skill set, or the socioeconomic stratum at hand. What they almost never do, because they know better, is mess with the framework. When a show like Netflixs Dating Around or Showtimes Couples Therapy does something as simple as drop the testimonials, its a pointed and profound statement about what its not trying to be: like every other reality show, and therefore Survivor.

Survivors influence is so vast its almost impossible to see, like a fish swimming in crystal-clear tropical water. Burnetts preferred terminology may not have caught on, but his understanding of what reality TV truly is has. Mass audiences dont tune in for a documentary, like PBSs foundational American Family, and never have. They flock to unscripted TV for, well, the drama, with unprofessional actors not so much mitigating the artificiality as giving their peers at home a natural way in. At Survivors inception, it was common for contemporary critics like Times James Poniewozik to hand-wring about the overall message that life is an elimination contest, promoting the suffering, the mean-spiritedness, the humiliation of getting voted off the island as a cultural value. Twenty years later, Survivors impact is at once higher-stakes (the White House) and more benign (Survivor fans would be the first to tell you the game is not real life) than that. And Poniewozik, now at The New York Times, is still covering the show.

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Survivor Is the Quintessential TV Show - The Ringer

NEW YORK With a stronger point of view, the documentary"Spaceship Earth" (Neon), might have pointed out that its subject,the two-year experiment called Biosphere 2, never came close to producinganything in the way of enduring knowledge. Instead, it was a lot of ballyhooabetted by sedulous and decidedly incurious news coverage.

Another way of looking at such a documentary during a time ofsheltering in place might be: "And you think you're bickering? How aboutgetting locked into a gigantic greenhouse with strangers for two years, withpeople paying to gawk at you as though you were a zoo animal?"

Stressful, that.

The early 1990s come off like a quaint prelapsarian age beforethe internet democratized scholarship and when news came exclusively fromnetwork TV and print outlets. If a billionaire decided to fund a140,000-square-foot sealed conservatory, it was treated with all the solemnityof a space shuttle launch.

And if, as unlikely as it seems, someone managed to attract sevenothers willing to have themselves locked away there and could get them tomention that the place would be a combination of Noah's Ark and the Garden ofEden, all the better.

Director Matt Wolf does the best he can with archival film, andhis interviewees include John Allen, the sometimes-playwright who led theexperiment, and a few of its "crew" members, many of whom saw Allenas a benevolent father figure. None appear to be angry or bitter about theexperience.

Viewers don't derive much knowledge of science from the film,other than the observation that its rigor requires experiments that can beduplicated under identical conditions. Meaning that another group would havehad to lock themselves up for two years again.

Allen, a charismatic graduate of the Colorado School of Mineswith a Harvard business degree, had a burgeoning interest in sustainablefarming and ecology. He also had a knack for finding the financing for hisventures, which included an oceangoing exploration ship, the Heraclitus, and aself-sustaining commune in New Mexico, the Synergia Ranch.

His avocation was penning avant-garde plays under the nom deplume Johnny Dolphin, and some of his devoted followers were drawn from hiscasts.

Crew member Linda Leigh, a botanist, says the group "was amagnetic center. It just kind of pulled me in." She's also heard in arecording talking to her therapist: "I have a personal relationship withevery single plant."

Another member, Roy Wolford, was a doctor in his late 60s whopromoted the belief that very low caloric intake could help you live to 120.(Wolford would die at 79.)

The publicized notion of Biosphere 2 was that it was a prototypeof how a Mars settlement that generated its own oxygen might work. But therewere also dark hints of survivalism and the belief, common during the Cold Waryears, that Western civilization could collapse, and biospheres would be theonly way for a small elite to live in the aftermath of nuclear war.

Built north of Tucson, Arizona, the $150 million facility wasfinanced by Texas oil billionaire Edward P. Bass. It exists still, operated bythe University of Arizona as an environmental lab.

And what a utopia it was meant to be, with a manmade rain forestand savannah, a tiny ocean and a small farm with goats and chickens. It wasalso intended to be a showcase of water and nutrient recycling, and oxygenthrough photosynthesis, with 64 separate projects.

But it never worked as intended. As an ecological entertainment,certainly. As science, no.

The plant life never produced enough oxygen for humanself-sufficiency, and carbon-dioxide levels grew so high that a scrubber had tobe installed. Crew members feared brain damage and suffocation as a result.Wolford, moreover, was stretching out the low-cal meals, making everyone cranky.

No surprise, then, that there was intense bickering over farmchores, and the inhabitants sole pleasure became the making of banana wine,although they never had sugar.

The facility went into receivership in 1994 before the Universityof Arizona took it over.

Many viewers might see a lesson here in the folly of sealingyourself off, rather than encouraging activities and government policymaking toimprove the environment of the planet called Biosphere 1 here we all sharealready.

But "Spaceship Earth" is more a chronicle of spectacle.It's also a reminder that the 1990s may have been stranger than we usuallyrecall.

A single expletive and oblique references to drug use make thefilm unsuitable for kids. But they are unlikely to be interested in its subjectmatter anyway.

For streaming information go to:https://neonrated.com/films/spaceship-earth#virtual-cinema.

Jensen is a guest reviewer for Catholic News Service.

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Documentary shows life in the 'Biosphere' wasn't out of this world - Arlington Catholic Herald

Cooking feels like a form of self-care; setting aside time to do something good for yourself (Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

Several years ago I hatched survival plans in the event of a zombie apocalypse.

Plan A was variable, dependent on the zombies walking speed. Plan B was conceived as a backup in case they could swim.

Both involved staying put for a long period of time, save for trips to forage at an abandoned supermarket.

Now that Im living a semi-dystopian lifestyle due to lockdown, I find that survival involves far less chainsaw action than I imagined and rather a lot more baking powder.

Who knew that survivalism would bring out the domestic goddess within me?

I say goddess with a pinch of salt, which, as it turns out, is not akin to a tablespoon when measuring out ingredients.

Salty lemon drizzle cake is upsetting, but not as upsetting as eating the whole thing anyway because you live alone and you spent all your food money on a bag of flour, which is now a rarer commodity than gold.

No one ate banana bread before March battered and browning bananas belonged in the bin. Yet our post-lockdown selves wouldnt dream of being so wasteful.

Instead, we go out and buy all the other required ingredients so that they can rot in our cupboards for the next three years instead.

We tell ourselves were simply being economical as we jump up and down to crush the pile of cardboard boxes weve accrued from all our Amazon Prime deliveries.

Although learning to bake certainly makes me feel more practical during lockdown, its actually useless because the supermarket shelves are full of baked goods.

Learning to make toilet roll or hand sanitiser would have been far a more productive use of time.

There are, however, benefits to baking that extend beyond the enjoyment of sugar and fat.

I find it calming; meditative, almost. Ive always struggled to get on board with traditional methods of meditation such as yoga or breath-work.

Sitting quiet and still for a prolonged period of time is my idea of hell, but having to measure out quantities of ingredients and make things with my hands has a calming effect on my psyche.

Before lockdown, I didnt bake and I rarely cooked. The fast pace of life in London meant that I would skip breakfast, grab a sandwich for lunch and more than likely go out for dinner.

It burnt a hole in my wallet, but I knew that doing a big shop would only lead to food waste as I rarely knew when I would be at home to cook it.

When the takeaways were taken away, I turned to actual recipes to spice up my diet.

Cooking feels like a form of self-care; setting aside time to do something good for yourself.

I used to scoff at people who spent so much time and effort in making the perfect dish when, in my mind, it all ends up in the toilet anyway but now I get it.

Cooking a meal from scratch makes me feel good. I dont know if that stems from some primal gatherer instinct imprinted in my XX chromosomes, or if its the lingering effects of 1950s housewife stereotype.

When men (as they so often do) accuse me of being a bitter feminist, I now agree with them. Yes, Im bitter. Im bitter that due to my firmly held principles I cant just stay home and ferment dough all day while the bloke Ive married goes out to work to earn it.

Call me a bad feminist, but I would probably be content just cooking and baking for the rest of my life if it werent for all the washing up that follows.

Forget the pill, the dishwasher gets my vote for the most feminist invention known to woman.

I live alone and spend at least an hour a day washing the pots, so I dread to think how wrinklythe hands of parents in quarantine are.

As much as I feel like I am settling down into a traditional gender role during lockdown, I have also smashed the stereotype in equal measure.

I fixed an alternator with my bare hands this week, something I would have usually called upon a man in my life to come and sort.

In lockdown, I have found the confidence to tackle household tasks that I previously thought myself incapable of sorting.

Once you realise that your partner/brother/father is just as clueless about reattaching an alternator belt as you are, but they just have that inbuilt masculine confidence to give it a go youre an unstoppable woman.

I hope that when lockdown is eventually lifted, I continue with my newly discovered confidence at domestic life.

If the zombies do come, Ill be armed with plenty of home baked baguettes. Lets pray they have a gluten intolerance.

Do you have a story youd like to share? Get in touch by emailingjess.austin@metro.co.uk

Share your views in the comments below.

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I didn't think a pandemic would bring out the domestic goddess in me - Metro.co.uk

New York It feels like the end times. A mysterious invisible killer stocks the land. Wild rumors abound. The government is useless. Theres no sense that anyone knows anything, much less is in charge. Could the United States become a failed state?

Yes, but not yet. Yes, but not because of the new coronavirus. Late-stage capitalism will ultimately destroy the current sociopolitical governmental system, not COVID-19. A vaccine will come online either later this year or early next year; that will be the beginning of the end of this scourge. Before then, many if not most Americans will have contracted the disease and recovered from it. Businesses will reopen. People will go back to work. The stock market will resume its climb.

In the meantime, many of us are wondering: how would/will we survive in an apocalyptic scenario without a somewhat benevolent government to run things?

I have good news: It is possible. Not easy. Not fun. But it can be done. I know because I have seen it. For decades Afghanistan was the epitome of a failed state, a nation whose government is no longer able or willing to supply essential services to its citizens. The 1978 CIA-backed overthrow of a Russian-supported regime prompted the Soviet invasion of the 1980s, which was followed after withdrawal by a brutal, grinding civil war partly resolved by the victory of the Taliban in 1996. They ruled until 2001 but didnt built much infrastructure before being themselves driven out of power by the U.S. after 9/11. I was there under the Taliban, long before the U.S. and NATO began reconstruction in the mid-2000s.

Afghans were utterly dependent on themselves. Not only did the Taliban government fail to provide services like mail delivery and garbage collection, the Taliban made peoples lives miserable through arbitrary edicts and a psychotic religious police force that beat Afghans in the streets willy-nilly.

Try to imagine, if you can, what it would be like to live in a country that didnt have a single inch of paved road, just muddy ruts. No one has a phone. There are no newspapers. Radios and televisions are banned, which is fine because you have no electricity and no stations are broadcasting.

Inside your house, theres no running water. You have to walk to a communal well if you are lucky enough to have one nearby that isnt polluted. Theres a good chance that a local thug controls the well and forces you to pay for water. It gets blazing hot in the summer, but theres no air conditioning. Its freezing cold in the winter but theres no heat. You could burn some wood but you cant find any because everyone has already chopped down all the trees.

Under the Taliban you cant send your daughter to school. But you cant send your son either because there probably isnt a local school at all. No one has work as we know it. You exchange odd jobs in a 100 percent unemployment economy where cash has stopped circulating; everything relies on barter.

There is a certain freedom. Without a public records office you dont need a deed to move into an empty house. But of course you cant sell it if you leave. Theres no department of motor vehicles so if somehow do you acquire a car you can drive it regardless of your age. On the other hand, if someone steals it, theres no police to report it to. If you did get that car, you probably would only want to drive it around your neighborhood. If you tried to drive to a different town, you would almost certainly be robbed and killed.

Sounds like it would be impossible to survive, right? But millions of Afghans did. Some of them even had children. Life went on. How? Its almost unfathomable for us Americans, so accustomed to our creature comforts, to imagine.

Not that they could have afforded to anyway, but Afghans did not hoard. Situations in which survival is precarious require you to be nimble. That includes being able to pack up and leave at a moments notice. If you manage to accumulate some possessions, you want something highly portable: cash (in Afghanistan, that meant dollars), jewelry, gemstones. A years worth of toilet paper weighs you down.

I have met more than my fair share of survivalists in the U.S. Typically their instinct is to hunker down on a remote plot of land, stockpile weapons and supplies, fortify a perimeter and arm up to fend off potential marauders. They are foolish. When the crap hits the fan, the best armed man will not be able to fight off a dozen invaders. Its smarter to pack up and go if your area turns into a battle zone.

What you really need to stock up on are two items: personal relationships and IQ points. Both make the difference between life and death. Good friends welcome one other into their homes. If one home is lost, they can squeeze together into a second one. A good friend might have a skill or a possession that you might need they can stitch a wound or drive you somewhere in their car.

You make yourself useful in a failed state exactly the opposite of how you do in ours. In the U.S. in 2020, it pays to have excellent skills in one or two areas, to be the best at what you do in your specialty. Not in Afghanistan in 2000. Dangerous places work best for people with a wide variety of skills. Learn to do a lot of things fairly well. Shoot a gun, drive a car, cook, sew. Translate a foreign language, ride a motorcycle, fish, hunt. You can sell those skills to people who dont have them.

Most of all, stay sharp and think nimbly. Hone your instincts. Watch for changes that might affect you and the people you care about. Prepare to drop everything you are doing at a seconds notice and take off if need be. We are all descended from people who lived this way. Those who didnt died. Survival is in your DNA.

I dont think youll need raw survivalism for the coronavirus apocalypse. But its worth keeping in the back of your mind.

Ted Rall is a political cartoonist and writer.

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How to avoid the end times - The Japan Times

(Part Two of Three)

An interview withPeter Harrison by GYRUS.

The late French anthropologist Pierre Clastres seems to be a big influence on your work, and I was interested to gather from your work that he seems to be influencing quite a bit of recent anthropology. His theories are a kind of subversion of the usual Hobbes vs. Rousseau dynamic, in that he valorises pre-state societiesbecauseof their penchant for violence since he believes the structure of their violence resists the consolidation of power by a State, and thus preserves autonomy. How did his theories impact your thinking?

I have only read Clastres in very recent years but his work is pivotal to the perspectives I attempt to elaborate in the book. I am not sure that his writing is yet having an influence on modern anthropology in general terms, but it is significant that the Brazilian anthropologist, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, not only makes clear the key concepts that emerge from Clastres ethnology but has also endorsed Clastres rejection of the teleology of exchange as the basis of all human societal interaction something that was, of course, effectively inaugurated by Marcel Mauss (which is evident if one follows Claude Lvi-Strauss elaborations rather than David Graebers attempt to escape the notion of the immature exchange relationship as the motor of pre-State human behaviour in his gamble on the critique of debt). The archaeologist Severin Fowles, has also, following Clastres, explored the centrifugal logic that appears to lie at the heart of primitive society through his studies of violence in Puebloan societies.

It is by examining Clastres understanding of the violence in primitive society that I have also been able to provide a perspective on the feud in non-State societies that abandons the summoning up of motives derived from the perspectives of economics and exchange, and which also abandons the notion that all societies must operate under the premise of social control. All these perspectives economics (survivalism), exchange, and social control are part of our modern-day logos and they are relentlessly and crudely employed to understand all other social forms and peculiarities. So, scholars as varied as Fernand Braudel, Christopher Boehm, William Miller, and Yuval Noah Harari, feel able to use their modern Sherlock Holmesian magnifying glass to explain the motivations of non-State peoples from their own perspective of exchange, trade, social control, and human nature with no awareness, I contend, that their magnifying glass only reveals to them the human story they are able to see. This does not mean that I am claiming to understand how non-State societies work, this is something I stress as being impossible. But I am claiming that if one takes the actual words and actions of non-State peoples seriously (as Viveiros de Castro does, for example), along with generating an awareness of how the way we live today impacts our view on everything, then there is the possibility of recognising that in other societies other things are going on.

But we can extend Clastres observations of the centrifugality of primitive society, in which dependence in any shape or form, or at any level, is anathema, into an investigation into the problematic that exists within the interconnecting discourses of freedom, universality, and peace. What Clastres tells us, in perhaps a roundabout way, is that all political phenomena since the emergence of the State must always, if become reality, be made manifest as methods for managing the population and that this necessary management naturally and unavoidably denies independence and what we understand as freedom. What I do with this vertiginous insight is to then simply reveal the impossibility of removing the State form in a mass society. This has implications for all political tendencies that claim to offer a way to dispense with the State and/or to institute a realm of freedom, as Marx terms it.

Have you found holes in Clastres model of pre-State societies relying on violence and feuding to keep social units small? Without suggesting that any particular form of contemporary foraging life is necessarily typical of early human life, Clastres case studies were in the Amazon, and cultures there can have very different dynamics to those in other areas, e.g. Inuit, San, or Hadza. Clastres seemed to make no effort to correlate his Amazonian findings with wider ethnography, which seems myopic for generating general theories. Also, what do you make ofDavid Graeber and David Wengrows recent proposition, that seasonal gatherings played a crucial role in the origins of hierarchy?

No, I havent found holes as such in Clastres intuitions in regard to the position of violence, feuding, or war in non-State societies. What I have found is support for his conjectures in the work of diverse anthropologists who do not usually intend to promote such conclusions, or who leave significant questions hanging in the air, such as the question of why tribal rivalries are the last primitive predisposition that generates heat in certain Indigenous communities.

Perhaps if Clastres had lived longer he would have searched for and found evidence for his theories in studies of other societies. I have, of course, recklessly extrapolated his theory across the gamut of non-State societies across the world but, for me, in general, his perspective holds.

In regard to the work of David Graeber and David Wengrow, that you mention, I tend to think three things. Firstly, that there is an assumption based on radical Enlightenment thinking as we have inherited it in the West, particularly as expressed in the idea of communism (or radical democracy, as the French economist and activist, Frdric Lordon, terms it), that it is possible for a mass society to operate on the basis of egalitarianism and individual freedom. Secondly, that there is a deep desire amongst these types of scholars to find justification for their radical democratic views in past social organisation. Thirdly, that if one tries to use the categories of egalitarianism or freedom as descriptors for social organisation in non-State societies one is immediately skewing what those societies may actually be like in favour of the promotion of a teleological bias or political agenda.

This is where, for example, the very fine thinker and anthropologist R. Brian Ferguson takes a dubious route, I think, in his objection to Steven Pinkers Hobbesian judgement of non-State peoples (see Pinkers book,The Better Angels of Our Nature). Ferguson cant accept the violence of non-State societies, and therefore cant connect this to their autonomy and independence, because to do so would be to destabilise his (leftist) argument that it is the State that prevents peace and the universalising of good will (following, and adapting, Rousseau).

In fact, the State does facilitate peace through its strategy of assuming the monopoly of violence, as Max Weber indicated. It is interesting that most leftists around the world will currently be favourably comparing countries with strict gun laws to the present situation in the USA where, for historical reasons, the US government has never apparently quite understood the benefits for a State in more properly disarming the population.

Graeber and Wengrow, whose paper was presented in the same year as Brian Haydens similarly-themed book,The Power of Feasts: From Prehistory to the Present, but extended and published the following year, occupies the same territory in regard to pondering the origin of the State as did tienne de La Botie nearly 500 years ago. La Botie described the establishment of the State as a misfortune caused by the phenomenon of tyrants or gangs taking control of society (by force or deception) that was then normalised by the population as it, slowly or quickly, accepted this new state of affairs. That is: the masses, ultimately, voluntarily,frustratingly and annoyingly, subjected themselves to servitude.

These are the twin myths that underlie radical leftist political discourse, or perhaps theexistential angstat its core. The first one is that bad people gained control over others (or at least that unchecked power corrupts), at some point in the past, inaugurating a tradition of hierarchy and domination. The second one is that the retarded, or false, consciousness of the masses does not allow them to see that they contribute voluntarily to the misery that envelops their lives.

The radical leftist strategy to escape this situation is, therefore, to replace the government, or dispense with it, and to simultaneously or at a later date awaken the consciousnesses of the entirety of the masses.

On the other hand, in reference to how the State began and what Wengrow, Graeber, and Hayden propose, Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, following and extending Clastres intuitions, have suggested that there is no evolution of the State and no one thing, such as fire, or the scattering of seeds, or the invention of pottery, or feasting, or the settlement of an alluvial valley, that initiates the inexorable rise of the State. Instead, they further deepen the mystery, but in another direction, by claiming that the State was always already there. This is how they rationalise that societies that wereagainst the State, in Clastres terms, could exist when there was no discernible State in the area. This is also why, in their conception, the State was able to appear all at once and fully armed.

But their solution to the question of the State is more a provocation than a simplification. The problem, as I see it, is that too much hocus pocus is being invested into what the Stateactually is. So much so, that the notion of the State becomes a mystery like the mystery of God. My proposal is that the State is simply the natural (necessarily managerial) solution to the fact of a large population which is why, for example, the Russian Revolution, irrespective of whether it was a communist or a capitalist phenomenon, became what it always had to be: a managerial solution. The mystery, which is now, under these terms, much more prosaic than the mystery of the origin of the State, is simply how populations got too large.

But there is a spanner in the works of my argument concerning mass society, as I indicate in the book, and it is found in the example of atalhyk as it has been interpreted by archaeology. This, apparently, was a large settlement of perhaps up to 8,000 people at its height that existed for up to a thousand years, from about 6,500 BC, that yields no evidence in the archaeological record of any form of hierarchy. The phenomenon of atalhyk is not only viewed as an egalitarian society by modern scholars, it is also viewed as a warless one. But this makes me wonder about the motivations of the interpreters of atalhyk. It is possible that atalhyk might be used as a practical, historical example of the modern concepts of egalitarianism and individualism as it has been used in the recent past in support of the claimed virtues of matriarchal society in order to gain leverage within, and for radical democratic discourse. If atalhyk is to be used as a proposal for moving present society forward, or as an example of how we might fix our problems, then it must be suspected that atalhyk is being misunderstood, fabricated even, for employment within a modern political agenda.

Drawing on Eduardo Kohns work, you describe capitalism as the most effective system for rendering us soul blind. Could you outline this concept, as something from indigenous cultures which has relevance for understanding the modern world? I found the perspectivism here to haveinteresting resonancewith psychologist James Hillmans use of the word soul.

Marx identified the concept of alienation as being a separation, or estrangement, from ones labour. And for Marx the consistent ability to labour, to work purposefully and consciously, as opposed to instinctively, towards apre-imaginedgoal, was the trait that distinguished humans from other animals. This means also that humans are able to be persuaded to work creatively, with vigour and passion, for the goals of others, or for some higher goal than the maintenance of daily survival. As long as they are able see some tiny benefit for themselves, which might be service to a higher cause, or even just simple survival, since working for the goal of others may be the only means of obtaining food. So, Marxs definition of alienation was more specific than an existential definition because it specified labour as the defining human characteristic. But he was also aware that the general conditions of capitalism made this alienation more acute and that this escalated estrangement of humans from immediately meaningful daily activity led to a sense of being a stranger in ones own world, and not only for the working class. This estrangement (I want to writetranger-ment, to reference Camus, but this is not a word) afflicted all classes, even those classes that seemed to benefit from class society, since capitalism had, even by his own time, gained an autonomy of its own. Life is as meaningless [or better: as anti-human] for a cleaner as it is for the head of a large corporation. This is why Marx stated that all people under capitalism were proletarian.

When I discovered the idea of soul blindness in Eduardo Kohns book,How Forests Think, I was struck by it as another useful way of understanding the idea of alienation. The concept of soul blindness, as used by the Runa people described by Kohn, seems to me to be related to the widespread Indigenous view of the recently deceased as aimless and dangerous beings who must be treated with great care and respect after their passing to prevent them wreaking havoc on the living. In Kohns interpretation, to be soul blind is to have reached the terminus of selfhood, and this terminus can be reached while still alive, when one loses ones sense of self through illness or despair, or even when one just drifts off into an unfocussed daze, or, more profoundly, sinks into an indifference similar to to reference Camus again that described by the character Meursault, inLEtranger.

There are some accounts of Indigenous people first encountering white people in which the white people are initially seen as ghosts, one is recorded by Lvi-Strauss for Vanuatu. Another is embedded in the popular Aboriginal history of the area I live in. On first contact the white people are immediately considered to be some kind of ghost because of their white skin. This may have something to do with practice of preserving the bodies of the dead. This involves scraping off the top layer of skin which, apparently, makes the body white. This practice is described by the anthropologist, Atholl Chase, in his reminisces of Cape York. But for me there is more to the defining of the white intruders as ghosts because of their white skin. These foreigners also act as if they are soul blind. They are like machines, working for a cause that is external to them. For the Indigenous people these strangers do not seem to have soul: they are unpredictable; dangerous; they dont know who they are.

But it is the anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro who, I think, connects most clearly to the work of James Hillman on the notion of the soul. James Hillman uses the term soul but he does not mean a Christian soul and he is not ultimately meaning the mind. For him the soul is a form of mediation between events and the subject and, in this sense, it might be similar to Bourdieus conception of disposition. For Viveiros de Castro, A perspective is not a representation because representations are a property of the mind or spirit, whereas the point of view is located in the body. Thus, Amerindian philosophy, which Viveiros de Castro is here describing, perhaps prefigures Hillmans notion that soul is a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint towards things rather than a thing itself.

To be continued

Originally published in 2018 by Dreamflesh blog.

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Is It as Impossible to Build Jerusalem as It is to Escape Babylon? (Part Two) - CounterPunch

As Bitcoin has collapsed over the past day, so too has Ripples XRP.

Since peaking at around $0.34 last week on the back of FOMO buying, the popular altcoin, the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has plunged as low as $0.26 a drop of around 25%. Ouch.

While the cryptocurrency has already plunged heavy, underperforming Bitcoins relatively measly 10% loss, a top analyst is fearing that more pain is on the horizon.

Legendary commodities trader Peter Brandt recently remarked that XRP is in the midst of forming a potentially extremely bearish chart pattern: a head and shoulders top, marked by two shoulder-like price action and a blow-off top.

Brandt remarked that should this textbook pattern play out, the cryptocurrency could fall to $0.2071 around 23% lower than the current market price around $0.27 for that is where the measured move for this pattern lies.

Should XRP fall this low, that would mean bulls would be put back to the drawing board, for the cryptocurrency would have broken through the crucial daily and weekly support around $0.27.

While a strong drop in something like Ethereum would normally be accompanied by a plunge in Bitcoin, XRP can move independently of the market leader due to certain market dynamics; indeed, in 2019, the altcoin fell 50% against the U.S. dollar, dramatically underperforming Bitcoins 94% yearly performance.

That means for this bearish pattern to unfold for XRP, it isnt a necessity for Bitcoin to fall that much lower than it is now.

While Brandt is warning (not predicting) of a potential crash in the altcoin, there are some sure the asset remains bullish, citing a confluence of technical analysis trends.

Financial Survivalism, the trader who called Bitcoins surge to $9,200 by mid-January weeks in advance, almost nailing the timing and magnitude of the move, said that XRP could be forming a medium-term bull trend.

In a tweet published Tuesday, he posted the below chart, showing that he expects the price of the cryptocurrency to rocket towards $0.70 160% above the current $0.27 price in the coming months.

Financial Survivalism backed this lofty forecast by looking to a few factors on the long-term chart of the cryptocurrency: the Heiken Ashi candles have turned green on a weekly basis, implying reversal, the cryptocurrency has turned a key horizontal into support, and it has broken above a falling wedge pattern, adding to the bull case.

Continued here:

Veteran Analyst Warns of XRP Crash to $0.20 as Price Stumbles - Ethereum World News

XRP hasnt done too well ever since finding a local top last week. Since peaking at $0.34, the price of the leading cryptocurrency has fallen off dramatically, tanking over 20% to as low as $0.265 or so on Wednesday.

Despite this strong pullback, there remain many analysts that expect for XRP to surge even higher in the coming months. Heres why.

Prominent market commentator Cal recently noted that XRPs long-term chart is starting to look bullish, falling through horizontal support that stretches back two years to bounce and smash straight through it shortly afterward, showing that bullish momentum is building. Indeed, he wrote that I think a lot are underestimating the importance of this, accentuating that traders may be sleeping on the performance of the cryptocurrency.

He remarked that this move considered, he expects a pullback into the two-year support around $0.21 to $0.24, prior to a strong bounce that will catapult XRP higher very, very quickly. His rough forecast estimates a $0.60 XRP price by the end of the year.

This forecast was echoed by Financial Survivalism, a trader who called Bitcoins surge to $9,200 by mid-January weeks in advance, almost nailing the timing and magnitude of the move.

He remarked in a recent tweet that e expects for the price of the cryptocurrency to rocket towards $0.70 160% above the current $0.027 price after a pullback to the region that Cal expects, around $0.024.

The analyst backed this forecast by looking to a number of factors: the Heiken Ashi candles have turned green on a weekly basis, implying reversal, the cryptocurrency has turned a key horizontal into support, and it has broken above a falling wedge pattern, adding to the bull case.

While XRPs long-term outlook is starting to look optimistic once again

Indeed, Cals own chart, which is long-term bullish, shows XRP retracing slightly in the coming months, prior to heading higher as 2020 elapses.

Not to mention, a leading analyst of traditional markets, Peter Brandt, recently suggested that XRP could soon print a bearish chart pattern: a head and shoulders top.

Per previous reports from Ethereum World News, Brandt remarked that should this textbook pattern play out, the cryptocurrency could fall to $0.2071 around 23% lower than the current market price around $0.27 for that is where the measured move for this pattern lies.

Should XRP fall this low, that would mean bulls would be put back to the drawing board, for the cryptocurrency would have broken through the crucial daily and weekly support around $0.27.

Link:

XRP Could Be on Verge of Explosive Breakout Higher, Taking It 100% Higher - Ethereum World News

Over the past two days, the crypto market hasnt fared too well. After peaking last week, the prices of digital assets across the board have tanked. XRP, the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, tanked from the multi-month high just a smidgen above $0.34 to as low as $0.265 a hurting loss of over 25%.

Despite this brutal crash, which made the biases of many traders flip negative after a short period of bullish optimism, a strong technical signal just formed that may support buyers moving forward.

While cryptocurrencies seemingly move without rhyme or reason, the movements of these assets (and assets in other classes) can be chalked down to price points here and there; a close above a certain price point can imply bulls are in control, and a close under a certain level may suggest bears are ready to graze, so to speak.

Trader Mexbt recently shared the chart below, which shows XRPs one-day chart with data stretching back to last November. The main point of the chart is that XRP has recently flipped $0.25-$0.26 a crucial monthly resistance into support, boding well for the bullish narrative of the asset.

Indeed, this level could act as a base for the cryptocurrency to rocket higher.

The turning of the monthly resistance into support isnt the only thing that has analysts, well, over the moon about XRPs prospects in the coming weeks and months.

Financial Survivalism, the pseudonymous trader that called Bitcoins January price action to a tee some weeks in advance, argued in a recent tweet that XRP may be on track to hit $0.70 this year.

The analyst backed this lofty forecast by looking to a few factors on the long-term chart of the cryptocurrency: the Heiken Ashi candles have turned green on a weekly basis, implying reversal, the cryptocurrency has turned a key horizontal into support, and it has broken above a falling wedge pattern, adding to the bull case.

While there are these technical factors, everyone and their mother isnt bullish on the cryptocurrency. On the contrary.

Per previous reports from Ethereum World News, veteran commodities analyst Peter Brandt warned his followers that XRP is in the form of printing a textbook a head and shoulders top, marked by two shoulder-like segments of price action and a blow-off top in the middle.

Brandt remarked that should this textbook pattern play out, the cryptocurrency could fall to $0.2071 around 23% lower than the current market price around $0.27 for that is where the measured move for this pattern lies.

See the article here:

XRP Just Flipped a Key Resistance Into Support: Why This is Bullish - Ethereum World News