Anarchitecture

Posted on February 24, 2009

Timber-frame trackhouses
endless carbon copy clones
little boxes on the hillside
and they all look just the same
built from the flesh of ancient forests
disposable homes built to rot
and be replaced in 50 years or less
forged from the bones of giants
who have sheltered us all for millenia.
i earned my name
sheltered by those branches
using my body to shelter them in return
and i would sooner rip my arms from their sockets
and use my bones to build
then make my home out of the broken limbs
of these, the oldest of our living relations
beings with neither fingers to write nor lungs to scream
but only quiet voices speaking always of peace
still, the masses cry – without wood, where will we live?
as though our frail bodies need for shelter
were justification enough for the massacre
i demand a new architecture
one forged from earth sand and straw
local, sustainable, organic
instead of drenched in toxic chemicals
and founded on the lie of immediate scarcity
coupled with the fallacy of infinite growth
an architecture that shelters and builds our communities
nurtures our spirits
and respects the earth that sustains us
spaces for humans to share to give, to meet and to mingle
without the jingle of coins
or the markets endless race to the bottom
a better way to build and to live
together.

A few thoughts on Currency & Markets

Posted on February 22, 2009

This is the first draft of an essay I’m working on comparing different types of currency and markets.  It’s all kinds of not done, but I wanted to post it here to hopefully get some feedback.
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A few thoughts on Currency & Markets

There are three fundamentally different types of currency, there is social capital which is real and important and invisible and largely unconscious, there is also currency of convenience – gold or cacao beans or some other easily mobile product with an intrinsic value that is used as a convenience in order to make barter between multiple parties more convenient. The third form is representative currency, that is to say paper money and/or its various digital and abstract representations.

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Patriotism: A Menace To Liberty

Posted on February 18, 2009

One of my favorite essays from the inimical Emma Goldman.  This one is from Emma Goldman’s Anarchism and Other Essays. Second Revised Edition. New York & London: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1911. pp. 133-150.

WHAT is patriotism? Is it love of one’s birthplace, the place of childhood’s recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naivete, we would watch the fleeting clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not run so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one “an eye should be,” piercing the very depths of our little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to the music of the birds, and long to have wings to fly, even as they, to distant lands? Or the place where we would sit at mother’s knee, enraptured by wonderful tales of great deeds and conquests? In short, is it love for the spot, every inch representing dear and precious recollections of a happy, joyous, and playful childhood?

If that were patriotism, few American men of today could be called upon to be patriotic, since the place of play has been turned into factory, mill, and mine, while deafening sounds of machinery have replaced the music of the birds. Nor can we longer hear the tales of great deeds, for the stories our mothers tell today are but those of sorrow, tears, and grief.

What, then, is patriotism? “Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels,” said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the average workingman.

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