So who am I, and why have I spent 14 years on-and-off on this poorly read blog? The first thing to assure you is: I write pseudonymously (though pretty transparently) because these are very provisional ideas which are considered "oddball at best" in polite society. You can find out my "street name" with some basic internet detective skills, and if you're not a dick I'll say hi to you.
I am a materialist and a Marxist. I do not believe in the supernatural at this point in my life, but I have no reason to argue with the beliefs of those who do as long as they do not stray into science-denial. I heartily endorse Stephen Jay Gould's concept of "non-overlapping magisteria" in that regard. I believe that the "superstructure" of human culture - culture, psychology and even religion - is based upon material reality and the physical and social processes through which humans survive and reproduce, and how this shapes their relation to each other and their environment. (By "materialist" I of course mean "ecological" - humanity as an animal amongst other animals living on Planet Earth is the necessary starting point.)
At the same time I am a mystic. It is clear from my own experience and my studies that the Numinous or the Absolute - that which cannot be explained in language and which does not appear to obey the laws of material reality - is a deeply important (subjective) reality in human culture, psychology and religion. I think it most likely that this numinous experience has a material basis, but that - until science has advanced further in understanding it - the tools given to us by human culture for understanding and appreciating this are found in various traditions and languages of religion, magic, poetry and art, and in modern materialist psychology to some degree.
I have spent my life trying to integrate these two equally real and true aspects of my life experience, in order to try to "find a way out of the trap" in which class society and in particular capitalism has trapped the world. The materialist and mystical paths are both true, complementary, but non-overlapping for me. A "vulgar materialist" form of Marxism can simply not engage humanity at the very real and important level of spirituality/meaning-making, as is necessary to form a collective subject for social action - except by transforming itself into a religious substitute and therefore denuding itself of the possibility of changing reality (as in Stalinist personality cults). Conversely, religion and magic are not necessarily liberatory - both can lead to reactionary as well as revolutionary conclusions. The belief system which inspired Malcolm X also inspired the Ayatollah Khomenei.
The basic principles of my praxis are as follows:
- Capitalism can only be overthrown by organised action of the working classes and oppressed peoples of the world, acting in solidarity and mutual aid. The working class can and will become the ruling class only when it becomes fully unified, which means perfecting solidarity, mutual aid, and unity-within-diversity within itself.
- Capitalism (like all class society) fulfils human needs for spirituality, art, and meaning (as well as more biological needs) in ways which enforce its own hierarchies and promote acquiescence to them. A (materialist) study of psychology, culture, religion and art is necessary to understand the very human need for spirituality, art, and other encounters with the Numinous, and to find ways in which people can encounter these aspects of life in a way that promotes solidarity and mutual aid.
- This also applies to psychology. Capitalism elevates the individual ego, its avoidance of pain and drive towards pleasure, as the basis of participation in society; thus, it actively undermines social solidarity, the only social force which can replace it. These latter arise not from intellectual assent to the propositions of socialism, but of (cultural and economic) practices of ethical behaviour and mutual aid within communities.
- The ego must be transcended or no social solidarity of the strength which can overthrow capitalism can be achieved; we probably won't even get far as creating a non-toxic socialist "scene". Various cultural traditions have been passed down to us which offer technologies for superseding the ego, which include:
- committing to a code of humane ethics, including the ability to self-sacrifice in the cause of solidarity;
- opening consciousness to "inspiration from outside", but at the same time strengthening the personality so that such "outside experiences" can be experienced safely, without damaging the psyche or its ability to function in the real world;
- integrating such experiences positively into art, intellectual endeavour, or relationships with other living beings.
The goal of Chaos Marxism, therefore, is reiterated as: a commitment to "complete the personality" through the taming of the individual ego, with the aid of not only humanistic psychology but of techniques which allow "magickal/mystical" experience to be experienced safely, and for its insights to be "brought back" to enrich the "real world" and the movement to change it.
Ancient traditions such as shamanism, Taoism, Buddhism, Sufism and Jewish and Christian mysticism, as well as more modern traditions such as Crowley's "magick" or Gurdjieff's "Work": all these aim to "complete" the human being, or at least make it something more than the accidents of heredity and environment have programmed it for. An encounter with "the other world" means enabling the introduction of novelty, or a random factor, which would have been unavailable to the workaday ego. (It is said that the best proof that Crowley's Liber AL really was channelled from outside his own ego is that, unlike everything else he wrote, it's not disfigured with misogyny.) Conversely, we find it very interesting to analyse the history of the Marxist and/or Leninist movements in the same terms as religious movements such as Islam; we do not believe Marxism should be a religion, or a substitute for it, but it is crucial for us to understand how it has been experienced so, so we don't fall into the same trap.
I have studied various forms of religion, magic and mysticism in my life. 10 years ago I was initiated as a dervish of the Ni'matullahi Sufi Order as my own commitment to try to get over my own ego, to practice the ethics worthy of someone who wants to live in a socialist future, and to strengthen my own personality, Will and ability to make commitments at the same time as opening oneself up to the "outside".
A few thinkers whom I have based these writings on, in vague chronological order: Starhawk; Robert Anton Wilson; Robert Fripp (from J. G. Bennett and G. I. Gurdjieff); exponents of anti-Stalinist Marxism such as L. Trotsky and T. Cliff; Sufi masters such as Dr Javad Nurbakhsh and Kabir Helminski; and most recently Michael Muhammad Knight, who has linked Islam with questions of racial/gender justice and magic/"altered states" like no-one else I know of. I have also gotten immeasurable benefit from the teachings of the Church of the SubGenius, a satirical project which skillfully incorporates all the most dangerous aspects of mind-control cultism and fundamentalist religion, thus (hopefully) inoculating its practitioners from falling for such things in real life. Every time some petty cult leader had me half-convinced of something ridiculous which required me to smash my brain flat, I realised "... that sounds like something 'Bob' would say!" and the feeling dissolved. J. R. "Bob" Dobbs is thus still one of my household gods, as it were. I'm clearly not a good Muslim on any level, but I don't have to be.
Questions? Comments?
Hi there , I think I’ve followed your blog for about 10 years now and I’ve enjoyed your posts during this time. It seems like you and I have changed in similar ways although I’ve not read too much on the majik. I’ll follow up on those recommendations as, like you I’m always keen to learn and it’s amazing how it’s all related .
ReplyDeleteAt the moment I’m reading Todd mcgowans “emancipation after Hegel” which I can’t recommend enough , and his videos . I’m also trying to grasp psychoanalysis (Lacan) at the same time as continuing to be a reluctant analysand for the last 10 years also.
Check out cadell last , Peter Rollins and as you might have guessed it, my guilty pleasure is Zizek . I came to all this through SWP Marxism which I still appreciate but wouldn’t follow . Things are changing very fast and they are stuck in the past somewhat.
Anyway keep up the good work , I look forward to your future posts .
Paul
Thank you most kindly. I too came from British SWP Marxism, in particular through the schismatic "Association of Musical Marxists" (B. Watson / A. Wilson)
ReplyDeleteZizek, however, has become red-brown, pro-Brexit, anti-migrant trash.
ReplyDeleteBob has gifted you with some serious slack
ReplyDeleteHAHAHAHA oh wow, if you'll search the archives from 2008-2009 or so you'll see that a crowd of SubGenii descended on this blog to tell me that "Bob" hated all commies. Ivan Stang himself said something about Marxism being the politics of an anthill. But of course "Bob" loves the heretics and punishes the orthodox, which is why the official CotSG is now pretty much a bunch of boomers sitting around smoking 'frop at Stang's ranch bitching about Kids These Days.
DeleteHi friend - any leads on folks I might study / discuss sufi thought and practice with? I tried tuning in to a zoom class of that nature recently, but they cut the meeting off early when i thought there would be discussion time at the end, after spending most of the class misrepresenting indigenous beliefs with seemingly no awareness of how many Native people have described settler usage of their religions as a continuation of the theft/misuse of their lands and home and an act of Warfare. It is frustrating but I want to try different avenues, thank you and lovely to see your writing still here after all these years and after the pandemic etc. Be well.
ReplyDeleteOf course I'm just going to spruik my own order: https://www.nimatullahi.org/, check out to see if there's a khaniqah in your neighbourhood. If there's not, of course you might want to look at other orders, which will veer from very hardcore uptight Muslim orthodoxy to "white person" groups which have totally bleached all that stuff out... whatever your taste might be. If you're offended by white hippie appropriating indigenous religions, probably better to stay away from the latter!
DeleteHey I didn't see this was published so accidentally just posted the same thing again - sorry - feel free to delete!!
DeleteThe issue, really, is not whether I as a white person am offended - It's that much of what's being said is verifiably, historically false. And also, that I can probably learn very little from people who insist on referring to First Nations groups in the PAST TENSE while not centering current First Nations communities and voices. And when this leads to ignoring and speaking-over many Native communities directly saying they are being harmed and even convening in the hundreds to unanimously declare that what settlers are doing is warfare against them, then there is even less I could possibly learn from such people of "practices of compassion," hah.
A post I just saw that seemed relevant:
ReplyDeletenormal-horoscopes
Occultism step one:
"Nothing is fundamentally real. There is no empirical truth. Love and justice are ghosts. The only things that have ever shaped politics are blood, gold, bread, and steel."
Occultism step two: (this is the hard part)
"You can trick warlords into believing in ghosts, so it is the ethical duty of every wizard to trick them into believing in love as well."
normal-horoscopes
Occultism step three: (this is the REALLY hard part)
"Do everything above without starting a weird libertarian sex cult"
https://normal-horoscopes.tumblr.com/post/663665227068489728/occultism-step-three-this-is-the-really-hard
Hi Doloras - Thank you for years ago letting me republish a bit of your writing in a community zine. It's good to see you still out here. I'm wondering about Sufis I might be able to study with without the expectation of necessarily being a 'believer'? I tried to talk to a group near me, but most of what they said was inaccurate/culturally-appropriative misinformation about the First Nations people whose land we're on. So that felt like a dead end, but I'd like to look for other avenues...
ReplyDeletehiii - i've been trying to put what i've learned from the chaos marxism primer into practice for a few months now. well i realized there's this blog the other day and i've been reading some of the posts - i saw in, i believe it was the theses on the new chaos marxism, that you disavowed spreading memes as praxis - i've been making some images for fun and then as praxis (especially after reading the CM primer on a discordian site - then i really started with it intentionally). well, now i'm not sure what to do. are all memes truly detrimental to consciousness? am i misinterpreting?
ReplyDeleteHi Rubi, and I'm really glad to find that people are finding the Primer material useful, in some cases up to 15 years after I initially wrote it.
ReplyDeleteIf you're following the Ukraine war at the moment, you will note that the Ukrainian side are playing an absolutely killer game with memes - starting with "Ghost of Kyiv" and "Russian warship, go fuck yourself". Let's put it this way - memes are probably detrimental to consciousness, in the same way that a tank or an armed drone are detrimental to life and limb. AND YET, they might yet be used for good purposes.
Of course, war is not a solution in the long term, and neither are memes. I think the best I can say is that - when I wrote the Primer materials - memes were underground shit that was only being taken seriously by the fringe. Now the big corporations and states have moved in and they are no longer "cutting-edge tech" for liberation.
I would say: if it brings you joy, meme yourself silly, but it's like playing punk rock today is not the same as playing punk rock in 1976 when it was actually threatening and the big players hadn't recuperated it.
Does that make sense? Once again, thank you for engaging with the material.
yeah, that makes sense. it definitely seems to bring comrades joy so i think i'll keep spreading internet Memes. and for the most part i try to be benevolent with what i spread - but i mean ya gotta crush some grapes to make wine, y'know?
Deleteand i think there's still some punk out there worth checking out, specifically the group ho99o9.