Anarchy for Saboteurs

Ripabottoni, the home town of Matteo Fiorito and Arturo Giovannitti

The Author’s maternal grandfather immigrated to Canada from Ribobottoni, a small hilltop town in the Abruzzi-Molise region in 1890, a decade before Arturo Giovannitti (Industrial Workers of the World) emigrated from the same small town to the United States.  It was a time when ‘globalism’ referred not to corporate commerce but to Il Proletario (also the name of the newspaper Giovanitti was editor of).  It was a time when new ideas of freedom and governance were clashing with the established order.  It was a time when the establishment did their best to cast social activists as ‘evil’ people and ‘framed’ activist leaders for crimes they did not commit (e.g. Giovannitti and Ettor, Sacco and Vanzetti).  History and ‘the authorities’ later acknowledged some of these injustices  (e.g. the State of Massachussetts proclaimed in 1977, fifty years after their execution, that Sacco and Vanzetti had been ‘unfairly tried and convicted’). What has not been ‘owned up to’ is the darkness unfairly cast upon ‘anarchy’ and ‘sabotage’, words that emerged in a far less ‘sinister’ context than they became ‘overprinted’ with, a dark overprinting that continues to taint them today.  For those who seek to understand the frames of reference for these terms as they existed at that time, this essay may be of interest.

‘Sabotage’ derived from the french expression ‘travailler a coups de sabots’, ‘to work slowly and clumsily as if wearing wooden clogs’.  It derived from the logic of ‘a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay’ which suggested, to the worker, the parallelism ‘a less-than-fair-days work for a less-than-fair-day’s pay’, rather than ‘a fair day’s work for a less-than-fair-day’s pay’ as was often the employer’s ‘equation’.  That is, if the pay was not fair then worker moved about in the manner of one of the ‘three stooges’, a country simpleton whose wooden clogs greatly constrained his mobility.   Giovannitti underscores this in his introduction to Emile Pouget’s essay ‘Sabotage’;

“Whether you agree or not, Sabotage is this and nothing but this. It is not destructive. It has nothing to do with violence, neither to life nor to property.”

But it was soon taken to mean ‘destruction of property’ which is the meaning it has continued to have.  As Giovannitti observes, working slowly and clumsily to protest poor pay is not a new tactic.  What was new was to give it a name and to openly advocate it.  Giovannitti describes the hypocrisy here by way of an example.  This excerpt is also useful for gaining an impression of how established logic/practice was being questioned in this era;

“… why is it that only since the Lawrence Strike, Sabotage loomed up in such terrific Light? It is easily explained.

A certain simple thing which is more or less generally practiced and thought very plain and natural, as for instance, a negro picking less cotton when receiving less grub, becomes a monstrous thing, a crime and a blasphemy when it is openly advocated and advised.

It is simply because there is no danger in any art in itself when it is determined by natural instinctive impulse and is quite unconscious and unpremeditated — it only becomes dangerous when it becomes the translated practical expression of an idea even though, or rather because, this idea has originated from the act itself.

It is so of Sabotage as of a good many other things. Take, for instance, the question of divorce. To be divorced and marry again is quite a decent, legal and respectable thing to do in the eyes of the church, the state and the ‘ third power, which is public opinion.

Now, a rich man having grown tired of his wife (or vice versa, or both ways), he properly puts her away through the kind intervention of a solemn-faced, black-robed judge, and marries a chorus girl through the same kind help of a very venerable and holy bishop. Nobody is shocked — on the contrary, the papers are full of this grand affair and everybody is well pleased, except some old maids and the regular town gossips.

The rich man may stop here if he is properly mated, and may go further if he thinks he is not. He can repeat this wonderful performance as many times as he likes – there is no limit to it and it is done quite often.

But, if you should — say at the third or fourth repetition of these public solemnities, find out that they are all quite unnecessary and that the aforesaid rich man could and should more properly keep his bedroom affairs to himself, if you should venture that he could as well dispense with judge and priest, you would be howled at that you are a filthy free lover, a defiler of the sanctity of the home, and so on.

How do you explain that? It is because, the fact that a rich man (he may be a poor one at that) puts away three or four or ten wives is of little importance in itself, it is only when out of this plain everyday phenomenon you draw the theory of the freedom of the sexes that the bourgeois jumps up and screams, for though free love be and has always been a fact, it is only when it becomes an idea that it becomes a dynamic and disintegrating force of bourgeois society, in so far as it wrests from the political state one of its cardinal faculties”

The impression of control and of obedience to the law was important, though for those with the means, the law was no obstacle to what might otherwise be judged unlawful or sinful.  Similarly, the cultural habit is to give the impression that the owner makes the production happen (the buck starts and stops with him for the ‘creation of wealth’) and that ‘labour’ is simply one of the commodity ingredients along with ‘land/resources’, ‘capital’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ that constitute the owner’s wealth-creating machinery, an ’emperor’s new clothes’ illusion that ‘sabotage’ exposes, to the owner’s embarrassment.   In the original roll-out of ‘sabotage’, the only thing that was destroyed was the illusion that labour was a passive cog in the machinery that turned when the ‘big wheel’ said ‘turn’.

So much for ‘Sabotage’, how it emerged, how it was tainted and remains tainted.

‘Anarchy’ has a similar history of having been scarred for life by abuse during its youth, so that its deep philosophical roots relevant to the architecture of organization are obscured by its troubled adolescence.

To go back towards the beginning (at least to the documented beginnings) of the debate on organization in our western culture, Plato and Aristotle were in basic disagreement as to whether organization was ‘extrinsically shaped’ (Plato) or ‘intrinsically shaped’ (Aristotle).  Aristotle’s view was the one that became popularized and remains the default ‘architectural assumption’ on organizational design in our western culture dominated global social dynamic.

Plato’s ‘extrinsic final cause’ is often expressed in terms of ‘ideal forms’; e.g. there is an ideal form for a horse and a ‘real horse’ is understood to be a particular, imperfect rendering of the ideal.  This is one way that Plato simpified his position though his impression of the ‘mold’ was sometimes ‘more dynamic’  since he also spoke of a spherical vortex around the earth raising the question as to whether the extrinsic celestial dynamic organized what went on on earth or whether the earth was ‘intrinsically organized from within’.  Plato’s view of the natural primacy of outside-inward (extrinsic) organizational shaping can be compared with the ecosystemic notion of a ‘niche’ wherein the dynamics of the habitat open up spatial possibility for some potentiality to rise up and fill it.  In this case, it is not a particular species that the niche is inductively beckoning, but a suite of related dynamic behaviours that could be satisfied by perhaps several different organisms or a combination of organisms.

Aristotle’s ‘intrinsic final cause’ or ‘telos’ is so familiar to us ‘western-acculturated’ types today, that we can hardly see beyond it to the extrinsic alternative.  In Aristotle’s view, the organization of things was driven by ‘intention’ which translates into ‘cause’ and ‘purpose’.  An example common given is that of the acorn growing up to be an oak tree.  The intrinsic shaping of organization presumes that the acorn has within it the encoded knowledge of what constitutes an oak tree and the intrinsic ‘purpose’ to push itself out of itself into an oak tree.  This is, in effect, the essence of the concept of ‘ego’ wherein we imagine that we are the ‘fountainhead’ of the ‘results’ that we lay claim to.

While the Aristotelian ‘purposive system’ model is today’s popular model of genetics, such understanding is in the process of transformation as new understandings arise in biology (e.g. ‘bidirectional innovation’ where ‘outside-inward’ (extrinsic) and ‘inside-outward’ (intrinsic) shaping of organization are in a conjugate relation (simultaneous mutually influencing relation).  This manifests in the evolution of multispecies microbial communities as described by Douglas E. Caldwell et al, ‘Cultivation of Microbial Consortia and Communities’).  Also, the environment has an outside-inward role in stem-cell development as associates with the cells in regenerative tissue.  The injury may be in the form of a missing piece of flesh or a hole and thus the dynamics of the damaged periphery have an outside-in shaping and organizing influence on the repair job.

A point to remember is that when organization is ‘extrinsically shaped’, it can be like the ‘V’ formation of the wildgeese where the spatial dynamics (resonances) orchestrate the individual and collective dynamics of the wildgeese in the formation (from the outside-in).  Extrinsically shaped organization clearly occurs in earthquake, avalanche, hurricane dynamics, and in all those cases where pressure fields or thermal fields or gravity or electromagnet fields develop non-uniform spatial distributions inducing material to move so as to restore balance.

This ‘extrinsic shaping of organization’ (extrinsic-intrinsic conjugate shaping, to be more accurate) is the design approach of Amerindian organization, which by many accounts, worked very well in the social sector if not in the commercial sector.

The impression of leaderlessness or absence of hierarchical control associates with extrinsic shaping of organization.  Imagine that you were in an Amerindian community and that one day, without warning, everyone starting packing up and the entire group folded their tents and moved on as a group, without any ‘orders from the top’ or issuance of plans or instructions.   Where the organizational sourcing would be coming from would be from the dynamics of the space the group was included in, the first touch of frost, the turning of the leaves, a certain feel in the air, the sun’s inclination, birds flying south overhead etc. etc.   We all know what its like to be warm and comfy, to be in the zone, so if being ‘in the zone’ originates in the dynamics of the habitat we inhabit, in being in a resonant relation with our social/environmental habitat, then our individual and collective movements can be organized by putting our behaviour in the service of sustaining such resonance.  Such organization IS NOT PURPOSE-DRIVEN and it does not involve a hierarchical command and control system.  It is an example of where ‘extrinsic final cause’ is in a natural primacy over ‘intrinsic final cause’. It looks and feels like ‘anarchy’ but it is highly organized even though it is ‘without purpose’.  Just as the winds and currents of a storm can induce high levels of organization in the crew of a sailing vessel, everyone ‘reading the signs’ and responding the continually shifting forces so as to sustain continuing balance and remain ‘in the zone’ (in an inner outer resonance), this doesn’t mean that a Captain is not useful, but it implies that the Captain is ‘secondary’, like a ‘coach’.  This sailboating system does not push out of itself to achieve its desired future state, NOT ON A FIRST PRIORITY.  Its organization is extrinsically shaped, and if the captain shifts so that he demands that his orders be put in first priority and demands that the ship stay on course, headed for a planned destination that is taking them, insanely, through the heart of a hurricane, the crew may mutiny, insisting that their actions be directed not firstly by plans and purpose but firstly by the dynamics of the space they are included in.

In Amerindian organization, there is a noticeable ‘lack of purpose’ but certainly not a lack of organization.   The local tribal community did not have a plan to purposively construct a desired future.  With their ‘strand-in-the-web-of-life’ view, they let their individual and collective movements be orchestrated by the dynamics of the habitat they were included in, not unlike the wildgeese and/or the sailing vessel (as contrasted with the powerboat).  Their goal was to cultivate and sustain a resonant relationship with the land.  Stories passed by the oral tradition underscore the relational aspects of the community dynamic, wherein the land organizes the community; e.g. ‘My Father and theLima Beans’ by Paula https://goodshare.org/wp/my-fathers-lima-beans/

Like many other things that have been popularized, intrinsic-shaping-based organizational design has enjoyed ‘lock-in’ not because it is superior but because it managed to become ‘established’ as the preferred approach (e.g. slavery helped to evolve the master-slave type of organization which transforms the captain from a coach to an absolute dictator).  Once a system becomes ‘established’, more and more activities become dependent on it, and the ‘switching costs’ become huge.  The sovereign state concept (which law historicans call a ‘secularized theological concept)  is itself conceived of as a local, independently-existing  purposive system that pushes out of itself to create its desired future.  By contrast, the extrinsically shaped organization is ‘stateless’; i.e. there is no locally-originating, internal purpose-directed behaviour; i.e. the Amerindians had no concept of a ‘sovereign state’ or ‘purposive system’ that pushed itself out of itself to become what it had decided and planned that it would become;  .

“To Engels, Morgan’s description of the Iroquois [in Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society and The League of the Haudenosaunee or  Iroquois] was important because “it gives us the opportunity of studying the organization of a society which, as yet, knows no state.”  Jefferson had also been interested in the Iroquois’ ability to  maintain social consensus without a large state apparatus, as had Franklin. Engels described the Iroquoian state in much the same way that American revolutionaries had a century earlier: “Everything runs smoothly without soldiers, gendarmes, or police, without nobles, kings, governors, prefects or judges; without prisons, without trials. All quarrels and disputes are settled by the whole body of those concerned. . . . The household is run communistically by a number of families; the land is tribal property, only the small gardens being temporarily assigned to the households — still, not a bit of our extensive and complicated machinery of administration is required. . . . There are no poor and needy. The communistic household and the gens know their responsibility toward the aged, the sick and the disabled in war. All are free and equal — including the women. “ — Bruce E. Johansen, Forgotten Founders

Anarchy, in light of actual examples such as this, might be described in terms of the notable ‘lack of purpose’ and  ‘lack of morals’.  That is, both the driving energy and the ‘morality’ are immanent in the organizational architecture.   Like the sailboat crew, the community accepts that it derives its power and its steerage from the spatial dynamic it is included in, and the people let their individual and collective behaviours be orchestrated by the cultivating and sustaining of  balance, health and harmony in resonant, conjugate relation with the ‘parenting’ medium of nature (the social/environmental suprasystem they are included in).

The ‘purposive system’ not only rejects the habitat dynamic as the primary source of organization, it relegates ‘land’ to ‘one of the factors of production’ along with ‘labour’, ‘capital’ and ‘entrepreneurship’.  ‘Land’ and ‘natural resources’ are, in the western world view, taken to be ‘a gift from God’.

These different ways of understanding the architecture of organization have found their way into western science by an intesting and peculiar path.

As Nietzsche noted, the Aristotelian choice of ‘intrinsic final cause’ or ‘purposive organization’ was infused into the two-body formulations of dynamics in physics.   For this reason, Nietzsche termed western science ‘anthropomorphism’ because this human sense of ‘purpose’, of being an ‘acorn’ that had its own internal knowledge and driving purpose to become what it wanted to become, is what is otherwise known as ‘ego’.  In ‘The Will to Power’, Nietzsche observes;

““Attraction” and “repulsion” in a purely mechanistic sense are complete fictions: a word.  We cannot think of an attraction divorced from an ‘intention.’ — The will to take possession of a thing or defend oneself against it and repel it—that, we “understand”: that would be an interpretation of which we could make use.

In short: the psychological necessity for a belief in causality lies in the inconceivability of an event divorced from intent; by which naturally nothing is said concerning truth or untruth (the justification of such a belief)!  The believe in ‘causae’ falls with the belief in ‘télè’ (against Spinoza and his causalism).” – Nietzsche, ‘The Will to Power’

The anthropomorphisms of ‘attraction and repulsion’ did find their way into physics even though they are reductions of ‘convergence’ and ‘expansion’.  As we know, in the presence if non-uniform thermal fields, matter will expand or contract but there is no ‘local source’ of the inside-outward push (repulsion) or the outside-inward pull (attraction).  This dynamic, the generative drive of which is the non-uniform energy in the field, is an example of extrinsic shaping influence and it is a more general case than the dimensionally-reduced two-body geometry of ‘attraction’ and ‘repulsion’ where the notion of internal ‘intentions’ (purpose) comes to mind.

An other example of extrinsically shaped organization associates with the development of non-uniformity in the thermal field that acts upon the atmosphere and ocean, engendering convection cells (storm-cells, hurricanes) that transport excess thermal energy from equatorial regions to thermal energy deficient polar regions.

In fact, relativity argues for a conjugate relation between extrinsic and intrinsic shaping of organization.

On the typical ‘maps’ that pretend to portray the full variety of political views, the extrinsically shaped organizational view is not even represented.  That is, they are all ‘intrinsically-shaped organizational variants.  All of the common political parties believe in organization that has the internal knowledge and the internal purposive drive to push itself out of itself to create its desired future self.  The extrinsically shaped organizational alternative (a) is not represented; only the ‘b’ (intrinsic) outlook is represented.  But these two ‘worldviews’ are radically different as the following articulations of them suggest;

(a)    “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” — John Lennon

(b) “You can create the future of your dreams. This may seem far fetched for most people, but what they do not seem to realize is that their present is the future they created by their past actions or inaction. You are where you are today because of the decisions and actions you took yesterday.”  [sometimes expressed; ‘if you don’t have a plan, you’re part of someone else’s plan’]

The typical map that tries to depict the differences between the ‘main political views’ (excluding extrinsically-shaped organization [anarchy])  deserves a little closer look;

extrinsically shaped organization is not represented

If we examine all of the ‘extremes’ on this map, we never get to a politics where extrinsic shaping of organization is even ‘seen’ much  less advocated.  As ‘el loco Gringo’ says; ‘we are fighting the battle of Moot Hill, no matter who wins, we all lose.’

We can get a clue to why this is by examining the position of Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand studied philosophy and took great interest in the different views of Plato and Aristotle;

“At the university she was introduced to the writings of Aristotle (intrinsic shaping of organization) and Plato (extrinsic shaping of organization), who would form two of the greatest influences and counter-influences respectively on her thought.” – Wikipedia

Ayn Rand takes the notion of ‘purposive systems’ to the limit; i.e. if you don’t have a purposive plan, you don’t count for anything;

“[The Native Americans] didn’t have any rights to the land and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using…. What was it they were fighting for, if they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their “right” to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or maybe a few caves above it. Any white person who brought the element of civilization had the right to take over this continent.” — Ayn Rand, “Q and A session following her Address To The Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974”

There is an important point here in regard to Ayn Rand’s unmitigated extolling of ‘selfishness’ and her unmitigated critique of ‘altruism’.  Neither of these concepts ‘make any sense’ if one approaches the understanding of dynamics from the ‘extrinsic shaping’ side of things.  That is, if the spatial dynamics orchestrates (organizes) individual and collective behaviour; i.e. if one puts one’s movements in the service of sustaining balance and harmony as one does when one drives friendly in the busy flow of the freeway, then such behaviour is not ‘purposive’ (as with the sailboater compared to the powerboater, the first order of the day is to sustain balance, to get into the resonant zone and to sustain the resonance).

Both ‘selfishness’ and ‘altruism’ are types of ‘purposive behaviour’.  If you are in traffic and you slow down or speed up to give someone space to move and avoid a collision, then you are actually letting your behaviour be extrinsically shaped, by the spatial dynamics you are included in.   Drivers may move away from one another in a relative or mutual sense (divergence) to open up space for someone who is otherwise threatened with collision.  In this case, you are not in control and the dynamic is not ’caused’ by you, as the organization/form is taking shape, you let your behaviour serve the unfolding of that shape.   By contrast, pPurposive or intrinsic behaviour means that you are pushing out of yourself to create a desired future result (a result that satisfies either your selfish or an altruistic agenda).  Letting your movements serve the cultivating and sustaining of harmonious flow is extrinsically shaped rather than intrinsically shaped behavior.  Neither selfishness nor altruism apply.

But all of the political variants ‘on the map’ take for granted Aristotelian purposive organization.  That is, Ayn Rand has a strong argument for ‘selfishness’ and against ‘altruism’ BUT ONLY IN HER NARROW ‘purposive systems window’.  Therefore, in spite of her often ‘atrocious-sounding’ statements, they are logically consistent IF ONE ASSUMES THAT PURPOSIVE SYSTEMS ARE ‘ALL SHE WROTE’.  That is, she says;

“I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows.”

Organization that associates with extrinsic shaping influence (or with a conjugate extrinsic-intrinsic shaping influence) brings on an entirely different paradigm.  ‘Purpose’ drops out of it because ‘intention’ no longer has any meaning.  Selfishness and altruism drop out of it because they depend on ‘purpose/intention’.  In extrinsically shaped organization, the ‘niche’ induces the emergence and shapes the dynamics of the organization.

For example, recent anthropological studies of the the Nenets of the European and Siberian Arctic show that they do not, as had been assumed, accumulate knowledge over the generations that they use to inform ‘their purpose’  so as to push out of themselves to create a desired future result.   Instead, they have developed keen skills for attuning to the dynamics of their habitat.  They follow the reindeer, knowing that the reindeer will following the exposed patches of lichen and the lichen will follow the wandering patches of lower precipitation and more sunshine.  They let what is happening in the space they are included in shape the organization of their behaviour.

On the other hand, were they to make permanent camp locally, they might round up some reindeer and start a reindeer feedlot.  They might then take on the form of a purposive organization with a locally instigated, hierarchical make-it-happen organizational structure that pushes out of itself to form its desired future self.  The dynamics of the land (or the dynamics of the larger community) they are included in might no longer be orchestrating their behaviour; i.e. there might no longer be extrinsic shaping of their social organization, their dynamic might then be locally driven and insensitive to the world dynamic in which they are included.

The same extrinsic or intrinsic organization shaping options apply when a group of people is included in a larger group of people; i.e. to what extent does a particular group let their behaviour be orchestrated by the spatial dynamic they are included in.   Within the flow of a crowd, islands and channels form, estuaries form.  There is a morphology similar to geomorphology and ‘relativity’ of motion is at play (extrinsic shaping influence is in conjugate relation with intrinsic shaping influence).  Mach’s principle of relativity can be seen; ‘The dynamics of the habitat condition the dynamics of the inhabitants at the same time as the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat’.   What shapes the ‘geo-like’ morphological organization in the crowd is not ‘one thing’ (intrinsic) or the other (extrinsic) but both (in coniunctio) at the same time.

The point is that we are not limited to the Aristotelian ‘purposive systems’ approach in our manner of organizing.  Yet we (the western culture dominated world)  have designed our governments and our business enterprises using this purposive systems paradigm.  We have infused the concept into science as well to the point that we can only think of ‘intention’ even where it is pretty obvious that the organizing influence is extrinsic.  For example, Wildgeese do like the Nenets, they let the dynamics of space orchestrate their movements.  If the patch of warm weather with abundant food moves south, they move south and if it moves north again, they move north again.  It is not as if they have the internally coded knowledge and the purposive drive that has them push out of themselves to engineer their desired future state of affairs.  But our habitual choice of intrinsic final cause leads us to force-fit this notion on inherently extrinsically shaped organization, eclipsing our view of the extrinsic (when one reduce the tool box to a single tool, a hammer, then everything looks like a nail).

Insofar as we are capable of ‘driving friendly’ in the flow of a busy freeway, or sailing in robust winds and currents, we are capable of experiencing extrinsic shaping of organization.  It is like nature calling us to take our place in the natural scheme of things, to invite us to ‘get in the zone’ (resonance) rather than one-sidedly pushing our selves out of ourselves to construct a desired future state (ignoring the dynamics of the space we are included in).   We can always force-fit our purposive models on top of these dynamics.  As Poincare observed, once we have extracted a theory, law, or fitted curve from the data, we then use the theory to ‘correct our experience’.   If we put paint on our wheels so that we could go back and see our meandering path on the freeway, we would likely still insist that we purpose-driven and destination oriented.  The same with our sailboating trajectory which tacked back and forth and back and forth.  We would tend to say that these meanderings where we departed from our ‘purposive plans’ were ‘noise’ and were not relevant.  There goes the natural primacy of extrinsically shaped organization, trashed as ‘noise’.  The Amerindian mind would say, ‘no!’, that is not ‘noise’, what is most important is staying in harmony with our living space while self-interest sourced purposes and objectives are secondary.

In conclusion, ‘anarchy’ speaks to a different organizational paradigm that we lose sight of when we ‘go into our inquiry’ armed only with Aristotle’s intrinsic final cause (inside-outward shaping of organization), having left behind Plato’s extrinsic final cause (outside-in shaping of organization).  We never get to really talk about ‘anarchy’ because it is one of those words whose basic meaning is summarily dismissed and replaced with the popular distorted meaning.

‘Purpose’ is a word we ‘understand’, so we believe in our culture.  In the Amerindian culture, when the people in a village spontaneously fold their tents and collectively move to where the game have moved to, or to where the sunshine and warmth has moved to, they are answering nature’s call to them to take their place in the scheme of things.  The Great Mysterious unfolding is calling them and they do answer and they do realize that they are inextricably included in the One unfolding and they do realize that they ‘are all in this together’ and that like small tributaries answering the call of the Ocean, joining together as they answer the call brings them the power of the mighty river.  ‘Purpose’ is like the ‘inner lining’ of the ‘Calling’ that, only in our minds, takes on a primary status when we start to believe that the calling starts within our own interior, when we start thinking of ourselves like the Aristotelian ‘acorn’ that is fully equipped with the wherewithal to push out of itself to become what it wants to become.  This is egoism that goes by the name ‘purpose’ and/or ’cause’.  As Nietzsche observed, we have infused the egoism of ‘intention’ into science and we call it  ’cause’ in physics and ‘purpose’ in biology, the notional empowering of local material objects/organisms/systems from within themselves to act on their present state of self to notionally determine their immediate future state.

‘Anarchy’ is a word that rains on the ego’s parade.  When the spring equinox calls the serfs to their participation in the unfolding by preparing the soil for planting, and/or when the migration of the warmth and game calls the people of the tribal village to their participation in the unfolding, some fool will call out; ‘I command you to prepare the soil for planting’ and/or ‘I command you to fold your tents and move on’ and believe that he is the ’cause’ of these dynamics.   In the western culture, that ‘fool’ could be you or I.  Instead of understanding ‘community organization’ in the sense that the call of the ocean brings many tributaries together into a powerful river, the new egoist understanding is that such organization is driven and directed from out of the interior of each of us.  ‘Ego’ is this new internal ‘calling’ and ’cause’ and ‘purpose’ are its illusion-propping cohorts.  The ‘spirit’ of nature that includes all of the diversity in the unfolding universe, that breathes life into us and inspires us to rise up and participate in the unfolding is, in the western culture, misconstrued as something that starts and stops in our interior, that is our private and personal ‘fountainhead’ whose organization on an individual and/or collective basis is ‘top-down’ or ‘shaped by intrinsic influence’

‘Sabotage’ is another word that rains on the ‘ego’s parade’.   Its originally-intended meaning of ‘ploddingly’ brings to the fore the manner in which the reader will assimilate the concepts in this essay (if at all).  That’s why I have titled it ‘Anarchy for Saboteurs’ (Anarchy for ‘plodders’ like many of us ‘westerners’ have become re philosophical issues such as these).  This lacks the drama of the popular culturally conditioned connotation of these words.  Hopefully this will not ‘disappoint!’

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