This is the reformist motto: “Yes, things are bad, but it’s not too late!”
Hope can be transformative, but can also trap us in dialectical struggle. 
Something will always be bad, and whatever it is at a given moment is what will receive the attention of the elite. And what is the steady reply? We’ve got to […]

Here’s a problem: reformists end up playing by oppressor’s rules, forming factions, and marginalizing minorities; revolutionaries become zealots who need to convert an army before they get anything done.
Here’s the underlying problem: change is slow, because people change slowly. Reformists want change that requires the consent of the very people responsible for why things are […]

Wikipedia is frequently snubbed for its anonymous, user-edited content. The argument is this: you don’t know who’s writing the articles you are reading, so you cannot trust them. This is offered in direct contrast to institutional sources like textbooks, academic journals, and proprietary encyclopedias.
What I find interesting about this discussion is the ommission of the […]

I’ve added an essay I wrote a while back to the Library page. It uses postmodern theory to critique organizational, and follows yesterday’s post with a more intensive academic analysis of institution.
It’s quite long. If you read it, please comment.
>A Postmodernist Account of the Organization

I want to continue to expound Abandonist political theory as introduced in this post. In particular I want to develop my statement that the abandonist renegotiates power through circumvention, not through competition.
Reformists cooperate. Revolutionaries compete. Abandonists circumvent.
But cooperate with what? Compete with what? Circumvent what?
The answer is institution–and this is tricky to define, but I […]

Modern society has a predilection for centralization–the consolidation of resources. This has clear roots in Enlightenment thinking: use natural science to discover and build on the best ways to do things, and ultimately strive toward perfection. This crippling singularity does not reflect the complexity of the human experience.
There is no best form of government. There […]

There was a time when I was ignorant of oppression; a blissful childhood spent aloof to the suffering in the world. My eyes began to open in my adolescence, and my identity shifted. Naively, I thought we could use the system’s own channels to reform and ameliorate oppressive conditions. I slowly became disillusioned with this […]

It was 10:30 PM, and we wanted pizza. We walked to the joint across the street. The door was locked. I thought they closed at 11? He opens the door. Oh, carryout ends at 10. We live right over there, so can we just bend the rules? What? A security issue? But you just opened […]

Last Friday I took part in Chicago’s Critical Mass. Rain was expected and it was the first Mass of the summer, so we numbered in the hundreds rather than thousands. Those who road found gorgeous weather, only light rain, and high spirits all around.
Hundreds of cyclists riding in unison tend to block traffic out of […]

The other night I parted ways with some friends and enjoyed a solo nine mile bike ride. Music kept my right ear company while my left listened for traffic.

And I had a thought. Ruminating on that Ironman post, I discovered a connection. I wrote about how weapons and systems of control can shrink the sphere […]