Emma Goldman: Essay (1869-1940)

 ANARCHISM: 

     What it really 

                        stands for

            THE history of human growth and development is at the same time the history of the terrible struggle of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn. In its tenacious hold on tradition, the Old has never hesitated to make use of the foulest and cruelest means to stay the advent of the New, in whatever form or period the latter may have asserted itself. Nor need we retrace our steps into the distant past to realize the enormity of opposition, difficulties, and hardships placed in the path of every progressive idea. The rack, the thumbscrew, and the knout are still with us; so are the convict's garb and the social wrath, all conspiring against the spirit that is serenely marching on. Anarchism could not hope to escape the fate of all other ideas of innovation. Indeed, as the most revolutionary and uncompromising innovator, Anarchism must needs meet with the combined ignorance and venom of the world it aims to reconstruct. To deal even remotely with all that is being said and done against Anarchism would necessitate the writing of a whole volume. I shall therefore meet only two of the principal objections. In so doing, I shall attempt to elucidate what Anarchism really stands for. The strange phenomenon of the opposition to Anarchism is that it brings to light the relation between so-called intelligence and ignorance. And yet this is not so very strange when we consider the relativity of all things. The ignorant mass has in its favor that it makes no pretense of knowledge or tolerance. Acting, as it always does, by mere impulse, its reasons are like those of a child. "Why?" "Because." Yet the opposition of the uneducated to Anarchism deserves the same consideration as that of the intelligent man. 


What, then, are the objections? First, Anarchism is impractical, though a beautiful ideal. Second, Anarchism stands for violence and destruction, hence it must be repudiated as vile and dangerous. Both the intelligent man and the ignorant mass judge not from a thorough knowledge of the subject, but either from hearsay or false interpretation. A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under the existing conditions; but it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish. The true criterion of the practical, therefore, is not whether the latter can keep intact the wrong or foolish; rather is it whether the scheme has vitality enough to leave the stagnant waters of the old, and build, as well as sustain, new life. In the light of this conception, Anarchism is indeed practical. More than any other idea, it is helping to do away with the wrong and foolish; more than any other idea, it is building and sustaining new life.

      
         The emotions of the ignorant man are continuously kept at a pitch by the most blood-curdling stories about Anarchism. Not a thing too outrageous to be employed against this philosophy and its exponents. Therefore Anarchism represents to the unthinking what the proverbial bad man does to the child,--a black monster bent on swallowing everything; in short, destruction and violence. Destruction and violence! How is the ordinary man to know that the most violent element in society is ignorance; that its power of destruction is the very thing Anarchism is combating? Nor is he aware that Anarchism, whose roots, as it were, are part of nature's forces, destroys, not healthful tissue, but parasitic growths that feed on the life's essence of society. It is merely clearing the soil from weeds and sagebrush, that it may eventually bear healthy fruit.

      
          Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think. The widespread mental indolence, so prevalent in society, proves this to be only too true. Rather than to go to the bottom of any given idea, to examine into its origin and meaning, most people will either condemn it altogether, or rely on some superficial or prejudicial definition of non-essentials.

      Anarchism urges man to think, to investigate, to analyze every proposition; but that the brain capacity of the average reader be not taxed too much, I also shall begin with a definition, and then elaborate on the latter.

ANARCHISM:--The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.

      The new social order rests, of course, on the materialistic basis of life; but while all Anarchists agree that the main evil today is an economic one, they maintain that the solution of that evil can be brought about only through the consideration of every phase of life,--individual, as well as the collective; the internal, as well as the external phases.

      A thorough perusal of the history of human development will disclose two elements in bitter conflict with each other; elements that are only now beginning to be understood, not as foreign to each other, but as closely related and truly harmonious, if only placed in proper environment: the individual and social instincts. The individual and society have waged a relentless and bloody battle for ages, each striving for supremacy, because each was blind to the value and importance of the other. The individual and social instincts,--the one a most potent factor for individual endeavor, for growth, aspiration, self-realization; the other an equally potent factor for mutual helpfulness and social well-being.

      The explanation of the storm raging within the individual, and between him and his surroundings, is not far to seek. The primitive man, unable to understand his being, much less the unity of all life, felt himself absolutely dependent on blind, hidden forces ever ready to mock and taunt him. Out of that attitude grew the religious concepts of man as a mere speck of dust dependent on superior powers on high, who can only be appeased by complete surrender. All the early sagas rest on that idea, which continues to be the Leitmotiv of the biblical tales dealing with the relation of man to God, to the State, to society. Again and again the same motif, man is nothing, the powers are everything. Thus Jehovah would only endure man on condition of complete surrender. Man can have all the glories of the earth, but he must not become conscious of himself. The State, society, and moral laws all sing the same refrain: Man can have all the glories of the earth, but he must not become conscious of himself.

      Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination. Anarchism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life; not merely in nature, but in man. There is no conflict between the individual and the social instincts, any more than there is between the heart and the lungs: the one the receptacle of a precious life essence, the other the repository of the element that keeps the essence pure and strong. The individual is the heart of society, conserving the essence of social life; society is the lungs which are distributing the element to keep the life essence--that is, the individual--pure and strong.

      "The one thing of value in the world," says Emerson, "is the active soul; this every man contains within him. The soul active sees absolute truth and utters truth and creates." In other words, the individual instinct is the thing of value in the world. It is the true soul that sees and creates the truth alive, out of which is to come a still greater truth, the re-born social soul.

      Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony. To accomplish that unity, Anarchism has declared war on the pernicious influences which have so far prevented the harmonious blending of individual and social instincts, the individual and society.

      Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Property, the dominion of human needs; and Government, the dominion of human conduct, represent the stronghold of man's enslavement and all the horrors it entails. Religion! How it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began. Anarchism rouses man to rebellion against this black monster. Break your mental fetters, says Anarchism to man, for not until you think and judge for yourself will you get rid of the dominion of darkness, the greatest obstacle to all progress.

      Property, the dominion of man's needs, the denial of the right to satisfy his needs. Time was when property claimed a divine right, when it came to man with the same refrain, even as religion, "Sacrifice! Abnegate! Submit!" The spirit of Anarchism has lifted man from his prostrate position. He now stands erect, with his face toward the light. He has learned to see the insatiable, devouring, devastating nature of property, and he is preparing to strike the monster dead.

      "Property is robbery," said the great French Anarchist Proudhon. Yes, but without risk and danger to the robber. Monopolizing the accumulated efforts of man, property has robbed him of his birthright, and has turned him loose a pauper and an outcast. Property has not even the time-worn excuse that man does not create enough to satisfy all needs. The A B C student of economics knows that the productivity of labor within the last few decades far exceeds normal demand. But what are normal demands to an abnormal institution? The only demand that property recognizes is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade. America is particularly boastful of her great power, her enormous national wealth. Poor America, of what avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soilless army of human prey.

      It is generally conceded that unless the returns of any business venture exceed the cost, bankruptcy is inevitable. But those engaged in the business of producing wealth have not yet learned even this simple lesson. Every year the cost of production in human life is growing larger (50,000 killed, 100,000 wounded in America last year); the returns to the masses, who help to create wealth, are ever getting smaller. Yet America continues to be blind to the inevitable bankruptcy of our business of production. Nor is this the only crime of the latter. Still more fatal is the crime of turning the producer into a mere particle of a machine, with less will and decision than his master of steel and iron. Man is being robbed not merely of the products of his labor, but of the power of free initiative, of originality, and the interest in, or desire for, the things he is making.

      Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in. But if man is doomed to wind cotton around a spool, or dig coal, or build roads for thirty years of his life, there can be no talk of wealth. What he gives to the world is only gray and hideous things, reflecting a dull and hideous existence,--too weak to live, too cowardly to die. Strange to say, there are people who extol this deadening method of centralized production as the proudest achievement of our age. They fail utterly to realize that if we are to continue in machine subserviency, our slavery is more complete than was our bondage to the King. They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in a clock-like, mechanical atmosphere.

      Anarchism cannot but repudiate such a method of production: its goal is the freest possible expression of all the latent powers of the individual. Oscar Wilde defines a perfect personality as "one who develops under perfect conditions, who is not wounded, maimed, or in danger." A perfect personality, then, is only possible in a state of society where man is free to choose the mode of work, the conditions of work, and the freedom to work. One to whom the making of a table, the building of a house, or the tilling of the soil, is what the painting is to the artist and the discovery to the scientist,--the result of inspiration, of intense longing, and deep interest in work as a creative force. That being the ideal of Anarchism, its economic arrangements must consist of voluntary productive and distributive associations, gradually developing into free communism, as the best means of producing with the least waste of human energy. Anarchism, however, also recognizes the right of the individual, or numbers of individuals, to arrange at all times for other forms of work, in harmony with their tastes and desires.

      Such free display of human energy being possible only under complete individual and social freedom, Anarchism directs its forces against the third and greatest foe of all social equality; namely, the State, organized authority, or statutory law,--the dominion of human conduct.

      Just as religion has fettered the human mind, and as property, or the monopoly of things, has subdued and stifled man's needs, so has the State enslaved his spirit, dictating every phase of conduct. "All government in essence," says Emerson, "is tyranny." It matters not whether it is government by divine right or majority rule. In every instance its aim is the absolute subordination of the individual.

      Referring to the American government, the greatest American Anarchist, David Thoreau, said: "Government, what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instance losing its integrity; it has not the vitality and force of a single living man. Law never made man a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are daily made agents of injustice."

      Indeed, the keynote of government is injustice. With the arrogance and self-sufficiency of the King who could do no wrong, governments ordain, judge, condemn, and punish the most insignificant offenses, while maintaining themselves by the greatest of all offenses, the annihilation of individual liberty. Thus Ouida is right when she maintains that "the State only aims at instilling those qualities in its public by which its demands are obeyed, and its exchequer is filled. Its highest attainment is the reduction of mankind to clockwork. In its atmosphere all those finer and more delicate liberties, which require treatment and spacious expansion, inevitably dry up and perish. The State requires a taxpaying machine in which there is no hitch, an exchequer in which there is never a deficit, and a public, monotonous, obedient, colorless, spiritless, moving humbly like a flock of sheep along a straight high road between two walls."

      Yet even a flock of sheep would resist the chicanery of the State, if it were not for the corruptive, tyrannical, and oppressive methods it employs to serve its purposes. Therefore Bakunin repudiates the State as synonymous with the surrender of the liberty of the individual or small minorities,--the destruction of social relationship, the curtailment, or complete denial even, of life itself, for its own aggrandizement. The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.

      In fact, there is hardly a modern thinker who does not agree that government, organized authority, or the State, is necessary only to maintain or protect property and monopoly. It has proven efficient in that function only.

      Even George Bernard Shaw, who hopes for the miraculous from the State under Fabianism, nevertheless admits that "it is at present a huge machine for robbing and slave-driving of the poor by brute force." This being the case, it is hard to see why the clever prefacer wishes to uphold the State after poverty shall have ceased to exist.

      Unfortunately, there are still a number of people who continue in the fatal belief that government rests on natural laws, that it maintains social order and harmony, that it diminishes crime, and that it prevents the lazy man from fleecing his fellows. I shall therefore examine these contentions.

      A natural law is that factor in man which asserts itself freely and spontaneously without any external force, in harmony with the requirements of nature. For instance, the demand for nutrition, for sex gratification, for light, air, and exercise, is a natural law. But its expression needs not the machinery of government, needs not the club, the gun, the handcuff, or the prison. To obey such laws, if we may call it obedience, requires only spontaneity and free opportunity. That governments do not maintain themselves through such harmonious factors is proven by the terrible array of violence, force, and coercion all governments use in order to live. Thus Blackstone is right when he says, "Human laws are invalid, because they are contrary to the laws of nature."

      Unless it be the order of Warsaw after the slaughter of thousands of people, it is difficult to ascribe to governments any capacity for order or social harmony. Order derived through submission and maintained by terror is not much of a safe guaranty; yet that is the only "order" that governments have ever maintained. True social harmony grows naturally out of solidarity of interests. In a society where those who always work never have anything, while those who never work enjoy everything, solidarity of interests is non-existent; hence social harmony is but a myth. The only way organized authority meets this grave situation is by extending still greater privileges to those who have already monopolized the earth, and by still further enslaving the disinherited masses. Thus the entire arsenal of government--laws, police, soldiers, the courts, legislatures, prisons,--is strenuously engaged in "harmonizing" the most antagonistic elements in society.

      The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.

      Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime. What does society, as it exists today, know of the process of despair, the poverty, the horrors, the fearful struggle the human soul must pass on its way to crime and degradation. Who that knows this terrible process can fail to see the truth in these words of Peter Kropotkin:

      "Those who will hold the balance between the benefits thus attributed to law and punishment and the degrading effect of the latter on humanity; those who will estimate the torrent of depravity poured abroad in human society by the informer, favored by the Judge even, and paid for in clinking cash by governments, under the pretext of aiding to unmask crime; those who will go within prison walls and there see what human beings become when deprived of liberty, when subjected to the care of brutal keepers, to coarse, cruel words, to a thousand stinging, piercing humiliations, will agree with us that the entire apparatus of prison and punishment is an abomination which ought to be brought to an end."

      The deterrent influence of law on the lazy man is too absurd to merit consideration. If society were only relieved of the waste and expense of keeping a lazy class, and the equally great expense of the paraphernalia of protection this lazy class requires, the social tables would contain an abundance for all, including even the occasional lazy individual. Besides, it is well to consider that laziness results either from special privileges, or physical and mental abnormalities. Our present insane system of production fosters both, and the most astounding phenomenon is that people should want to work at all now. Anarchism aims to strip labor of its deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of color, of real harmony, so that the poorest sort of a man should find in work both recreation and hope.

     To achieve such an arrangement of life, government, with its unjust, arbitrary, repressive measures, must be done away with. At best it has but imposed one single mode of life upon all, without regard to individual and social variations and needs. In destroying government and statutory laws, Anarchism proposes to rescue the self-respect and independence of the individual from all restraint and invasion by authority. Only in freedom can man grow to his full stature. Only in freedom will he learn to think and move, and give the very best in him. Only in freedom will he realize the true force of the social bonds which knit men together, and which are the true foundation of a normal social life.

      But what about human nature? Can it be changed? And if not, will it endure under Anarchism?

      Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can any one speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?

      John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?

      Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities.

      Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.

      This is not a wild fancy or an aberration of the mind. It is the conclusion arrived at by hosts of intellectual men and women the world over; a conclusion resulting from the close and studious observation of the tendencies of modern society: individual liberty and economic equality, the twin forces for the birth of what is fine and true in man.

      As to methods. Anarchism is not, as some may suppose, a theory of the future to be realized through divine inspiration. It is a living force in the affairs of our life, constantly creating new conditions. The methods of Anarchism therefore do not comprise an iron-clad program to be carried out under all circumstances. Methods must grow out of the economic needs of each place and clime, and of the intellectual and temperamental requirements of the individual. The serene, calm character of a Tolstoy will wish different methods for social reconstruction than the intense, overflowing personality of a Michael Bakunin or a Peter Kropotkin. Equally so it must be apparent that the economic and political needs of Russia will dictate more drastic measures than would England or America. Anarchism does not stand for military drill and uniformity; it does, however, stand for the spirit of revolt, in whatever form, against everything that hinders human growth. All Anarchists agree in that, as they also agree in their opposition to the political machinery as a means of bringing about the great social change.

      "All voting," says Thoreau, "is a sort of gaming, like checkers, or backgammon, a playing with right and wrong; its obligation never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right thing is doing nothing for it. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority." A close examination of the machinery of politics and its achievements will bear out the logic of Thoreau.

      What does the history of parliamentarism show? Nothing but failure and defeat, not even a single reform to ameliorate the economic and social stress of the people. Laws have been passed and enactments made for the improvement and protection of labor. Thus it was proven only last year that Illinois, with the most rigid laws for mine protection, had the greatest mine disasters. In States where child labor laws prevail, child exploitation is at its highest, and though with us the workers enjoy full political opportunities, capitalism has reached the most brazen zenith.

      Even were the workers able to have their own representatives, for which our good Socialist politicians are clamoring, what chances are there for their honesty and good faith? One has but to bear in mind the process of politics to realize that its path of good intentions is full of pitfalls: wire-pulling, intriguing, flattering, lying, cheating; in fact, chicanery of every description, whereby the political aspirant can achieve success. Added to that is a complete demoralization of character and conviction, until nothing is left that would make one hope for anything from such a human derelict. Time and time again the people were foolish enough to trust, believe, and support with their last farthing aspiring politicians, only to find themselves betrayed and cheated.

      It may be claimed that men of integrity would not become corrupt in the political grinding mill. Perhaps not; but such men would be absolutely helpless to exert the slightest influence in behalf of labor, as indeed has been shown in numerous instances. The State is the economic master of its servants. Good men, if such there be, would either remain true to their political faith and lose their economic support, or they would cling to their economic master and be utterly unable to do the slightest good. The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue.

      The political superstition is still holding sway over the hearts and minds of the masses, but the true lovers of liberty will have no more to do with it. Instead, they believe with Stirner that man has as much liberty as he is willing to take. Anarchism therefore stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. But defiance and resistance are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man. Everything illegal necessitates integrity, self-reliance, and courage. In short, it calls for free, independent spirits, for "men who are men, and who have a bone in their backs which you cannot pass your hand through."

      Universal suffrage itself owes its existence to direct action. If not for the spirit of rebellion, of the defiance on the part of the American revolutionary fathers, their posterity would still wear the King's coat. If not for the direct action of a John Brown and his comrades, America would still trade in the flesh of the black man. True, the trade in white flesh is still going on; but that, too, will have to be abolished by direct action. Trade-unionism, the economic arena of the modern gladiator, owes its existence to direct action. It is but recently that law and government have attempted to crush the trade-union movement, and condemned the exponents of man's right to organize to prison as conspirators. Had they sought to assert their cause through begging, pleading, and compromise, trade-unionism would today be a negligible quantity. In France, in Spain, in Italy, in Russia, nay even in England (witness the growing rebellion of English labor unions), direct, revolutionary, economic action has become so strong a force in the battle for industrial liberty as to make the world realize the tremendous importance of labor's power. The General Strike, the supreme expression of the economic consciousness of the workers, was ridiculed in America but a short time ago. Today every great strike, in order to win, must realize the importance of the solidaric general protest.

      Direct action, having proven effective along economic lines, is equally potent in the environment of the individual. There a hundred forces encroach upon his being, and only persistent resistance to them will finally set him free. Direct action against the authority in the shop, direct action against the authority of the law, direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code, is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism.

      Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed, it will. No real social change has ever come about without a revolution. People are either not familiar with their history, or they have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried into action.

      Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today permeating every phase of human endeavor. Science, art, literature, the drama, the effort for economic betterment, in fact every individual and social opposition to the existing disorder of things, is illumined by the spiritual light of Anarchism. It is the philosophy of the sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing the world, and that will usher in the Dawn.

Albert Libertad (1876 -1908)

       The Joy of Life 

Wearied by the struggle of life, how many close their eyes, fold their arms, stop short, powerless and discouraged. How many, and they among the best, abandon life as unworthy of continuance. With the assistance of some fashionable theories, and of a prevalent neurasthenia, some men have come to regard death as the supreme liberation. To those who hold this view, society replies with the usual clichés. It speaks of the “moral” purpose of life; argues that one has no right to kill himself, that “moral” sorrows must be borne courageously, that a man has duties, that the suicide is a coward or an “egoist”, etc. etc. All of these phrases are religious in tone; and none of them are of genuine significance in rational discussion. What after all is suicide? Suicide is the final act in a series of actions that we all tend to carry out, which arise from our reaction against our environment, or from that environment’s reaction against us. Every day we commit suicide partially. I commit suicide when I consent to inhabit a dwelling where the sun never shines, a room where the ventilation is so inadequate that I feel like I am suffocated when I wake up. I commit suicide when I spend hours on work that absorbs an amount of energy which I am not able to recapture, or when I engage in activity which I know to be useless. I commit suicide whenever I enter into the barracks to obey men and laws that oppress me. I commit suicide whenever I grant the right to govern me for four years to another individual through the act of voting. I commit suicide when I ask a magistrate or a priest for permission to love. I commit suicide when I do not reclaim my liberty as a lover, as soon as the time of love is past. Complete suicide is nothing but the final act of total inability to react against the environment.

These acts, which I have called partial suicides, are no less truly suicidal. It is because I lack the strength to react against society, that I inhabit a place without sun and air, that I do not eat in accordance with my hunger or my taste, that I am a soldier or a voter, that I subject my love to laws or compulsion. Workers daily commit mental suicide by leaving the mind inactive, by not letting it live, as they kill within themselves their enjoyment of the arts of painting, sculpture, music, which offer some relief from the cacophony which surrounds them. There can be no question of right or duty, of cowardice or of courage in relation to suicide; it is purely a material problem, of power or lack of power. One hears it said, “Suicide is a human right when it constitutes a necessity ...” Or again, “one cannot take the right of life and death away from the proletariat.”

Right? Necessity?

Shall one debate his right to breathe poorly, i.e., to kill most of the health-giving molecules to the advantage of the unhealthy ones? His right not to eat in accordance with his hunger, i.e., to kill his stomach? His right to obey, i.e., to murder his will? His right to love the woman designated by the law or chosen by the desire of one period forever, i.e., to slay all. the desires of days to come? Or if we substitute the word “necessity” for the word “right” in these phrases, do we thereby make them the more logical? I do not intend to “condemn” these partial suicides more than definitive suicides; but it seems to me pathetically comical to describe as right or necessity this surrender of the weak before the strong — and a surrender made without having tried everything. Such expressions are merely excuses one clings to. All suicides are imbecilities, total suicide more than the others, since it is possible to bring oneself out of the partial forms.

It would seem that at the moment of the departure of the individual, all energy might be focused on a single point of reaction against the environment, even with a thousand to one chance of failure in the effort. This seems still more necessary and natural in view of the fact that one leaves those one loves behind. For this part of one’s self, this portion of the energy of which one consists, cannot one engage in a gigantic struggle, however unequal the combat, capable of shaking up the colossal Authority?

Many die, declaring themselves to be victims of society; do they not realize that, since the same cause produces the same effects, their comrades, those they love, could die as victims of the same state of things? Won’t a desire then come to them to transform their vital force into energy, into power, so as to burn the pile rather than to separate its elements?

Once one has overcome the fear of death, of the complete dissolution of the human form, one can engage in the struggle with that much more strength. Some will respond to us, “We have a horror of bloodshed. We do not wish to attack this society, made up of men who seem to us to be both unaware and irresponsible.” The first objection does not hold. Does the struggle only take a violent form? Is it not multiple, diverse? And all the individuals who understand its usefulness, can they not take part each according to his own temperament? The second is too inexact. Such words as “society”, “knowledge”, “responsibility” are too often repeated and too little explained.

The barrier that obstructs the road, the biting serpent, the tuberculosis microbe are unaware and without responsibility, yet we defend ourselves against them. Still more irresponsible (in the relative sense) are the cornfields which we reap, the ox that we kill, the beehive that we rob. Nevertheless we attack them all. I know nothing of “responsible” nor of “irresponsible”. I see the causes of my suffering, of the cramping of my personality; and my efforts are bent to suppress or to conquer them by every possible means.

According to my power of resistance I assimilate or I reject, I am assimilated or rejected. That is all. Even stranger objections are advanced, in a form neurotically scientific: “Study astronomy, and you will realize the negligible duration of human life as compared to the infinite ... Death, is a transformation and not termination.” For myself, being finite, I have no conception of the infinite; but I know that duration consists of centuries, centuries of years, years of days, days of hours, hours of minutes, etc. I know that time is made up of nothing but the accumulation of seconds, that great immensity formed from the in-finitely small. Short as our life may be, it has its dimensional importance from the point of view of the whole. Life, seen from my own point of view, with my own eyes, cannot be of little importance to me; and all seems to me to have had no purpose but to prepare for us — for myself and for that which surrounds me.

The stone which caresses the head when dropped from a meter above, will break it open if it falls twenty meters. Arrested on the way, seen from the point of view of the whole, it differs in no particular; but it lacks the energy which makes it a power. I disregard all that I cannot conceive, and look primarily to myself; and a dissolution or rather a non-absorption of strength that acts to my detriment occurs in either a partial or a definitive suicide. Death is the end of a human energy, as the dissociation of elements of a battery is the end of the electricity which it releases, as the dissolution of threads of a tissue is the end of that tissue’s strength. Death, as the end of my “I”, is more than a transformation.

There are those who say to one, “The goal of life is happiness,” and who profess to be unable to attain it. It seems to me simpler to say that life is life. Life is happiness. Happiness is life. All the acts of life are a joy to me. Breathing pure air, I know happiness; my lungs are expanded, an impression of power makes, me glow. The hour of work and that of rest afford me equal pleasure. The hour which brings the meal-time; the meal itself with its labor of mastication; the hour which follows with its interior activity — all give me joy of varying sorts. Shall I evoke the delicious attention of love, the sense of power in the sexual encounter, the succeeding hours of voluptuous relaxation? Shall I speak of the joy of the eyes, of hearing, of odor, of touching, of all the senses, of the delights of conversation and of thought? Life is a happiness .

Life has not a goal. It is. Why wish for a goal, a beginning, an end? Let us recapitulate. Whenever, hurled on the stones by an earthquake, avid for air, we bow our head against the rock, whenever seized by the regimentation of society as it is, avid for the ideal (to make this vague term exact: avid for the integral development of one’s self and one’s loved ones) we arrest our life we obey, not a necessity nor a right, but as obsession of force, of the obstacle. We do no voluntary act, as the partisans of death profess; we obey the power of the environment which crushes, and we depart precisely at the hour the weight is too heavy for our shoulders.

“Then,” they say, “we do not go except at our hour — and our hour is now.” Yes. But since, resigned, they envisage their defeat in advance; since they have not developed their tissues with a view to resistance; they have not made due effort to react against the regimentation of the environment. Unaware of their own beauty, of their own force, they add to the objectives of the obstacle all the subjective weight of their own acceptance.

Like those resigned to partial suicides, they surrender themselves to the great suicide. They are devoured by an environment avid for their flesh, eager to crush all energy that appears. Their error lies in the belief that the dissolution is by their own will, that they choose their hour, while actually they die crushed inevitably by the wickedness of some and by the of others. In a locality by the maleficient of typhus, of tuberculosis, I do not think of absenting myself to avoid the malady, rather, I proceed immediately to disseminate disinfectant’s, without any fear of killing millions of microbes.

In present society, made foul by the conventional defecations of property, of patriotism, of religion, of family, of ignorance, crushed by the power of government and the inertia of the governed; I wish not to disappear, but to throw upon the scene the light of truth, to provide a disinfectant, to it by any means at my command. Even with death approaching, I shall have still the desire to chair my body by means of phenol or acid, for the sake of humanity’s health. And if I am destroyed in this effort, I shall not be totally effaced. I shall have reacted against the environment, I shall have lived briefly but intensely; I shall perhaps have opened a breach for the passage of energies similar to my own. No, it is not life that is bad, but the conditions in which we live. Therefore we shall address ourselves not to life, but to these conditions: let us change them. One must live, one must desire to live still more abundantly. Let us accept not even the partial suicides.

Let us be eager to know all experiences, all happiness, all sensations. Let us not be resigned to any diminution of our “me”. Let us be champion of life. so that desires may arise out of our turpitude and weakness; let us assimilate the earth to our own concept of beauty. Thus may our wishes be united, magnificently; and at the last we shall know the Joy of Life in the absolute.

                                                                                                      Let us love life

William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven & Hell (1789)

Proverbs of Hell 

                         In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.

                         Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

                         The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

                         Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.

                         He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.

                         The cut worm forgives the plow.

                         Dip him in the river who loves water.

                         A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

                         He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.

                         Eternity is in love with the productions of time.

                         The busy bee has no time for sorrow.

                         The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom: 

                         no clock can measure.

                         All wholsom food is caught without a net or a trap.

                         Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth.

                         No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.

                         A dead body, revenges not injuries.

                         The most sublime act is to set another before you.

                         If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

                         Folly is the cloke of knavery.

                         Shame is Prides cloke.

                        Prisons are built with stones of Law, 
                        Brothels with bricks of Religion.

                        The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.

                        The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.

                        The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.

                        The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

                        Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.

                        The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, 
                        the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, 
                        are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man.

                        The fox condemns the trap, not himself.

                        Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.

                        Let man wear the fell of the lion, woman the fleece of the sheep.

                        The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.

                        The selfish smiling fool, & the sullen frowning fool, 
                        shall be both thought wise, that they may be a rod.

                        What is now proved was once, only imagin'd.

                        The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit: watch the roots; 
                        the lion, the tyger, the horse, the elephant, watch the fruits.

                        The cistern contains; the fountain overflows.

                        One thought, fills immensity.

                        Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.

                        Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.

                        The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted 
                        to learn of the crow.

                        The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.

                        Think in the morning. Act in the noon. 
                        Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.

                        He who has suffer'd you to impose on him knows you.

                        As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.

                        The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

                        Expect poison from the standing water.

                        You never know what is enough unless you know 
                        what is more than enough.

                        Listen to the fools reproach! it is a kingly title!

                        The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, 
                        the beard of earth.

                        The weak in courage is strong in cunning.

                        The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, 
                        nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.

                        The thankful reciever bears a plentiful harvest.

                        If others had not been foolish, we should be so.

                        The soul of sweet delight, can never be defil'd.

                       When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius, 
                       lift up thy head!

                       As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, 
                       so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.

                       To create a little flower is the labour of ages.

                       Damn, braces: Bless relaxes.

                       The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.

                       Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!

                       Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!

                       The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands &

                       feet Proportion.

                       As the air to a bird of the sea to a fish, 
                       so is contempt to the contemptible.

                       The crow wish'd every thing was black, the owl, 
                       that every thing was white.

                       Exuberance is Beauty.

                       If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.

                       Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked 
                       roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.

                       Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

                       Where man is not nature is barren.

                       Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.

                       Enough! or Too much!

Carl Chiarenza: Interview with Robert Hirsch

Transmutation:

Turning detritus                into splendor

                                               Photo Technique, November/December 2012 

Chiarenza’s luminous, meticulously crafted black and white photographs remove his subject from the everyday world of color. This allows his images to transcend their specific subject matter and evoke an inner state of consciousness that grapples with his subject matter beyond its external structure. Chiarenza’s spirit of experimentation disrupts customary expectations through his use of everyday materials to visualize their metamorphosis into hauntingly beautiful abstractions that hint at horizons, geological strata, and quixotic figures. His constructed meditative symbols forge a connection between the mind and nature that elicits emotional responses. This work, often relating to the landscape, dismantles formal media boundaries and permits photography to merge with graphic design, painting and sculpture. Conceptually, Chiarenza’s transformative imagemaking pulls back the photographic cloak to reveal its illusional qualities. In turn, this draws attention to the difference between a photograph and the reality it depicts, reminding us that all photographs are constructed images and not concrete realities. Ultimately, Chiarenza’s work invites psychological speculation by encouraging us to examine the unconscious and/or the subliminal workings of the mind, thus demonstrating how knowledge about our world and ourselves can be gleaned through a fabricated methodology. Chiarenza is also a photo-historian noted for his acclaimed biography, Aaron Siskind: Pleasures and Terrors (1982).

Robert Hirsch: How did you get interested in photography?

Carl Chiarenza: The playground across the street from our house in Rochester, NY had a meeting and storage shack. When I was eight years old I made my first pictures of neighborhood kids playing ball with a Kodak Brownie. I processed them in a tiny darkroom the playground director built in that shack. My first serious picture was of a Rochester East High School wall on graduation day 1953, upon which people had scribbled their names over the years. It was essentially my first abstract picture.

RH: What is the key visual theme running through your work?

CC: In high school I was already leaning towards a formalistic picture. When I started attending Rochester Institute of Technology and making photographs for assignments Minor White gave us, I found myself doing close-ups. This furthered my interest in abstraction which can be seen in my 1957 senior thesis, Interaction: Visual Verbal, which essentially consists of close-ups and details of a railroad yard (facsimile edition available from Nazraeli Press).

RH: How did your notion of the landscape evolve from outside to inside?

CC: I have always been attracted to the landscape and tried hard to photograph outdoors, but I couldn’t get the pictorial ideas to evolve in nature. So I went into the studio and tried to let collage and light dream up images of my feelings for and about nature. Later, in 1983, I was invited to participate in an exhibition called Arboretum for which I made a series of collage pictures called Woods, which more directly explored my feelings about nature. I concluded that the idea of landscape is really a pictorial construction. In the past, people didn’t refer to nature as the landscape out there. It only became a landscape after it was pictured. My sense of landscape, therefore, is that it is an abstract, emotional, pictorial mindset that we construct to examine nature in relation to ourselves. Nature is not picturesque, it is often ugly and unruly, which is why one has to struggle to make a photograph out in it. By working in the studio, I have control over the light and its effect on the collage. This allows me to alter that relationship in a manner similar to how I burn and dodge in the darkroom.

RH: How have people created a landscape genre?

CC: People bring their feelings to the landscape and in turn the landscape affects them. The picture comes from a place in between by taking these experiences and reconstituting them into visual symbols that one associates with them.

In the studio, I play with scraps of paper, and with the lighting on my copy stand to make what I would love to see in nature, but isn’t there. I can’t see it out there, but I feel it. It is my way of giving back to nature something that I got indirectly from nature.

RH: What is your work’s connection to the logic of perspective and the illusion of visible reality?

CC: My engagement with the landscape has led me to form an awareness about the effects of human incursion in our world, and I have no interest in recreating such scenes. My work has its own illusions, which occasionally do include a sense of visual reality. However, my goal is to draw viewers into a new experience; one of a non-physical reality, much as music does (one of my other passions). My photographs evoke rather than mirror a sense of place. My working methodology of making and photographing my collages allows me to respond to imaginary places in a photographically expressive manner.

RH: Why do you work in black-and-white?

CC: In 1979 while working with the Polaroid 20x24-inch camera and color film, I discovered the only pictures I was satisfied with were monochromatic. This led me to realize the feelings and emotions I wanted to convey are best expressed in black and white. For me, color distracts from my objectives; it doesn’t have that depth, that richness, that pulse, or as we would say in music, “that sound” I seek to convey.

RH: Why have you used Polaroid Type 55 Negative/Positive film?

CC: By seeing the results I can immediately tell what

I need to change in the collage or lighting or both. Without those instant prints I would have to develop film and then go back to remake the collage. The collages are not in themselves an end; rather they are a means to represent what I want to articulate. Once you touch them they are gone.

RH: What is your allure to photographic black?

CC: I start with black and something grows out of it that slows you down and encourages you to stop and stay in the picture. By reducing a subject to its essential qualities, black and white provides a direct connection to your thoughts and feelings. However it’s not only the blacks, but also what happens with the light. It’s really about light and the absence of light without the interference of those distracting colors. It’s a riddle that simultaneously baffles and challenges one and reminds us that every photograph is an abstraction.

RH: How has a long life affected your picture making?

CC:  As I have gotten older, I have the desire to simplify. My wife, Heidi Katz who is a landscape designer, has an excellent garden analogy. She says: “When one is younger one wants to grow everything. As one gets older, one accepts limitations and concentrates on specific plants.”

RH: What is a key factor in your picture making?

CC: I’ve been making pictures so long it’s like eating. I go to work every day I can. I am interested in producing something, whether it’s imagery, writing, or music, which gives back something of what I took in. Ultimately, the most important thing is just showing up.

    

  
         

Mabel Collins: Light on my path (1885)

               KARMA

CONSIDER with me that the individual existence is a rope which stretches from the infinite to the infinite and has no end and no commencement, neither is it capable of being broken. This rope is formed of innumerable fine threads, which, lying closely together, form its thickness. These threads are colorless, are perfect in their qualities of straightness, strength, and levelness. This rope, passing as it does through all places, suffers strange accidents. Very often a thread is caught and becomes attached, or perhaps is only violently pulled away from its even way. Then for a great time it is disordered, and it disorders the whole. Sometimes one is stained with dirt or with color, and not only does the stain run on further than the spot of contact, but it discolors other of the threads. And remember that the threads are living — are like electric wires, more, are like quivering nerves. How far, then, must the stain, the drag awry, be communicated! But eventually the long strands, the living threads which in their unbroken continuity form the individual, pass out of the shadow into the shine. Then the threads are no longer colorless, but golden; once more they lie together, level. Once more harmony is established between them; and from that harmony within the greater harmony is perceived.

This illustration presents but a small portion — a single side of the truth: it is less than a fragment. Yet, dwell on it; by its aid you may be led to perceive more. What it is necessary first to understand is, not that the future is arbitrarily formed by any separate acts of the present, but that the whole of the future is in unbroken continuity with the present as the present is with the past. On one plane, from one point of view, the illustration of the rope is correct.

It is said that a little attention to occultism produces great Karmic results. That is because it is impossible to give any attention to occultism without making a definite choice between what are familiarly called good and evil. The first step in occultism brings the student to the tree of knowledge. He must pluck and eat; he must choose. No longer is he capable of the indecision of ignorance. He goes on, either on the good or on the evil path. And to step definitely and knowingly even but one step on either path produces great Karmic results. The mass of men walk waveringly, uncertain as to the goal they aim at; their standard of life is indefinite; consequently their Karma operates in a confused manner. But when once the threshold of knowledge is reached, the confusion begins to lessen, and consequently the Karmic results increase enormously, because all are acting in the same direction on all the different planes: for the occultist cannot be half-hearted, nor can he return when he has passed the threshold. These things are as impossible as that the man should become the child again. The individuality has approached the state of responsibility by reason of growth; it cannot recede from it.

He who would escape from the bondage of Karma must raise his individuality out of the shadow into the shine; must so elevate his existence that these threads do not come in contact with soiling substances, do not become so attached as to be pulled awry. He simply lifts himself out of the region in which Karma operates. He does not leave the existence which he is experiencing because of that. The ground may be rough and dirty, or full of rich flowers whose pollen stains, and of sweet substances that cling and become attachments — but overhead there is always the free sky. He who desires to be Karmaless must look to the air for a home; and after that to the ether. He who desires to form good Karma will meet with many confusions, and in the effort to sow rich seed for his own harvesting may plant a thousand weeds, and among them the giant. Desire to sow no seed for your own harvesting; desire only to sow that seed the fruit of which shall feed the world. You are a part of the world; in giving it food you feed yourself. Yet in even this thought there lurks a great danger which starts forward and faces the disciple, who has for long thought himself working for good, while in his inmost soul he has perceived only evil; that is, he has thought himself to be intending great benefit to the world while all the time he has unconsciously embraced the thought of Karma, and the great benefit he works for is for himself. A man may refuse to allow himself to think of reward. But in that very refusal is seen the fact that reward is desired. And it is useless for the disciple to strive to learn by means of checking himself. The soul must be unfettered, the desires free. But until they are fixed only on that state wherein there is neither reward nor punishment, good nor evil, it is in vain that he endeavors. He may seem to make great progress, but some day he will come face to face with his own soul, and will recognize that when he came to the tree of knowledge he chose the bitter fruit and not the sweet; and then the veil will fall utterly, and he will give up his freedom and become a slave of desire. Therefore be warned, you who are but turning toward the life of occultism. Learn now that there is no cure for desire, no cure for the love of reward, no cure for the misery of longing, save in the fixing of the sight and hearing upon that which is invisible and soundless. Begin even now to practice it, and so a thousand serpents will be kept from your path. Live in the eternal.

The operations of the actual laws of Karma are not to be studied until the disciple has reached the point at which they no longer affect himself. The initiate has a right to demand the secrets of nature and to know the rules which govern human life. He obtains this right by having escaped from the limits of nature and by having freed himself from the rules which govern human life. He has become a recognized portion of the divine element, and is no longer affected by that which is temporary. He then obtains a knowledge of the laws which govern temporary conditions. Therefore you who desire to understand the laws of Karma, attempt first to free yourself from these laws; and this can only be done by fixing your attention on that which is unaffected by those laws.