I'm looking for some more lit like instead of hard philosophy. Just dunno if that one wasn't fit for beginners, you know like if it were a book in a logical series or something. Maybe I'll read Atlas Shrugged for lulz too...
That too yeah. I'd even go as far as to say that the whole book is effectively just a description of what an anarchist should be like. And I don't know how it is in German but the English translation I have (which is ooooold) is written in proper archaic Biblical language and it's just the most beautiful piece of literature going *drools*
Was thinking about Thus spoke Zarathustra, that any good to start with?
From a vaguely left-leaning perspective I'd probably say that 'Beyond good and evil' is the most...appropriate or whatever. Not least because there's a fun passage in it about how all antisemites pretty much just have to killed in order to save humanity lol japes. But seriously yeah that one's pretty good. And there's a book about Nietzsche and anarchism called 'I am dynamite,' that's quite a cool read. If I remember rightly the editor used to be a primitivist but then stopped being one but was still clearly a bit of one, but I don't think that influenced the choice of content too much...
hatzel, mind recommending me sum Nietzsche to read? Would like some for vacation reading but I have no idea where to start.
Stirner? IDEALIST SCUM RAWWWR
I do my best! It just so happens that back in my student days I (for some strange reason) ended up writing an essay on theories of state power in State and Revolution and ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah (wtf?). As luck would have it that essay has now vanished into the annals of time, but as I had criticised that exact quote, I just thought I'd regurgitate some of the stuff I'd written way back when. Yeah, faux spontaneity there, but it was all already planned... The issue of alienation in the face of the state - particularly the liberal state - is really where Stirner starts to come into his own, I'd say. I don't think his is an analysis which concerns itself excessively with the actual nature and organisation of the state, whether this or that institution is worthy of the name 'state,' as is arguably typical on the left; he's much more concerned with its function. There are certainly a few problems with his ideas, but I think that the basic framework is pretty strong.
Thanks for the very interesting post in the anarchism thread just now, by the way. I think the state thing is one of the most ill-defined concepts among the whole left, ask two people and you get three opinions, sorta like that. My idea of the emphasis on alienation stemmed from reading an essay on Marx' Grundrisse and his concept of alienation, and I was reading a passage about human interaction alienating itself in the market while still being a form of human interaction and I was like woah, maybe that goes for the state too. I think most Marxists have a very mechanistic view of the state, but I could never get a good definition out of an anarchist either... kinda a "you know it when you see it" kinda deal.
Yeah, free camping sounds awesome already (and takes a load off, staying somewhere costs the most for these types of events). I'll probably take some food and water with me if I'm going. Kinda looking forward to it but anxious at the same time, I'm just such a shut-in lol
I'm in the vague London area, which hopefully means finding transport won't be too much of a problem. Probably some cheapo coach to take me most of the way, if I end up going, but it would depend who else I know who's going, because I don't really want to be stuck out there with a load of potential dickheads :P But looking on the site...it says there's a free (what?!) campsite in town, and that they're trying to keep most of the events free, too, just some with a 'discretionary' cost. I guess that couldn't be too much, and even if it were, it could be avoided by just not hitting up that particular event. It could probably all be done on the proper cheap, even if that requires mindless networking with the gathered masses outside of the officially organised events...I dunno...
