this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2024
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Anarchism and Social Ecology

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Anarchism

Anarchism is a social and political theory and practice that works for a free society without domination and hierarchy.

Social Ecology

Social Ecology, developed from green anarchism, is the idea that our ecological problems have their ultimate roots in our social problems. This is because the domination of nature and our ecology by humanity has its ultimate roots in the domination humanity by humans. Therefore, the solutions to our ecological problems are found by addressing our social and ecological problems simultaneously.

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Poetry and imagination must be integrated with science and technology, for we have evolved beyond an innocence that can be nourished exclusively by myths and dreams.

~ Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom

People want to treat ‘we’ll figure it out by working to get there’ as some sort of rhetorical evasion instead of being a fundamental expression of trust in the power of conscious collective effort.

~Anonymous, but quoted by Mariame Kaba, We Do This 'Til We Free Us

The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.

~Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.

~Murray Bookchin, "A Politics for the Twenty-First Century"

There can be no separation of the revolutionary process from the revolutionary goal. A society based on self-administration must be achieved by means of self-administration.

~Murray Bookchin, Post Scarcity Anarchism

In modern times humans have become a wolf not only to humans, but to all nature.

~Abdullah Öcalan

The ecological question is fundamentally solved as the system is repressed and a socialist social system develops. That does not mean you cannot do something for the environment right away. On the contrary, it is necessary to combine the fight for the environment with the struggle for a general social revolution...

~Abdullah Öcalan

Social ecology advances a message that calls not only for a society free of hierarchy and hierarchical sensibilities, but for an ethics that places humanity in the natural world as an agent for rendering evolution social and natural fully self-conscious.

~ Murray Bookchin

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radicalsundayschool.noblogs.org

From their website:

Radical Sunday School is an anarchist (anti-authoritarian socialist) educational collective based in Amsterdam. We want to help our communities learn like they’re already free: free as in without charging money, free as in choosing for yourself what classes are about, free as in learning to free ourselves from bosses and bureaucrats. We also work to challenge the more subtle hierarchies of the classroom, like the rule of the expert over the amateur. In our classes, everyone has something to learn, and everyone has something to contribute.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 months ago (3 children)

This is a neat idea but unfortunately the name and advertisement 100% read to me like this is Christian proselytizing. I wouldn't expect secular education to be remotely part of this from just this material, and I wouldn't even check out the website to confirm.

[–] ElectroVagrant 16 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Considering this group is in Amsterdam, it may be that there isn't as much of a religious backdrop to make people think of it like that. Admittedly I don't know the demographics of the city, much less the country, enough to know whether that's the case or not.

[–] samus12345 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Very few Western countries are as fervently religious as the US. Amsterdam is 13% Christian and 62% no religion, so safe to say religion isn't the first thing that would come to people's minds there.

[–] stormeuh 6 points 2 months ago

Yet, the Netherlands has its very own bible belt! There are quite a lot of conservative christians in the Netherlands, they just don't live in Amsterdam. I don't disagree though that religion is less at the forefront of public conversation than in the US.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Yeah, I'll confess, this may be very largely an American perspective. I am in one of the least religious metro areas of the US, and it's still 50%+ Christian. For anyone who has been near Christian conversion propaganda, there are a lot of red flags in that ad, but I also agree with some comments below that it doesn't seem like a great pitch even in absence of that context. I'd want to know more about what is being taught and why before I would be interested.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I saw it in a left wing collective cafe on the bathroom wall, so I think in this context I never would have thiught about it like that

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

That's fair! Context is key. I was thinking if I saw this on the street, I'd ignore it for the reasons above.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

Some friends I had in my 20s had a similar project in South St. Louis. Late 90s, early 2000s. Just folks running classes teaching eachother what they know. Learned to make burn balm from lavender, helped renovate and bring a house up to code, community gardening, bike shop, an arts center...lotta cool stuff can happen when people work together with a good mindset.

[–] LesserAbe 7 points 2 months ago

Got to say, I have a ton of things I want to do and rarely enough time. The pitch for this doesn't strike me as appealing.