191–200 of 213 posts
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Libertarian socialism rejects representative democracy, they favour horizontal institutions with instantly recallable delegates instead of representives.
I think it also seeks to minimize democracy itself, in favor of anarchy wherever possible, if not entirely.
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Punk rose to prominence, in part, because of their acceptance of technology. They used technology that was once the expensive and in the domain of conservative corporations that was turned into accessible and cheap ways to disseminate ideas. Xerox machines were prominently used to create flyers for shows and distribute zines. Cassette tapes were copied and passed around to anyone who wanted one. VHS was used to recor…
The punk ethos, shortlived as it was as a mainstream culture, and a little longer lived (still short) from some totally uncommercial die-hards, was not about technology at all. Xerox was not some fancy new technology, it as 15+ year old staple at the time. Cassetes were not a thing in the punk scene at the time. They were insignificant in sales in the UK, and no mixtapes, they caught on in the tail end of the 70s, se…
So you're both somewhat correct. The birth of punk was not about tech, but about self-reliance: doing your own thing, no matter how ugly or discordant (see early punk bands and their notoriously bad vocalists), fuck everyone else. It was the application of flower-power principles to urban energy-crisis nihilism. As punk grew, a generation of democratized technology appeared that could support and supercharge such ethos, to the point that (if you were not part of the original hardcore nucleus) you could easily assume the tech was indivisible from the ethos and necessary to its survival.
I think the author misattributed who the modern era punks would be. At least based on the described framework of what punk counter-culture was about and what it was countering. Given how much of the mainstream is organized around overwrought advertising, influencering, guruing, and being terminally online... it seems like the modern punks would be the counter-culture that prioritizes being offline, being private, and…
The punks are alive and well tagging freeway overpass signs, dumpster diving, planting flowers in public parks, making their own clothes, and living in communal housing where it’s always someone else’s turn to do the dishes.
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Pastors are as well. Just differently. Each church has a board of elders who will hire/fire/correct/counsel the pastors. At most protestant churches at least. I can't speak for all churches. I've seen a board of elders remove a megachurch founding pastor. They take their positions seriously.
I have more faith in the Protestant and Baptist, more decentralized methods. Catholic monoliths, less so.
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for March 18, 1992: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/03/18
Coincidentally, Watterson himself was very punk: he started drawing for his own sake, got famous, refused to accept the capitalist growth imperative, and dropped out. He never sported a mohawk or pierced his tongue, but was more punk than several generations of punk-rock wannabes.
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It's not a decision I made, it's just my observation. I could be wrong but of course I don't think so. I'm not commenting on the politics of sexuality in Nigeria, I'm talking about western societies. I've been around a lot of gay people and transgender individuals, and never have I once seen them in danger in public. Now, I wasn't around in the 80s or 90s, with the gay bashing and what not, and I understand the pligh…
I fail to see Well, yeah.
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Why do you think "being against the mainstream" is the standard of what punk is?
Because that's what it is: a commodified version of "f*ck you mom and dad" rebellion with DIY window dressings. I grew up in punk culture (my house in college was a DIY punk club [1]) and at the core, that's all it is [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuJ60dAHyc4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YefQjTeaUDI
One of the problems with TFA's allusions to hippies for me is that it feels as if it is arguing that the hippies were the first of their kind. In reality, groups with the general back-to-the-land drop-out mentality are a persistent feature of western culture, occuring every 40-80 years for several hundred years. They rarely change the entire face of the culture they emerge in, but they typically shift it a bit, at le…
That's because the upper echelons correctly understood that culture is largely window-dressing, as long as the fundamental economic ballasts remain the same. They will let us dye our hair blue, what matters is that we keep working in their factories/shops/call-centres/banks/etc, making money for them; and if we bootstrap something else, it will inevitably be absorbed back into the system once a little greed creeps in.
What they cared about was killing collectivism, which was the real threat to the economic order, and they largely achieved that.
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I don’t know to what degree it’s “a thing” but I know a lot of 30-something punks from my old scene that are now into a kind of homesteading vibe. Moved out to the surrounding countryside as much for economic as ideological reasons. Some are all the way into off-the-grid, home schooling, etc. Nothing says “Fuck the System!” like solar panels and a wood burning stove I guess?
> Nothing says “Fuck the System!” like solar panels and a wood burning stove I guess? Pithily put. I can definitely attest that this is my plan and the plans of a few others I know. Home baked bread and sour dough starter feel pretty anti-corporate to me. That said, I do recognise that going off grid requires heavy machinery and tools that are produced by the biggest of corporations... but somehow Milwaukee tools see…
It's all about recognizing there's a spectrum of participating within the mainstream, and pushing to get as far from the center out to the edges. Actually getting out of the stream and up on the shore is impossible for we fish.