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RE: [Liberal Agenda] The Anarchist Cookbook
Oh wow this is a blast from the past! I think I have a xeroxed copy of this somewhere, but it wasn't mine, a leftover from a roommate haha I don't think it would make much sense to ban it from sales after all it's pretty much freely available from various sources as you mentioned. I saw parts of that documentary actually and I felt bad for Powell, he seemed very remorseful and sincere about how he felt regretful. My educated guess is if he hadn't done it someone else would have anyway. I think there are other figures in history that invented something hoping it would be used for good and the thing wasn't. Tragic stories indeed.
That's pretty cool if you still have it! Is it a photocopy of Powell's original or one of the offshoots?
Yeah, I mean he got nearly all the information for the book from the New York Public Library, and these days it seems tame compared to what you can find online if you go looking for it. I can understand the argument in the 70s, 80s and 90s to maybe pull the book from circulation, especially when it was being found at a range of suspects places, but by 2000 is was little more than a curiosity to most.
I really felt for him, I can completely understand why he wrote it and like you say, if he didn't, someone else was going to. Maybe not as well either. In my eyes at least, he did a lot of good for the world and more than made up for any role he may or may not have had in crimes with the writing of his book.
I thought it was interesting that many anarchist groups renounced the book because it wasn't written by one of them. There's some irony in there somewhere, I'm sure of it.
It's in a box somewhere but when I find it I'll let you know. It's a photocopy from the 90s I'm fairly sure. My friend was a big user of usenet so I bet they got it from there.
It's always a bit laughable when niche sub groups get elitist about themselves and in essence extinct their movements by their own stringent criteria. I've seen that so many times in the music scenes (goth, punk, industrial, etc.)
Recently - and this is kind of a tangent sorry - I was looking into the post-apoc genre on steemit, just getting a feel if there was an active interest in the genre and I found some prepper stuff but to my surprise there was a discussion on how prepping was diminishing or people were just flat out getting tired of prepping. Literally, tired. I guess the act of prepping is pretty exhausting. Also seems some Steemit preppers have a strong religious motivation or background and there was a very enlightening post about how this one lady said she was tired of living in fear. Those were her words, that being fearful all the time just sucked a lot of emotional energy and in itself becomes physically debilitating.
...(I am making my own deduction that being very religious perhaps makes someone more susceptible to fearfulness in the sense that biological mechanism might be located in the same location in the brain --- I also believe this to be the same part of the brain where creativity and imagination "lives" by virtue of the necessity to be able to believe or conceive of things not tangible or real or proven, but this is my own cereal box theory not based on science)
I never had the chance to try usenet, a little before my time sadly, so I get quite jealous hearing about peoples early net journeys!
Ha yeah that's it exactly, although on a slight tangent, do those cultural sub-groups still exist? I mean, there's still goths, and punks and ravers, but the last sort of "original" subculture I've seen was the Emo scene kids of the mid-00s. There doesn't seem to be a subculture for the now.
Never apologise for going of on a tangent with me, I love it! The prepper community is one I first came across a few years ago through a show called Doomsday Preppers when it was sort of trendy, I guess?
I often thought it must be exhausting living like that, to me as well having to think about so much all the time and constantly be on your guard for the coming end-times... yeah it'd finish me off. The one thing that always bugged me was how are they maintaining the freshness of their food supplies? Canned food still goes off, so do they circulate it and eat it and replace? Anyway...
That religious motivation is something I noticed too, and it's definitely a very common feature amongst the preppers, and to a less extent the conspiracy theorists I've seen.
Could you share a link to that ladies post? I'd be very interested to read it.
I can understand how that would be just completely draining both physically and mentally. It's been a common argument of mine for why believing too much in these things is bad for the individual. If the end times are coming, it's out of our control so why worry? If the government is this shadow entity run by the NWO, well there's bugger all I can do about it so might as well just continue with my life.
Plus, it's not cheap being a prepper from what I can tell!
I definitely think that the religious mentality can make someone more susceptible to this way of thinking and being. Certainly those who, for example, take the bible literally and believe in the Creation story and so on.
You saying that about creativity and fear being located in the same parts of the brain makes me feel like I've seen a documentary that said a similar thing. Gonna take me awhile to remember, but when I do I'll let you know. There is a really interesting experiment, where the researchers can stimulate a certain part of the brain and induce what many participants describe as a "religious experience", where they feel like they've been in the presence of God.
I think there's also an element of these people are having their fears and anxieties prayed upon by what are essentially snake oil salesman. Alex Jones is the prime example of that. The government is putting chemicals in the freaking air and hillary and obama will kidnap your children and turn them into gay frogs, but buy my super male vitality supplements and you'll be able to fight the authoritarian bastards off with the power of a dozen bears!