Fuse Feed Print ⇰ Distribute

11
Spiritual Anarchism
Anarchism has historically positioned itself as an
atheist tradition, and for good reason.  At the time
of the modern articulation of anarchism, there was
a need to confront the authoritarianism of religions
that, both in their institutional structure and in their
overarching ideologies, demand obedience to an
ordained notion of morality and subtly reinforce
the mentality of submission to an external source.  Religions of the world contain metaphysical
These aspects of religion reflect political
undercurrents, with respect to the legitimation of
centralized power, within theology.
Anarchism involves a belief that ever-more
egalitarian social, political, economic and spiritual
structures can be found. The architecture of
society was constructed and is maintained by
concentrated power and masquerades around as
inevitable.  Anarchists claim that if left to our own
self-management, we can find social, political,
and economic structures that reflect the needs of
everyone involved.  Taking this one step further, if
left to managing our own spiritual sensibilities, we
can construct spiritual structures (articulations of
the nature of divinity, practices, mythologies,
community support systems) that reflect
everyone’s needs.
Anarchists proclaim that we cannot know the
shape of a future liberated society before we get
there.  We must create and grapple with it
together, as it arises.  A healthy society grows
organically out of our actual needs and desires of
the members of a particular society.  An ideal
society, constructed by an elite group and
imposed upon society, always involves coercion.  theory presents a different kind of ethos.  It honors
The same is true with religion.  An ideal religion,
imposed upon an individual limits him or her.  A
healthy spirituality grows organically out of the
needs and desires of members of a particular
community.
In order to see how this principle operates in the
world, we can look at anarchist decision-making
processes, namely consensus.  With consensus,
the group establishes an agreement at the outset
to work toward the benefit of the whole, to honor
each individual’s perspective and to offer their
own perspective to the group in order to enhance
understanding for the whole group.  At the same
time, a consensus group accepts that complete
unanimity is unrealistic but aims is to come to
concrete plans of action and organization that
don’t violate anyone’s personal principles. The
goal in an anarchistic society (as seen in
consensus decision-making processes) is
cooperative, voluntary relationships.  This can be
applied to spirituality.  Many disparate positions
can exist simultaneously.  Anarchism is not about
one model, but a harmony of many models.  am truly fortunate.”
Spiritual anarchism values plurality as well.
Anarchism reflects many of the principles of Tao.  religiously.  To paraphrase Hakim Bey and the
The Tao te Ching, attributed to Lao-Tzu says that
Tao means How.  Ultimately, anarchists are
concerned, not with what the external structure of
society looks like, but with how a group
constructs it.  Anarchist self-organizing involves
consensus, cooperation and voluntary
associations.  It expresses a political method or
So’ Hum
LAW
CENTER
Richard Jay Moller
practice, not a political organization.  Similarly,
certain spiritual traditions emphasize the practice,
not the organization.  Taoist philosophy focuses
on the way nature exists and changes rather than
how to manipulate it to conform to one’s idea of
perfection.  Similarly, Taoism is not a religion in the
traditional sense because it isn’t an organization. 
It is a practice and philosophy without a
centralized church.
reasonings about power and governmentality.  I
hope to demonstrate that one’s beliefs concerning
a spiritual authority translate into beliefs about a
political authority because they relate to beliefs
about ourselves.  I seek the metaphysical
reasonings that convey similar messages about
governmentality as anarchism, namely that the
individual is capable of cooperation and
self-organizing.  proposed a revolutionary theology, abandoning
A comparative analysis of mythology reveals a
difference between theologies that present a God
outside of the self who ordains morality and
maintains order in the world and mythologies that
describe an essence-god which animates all, and
resides in everything, including the self.  This is
the difference between belief in transcendence
and immanence, discussed later in the text.  involves an examination of mythologies and
Both God and the state present specific moral
orders, ones that seek to transcend personal
moralities.   God and the state use different, yet
parallel, modes of coercion.  Religious authorities,
in monotheistic religions, use fear of eternal
damnation.  The state uses fear of secular
damnation: prison, military, poverty.  Anarchist
all forms of life and treats individuals (and
communities) as capable of discerning their own
morality.  In spiritual anarchism, which recognizes
God as the self, personal moralities gain
legitimacy.
Anarchism, if seen as resistance to
authoritarianism, has a longer heritage than is
typically ascribed to it– in large part because it
was crafted as only secular and in opposition to
all religion (“neither god, nor master…” cite).  the country about alternative economic and social
Anarchism was only articulated relatively recently
(late 1700s) as a political concept.  It came out of
the secularization project of the industrial
revolution, which attempted to separate the
spiritual from the political.  The ideology of the
Age of Enlightenment described the earth as a
material commodity, ready for exploitation.  This
was not a radically new concept.  European
secularization was a continuation of Christian
theology that separates God from the earth. 
Spiritual anarchism argues with this premise,
instead advocating for the divine life in everything.  friend. The sun is setting on the bayou-licked lands and I
Prior to anarchism being expressed as a secular
concept, anarchist tendencies were expressed
situationists, when a society expressed its politics
in religious vocabulary, because the world
conceived of themselves religiously, anarchist
tendencies also expressed themselves in religious
vocabulary.  Religious sects formed and sustained
resistance to domination, hierarchy and authority.  gut a house in the 3000 block of Laussat found her dead
The Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit
Fuse Feed Print Distribute
13
Support AHHA’s work to create tiny house villages
707#923#4851
throughout Humboldt!
To donate or offer land options contact AHHA  The Muirwalker Himself!
412$Maple$Lane
Garberville,$CA$
95542
Teresa Mills
belief in transubstantiation and sin.  With this
perspective, we can trace a resistance to
authoritarianism back hundreds of years and
beyond.  This may point to an inherent desire
within humans to live without political repression -
a natural drive for self-determination.
Finding an anarchistic expression of spirituality
institutional structures that best represent the
infinite potential of the individual in society while
being critical of religions which reinforce human
dependency on institutions and belief structures
which narrate a weakened, limited, divided
individual spirit. Atheism does this too. An
anarchist spirituality framework allows for a
precise and complex critique of authoritarian
religions without rejecting all forms of spirituality. 
From the introduction of a paper by
Kirsten Brydum  
In San Francisco Kirsten helped found the Really Really
Free Market, a monthly bazaar of free goods and
services, and Access Café, a periodic, volunteer-run
restaurant which serves free sit-down meals to all
comers. In July 2008, she set out on a “collective
autonomy” tour to exchange ideas with others around
models. She stopped first at the RNC protest in
Minneapolis-St. Paul, where her travel companion
recalled them “baking vegan cupcakes amidst riot
police, dancing in the streets, shouting ‘destroy money,
build community,’ picking vegetables from an
abandoned garden for a potluck, playing washboard
with wingnuts, and planting seeds of hope for the
future.”
A month and a half later, Kirsten wrote her last dispatch
from aboard a train: “I’m rolling into New Orleans. An
old friend of a new friend offered to pick me up from the
station and get me to the house of another friend of a
On her second night in town, she borrowed a bike from
the house where she was staying in the Katrina-battered
Ninth Ward and rode with a feather in her hair to see the
Rebirth Brass Band perform in the warehouse district.
The club’s doorman remembers her leaving alone on her
bike at 1:30 am.
Later that morning, at 8:30, a church group returning to
on the sidewalk, shot in the head. She was 25.
Create you own MUIR REPORT with
on a tour of the wilds
of Northwildwest California
0 5:3
5 3364 93
3
,*

Marie Mills
(707) 923-9199

jaym@humboldt.net *No Plants

or Animals will
DONATE OR be Harmed
P. O . B o x 1 6 6 9 BY MAIL ONLINE during the tour
R e d w a y, C A 9 5 5 6 0 PO Box 3794, ahha-humco.org
Purveyor(of(Fine(Hemp(Products
Eureka, CA 95502-3794 ahha.humco@gmail.com

www.greenfuse.work