Alpine Recreation
angry british vegan clown artist
i like sharing food, playing games and drinking tea
'when i say "i am stupid" i am not making a comparison' - ivor cutler
twitter.com/alpinewreck:
h.l. mencken 1919
waaaaaaaaaaaaay good
Freedom emerged from the British socialist movement in the early 1880s. At that time there were several overlapping organisations with associated periodicals – the Social Democratic Federation with Justice and Today, the Fabian Society with the Practical Socialist and Our Corner, the Socialist League with the Commonweal, and so on. Anarchists were active in all these, but there were no separate anarchist initiatives in the country until the formation of a “circle of English anarchists” in May 1885. This group included both Continental émigrés (Such a Nikola Chaikovski and Severio Merlino) and native British anarchists; among the latter the leading member was Charlotte Wilson, who was both well educated and well off, and who was an active writer and speaker advocating anarchism in socialist organisations and publications from 1884.
conrad hyers - zen and the comic spirit
i just finished this very interesting book that i would recommend to anyone interested in ch’an/zen buddhism or humour or the emancipating and liberating effects of laughter and how enlightenment aligns with a comic outlook on life
fascinating and empowering
mikhail bakhtin
rabelais and his world
laughter, when it triumphed over the fear inspired by the mystery of the world and by power, boldly unveiled the truth about both. it resisted praise, flattery, hypocrisy. this laughing truth, expressed in curses and abusive words, degraded power. the clown was the herald of this truth."
mikhail bakhtin
rabelais and his world
mikhail bakhtin
rabelais and his world - circa 1940s, published 1965
mikhail bakhtin
rabelais and his world (compiled in the 1940s, published 1965)
insidiously, violently, they have led them to hate women, to be their own enemies, to mobilise their immense strength against themselves, to be the executants of their virile needs.
they have made for women an antinarcissism!
a narcissism which loves itself only to be loved for what women haven’t got!
they have constructed the infamous logic of anti love."
hélène cixous
le rie de la méduse/the laugh of the medusa
(1975)
It seems lost on most of the global anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist Left that there is a new liberation movement on the planet – animal liberation – that is of immense ethical and political significance. But because animal liberation challenges the anthropocentric, speciesist, and humanist dogmas that are so deeply entrenched in socialist and anarchist thinking and traditions, Leftists are more likely to mock than engage it.
For the last three decades, the animal liberation movement has been one of the most dynamic and important political forces on the planet. It is not for no reason that the FBI has branded the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) (along with the Earth Liberation Front) the top “domestic terrorist” threat in the US. Where “new social movements” such as Black Liberation, Native American, feminism, chicano/a, and various forms of Green and identity politics have laid dormant or become co-opted, the animal liberation movement has kept radical resistance alive and evolved into a potent global force of progressive change.
Since the fates of all species on this planet are intricately interrelated, the exploitation of animals cannot but have a major impact on the human world itself. When human beings exterminate animals, they devastate habitats and ecosystems necessary for their own lives. When they butcher farmed animals by the billions, they ravage rainforests, turn grasslands into deserts, exacerbate global warming, and spew toxic wastes into the environment. When they construct a global system of factory farming that requires prodigious amounts of land, water, energy, and crops, they squander vital resources and aggravate the problem of world hunger. When humans are violent toward animals, they often are violent toward one another, a tragic truism validated time and time again by serial killers who grow up abusing animals and violent men who beat the women, children, and animals of their home. The connections go far deeper, as the domestication of animals at the dawn of agricultural society is central to the emergence of patriarchy, state power, slavery, and hierarchy and domination of all kinds.
In countless ways, the exploitation of animals rebounds to create crises within the human world itself. The vicious circle of violence and destruction can end only if and when the human species learns to form harmonious relations – non-hierarchical and non-exploitative — with other animal species and the natural world. On its own, however, the animal liberation movement cannot possibly bring about the end of animal exploitation. It can only do this in alliance with progressive social causes, anti-capitalist struggles, and radical environmental movements.
In addition to gaining new insights into the dynamics of hierarchy, domination, and environmental destruction from animal rights perspectives, Leftists should grasp the gross inconsistency of advocating values such as peace, non-violence, compassion, justice, and equality while exploiting animals in their everyday lives, promoting speciesist ideologies, and ignoring the ongoing holocaust against other species that gravely threatens the entire planet. Conversely, the animal advocacy movement as a whole is politically naive, single-issue oriented, and devoid of a systemic anti-capitalist theory and politics necessary for the true illumination and elimination of animal exploitation, areas where it can profit greatly from discussions with the Left and progressive social movements. Further, environmentalists can never achieve their goals without addressing the main cause of global warming – factory farming – and grasping how water pollution, rainforest destruction, desertification, resource depletion and other key problems are shaped principally or significantly from global meat production and animal exploitation.
We assert the need for more expansive visions and politics on all sides of the human/animal/Earth liberation equation, and we call for new forms of dialogue, learning, and strategic alliances. Human, animal, and Earth liberation are interrelated projects that must be fought for as one, as we recognize that veganism is central to peace, ecology, sustainability, nonviolence, and the healing of the major crises afflicting this planet.
Thus, we must replace partial concepts of revolutionary change, such as involved the liberation of humans, animals, or the Earth, in favor of a far broader, deeper, more complex, and more inclusive concept of “total revolution.” We must replace the critique of any one system of domination with a critique of hierarchy as a systemic phenomenon, as we recognize that capitalism is a metastasizing cancer eating away at the planet and that a viable program for total liberation necessarily seeks to replace global capitalism with decentralized democracy and a dismantling of hierarchy in all forms.
"(Source: negotiationisover.net)
jacques rancière - on the shore of politics
we must always be working towards our goals, why process is key, why equality can never be a fixed point but must always be a protean, ever progressing/progressive state
Lord have mercy, anyone who thinks that please unfollow me. I’ve seen some ridiculous ass things on tumblr but this shit is the worst. However the eating dairy and meat products means you are upholding rape culture is probably the most offensive shit I have read on tumblr.
Totally agree, and I’mma add some facts in addendum as to why the argument is bullshit even on the most basic level.
I’ve seen some people in your notes say that dairy cows are kept “constantly” pregnant to produce milk a few times in this post, and that’s just not true. Cows go into estrus a lot like humans do — it’s not limited to a certain time of the year, but happens on about a monthly basis when they’re not pregnant. They’ll start ovulating again about 3 weeks after they calve, but it’s not recommended that you start trying to breed again for 40-60 days after they calve, and only around half of them end up breeding successfully at that point, so a lot of them don’t become pregnant until 70-80 days or even later.
Also, a while lot of it now is done by artificial insemination. I’mma be real blunt about it, but um I’ve seen farmers be able to shove their arm in there up to the shoulder and the cows really don’t react at all, because the vaginal cavity is so large,that it’s not really affected. They are generally harnessed for traditional insemination, because the bulls are violent assholes.
A lot of the reason why cows are bred so closely to the time they calve, as opposed to the way humans become pregnant, is that after three months or so of having calved, they stop being fertile and can’t be bred at all. Once that window closes, there’s no going back, unless you use synthetic, injectable hormones and sometimes even they aren’t successful. Then the cow has to go to slaughter, because she can’t support herself anymore, and feeding and caring for a cow is not like feeding a stray cat. It’s thousands of dollars every year, without vet care.
And I know a lot of people object to cows and calves being separated, on emotional grounds, but dairy calves tend to die in pretty high numbers at young ages when they’re left in large groups, and cows are herd animals. Calves’ immune systems aren’t fully developed until about a month after they’re born, so they’re very susceptible to viruses, bacteria and protozoa. If one of them comes down with, say, cryptosporidium (an intestinal protozoa that causes bloody scours/diarrhea/dehydration/etc), then probably all the calves in that herd group will catch it real bad, and a quarter to a third of them’ll die, cause it’s really hard to treat calves as they need to be for scours when they’re not penned individually or in small groups, as well as monitor them for signs of disease. And if you don’t catch something like cryptosporidium early and can’t keep them hydrated, they die in a matter of hours. Like, seriously, 12 hours and they’re dead, and if you don’t start treatment early enough, then you’re really just delaying the death by a couple days.I’m not saying that there aren’t a lot of problems in the dairy industry, but comparisons to human trauma and the personification of animals is NOT legitimate way to criticize such things. Animals do not have the same concepts of free will, consent, or morals that we do. And comparing it to trauma experienced by humans is a giant dick move.
emphasized the last paragraph
feminism has always proudly embraced the maxim that ‘we suffer as equals’ that there can be no hierarchy to judge who’s trauma has been worst in history - that women’s subjugation under the patriarchy is no better or worse than those who suffered under the horrors of the slave trade, the tyranny of the nazis, or the red army, those in syria, cambodia, at the hands of homophobes and racists…
rather there is strength and solidarity between all these groups, knowing each of them has survived (and continues to survive) in awful situation
with this is mind it is no ‘dick move’ to extend this compassion, empathy and understanding outwards to all life, non-human animals included, recognising the inherent one-ness of all life on this planet
but to use arguments which have been aimed at feminism (that emotional connection invalidates a movements position) and to continue using language and barriers to maintain existing hierarchies and justifying cruelty and exploitation in any form against any group is at once hypocritical, self defeating and continues to enable those who would act against our chosen causes and the causes of those we should be standing alongside, fighting together with
it is our inability to concede minor defeats that stops us unifying against common enemies - we are confusing the battle with the war and in doing so we divide and they conquer
with every ounce of our energy spent with this infighting we empower those who continue to enforce suffering in our lives and the lives of others
in each of us burns a passion to end this misery, but it must be the suffering of all or, through our inaction, we shall continue to end the suffering of none
(Source: lipsredasroses, via lipsredasroses)
encourages multi-faceted thinking
it is not binary - there is no good or bad,right or wrong
when people consume shite like the x-factor/BGT there is only a good/bad option
and the audience gets to cheer and sneer accordingly
with the occasional guilt placater thrown in to make them feel like good people
‘oh i thought this non-commercially attractive person would be awful but it turns out they actually have a modicum of talent so now i’ll pretend i always liked them and feel better about how vapid my life is’
we are being conditioned all the time to think in these stupid binary terms, in black an white while the world is so grey - because when things are either/or there is nothing to question, the status quo continues because ‘that’s how it is’ - only it’s not at all how it is
there is empowerment in uncertainty, in questions and ultimately in change
a weak belief that does not stand up to challenge
is not made strong by clinging blindly to it
we cannot protect something for the sake of preserving it
hiding a disease will not cure it
and society has many tumours we must work together to remove
art builds communities and strengthens individuals
it must not be allowed to be used as a tool to divide us into artists/people or cultured/not-cultured or pretentious/down-to-earth
we are all humans and our living experience takes us through hundreds of different points of identity, change, growth, experience, output, gender, sexuality, thoughts, beliefs, faiths, ideas, creativity, loves, culture, political alignment…
we must never believe we are static, we must never believe we have binary identities
we are multi-faceted and we are fluid and we have to understand that so is everything else in the world
life and art are not two separate things
an we can no longer let them be treated as such
divided by the walls of the gallery, the concert hall, the university - these are all mausoleums built to pretend there is still life in dead art, swimming pools of formaldehyde to preserve the corpses of material that has ceased to be relevant
now more than ever we must surrender our divisions, learn to cooperate and share, we must learn autonomy and respect, we must learn to concede defeat on certain points and take only the best aspects of ideologies forward to something better - because time is running out for us if we continue to exist in the outer edges of our venn diagrams
i can promise you this - it’s more fun in the middle where people meet
Do not say: that man is not an artist. By setting up such barrier between yourselves and the world, you simply expel yourself from the world. If you thought him no artist, he might think you no human, and that would be a worse reproach. Say rather: he is an artist because he is human. We may do what he does more perfectly and be honoured for it, but what we do is something universal, human, something practised hourly in the busy streets almost as much a part of life as eating and breathing. Bertolt Brecht
