Standing between Marx, Bakunin, and Camus

Existential angst is a feeling of dread or anxiety related to the belief that life has no meaning other than what people choose. The anxiety develops the instant that an individual question if their life has significance, principles, or value.

But, the meaning of life is in living life in spite of the consequences.

Class society is founded on parasites that run everything. The rest of us come to terms with that. Many grovel for crumbs by selling out their communities. The fearful will protect their children by closing their eyes to the horrors of exploitation and oppression. The principled army of opposition chips away at the walls of this prison and then fights a pitched battle to save our meager gains.  The isolated rebel makes signs out of cardboard and stands alongside the freeway entrance receiving friendly nods, but not much else.

 

Resistance is an art form and a lifestyle.  Each day of rebellion keeps the dream of liberation alive. Compassion, sociological imagination, historical inspiration, cross-cultural creativeness and a commitment to humanity and the planet becomes our genre.  It is still not too late. As our numbers increase the future can be rewritten.

 

From Marx we derive a method of understanding through empirical and careful study of the world we are born into, from Bakunin we learn never surrender to an authority divine or temporal, but to embrace our humanity in the community of humans. Camus considers the leap of faith as "philosophical suicide," rejecting both this and physical suicide. All three embrace the world in resistance to anything that diminishes our full humanity and celebration of life. Nihilism is only a transition to the life of a rebel; life is a celebration to be indulged in not a burden to be endured. To choose not to kill oneself is to accept life.

 

Marx, Bakunin, and Camus would be my Trinity, but if I move beyond that and embrace the four directions, I would add Epicurus with the celebration of life with the pursuit of happiness in the company of family and friends.

 

Postscript:

If we lose the next election the left still will define the debate for the next ten years.

As a lifelong activist, one thing I learned there is power in numbers. A single snowflake may be fragile, but a snowstorm is a powerful force of nature. In my early childhood I was a victim of some pretty intense bullying, both by other children and adults. In my High School years, I realized that bullies traveled in packs. As a single individual you did not stand a chance against a gang. If the bullied formed their own gang, we had such numbers that all bullying stopped. That is what happened. I soon learned that bullying was a historical and institutional problem with victims being the victims of past history. Sometimes even absurd, for example in the early 1960’s homosexuality had little to do with sexual orientation as were women who used their minds, men not good in sports. Other victims included native peoples, Asians, African Americans, people with a different sexual orientation and just about everyone not fitting the narrowly defined rolls passed down to us. Black Lives Matter because of a very long history of slavery, lynching, segregation, police violence, and currently established institutions that have never really addressed that history. LGBTQ+ just because of no really rational reason. Women because so many men and even other women do not know how to act appropriately around women. Indigenous peoples everywhere because our proud settler states were founded on stolen lands.

We are part of history that is built on past social movements that is fully embracing the future. The green new deal and climate change, universal health care, both a guaranteed income and a living wage, universal housing guaranteed, doing right by indigenous people, people of color, women, LGBTQ+, special needs people, and especially Black Lives Matter.