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Newsflash: Indymedia Working "Within the System"

jools | 23.08.2005 14:43 | Analysis | Indymedia | Social Struggles | Oxford | World

So . . . you're a political activist and you think that it's necessary to use the mainstream media to educate people about certain issues. It seems to make sense that you should use these methods to reach people, because otherwise, who will notice you?

Working "Within the System"

If you beat them at their own game, you've lost.

So . . . you're a political activist and you think that it's necessary to use the mainstream media to educate people about certain issues. It seems to make sense that you should use these methods to reach people, because otherwise, who will notice you? Yes, you realize that you're making compromises with the very system you're trying to fight, but it'll be worth it in the end... and we all have to make compromises, don't we? It's worth considering whether we really do after all, just as it's worth questioning whether getting ahead in their system of cutthroat competition and mass-marketing can ever really help us change the world. What would happen if we stopped compromising, stopped playing their game altogether and concentrated all our efforts on creating channels of our own for spreading ideas in new ways?

The Revolution Cannot Be Televised.

Of course they want you on their television show, radio program, rock festival, major label. They don't care whether they're selling mouthwash or anarchist revolution as long as they can keep people watching and buying. They know that sooner or later people are bound to get bored and fed up with the mindless, passionless drivel that they normally have to offer, and they count on you to keep new ideas and styles coming for them to exploit; without that, they'd have nothing new to sell people. They know if they can find ways to sell your own expressions of outrage back to you, to cash in on the very frustration that their system creates, they've got you beat. They know that no message you could spread through their channels could be more powerful than the message that your use of their medium itself sends: stay tuned. No awareness you could possibly raise through internet/television or CDs sold in shopping malls is more important than the awareness of the power of individuals to act for themselves. Television watching and supermarket shopping keep people passive, watching things that they can never take part in and people they can never meet, buying what is marketed to them by corporations rather than making their own music, their own ideas, their own lives. To motivate people to act for themselves, you have to contact them more directly.

The Values of Mass Production.

We're taught to think of our success in terms of numbers, aren't we? If touching one person's life is a good thing, then touching one thousand people's lives must be a great thing. It's easy to see where we learned to think this way: our whole society revolves around mass production. The more units we can move, the more customers we can serve, the more votes we can get, the more money and stuff we have, the better, right?

But maybe it's not possible to touch a thousand people as deeply or as powerfully as one person or ten people. And maybe it's not really so revolutionary after all to have one person or group telling everybody else what's right. Wouldn't it be better to try a decentralized approach where everyone works closely with those around them, instead of a few people leading an anonymous mass? Do you, or your band, or your label have to save the world all by yourselves? Why don't you trust anyone else to do it with you? (And have you noticed how much you have to stomp all over everyone else to get that success you plan to use to spread your message?)

Working Within the System.

Most of us don't get much pleasure out of the things we have to do to work inside the system. We'd rather be reading books on our own than writing assigned papers for school, rather be using our skills, energy, and time to work on projects of our own choice than selling ourselves to employers. But we feel like we have to work for them, whether we like it or not. It never occurs to us how much more fun, and perhaps more effective, it could be to take our labor out of their hands and do something else with it. Sure it would be hard at first, but nothing could be harder than to have to put up with this bullshit for the rest of our lives, right? Better we dedicate ourselves to replacing it than just dealing with it.

Besides, can you trust yourself to work "within the system" for the right reasons? We're all programmed to want "success," to measure ourselves by wealth and social status, whether we like it or not. Could it be that you want to become a journalist or professor of political science or rock star because you can't bring yourself to consider any other options seriously, because you're afraid to try cutting to the safety line that ties you to the security of a mainstream lifestyle? And how can you be sure that it isn't that dark corner of your heart pushing you to seek success, the part that loves the attention and feelings of greatness your popularity and social standing bring? Sure it feels great to be able to tell your parents what your goals are and have them applaud your decisions... but is that any way to decide how to go about changing the world?

Let's listen to our hearts, trust our instincts, and refuse to participate in anything that bores or outrages us. We need to nourish our idealism and our willingness to take risks, not work out new ways to integrate our frustration and our desperation for change back into the society that engendered them.

How do we get out of here?

There's no excuse to let even a fraction of our lives go by doing things we don't love, or to let any of our talents and efforts serve to prop up a world order we oppose. Instead, let's fight so hard, and live so hard, that others inside the cages of mainstream life can see us and are inspired to join us in our complete rejection of the old world and all its bullshit. And let's make our communities something greater than they are; let's make them more open and more capable of offering life-support, so that others really will be able to join us.

The system we live under offers only losers' games: economic competition instead of cooperation, popularity contests in place of community, the struggle to measure up to social norms instead of the pursuit individual dreams. The reason we're working towards something better in the first place is that everyone loses in these games—so why play them? It's up to us to create new games, more joyful, exciting games to replace the old ones. Let's not try to beat them at their games, but make them join us in ours!

jools

Comments

Hide the following 8 comments

food for thought

23.08.2005 15:26

Hay, thanks jools..... Some very good points..... I'm off out, enough of this computer malarky. Run free children run, run, run..

dill


Frustrating

23.08.2005 23:51

I agree, it sounds fantastic. But it's also frustrating, how do you even start about breaking free of the mainstream. If you had a stack load of money so you could spend it all on some land and become self sufficient... What happens when you say have a heart attack or obtain a nasty injury whilst planting your carrots, there are no Indy hospitals to attend (maybe one day tho!) you have to rely on the system to patch you up. There's probably stack loads of laws governing what you do on your land too... so you'd have to conform in that respect... unless you could deal with endless conflict with the state.

We do have our own media network, but that is entirely dependant on the mainstream... who supplies the computers and the world wide web. Look at Schnews, where would they be without corporate software giants Adobe!

When we gather to protest... unless you walk, you'll have used a bike/car/plane/boat made within the mainstream... and no doubt consumed fuel supplied by one of the planets worst enemies.

What if you have diabetes/asthma/aids and your life depends on the system!

Sorry my argument is all over the place, it's way past my bed time...but what can we all do that's really properly outside of the system. Even if you stand outside your door with a placard spelling out the evils of capitalism... the pen you used, the paper and bit of wood will have made it's way through the system somehow.

But, if anyone knows the answer, believe, I'll be there with my own hand forged bell on :)

Milo


working within our own systems

24.08.2005 10:02

I'm planning to go self-sufficient and just wanted to counter some of the objections raised by the person above..

There is no reason that the communities we wish to build should not have places of healing, there are a wide variety of healing practices and knowledges that people can contribute willingly to the community (go to the healing area at any decent festival and you'll see what i mean!!) though it would be unlikely to take the form of a central building in which only expensive, dangerous pharmaceutical therapy is offered.

Diabeties, heart attacks and a whole host of other conditions are largely caused by the way we live at the moment, they are not given aspects of any society. The promotion of (and tendency toward) a healthy, localy scourced, less refined diet and more rewarding, communal physical work (town vegetable plots, crafts, building, dancing!) would likely make a lot of illness unable to grip us... injury and illness that is (inevitably) suffered though is just a fact of life, if dying at 30 is the price of living in a caring community rather than the 72 years of desperate survival offered by this society, i'll take the 30.


Yes you can attribute just about every thing to the machine, and we are all 'in' it to some degree. But everything in this world is interconnected, the 'state' brings an element to my collective, just as we bring an element to it.. i'm not going to scupper my chances of creating a paradisical utopia just because a load of other people (and me to a degree!!) can't seem to stop behaving like mindless ants, but instead focus on what we can acheve with or without the system to bring beauty into the moments that make up our lives....

The examples you mention are being curcumvented... for software check out the open source community, for pens, try making your own if you want, its not too hard, and as for computers and all the other objectes being a result of the rape of our planet... to right! but look around us, we have generated so much shit, i think that given the spread of community based living, cars, offices etc will become obsolete, left to rot... i don't think we'll ever have to mine for metals, make chip-boards or quarry stone again! and to be honest, i don't really have any intention of using a computer that far into our new world... veges grow from mud, fruit a gift from trees, all i need for our new world is a handful of some seeds...xxxx


lots of love.x

btw, the text from the original post and loads of amazing writings like it can be found in the book "days of war, nights of love" by the crimethInc collective... check it out, seriously..it's life changing.

a.


Life is short and sweet

24.08.2005 12:34

Hey thanks guys for your great comments.
Two years ago I would have been shot down in flames for posting this stuff.
Perhaps the times really are changing!!!

You can probably handle this too......

 http://www.humanunderground.com/unibomber.html

jools


nice stuff

25.08.2005 10:27

hey mate,

i'm familiar with the manifesto, and his other works... not above criticism, but excellent none the less...

good to know there are agents out there.

good luck with whatever your doing and love from the south-downs tribe.xxx

~See you on the front page of the last newspaper those motherfuckers ever print~

a.


Reclaim the system !

26.08.2005 09:01


I would agree with the original poster when he criticises the system of rating and competetion, that pits us against one another, ever looking for more and better - "more" and "better" only defined by the fact that others have "less" and "worse"

Further posters, however, seem to mistake that system for the whole of our society. Of course it sounds like it's the predominant system, because it shouts louder. But if you stop listening to it, and look around you a bit, things are different. People help each other on a daily basis ; there are comunity projects springing everywhere ; people are struggling all the time to protect their comunties (there's a lot more out there than what makes it on indymedia!).

Why should we go away, and rebuild all those things that are ours ? We need to change the way hospitals are run, not give them up !

The idea of going away with your friends rebuilding your own world is proof of an elitist mentality - if there was enough of us, we could indeed change our things are run here. By assuming we need to go away, you are thinking of a small group of "enlightened" people who know better ! Please go, this type of alternative comunities have their uses. But I'll stay. Because nobody likes to slave around for a miserable wage. Because nobody likes to see schools and hospitals managed by greedy corporations. Because I think we can make a different world here, where we live, with the people that live in it.

eee ;)

eee ;)


re: Reclaim the system !

01.09.2005 14:42

I think you have some valid points and some nieve.

To reclaim the system which is bloated, centralised, hugely inefficient and dependant on energies and technologies that are going to run out soon would be foolish in the extreem.

This kind of don't throw anything away mentality will end with you in a house so full of crap you can't move and have to shit in a bucket in the living room.

Out with the old, in with the new.

Or out with the new in with the old?

If your too old and knackered to be useful kill yourself. Leave. What are you scared of? Missing something?

Remember, Morality is only temporary but Wisdom is permanent.

jah