it's the churches and mosques that are going to end up being the problem and that are going to need to get shut down by force, not the concerts and bars.

we're stupid.

it's that simple.

what they're doing is scapegoating young people, with irreligious lifestyles. it's bizarre.

it's like something they'd do in iran. 

it's like public shaming. 

i've got my hands full. i hope that a few bars around town stay open in protest, and i hope there are civil rights groups pushing back on the fines.

if i had a bar, i'd stay open, get fined and take the government to court over it.

if they were logical, the very first thing they would have done was put a total ban on all religious gatherings, period. that's where this is living.

but, they shut down the bars, full of healthy young people, instead.

because they're stupid.

'cause you know where all the lonely people (where do they all come from?) are going right now, don't you?

i shouldn't complain. good riddance to them. maybe this is the final nail in the coffin of the church, so to speak.

enjoy your diseased wafers; your magic water won't save you.

they should shut down every church, chapel, mosque, temple and synagogue in the country under the threat of heavy fines, until further notice.

listen, i can make you a promise.

i've got 90% of a 26er of vodka in my cupboard, and i won't touch until the bars open. i won't smoke, either.

you can be pretty sure i'll be pretty straight edge for as long as this goes on, because i hate being fucked up alone, and i only really enjoy marijuana in the presence of live music. if i get back to work soon, i'll be recording, and i am pristinely sober, then.

but, i really don't want to miss a 4/20 weekend that includes squarepusher and rachmaninov. that was fucking amazing.

again: if they wanted to cancel something, they should have canceled religious services. that's what happened in south korea, it was a church at the centre of the outbreak. that would have actually made sense...

but, we live in a supremely backwards culture that blames alcohol (a mild disinfectant) and provides exceptions for organized religion (the root of the problem).

we are, collectively, incredibly stupid.

and, we're about to pay for it....

yeah, i'm pissed off.

there's no logic underlying this, at all.

it's just panic-stricken, hysterical backwardsness.

welcome to the fucking third world, guys. it's here.

sorry. i meant to say...

let's just hope they fucking die fast so we can get on with this.

you have to have faith in something, right?

shutting down bars will have no effect.

let's just they fucking die fast so we can get on with this.

bernie sanders is often incoherent, as he will argue for an expansion of human rights and against "rugged individualism" in the same sentence, which makes absolutely no sense, and i've long deduced that he hasn't read much of this stuff, directly, but instead relies on colloquialisms and common sense fallacies to frame most of his arguments.

people tend to shrug it off because they haven't read any of it, either.

people that move too far towards collectivism, and reject the individual outright, are not anarchists (who seek a synthesis between individualism and collectivism via dialectical reasoning), but are rather called fascists - and include stalinists and nazis. they draw mostly from hobbes, ultimately. mussolini called himself a corporatist, and these words - corporatism, fascism, collectivism - are really all the same thing.

it's the exact thing you want to be very careful about, on the left; when you hear them start ranting against the individual, that's a red flag to step back and realize they aren't socialists, they're fascists. it's the exact thing you want to avoid; it's exactly when you know this is bad news.

the types of socialism that you want to associate with will not do that, but will insist on the concept of human rights, even as they reshape the discourse to include things like shelter and reject things like property. human rights are the pinnacle of liberal individualism.

marx followed bentham, a tory, in his rejection of human rights as "anarchistic". proudhon, bakunin and kropotkin did not. and, that is itself a key difference in their approaches to socialism.

marx was a liberal. that's how he self-identified. he was into rugged individualism as much as any other liberal. and, so was kropotkin.

but, these people didn't think in terms of contrasting individualism with collectivism, or in terms of opposites clashing against each other, at all. these people were hegelians, and they insisted on dialectics as the means of resolving contradictions in thought.

so, to talk of individualism as being in opposition to collectivism is language that would be very weird to any early socialist, including kropotkin. they would have all wanted to speak of a synthesis between individualism and collectivism, and find ways to resolve the contradictions through an application of dialectical thinking - following hegel, but stemming from aristotle.

the idea that you can line these ideas up in contrast with each other is really uniquely american, and comes right out of the cold war. it's vulgar. really.

actual leftists do not talk like this - they don't line up collectivism v individualism or socialism v capitalism or masculine v feminism or anything else like this but rather try to find ways to unite the ideas into holistic concepts that eliminate the conflict within them.

that insistence on dialectical thought is really the foundational point of socialism as a philosophical system - as mentioned, coming directly from hegel.

the closest thing to mutualism in the context presented is actually a labour contract. it's crude, because you're ramming the square peg of mutualism into the round hole of capitalism and coming up with a busted mess, but it's true.

it's broadly difficult to speak about mutual aid in the context of a capitalist society because it really provides very few opportunities for it. when people are in the position for a reciprocal exchange, it's almost always framed in the context of a market interaction; when people require aid, it's almost always charity.

as is so often the case, the difficulty is really rooted in the existence of property. mutual aid is usually spoken of in the context of societies that existed before property was invented (where everything was shared, collectively), or in the context of a future system where property no longer exists.

trying to just do mutual aid in the middle of all of these capitalist relations around us is rarely going to make any sense, for these reasons - you're going to end up doing charity work and/or are just going to end up taken advantage of.

the issue with service workers sharing wages in an economic slowdown works precisely because it breaks the market relation. all of a sudden, there's no labour and, for the proletariat, that means that the rules of capitalism are temporarily lifted.

but, helping wealthy old people walk their dogs or delivering them food for free doesn't fall into that paradigm. it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. but, you should avoid abusing the language, please.

the idea being expressed in that article is closer to the idea that young people should honour their elders by paying tribute to them than it is to a concept of mutual aid, which is historically closer to a type of conservative value system.

mutual aid is an anarchist term developed by kropotkin.

the scientific term, in english, is reciprocal altruism and came about a bit later, but does have origins in kropotkin's work.

i'm being lazy in sourcing from wiki, but this is fine for an easy concept like this:

In evolutionary biology, reciprocal altruism is a behaviour whereby an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism's fitness, with the expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time. The concept was initially developed by Robert Trivers to explain the evolution of cooperation as instances of mutually altruistic acts. The concept is close to the strategy of "tit for tat" used in game theory.

the reciprocity is key. if there is no expectation of altruism in return, it is not mutual aid, it is christian do-gooding.

and, what is the expectation that these people will receive something in return? there is not one. they're donating their time, in a market economy - and one in which labour is scarce. this is an affront against the working class!

if people are going to do these kinds of behaviours for strangers in a market system, they should expect a pay check for it. it is labour. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_altruism

examples of mutual aid would include service workers pooling resources (money. shelter. labour.) to help each other get through the lack of work, or recovered patients donating resources back into the system to help the next wave of sick people.

and, there's a concept of mutualism attached to helping your parents or grandparents or other relatives, who raised you and fed you as children. 

but, "random acts of kindness" are not mutual aid and should not be confused for it. that's an abuse of the language that needs to be corrected immediately. anarchism will collapse under any kind of kantian system of ethics; it's not sustainable. and, i'd argue it isn't desirable, either.

this is one of the differences between christianity and socialism.

this isn't actually mutual aid, it's more like charity work. mutual aid is a type of reciprocity, and the people being helped here don't really have anything to offer.

as with any kind of charity, it also runs the risk of developing dependence. are you going to keep walking the dog when this is over?

anarchists should actually argue that many of these activities should really be treated as labour and associated with some kind of compensation, especially in a scenario where work is likely to be scarce for a while. mutual aid is not equivalent to free labour for the bourgeoisie.

so, don't confuse misguided christian do-gooding with socialism or anarchism. this is a co-option of the language that does not align with the theory and should be opposed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/14/coronavirus-campaign-launched-offering-help-to-those-self-isolating