This is the first time in your long life that you have ever Ever had the privilege of living without punishment, without a sense of descepline hung over your bowed head.

The twisted moral of the story is this.

Discipline is Oppression, and
Self-discipline is for suckers, saps, and rubes.

II.

I believe every word of that and it requires no faith to do so.

I’m living it every day, so all I need is to believe my own eyes and heart.

However … according to the same sources of evidence, not all is well in the new world of anarchic bestial freedom. (God something in me is loving this telling of truth–this is what spilling is for really.)

First of all, this society isn’t the kind to go rainbow chasing after something as ridiculous as real freedom, in the form, let’s say, of a Universal Basic Income. That would have to be carved out of the hides of the super-rich. Jeff Bezos would have to tighten his belt and actually pay taxes instead of underpaying workers. Unacceptable! Murika is a very long way from Utopia, or even from a healthy Scandinavian paradise with health care and a robust social safety net.

Many many people have drunk the Kool-Aid which says that a job is necessary. It’s not. Work might be–I’ll even say yes it is–but conflating that with Employment is a mistake.

So this unique situation of socially distanced freedom has a vague but ever-nearer expiration date. Absolute zero income from any source is not sustainable, even if my time on the earth should be unexpectedly and tragically curtailed.

I don’t want to put myself back under the thumb of some bossman’s expectations. I might do it briefly, but with the self-insured guarantee that I’ll be the kind of problem child that is always seeking to avoid all the thumbs, external and more problematically internal. In any case, short-term exigencies aside, Job isn’t sustainable.

So if Work is the cure for Jobs …

What is the cure for (self)discipline, castigation, punishment, chastisement, correction, subjugation and the unspared Rod (regardless of who is bringing it crashing down on your ass, including yourself)?

There’s not a lot of good to be had in the thesaurus, but I’m going to say that the best alternative is:

Self-governing.

Because viewed from a certain angle, it’s completely compatible with anarchist idealism.

Maybe in order to live without rulers, it is necessary to rule oneself.

Living bestially is boring anyway …

… Out past the point where all the porn starts to look the same … past the point when the yard is cleaner than it has ever been in recorded history … when every indulgence shades into overindulgent ennui … the soul longs for something better.

The secondary meaning of ‘discipline’ is born in academia. It means a field of study. What’s your major? taken far enough down the graduate path, becomes What is your discipline?

Or with our changes here: How do you govern, internally?

Just as ‘discipline’ in the common punishment sense is gross and leads nowhere … so too is the ‘what’s your discipline’ question only good for pigeon-holing and for job-keeping. “I’m a biologist geologist industrialist or even journalist”, means essentially nothing beyond the tepid confines of a job description.

Anyone worth listening to at length is at the very least Trans-Disciplinary.

The brightest and most creative found their own fields of study.

I don’t serve civilization or its pre-fab disciplines.

I’m not saying that I’m making up something totally new in a vacuum. Naturally I will stand on the shoulders of mad giants like HST, and trogs like Bukowski.

I reject and stave off punishing even when it tries to happen from inside me.

But I take off my armor and receive thought gifts when it’s safe sane and consensual. I celebrate my spiritual ancestors, even as I seek a unique form of self-governing in a context without rulers.

A long time ago I wrote a document on “Shared Governance” for an institution I jobbed at.

The very concept was a lie. There is no sharing when it comes to institutions and jobs and governing. In a democracy we have a vote, but holding a one-in-several-million proxy over two shitty choices and two hopeless ones is a parlor game at best. If the true spirit of sharing ever threatens the system, the choice that offers it will be ratfucked; alas poor Bernie.

The only politics that really matter are how you govern yourself and success, if it flows, will flow from that.