POEM: Chains of Command

A juggernaut of freedom
He proudly served
As the weakest link
In the chain of command
And above

Due no harm

This poem juxtaposes the contrasting notions of freedom achieved through tight, even militaristic, ventures versus embodying freedom through default and decentralized decision-making.  This is a command and model versus fostering non-hierarchical and autonomous action.  Free Range Human Being - POLITICAL BUTTONMy is that directly practicing freedom and modeling this for others is the best means for manifesting increasing freedom.  Most succinctly put, this is a matter of means and ends — or rather a madder of means and end for the militarist or fundamentalist.  Subcontracting out freedom by wholesale consenting to others' directives strikes me as a fundamental bastardization of freedom, particularly in large militaristic bureaucracies dedicated to the end of freedom — through ever-escalating means.  This is part and parcel to anarchist practice and .   Anarchists value direct, unmediated as both a way to live and learn, in contrast to imputing (via , and ultimately ) into human organizations or other social arrangements.   is best experienced and served through smaller-scale, personal , where the creative expressions of voluntary association and the personally uplifting experiences of mutual aid flourish.  The most common way people give up power is by thinking they don't have any -- Alice Walker quote POLITICAL BUTTONThe title of this poem, “Chains of command,”  is a pun — a double — directly linking the shackling of freedom to systems of command and .  Anarchists are renown for their issues with .  Less well appreciated is their fundamental critique of large, ventures which are viewed as the primary threat to our individual and collective .  Anarchists seek to live on what is considered a human scale, which is necessarily smaller-scale — you can only relate personally to a finite number of people — and decentralized in that your set of is an organic, even alive, entity that is guided by free association and mutual aid.  While anarchists are often portrayed as dangerous (perhaps to many forms of social order) and cavalier (perhaps revealing how foreboding freedom can be), there is a certain built into the anarchist worldview; there is a profound lack of ambition to others (and be controlled) through the bulk of social arrangements in modern, so-called civilization.  The necessary for is for me the best example.  Now, the brand of anarchist practice that I would ascribe to might be referred to as green anarchism, where is not understood to be an integral and necessary part of being human.  So-called black anarchists might view the inherent in the social order as necessitating violent responses.  My view of freedom does not consider violence as necessary to being human, though the choice to be subject to violence as opposed to inflicting it remains a difficult and necessarily challenging one.  Clearly the current world order considers violence as merely the order of the day, a necessity, outside the realm of free choice. The last lines of the poem are a tribute to a pacifist green anarchism, and the deep it engenders: And above//Due no harm.  Of course, this is a take on the Hippocratic Oath: Above all, do no harm.  Plus, the “Due no harm” alludes to the vision of a world where the cycles of violence are broken and there is no longer the cruel divide of victim and perpetrator.  To go full circle, we must cast off the chains of command.  May you find the freedom and to pay the cost of boldly adding your human to the mix of where and misunderstandings and inertial stand in the way of our individual and collective humanity.

Click here for more anarchist slogans and designs.

This entry was posted in About Top Pun, Anti-War, Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply