Comments on: A Pirate’s Life for Me II: Opening the Map

By: Howard

Howard — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:08:40 +0000

I just read this article twise.
Thanks for it.

Cheers

By: The Anthropik Network » Living in Collapse

The Anthropik Network » Living in Collapse — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:41:49 +0000

[…] won’t disappear overnight, though it might feel like it had. By 2015, the trend of “the opening of the map” (basically “the closure of the map” run in reverse) should become increasingly […]

By: WildeRix

WildeRix — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 13:19:21 +0000

Syncretism from Serenity…

We have done a lot of talking over at the REWILD.info forums lately on syncretism.
syncretism: the reconciliation or fusion of differing systems of belief, as in philosophy or religion, especially when success is partial or the result is heterogeneous….

By: nagnagnag

nagnagnag — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:40:08 +0000

I really enjoy how this article turns the movie’s “the-fun’s-over”-narrative up and down! As a kid, i always got frustrated and discouraged with all this fiction litterature that ends with an implication/explanation of there being no alternative to status quo; the pirates all gone/no-one believes in fairys anymore/it was all a dream/the end of the magical world/the kids grew up etc etc. I always got the feeling (if not in these words) that it was evil propaganda made to ruin my life… ‘Suppose it’s those same old agri-cultural lost-golden-age-memes playing out, but i think they might also have a apathy-inducing social function, that the powers that be probably take advantage of. Gotta give people their escapism, but gotta make sure they don’t see escape as a realistic alternative…

By: raku

raku — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 15:14:49 +0000

Unbelievable! Jason, do you realize that you might have just credibly proven the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s claim that a decrease in pirates is directly related to global warming?

By: locke

locke — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 01:48:57 +0000

Here’s an interesting article. I don’t have much to add to it, but I’m writing some filler so I don’t trip the spam trap that everyone’s been so vocal about lately.

By: The College of Mythic Cartography » Blog Archive » Cartographic Violence

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 08:09:05 +0000

[…] Check out an intriguing essay on a primary act of imperial (and therefore civilized) violence, that of closing the map, and the quest of the colonized to reclaim their native geography and cultural imagination. An excerpt: If there is anything that radically distinguishes the imagination of anti-imperialism, it is the geographical element. Imperialism after all is an act of geographical violence through which virtually every space in the world is explored, charted, and finally brought under control. For the native, the history of colonial servitude is inaugurated by the loss of locality to the outsider; its geographical identity must thereafter be searched for and somehow restored. Because of the presence of the colonizing outsider, the land is recoverable at first only through imagination. […]

By: Jason Godesky

Jason Godesky — Thu, 31 May 2007 18:53:18 +0000

Mmm hmmm … point being? Yes, Peter Lamborn Wilson is a creepy pedophile scumbag. And Hitler occasionally said “Good morning” before noon, and a broken clock is right twice a day. Nobody ever said he was a moral exemplar, just that he had some good ideas in the TAZ. That he wanted a TAZ to get it on with little kids is something I find pretty disgusting, but it doesn’t change the fact that a lot of what he wrote in the TAZ was a good idea. Ted Kaczinski was a murdering madman, but he wrote some good things, too. This is why argument ad hominem is a logical fallacy.

By: Techno-Lardass

Techno-Lardass — Thu, 31 May 2007 18:45:03 +0000

with all these fabulous quotes from Hakim Bey, i figured one of them was definitely going to be one of his poems from the NAMBLA bulletin:

barelegged on his bicycle in the park he rides beneath
a children’s fountain droplets catch his hair which
the afternoon makes somewhat bronze, beaded with molten dew
–the sunset over Jersey like an industrial krakatoa:
Newark Gold, Secaucus Red, East Orange.
The button on his blazer: Anarchist Bicyclists
he’s in the bathtub, I see
him through a crack in the door playing with himself, he calls me in, shows me
underwater push-ups and sit-ups, except for his gallic buttocks his skin is gilt as the air over the Hudson. The touch of his wet, bath-wrinkled fingers in my hand… but then…
one of his parents clumps down the hall… I suppose to make sure neither of us is raping the other…
[chorus of groans] Ohhh! for a
Buster-Keaton-bomb all spherical & black as coaldust with sweet sparkling with sweet sparkling fuse a mindbomb to
Drop on the Idea of the Family! O for a libertarian isle of runaways! O goodnight
Moon, I am lost, actually lost without him
But I didn’t want this to be
Just another poem about hopeless love. Pretend it’s a manifesto instead. Down with School! Boy Rule OK! In the land of dreams
No governance exists
But that of anarchs and kings, for dreamers have not yet learned to vote or think past the unfurling of the moment. He touches my cheek, runs delicate fingers through the hairs on my arm.
My liege shatters all Law for a triple kiss.
–Hakim Bey

By: Answering the Archdruid (The Anthropik Network)

Answering the Archdruid (The Anthropik Network) — Wed, 30 May 2007 19:50:54 +0000

[…] Greer’s original post contained some excellent observations about defining trends of what Greer calls “deindustrialization,” and I took the opportunity in the comments to offer another trend, what we’ve previously discussed here as “opening the map.” The response was, well, a little more personal than I expected: As for the rest, well, of course from my perspective you’re stuck in an apocalyptic version of the trap Toynbee calls “archaism”—the dream of returning to an allegedly golden age in the distant past. As he documents, it’s a common fantasy among urban intellectuals during ages of decline. Since the mixed urban-rural economy (what you label “civilization”) has proven resilient over multimillennial time spans in the right ecosystems, and plenty of people are already working hard on the transition back to sustainable forms of it, I see no reason to think it’s going to up and die any time soon. […]