Greetings

Difficulty     Welcome to Ambiarchy, formerly the Evolution of Consent, a blog by William Schnack. Here you will learn about ambiarchy, formerly geo-mutualist panarchism, and ambitheism, formerly dualist pantheism. These are developments from historical mutualism and pantheism, as covered in paleomutualism. The historical background of pantheism and mutualism play a significant role in ambitheism and ambiarchy. These are my contemporary philosophies carrying on the traditions of mutualism and pantheism in my own way, with contemporary insights added. Together, Ambiarchy and Ambitheism compose a comprehensive worldview that has application in the real world. If you have any questions or would like to talk, visit the forum! I’d be happy to answer questions, to chat, or even to make new friends.   (more…)
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Elements of My Utopia

Difficulty     I’m going to do something against the ordinary and describe the particularist elements of my own personal utopia, as they would be chosen according to taste. My own utopia, constructed to my particular tastes, would be placed in a nearly subtropical, temperate rangeland consisting of natural meadows and woods, perhaps along the coast so as to maintain a more stable subclimate. A network of villages would form a highly-wooded and intermittently-pastured city, planned according to Nature’s design principles, as per permaculture design and efforts such as fabric-formed concrete. Architecture and infrastructure would make use of natural principles for design and construction, and would tastefully range from being hidden into the landscape, being rustic, and being modern in the sense of simplicity and geometry. Transportation would consist of a natural pool style “lazy river” that is tended against snakes and pests by sponsored carnivores (such as owls, hawks, cats, (more…)
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Cognition, Conscience, and Consciousness Briefly Delineated

Difficulty     Cognition is input of facts or data into the mind by the brain, and conscience is the output of values or mores into the brain by the mind, while consciousness itself is pure awareness. That is, consciousness only perceives the throughput of both cognition and conscience. Cognition inputs facts of entropy and outer phenomena, while conscience outputs demands of syntropy and inner noumena. By this view, consciousness is the Big Self, the I AM, which merely witnesses the other two, and which is immortal and non-dual, being Nature herself, peering through each of us. Cognition is a source of determinism, while conscience is a source of freedom and of will. However, cognition is observational and inductive, while conscience is contemplative and deductive. While cognition processes data from outside, conscience contemplates data from inside of cognition, making value judgments for appropriate action to be taken by the motor system. (more…)
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How the System Works

Difficulty     The way the postmodern system currently works is through manipulation toward pessimism. At few factors are at play. Economically, money accomplishes things by moving labor. Psychologically, people form their opinions based on associations: for instance, if pleasure is experienced alongside an event, the event will be desired again in the future, and similarly if it is displeasurable it will be avoided. Behaviorally, people are biased toward the familiar, typically ruling in favor of the status quo. Financially, economics can be used to establish psychological associations that manipulate behavior. For example, capitalists, landlords, and bosses, who have unearned income in the forms of interest, rent, and profit, as well as religious authorities and politicians, who have control of compulsory tithes and taxes, can use their surplus income, at a loss but without a cost (cost is effort, unearned income has no cost to the holder) to create artificial psychological (more…)
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Positive, Negative, and Equal Liberties and Rights

Difficulty     When I speak of rights, I am generally speaking of recognized liberties. Liberties are natural freedoms, whereas rights are protected freedoms.[1] Our liberties are unrestrained, excepting for our endowments and environments. That is, our liberties are our capacities. We are free, in a state of raw nature, to do whatever we may accomplish with our bodies and our surroundings. Our capacities, then, appear twofold in a sense. We can act and can be acted upon. And so we do have positive and negative capacities. But can these two, mutually-defining acts exist in an isolated state from one another due to eradication of the other? I reckon that this is unlikely, much as a negative and positive pole or charge in magnetism requires its opposite to exist somewhere. Consider a farmer on his homestead. In a state of isolation, he has socially unlimited capacities. He can act and is (more…)
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Henocracy, Henarchy, and Their Relation to Ambiarchy

Difficulty     The early mode of ambiarchy, where the ruling class is being subjugated by the abiding class, is called henarchy, referring to the process of making, from many, one class. Upon the expiration of the abiding class altogether, henarchy gives way to anarchy. The same does not follow with henocracy, which exists as the legislative corollary to henocentric jurisprudence. Henocracy, a permanent feature of ambiarchy, refers to the federal panarchistic relationship between the whole and its parts, particularly as it regards the Legislative Branch. This federalistic relationship, like the henarchy, is a process of making from many, one. The henarchic henocracy is expected to be in full control of the directly-technocratic anarchist republic that is ambiarchy. (more…)
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A Directly-Technocratic Constitutional Anarchist Republic

Difficulty     Constitutionalism Constitutionalism refers to the practice of establishing and upholding constitutions, covenants or treaties instituting an association of component parts and their means of governance. Very ancient in origin, in the Anglo-American world its roots are generally traced to the establishment of Magna Carta, wherein lower barons put governing limitations on the King and his men, thereby establishing the beginnings of a constitutional monarchy, something that would culminate in the English Civil War and other conflicts such as the American Revolution, which transitioned instead to a constitutional republic. Constitutionalism is, today, in the United States anyway, especially associated with efforts to maintain the established, conservative values arising from out of Enlightenment liberalism against the encroachments of illiberal philosophies such as Marxism, fascism, and progressivism. Appeals to the Constitution are often made, in particular to the Bill of Rights, which outline fundamental rights and protected liberties that are not (more…)
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Henosyndicalism

Difficulty     Race and Specie We are used to thinking of species in terms of inherited genetic relation stemming from common ancestors. However, this is an incorrect assessment of species. Species are also thought to be unable to procreate outside of their own groups, at least while having viable offspring. But while interspecific procreation is more difficult, and this difficulty certainly characterizes what a specie is, the idea that species cannot interbreed has long been dispelled. Ligers, for instance, have been shown to be capable of backcrossing, and there has also been much hybridization in our own specie, with a large proportion of our genetic inheritance having come from backcrossing with Homo erectus, Neanderthal, Denisovan, and certain “ghost species.” So while species may be characterized by their difficulty interbreeding with others, and while this generally does imply traits inherited from a common source, this is not always the case. Instead, (more…)
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Henofidelity

Difficulty     Kerista was a utopian community or macrofamilial experiment that was spearheaded by John Presmont. Presmont claimed to have experienced an auditory hallucination telling him to create the community, though otherwise attributes his motives to simply having always desired to have sex with a larger number of beautiful women and his design toward this end.[1] Keristans practiced what would come to be known as polyfidelity, or “group marriage.” As with any marriage, fidelity implied exclusivity and loyalty to the “family,” but the family was composed of Presmont and the younger men and women he convinced to take part in his familial experiment. As Presmont saw things, it truly was meant to be a familial experience, with family bonding and a wholesome, jealousy-free atmosphere. Jealousy was to be hampered by a rotating schedule that paired couples of the opposite sex for each night without any preferentiality. The larger group was (more…)
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New Tabor Now Available!

Difficulty     New Tabor is something a little bit different from my usual efforts. Usually I shy away from fiction, but, in this case, I have created a Realist boardgame for the purpose of not only having a good time, but for learning about mutualism! Subtitled The Game of Physical Economy, my creation New Tabor is an economic simulator that places you in the middle of a mutualist economy that you generate from out of your own bare labor applied to the land. Central to the game are geo-mutualist mechanisms of economy, such as a self-appraised land value “tax” and full-reserve mutual credit. Players are ultimately trying to live the Good Life by attaining happiness, but find that in order to achieve this they must first consider their own and the other players’ material needs, producing and exchanging as necessary to meet them. It could just have easily been called (more…)
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The Book of Mutualism now available

Difficulty     The Book of Mutualism is my most recent and probably most important work thus far. Similar to the themes in my essays from The Evolution of Consent, which tended to go from big to small picture or vice versa, The Book of Mutualism considers matters of cosmology before zooming into matters of present day human affairs. But this time, it’s all together into one cohesive unit. Subtitled A Natural, Moral History with Philosophical Interjections and Appendices, what has become The Book of Mutualism is something of a “Big History,” a history that is nestled within the context of the Universe and replete with the meaning and purpose that comes along with that. It is a worthwhile, comprehensive synthesis of a vast array of non-fiction knowledge, including that from religion, philosophy, and science, placed into a historical format. Postmodernists tremble at this Grand Narrative, and fake anarchists shutter at (more…)
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Syntropy Responsible for the Growing Earth and Convergent Evolution

Difficulty     Since the era of the World Wars in the early 20th century, it has become increasingly evident that science, as practiced, has become adulterated by politics. This is so much the case that the study of the causes of this adulteration has become a particular focus in the sociology of science, which studies science as is performed by living humans with their own goals and motivations, and in elite theory more generally, which explores the behaviors and strategies of the politically impactful, as well as in the history of the philosophy of science, which explores the march of scientific progress as it actually occurred, including its missteps, even when unintentionally so. While politics certainly influenced scientific progress even before the World Wars era, it was during this time that the postmodern paradigm, characterized by a certain kind of pessimism and an apparent appreciation of the absurd and the (more…)
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Neurodesirability

Difficulty     There is a tendency in postmodern society to excuse every perversion and absurdity, often predicated on the derailing idea that a particular category may be made for the divergent, for which they deserve absolution. Homosexuality, beastiality, pedophilia, fetishism, and etc. have become pets of the postmoderns, to be defended against any and all criticism. Postmodernism is waging a war against evolution. Much of the postmodern paradigm is predicated on cultural Marxist approaches to psychology and especially psychoanalysis, which has bled into some interest in neuroscience. As such, those of various sexual deviancies as well as those who have social or interpersonal deviancies, such as by being autistic, dyslexic, synesthetic, psychopathic, narcissistic, or so on, have often been given the excuse of neurodivergence, a category meaning “different from others” but that effectively amounts to “protected species.” Those who are considered to be neurodivergent are beyond reproach by the neurotypical, (more…)
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Social Darwinism, Mutualism, and Postmodernism

Difficulty     The Evolutionary Sociology of Herbert Spencer As human beings are animals, we are bound by the same fundamental laws of biology as the rest of the animal kingdom. The biological world, of which we are a part, is composed of ecological systems, combinations of biological organisms and communities of those organisms that find themselves always within a dynamic equilibrium, or else quickly shifting toward one. This dynamic equilibrium is maintained by forces of natural selection that occur within conditions of relative stasis (as described by Charles Darwin) or rapid punctuation (as described by Stephen Jay Gould). Because human beings are biological entities, and because our societies are emerging superorganisms, it is necessary to consider our lives within the framework of natural selection. Doing so, as was done by Herbert Spencer, is historically labeled social Darwinism, but has taken more contemporary form in ecological-evolutionary theory, as expressed by Gerhard (more…)
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Creedal Foundations of Mutualism

Difficulty     Mutualism was the first well-organized industrial workers’ movement. And it grew largely from heresies prominent in the minds of, and material conditions faced by, radical textile workers. There had been significant and well-organized peasant uprisings in the Middle Ages. John Ball, a heretical preacher, had inspired the English Peasants’ Revolt, led by Wat Tyler. Under the leadership of Jan Zizka— considered by some the best military leader of all time— the Taborites fought off military orders with well-armored knights, from wooden wagons from which they made some of the first military use of gunpowder. The German Peasants’ War was a countrywide conflict led by heretical, anti-feudal clergymen such as Thomas Muntzer. Peasant uprisings were quite common, and mutualism comes from that heritage. But these were not organized, industrial worker rebellions. Some may have been organized—such as the Stedinger in their peasant republic— but they were not organized by (more…)
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Paleofeminism: A Remodernist Defense of the Original

Difficulty     I think that what is empowering about anarcho-feminism, particularly in someone like Emma Goldman, is that there is the idea that women’s freedom fundamentally does not depend on any changes in behavior from men (though it may be offensive), so much as upon the self-development of women. This is typical of the radical strains of modernist and Enlightenment-era feminism, such as Mary Wollstonecraft—the mother of modern feminism— and the women in the French and American revolutions, who stressed women’s capacity to reason equally with men, and who focused on education as the best means of women’s emancipation. Emma Goldman wrote works such as “Woman Suffrage,” in which she opposed suffrage for women on anarchist and feminist grounds. She argued that woman needed instead to focus on becoming equal with man as by abolishing her own self-imbued and socially-conditioned ignorance and superstitions. Her argument mirrors those of black abolitionists (more…)
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Decolonization and Anti-Imperialism vs. Socialism

Difficulty     Decolonization/anti-imperialism and socialism both relate to the struggles of conquered peoples. Both the colonized/imperialized and wage slaves represent the results of conflicts over cultural dominance (over people and geographic advantages). Victors in these conflicts may become colonizers/imperialists and capitalists.  Colonized people are those who have had their culture challenged by colonies of a more powerful culture– the colonists– that imposes its own ways on them. Often they live in communities of their own, under the authority of the colonizing force. Imperialized people have become politically controlled by the colonizing culture, the empire. These are systems of colonialism and imperialism.  Working class people are those who, while considered a part of the dominant culture, are not full beneficiaries of that culture’s privileges. They don’t own much property or have much economic or political say. Their productive life is controlled by capitalists, in the system of capitalism.  These situations– colonialism/imperialism (more…)
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Enlightenment, Counter-Enlightenment: Modernism, Postmodernism

Difficulty     Part 1 – Enlightenment, Counter-Enlightenment In the late 20th century and early 21st century, historians such as Margaret C. Jacob and Jonathan Israel, following scholars such as Isaiah Berlin who uncovered a Counter-Enlightenment, dissected the Enlightenment into Radical Enlightenment and Moderate Enlightenment factions. The Moderate Enlightenment was the Enlightenment that we were all familiarized with growing up, that was responsible for the American Revolution, and those that followed. This is the Enlightenment of Montesquieu, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. This Enlightenment, which had produced the oligarchic republics that we are familiar with today, had actually followed in the wake of a much more Radical Enlightenment that had pursued not only republicanism, but popular democracy, freedom of speech, religious tolerance, and so on. It was this Radical Enlightenment (which had preceded and influenced the more aristocratic-styled Moderate Enlightenment) that is most associated with core Enlightenment ideals, with (more…)
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Paleomutualist Manifesto

Difficulty     Introduction Mutualism is a perennial impulse, a revolutionary social movement, and a sophisticated philosophical tradition. It is established upon, and focuses on, the reciprocity of rights and obligations, promoting the fairest approximation of justice. It was once a very rich, worldwide tradition that featured especially prominently in Europe, the Americas, and Australia. But it has been set into decline. Paleomutualism takes interest in the reasons for this decline and ways that mutualism can be revived to the benefit of working people everywhere.  Mutualism’s Impact Did you know that the American forefather, Benjamin Franklin, was the first person to form a mutual insurance company in the New World? This makes him at least a practicing, if not an ideological, mutualist! If this isn’t odd, Alexis de Tocqueville described America as a land rich in voluntary associations (mutualism). Are you aware that the American mutualist, Lysander Spooner, had referred to (more…)
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Necessitarian Psychology in the Revolutionary Tradition

Difficulty     Baruch Spinoza’s necessitarian philosophy, as presented in his Ethics, is found in modern anarchist literature, as in the work of William Godwin or Mikhail Bakunin. Further, Spinoza’s psychology has been affirmed by the frustration-aggression theory, and so may be considered to be scientific. This scientific view of social psychology was at the heart of Radical Enlightenment thought, which is at the foundation of the Western revolutionary tradition. This tradition ultimately aims at interfering with the chain of frustration and aggression, themselves having their foundation in ignorance and superstition, and expression in political and religious authority. It is from the Spinozan thought behind the Radical Enlightenment that radicalism, and anarchism more specifically, came to be. Spinoza, Necessity, and Blessedness Spinoza’s philosophy was a complex relationship between his theological, political, ethical, and psychological understanding. A pantheist, he held God to be another name for Nature. A democratic republican, he opposed (more…)
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