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About the Author
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William Schnack is a free thinking mutualist and a truth-seeking pantheist who writes about topics such as cosmology, biology, history, and social philosophy with an emphasis on the emerging capacity for humans to engage with one another voluntarily, consensually, and reciprocally. He considers his views to be non-political and Far Center, taking insight from the Far Left, the Far Right, and everything in between. That is, after all, the very nature of a truth-seeking free thinker.
Schnack has authored five books and a board game, all of which have been released with a Creative Commons license, being mostly free cultural works. Aside from this, William has been a drummer in hardcore punk rock bands and a part-time homesteader, otherwise working regular wage jobs at a vegan restaurant, a Vietnamese sandwich shop, a consumer-owned health food co-op, and a producer-owned urban farming co-op. He eats a majority-vegan diet and lives a near-vegan lifestyle, having had been fully vegan for 10 years but having since taken up raising his own egg-laying fowl and dairy animals, eating lacto-ovo sourced from his own livestock raised on his own smallhold. He continues to boycott the commercial meat, egg, and dairy industry, believing veganism to be the appropriate choice where ecology does not demand otherwise, such as in urban environments.
What is Ambiarchy?
Ambiarchy describes the symbiotic mutualism between anarchists and non-anarchists, and their resulting institutions, which can be equally and simultaneously regarded as models of good government and of anarchy de jure. It is a panarchy synarchically-led by anarchists; paleomutualism for the postmodern condition.
Ambiarchy is established upon the metaphysical premise of Ambitheism
NOTICE
There are different kinds of information on this blog:
- factual information
- speculative information
- visionary information
The proper applications correlate as follows:
- for independent confirmation by the reader
- for independent and concerted consideration by the reader and their associates
- for independent and concerted amusement of the reader and their associates
The purpose of the content of this blog is for the following:
- spiritual
- research
- philosophical
- civic
This content has been created with the following motives:
- sharing observations
- artful musing
- hypotheticals
- conjecture
- model-making
- conviviality
- scholarship
- peer education
- morality
- social progression
This blog uses the concept of anarchy. Anarchy, as used in this blog, does not refer to a condition of disorder, chaos, or disunity. Instead, anarchy refers to a condition of order, structure, and unity without the presence of a ruler, someone or a group of someones who establish(es) rules that others must follow without those others’ prior consent having been given. This is a colloquially uncommon definition, though many of the other definitions used on the site are also different from their colloquial one, while still more are in fact colloquial. This provides an example of the care that the reader should take in the interpretation of the words used on this site: a great deal of it. All definitions are those of the author and are to be construed in a manner appropriate to the context of the information on the rest of the blog.
DISCLAIMER
The author is a lifelong learner, who is perpetually continuing his education socially by engaging in conversation with other lifelong learners. The author’s education is not and never will be considered finalized.
The author is a self-educated autodidact. The author’s education is not in any way formal, the author having no degrees or certificates (excepting a GED and a Permaculture Teacher Certificate). The author is a lay learner, lay philosopher, and lay researcher.
The informational content of this blog is cross-disciplinary in nature. The cross-disciplinary nature of this content naturally impedes the author as a specialist in the various fields from which the information is derived. This being the case, the informational content is abstract and general in nature, and much of it represents the half-baked ideas of the author, the details having not been worked out.
The information used in this blog is the best of the author’s knowledge at the time of writing, but the author reserves the right to change his opinion and may do so without making an immediate change or any edits at all to his previously stated opinion.
The author does not condone any unlawful, illegal, vicious, or hateful behavior. No information on this blog is to be construed otherwise.
Nothing on this blog should be construed for legal, accounting, financial, relational, or living advice.
Any information used or derived from this blog is used under the reader’s own discretion and at the reader’s own risk. The reader, if sharing information derived from this blog with others, assumes all liability associated with sharing the information. The author cannot be held liable for any damages caused from the use or misuse of the information herein.
Dualist Pantheism: An Introduction
Geo-Mutualist Panarchism: An Introduction
William Schnack on Primo Nutmeg
Reversing the Thermoeconomic Arrow of Time
Please Keep an Open Mind and be Polite
While here, I ask that you maintain the proper etiquette of a free and critically-thinking truth seeker. This can be achieved by following this sequence:
- Actively Listen – Read, watch, or listen with the intentions of being able to paraphrase what has been said. This helps to ensure that what has been said is well understood, enough that one may repeat it.
- Suspend Judgment – Before criticizing or dismissing, grasp what is being said in its own context, and what is meant by the speaker. Don’t look immediately for flaws, but focus on comprehending what is being said and what the intentions of the speaker are.
- Critically Think – Consider what has been said, and whether or not it is in line with those things understood to be more fundamental. If so, decide where the adjustment should be made to your beliefs, whether the thing is truly fundamental or not, and if the other thing is right or wrong because of it.
- Constructively Criticize – If you think there is something wrong, criticize with the intentions to be constructive, and offer an alternative to the position you are criticizing. Ask yourself if you are fairly applying your criticism, and if it would also be true if used against you.
- Nonviolently Communicate – Communicate in manners that are not aggressive or attacking, but which are open, polite, and considerate.
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Most Recent
- On Retrocausality and Idealism in Neutral Monism March 26, 2024
- If You Can’t Read Them Out, and Can’t Bleed Them Out, Breed Them Out! March 26, 2024
- Classical and Neo-Anarchism Compared and Considered with Regard to Synarchy March 26, 2024
- Mutualist Land Tenure, as Rooted in Anglo-Saxon Tradition March 25, 2024
- Elements of My Utopia March 10, 2024
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…)
Posted in History, Macroblog, Revolution, Social Sciences
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Greetings
Difficulty Welcome to Ambiarchy, a blog by William Schnack (that’s me, a classical mutualist and pantheist). This blog used to becalled The Evolution of Consent, because my work focused, and still focuses, on voluntary and consensual human relationships, including the current though surpassable), limitations imposed on it, and what consent has to do with evolutionary processes and cosmology, among other things! Here you will learn about ambiarchy, which is the rhetorical synthesis of good government and anarchy (which you may recognize as the project of Proudhon’s federalism), along with topics of interest to classical mutualism and pantheism. These topics are wide-ranging, indeed, and include matters of cosmology and metaphysics, geology, biology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, political philosophy, history, and religion. Ambiarchy was formerly geo-mutualist panarchism, which synthesized mutualism, especially, with geoanarchism and panarchism. It maintains those same basic elements as before, but with more original thought and even wider (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…)
Posted in All, Anarchy, Macroblog, Mutualism, Revolution, Social Sciences
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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…)
Posted in Macroblog, Mutualism, Pantheism, Revolution, Social Sciences, Uncategorized
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Reversing the Thermoeconomic Arrow of Time
Difficulty The Returns to the Economic Factors of Production Analyzed for Efficiency through a Thermodynamic Engine Introduction Thermoeconomics is a field combining thermodynamics (the study of heat and heat transfer) and economics (the study of resources and resources transfers). It was pioneered by thinkers such as Georgescu-Roegen in his The Entropy Law and the Economic Process and later by John Bryant in his Thermoeconomics: A Thermodynamic Approach to Economics. Both thinkers, base their models upon the second law of thermodynamics, the “entropy law,” as well as upon conventional reasoning in economics stemming from the Marginal Revolution. What is the entropy law? And what is the Marginal Revolution? The entropy law, or second law of thermodynamics, states that the entropy of a closed system is always increasing. Entropy is chaos or disorder, so the law suggests that chaos or disorder always increases for a closed system (a system without external inputs). The Marginal Revolution was a period in economics in (more…)
Radically Remodernizing Mutualism
Difficulty Mutualism refers to a social movement and corresponding philosophy— as popularized by Pierre Proudhon— that is decidedly modernist in its original orientation, coming out of the Radical Enlightenment. In the name of postmodernism and cultural Marxism—found among the elites of university campuses—, however, mutualism’s modernist orientation has been downplayed, resulting in confusion (obscurantism), polarization (“Tuckerites” and “neo-Proudhonians”), and followed by reductionism (‘the real mutualism is “neo-Proudhonism”’). This essay argues for the revival of mutualism’s modernist elements, such as its pursuit of collective reason, utilizing the developmental model of Spiral Dynamics, Integral theory, art history, history of the philosophy of science, mutualist history, and ecological-evolutionary theory. In it, I display clearly mutualism’s modernist origins, its position in Spiral Dynamics, its similarity to Integral theory, relationship to Marxism and cultural Marxism, and its position on war, stratification, and sociocultural evolution, as well as matters having to do with the current (more…)
Posted in Anarchy, Macroblog, Mutualism, Revolution, Social Sciences, Uncategorized
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Anarchism, Synarchism, and Ambiarchy
Difficulty In order to understand Ambiarchy, it helps to understand synarchy. In a way, Ambiarchy is the synthesis of the thesis, anarchism, and its antithesis, synarchism. Anarchism is, of course, a philosophy that advocates the elimination of external government and the political state. Anarchists oppose political authority and institutions such as private property, preferring instead to promote mechanisms of self-government and self-management. As there is much on the internet about anarchism, and as I have covered it extensively in my work, I will leave it at that for now. Synarchism is not as familiar as anarchism is. But it was created as an alternative to anarchism, by those who opposed anarchism but saw it as an inevitable future should it not be stopped. Synarchists believe in a technocratic government that is administered by secret societies who use as little physical force or might as is possible, substituting instead the (more…)
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Science, Scientism, and Credentialism
Difficulty “Scientist” is not a class of people, but an adherent to the ideology of scientism. But not everyone who does science need be a scientist, but, merely, adhere to the scientific method, preferably pressing a “null hypothesis.” No “ist” or “ism” needed. Science was revolutionary. It was about the ability of common sense (the five senses, perhaps also intuition), used by anyone capable, to make sense of the world. It was a popularly accessible method for understanding. The Scientific Revolution led to the Enlightenment, wherein titles of nobility (whether inherited or conferred) were abolished in favor of making persuasive arguments in deliberation with others. Where people hear each other out democratically, titles of nobility get in the way of honest communication. Governmental accreditation of degrees is one step removed from the gains of the Enlightenment, and one step closer to titles of nobility. No longer is science a (more…)
Posted in Macroblog, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Uncategorized
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Paleoradicalism
Difficulty “Paleoconservatism” and “paleolibertarianism” are watchwords from the political Right. But I want to introduce a new term from the political Center, the “Far Center,” as I call it. This term is “paleoradical.” Conservatives and radicals are often pitted against one another in the fashion of revolutionaries and reactionaries. So why might a radical—someone who typically identifies with the historical Left—want to align themselves with the “paleo” position, a position which suggests that something from the past got it right? Is this counter to the “progressive” element that is so often found within radicalism? The “paleo” in “paleoconservative” and “paleolibertarian” typically refers to antagonism toward the elements of “progress” associated with the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his henchmen. Paleo-conservatives and libertarians also distinguish themselves from neo-conservatives and neo-libertarians, as well as from Left-libertarians, by way of their opposition to militarism and cultural Marxism. Paleoconservatism and paleolibertarianism (more…)
Posted in Macroblog, Mutualism, Revolution, Social Sciences, Uncategorized
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Anarchy: More or Less Government?
Difficulty Compared to monarchy, is democracy more or less government? It seems to depend on who is asked. Some will suggest that democracy is less government than monarchy is, because people have the ability to participate directly in the governing process. Others, however, will point to bureaucratization and suggest that democracy is most certainly more government than monarchy is. The same can be said of anarchy. Anarchy, of course, is a word often confused for chaos, while actually referring to no rulers. No rulers, of course, is not the same thing as “no rules.” No rulers refers to a situation in which existing human rules are not applied by a ruling party, but by way of agreement. The natural world requires that an anarchy, if it is to exist in an industrialized world, will require greater amounts of organization than a democracy would, in much the same way that (more…)
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Direct-Democracy or Philosopher Kings?
Difficulty The Masonic Philosophical Society recently posted a poll on Facebook, asking whether direct-democracy or philosopher kings were preferable. The results, when I saw them last, were about 60/40 with philosopher kings in the lead. Plato had famously posed philosopher kings as an alternative to direct-democracy, after direct-democracy had killed his teacher, Socrates. Of course, these are not the only options out there. Other options include complete dissociation, representative democracy, non-philosopher monarchs, and consensus decision-making. But direct-democracy and philosopher kings show us the furthest bounds of possibility: the rule of the majority and the rule of the minority. Minority-rule, by a benevolent philosopher king, is very expedient and conceptually fair, if such a philosopher rules with a level hand. The problem is, the ideal philosopher king, who is wise to every possibility, is non-existent. All-too-often potential philosopher kings degrade into tyrants. This is so often the case as to (more…)
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Proudhon on Economic Rent
Difficulty This was originally composed for part of a “Mutual Exchange” by C4SS, the Center for a Stateless Society. It has subsequently been removed, with a notice that they are no longer affiliating with me. Because I think the original content was important, I posting it here with a few omissions to remove the discussion format. On these grounds alone, I believe it a reasonable argument to suggest that a more thoroughly mutualist position — considering the core principles on which its economic form is merely an expression or attribute — would support the community capture of economic rent. I also believe libertarian variants of Georgism provide for the least arbitrary and fairest allocation of possession for occupancy-and-use, and best allow the price mechanism to operate. Nonetheless, I do believe there are times when Proudhon supports something similar to the community capture of economic rent, and I aim to demonstrate some (more…)
Posted in All, Anarchy, Geo-Mutualism, Georgism, Macroblog, Mutualism, Social Sciences
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The Wider Mutualist Movement
Difficulty Mutualism is often spoken of in terms of a philosophical camp, as if mutualism were a philosophical potential that remains unrealized, and which has had a certain impact. But mutualism is better regarded as a social movement, as its philosophical premises and its real-world efforts are intertwined, and its major philosophical proponents had witnessed mutualism-in-action before expounding upon it. That is, much of what we know as mutualist philosophy is a justification and attempt to forward a social movement that was already in place. As I have written in Heretics, Radicals, & MUTUALISM, I believe this social movement ultimately to go as far back as the ancient philosophical schools and beyond. Mutualism as an economic practice– mutual insurance, mutual banking, cooperativism– goes back, at least in part, to the middle ages, and as an ethical practice to time immemorial. As an instinct or living condition, it precedes the (more…)
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Ambiarchy and Hierarchical Authority
Difficulty To understand why Ambiarchy prefers a meritocratic organization, as opposed to a flat or majoritarian one, it may be best to look at the characteristics of cooperatives and collectives, and how they fair in the economy. The tendency of cooperatives today is to retain a degree of traditional authority and hierarchy, but the justification is that this hierarchical authority is under the authority of the whole. In such a case, it can be argued that the hierarchy or authority is one of form, but not of substance. An example of a cooperative which uses traditional hierarchy and authority, but under the superauthority of the whole, is a typical consumer cooperative, whose members elect a board, and whose board then delegates an ends policy to a non-board executive of some sort. From the executive onward, there is a traditional hierarchical structure, in which authority flows downward: managers set employee (more…)
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Mutualism, the Politics of the Illuminated
Difficulty level not set for this Post Mutualism and the Illuminati Both pantheism and mutualism– the most influential of views upon Ambiarchy– can be traced to the views of the Illuminati. No, not the Bavarian Illuminati of Adam Weishaupt, but to the Amalricians– who called themselves Illuminati long before Weishaupt–, and by extension the Gnostics and Greek philosophers, from whom the Amalricians take after. I discovered this by tracing predecessors of the most paramount of philosophers, Baruch Spinoza, the pantheist and democrat, and Proudhon, the mutualist and anarchist. Pantheism Spinoza was a pantheist who had been excommunicated from the Jewish faith. He had been influenced by Giordano Bruno, a Hermetic pantheist from decades earlier, who had been burned at the stake for heresy. Giordano Bruno has no provable direct connection to prior pantheists that I have discovered. This may attest for the notion within perennial philosophy that the truth bubbles (more…)
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Ambiarchy and ‘The News’
Difficulty In today’s society, reading, listening to, and/or watching the news is largely an empty act. Rarely are important matters actually covered by the mainstream media. In an Ambiarchist society, the news would be of utmost importance. In such a society, the news would tend to cover matters important to the society, because the society would partake in legislature directly. An Ambiarchy is an industrial democracy and confederation of collectivities of various kinds. The initiated have a say in the major affairs of the confederation and its appropriate compartments, their workplaces, schools, homes, consumer organizations, banks, insurance programs, and so on. As you can see, there is plenty of real news to cover, and of consumer demand. Today’s news doesn’t need to cover real news, because people don’t have a say anyway. In an Ambiarchist society, you might wake up in the morning and while sitting down for breakfast, (more…)
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Ambiarchy: From Whence Rights Commence
Difficulty Ambiarchy is an interesting worldview, because it is simultaneously anarchy and statism. Many would think this an impossibility. To understand how Ambiarchy is simultaneously anarchy and statism, one must understand the Ambiarchist conceptions of anarchy and statism. These are intrinsically bound up in the Ambiarchist conception of rights. Ambiarchy starts with early humanity, in our nomadic and hunter-gathering stages. Hunter gatherers lived in a primitive anarchy. That is, they lived without rulers. This is, in part, because Stone Age technologies and nomadic lifestyles are not conducive to slavery, the way Bronze Age technologies and complex horticultural, agricultural, or pastoral lifestyles were. This was a condition of anarchy de facto, in which anarchy existed as a fact of nature. De facto anarchy represented the pinnacle accomplishments of the genus Homo, before African Homosapien stock moving out of Africa. The establishment of an intraspecific equilibrium of sorts–wherein power could not (more…)
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Ambiarchy Defined
Difficulty Ambiarchy comes from the Latin, ambi, meaning “both,” and archia, meaning “rule.” Ambiarchy, then, means “both rule.” The “both” in question can refer to a number of concepts. In the past– though it doesn’t seem to have been a major trend–, Ambiarchy has referred to a diarchy or biarchy, particularly one in which a man and woman co-rule. The idea of man and woman co-ruling is completely compatible with the more recent rendition of Ambiarchy that I pose here. It may be understood to refer to the Lord and Lady– entropy and syntropy–, a topic in Ambitheism; or it may refer to the actual sharing of power within the Ambiarchy by men and women. But the manner which I pose Ambiarchy focuses more on the ambiguity between competing approaches to political rule, namely government (archy) and no government (anarchy). In this case, Ambiarchy refers to an collective body (more…)
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