The eternal diatribe

"Why do you abandon the open path to take this narrow and rough road? Do you really know, little girl, where you're taking yourself? It just might end up that you'll find yourself in some unfathomable abyss. No one, not even the smugglers, dare to venture down it. Stay on the wide, spacious road that everyone else walks down, why don't you? Stay on the cared for and mile-marked path, with its signs and directions. It's so comfortable and pleasant to stroll along it!"

"Because I'm sick of the suffocating dust, sick of the route the rest follow; sick of the slow drivers and the rushing walkers. I'm tired of the monotony of the main drags, the horns on the cars and the trees that line the streets like soldiers. I want to breathe freely, to breathe as I please, to live my own life."

"You'll never manage to live your own life, poor girl. It's a chimera. The passing years will cure you soon enough of that desire. We always live in some way for other people, and they, in turn, live, to a certain extent, for us. He who plants wheat is not the same that makes bread. And the miner is not the one who drives the train. Life in society is an ensemble of very complicated human machinery, the functioning of which requires a great deal of vigilance, and demands numerous concessions and infinite attention.Think of the chaos which would come of it if everyone wanted to live their own life! It'd be just like hell if everyone went down that road that no traveler visits, where bad weeds grow tangled, and which leads no one knows where."

"Oh, old man! It's the over-complication of life in society that horrifies me. I'm shocked by the obligation to be dependent on the person next to me, an obligation that I feel weighing more heavily each day on my being, on my desire to live my own way. And I lose heart when faced with the idea of living the lives of others, of living for them; I want to be able to bite into clean mouthfuls without finding myself considered a glutton or a spoiled brat. I want to be able to lay down and stretch out on the grassy meadows, without fear of any guards or police. I love the roots, the trees, and the forest's creatures, the brambles and blackberry bushes of this path with no exit; what do I care about the gilded bread and palaces in the company of which I feel only disgust? Why should I care where I'm going? I live for today, and I'm indifferent to tomorrow."

"Oh young girl! Others before you have spoken the same words, and they, like you, have gone towards the unknown. They never ended up coming back from that voyage. A long time after, on those paths, smoothed over now, and on those summits now cleared of underbrush, little mountains of bones have been found, here and there -- that's all that's left of them. Without a doubt, they lived their own lives, but at what cost? And for how long? Think about those tall towers these thick clouds of smoke without end come from. They are the chimneys of the grandiose factories that humankind has erected --there, millions of men, on those whitewashed, spacious, and well ventilated premises, are working those marvelous machines that dispense to us humans the most necessary articles. And when night comes, these simple people, satisfied with a day's work well done, conscious of the daily bread they win with the sweat of their brows, come home singing to their humble homes where their loved ones await. Look over there at that rectangular building, with its large halls and its ample windows; that is the school, where selfless teachers prepare little beings like you to overcome life's challenges; little creatures who only find advantage in schooling -- can't you hear the sweet sound of those little voices repeating the lessons that yesterday they were told to memorize? The ringing of those military-like bells and those measured steps, which will soon walk the twists and turns of the road before them, is there for you, to bring forth a troop of boys and girls marching with the flag held high before them, children who are kept in the schools for a certain period of time in order to teach them how to efficiently defend their fatherland, their nation, if any new menace rears its head. Don't you see that that's the way men evolve towards Progress, each of them working in their own specialization and according to their own capacities? There are, without any doubt, courtrooms and jails, but those are for the malcontents, for the few undisciplined ones who make them necessary. Regardless of its defects, the implantation of such a state of things has taken centuries. It is our civilization --imperfect, but perfectible -- from whose influence you will never be able to escape unless you sink to who knows what depths."

"In those vast factories and workshops I see no more than flocks of slaves, executing monotonously, as if they were religious rites, the same gestures in front of the same machines, slaves who have lost all initiative and whose individual energy is decreased more and more every day, since every day it seems less and less true to me that these risks are part of the necessary conditions of human existence. From top to bottom, in the administrative hierarchies, only one watchword can be heard -- drown individual initiative. Oh yes, certainly, when the night comes I can hear your workers singing, but with bitter voices, and only after they've stopped in at least one of the innumerable taverns set up around the factories. The voices that come from your schools are the little voices of sad, bored children who can hardly keep down their desire to run, to leap the fences and walls, to climb the trees. Beneath the uniforms of your soldiers I only see beings who have had every sentiment of individual dignity annihilated in them. To discipline will, to kill energy, to restrain initiative -- these are the imperatives of your society, these are the things people suffer so that your society might subsist. And you fear those who don't want to adapt to this so greatly that you seclude them in the somber darkness of jail cells. Between your "civilized man" of the twentieth century, whose only preoccupation seems to be avoiding the necessary effort for sustaining his existence, and the man "dressed in animal skins", which wins out? The latter did not fear danger; he did not know the factory nor the barracks, the tavern nor the brothel, nor jail nor school. You have conserved, modifying them only in appearance, the superstitions and prejudices of these people you'd call "savage". But you lack their energy, you lack their valor, and you lack their frankness."

"Well, I agree that in the panorama of our present society there are some dark shadows. But there are generous men who have tried and still try to introduce greater equity and justice to its functioning.They are recruiting partisans, and perhaps tomorrow they will be their resistible majority. Don't go down these out-of-the-way paths --instead, hold to good principles, follow a method. Believe me, I'm an experienced old man; success doesn't tend to accompany those who don't systematically pursue it. Science teaches that it is necessary to regulate life. Hygienists, biologists, and doctors will supply you in its name with the necessary formulas for its prolongation and for your happiness. To lack authority, principles, discipline, and a plan is the worst of incoherencies."

"I do not need, nor do I want your discipline. With regards to my experiences, I want to have them for myself. It is from them, and not from you, that I will draw my rules of conduct. I want to live my own life. Slaves and lackeys terrify me. I hate those who dominate, and I am sickened by those who let themselves be dominated. He who bends before the whip is worth no more than he who wields it. I love danger, and the unknown, the uncertain, seduces me. I'm filled with a desire for adventure, and I don't give a damn for success. I hate your society of bureaucrats and administrators, millionaires and beggars. I don't want to adapt to your hypocritical customs nor to your false courtesies. I want to live out my enthusiasms in the pure, fresh air of freedom. Your streets, drafted according to plan, torture my gaze, and your uniform buildings make the blood in my veins boil with impatience. And that's enough for me. I'm going to follow my own path, according to my passions, changing myself ceaselessly, and I don't want to be the same tomorrow as I am today.I stroll along and I don't let my wings be clipped by the scissors of any one person. I am amoral. I am going forth, eternally passionate and burning with the desire to give myself to the world, to the first real person that approaches me, to the ragged trousered traveler, but never to the grave and conceited wise-men who would regulate the length of my stride. Nor to the doctrinaire who would like to clutter my mind with formulas and rules. I am no intellectual, I am a human being -- a woman who feels a great vibration within herself before the impulses of nature and amorous words. I hate every chain, every hindrance; I love to walk along, nude, letting the rays of the voluptuous sun caress my flesh. And, oh, old man! I will care so very little when your society breaks into a thousand pieces and I can finally, fully, live my own life."

"Who are you, little girl, fascinating like a mystery and savage like instinct?"

"I am Anarchy."



This post is basically an essay "Realism and Idealism Mixed" by Emile Armand, translated from "Anarchist Individualism and Amorous Camaraderie" and published by the International Library, Paris, 1926. Upon reflection, I find it bizarre how much my mental constitution in my teen years resembled the little girl in the passage, that of working class radicals and sans-culottes during and following the French Revolution. Bizarre... but not unexpected! Evolution always has the final say... I guess!