Anarchist Book #2 Review: Days of War Nights of Love

"...this book isn't designed to be used in the way a 'normal' book is.  Rather than reading it from one cover to the other, casting perfunctory votes of disapproval or agreement along the way (or even deciding to 'buy in' to our ideas, in a passive consumer fashion), and then putting it on the shelf as another inert possession, we hope you will use this as a tool in your own efforts--not just to think about the world, but also to change it."
True to form, I hopped around this book, starting with the chapter "A is for Anarchy," and dutifully applying the "exclamation point test," in which you substitute an exclamation point for a period from time to time to determine if the "dry political theory such as this text" is relevant.  OK, the opening vignette about the stages of teen rebellion put me to sleep, but the idea of an exclamation point test was kind of cool.  Likewise, CrimethInc has a funny habit of flipping the text upside down from time to time which did amazing things to my brain in the physical copy, but irritated the crap out of me when I initially tried to read the free PDF version of this.

I skipped ahead to the W is for Work section, which didn't strike me as particularly revolutionary.  It was a lot of anecdotes from people who opted to drop out of the workforce in favor of a life of squatting and scavenging.  I had read a bit too much Rand diatribes on moochers to really aspire to be that wage-earner who can support a lot of friends that they all seemed to laud.  But it did make me think the Financial Independence folk are onto something about having a clear bead on understanding how much your lifestyle takes to support and how much interest your personal savings is able to provide towards those costs.  That said, in the face of unstable currencies and potential mass inflation, I'm not entirely sure the plan of early retirement will work without an infusion of some of this anarchist scrappyness.  

Given my hummingbird approach to this book, I'm not sure if I'm technically "done" reading.  I'm not, actually.  I would go a couple pages, skim some stuff that seemed tiresome and overly naive and idealist, stumble upon something really profound, and need to pause.  For instance, the concept of morality being an extension of religion which is just a rarefied form of hierarchical control of people's lives.  Yawn.  "Cry me a river, build me a bridge, and get over it," as a surprisingly articulate 1st grader put it when interviewed about gay marriage.  But then I got to wondering if we were to redesign morality at an individual level from the ground up, what would that look like?  Would it have so many etiquette riders from bygone eras?  Could it be simplified to a single mantra?  If it was something as all-encompassing as Love, that's great, but how does one engage with sociopaths?  Wouldn't something like the Golden Rule or even something more draconian like Hammurabi's code make more sense?  What if we lit reviewed happiness research or evolutionary biology/survivalist findings and used that as a moral starting point?  I passed out pondering these possibilities... and woke up thinking about what it would mean to instead of focusing on "saying no" more often, with all of the guilt and negativity that comes with it, instead focus on "saying yes!" emphatically.  Approval vote the handful of things we're passionate about and be flaky, non-commital, non-responsive on the rest.

In short, this books seems like a keeper, if only as intermittent mindfloss.  Read a couple pages or get arrested by a couple of the disturbing co-opted pictures.  Try not to get too caught up in the teen angst undercurrent, eventually find something redeemingly thought provoking to give you pause and possibly change your ways.  Rinse and repeat.