The Brilliant

In this episode of the Brilliant, we begin by discussing briefly what made us first call ourselves anarchists: Aragorn! talks about being realistic by demanding the impossible while Bellamy almost mistakes the episode for a therapy session. We then spend a good bit of time on the Paris attacks, an effort which mutates into a discussion about how we frame analyses of distant events. Finally, we use a thoughtful and lengthy critical e-mail from a listener as a point from which to wander through the subjects of revolution, “changing the world”, pessimism versus passivity, and the meaning of joy. 0:44: A new intro by Aragorn!, so you don't have to keep skipping past the beginning of the show 1:57: Bellamy frames the episode while and A! occupies himself by clicking and making noise in the background; 2:34: A! tells about how he became an anarchist 6:03: B tells about he became an anarchist 8:57: The call of the wild 9:10: A-News does something sweet and nice for a change 11:30: Aftermath of Paris incident 12:50: Reading from the Appelistas' (anti-state communists) comment on Paris 13:58: Discussion of Paris attacks: humans as neurotic, caged animals; “there's this thing called History”; people as mutually incomprehensible; the usefulness of an anti-civilization analysis for understanding the event; people performing ideological functions passively vs. actively; “[Civilization:] there's no way to fight it other than going camping a lot” 29:50: More from the French commies 30:45: Beautiful sentiments; lived communism as something like dual power; rhetoric based on real relationships vs. abstract concepts 34:40: Response to listener e-mail: J'accuse!; the nature of human nature arguments 39:08: Wildness cannot be denied 39:30: chasm on the possibility of revolution; strategy vs. human-scale thinking 42:10: publishing as an indigenous perspective on revolution – “it looks like telling better stories” 45:20: “changing the world” as discrete vs. continuous; pessimism in the context of metaphysic of world as Becoming; anarcho-lexophilia; anarchism, anarchy, anarchist...choose carefully!; metrics of “success”; pessimism vs. passivity 54:45: Anarchy without emphasis; “You're so fucked up! - Respond!” 57:41: Unmediated joy; joy vs. happiness; Joy is...bro-like?