Discussed: apple picking, self-oppression, logical incontinuities, wu-wei, hoboism, pushing boats, Alan Watts, smiling
Your imposition of concepts onto your existence is a form of dominance that can manifest, arguably, stick with me, oppressive circumstances for your own self. If I impose the concepts of numbers and counting onto the experience of, say, picking apples with my friend then this could develop into judgement and, if you’re particularly inept at picking apples, a state of sadness and self-loathing. Compare that to the experience sans conceptual imposition whereby you just, you know, pick apples. There is only the picking, you have not added or imposed anything upon it, there are no expectations. There is no trying to make it something beyond what it just is.
The concept of conceptual self-oppression is in itself a tricky one because it can quickly explode into the infinite regress of who pulls the strings. Who would be such a jerk as to oppress themselves? Who is creating the concepts that manifest oppressive feelings? I’m not here to explore that question in its entirety (and I don’t think it’s really answerable). But we can probably agree concepts arise and the “I” that resides at the seat of consciousness has the ability to recognize either the concept arising or the manifestations it’s responsible for. There exists some sort of middleware or observer or combo thereof.
So these are the players: 1) potential oppressor: the concept creator, 2) potentially oppressed: the feeler of feelings, and 3) potentially God: the passive observer that kind of witnesses everything but also has the feeling of being able to take the wheel if need be. Also, these are all you. Acknowledging there is a paradox or at least some type of logical incontinuity there is encouraged since that’s maybe the only thing that is true as far as existing goes.
Back to anarchism. Straight from Wikipedia it “rejects all involuntary, coercive forms of hierarchy”. What we just laid out sounds very “involuntary” and a lot like a “hierarchy” (albeit a little Escher-ian and circular). But traditionally anarchy is a political philosophy (again, ask Wikipedia) and one that was pretty appealing to 20-year-ago me. 20-year-later me is a bit more skeptical of it as a functioning social order or its tactics being effective for change but still happy to look to it as a north star if the collective We can ever get our shit together. However, after some study of Taoism and Zen over the last few years I’ve realized there is a lot of overlap with anarchism as a spiritual guidepost. The ancient Chinese Taoists were essentially philosophical anarchists who encouraged a life of “doing nothing” or wu-wei. Taken at face value that sounds like nihilism or hoboism, perhaps. But wu-wei is not about passively doing nothing, it’s about non-interference with the way of things as they are - “push the boat with the current” as the Chinese idiom says.
In describing the related concept of “no-mind”, Alan Watts in his book The Way of Zen says:
It is a state of wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily, without the sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it with a club. If the ordinary man is one who has to walk by lifting his legs with his hands, the Taoist is one who has learned to let the legs walk by themselves.
Don’t impose the concept of “moving” onto walking. Just walk. Do not oppress your legs with your hands, do not oppress your mind with the burden of propulsion. This is anarchism of self, of your experience. Self-organizing, non-action, action. Ideally the benefits of which are less stress, anxiety, self-hate, fewer outward manifestations of dominance, nirvana, all that. By recognizing the hierarchy is a paradox, a snake eating its tail, it will vanish and the uncontrollable chaos that remains is beautiful and pure anarchy. And you will smile more.