The Emotional Anarchist
I have gone through a philosophical journey of self discovery and exploration here on Gonzo Times. I started the site a capitalist libertarian party libertarian. I evolved from there to a rothbardian anarcho capitalist and then on to rejecting capitalism in favor of socialism and anarchism. Much of this journey I was reading and operating in a realm of economics and logic. Through the journey I picked up other issues I stood for such as the liberation of the LGBT community, feminism and the plight of the migrant. In the realm of feminism I was exposed to types of intelligence that may not necessarily fit nicely with those of economics and all so called logic. Emotional intelligence I have learned is a valid form of intelligence that I am sadly lacking in.
I hope that I can delve further in my emotional intelligence, nurture it, feed it and grow more attached to it. I have seen that often men are socialized to reject emotional intelligence. I believe this is an element of gender dominance and often feeds into the mindset that perpetuates forms of hierarchy within society. Emotional responses and reactions or understandings can be seen as less than or just naive. I now see that the rejection of emotional intelligence is done out a lack of intelligence. What is an emotional anarchist? I want to understand anarchism through the lens of emotional intelligence and begin to embrace it through a new perspective with a new knowledge.
I am now asking myself what Emotional Anarchism is and what it looks like. I am now wanting to see anarchism with a new set of eyes to examine it and pick it apart through new forms of intelligence. Howard Gardner proposed the theory of nine types of intelligence:
Can we look for anarchism in each of these types of intelligence? How can someone who is stronger in one specific area here begin to frame and understand anarchism? I would love to hear from some who are stronger in specific areas of intelligence and how that intelligence may impact anarchism for them. How can we frame anarchism within emotional intelligence as well as the nine types of intelligence? Are there still many new approaches to take to reach our conclusions?
5:18 pm
This is also why IQ tests cannot fully measure intelligence but only the first type (logical-mathematical) and maybe the second (spatial). Anyone that boasts a high IQ can still put forth some really bad ideas (especially if those ideas are to be applied to a whole society of people) as it’s quite possible that their ideas completely lack the interpersonal intelligence dimension.
Furthermore, it’s unlikely that one could excel in *all* dimensions of intelligence. I’d like to think I’m pretty good on the logical-mathematical dimension, somewhat in the spatial dimension, and maybe even some decent existential intelligence mixed in there with more average levels of all the other types, but even that generous assessment in only really touching on less than a third of proficiency of the dimensions. The unlikelihood that a person could excel in all dimensions of intelligence stress the need for collaboration and cooperation in society (voluntary of course). Working together we can do more by supplementing each others’ weaknesses than we could by ourselves with even double our intellectual resources.
11:51 pm
You say “so-called logic”. I think you fail to realize that there is never any need for quotes around logic. Logic is logic. Feeling is feeling. It’s intuition. It’s a trained subconscious response. It works on different physical mechanisms than analytical thought. It’s lower level, it’s broader, in some sense it’s more powerful in that it can provide us with very rapid responses that, when properly trained, have great odds of being correct in a timely fashion. It permits us to connect with each other on a level that is unachievable through discourse; it lets us communicate vast and complicated things through cultural shorthands that could not otherwise exist. Through emotion we can *feel* and *experience* what through logic we can only *know*.
But what it is *not* is a fact finding or analytical mechanism. It is not, in itself, knowledge. A person with very poorly trained emotions can have very inappropriate reactions to a situation. Those of us with better-trained emotions can instantly *feel* that those reactions are wrong – for instance, the statist who who revels in the suffering of people who have come under the heel of his master. But we can only describe *why* we feel that way, and why our feelings are justified, through logical means.
To improve one’s emotional intelligence, one must change one’s behavior and consciously recriminate the bad and cultivate the good. One cannot change behavior if one does not know that it must be changed, and if one’s feelings are in line with one’s inappropriate behavior, one’s emotions cannot be one’s guide in making a change. I put forth that anarchism is a journey of both logic and emotion, and that one cannot help but improve one’s “EQ” (if you like) in embracing the analytical side. The reason for this is that if you are more than an armchair anarchist, if you actually try to live the ideals you promote, you change your behavior. Your emotions inevitably catch up.
I think this is why a lot of people walk the path you describe from anarcho-capitalism toward mutualism and sometimes on through forms of anarchist communism. This is because you already emotionally evolved. Things you became convinced of logically began to reflect on your emotions. Perhaps in spite of yourself you not only began to recognize injustice and oppression, but to *feel* outrage over it, and eventually to empathize with the victims. Maybe this lead you to the point where you started to care more about how to positively improve life rather than simply removing the imposed negatives.
I remember the point in my life where cold indifference to human suffering, trained by a lifetime of being raised in a statist culture, started to crumble. It was after, not before, I rationally integrated anarchist ideals. It’s reached a nearly crippling opposite for me now where outrage and grief often overwhelms my judgement and I end up in situations that don’t help me or anyone else. I think I’ll feel I’ll have truly reached a point of emotional enlightenment when I can strike a balance between being *able* to feel these things fully and deeply without being controlled by them.
6:55 am
Looking back at that, I wish I didn’t use the phrase ‘so called logic’ at all. I think it’s terrible.