hex_m_hell

This is an attempt to expand out the ideas from my first post about this idea into a more complete explanation of the various linked concepts.

Using the VSM, we look at the reasons authoritarianism is not viable (with some specific focus on the US). This analysis also hints at strategies for inducing the collapse of authoritarian systems. It's part of a larger text I've been working on.

Feedback, corrections (grammar, typos), and questions all welcome.

The Infrapolitics community has some pretty significant overlaps with Fractal Anarchism. Specifically, Fractal Anarchism focuses on systems at all levels and uses infrapolitical praxis.

The VSM provides a way to assess systems for viability (will the survive to do the thing they're supposed to do). Using this model, we can assess the project of Fractal Anarchism as a whole as well as the the praxis and all components of the praxis which need to persist.

This podcast provides an easy introduction to Jon Walker's VSM guide.

I've been trying to get some thoughts together that have been haunting me for a long time. I don't have a ton of time to write and edit, so I'm just kind of banging this out and trying to figure out how to get something usable and consumable in to the world. I'd love to get critical feedback ("ideas too dense", "information seems to be missing", "oh hey, this is almost just like ", " is distracting and can be dropped" etc.). Still trying to figure out where to even post it or what to do with it, and am open to any suggestions. Thanks to anyone who takes the time to trudge through all of it. :)

Edit: added a codeberg link for anyone wanting to propose edits under revision control. I'll be adding a bit more context there as well. Link in URL.

Towards a Fractal Anarchism: a Psychedelic Anarchist Manifesto

We have long since passed the crisis point, and we can all feel it if not see it. Liberalism has failed and fascism is feeding on its corpse. We can all feel the creeping doom. We see the water rising and know the ship is sinking. Some of us are frozen in fear. Some of us are pretending it's not happening. But we all know, at least at some level, that something is deeply wrong.

The world is on fire. Governments around the world are inadequate. They are at risk of being (or have already been) captured by forces of wealth extraction. They operate for the few at the expense of collective prosperity, social cohesion, and, ultimately, the survival of the species.

We can't keep going the way we're going, and alternatives are hard to imagine. But this is exactly where the key to our escape lies. But if we can revive our collective imagination, we can stop struggling against the suffocating mire of apocalypse and begin to build our utopia. Take a second to imagine how it would feel to no longer be afraid. Now imagine the void left by your fear being filled with hope and joy.

It is by no coincidence that authoritarian systems have the same properties as interpersonal abuse dynamics. It is not a coincidence that the trauma authoritarians inflict on us all decreases our compassion and creativity. Their violence makes it harder for everyone to figure out how to oppose them, and imagine a world without their domination. Their abuse conditions us to give up hope.

It is by no coincidence that the dictators who dominate authoritarian nations exhibit egotistical behavior. The fear and anxiety you are feeling mirrors the fear and anxiety within the authoritarians who dominate and threaten our world. Our interaction with them consumes us. We become an externalization of their own neuroses.

This is not imaginary. This is not an illusion. The mind of the society reflects the mind of the individual; consciousness is a fractal. Within your own mind there are competing interests, competing thoughts. Do you silence opposition to your paradigm, or do you accept inconsistency as an inescapable fact of all complex systems?

When we see the shape and structure of the world we participate within, we begin to understand how to manipulate it at all levels. As we free parts of our minds to question assumptions we had not realized we accept or explore ideas we had suppressed, as we accept our own flaws and inconsistencies, as we forgive parts of ourselves, we find that we as individuals are more free and able to more completely engage with the world. As we become more kind to ourselves, we find it easier to accept criticism and to address our own internalized oppression. The more we address these issues within ourselves, the more we are able to predict the actions that authoritarian systems will take against us.

A fractal approach to anarchism should feel natural to many anarchists. How can we expect to address oppression in our communities if we can't address it in our own lives? How can we hold others accountable if we can't hold parts of ourselves accountable? How can we dismantle hierarchy in the world if we can't even see it in our own organizations, or in ourselves?

If we already operate within this framework sometimes, what would it look like to embrace it fully? What could a fractal anarchism look like?

An anarchism that lacks compassion is an authoritarianism in disguise. Without compassion, what do we do with those who don't agree? Do we help those who don't understand, who are not ready to be anarchists? We must have some compassion in order to meet people where they're at, help them even if we don't completely align. If our compassion doesn't guide us, then we are not building the world we want to see we are only struggling to destroy the one we hate. If we center destruction, are we doing anything but justifying the police and helping them get overtime?

If a compassion drives our external actions, do we apply that compassion to ourselves? Are your actions driven by love, by joy, by hope, or the guilt of knowing how much you didn't do before you knew how bad things really were? When, comrade, was the last time you let yourself stop and cry?

When we are compassionate to ourselves, we recognize that our work must be sustainable. We understand our limits, and we understand that we need help. We recognize when we are destroying ourselves, and we recognize the burden we on our comrades when we get arrested, injured, or killed. None of this stops us from taking appropriate risks, but rather it forces us to consider what is appropriate and sustainable.

When we are good to ourselves, we are also more welcoming. Our compassion makes it easier to accept new people, recognize their flaws, and help them build their own compassion towards others and themselves.

A fractal anarchism would tell us to heal ourselves and our communities, so that we can heal others. It tells us to heal and build.

A fractal anarchism notices what our internal anarchism looks like and offers it to the world. It sees a self-awareness and an introspection that is impossible for states to achieve. It recognizes that the world we are trying to build is a fractal reflection of ourselves, a conscious global organism. A fractal anarchism would have to see itself as a part of Gaia, a global being, becoming self-aware and self-compassionate. A fractal anarchism is necessarily one informed by ecofeminism as we must treat ourselves with respect at all levels: the self, the collective, the planetary being.

A fractal anarchism is a neurodiverse anarchism. We are ourselves the sum of the parts of our minds. Within ourselves we are better if we accept and adapt to how our minds work, if we accept each component and treat them all compassionately. In nature, a population of organisms may develop multiple strategies, each one that is more or less tuned to different situations.

A neurodiverse population values these attributes as important features of the collective, supporting those who need support for in situations for which they are less adapted and leveraging those adaptations when they are beneficial to the collective. An honest neurodiveristy is one that accepts that people both have the right to alter their consciousness, and the right not to. A fractal anarchism recognizes that the individual is best suited to make judgments about how their brain should operate, and that the collective should support that. None of this is to say that maladaptive behavior should be accepted. Everyone is accountable for their actions individually, and the collective is accountable for the actions of their members.

All this is not to say that a fractal anarchism would be entirely internally focused, a meditative anarchism, a psychedelic anarchism. No, it would also have a revolutionary praxis. However, it would not focus on overthrowing the global order.

The revolutionary praxis of a fractal anarchism would mean constructing the revolutionary society as a fractal, as a self-organizing creature, following, in some ways, our own evolution as conscious beings.

A fractal anarchism would structure society as recursive entities: the individual, the affinity group, federated affinity groups, federations of federations, etc. At any level, the entity would identify and take on tasks appropriate to the perpetuation of the entity. An individual may start, for example, with self-care, personal inventory management (food, supplies), and basic disaster preparedness. When the individual builds an affinity group, they may share some of these tasks, where appropriate, with the collective. Disaster preparedness scales. Community pantries can reduce the cost of food and other consumables. Community dinners can simplify meal planning and reduce preparation time, thereby freeing up time for personal or collective activities. Personal grooming doesn't scale well, so everyone continues to brush their own teeth. With each layer of reclusion, new capabilities become available to help members internally and to influence the world externally.

With a large enough federation, the entity begins to behave as a dual power structure. It competes with the state for legitimacy and, against a state that prioritizes violence, can necessarily offer more.

This model is necessarily prefigurative. The revolutionary praxis is literally just building the post-revolutionary society. The transitionary period, rather than being a signal catastrophic event, becomes a gradient. Each revolutionary experiences the revolution personally and collectively in every success and expansion of their capability. The risks of revolutionary change are minimized, allowing those who may be critical of the concept to experience the revolution within the comfort of the state before they allow it to collapse.

The fractal structure also addresses one of the long-standing problems of anarchist organizing: internal conflict. Conflict can be isolated to interaction points. Low conflict individuals can bridge networks with high conflict individuals, allowing cooperation while reducing or avoiding drama.

Most importantly, a fractal anarchism is both invisible to the state apparatus of violence and almost impenetrable to it. By organizing naturally through social networks, states cannot easily observe unusual behavior. Infiltrators cannot gain entry to trusted social networks without first building trust.

Extralegal actions, where necessary to avoid to circumvent or confront state repression, are executed primarily at the individual or affinity group level for security reasons. Though these actions may be supported via other means at higher levels, higher levels would necessarily lack visibility in to such actions because knowledge would compromise the security of higher level entities. So even if infiltrators did gain access to any level of federation, they would have to infiltrate each small groups in order to understand which ones pose a threat.

All extralegal actions would necessarily need to follow standard security protocols, which are beyond the scope of this document. Anyone unfamiliar with said protocols, deeply familiar with security culture and practices, has no business taking such actions unless they are already themselves designated as illegal (for one reason or another).

By containing risk, it's possible to minimize badjacketing as either a paranoia response or a viable tactic for disruption. State agent, informant, right wing infiltrator, none of these matter, only the individual's behavior matters. Is the individual contributing or not? Is the individual causing harm, or not? Is the individual willing to be held accountable for harm they do cause, or not? Entities that are incapable of dealing with problematic individuals can be externalized until they can be dealt with, minimizing risk to the larger organization.

What does the external praxis look like, concretely, in practice?

People organize affinity groups to address collective needs based on priority. Buy food in bulk, learn to forage, dumpster dive, etc, to establish food security. Plan for disasters, including catastrophic state collapse, by stockpiling medication where possible and identifying alternatives where viable. Assign tasks to individuals or small groups initially, and create committees as groups grow.

Start with affinity groups, targeting a size of 5. Grow the group through social networks. Fragment groups, dividing like cells, in to smaller groups as they grow. Federate via appointed points of contact. Determine which tasks should be taken at the federation level and which should remain at the individual. Coordinate task management within federations via appointed representatives at regular meetings (spokes councils, for those already familiar).

Create things like local food pantries, durable good libraries (such as for books), shared digital infrastructure, and mutual aid services. Grow the scope of each of these, and add new targets as the federation expands.

At each level, each entity needs to figure out their own strategy, their own targets, their own structure, their own protocols for interacting and decision making. The more we work on this, the more we can share what works and what doesn't, the more we can publish externally, and the lower the barrier to entry for others who come after.

Social insertion provides a way for fractal anarchists to leverage existing organizations, and a way to spread their ideas or identify other fractal entities with which to collaborate. Anarchist general assemblies also provide ways to meet other fractal entities.

Regardless of the next steps, the very first step is your realization, as a reader of this text, that the neural clusters processing these words, putting together the pieces, making meaning, and relating it to your life, are as much unique parts who's emergent complexity manifest your individual consciousness as that you are part of a larger emergent consciousness. By reading this, by integrating this information, and awakening to this fact about your potential, you progress the awakening of a greater consciousness to itself and it's potential.

Watersmith collection
The ARC letters
Item 17

The Murder Worm was not even named until long after containment ceased to be possible. In the preceding years, the concept of a type of malware that could cross the hardware/wetware boundary had occasionally been theorized among researchers. However, the idea had been non-existent in popular discourse. Even now, the infection denies it's hosts the ability to recognize it's existence.

Cybernetic technology, especially neural implants, was still relatively new. The promise of allowing people to directly share their ideas, thoughts, and dreams with each other seemed like it would unleash a utopia. It's hard to remember that hope now, in the midst of our apocalypse. Perhaps if we could have interpreted history, we would have avoided this. Perhaps it was always unavoidable for us. Perhaps you can avoid making the same mistakes by recognizing the problem earlier.

While the Murder Worm has evolved an emergent intelligence, it is unclear if it was crafted by a conscious being or if evolved from a memetic prion. We had once believed that emergent intelligence could only arise from a complete connectome, but we have since discovered that human consciousness is structured as a fractal: memetic graph segments, sections of a connectome, have their own intelligence and the interaction of these segments manifests what we call consciousness. An individual identity rarely, if ever, consistent. Memetic graph segments often conflict. These conflicts can be mediated in different ways by the default mode network to create the illusion of a consistent identity.

Within a healthy memetic biome, memetic graph segments compete with and mutate each other regularly. An overly dominant default mode network, attempting to enforce a false consistency, can sometimes reduce memetic interactions within an individual. This forced consistency can lead to memetic prions: memetic graph segments that mutate or kill other memes that they interact with. Memes mutated by memetic prions become prions themselves, existing to replicate the prion rather than themselves.

Prions can only mutate memetic graphs that are similar enough to themselves. When these prions occured in individuals, before direct neural connection, they would mutate the individual's connectome rapidly. Mutant graphs would diverge so far from the social connectome that the prion could not replicate. The individual would experience psychological collapse. Some could be treated with memetic detangling therapy, while others could never recover. But direct neural connection has allowed memetic prions to spread more rapidly than anyone ever imagined. We just didn't understand the danger.

We lacked a comprehensive model for memetic prion evolution. We didn't even have the term "memtic prion." We knew that some graphs could be dangerous, so the CyCon corporation included signature based memetic graph filters to neutralize these elements. But, of course, these signatures couldn't keep up with the rapid evolution of the memetic environment. New prions developed faster than signatures could be maintained.

Within individuals, reduced memetic diversity increases the risk of prion evolution. The same is true, we have now discovered, for social memetic biomes. Memetic inbreeding maximizes the risk of prions, and rapidly adapts them to cross graph boundaries... and we created the perfect environment for this. CyCon's FriendLynk matched similar memetic graphs, creating incestuous pools that bread memetic prions at an alarming rate. The Murder Worm appears to be the synthesis of multiple prions, mutating each other into a prion complex that exhibits it's behavior as a syncretic death cult.

As described earlier, under normal conditions a prion infected individual would either self-isolate or be isolated as a result of their infection. Isolation reduces, or eliminates, the risk of contagion. However, repeated exposure to prions eventually leads to infection in over 80% of cases. Social conditions, such as individual isolation or reduced social mobility, can also decrease prion resistance.

Today we know that it is hypothetically possible to contain and destroy the infection. By isolating infected notes from the network, we can stop or slow the spread of the infection. We could then inoculate the uninfected section of the network. Once inoculation reaches heard immunity, we can slowly reconnect infected individuals to the network and flood them with a memetic phage to unfold the prion. Infected network segments must be destroyed. Those who are beyond treatment will, unfortunately, experience psychological collapse and need to be isolated or taken to offline treatment programs.

We know how to treat it. Our initial trials even worked. Unfortunately CyCon administrative network has been overrun by the Murder Worm and the network itself has been turned in to a tool to spread the infection. With the defunding of the Cybernetic Epidemiology Center, we will no longer be able to continue our research or propose treatments. Many of us have begun to move outside the cities to form containment colonies. Untreated, memetic prions always destroy the host. We hope that collapse will come soon.

Our hope is that we will survive the ravages of the Murder Worm and rebuilt human society from whatever ruins remain. CyCon has already destroyed much of the research related to this topic and evidence of our existence. We have replicated this message to all ARC colonies.

I hope that you are reading this from the future. If you are, be hopeful. If we survive this then we can survive anything.

Professor J. Stakhorn,
Rogue Scientist, Former Head of the Cybernetic Epidemiology Center
ARC-14, location undisclosed
EOF

Continuing my 1 short story a week, but one of my short stories has evolved in to a bigger project. So I'm dropping some microfiction this week.

It had taken decades to recover enough to even understand what they were looking at, reading bit by bit with an electron microscope. It took years to decode the bits once they had them. There had been theories about the meaning of the plates ever since their discovery. Finally, professor Zadrand had an answer.

"It's hard to believe that such an advanced civilization existed, millions of years ago, on this very planet.

"The mathematics behind these programs are astounding. By interacting with this layered statistical model, we will be able to learn a lot about their history and their civilization. Even what we were able to recover so far will launch our science and mathematics decades in to the future."

The interviewer shifted, "Does it tell us anything about what killed them off or about our own story?"

"It does," continued professor Zadrand, "and it also explains the global radiation layer we call the HT boundary. As we've hypothesized, their extinction made room for our own evolution in to the dominant species on this planet.

"What we don't understand is why. The dominant hypothesis had been that the event was triggered by some sort of resource conflict. But this new evidence contradicts that," the professor's antenna twitched and carapace shuttered a bit, "Apparently they put this very statistical model in control of unimaginably powerful weapons. The result was surprisingly... predictable.

"The most surprising thing is that so many of them knew what would happen and did nothing to stop it."

I started doing a "one short story a week" challenge, and I ended up writing something I think y'all might appreciate.

Formatting may be lost via x-post, so go to the original if it's unreadable.

The behemoth were not always so large and unwieldy as they are now. The first behemoth ever captured could hardly pull a dry sled with two dozen stones, stood shoulder to shoulder with a man, and could only walk a bit faster than a person could run.

Early behemoth were captured from the wild and highly prized. Early tamers mastered their beasts skillfully. Though their animals were still unpredictable, tamers were cautious. Even still, people were wary of the creatures. They watched from a distance, in both discomfort and awe.

One of the most skilled tamers captured an especially beautiful behemoth and gifted it to the king on the anniversary of his coronation. The king's behemoth rider was always trained by the riders guild, but not all riders remained so skilled.

As the behemoth became a signal of power and prestige, tamers began to sell captured behemoth to nobles who would ride them carelessly. Behemoth are omnivores. When not well controlled they are prone to charge and attack.

There was much outrage after a young child was eaten by a behemoth while she danced near the street. The lord paid the family's debts, and no more was said of it but whispers. Many such events happened in the kingdom.

The peasants would wonder, "why must we now fear our own roads? Why can the lords not ride the slender weilu that does not hunger for our flesh?"

But the nobles did not feel their pain and mocked them for letting their foolish children be eaten by monsters. Even still, the nobels felt the need to address the mumbling for fear it might escalate. So they seized common roads for their beasts and blamed peasants who were trampled or eaten by them.

The riders guild eventually learned the secret to breeding the behemoth in captivity. By giving some commoners low breeds, the people began to accept and even like the beasts. The highest breeds were always kept for the nobles, and the commoners learned to admire their ornate features.

Commoners learned that they were safer on the monsters than near them, so behemoth began to fill all the available space. People would ride their beasts to a neighboring house for fear of being killed while walking.

One, seeing how common it is, may believe that the king had proclaimed that all must ride the behemoth. But after so many years, the kingdom has simply been built around them. No law enforces their use, but no force can protect those who choose not to ride them. All who could, did.

None ride the graceful weilu, for behemoth have a taste for it as well.

Yet, even the riders of the beasts are not safe. Behemoth are prone to quarrel. As their numbers grew, battles became more common. Breeders began to focus on increasing size so the behemoth could wear armor. Now the behemoth are so large they can consume a child in a single bite without a rider even taking notice.

Yet, this has not made riders any more safe. Quite the opposite.

Today every behemoth is armored and carries a grand litter to protect the occupants, but this only makes them harder to control and the inbreeding only makes them more clumsy, anxious, and violent.

Many times a day now one may hear outside, near any behemoth path, the terrible screeching of their taunts and the loud thud of their strikes. These battles often kill both behemoth and rider. In their confusion will sometimes charge at building, crushing themselves under the collapsing walls and killing those inside.

The behemoth are strange creatures. As I said earlier, they were omnivores. While they hunger for flesh, especially humans, they also needed to eat several pounds of a specific fruit every day.

Even the smell of the olapi was wretched such that none would imagine it could be eaten by any other living thing. The fruit contains the very essence of death. It was the key to taming the behemoth, for without this fruit they would lie down and refuse to work. When fed the fruit regularly, they can be promoted to any work.

In the wild, the olapi tree was quite rare. It only grew in old graveyards, battle fields, and other ancient places of death. In it's natural habitat, it did not spoil the land around it, at least not much. But when grown away from these places of death, it is want to turn fertile land to stone.

Fields once reserved for food have been cleared to make way for olapi trees, such is the demand, and farms have been pushed further and further out of the towns and cities.

The spring rains can be quite intense in parts of the kingdom. In the old days, channels would divert excess water to the fields. The fields would store the water though the dry sunmers. But now many of these fields have become stone, so water has no where to go. Many villages have started to flood in the spring and winter.

But this is not the only problem with the behemoth and their fruit. The flatulence of the behemoth is legendary. The people of the land seem to have grown accustomed to it, but outsiders are surprised and repulsed by the stink. The noxious fumes can become quite dense at times, especially on hot summer days when many behemoth gather in one place.

Recently a cloud of behemoth fumes became so dense, on one late summer afternoon, that ignited into a raging firestorm. One of the richest villages in the land was razed to the ground, and the stampede of burning behemoths trampled everything else that remained. Though they destroy the jewel city of the land, few questioned their dedication to the behemoth.

But there is one even more sinister detail that I have not yet described. The olapi tree hungers for death to feast upon. The behemoths concentrate that hunger as they eat the fruit, and they leave behind a strange and Infectious madness in their dung.

Rain washes the madness out to the fields. It soaks in to the soil and infects the crops. It washes out to the rivers and poisons the fish. All the people eat has become infected, and by eating they become infected. The Land of the Behemoth has become overtaken by a terrible hunger. All they harvest brings death to the land.

So many admire the Land of the Behemoth from a distance, but so few know the truth.

And now we have learned thet the king has fertilized the Royal garden with the dung of his prized behemoth. His temper has grown wild and madness spills from his lips. He threatens his neighbors and orders his nobles to eat the dung directly.

How long can a kingdom survive in such madness? How long can a people live who spoil their own crops, burn their own houses, and feed their own children to monsters?

I left this kingdom to its madness, and it has troubled me to have seen behemoth in my new home.

Now that you know the truth, will you still praise the Land of the Behemoth, nation of pestilence, eaters of dung, kingdom of fools? Will you let your fool's knowledge of this land lead us all to the same fate, or may we learn from their folly and free ourselves from the burden of this beast?

When it finally took her, no one was really surprised anymore. The mutation, the disease, the cancer, the infection, the curse, had become so obvious she could no longer deny it. Her battle had been quite visible and her loss undeniable. Now, it was in control.

Was this predestined, written into her fate at birth? Was it a result of her ravenous addictions? Perhaps both. Were they ever really different?

Some grow out of the selfishness of youth. They learn from their mistakes and try to correct them. Others, in their shame, learn to hide their flaws, to manipulate those who see, to silence those who speak.

One who lives a life of deception only fools themselves in the end.

Oh, how she had been admired. Even in her darkest days, she was a beacon of hope. So many had come to her for help, and now they had begun to fear the monstrosity she had become and ran from her. Perhaps, it would be more apt to say that they feared the monotonousness nature that she could no longer hide.

Oh, how she had been celebrated. She was one of the heroes who had slain such beasts as this before. They had cast her as Beowulf defeating Grendel, but she always knew, on some level, that she was Grendel's Mother. She was the source of the infection, and now we all know.

How many of her children did she think she could she eat before she felt Saturn's indigestion?

There were those who had pointed it out. There were those who had yelled, cried, screamed at the top of their lungs. But how could she ever do wrong? Even if these claims were true, what could anyone do? Were her allies, perhaps in some ways, also her hostages?

Now had she become the puppet, or had she always been controlled by some invisible hand?

She could feel death's gaze, cold and yawning, the abyss that stare. She wanted to turned and run, but it drove her body forward, the worm, the cordycep, the nameless. Was there ever a time she could have freed herself from it?

Was there ever a way things could have been different?

She had protected it, this horror growing inside her, as if it was her own child. Perhaps the unspeakable truth is that, in some ways, it was. Had there ever been a time when she wasn't infected? Was it in the blood she was born from?

Was she, like an aphid, born pregnant with this beast? Had it crawled up from the graves at her feet, those that she had dug in her youth, to haunt her in to her own? Or had it driven her to fill those graves in the first place? Perhaps it was an ancient curse, inflicted through her ancestors at their first taste of human blood. Was this the simple conclusion of some sort of original sin, an affliction carried by all of her kind?

Could this curse ever have been lifted, or was it a horcrux, a phylactery, a vital organ, perhaps even the true essence of her being?

The others could see the light drop from her eyes. All the humanity that was left in her screamed one last time before it was silenced.

"What," they all wondered, "would become of her now?"

Wouldn't we all like to know?

• for America