hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3335.txt

Episode: 3335
Title: HPR3335: For your consideration, the Anarcho Book Club
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3335/hpr3335.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 21:00:40

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3335 for Friday, 14th of May 2021.
Did the show is entitled?
For your consideration, the ENERCO Book Club, and is part of the series podcast recommendations
that is hosted by Ken Felon, and is about 22 minutes long, and carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, this is an example of the podcast that was featured on New World Order.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
That's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's Honest and Fair at An Honesthost.com.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Felon, and you're listening to another episode of HPR15.com.
You're listening to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Today, a podcast recommendation, the ENERCO Book Club.
First, heard about this one when Tlatu interviewed Herga on Gnu World Order Episode 397,
link the show notes, and link to the website is also in the show notes.
So sit back, relax and enjoy this CC-0 public domain piece of content.
I started ENERCO Book Club because I wanted to explore the different philosophies of anarchism.
For the longest time, I was one of those who classified themselves as a specific sect of anarchism.
I classified myself in a range, in a very narrow range of anarchism.
And specifically, it was the anarcho-capitalist camp, but I took a step into the world of
the greater realm of anarchism by reading Emma Goldman, because I wanted to know where it all came
from, where all of the different philosophies derived their meaning.
And in the past, I studied language and philosophy.
You may have heard me on Gnu World Order whenever I talked about my studies at university, studying
a few different languages, German being my primary realm of study, and Old Icelandic, and
kind of those tutonic languages. But then I also studied the Romance languages, like Italian,
French, Latin, and Spanish. And my focus was not on studying these languages so that I could
speak them more fluently, although that was kind of a secondary goal. My focus was more studying
the roots of these languages and studying how these languages worked and how they affected
the populations and the individuals that spoke them. So I guess you could say it was more of a
sociological study. And so if you ask me right now to speak to you in German, I more than likely
wouldn't be a great candidate for that. Instead, I can tell you a lot about the German language.
I can tell you a lot about the Old Icelandic or Old Norse language. I can tell you a lot about
the Spanish language or the Italian language, specifically Latin as well as it pertains to
all of these languages. And I say all that not just to give you a background, but also I say all
that to say that in these studies, I have found a common trope amongst philosophers in each of these
different languages, like the Latin philosophers, the Spanish philosophers, the Spanish poets,
primarily, and the Latin poets for that matter, the German philosophers and poets and more so than
any, I studied the Icelandic literature and philosophies. And I focused on that because
well, where I was attending university, there was a lot more resources where I could study those
subjects. And it all kind of led to Chomsky, Nome Chomsky and his books on language, his books on
anarchism. And I had never actually read on anarchism by Nome Chomsky, but I will be eventually.
I still haven't read it. I have read so many of Chomsky's works, but eventually something led me
down this path. And I discovered anarchism. Now, the way I discovered it was more through
the American libertarian community. And so I was kind of excluded or I was my mind and my world
view was kind of narrowed down to this anarcho-capitalism viewpoint. But the more I've read since starting
this podcast and before, it's what I had read before that had really encouraged me to start this
podcast, this journey, you might say. And the more I read, the more I realized that anarcho-capitalism
is a tiny little sect. And so I wanted to discover the other sects of anarchism. And so I did.
And since August, whenever I released the first podcast episode of anarcho-book club,
I have learned so much and it has made me realize if you have listened to the episode of
New World Order that I did with Klaatu, you will see there's one kind of almost, I don't know if
you'd call it a principle or not, but there's one thing that kind of sticks out to me. And that is
that we are all anarchists. We all are individuals. And we all make our own choices. And the only
thing that limits us that may make us think, no, I'm not an anarchist. The only thing that gives us
that idea is the powers that would oppress us or would enforce their own morality or their own
rules upon us. And I learned long ago from studying the languages and the poets that there is one
thing that law can never do. There's one thing that a government can never do or an overarching
power can never do. And that is they cannot legislate morality. They never could and they never
will be able to. And that is because within the spirit of every individual, there is still an
individual mind. There is still an individual person who makes their own choices. And any choice
that an individual makes cannot be, how would you say it? Any choice that an individual,
any choice that an individual makes is their own choice. And when I've learned about anarchism,
because whenever, well, I should back up, when I started learning about anarchism, I thought it was,
in my mind, it was this political philosophy. But in reality, when reading all of these books,
I'm realizing it's not a political philosophy. So to speak, it's, it is a human philosophy,
a human urge, a human need to be separate and apart from some sort of oppressive power,
some oppressive regime, some giant conglomerate that wants to hold you down as an individual and
integrate you into greater society as a cog in their great machine to be used for their purpose.
And instead, we want, we as anarchists want to be separated from that to step out of that and to
to choose our own way. And that's what it is to be an anarchist. It is to, it is to try to step
away from that to stop contributing to the great machine that seeks to enslave everyone to their
purpose. An anarchist steps away from that and an anarchist seeks their own path. And some of
the things I've learned from reading the aggrists and from reading the the Kropotkins and all of the
other anarchists is that that doesn't mean to to to to seek to be an individual and to choose your
own path does not mean that you separate yourself and isolate yourself. You don't become your own
island of self sustainability. I mean, you could, but that it that tends to be a less successful route
to go. Instead, you separate yourself. You become your own individual self, but you do it through
a system of mutual aid that you you develop with your peers and your neighbors and your
community and you form communities. And now this can all lead back to creating some sort of
grand overarching power that seeks to impose its will upon the individual. And I understand that.
And I don't claim to have some sort of knowledge to stop that or to refute that that formation.
But one thing that I do know is as long as there are people, there will be anarchists. And that
is because as long as there are people, there are there will be individual minds who seek their own
ends, who seek their own individuality. And that's one of the things that sort of prompted me
to start this whole book club so that we can all kind of absorb the knowledge of past anarchists
like Chomsky, although he is still current. He is still alive. But to absorb his knowledge,
to absorb the knowledge of Kropotkin, to absorb the knowledge of Bakunin and Imagoldman. But
ultimately the stated goal or maybe unstated goal of the book club, anarcho book club is it's not
to get you the listener to to find one of these one of these anarchists and say this is I'm a
Bakuninist. I'm a Chomskyite. It's not to do that. It is to have so that we can all read these and
glean from them what we will to glean nuggets of wisdom from each of these books and apply that to
our own personal individual philosophy. And that means some of us may be more in line. The way
our minds work may say, may inform us in a way that Chomsky may appeal to us more than Bakunin.
Or Bakunin may appeal to us more than Imagoldman or their philosophies, the philosophies that they
developed. But as an added layer of complexity, we also all understand that Imagoldman developed her
own philosophy, her individual philosophy based on the things that she had read. And she builds on
the backs of or on the works of the the giants that became before her. She builds on the philosophies
that came before her own philosophy. And this is sort of the the argument of Prudol when he says
property is theft. He says that all that you have was someone else's at once one time before.
All that you have all that you know comes from those before you. And this is a this is a
a little nugget of wisdom that I gleaned from his works. Though I may not agree with everything that
he put forth and I don't. But I do I do see some wisdom in the words that he wrote down. No
matter how pompous I thought he sounded whenever if you if you've listened to that episode, you may
notice that I I kind of go on about how he sounds a little bit full of himself and maybe he is
or maybe he was. I don't know. But we I've gleaned something from that that is that everything we have
everything we do is built upon something that came before us. And there's the mutualism
of Kropatkin. There's the mutualism of the mutualists that's we work together to build this philosophy.
We work together to develop our own worldviews our own ideologies. But I would implore any of you
dear listeners to not let your ideology rule your path to continue to strive to better yourself.
And that is exactly why I wanted to start this book club the anarcho book club. It's because I want
I want to develop my own individual philosophy. But also encourage anyone who's listening to develop
their own. And that's why this this podcast is creative common zero license. It's public domain
because I don't want to restrict it in any way shape or form. I don't want to restrict it from anyone
who wants to use it. Any of these audio clips, these bits and bytes that I put out on the web
that I that I network with you the dear listener and anyone else they're free to use,
free to cut up, free to do with what you will. And in my mind no restrictions. And I have to give
credit to Ken Fallon of hacker public radio for referring me to that license because before I
use the WTFPL license, which was just a completely non restrictive license, but it was lacking in
some areas. Not licensing areas, but sort of a public image area. Not it wasn't as recognized by
anyone as far as I can tell. And whereas the creative commons licenses are recognized a lot
a lot better by the community and by anyone else out there. And besides all that it makes putting
these up on LBRY a lot easier because they already have a pre-formatted option for the
CC zero license, the creative commons zero license. So and anything that can make this easier is good
in my book. So so this is kind of just I just wanted to make this episode as an introduction
to the anarcho book club. And the things that we've read so far are minuscule compared to what
there is out there of anarchists. And we don't just read anarchists in this book club. If you're a
new listener or if you you just found this for the first time, we have read Metamorphosis by Franz
Kafka or maybe it's the Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. And we have read Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut.
And both of those are both of those authors are not strictly anarchists, but there are there are
things within their works that we can glean for our own personal philosophy. But then again,
I would I would stress that I think we all are anarchists. So in a sense, they are anarchists.
Whether they claim to be or not, their literature is not considered broadly by the by the wider
community to be anarchist works. But I personally do consider their works to be in a sense anarchist
works. And I'm not going to use that sort of excuse to just read whatever I want to read. Though we
I suppose we could we could read Harry Potter and draw some sort of anarchist philosophy from it.
Some sort of philosophy that would benefit us as individuals. Because in the end, I think
an anarchist is simply just an individual who makes their own choices, which encompasses the whole
world of human and all of humanity. So I guess what I'm going with this then is
anarcho book club is for all whether you claim yourself to be an anarchist or whether you're
anarcho curious, which is a term that I've seen mentioned on the Fediverse on mastodon specifically.
And that's another thing. Part of what I wanted to sort of help to educate or help to
bring to awareness for my listeners is the existence of something called free software,
or open source software, which most since I only I don't really advertise this podcast anywhere,
I mostly put it on LBRY, I put it on mastodon, or at least post whenever I post a new episode on
mastodon. So in both of those communities are fairly aware of the free software and open source
communities. However, I did create a section on the website specifically for free software,
because there are things, there are resources that I want to advertise to any of my listeners,
whether you be from the free software world or not, just to kind of reinforce as an anarchist,
we should always be seeking ways or methods to free ourselves from some sort of an oppressive
power. Be it the state which free software can help you out with as well, or be it some sort of
mega-corp or conglomerate like Google or Microsoft, and you can free yourself with free software,
because free in free software is, it stands for free as in freedom, not free as in free beer,
although most of free software is or tends to be free to download. By its very nature, because if
the source is free, if the source is out there, anyone can build it and package it for their own
system, including Windows or Apple or Mac OS I should say. So by design it can be free,
though it is highly encouraged and I do regularly donate to the software that I use most.
So this whole introduction to the anarcho-book club is kind of a way to kind of, I guess it's a
state-of-the-club sort of address here, and it has nothing to do with what we've been reading,
which if you are just joining us, we have been reading on language, which is near and dear to my
heart, because this is one book that I actually haven't read, I thought I had, but I haven't
actually read this book by Chomsky, and it is a delight to see. And he is as dense as I
remember him being from back in my university days. So that's what we've been reading, and we'll
read others, I'll announce. This one, the on-language, will take probably a couple of episodes to get
through, and then at the end of the next episode I will announce the next book that we'll be reading.
And I try to pick smaller works, so it's easy to read quickly, and be prepared to kind of,
well, you can listen to the podcast, which are basically just my thoughts on the book,
and then engage with me, or engage with the community that is on mastodon so far.
That's the only place I have found so far that we could, that we can use to discuss these things.
I'm considering other options, but so far I think mastodon does a pretty good job of facilitating
this sort of discussion. So in through discussion, through kind of a unity of method, we can each grow
as individuals and as anarchists, and that's kind of the whole point of the anarcho-book club.
So this is just going to be this kind of short episode here, and just kind of an introduction,
a state of the club, and I hope you enjoy it. I hope you enjoyed this one, and I hope you
enjoy the whole podcast. If you do, please, please feel free to send me a message on mastodon.
My, you can reach me there, I'll put the link in the description, but you can reach me there by going
to, if you have a mastodon account already, just search for me, I am at Herog,
or in long form at Herog at dobs.town. And if you're not on mastodon, consider joining. It is a
free, as in freedom, free piece of software that is hosted in various places. You have different
instances, different servers, basically, and you can join whichever one you want. I'm at dobs.town,
but it federates, everything federates together so that we can all talk, no matter which server you're
signed up on, it is federated, and decentralized. There is no central authority over mastodon,
or pluroma for that matter, which is a similar piece of software, which we won't get into in this
short little audio clip. So join me there, send me a message, follow me if you want updates on the
club, or just random thoughts that I have. And you can also, if you just have a single specific
question, and you'd rather just ask and not really engage in a wider community, you can email
the club at anarchobookclub at riseup.net. And I'm usually pretty responsive, assuming work hasn't
taken over my life for a couple of days. So those are the two best methods of getting a hold of me.
You can also comment on the LBRY videos as well if you'd rather do that. So yeah, that is the club,
that is an anarchobook club. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at those
places, and I think that's it. I do hope to see you guys there. I hope to see you guys kind of
join in on the club. There's no official sign up or anything, so basically all you do is you can
just listen and read along and send me messages or make a public post about the club. I don't
I don't really care what you do. It's, we're all individuals here. We are all anarchists here.
So, but I do invite you to join me. Thank you.
You've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at HackerPublicRadio.org.
We are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday, Monday through Friday.
Today's show, like all our shows, was contributed by an HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast, then click on our contribute link to find out how
easy it really is. HackerPublic Radio was founded by the Digital Dove Pound and the Infonomicon
Computer Club, and is part of the binary revolution at binrev.com. If you have comments on today's
show, please email the host directly, leave a comment on the website or record a follow-up episode
yourself. Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released on the Creative Commons
Attribution. Share a light 3.0 license.