Links 3/30/2024 | naked capitalism

Yesterday, I had a couple of events that made me think about how we treat each other as people here in the Midwest, USA, in the spring. Good Friday was the day for the third of five planned infusion sessions for stage 4 rectal cancer treatment. The routine was a bit different this time - I had to get a blood test to determine if I was healthy enough to continue the treatment. I had to walk the entire length of the building - the Sideman Oncology Center, a bright, ten-year-old building with curved glass walls, rising up to 10 stories.

While answering questions during registration, I noticed a couple of quite wealthy individuals following the same path, putting on impressive black respirators by the time they reached the registration desk. They started the registration process after I had already finished. I sat a few seats down from his wife, and after a while, I turned to her, noticing that apparently, only the three of us were wearing respirators today.

It's important to note that besides the three of us, there were only two "heroes" and an employee registering visitors at the other end of the floor. I was dressed, as usual for a trip to the hospital, in sweatpants and a soft shirt, which are well-suited for doctor visits, as well as a Kansas City Chiefs hat on my thin, yet still long hair tied in a ponytail.

Patient's spouse

The patient's wife also reacted to my question with visible tension, keeping her face expressionless and looking straight ahead. I couldn't help but laugh, and I continued to look in her direction until she got up and moved four or five seats away.

View from the first floor

From that corner of the building on the first floor, there is a view of Kirkland University, where students walk back and forth to classes, and a busy bus line takes workers to Case Western, the UH medical center, and just a few steps away, the huge Cleveland Clinic complex. Across from the building was a beautiful Presbyterian church in the shape of a cross, advertising Good Friday services, but in the traditional colors of Lent. Almost lying on his side on the grass right by one of the bus stops was a man with a bare, protruding, and very large belly. Everyone around this man, and there were many, was dressed in hats and winter coats—it was cold. And this man kept gasping or doing something else.

• Anarchism offers a philosophy that believes it is possible to organize our human affairs without a ruler, without state institutions, and even without the Madisonian Trinity.
• Self-organization is an anarchist tool for achieving set goals - it does not have to wait for some vanguard to overthrow the state in order to seize power and dictate.
• Anarchism is the future, as many are losing confidence in existing institutions, and our class differences, exacerbated by schismogenesis, make party and possibly even union organizing difficult, if not impossible, in the current legal framework.

Perhaps then we will discover that it is anarchism that offers a philosophy which considers it possible to organize our human affairs without a ruler, without state institutions, and even without the Madisonian Trinity. And self-organization—the tool of anarchism for achieving set goals—does not have to wait for some vanguard to overthrow the state in order to seize power and dictate.