livingfromlove

Facilitate the power of love - confront the love of power

Sat, 28 Aug 2004

Voices from the margins

An important part of this inquiry into domination is spreading the net wide enough, looking at a wide enough range of perspectives. Many of the most interesting voices come from the margins.

Once the cultural distortions attached to it have been lifted—the notion of anarchism has always been a challenge to cultures of domination. I was surprised to find Naom Chomsky in this interview speaking of it approvingly.

Another voice from the margin, John Zerzan describes the damaging imperialism of Western musical tonality (the division of the smooth spectrum of sound into scales of discrete notes and the structures of harmony built on them). Hmm, even the 'the freedom to fly' in the jazz improvisation that I play, is imprisoned in an ideology of tonal and harmonic domination.

The Big Picture - geo-politics - macroeconomics, is an important thread in this inquiry into domination. 'Crazy' behaviour in a person can make sense if you can get close enough to their world to empathically divine what is going on. If we can get past the headlock that says this behaviour is 'irrational' i.e. beyond the reach of any kind of sense-making, even the 'crazy' behaviour of national administrations may make sense, (while remaining insane) I found this overview of the rationale behind US global domination— a talk by David Harvey on 'The New Imperialism'—very helpful.