In case you missed it, we have published a new 90-page pdf booklet in association with Winter Oak Press, featuring a series of in-depth written conversations between Crow Qu’appelle and Paul Cudenec.
The New Anarchy: Truth, Nature, Beauty and Withness can be downloaded for free here, and below we present an excerpt of Crow's preface:
"In the ruins of this civilization, we need to plant a mighty tree of authentic wisdom that will watch over the health, freedom and future of humankind for many centuries to come.”
So concludes the foreword to The Withway, the 2022 book by Paul Cudenec, the mystic and philosopher increasingly recognized (albeit not by himself) as the world’s greatest living anarchist thinker.
The author makes it clear that this book is not a manifesto, but rather a contribution to the process of political reorientation made necessary by the ideological collapse of the Left in the wake of the COVID psy op.
He states: “The Withway is an attempt to identify the deeper issues at stake and point at a different way of seeing the civilizational choices with which we are being collectively presented.
It is not, as will be readily apparent, a political manifesto or a detailed programme for action. It is, rather, an exploration of ideas which is intended to act as a preliminary signpost, a rough sketch of the way in which many of us know intuitively we ought to be heading”.
To refer to the work as a preliminary signpost is rather modest, for the author sets out an exquisitely well-reasoned argument. If its ideas catch on (and I believe that it is only a matter of time before they do), then we may well look back on this book as a turning point in the trajectory of anarchist philosophy.
So far as I am concerned, this book is as important as Ronald Wright’s A Short History of Progress or David Graeber’s The Dawn of Everything.
Its subject matter is something that is near and dear to my heart, because the philosophy that Paul espouses is pretty much exactly what I also believe.
For this reason, I have a lot to say about The Withway, which is the best articulation of this philosophy which I know of. Therefore, in these interviews I explore some of the ideas which Paul so skilfully elucidates in this ground-breaking new book.
But before I do so, I’d like to set the stage by saying a bit about how my story relates to that of Paul, and to that of Nevermore Media.
The truth is that were it not for Paul Cudenec, Nevermore would not exist, and I do not know what I would be doing with my life.
When I encountered his writing, everything changed for me. I knew what I had encountered. This was the antidote to the poison of post-modern nihilist bullshit which had infected the Left.
I’d found the medicine that could cure the hideous ennui of postmodern alienation, and knew that I had to do something with it. I had been searching for ideas that could serve as a basis for unity for a new political movement, and I had found what I was looking for.
The world was withering for want of wisdom, and I had discovered a fountain of wisdom which seemed to stretch back to the dawn of time.
I had my work cut out for me.
It was in the dark days of lockdown when I resolved to scour the web for whatever authentically revolutionary voices remained amidst the rubble of the Left.
It was heartbreaking to see so many of my supposed comrades betraying the values of the anarchist counterculture.
At that point I felt, for the first time in my life, that punk was pretty much dead. The culture within which I have lived my entire adult life was no more.
It felt like a world had been destroyed.
I remembered the words from a punk song – “If it doesn’t matter now, then it never really did. And without this, we might as well be dead”.
Had everything that I had based my life on since I was fifteen been a lie? If people were so willing to throw their values out the window at mere rumours of a virus, was it not reasonable to assume that they never truly believed in them in the first place?
Maybe anarchism was just a fashion, one that I had taken way too seriously.
And if (almost) no one else believed in the principles of anarchism, could it be that it was because those principles were not sound? Did I need to grow up and accept that state violence, economic exploitation and coercive power were simply the way of the world?
Should I accept that activism is useless, that resistance is futile, and that it is folly to take up arms against the Great Machine, whose destiny has always been to swallow up the whole world?
It was in such bitter spirits that I began my search.
My spirit was soon to be lifted, for it was not long after beginning that I encountered a blog post with an eye-catching title – Anarchists Against Freedom. Was this what I thought it was?
I clicked on it, and was delighted to see that it was. I wasn’t alone! There was someone out there who felt exactly as I did about the absurd phenomenon of so-called anarchists fervently preaching compliance with the authoritarian dystopia being justified with the flimsy-ass excuse of a bad flu.
As soon as I read Anarchists Against Freedom, I was hooked on Paul’s writing. Here was an authentic anarchist voice who had distilled the essence of anarchist philosophy down to its purest possible form.
I dived into his body of work, and discovered to my delight that not only was he a green anarchist, the tradition to which I also belong, but he was also well-versed in metaphysics, mysticism, literature, Jungian psychology, Eastern philosophy, anthropology, archaeology, comparative mythology, and more.
Very soon, I knew that I had encountered the teachings of a true spiritual master.
I did not need to be converted to his way of thinking. It was very much what I already believed in my heart. But his philosophy was much more fleshed-out and complete than mine.
Mine was a philosophy of the heart, and Paul Cudenec had put it down into writing, placing it in its proper place in world history.
He had explained to my intellect what my soul already knew. It was glorious.
To read the rest of the preface and to access the free booklet, check it out here: https://nevermore.media/2023/04/30/the-new-anarchy-truth-nature-beauty-and-withness/