Echo

Philoclasticism

The Affinity to Destruction

Destruction is the ultimate affirmation of my individuality. It is what makes me who I am. The philosophy of destruction is in my actions, I need no further explanation, no justification. However, I will still try to show you why I look simply to destroy.

Remember the first time you broke something with purpose? Maybe it was a jar, maybe it was a window, maybe you tore down a wall. What it was that you destroyed doesn’t matter- just the feeling you had when you did it. That feeling of strength. That feeling of satisfaction. You are feeling freedom, in a small dose. You are feeling your decision to be self-propulsive. The breaking of a mindset that tells you that creation is the only good thing. The destruction of barriers. You are feeling the ability to be who you want, you recognize yourself in the staunch opposition to what everyone else tells you is morally right. You are freeing yourself.

You understand something in that moment- what you want can only come from rubble and ashes. You understand that destruction is self-propulsion in itself, but that it also allows for future self-propulsion by removing barriers.

We are told our entire lives- don’t touch that, you’ll break it. Leave that alone, it’s old and beautiful. That isn’t yours. And now I say to you, comrades, please break that. Don’t leave that alone, be iconoclastic and smash it!

No thing is so sacred that it deserves to be saved from us.

But what do I know? Me, a teen. A savage. An iconoclast. Insurrectionist. Truly, what do I know?

I know that all I wish for is to be free. I do not wish to fill roles that are designed to oppress. So I fight. I destroy. I attack.

I am here to affirm myself, and I will succeed.

The feeling that you got when you broke your first jar, I live for that. I am addicted to that. I became addicted the day the police pepper-sprayed me. The day I learned to push back. The day I learned that they not only deserved opposition, but that I could be the opposition!

So, my opposition lies in destruction. With Renzo Novatore, I say, “Every society you build will have its fringes, and on the fringes of every society, heroic and restless vagabonds will wander, with their wild and virgin thoughts, only able to live by preparing ever new and terrible outbreaks of rebellion!”

I am a restless vagabond. And so I prepare. I plan. I think.

I grow weary of watching an idle world, waiting for a revolution. So I begin my own, permanent insurrection! I will keep going long after the world has achieved communism, or any other system, because I strive for a world without systems. I strive for a tumultuous world, where people are able to be fully self-propulsive, and thus truly be unique.

And destruction is then the way to loosen the structures, to be self-propulsive, to truly determine your future.

I only wish to see a world filled the self-affirmation of individuals, filled with the destructive force that filled our hearts with that feeling of self-propulsion. I wish to see iconoclasts roaming the earth, looking for new things to tear apart!

And my promise to all of them- I will always be among you. And if even one person reads this and understands the white-hot truth behind our destruction, the philosophy behind our offensive action, and understands the feeling that filled their heart when they broke their first jar, then we have hope, for there are others who wish to be free. Others who wish to destroy.

And once we have destroyed that which oppresses us? Then, and only then, can we be free. Only then can we show our true selves, can we truly be individuals, can we truly be openly unique. As of now our uniqueness can only be defined by this or that characteristic which we can select to define ourselves, rather than casting ourselves on the world through being free, and finding out where we take ourselves. Individuals cannot be defined as they are always something new, and not once is one a replica of another. So we attack that too- the idea that we must be defined. Consider what Noam Chomsky once said: the smart way to keep people passive is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but to allow very lively debate within that spectrum. I would change this by saying that the smart way to keep people oppressed is strictly limit their options in who they may be, but allow them to struggle fiercely in trying to find the option that defines them the best.

So let us no longer be defined!

And the key to this freedom that comes with being undefined is destruction.

Freedom doesn’t come from creation- creation stresses roles and creates the idea that the created is somehow to be saved. Destruction only leaves empty space to be used however one sees fit.

My opposition to creation, however, should not be seen as an opposition to arts such as painting or sculpting, nor should it be taken as an opposition to owning things that make you happy. These are different from things like cities and farms, as they do not impose roles on us and they do not support civilization.

So, why have we always veered away from the path of destruction? Why not destroy?

And finally, I propose what I have been saying throughout this entire essay- the idea of philoclasticism: the affinity to destruction. Of course, this entails more than just the love of breaking shit (which is, albeit, not a bad thing), but also the realization of destruction and it’s relation to being self-propulsive. Like I said earlier, destruction is an act of self-propulsion in itself, but it also opens up the possibility for other opportunities. In this way, destruction is the most complete form of self-propulsion.

However- this may lead you to a disturbing conclusion, if you don’t understand what it means to be self-propulsive. You may end up coming to the conclusion that you can use philoclasticism to justify fucking people over. But you would be wrong. Being self-propulsive is freedom, and as the Invisible Committee says in The Coming Insurrection, freedom is the “practical capacity to work on [our connections], to move around in their space, to form or dissolve them”. This means we cannot afford to form crystallized roles if we wish to be free, as we will not be able to work on our relationships. When you are simply fucking people over, you are imposing a role on them, subjugating them to a will as you see fit. And suddenly, your ability to be free is lost, because you are forming roles for yourself, which crystallize. You lose the ability to act in the ways you wish, to work on your relations, because you are now in the role of the subjugator, and until you end that relationship of being a subjugator, you can’t be free. You’ll be forced to interact with people as a subjugator, rather than interacting with them in a way that represents you.

I expect no one to take this position, as it is a hard position to accept. But let me encourage you to do something- go out right now, and take something you held to be too important to destroy, and do exactly that. Learn to remember that feeling, that feeling of self-propulsion, and become addicted- become philoclastic!