Lucid Bacchanalia

I've been reading Gabriel Kuhn's Sober Living for the Revolution, a bit of a history/overview of leftist hardcore straight edge politics. The sort of thing that mostly appeals to a niche audience, I guess, but I guess I'm part of that niche. It's a decent book. Interviews, mostly, with some manifestos thrown in. Great interview with Ian MacKaye, great interview with Dennis Lyxzen.

And I particularly like the manifesto "Wasted Indeed: Anarchy and Alcohol" by the CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective.

Here's a bit:

In this push-button culture, we've become used to conceiving of ourselves as simple machines to be operated: add the appropriate chemical to the equation to get the desired result. In our search for health, happiness, meaning in life, we run from one panacea to the next-- Viagra, vitamin C, vodka-- instead of approaching our lives holistically and addressing our problems at their social and economic roots. This product-oriented mindset is the foundation of our alienated consumer society: without consuming products, we can't live! We try to buy relaxation, community, self-confidence-- now even ecstasy comes in a pill!

And:

These partisans of Rebellious Drunkenness and advocates of Responsible Abstinence are loyal adversaries. The former need the latter to make their dismal rituals look like fun; the latter need the former to make their rigid austerity seem like common sense. An "ecstatic sobriety" which combats the dreariness of the one and the bleariness of the other-- false pleasure and false discretion alike-- is analogous to the anarchism that confronts both the false freedom offered by capitalism and the false community offered by communism.