More Thoughts on Reaction

AngieSpeaks says that in the marxist sense ‘reaction’ merely means ‘amenable to capital.’  I guess that makes sense.  How many reactions have I seen that ultimately are amenable to capital?  And let’s keep in mind how vastly adaptable capital is to any phenomena here.  You blow up a building - what’s the response going to be?  More police, more public opinion shaping.  More reification of the carceral state, all that shit.

Most initial responses to something such as a police shooting sound reactionary:  a hastily assembled march.  Anything intended for youtube and social media in its conception and realization.  Mainstream music and movies…the movies especially.  Maybe that’s why so many movies don’t feel right.  

So what is a response that isn’t reactionary?  Or given capital’s saturation in all things, what are the least reactionary choices we can make when formulating a response to, say, another state-on-citzen murder?

Well.  Probably something that doesn’t take place on social media.  Conversations that happen without the pressure of needing to be ‘productive’ or ‘solutionary.’ My initial thought - which is also my frame of reference - is the kind of community organizing under which I was trained. My mind goes to the old outs: we need to establish authentic relationships.  Ones that aren’t even contingent on ‘action,’ but rather the action being the recognization that people need one another to survive and our continued reliance on the state for survival ensures its dominance over us.

We need the rituals that help us metabolize and make meaning of: life and living, death and dying.    We rely on mass culture (and its current false fractal iteration) for this and it undermines our ability to make anything generative.  It points back to itself as the way through it all which only leaves us stuck.