Author: Christiaan van Gaal

Self-publishing on Amazon

Books, pictures, Poetry

Black cover.jpg

This week I got the idea to self-publish some of my poetry combined with pictures. I have done that before but that was purely for myself and through a photo website, which was great quality but also expensive, like 90 dollars or so. So, I went to the Amazons self-publishing site and looked at some tutorials on YouTube and it seems to work great and for what you get it’s a good deal (I hope, haven’t read all the fine print). I have not received a copy of my little book, so I don’t know what the quality is, especially because I included color pictures, but for the 20 dollars (including postage to Norway) I spend there is not mush to loose…besides my time.

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Crass.

anarchism

crass-picture-13-1200x480I you think about anarchism and music you think about punk, if I think about punk I think about Crass.

The lyrics might not always be refined  but they come straight from the heard and are in essence not different than a pamphlet from a revolutionary anarchist from the 19th century or more learned books from the twentieth century.

I will show here parts of some lyrics that speak to me with links to youtube if you like to listen to it.

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James C. Scott – Two Cheers for Anarchism

anarchism, Books

James C. Scott.jpgTwo Cheers for Anarchism is a book written by James C Scott a political scientist and anthropologist.. It’s a collection of examples of “anarchistic” behavior in daily life and other stories related to the movement. While writing this I almost finished the book and so far I can recommend it but don’t take my word for it.

Excerpt:

Preface

The arguments found here have been gestating for a long time, as I wrote about peasants, class conflict, resistance, development projects, and marginal peoples in the hills of Southeast Asia. Again and again over three decades, I found myself having said something in a seminar discussion or having written

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Max Sterner, the ego and its own.

anarchism, Society

Max Sterner, the ego and its own.

max-stirner.jpgI know about Max Sterner for many years now, mainly as a predecessor of Nietzsche philosophy but I never read anything from him, till yesterday when I started on his most famous book The ego and its own. There is lots of information to find on the internet but Wikipedia says the following about this book:

The Ego and Its Own (German: Der Einzige und sein Eigentum; meaningfully translated as The Individual and his Property, literally as The Unique and His Property) is an 1844 work by German philosopher Max Stirner. It presents a radically nominalist and individualist critique of Christianity, nationalism, and traditional morality on one hand; and on the other, humanism, utilitarianism, liberalism, and much of the then-burgeoning socialist movement, advocating instead an amoral (although importantly not inherently immoral or antisocial) egoism. It is considered a major influence on the development of anarchism, existentialism, nihilism, and postmodernism. Read the rest here.

Excerpt:

Translated from the German by Steven T. Byington. 1907

  1. A Human Life

From the moment when he catches sight of the light of the world a man seeks to find out himself and get hold of himself out of its confusion, in which he, with everything else, is tossed about in motley mixture.

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