But how might political forms respond if, in addition to familiar approaches to resistance, temperament was also gauged? Considering temperament, uprising, rioting, and sabotage are often the gentlest response to much greater structural violence from a dominant regime, and sometimes a direct assault is the only way to unseat abusive power. At the same time, when considering temperament, the Left wisely stayed away from the insurrection at the US Capitol so as not to deliver a fight that might have been used to justify violence. Inciting violence might be considered to be politically radical but temperamentally conservative and conformist. A activist identifies an injustice and takes a stance against it. But while not softening any resolve about fighting that injustice, they might also work to dull binaries—outwitting the superbug’s schemes and robbing them of their white sugar fuel.
Medium Design considers a spectrum of evils—capitalism, fascism, racism, whiteness, imperialism, xenophobia, and sectarian violence—as well as the ensuing dangers of non-human atmospheric and biological agents. This is not a betrayal of any one crucial struggle. (Maybe it is the Enlightenment mind that makes this category mistake—this mistaking of part for whole.) Instead it reflects a keen sense of the ways that political superbugs run rings around singular evils and singular solutions. Singularity only makes it easier for them to keep you in a divisive fight and do whatever they want with you. But a spectrum has a better chance of gathering terms that migrate between multiple struggles to build global solidarity.
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Finding the means to short-circuit and transition away from abusive organizations and industries can also work on their temperament to simultaneously defuse and unwind. These efforts potentially benefit from the insanity of the weak and friable fights as well the contorted logics and lies used by those who hoard power. Countering authoritarian power requires all the techniques we have—direct, indirect, and everything in between.
