Anarchocovenism

Anarchocovenism is an open source religion.

Why?

As we enter the terminal phases of capitalism, many have realized that we must escape. But how? Capitalism and the modern liberal state are a mutation of divine right feudalism. They are a new story created to justify an old order. Structurally, divine right feudalism and late stage capitalism are quite similar: power is passed by birthright, structured as a pyramid, and justified by invoking an invisible and incomprehensible power.

The lineage that lead to the feudal state obviously leads through the church. More interestingly, the very first institutions that look states came directly from ancient temples. The state has always been a religious institution. The modern narrative of the secular state is ultimately a deception (intentional or not). Some have pointed out that late stage capitalism and the liberal states that embrace it resemble a death cult. This is, in fact, literally true.

Then the question becomes, how does one escape a cult who's members are backed by and include police and military forces around the world?

It is sometimes the case that information derived from one type of system can be used to understand another, and some rules apply to all sufficiently complex systems. Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem proves that any system as complex as mathematics is necessarily either inconsistent or incomplete. Gödel violated the constraints of Typographical Number Theory by encoding the system within itself so that it could ignore those constraints.

This pattern of attack should be familiar to anyone who's ever violated the technical security constraints of a jail or sandbox system. For anyone not familiar, a "jail" or "sandbox" is a set of constraints applied to a programming language or operating system such that the possible behaviors are more limited than the set normally available within the operating system or language. As a (simplified but) concrete example, sometimes an incorrectly configured Linux container can be escaped by mounting /dev/ within the container, mounting the hard drive inside of that, and pivoting the root to the mounted drive.

This pattern can be applied to any system of rules.

The State justifies it's existence by providing services. It collects taxes (ostensibly) to pay for those services. It does not pay taxes. It has the ability to create rules and enforce those rules on it's citizens. Within the US, there is an institution that collects money to pay for services, does not pay taxes, and can selectively ignore some of the rules of the state. Churches, via the 1st amendment, are able to reference and modify the rules of the state without directly leveraging power against the state. These institutions are a source of inconsistency.

Christian nationalists have leveraged this inconsistency to build a dual power system, through which they can manipulate the operation of the state. Every crack they create is one we should be able to leverage against them.

The strategy of the right in the US within the political system is to block and dismantle supportive state institutions as rapidly as possible through any means available. While the moderates (since there is no left) rush to restore these institutions, the right expands systemic violence. This strategy requires little to no competence to execute (as demonstrated by Trump). Meanwhile, the strategy of creating and supporting institutions is incredibly laborious. Because it is easier to destroy than to build, any strategy that focuses on the destruction of state institutions will inevitably succeed.

This is why we should create an open source religion. We can remove supportive institutions from the domain of the state. As the Syrian Civil War demonstrated, whomever provides bread in a famine becomes the defacto authority. As the state removes support, it loses it's legitimacy and becomes dispensable. Meanwhile, an institution that provides support gains legitimacy and becomes indispensable.

The only problem with religions is that they tend to be used to control people. This is why we should create an open source religion. Religion should serve the needs of people, not the other way around.

How?

Run build.sh to build the epub, pdf, and html versions of the initial text.

Use this as is or fork it to form your own coven (legally a church). Push changes back if you think they would be valuable. This is the first repository, but it should not be the only. It absolutely should not be considered authoritative, as no such concept can or should exist for this religion.