Anarchist Roll Call

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
21

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Varqanir wrote:
dhickey, the really ironic thing is that your avatar, the Gadsden flag, embodies perfectly the anarchist ideology.

Anarchy as I understand it isn’t about dismantling society, or blowing up buildings, or creating chaos.

It is nothing more or less than a commitment to not initiate force against another, and expect the same courtesy in return.

Just like the rattlesnake doesn’t seek out human victims and attack them unprovoked, but is prepared to strike if trod upon.

I believe that anarchy works best in relatively small societies (say, 100-500 members), and only among people who are capable and responsible. A small group of capable, responsible people can build their own roads, put out their own fires, provide for their common defense, and police their own malefactors. I’ve seen this work in Indonesia and Japan. No reason it can’t work anywhere there are capable, responsible people.

It is only the irresponsible and the incapable who need governing.

This is an honest question, Varq. Why is your description of true anarchy so…unanarchistic?

[/quote]

It’s because your understanding of anarchy is twisted by pop culture and government propaganda.

22

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
As an anarchist, I agree. The best way to “attempt to change society” is to just ignore those in power and start advocating the importance of free and unfettered markets.

There are actually some powerful arguments FOR world government:

"So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might.

First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a â??global war on terrorâ??.

Second, it could be done. The transport and communications revolutions have shrunk the world so that, as Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, has written: â??For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible.â?? Mr Blainey foresees an attempt to form a world government at some point in the next two centuries, which is an unusually long time horizon for the average newspaper column.

But â?? the third point â?? a change in the political atmosphere suggests that â??global governanceâ?? could come much sooner than that. The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty."

http://www.iterasi.net/openviewer.aspx?sqrlitid=f0upaqhl20qjsgf5cv3aaq
(Dude blogs in the London Financial Times)

In addition, the ability of small groups to inflict tremendous damage is rising exponentially. Only an all-powerful all-encompassing government with absolute power could crush such groups. As long as the ability of small groups is rising, anarchy would be a disaster.

[/quote]
HH, I agree. If I had a lust for seeking total power over everyone else I would see no other way to bring it about that with world government.

Fortunately, I do not have those goals in mind.

23

[quote]kaaleppi wrote:
Varqanir wrote:

The San bushmen of the Kalahari have been living under the same system of non-governance since the Paleolithic times. Granted, they haven’t developed technology, they don’t wage war, and until recently they didn’t even practice agriculture, but they are the best example of communalist anarchy that we have.

I would say that civilization itself is the cause of death for cities.

Hey, cities are the cancer of this earth. With their infrastructures and logistics, the way in which they destroy land around them, they are like cancer cells. It’s a japanese that presented this thought, but I can’t recall his name.[/quote]

Mircea Eliade said this in The Sacred and the Profane. I’ve heard it attributed to a few sources, but you don’t have to be a philosopher to make the connection. Just look at an aerial photograph of a city. Looks more than anything else like a cancer cell.

25

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

Mircea Eliade said this in The Sacred and the Profane. I’ve heard it attributed to a few sources, but you don’t have to be a philosopher to make the connection. Just look at an aerial photograph of a city. Looks more than anything else like a cancer cell.[/quote]

Thank you for the correction. I have actually read The Sacred and the Profane, but it’s a long time ago. The connection I rememer is some japanese ecophilosophist farmer whose text I read a couple a yers ago. I don’t remember details. But anyway, I haven’t forgotten that metaphor. It’s a simplification, but it bears the weight of truth.

26

[quote]pushharder wrote:
This is an honest question, Varq. Why is your description of true anarchy so…unanarchistic?

[/quote]

“Unanarchistic” is a double negative that equals “archistic,” a non-word that means “with a chief or ruler.” My definition of true anarchy does not include chiefs or rulers, so I guess I’m not sure what you’re asking.

Do you mean to ask “why is your description of true anarchy so dissimilar to the common perception of anarchy?”

27

[quote]kaaleppi wrote:
Varqanir wrote:

Mircea Eliade said this in The Sacred and the Profane. I’ve heard it attributed to a few sources, but you don’t have to be a philosopher to make the connection. Just look at an aerial photograph of a city. Looks more than anything else like a cancer cell.

Thank you for the correction. I have actually read The Sacred and the Profane, but it’s a long time ago. The connection I rememer is some japanese ecophilosophist farmer whose text I read a couple a yers ago. I don’t remember details. But anyway, I haven’t forgotten that metaphor. It’s a simplification, but it bears the weight of truth.[/quote]

You’re likely thinking of the great Japanese microbiologist and natural farmer Masanobu Fukuoka, who wrote The One-Straw Revolution and The Natural Way of Farming. He also used the city-as-cancer cell metaphor.

29

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

You’re likely thinking of the great Japanese microbiologist and natural farmer Masanobu Fukuoka, who wrote The One-Straw Revolution and The Natural Way of Farming. He also used the city-as-cancer cell metaphor.[/quote]

Thank you once again. I thought you might know the man. The Natural Way of Farming is the name of the book. It wasn’t what I was actually looking for, but it was interesting never the less.

30

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
pushharder wrote:
This is an honest question, Varq. Why is your description of true anarchy so…unanarchistic?

“Unanarchistic” is a double negative that equals “archistic,” a non-word that means “with a chief or ruler.” My definition of true anarchy does not include chiefs or rulers, so I guess I’m not sure what you’re asking.

Do you mean to ask “why is your description of true anarchy so dissimilar to the common perception of anarchy?”[/quote]

I believe it was because Push incorrectly thinks that anarchists are unorganized rather than unruled. You alluded to it best working in a society of very few people. I think he sees that as a form of government. Rather, you never even suggested what kind of organizations they might be.

For all we know there could be professional guilds, universities, charitable organizations, farming villages, and many others that would exist in the market of ideas and be the result of the greater desires of those cultures. The difference is they need hold no allegiance to any particular idea and are free to change their minds and act in their own best interest to obtain that effect.

Organization is spontaneous.

31

I prefer to call a lack of government “anarchism”
versus “anarchy” because of the negative connotations the latter carries…

but yes, I tried the party system, I tried to support democracy and it failed me
thus I am back to my roots

I am an anarchist as well!

32

Believing that anarchy could work is just as naive as believing communism could work.

And separate militias functioning independent of each other instead of an army? Are you fucking kidding? I guess some people don’t actually like reading history, but aside from that beautiful, idealized version of Lexington and Concord, the British slaughtered us in battles because the troops from militias SUCK. The very fine thread holding the ramshackle army together was having some fine, incredibly experienced commanders holding the deal together. They didn’t become a good army until after having been trained and drilled by regular army officers like von Steuben.

Having that “system” of oddball survivalists and “militia” would severely compromise the security of the US.

33

uh oh, we have some contention from the Fighting Man from Ireland

34

[quote]pushharder wrote:

  1. a state of society without government or law.
  2. political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control: The death of the king was followed by a year of anarchy.
  3. a theory that regards the absence of all direct or coercive government as a political ideal and that proposes the cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as the principal mode of organized society.
  4. confusion; chaos; disorder: Intellectual and moral anarchy followed his loss of faith.

There are obviously some definition(s) (#3) that fit your model. However, #s 2 and 4 seem diametrically opposed to #3. “A cooperative and voluntary association…organized society” implies the lack of confusion and chaos.

Please do not see my posts here as argumentative or sarcastic as they often may be on other threads but rather as strictly inquisitive.[/quote]

Okay. I think it might be instructive here to repeat what I said a few months back when you asked me about anarchy. This is for you, too, Irish. So listen up (I’ve had a few Jameson’s, so bear it in mind).

I feel about government about the same as I feel about the vast majority of people in general: I don’t hate 'em, I just prefer it when they’re not around. Long as they’re at a distance, and reeeeal quiet, we get along just fine. Anarchy meaning “without a ruler,” I figure that any man who will not be ruled is, by definition, an anarchist. A group of people who refuse to be ruled might be thought of as an anarchic society.

“Hedonist” is another word that people are loath to use to describe themselves, because so many negative connotations have been stuck onto the word. Hedonists are considered immoral, irresponsible, and self-gratifying at the expense of their own health and society. Just like anarchists are commonly thought of as being advocates of upheaval, disorder, and chaos.

Really, though, a hedonist is just someone who believes that pleasure is the only worthwhile motivating force in his own life. Most people are motivated by fear of loss, fear of pain, fear of ostracism, or fear of death. Being motivated by pleasure is, in my estimation, highly preferable to this.

A ruler has the power to confiscate, to torture, to incarcerate, and to execute. He wouldn’t rule for very long if he didn’t have this power at his disposal. A man who isn’t motivated by fear of this power, however, can’t be ruled.

As Heinlein said,

“Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything–you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”

36

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
Having that “system” of oddball survivalists and “militia” would severely compromise the security of the US. [/quote]

That is the whole point, though I think you buy into stereotypes way too much.

I have no allegiance to some ambiguous piece of land and I am not afraid of invaders…other than the space kind. The individual person’s safety would become much more probable should the entire US government vaporize instantly.

The whole world would be much safer, too!

37

[quote]pushharder wrote:
However, you did not address my dictionary definition question posed above. Maybe the spirit of Jameson inhibited you or maybe upon a second request it just might stir the cerebral juices enough to cause you to dispense a satisfactory dissertation.[/quote]

I am rarely ever inhibited by Jameson. Quite the opposite, actually.

As you’ll no doubt know from your long acquaintance with me, I’m a stickler for the meanings of words. Unfortunately, the word “anarchy” has acquired a number of connotations that are divorced from the original meaning of the word. Rather like “fascism” or “communism,” I suppose.

As an aside, I like what George Orwell once said about fascism:

The word ‘fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else… almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘fascist.’

And almost any English-speaking person, when he says “anarchy” probably really means “chaos.”

As it happens, the word “anarchy” once had no negative connotation. Jean-Jacques Rousseau recognized anarchy as the natural state of nature, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon imagined a spontaneously-ordered, “natural anarchic” society in which, to quote V from V for Vendetta (who was in turn quoting Aleister Crowley), “‘do as thou wilt’ shall be the whole of the law,” and where “business transactions alone produce the social order.” Henry David Thoreau was well and truly an anarchist, and in the writings of Thomas Jefferson, one may catch glimpses of anarchist thought.

The negative connotations of the word have been and still are promulgated, unsurprisingly, by those who have a vested interest in seeing that anarchy never flourishes. Indeed, the first people to use the word “anarchist” as an epithet were the Royalists in the English Civil War, against the supporters of Oliver Cromwell: those who were advocating a country without a king, ergo, anarchism. By the same token, the Founding Fathers could have been called anarchists… at least by the Tories.

Associating anarchy with scary things like lawlessness (definition one), political and social disorder (definition two), and confusion and chaos (definition four) is a good way for a ruler to discredit the idea of ruler-less-ness, and make it an unattractive goal for the ruled. If one takes the time to consider what words actually mean, however, one comes to the conclusion that the rulers are full of shit, as rulers generally are.

Hope that answers your question.

39

Very nice!

keep it up family, i’ll have access to my notes when I get home I will then present them

40

[quote]pushharder wrote:

Ahhhh…Mr. Crowley…

An occultist AND an atheist. Your kind of guy?[/quote]

I’d call him a humanist rather than an atheist; humanist defined as one who finds divinity within humanity. Point of interest, considering our recent exchange on the other thread: he was also an avid chess player, and his mother’s maiden name was (ready for this?) Bishop.

Although I’m of the opinion that divination in particular and most of occultism in general is a crock of shit, an old girlfriend once gave me a set of Aliester Crowley tarot cards based on a set Crowley himself had designed. The artwork was magnificent.

Crowley’s views on anarchy:

  1. Man has the right to live by his own law,
    to live in the way that he wills to do:
    to work as he will:
    to play as he will:
    to rest as he will:
    to die when and how he will.

  2. Man has the right to eat what he will:
    to drink what he will:
    to dwell where he will:
    to move as he will on the face of the earth.

  3. Man has the right to think what he will:
    to speak what he will:
    to write what he will:
    to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will:
    to dress as he will.

  4. Man has the right to love as he will:
    “take your fill and will of love as ye will,
    when, where, and with whom ye will.”

  5. Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.

Anything there you heartily disagree with, Push?