Anarchy Without Adjectives
I was shocked to realise how many different forms of anarchy there are. It seems to me that once you start organising anarchy it should no longer be classified as anarchy. I think the need to organise is driven largely by the need to protect oneself. It’s why pirate utopias fail and become authoritarian. It's the realization that you cannot control others and therefore cannot guarantee security. But wait, that’s why government is there in the first place. True anarchy accepts this inability to control the actions of others. But we cannot prevent ourselves from living freely by allowing ourselves to constantly worry. We must adopt a mindset of no expectations. Plan, all you may, but do not worry about the outcome. Live in the moment. A true anarchist can exist within society because they know what absolute freedom means.
True freedom
I just want to clarify that I do not believe anarchy as a form of government is the answer. I was just trying to understand it, and why it doesn’t work. I think anarchy is representative of a state of mind of total freedom, freedom from beliefs, freedom from assumptions, from expectations. In the same way one would challenge a government, one can challenge all their preconceived notions of how things should be. We can throw off what our parents taught us, religious dogmatism, societal pressure, the critique of our minds on ourselves, the guilt, and not let these things weigh us down. This is true freedom. I think one can live perfectly well within a structured society and still uphold this state of mind.
Perpetual Travelers
Although it doesn't appear that the primary motivation shown in your examples are tax evasion, I found an article on a modern-day lifestyle that doesn't involve the post-apocalyptic theme over-exaggerated in my prior posting: Perpetual traveler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Even more closely accurate would be the philosophy of self-ownership, described as "the moral or natural right of a person to be the exclusive controller of his or her own body and life." As we discussed earlier, the term "anarchy" can be very misleading.
Scratching your own back
As there are reasons for practically everything in this world, including the argumentum ad antiquitam reason of "because that's how we've always done things," there is a reason people prefer Anarchy over a State. Bear with me while I crudely elaborate my understanding of these perceptions:
1) Elitist view of social darwinism: believing that every person should have to fend for themselves which is ideal if you are better equipped to survive than those other sods. Personally, I sympathize with this view the most because worthless people like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton would be quickly consumed by wild animals, lest they become concubines to powerful warlords. The poor and ill-equipped would perish and the true survivalists and combatants would be able to rape and kill their way towards personal freedom. This is great if you prefer rape to consensual social relationships.
2) Isolationist lifestyle: when you live on a farm, an abandoned cabin long forgotten in the remote wilderness, or even inside of a dumpster behind a shed behind a McDonald's behind a New Jersey highway, it is extremely annoying when a taxman asks you for property tax. Why should you, who asks nothing of the State, be asked to contribute? (The answer is that it is illegal, and you should instead vacate the country to a disease-ridden tax haven in your "Google Ron Paul!" blimp.)
3) Trying to make change for the better: It's you and your hippie friends in a who's-who bloodfest against the United States Government, the Internal Revenue Service, and the hundreds of thousands of individuals under their employ. Or should I say... your employ? Convincing them to disband their neckties, suitcases, and annual salaries to form nomadic tribes to roam the plains shouldn't be too difficult if you teach them how to hunt wild bison with a stone-tipped spear. If you insist on staying in this country I suppose this is the viable choice. Vote libertarian or join a Kool-Aid sect in Southern California!
There are certainly many other legitimate reasons for wanting to be independent from State rule. For instance, I have opposed nearly every individual that has sat at the helm of this country for the last eight years our organization has been in technical existence (in the case of the shadowy Karl Rove, steered behind the helm). The operation to liberate viscous liquids from Iraq, assigning an incompetent horse jockey to head FEMA, secretly infringing on millions of Americans' rights (when they could've just asked)...
Let's go over some fun scenarios of post-government lifestyle.
1) Your house catches on fire. It wasn't faulty wiring, since there is no longer a public utilities department, but because a feral animal crawled through the rotting wood in your living room and tipped over a candle. In order to extinguish the flames, you have a choice between running to the communal well with your wooden water bucket and dousing the flames with putrid water, or you can send a distress letter via carrier pigeon to "the local guy that does fires."
2) You are starring in a version of Mad Max without the happy-go-lucky protagonist. You are surrounded by a powerful warlord and his mercenary henchmen and you have something they want. Be it the remnants of your home that survived the fire, which they'd gladly convert into a whorehouse-slash-barracks, or even the sexual bounties of your own body (male or female)... you should probably practice how to kill people with a boomerang. If you're one of those people lucky enough to charge your cell phone with a hand crank, you're still not going to reach a working satellite or radio tower. And even then, you wouldn't reach the police. You'd probably end up talking to some Russian guy who's being crushed in the crumbling debris of a collapsed research station.
3) You are being mauled by a gigantic fucking bear. Because you have recently been persuaded to part with your home and all of your belongings, you find yourself deeper in touch with Nature and her Gigantic Fucking Bears. It probably thinks that you have a picnic basket. Why did you even attempt to move into that cave anyway? At least it was tax-free, while it lasted...
Humans are social animals that have instinctively bonded together to create communities. People each have their individual strengths and weaknesses but are not cut out to survive on their own. The very idea of anarchy is just that: the expectation that humans' common sense will outweigh the necessity of communal interdependency. The same way that anarchy is described as a transitional period between governments, the human desire to be without social responsibility is a transitional period between communities. Tribalism and Evolution is a good place to continue reading about how anthropologists understand this issue.
In biology, the human species is locked either by nature or design into the cycle of biological life. We are competitors with other living species and we have formed and broken alliances. Humans claim to be the superior species on this planet due to thought, intellect, and reason, but none of that could be achieved independently.
Do we need our civilization? Do we need cell phones, motor vehicles, electricity, or television? I can see myself living without most of that for a few years. Why would I even contemplate doing that? I've already lived without some of these things in rural Norway, but I understand and accept their conveniences.
I do not believe we should only allow one way of life, however. There are ways we can live in harmony with nature and each other, but I do not believe that comes from a well-rounded hunter-gatherer survivalist instinct. I believe that the responsibility we claim over the kingdom of the plants and animals of Earth comes from the acceptance of our natures. We distinguished ourselves from other animals by first using tools. We are materialistic and opportunistic, and through thousands of years of human experiences recorded through history, we can fight our own instincts to consume and destroy to create a new way of life that gives back to our environment so it can continue to give to us.
That way is not through anarchy. It is through structure and organization that must adapt and fluctuate. What we are all trying to break free of, I believe, is the bureaucratic government that is being crushed by its own weight and must fight new ideas in order to preserve itself. If we are ever going to break free we will have to take a side path that does not accept anarchy or government as ultimates.
What do you think?
Hrmmm. I think the argument
Hrmmm. I think the argument for political Anarchy goes something more like this:
People suck.
(1) Therefore, people in a state of Anarchy will suck.
(2) But the alternative is for a small group of people to make laws to control a larger group of people. As mentioned, people suck, ergo the laws will suck.
None of this is really arguable. The untested hypothesis of intellectual anarchy is that state (2) is worse than state (1).
Andrew, your argument rests on the assumption that those arguing for political anarchy are also arguing for societal anarchy, which I really don't think is the case.
Societal Anarchy
Headphone Cat says:
Andrew, your argument rests on the assumption that those arguing for political anarchy are also arguing for societal anarchy, which I really don't think is the case."
But the examples are more awesome that way.
But anarchy as a form of
But anarchy as a form of government isn't the same thing as complete anarchy - the society can and will still organize itself, but without any form of laws or judicial control. Any organized attempt to control people ceases to be anarchy, but a parent can tell their child what and what not to do and still be an anarchist.
voluntary organisation
Adam,
You bring up two interesting points.
Chomsky says it rather nicely, “The tendencies in anarchism that I've always found most persuasive seek a highly organised society, integrating many different kinds of structures (workplace, community, and manifold other forms of voluntary association), but controlled by participants, not by those in a position to give orders (except, again, when authority can be justified, as is sometimes the case, in specific contingencies).”
( http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/rbr/noamrbr2.html )
Organisation CAN occur within anarchism, but it is completely voluntary. There is no force to uphold it but the will of the members. I might even suggest you could appoint a leader in such a situation, but there would be no real obligation to follow that leader. I suppose I'm suggesting a loose form of democracy in such situations. But one would have to be willing to accept that the organisation is fleeting, and its members could disband at any moment. I think if a leader ever did start gaining too much power it would be a good sign to disband.
How would an anarchist raise a child without becoming an authoritarian hypocrite? How would one raise a child when they don't believe that any action is inherently right or wrong? If you have no beliefs, then you have nothing to impose on a child other than teaching them to challenge everything, even yourself. Would an anarchist treat their child more as an equal? It seems like an anarchist parent would be fairly laid back. I think a parent would have to change the parenting methods as the kid matures. For instance, I’ve tried arguing with a two year old. It doesn’t work, because they have no ability to think rationally. So you can’t very well try to rationalize and help them understand. You have to be black and white. But once they’re older it gets easier to talk to them more openly.
I feel like child-raising is
I feel like child-raising is an area where anarchy is difficult to apply. One of the primary tenets of anarchy is that no majority opinion or central power has the right to decide what is "right and wrong." The idea being that some kind of individual human nature will rule against those things we consider obviously morally wrong, such as murder and rape, and leave open to the individual most everything else.
The question I have is whether or not we consider a parent guiding the development of a child to be the equivalent of the government trying to guide the life of an adult. i.e. is child-rearing with application of authority hypocrisy or something distinct? The problem I have with labeling it hypocrisy is where do you draw the line? How is a parent supposed to distinguish between child-rearing with authority, and without?
Incorrect
You are a cat stop talking or i will end u.
You're a cock gobbler.
You're a cock gobbler.