Why I am an anarchist

ill try again

Why don’t you read DE’s own post?

i’m NOT an anarchist because i don’t trust people be sensible, look after themselves, and functionally coexist without oversight by an authority. i lack that faith in humanity. It strikes me as dangerously naive.

fc----I don’t know this de…exactly what has he done…I need to know in order to compare him to me…
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ill try again
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Why don’t you read DE’s own post?
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I did…

There is one thing that represents the only sanity involved in establishing a State - Commonwealth.

And it is that concept that is then used by the sociopaths through obfuscation, terrorism, and misdirection that allows the common wealth to be twisted into the common poverty.

Learn how to verify if something is a true common wealth before presuming it to be, and the sociopaths lose all power to corrupt the only good purpose of a State.

This is in agreement with my analogy between “archies” and “theisms”:

a(n)-archy : a-theism
mon(o)-archy : mono-theism [cf. Christ as “King”]
olig(o)-archy : poly-theism [“few” and “many” being relative terms]
pan-archy : pan-theism

“Panarchy” here does not refer to how the word has already been coined; instead, it refers to the positive form of anarchy, even as pantheism (“all is divine”) is the positive form of atheism (“nothing is divine”).

James - Yes. A question of economy, of proper investment and distribution. A functional concept of value is all that is required. What do you think of the three or more layer system?

Sauwelios - what would you suppose a pan-archic sociery would look like?

Turtle - you don’t need to compare Das Experiment to yourself. You can just read what he says, and consider if you agree or disagree.
I was only responding like this because Stoic Guardian pretended to know what DE does besides when he writes these posts. He doesn’t. It’s weird behavior for a normal poster, but even more out of place for a mod.

This seems like a valid comparison to a significant degree. The limit is that a brain stands in relation to other brains, other beings - not just its fellows but also its prey and hunters. The Earths population does not have such external references.

I see the market as fundamentally different from State and Church, as it does not need a moral requirement.
It’s a matter of basic necessities, tastes, will to power, suffering and bounty - very much like life. It has no need of an interpreter, an authority, a representative - it’s not fake. It is of course not very accommodating to weakness, but it isn’t cruel by nature - it gets to be so because it is artificially tilted and skewed in the struggle between governments and between governments and citizens.

What’s wrong with averaging out value-estimates to facilitate a fluid system of transactions? I’d say long as the identities of the valuers are not averaged out, that’s fine.

What do you mean by that exactly?

I’m not sure I understand. Could you rephrase that in terms of limits? What does the upper right corner (x,y) represent?

I regard these as the most excellent economic ethics.
Yes, away with the dogmas of scarcity and zero-sum interactions.

a purpose is indeed always a necessary condition of a coherent collective. That is why I do not want to declare an a priori collective, and where I agree with the idea of spontaneous economic segregation based on values, I do not think that such can be established or maintained from above. It’s a bit like relativity - there is no objective reference frame.

Value ontology, a mathematical extension of it, would serve as the ground for transforms to communicate, translate values from realm to realm.

Perhaps the state should exist only as a set of mathematical operations.

I think all top down systems operated by humans are bound to that.
Have you read the book Parkinsons Law? (not the guy of the disease)
I just got my hands on that - it’s amazing how elegantly it predicts the clogging of any kid of administrative system.

This would be resolved, theoretically, by the redistribution of people across land, and the de-specialization of agricultural industries. I think that’s a very good idea anyhow. Urbanization is, quite obviously to me, very dangerous and self-destructive. I love cities, as I love humanity, but I would be happiest with expanses of land and a proper physical context from which my values are drawn.

I suppose I am some kind of anarchist also, but I wonder about this part. If people are creative, intelligent, good natured, compassionate, innovative and funny, why are so few of them anarchists? I actually don’t find myself thinking those adjectives when dealing with most people, but I thought I would ask it via the anarchist issue to you. If they have been in some way brainwashed not to consider anarchism, isn’t this showing a limit on their intelligence and creativity? If it is some other factor that stops them, what is it? I have to say I don’t find most people compassionate. If you are a legitimate victim - the criteria for determining this varies - they may exhibit the form of compassion and some likely also actually feel it, but it seems like a lot of people fall outside ‘justified recipient of compassion’ status. I also find a lot of blame out there. Here’s what you did wrong. If you thought more positively… and other non-compassionate reactions to people who are suffering or not succeeding. I am not advocating that one wander around glopping one’s heart on the problems of others. In fact I see a lot of Active cruelty - most of it attitudinal, some of it acted out. Anarchism, it seems to me, depends on the qualities you mentioned. I am not sure where the discussion can go if you experience people as generally fitting those qualities and I do not, but I want to explore it a bit and see how we are each reaching our conclusions.

Well, after I posted that, I realised the significance of the number 4, and indeed, I now think the four resonate with the four natural castes (temperaments) I discern. The iNtuitive Thinkers are then the natural pantheists, the iNtuitive Feelers the natural polytheists, the Sensing Judgers the natural monotheists, and the Sensing Perceivers the natural atheists. This suggests that the philosopher needs to go down from pantheism to polytheism—as you have suggested before—in order to appeal to the noble knight crusaders. A panarchic society could then only be a society of philosophers—which Strauss in his “The Law of Reason in the Kuzari” cryptically calls “a society of robbers”, by the way.

Because the state has built itself up to the point where it is the path of least resistance. To be an anarchist these days you have to avoid the state on a frequent basis, whereas in the past you could largely just ignore it.

Besides which, my argument is that inasmuch as people are creative, intelligent, good natured, compassionate, innovative and funny, they are anarchists. Inasmuch as they are other things, they are not anarchists (though not quite because the list we’re repeating is not complete), because that is what ‘anarchism’ means to me, it means the advancement of those aspects of humanity. A society that advances those, even if it still has a government, is inherently anarchic, or perhaps value-archic.

Yes, but I never said these characteristics were limitless, nor that they summed up the whole of humanity. Humanity is capable of the opposite of these things, of course. Though now you’ve asked, I see these aspects of humanity that I am trying to advance as limitless in potential, whereas the statist aspects are inherently destructive and self-destructive, and so would inevitably lead to death and hence are not limitless in potential.

Like I say, I think it is the state making itself the path of least resistance. It’s made so much easier to run into the slaughterhouse because you get a free toy if you run into the slaughterhouse, whereas if you refuse to go anywhere near the slaughterhouse then the slaughterhouse guards come and try and take your toys off you. So I say turn the toys into weapons to undermine the very existence of the slaughterhouse.

You’re talking about people’s compassion towards people they only know through vicarious media coverage of crime and so forth. I’d argue that’s a terrible measure of how compassionate humans are, as indeed the reactions brought on by mediated reality is one of the main things driving human shitiness. It’s kinda like saying ‘these people with their hands chained to a wall aren’t doing much landscape gardening, thus humanity is crap at landscape gardening’.

OK, that analogy is flawed for all sorts of reasons, but you see what I mean, it’s just a bad measure of what humans are, because it’s a mechanism being used for turning them into something else. No doubt digitally replicated human beings (the ultimate transhuman social control method) would have no compassion whatsoever, because ‘compassion’ would be irrelevant and meaningless by that point.

The vast majority of that behaviour is inspired and provoked and managed by the state, or rather by the people who make up ‘the state’.

It not only depends on those qualities, it IS those qualities (by the way I’ve come to see it).

Well, we need to define the disagreement more clearly - do we mean that ‘people generally fit those qualities’? I don’t. I’m not saying these are the overwhelming characteristics of human nature, I’m saying they are utterly natural qualities that almost all humans have, and that they are what is most self-nourishing and therefore valuable about human beings. Politically, I’m saying they are the vital components of an anarchistic society, and so how well we advance those characteristics so they become a more common part of people’s behaviour and attitudes is, in fact, the measure of how anarchistic our society is.

I hope I’ve clarified here - there is a tendency in Western culture towards cynical fallacies, such as confusing ‘you sometimes do selfish/inconsiderate things’ with ‘you are selfish/inconsiderate’. We tend to generalise what is bad about people and trivialise what’s good about them. If we can turn that one around so we just have a more realistic appreciation of what we are, what we can be, and what we want to be then that’s a political-philosophical goal that is worth accomplishing. Plus it isn’t anyway near as hard as one might think it is.

You are an anarchist merely because you cannot clearly see anything better to be.
Although I might suggest that you instead learn and teach people how to clearly see.

Define ‘clear’ (without the use of dictionary.com)…

Clear ≡ easily discerned details of relevant affects.

Define ‘discerned’…

I find myself in agreement with this assessment of “most people”.

I admit that I do not literally know most of the 7 trillion people on the planet, and neither is anybody else likely to - in whatever combination. So in comparing “most people”, we’re most likely to find at least slight variations. This means it’s somewhat interesting when we don’t.

I too find that most people I have come across are not compassionate, because they need to blame, meaning there is a lot of cruelty. Not individually towards me, mind. I am referring to a general outlook and attitude, which may or may not manifest itself politically. I analyse this as a reaction to either a lack of intelligence and creativity or - much more disturbingly - a lack of willingness to be any different. The latter appear quite content in their discontentment, to take all at face value. Without an easy scapegoat, they blame individuals rather than the way in which they are organised, encouraged and discouraged. They are largely disinterested in politics and the study of society and economy even if they do have the intelligence and creativity to do so, and even if they do loosely affiliate themselves with a party - though seemingly only to have some answer to questions about it, to avoid being labelled ignorant. They might not be averse to a little amateur psychology though, which is naturally warped and negative due to the knowledge from which they cut themselves off. The unintelligent and uncreative end up with similar symptoms, but at least they are not squandering their abilities.

I think if there’s one thing that modern politics understands, it’s these people. They are the majority and they are manipulable because they are dim.

Intellectual theories that you are likely to find on a philosophy board or amongst any intellectual group of people, are beyond them - and thus crucially inapplicable.
I think politics ought to start with admitting what we’ve got - whether or not it ends up transforming it.

Anarchism has some success in appealing to the majority because its central message is a lack of government, and government is one of the most obvious scapegoats - it’s visible, it is accountable (in that politicians are required to put themselves in the way of identified issues as those who are about to resolve them) and its role affects people’s day to day financial situations. Single issue parties with an aversion to foreigners, calling it “national pride”, “Nationalism” or “independence” have an equally visible issue to scapegoat, which likewise affects people’s day to day financial situations. This gives the majority a target to impotently complain about - but people are a lot safer than inanimate property. Anarchism’s central message being rooted in destruction applies to both people and things, so it attracts a more physical crowd who now get to feel justified in attacking property. As such they become more known for vandalism and violence than anything else, especially amongst rebellious youths - meaning it is usually written off as a teenage phase that only brutes will carry on into adulthood.

One main thing that benefits the main political parties is PR. They know that most people only care about the personality of the person in charge, and the addressing of isolated complaints minus the bigger picture. It thrives on its pettiness and through this achieves the goal of mostly carrying on things as they are, with only minor tweaks. These minor tweaks often making things worse only feeds their Conservativism.

The only problem is that people want more change than this (despite being afraid of too much change at once). Only, alternatives have a bad reputation (though often for good reason - and I would say there’s a good reason Anarchism has one). Alternatives need to think about their market - not just their essential principles, which on their own create a reputation too easily marred. Their essential principles should be directed away from something easily slandered. Anarchism is too extreme for this, as well as being foolish enough to concentrate on superficial things even at its depths.

On the frontiers, perhaps, but serfs, for example, in many times and Places could not ignore the state. But in any case, I am not quite sure how this explains the lack of anarchists nowadays. (perhaps there are more than say in the 70s, but we are still talking about a small, small minority.) it seems like they are anarchists in potentia.

That’s fair, if I am taking it correctly as they are defacto anarchists even if they do not define themselves this way. I would raise the issue of why so many of them would be skeptical about the dissolving of the state working.

One can be aware of the problem and simply do things so as to makes ones Life easier. There is only so much most people are willing to treat Everything as a Place to take a political stand. However I don’t find most people aware that there are problems with having a state or the way Corporations can influence their lives and the government. They have problems with this law and that policy, but then to want other ones.

And frankly much of the population that identifies as libertarian, also a minority, don’t seem to fit your criteria.

I was talking about that, but also direct on the ground compassion in interactions. With acquaintances, people they see on the street, people they hear complaining. If something tears someone out of their Daily Life - a guy on a bike get hits by a cab - people are generally great. This is a valid victim - according to most people’s standards. But where you seems to be having trouble with systemic issues and they personally don’t agree with the implicit political stance in your issue, I don’t see much compassion. There still seems to me to be a generalized you are a bit of leper if you are not doing well. I can connect this with the way people take psychotopics. If you are feeling anxious, you have a problem. Modern Life is not the issue. Of course modern Life is stressful, people may grant, but if you are one of the ones who ‘really’ is bothered (which is an extremely large % of the population given medication rates) you have a problem and you should take the pills. I see the individual getting pathologized (not just around medication but it is a kind of marker of it) rather than assessment of systemic problems.

I still see a general taboo, also, around expressing ‘negative emotions’ in fact most of all fear and sadness about ‘the way things are’. This is generally not received well.

I agree. And I really see a powerful trend towards this. Why makes things good for us when we can make us good for…already Cold people with Power who want more.

Perhaps you are correct, but then I feel kinda slighted since I don’t have those reactions. All these people are being granted by you the status as compassionate, even though they may not demonstrate this quality because of the state. What is their problem? Think of people you know who actually manifest the qualities in your list. Are they really the same as everyone else? Or is there something lacking in the people who merely have those qualities as potential?

And how do you know what the people are really like?

I agree. I meant mainly that if you have the kinds of shifting ongoing renogotiation plus a lack of state enforcement, people have to be pretty darn like that list and not merely in potentia. Because otherwise the sociopaths will take over and form states. And fast.

I just don’t experience people as having much interest in creativity, for example, except in very restricted areas - portions of their work, getting out of chores, convincing their partners to do something, etc.

That Cuts both ways. I would be very nervous about going out of my apartment and actually figuring out a way to determine if even a few people fit your list.

First I see a great deal of the opposite. But more importantly, it’s not that I see people as bad, per se. It’s more like they are rigid, habit driven, precisely not creative, and resistant to moving beyond norms. Whether these come from the state or somewhere else is not important to me for this particular issue. This can lead to them doing good and bad thigns, but generally just going with whatever norms and customs their are. That inside there are these creative compassionate intelligent people waiting to leap out if only the state would release their bindings seems mythological to me. I am not focused on them as moral creatures so much, but as people who do not fit those adjectives you listed.

How do you see it being accomplished? Presumably there would be some intermediate stages between the current statist system and an anarchist World. Waht would these intermediate stages look like and how are they to be brought about?

FYI i haven’t read the whole thread yet,just posting as i read along

How should one measure value? How should I measure value? (Certainly not dollars or God or state)

I agree somewhat

I cannot ignore the time someone invests into preparing these ‘basic derivatives’. Also forgive me for being a bit primitive with my examples

Air - yeah that should be free in my opinion

food? water? cloathing? etc… i think these things are a bit more negotiable

Someone must hunt, grow, collect, harvest the food

Someone must build the bucket to collect the water

Someone must knit the clothing

Someone must build the house

The necessity of the object gives it value to me, but ‘should be free’ is not a premise i agree with

When i build my house and grow my food and knit my clothes, and then do it for others, I’d like to choose who to give the fruits of my labor to. Let’s say my children have a clothes and shelter and water but not enough food… i’ll be damned if I am compelled to give you some of my food or clothing for ‘equality’/freeness/community sake before i feed my children as much as they require

I would like to posit that my right to obtain these basic needs should not be impinged by any person or government, and I, In turn, will not attempt to impinge your ability to do these things either

I will help you if and when I can, but it is not for someone else to determine what that help will be. No person should impose that on me. I fundamentally reject (from a personal perspective) the idea that someone else can compel me to use my time in a specific manner that i disagree with, and be moral at the same time


However when it comes to these next levels… things get a bit trickier

I agree with this mostly

I think the free-market is used incorrectly most of the time, and is too often synonymous with “the protection of the ability of a corporation to use its dollars to influence law” by the people with power.

To the peons like me, it means the ability to sell you whatever I have for whatever I want without anyone interfering

I don’t really see ‘the market’ as an entity that can ‘have power’ in its purest form (but practically it does -its hard to live without dollars)

I think the concept of ‘free-market’ is perhaps better understood as an approach to the same end from a different perspective… or lets say… the fiscally conservative ‘approach’ towards anarchism. The socially liberal ‘approach’ tends to be different in my mind.

I’m not. I’m a hateful, domineering monster that would exploit you to my own selfish ends if given half a chance. And even if I’m exaggerating, there’s just enough people who really are that way. I’ve always thought talk about human nature kind of missed the point. Hobbes tried to say “here’s what people are like”, but his premise was far too strong. He really only needed to say “Here’s what a few people are like” to justify the state.