Why I am an anarchist

They tend not to do especially well. They are damaged. In some short term situations they will do better, but long term and often short term also, they fuck up. They are essentially social mammals with part of their Brains missing.

Uccisore - The US Constitution is essentially a form of anti-State. So, yes. Can’t say I disagree as far as the USA goes. I live in Europe, though.

It will be absolutely prudent for any political anarchistic movement to see to what extent the US Constitution is a viable form. Of course, a large problem is with the enforcers of the law all the way up to the executive office. How are you going to keep them from being corrupted by capital? If even the mods on ILP are corrupted somewhat by their power, then how is an enforcing arm of a government ever going to keep clean?

This is why I propose something even more reduced to principle. At least something that can be traced back in toto to a set of agreed upon principles.

And as it turns out, those principles will be amazingly similar to the US Constitution (before recent corruption). And the way you prevent corruption is through “double-stitch verification” which basically prevents all forms of cancers.

And this definition as a perspective;

…would make me your god (note the small case “g”).

Oh, you mean when the Earth had about 0.5% of its present human population? You and your fellow anarchists are going to have to do some serious “culling of the herd” before you can get back to that.

I think you can just as easily say “culture develops in its own time at its own rate, so humans are foolish to tamper with it” as “culture develops in its own time at its own rate, so humans are foolish not to change with it”.

I strongly subscribe to the theory that population density (usually in line with size) is one of the most significant factors in changing social attitudes/organisation. I would totally agree that we can’t go back to any hunter/gatherer tribalism without a massive “culling of the herd”.

Monarchs became unable to manage populations too large, so they spread their powers to select Feudal Lords, who in turn had to spread their powers amongst Capitalists, who presumably will in turn eventually have to spread their power amongst co-operative management (and so on?). Akin to trees with their trunks, branches, twigs, leaf veins…

Living in increasingly close quarters similarly demands stronger co-operative behaviour in the social world as well as the economic, because there is no way out (with everywhere else increasingly populated too, with neighbourhoods rejecting you unless you will keep the peace and allow everyone to get on unhindered as best you can - enter the concept of negative liberty).

Anarchy just doesn’t factor into historical progression except, at best, at each extreme - with hardly anyone on the planet (lone wolves), or with far too many people on the planet that leadership is too spread out too have any real significance, assuming branching out of layers of power continues infinitely.

Anarchy is just “a cool idea” - at best a thought experiment to remind us where not to end up (realised once you’ve thought it through sufficiently).

Co-operativism is the next stage.

Must be a bizarre definition of elite you’re using there. But then mine only includes me…

I’ve lived in an abnormally high number of different houses for my age, 19 so far. They span only a few English counties, though family, friends, partners and holidays have filled in the gaps in terms of my travelling experience throughout the rest of the country - though not so much the rest of the world, I’ve only visited 4 foreign countries across only 2 continents. So in terms of being well travelled, I am and I am not. I feel informed about the USA, despite only having visited there once - through internet contact (and only to the extent one can be through media representation of the place). My best friend grew up and still lives in the Middle East. Living where I do, I am exposed to people from all over the world in a professional environment as well as living amongst all sorts of them - so I know about much of the rest of the world through them, despite not having visited the countries from whence they came. Further, my geography is very good, and I like to read up on other cultures/ways of living.

If I am to generalise, I would subscribe more to a notion of “human tendency relative to circumstances” than some ridiculous notion of a uniform “human nature”. I know people far better than I’ve ever known anyone else know them, and there’s definitely common ground and patterns - despite huge numbers of individual differences and variations.

I regard people who squander their abilities as highly politically significant, despite their lack of knowledge about what they’re doing. They vote in vast numbers for other reasons than political curiosity and knowledge. They keep the same old parties in power, and these parties know this.

Most people who call themselves Socialists are also dipshits. I seek to define Socialism as what it actually is, rather than what it’s made out to be - however futile others might see that endeavour.

I’m neither anti-State nor anti-government. To me, that’s “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. They are here and aren’t going to suddenly disappear forever just because some Anarchists got together. These institutions need to be transformed into something that brings out more favourable conditions (ironically ones that Anarchists would most likely wish would happen immediately without any transition). Socialism is simply more realistic - though I would identify more as a Co-operativist, because even Socialism asks for too much at once.

Not a simple answer to that one for sure. But to force one, I would say emotional/chemical reward due to a certain set of experiences.

Really? How do you measure that?

But OK, what is this human tendency, as you see it?

You’re still working within the framework of electoral politics. I couldn’t give a toss about that, because it always becomes dominated by political parties and political parties are equivalent to tabloid media in the way that they’ll leap from one position to another depending on what they perceive the advantage as being in doing so. The socialists are no different in this respect.

Go on then, define socialism as ‘what is actually is’. I’d be interested to hear what you mean by that.

This is perhaps the 12th time on this thread that people have resorted to a stock, hackneyed rejection of anarchism that has nothing to do with anything I’ve said, or indeed that anyone else on this thread has said. It’s an objection to a label, nothing more. I expect more of you, and know you are capable of far more.

So we need to use the state as a mechanism to force people to become more co-operative? I think you’re right that this is ‘what socialism really is’ but it’s a pretty terrible thing.

And this is why I hate Marxism - it reduces people to material beings, typically views ordinary life and people with contempt and pretends it is forcing them to do things for their own benefit. You have expressed utterly typical Marxism.

Indeed that is where I am different from most anyone here.
Of course I myself am the standard to what is required to be part of this elite - and I was drunk writing that list - but I’ve come so far that I can’t rise any higher, and have to expand in breadth. Thankfully this proves possible.

Basically I included every poster on this list who I know that understands, to a significant degree, value ontology. Without meeting that standard anyone is perfectly worthless to me, as a philosopher I mean.
WL’s presence on the list is mostly due to the drinking.

Why?

Regardless, that’s not what I meant. I meant that they are only compassionate, funny etc. part-time, hence are only ‘working as anarchists’ part-time.

I’m not defining them per se as anything or via anything. I’m saying people not only have the potential and capacity to be these things but also manifest them on a daily basis in a billions ‘trivial’ ways. That they also manifest other characteristics does in no way preclude or contradict what I’m asserting as a base proposition.

I’m not talking about ‘changes I want to make’, so as with Sil this is a stock argument against what most people argue for when they talk about anarchism, rather than a rejection of what I’ve actually asserted. And I’ve never met anyone who was frightened by my political perspective, so I simply don’t buy the idea that most people will call in the state because they are so terrified of me. It’s not like I’m urging people to fly planes into Big Ben.

You aren’t taking this seriously.

When an old person drops their shopping and you help to pick it up the state has virtually fuck all to do with it. Again, I don’t think you’re taking this seriously.

‘It’s best to go with what is’ - OK, and to me ‘what is’ is that humans have the capacity and potential and manifest this quite a lot already for being funny, compassionate and so on. That is my base proposition, and after several long posts all you’ve done is talk around that, rather than take it on directly and tell me what it is you object to about it.

The absence of a grand narrative of the dissolution of the state. That’s an aim, but it shouldn’t be a political teleology.

Sure, but I’m not willing to reduce political discussion to the relativism of personal experience. If you are, then there probably is no point continuing this discussion.

I think you’re being hyper-sensitive here, and it’s pathetic. Those who have the stomach for actually believing in things would not find such a discussion even the slightest bit uncomfortable, and frankly those who don’t believe in anything deserve whatever they get, and accept whatever they get. If you go along to get along then when things change you will continue to go along to get along, so what does your opinion matter? I’m not seeking to have that sort of conversation with the sort of person who spends most of their time watching reality TV and soap operas, so I don’t give a fuck about whether they’d hypothetically find it uncomfortable.

Do you not read the newspapers? Indeed, the very fact that it’s now out in the open that the state (not just government) basically records everything it technologically can record about its citizens, their behaviour, their thoughts and attitudes means that people feel under surveillance by the state even more than they did before, hence it has even more influence on their behaviour.

It’s the fact you keep asking me about intermediate stages and changes I would make and so on when I haven’t mentioned any of that. It’s the fact you keep trying to draw me into ‘well I don’t believe that’ when nothing in my argument relies on you agreeing or requires you to agree. You can be funny and compassionate without believing what I believe about humour and compassion.

Once again you’re committing the fallacy of confusing ‘people CAN BE and ARE SOMETIMES funny and compassionate’ with ‘people ARE (per se) compassionate’. Stop applying ludicrous, irrelevant standards to what I’m saying and maybe you’ll understand it.

OK, sure, I agree, but this is kinda my point - that so many anarchists reduce ‘the state’ to ‘the government’ and thus believe that the ‘free market’ will replace ‘the state’ when it is magically abolished. The corporations are the most obvious reason why that is nonsense.

‘Outperforms’ in what sense? As a practical (rather than implied) mechanism of control? If that’s what you mean then I agree completely, though I would add the caveat that the main purpose of the military is not to control ones own population. That was their main purpose in the past, but now it’s more about stealing resources from the citizens of other countries. But yes, the welfare state and in particular the medical-industrial complex is the main tool for control in the Western world. Medicalise dissent and then numb it with SSRIs - this seems to be their first port of call.

Yes.

I know, and agree with, what you’re saying here but as always I yearn for a better vocabulary. I don’t want to break down the state, I want to make it irrelevant. Ditto the Islamic hegemony. My ideal world has the bastard mullahs on street corners talking about their terrified and horrified world view but the passing people do nothing except tell them to shut up and fuck off. No fighting, just a general contempt for such idiocy.

I have no problem with you bringing up a religious figure. Many Christians might argue that a lot of other people who don’t identify with Christianity because of the church or ideology are in fact behaving in a Christian way, and many would be right to argue that. I’m arguing much the same regarding anarchism, and the way I conceive of anarchist man is not at all far from the way many Christians conceive of Christian man. So no worries there, though I do object somewhat to the notion of Christ as more-than-man, because to me our redefinition of power is an affirmation of the human, not the transhuman, and the Napoleonic view strikes me as profoundly transhuman.

Right. No I am not thinking like these people.
I rather equate the current idea of “State” with “Extortion Apparatus”.
I’m not really interested in softening my definitions either, I don’t want to waste anymore energy on trying to find some sort of euphemism.

Right - the medical industry is used to keep the population subdued - and really not just by anti depressants, but this is way too scary to discuss for me online.

I say “outperforms” because it’s much more pervasive and subtle - what’s really impressive is how it convinces people that it’s best to submit themselves to the lobotomies and the other disgusting practices. With the military, at least the guys getting blown to bits are trying to escape it.

We agree then, because I have no illusion about any force being able to actually confront either our State or the Islamic Doctrinal Fascists.
They need to be rendered irrelevant, un-credible.
Value ontology is the only thing that gives me hope that such is in the long run possible.
After all, in order to replace a functional mindset (and that is all Fascism/Corporatism is, rests on) you have to have an alternative.

We need to actually have a working model for a non-corporate government.

Yes. I only mean that I prefer Napoleons conception, not that I agree with it entirely.
He’s way too fanatic, but at least he recognizes the vast and awesome power in the concept of “Christ”.

We definitely need a new name for Christ as well, and the whole religion needs to be stripped of the - ehm, religion.

Which still exists incidentally in modern civilization.

Anarchists don’t really have to do much. Statists are already doing very well destroying the world in various different kinds of ways which will eventually end up destroying ninety five percent of the human population.

All anarchists have to do is sit and wait to inherit the soon to be ruins of this planet left by the statists.

The difference I was talking about wasn’t ‘change’ vs. ‘don’t change’. It was more like ‘change by people behaving naturally in response to their needs and changes in their environment’ and ‘change because a handful of academics think they know how to guide society better than these natural forces would do’. It’s a mistake with culture, it’s a mistake with the economy. Or, you know. Says I. I’m against somebody saying “Everything needs to be commercialized” or “everything needs to be egalitarian” and creating an abnormal society of square pegs in round holes because enforcing the ideal is more important than actually lettings humans live their lives.

Uccisore - I agree in general terms. Wherever this top down ‘academic’ will originates, it serves as a force to cause a lessening of power differences, thus lesser power to create changes, within the populace. The curve is flattened, to rise only at an almost absolute differential as it approaches the location of executive wealth.

In a hypothetical, perfectly organic society, every point can always change a point next to it because to not be the same means to be different means to have an effect. In a totally synthetic society, every point is interpreted by every point as being the same as itself, so there is no potential to cause change in each other, no real power differences among the people. At least, in their awareness.

We are close to such a synthetic world. With the exception of the context of playful business such as sports as well as whatever happens outside of what our media consider the civilized world, all people just look up for power, they do not look to what they can do to/with each other. The direction of their desired change is toward an abstract ideal of being super wealthy. In this way no wealthy person ever affects a person next to him as if he is really very powerful. Wealth is spent in the most infantile ways because the very notion of influencing others out of inequality (being ‘better’ as in able to do greater good) is considered not just evil, but impossible.

Charities exist, but they are usually completely megalomanic and abstract. What’s being taken away is the direct chain of events between individuals. The state serves as a mediator, a filter through which every impulse must pass before it can have a substantial influence.

This may have started as the Ten Commandments - that was an advice about how to keep out of harms way within a community. And I guess it still functions like that, but with the harm (bathwater) life itself (baby) is thrown out.

Nor should you - it is an extortion apparatus, that’s the most apt description for it.

I suppose the appeal of the market is that there are already lots of companies and businesses out there who have almost nothing to do with the state, whereas there aren’t many other types of institutions with the same almost-independence, and I do share in finding that appealing.

Of course, like I say that their first port of call. If they can keep you going to work and paying taxes or sitting in your prison cell or doing whatever it is they think you should be doing, without resorting to more cannibalistic methods then they generally prefer that.

Yes, you’ve said this before and you’ve always been right. I dunno, I don’t live that healthy a lifestyle and yet I’m rarely ill and haven’t been to a doctor in years. Maybe I’m lucky, or maybe it’s because I don’t go to the doctor that I’m usually well.

I am not sure that we do. We need an alternative, a mindset that demonstrably functions better, but I don’t think we need a working model. But even if at this stage we only have a mindset that applies to individuals and small groups like families, if it works then it will catch on, because nothing makes a differences to people’s lives more than something that actually makes a difference to their lives.

Besides which, I don’t know what a non-corporate government would look like, though I’m all ears to anyone who wants to explain it to me.

To be clear, I was not objecting to you presenting that view, only to that aspect of the view itself. But there is something crucial in there that separates Christ from other figures who are considered similar. And yes, stripped of the religion, what is left? An awful lot that is nourishing.

Is this the point at which you realise you are being a hypocrite?

You’re against “change because a handful of academics think they know how to guide society better than these natural forces would do”, and “ego-maniacal experimenters and theorists that think they know better than how the culture has developed over time”, yet whether or not one is to dub you ego-maniacal, your theories and practices are in line with your judgment that you know better than how culture has developed over time… which has forever been shaped by people who think they know how to change things for the better! I would even say that culture cannot even exist without people pushing their various ways that they think are best, like you are doing by saying there is some natural way other than the way that nature has presented us with so far.

Your argument only makes any sense if you’re either simply disparaging “academics” and/or the “ego-maniacal” (but everything else in those sentences is fine), or you’re trying to distinguish between people acting according to how they think they know best so long as it is to have effect over only themselves vs. people acting according to how they think they know best when it has effect over others.

In the latter case, you’re simply arguing for a society and/or economy founded only on negative liberties aka. Libertarianism.

…but you say “I’m not a libertarian”.

And what a ridiculous ideology it is anyway, with which you deny acquaintance - one that either ideally suggests that a society/economy of agents ought to live freely from the unwanted effects of one another, as though such a practically impossible scenario could be called society/economy, or it realistically knows that such an idealisation of freedom ends in people impinging on the freedoms of others and thus it can only pre-emptively contradict itself by ensuring that this cannot happen. Lol. You say you are against “enforcing the ideal” so there’s no way you could be affiliated with a doctrine solely founded upon an ideal.

So let’s just say I’m missing something here, rather than jumping to conclusions that you simply haven’t thought this one through. What would that be?

By observing outcomes and how well they fit in with my knowledge of people vs. other people’s knowledge of people - in terms of both quality of prediction correlation with these outcomes and quantity of accurate predictions - in the eyes of others as well as in my own.

Towards the end of your post you accused me of being a Marxist because I reluctantly forced a simple answer to an admittedly vastly complex question. I don’t really feel like doing it again - not because of the association with Marx but because I have no time for ridiculous irrelevant accusations and your contempt and hatred for strawmen.

Not really, people who squander their abilities are going to act in ignorance with or without any electoral system. With one, they contribute heavily to an outcome dominated by political parties that are equivalent to tabloid media in the way in which you describe. Without one, they contribute heavily to something indistinguishable.

To address your slant to Socialists, they are revolutionary, and revolution isn’t a process of indirectly democratically voting on who to have in power like we have now. It literally forces an outcome. Within the Socialist framework, democracy is hugely emphasised at all levels, which become increasingly independent as Communist principles become established and people eventually realise how much better they are and turn away from Capitalist principles by their own accord. Thus the State withers away, giving way to Communism, which is equally democratic. Only the democracy of both Socialism and Communism is free of the opportunistic deception and manipulation and you’re rightly against - it’s simply open, transparent and factual.

This is the kind of thing that I’m talking about when I refer to “what Socialism actually is”, as opposed to the nightmarish distortion that everyone seems to associate it with - as inspired by corrupt and/or Totalitarian governments adopting the name simply because of its good reputation, and dramatic media representation.

Socialism isn’t about forcing people to play nice, it’s about prohibiting people from playing mean when it comes to peoples’ means to live. The former would be a terrible thing, but the latter certainly is not.

You make a lot of dire predictions, and i’ve noticed that many of them do not come true. In any case, even if 95% of the world gets wiped out suddenly, i wonder what makes you think the remaining 5% will be anarchists content to live a hunter gatherer lifestyle?

I disagree with this. I think these forces tend to cause a [i]change[/i] of power differences, and billing the change as a lessening is a sales pitch.   Because of natural aristocracy, there's always going to be power differences, the levelers are just seeking (knowingly or not) to change the rules of the game in such a way that people and merits they favor rise to prominence.   So for example, when somebody says we ought not solve problems with violence, they are (often as not) saying that we OUGHT to solve problems with cunnning, manipulation, or money.  Power doesn't change, how you get it does.  The rest of what you said, I found pretty spot-on and insightful, yes.

A working model only in the sense of a logic that is applicable to every kind of crisis situation we can project. What’s important in the future is to have a critical mass of conscious humans. The state has been necessary only in so far as humans weren’t in the position to value without remorse or fear. These conditions aren’t excess or accident, but conditions of the mind. Only by healing (making whole, completing) the mind do these dispelled. And unlike mystics want, this is done by the toughest and most radical honesty.

We’ve reached agreement on most if not all of these issues. Peculiar how rare that is.
I’d like to offer that Silhouette means well and is realistic. The system is in place and it’s an evolving dragon of popular will, i.e. common sense. I’m sure Von Rivers and Silhouette could find terms on an objective morality. What I would consider a contingency plan wherein every situation is contingent - to the friction between irreducible self-valuings.

It’s awesome that our branch of online philosophy is gaining momentum, has gained a momentum – it lets me relax a bit and include a lot of what I’d strictly consider challengeable ideas, allies and practical truths. There’s no enemy except illogical division - a division of self-valuings holding compatible values. This is the common human (post Babel) condition and result of a belief that the other is other in such a way as to require to change to similar in order to be justified.

Rather, the other, in this system of surplus, is an agent of the self. The self, the human self will no longer ever be the animal, but a God by virtue of his resources, which are other humans turned God in this manner.

Fundamental question of economy: do the parts amount to a greater potential for the individual than the individual does by himself?