Anarchism
- Skillz
- Posts: 19
- Joined: September 6th, 2014, 9:44 am
- Favorite Philosopher: Tristan Tzara
- Location: Missouri, USA
Re: Anarchism
"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in." However, society cannot be a state and stateless simultaneously - this makes everyone a statist until proven otherwise. No one's free unless all are free. Only dictators free themselves at the expense others freedom. "No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Nietzsche
Anarchism sucked the fun out of all my favorite statist pastimes. So if you like the sound of my bell ringing then make me aware of it.
-
- Premium Member
- Posts: 13814
- Joined: July 10th, 2008, 7:02 pm
- Location: UK
Re: Anarchism
-
- Posts: 225
- Joined: June 20th, 2011, 7:28 pm
Re: Anarchism
I have to agreeBelinda wrote:But you can't have your cake and eat it! If there is anarchy there is no altruism, enlightened or not. If there is anarchy there are no checks on individuals whose power will kill off the less powerful, and there are no balances to set right any checks on individual liberty. Anarchy would result in chaos.
With the present genome of homo sapiens, there will always be the few who choose to be immoral and succeed at initiating the offense.
By definition of anarchy, no formal government which include municipality, the only way anarchy could work is if either:
1) ALL humans did not offend their fellow man (5000 year of written history says it hasn't happened)
or
2) if the few criminals were dealt with by the remaining humans on an instinctive level. This would require both morals AND spontaneous actions in humans to be genetically built into their psyche (I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon).
As an realistic optimist, I like the concept, its great as a camp fire conjecture, but realize that it is not feasible and would result in chaos.
Perhaps a realistic spin-off that can encapsulate all humans, the moral and immoral, and the weak and the strong, with out leading to chaos.
What template could be used that resulted in a minimal of government?
- Skillz
- Posts: 19
- Joined: September 6th, 2014, 9:44 am
- Favorite Philosopher: Tristan Tzara
- Location: Missouri, USA
Re: Anarchism
In a nutshell, Panarchism grants everyone the right to voluntarily choose their most desired form of government without leaving where they currently live.Belinda wrote:But you can't have your cake and eat it! If there is anarchy there is no altruism, enlightened or not. If there is anarchy there are no checks on individuals whose power will kill off the less powerful, and there are no balances to set right any checks on individual liberty. Anarchy would result in chaos.
I believe there are no inherent rights as no one has the right to exist unilaterally. The only rights that can exist are reciprocal rights. Our right to subsist can only exist reciprocally. A stateless society is responsible for everyone else - irresponsibility is statism. No one has the right to be irresponsible without granting everyone the same right. You may voluntarily choose to be irresponsible as others may voluntarily choose to be responsible about your irresponsibility. There's nothing to fear in a voluntary society, because responsibility trumps irresponsibility. Society cannot be both evil and good simultaneously, good doesn't begin until evil ends. Society cannot be a state and stateless simultaneously, anarchism doesn't begin until statism ends.
The nature of human society will equalize itself because defense should be equal to the threat - that is to say because it is pro-equality in a universe of inherent disparity.
- Theophane
- Posts: 2349
- Joined: May 25th, 2013, 9:03 am
- Favorite Philosopher: C.S. Lewis
- Location: Ontario, Canada
Re: Anarchism
With no social order, how can a society exist? How can civilization exist?An anarchist society is one without chaos.
This just isn't realistic, human nature being what it is. Human nature ruins every attempt at Utopia that has ever been made. We suck!It is a society in which people neither attack each other nor try to dominate each other. It is a society where people respect each other's freedom.
- Vlad
- Posts: 136
- Joined: January 12th, 2009, 3:11 am
Re: Anarchism
They taught you that legitimizing myth to justify their perverted system. This thug-man you believe in is the result of statist enculturation. War and slavery rose together with the state.David_the_simple wrote:I have to agreeBelinda wrote:But you can't have your cake and eat it! If there is anarchy there is no altruism, enlightened or not. If there is anarchy there are no checks on individuals whose power will kill off the less powerful, and there are no balances to set right any checks on individual liberty. Anarchy would result in chaos.
With the present genome of homo sapiens, there will always be the few who choose to be immoral and succeed at initiating the offense.
By definition of anarchy, no formal government which include municipality, the only way anarchy could work is if either:
1) ALL humans did not offend their fellow man (5000 year of written history says it hasn't happened)
- "New Study of Prehistoric Skeletons Undermines Claim That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots"
John Horgan
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro ... ary-roots/
"When did war begin? Does war have deep roots, or is it a modern invention? A new analysis of ancient human remains by anthropologists Jonathan Haas and Matthew Piscitelli of Chicago’s Field Museum provides strong evidence for the latter view."
- "Survey of Earliest Human Settlements Undermines Claim That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots"
John Horgan
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro ... ary-roots/
"[T]wo new studies that contradict the Deep Roots Theory of War, which holds that war is ancient and innate. One study concludes that modern-day mobile foragers (also called nomadic hunter gatherers) are far less warlike than Deep Rooters contend. According to the other study, there is vanishingly little archaeological evidence of lethal group violence prior to 10,000 years ago."
Or,
- "New Study of Foragers Undermines Claim That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots"
John Horgan
"http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro ... ary-roots/"
"One of the most insidious modern memes holds that war is innate, an adaptation bred into our ancestors by natural selection. This hypothesis—let’s call it the “Deep Roots Theory of War”–has been promoted by such intellectual heavyweights as Steven Pinker, Edward Wilson, Jared Diamond, Richard Wrangham, Francis Fukuyama and David Brooks."
-
- Posts: 2501
- Joined: April 28th, 2013, 10:03 pm
- Favorite Philosopher: Omar Khayyam
- Location: Australia
Re: Anarchism
They had no government through all of these millennia and things didn't start to go pear-shaped for the Australian Aborigines until the great white overlords decided to give them one. They generously bestowed a host of exotic diseases on them as well, which meant that within a generation there were bugger-all of them left to govern. The remaining remnant were bundled into missionary camps and taught to love god. Most of them have been on the piss ever since and who could honestly blame them?
In the interests of balance perhaps we should ask an Australian Aborigine what he reckons about the nation-state.
Regards Leo
-
- Premium Member
- Posts: 13814
- Joined: July 10th, 2008, 7:02 pm
- Location: UK
Re: Anarchism
"This thug-man" : except that humans are social and so normally aren't thugs in any settled civilisation. Predators cannot live except by predation. How can there be living without struggle for survival, even although that struggle be as minimal as Leo describes in the lives of the Australian Aborigines? Killing and enslavement happen today and every day, not because of state intervention but because some private citizens are sociopaths or aliens, and their private alienation and sociopathy is the obvious cause of their killing and enslaving.They taught you that legitimizing myth to justify their perverted system. This thug-man you believe in is the result of statist enculturation. War and slavery rose together with the state.
-
- Posts: 225
- Joined: June 20th, 2011, 7:28 pm
Re: Anarchism
Thanks for the interesting leads.Vlad wrote:They taught you that legitimizing myth to justify their perverted system. This thug-man you believe in is the result of statist enculturation. War and slavery rose together with the state.David_the_simple wrote: .... 1) ALL humans did not offend their fellow man (5000 year of written history says it hasn't happened)Or,
- "New Study of Prehistoric Skeletons Undermines Claim That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots" ... http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro ... ary-roots/
"When did war begin? Does war have deep roots, or is it a modern invention? A new analysis of ancient human remains by anthropologists Jonathan Haas and Matthew Piscitelli of Chicago’s Field Museum provides strong evidence for the latter view."...Or,
- "Survey of Earliest Human Settlements Undermines Claim That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots" ... http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro ... ary-roots/
"[T]wo new studies that contradict the Deep Roots Theory of War, which holds that war is ancient and innate. One study concludes that modern-day mobile foragers (also called nomadic hunter gatherers) are far less warlike than Deep Rooters contend. According to the other study, there is vanishingly little archaeological evidence of lethal group violence prior to 10,000 years ago."
- "New Study of Foragers Undermines Claim That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots" ... "http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro ... ary-roots/"
"One of the most insidious modern memes holds that war is innate, an adaptation bred into our ancestors by natural selection. This hypothesis—let’s call it the “Deep Roots Theory of War”–has been promoted by such intellectual heavyweights as Steven Pinker, Edward Wilson, Jared Diamond, Richard Wrangham, Francis Fukuyama and David Brooks."
First, it must be pointed out that man is a social creature. This is a blanket statement, there are individual exception. Many today as is expected of yesteryear, are kind and generous. It is the few that screw things up.
Next, under strain of diminishing resource, kindness gets overshadowed with self and family preservation. Still not war, but expected higher incidences of petty theft. The leads you provided displayed this.
10,000 years ago there was a boom in human population followed by a small ice age till about 5,000 years ago. Point being, with increased population, the chieftain model begins to fail. It is understood that true democracy fails with a larger population. I can concede that Anarchy may vary well work in small tribes with lots of resources, but has yet to prove any more feasible than democracy with larger populations, historically speaking.
One of the Greek philosophers stated that all forms of government hold the seed to their demise. Anarchy can be expected to fall do to pockets of alliances... not quite government, but a social contracts that later evolves into one.
-
- Posts: 2501
- Joined: April 28th, 2013, 10:03 pm
- Favorite Philosopher: Omar Khayyam
- Location: Australia
Re: Anarchism
Technically this is true but it's rather misleading. In fact man is a "tribal" creature whose social interactions are limited by group size. Once human social groups number much more than about 150, a limiting function known as Dunbar's number, then the natural cohesion of their societies begins to fragment. This makes perfect evolutionary sense and it is observed in all social species, although Dunbar's number itself varies from species to species. For instance in chimps it is about 50 and in dogs less than ten. It is directly linked to the processing power of the neo-cortex and in the fields of paleo-anthropology and social psychology Dunbar's work is regarded as mainstream and completely uncontroversial.David_the_simple wrote:First, it must be pointed out that man is a social creature.
Dunbar's number crops up everywhere in social psychology and is now even being researched in the context of people's facebook "friends". I'm not into facebook so don't know much about it but already the average number of facebook friends that a single person can engage with has levelled out at about 150. Rural villages in every society in the world have always levelled off at around this number, dating back forever and still very much going on.
Once human hunter-gatherer groups started getting together about 10,000 years ago in larger groups to share in the benefits of agriculture the natural cohesion of human sociability began to fragment. Hierarchical mechanisms of control had to be developed to prevent these societies from disintegrating so now we have government, religion, law and order, disease, investment bankers, and radio shock jocks.
We wouldn't have needed any of this **** if we hadn't outsmarted ourselves and stayed in our tribal groups like the indigenous Australians did. Naturally the corollary is that neither would we have evolved into the advanced technological civilisation which we are today. Population pressure through migration was the driver for the agriculture revolution but after the last ice age no further migration into Australia was possible. The overall population of our island continent simply levelled off perfectly naturally at an environmentally sustainable level and this natural population varied little over time spans of millennia. If it hadn't been for colonial invasion there is no reason to suppose that this wouldn't have continued until the next ice age because there was no selection pressure for change. As far as they could judge the matter our indigenes lived in Utopia, a world-view which is reflected throughout their entire culture.
This is all mainstream science and one of the hottest fields in science at that. Paleo-anthropology and social evolution can reveal much about many of the ills which beset our societies today and the work of Robin Dunbar and others is groundbreaking stuff. Our societies are dysfunctional because we're trying to force a square peg into a round hole. Human beings evolved over a period of millions of years to live as foraging groups and then basically stopped doing it in the blink of an evolutionary eye only about 500 generations ago. We are now reaping what we've sown and if we don't smarten up our game then the same fate awaits us as awaits all of nature's failures. Extinction.
However the extinction of homo sapiens would be a unique event in our planet's evolutionary history. Amongst our many other firsts we would be the first species to engineer our own Armageddon. However this is not something to get too alarmed about because nature is resourceful. The estimates vary but it is generally assumed that human-level sentience could evolve at least another hundred times, if we weren't here, before our sun becomes uncomfortably hot. They could all emerge one at a time, outsmart themselves as we have done, and then simply vanish off the biological landscape.
Nature couldn't care less. Life goes on.
Regards Leo
-
- Posts: 225
- Joined: June 20th, 2011, 7:28 pm
Re: Anarchism
Obvious Leo wrote:Technically this is true but it's rather misleading. In fact man is a "tribal" creature whose social interactions are limited by group size. Once human social groups number much more than about 150, a limiting function known as Dunbar's number, then the natural cohesion of their societies begins to fragment. This makes perfect evolutionary sense and it is observed in all social species, although Dunbar's number itself varies from species to species. For instance in chimps it is about 50 and in dogs less than ten. It is directly linked to the processing power of the neo-cortex and in the fields of paleo-anthropology and social psychology Dunbar's work is regarded as mainstream and completely uncontroversial. ...David_the_simple wrote:First, it must be pointed out that man is a social creature.
I am aware of Dunbar's 'monkeysphere' number, Hence why I have brought it up in other threads as necessary to tweak our constitution to embrace it and modify social structure to avoid the loop holes due to 'over extended' representation.
In relevance to this thread, this is why I believe that anarchism can only work for a short while in small groups.
-
- Posts: 2501
- Joined: April 28th, 2013, 10:03 pm
- Favorite Philosopher: Omar Khayyam
- Location: Australia
Re: Anarchism
Theoretically it should work forever in small groups as would socialism, or capitalism for that matter. In fact there's no reason why a subtle blend of all three wouldn't work best of all. Things only go pear-shaped when we try and extend these models to larger groupings because the doctrine of reciprocal rights cannot extend beyond Dunbar's limiting function.David_the_simple wrote:In relevance to this thread, this is why I believe that anarchism can only work for a short while in small groups.
Regards Leo
P.S. I did a lot of work on this some years ago and even have a sizable half-finished manuscript on the subject which I've entitled "The most obvious social contract". I very much doubt that I'll ever finish it but I found that my research in this field was of enormous assistance to me in a number of more traditional lines of philosophical enquiry which I was pursuing at the time. You never know what you might find under a rock unless you roll it over and have a look but without doubt when the bloody obvious jumps out from under there you sit up and take notice. Simplicity is Truth.
- Vlad
- Posts: 136
- Joined: January 12th, 2009, 3:11 am
Re: Anarchism
The state is an addiction. Physician and addictions specialist Gabor Mate suggests that process addictions and substance addictions work more-or-less the same way in the brain. Brain scans seemed to show the parts of the brain lit up by drugs are the same parts lit up by money and status (monetary tasks and brand names). The ego is addicted to the state just like a junkie. The ego has defenses against threats to that dependency: denial, rationalization, displacement and so on. You are addicted to your hurt. Those are the disciplinary lessons the state taught you, and you wouldn't want to let that pain go, it is dear to you: it makes you who you are. The legitimizing myths of statism: such as, 'man is inherently greedy', or 'it could never work without the state' are just the rationalizations of an internalized brutal pimp-drug dealer: 'you need me, you could never make it without me!' Unfortunately, no one is more likely to walk away from the state, reject it's legitimizing myths, and open their heart to freedom and anarchism than a crack addicted prostitute who's been in the game and using since she was a kid is to come clean.David_the_simple wrote:First, it must be pointed out that man is a social creature. This is a blanket statement, there are individual exception. Many today as is expected of yesteryear, are kind and generous. It is the few that screw things up.Vlad wrote: "New Study of Prehistoric Skeletons Undermines Claim That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots" ... http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro ... ary-roots/
_____________________
Naive realism (belief in a physical external world that preexists consciousness), the sexual taboos, egoic consciousness (belief in a fixed self identity), and the state, form an integrated system. Collapse any one of these, and the whole system of shame and blame, and bribery and punishment comes down.
If you have never before conceived of the centrality of sexual taboo (especially incest) to the state, this is a compulsory read from anarchist academic Jamie Heckert, Sexuality as State Form,
http://www.academia.edu/234322/Sexuality_as_State-form
-- Updated Sat Jan 03, 2015 2:05 am to add the following --
Should also be required reading, the incest machine: explained by Gayle Rubin in "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex",
https://genderstudiesgroupdu.files.word ... -women.pdf
Here are are a few links to the concept of Egoic Consciousness; central philosophical concept and yet almost totally unknown to so many so-called philosophers,
http://www.purifymind.com/EG.htm http://www.drwaynedyer.com/blog/the-ego-illusion/ http://www.esotericscience.org/articlea.htm
-
- Premium Member
- Posts: 13814
- Joined: July 10th, 2008, 7:02 pm
- Location: UK
Re: Anarchism
Vlad writes an interesting scenario with truth in it, probably; I say this without dipping into the bibliography that Vlad offers.The ego is addicted to the state just like a junkie. The ego has defenses against threats to that dependency: denial, rationalization, displacement and so on. You are addicted to your hurt. Those are the disciplinary lessons the state taught you,
However, an even more important cause of behaviour than make-up of egos is whatever climate, food, terrain, water and living space is available. Egos are secondary to the latter economic necessities. For economic necessities to be reliably procured humans need to cooperate with the work of whatever local elite controls their movements.
Generally, as David_the_Simple explains(#144) and Obvious Leo refines(#145)the more easily procured are the economic necessities the less need there is for strict controls by the chiefs. It is confoundingly difficult for huge societies to understand the machinery of economic survival with or without economic growth and so the state, i.e. a large part of the power elite , gets in moneys to pay for experts. It takes state machinery to raise tax moneys.
-
- Posts: 225
- Joined: June 20th, 2011, 7:28 pm
Re: Anarchism
I do not challenge the physiological findings.Vlad wrote:The state is an addiction. Physician and addictions specialist Gabor Mate suggests that process addictions and substance addictions work more-or-less the same way in the brain. Brain scans seemed to show the parts of the brain lit up by drugs are the same parts lit up by money and status (monetary tasks and brand names). The ego is addicted to the state just like a junkie. The ego has defenses against threats to that dependency: denial, rationalization, displacement and so on. You are addicted to your hurt. Those are the disciplinary lessons the state taught you, and you wouldn't want to let that pain go, it is dear to you: it makes you who you are. The legitimizing myths of statism: such as, 'man is inherently greedy', or 'it could never work without the state' are just the rationalizations of an internalized brutal pimp-drug dealer: 'you need me, you could never make it without me!' Unfortunately, no one is more likely to walk away from the state, reject it's legitimizing myths, and open their heart to freedom and anarchism than a crack addicted prostitute who's been in the game and using since she was a kid is to come clean....David_the_simple wrote: First, it must be pointed out that man is a social creature. This is a blanket statement, there are individual exception. Many today as is expected of yesteryear, are kind and generous. It is the few that screw things up.
I do propose a simple model that helps explain what is and what has gone wrong.
Above a threshold population, there is a need for order, which requires a leader. This leader may raise to the occasion (the most basic/elemental form of state) then meld back into society or may remain. More times then not, the leader remains.
In this model, the 'state' serves a necessary function. In this model, the remainder of the population look up to the leader to fulfill a need, which has the physiological effects mentioned above.
The problem arises in that there is no adequate means to guarantee the leader's moral choices outside of fulfilling the need. This is the root problem with all forms of 'state'.
The 'state' fulfills a necessary function due to above threshold population.
The person(s) in 'state' may be moral or immoral. The grievances should be against immoral leaders not the 'state'
2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023