Another great piece. Most people believe Anarchy is chaos because they have been told that is what Anarchy is by movies, television, media, government, schools, not realizing that the ultimate anarchy is peace....grow a garden, travel without a passport, live according to the non-aggression principle, yet take no shit, defend yourself and property, and those unable to defend themselves, but do not incite violence. The system doesn't want anarchists because an anarchist doesn't believe in their bullying, or non-consenting, force, instead live with consenting agreements between parties (without manipulation, honest and transparent). True chaos is the system we have, which is to rule by theft, deceit and coercion, creating fear in hearts and minds, instead of freedom.
Well, "anarchism" is only negative because of three of the four definitions. But really it just means [an] without + [arkhos] rulers. And that is not viewed by adherents to definition four as a negative—quite the contrary. Nonetheless, your point is well taken. Indeed, my wife was saying the other day that she thinks the same: voluntaryism is better because it lacks the same connotations and baggage.
But there too, I've heard it all: "Voluntaryism? What, so you're saying criminals will just agree to behave themselves voluntarily?"
I completely disagree. We need to stop allowing others to redefine words us (and that goes for everything, not just this) and as such 'forcing' people to speak a certain way. Anarchy means what it means, always has and always will, and it is our duty to clarify and correct, not play more of their games.
"'anarchism' is a negative description rather than a positive one."
I agree. The most common usage of "anarchy" implies "chaos", meaning the absence of order. Control is a kind of order. But there is another kind of order. The "invisible hand" Adam Smith wrote about.
Spontaneous-order/self-organization is the order that emerges from the voluntary interaction of people in a society. I honestly don't understand why a new term needs to be invented.
"I honestly don't understand why a new term needs to be invented."
—Those are good, expressive terms. But "self-organizationist" or "spontaneous orderism" don't make for good labels for peoples/philosophies/movements. Would you prefer voluntaryist? I like that okay, but it seems a bit clunky to me…
Good points. But yes, voluntaryism is somewhat clunky, and like anarchism, voluntarism already has a well established meaning, in usage and in the dictionary. Self-rule also has an established meaning in the context of nations and governments. Freedomism? Freedomists?
I found that "freedomism" does already have two meanings: indeterminism (Philosophy) and anti-statism. But it is rarely used. The MS Word spell checker does not recognize it as a word. 'Freedomism' would have the connotation of 'free markets' which are a good example of voluntary exchange.
But someone who believes in the "limited-government original vision of the Founders" could easily and rightly claim to be a freedomist. But that is still not the same thing as anarchism, right?
"someone who believes in the 'limited-government original vision of the Founders".
True, but at least it does not yet have that meaning.
Personally, I would be willing to go along with whatever label for the movement that others agreed upon. We need this movement, and your ideas seem to be the best basis for it that I have seen.
We need to counter-attack against the left, defeat them, and retake the future of America. We must cooperate on a movement and a vision for that, or we will lose everything.
Thank you. I am grinding my brain away on the problem daily.
I am about to offer you a very controversial and difficult thought. I have long been a patriotic conservative American, so what I am about to say, I do not say lightly…
The notion that we must "counter-attack against the left, defeat them, and retake the future of America" may simply no longer be the right way to look at things. Perhaps it never was.
Yes, the left is the worst major ideology ever to ooze forth from the twisted mind of man. And yes, they are a threat, and if they could somehow be defeated or discredited, in all of their manifestations, in every corner of the globe, for all time, the world would be a happier and better place. But…
The notion that we must retake the future of America is problematic. In fact, at risk of angering the ghost of Lincoln, the entire concept of a single America is problematic.
What happens if we defeat the left and retake the future of America? What do we do then? If we go with the system as it is set up, we will replace their blueprint with ours. We will replace their forcible imposition of their blueprint with forcible imposition of ours.
Does that sound like it would work for any length of time? Even if we could completely defeat the left politically, we would not obliterate its adherents. Those people won't be going anywhere. And they will be bitter and want back into power. They will want to reimpose their blueprint again. And so we will fight, back and forth, forever.
Do you remember that original series Star Trek episode with the two identical guys from parallel universes fighting in limbo forever? I don't want that to be our fate. I don't think it has to be.
Even if we could achieve a permanent forcible imposition of our blueprint, is that a good thing to want? To win decisively and maintain the power to tell everyone that they must live our way?
Granted, if we won, we would largely just tell people they could live however they want. Our blueprint would be smaller and less obtrusive than the left's. Much of the blueprint would be devoted to keeping the left and the state at bay.
Yet it is still, at the end of the day, imposed by force upon people who do not want it. "You want to live what way? Too bad—we're in the majority. You must live our way." That is a recipe for permanent strife. I refuse to accept that permanent strife is the only possible way mankind can live.
I think America needs to break up. The smaller the units, the better. I think this is true of every country. Every country is built on the notion that someone gets the power—a monarch, a majority, whatever—to tell everyone in the country how they must live. This is a terrible way to live. We must evolve beyond it.
Thus, the whole idea of "taking America back" (or any other such country) seems like the wrong goal. I know that is a bitter pill for lifelong patriots, and for all of us, since few of us have ever even contemplated anything other than the system we have. But I think we must.
Nikolai Berdyaev, twentieth century Russian religious philosopher, described sobornost’ in anthropological terms as a community of believers. According to him, a man needs other fellow creatures to reach self-fulfillment and jointly aim toward the truth. The community (sobornost’), which allows individuals to gain contentment and realization, is the ultimate happiness. It also enables its members to search for truth which can never be found independently.
Yes, we are ultra-social creatures. We hate being in solitude. We can accomplish very little in solitude.
The problem is that that fact is then used to justify treating the individual human person as a sub-unit of the collective. To treat the collective as a rights-bearing entity, and the human person as a mere cell of the collective. To subsume the rights of the human person into the utilitarian aims of the collective.
And those aims are always interpreted and actuated by a small group of people claiming to act on behalf of the collective.
And the full flower of this attitude is the 150 million human souls slaughtered in a single century.
If we emphasize the collective over the individual, that is what we will always end up with. That does not mean calling for atomization or misanthropy. It just means recognizing that the individual is the fundamental unit of moral concern and analysis.
OMG, YES! I knew I knew the name. One of my best friends was a RO priest for a long time, and he has sent me quotes from Berdayev about personalism. (In fact, I think he might have sent me a whole book, though I just spent ten minutes looking for it and cannot find it. I will have to look more.) I do remember one passage he sent being deeply moving. I will have to look for that too.
So can you say in more detail how he (or you) would distinguish personalism from individualism?
The major difference is that an individual represents a single unit in a homogenous set, interchangeable with any other member of the set, whereas a person is characterized by his uniqueness and irreplaceability. This uniqueness cannot be changed with another, cannot be used by another, and has infinite value. If you do not mind ebooks try https://annas-archive.gs/search?index=&page=1&q=Berdyaev&sort=
That's very informative. Thank you for that foundation. So where would a Collaborative Democracy fit on your diagram? (A direct democracy legislated by all Citizens who choose to participate [remotely] administered by citizen councils [selected randomly from qualified pools of citizens]? It is a government, but of the people where each person has a voice and citizens collectively rule.)
If it is imposed by force against, and without the consent of, all people within a given territory, then it is a government. If it is occurring in a private polity, and participation in that polity is consensual, and people have the right of exit, then it is inarchy. If it is taking place and people can choose it from wherever they live, or they can choose other governance providers, or from a menu of market providers, or nothing at all, then it is panarchy.
I mean caste, class,any self defining category that feels or that is on the outside. Should peacefully even include criminals or violent actors? I don’t think anything will work now. We have been too indoctrinated to value the individual over being part of the society.
As an aside, what do you think would happen to the JFK quote… Ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country, if a politician said that today?
"any self defining category that feels or that is on the outside."
—On the outside of what, though? Society exists whether or not there is an involuntary government telling everyone what to do. Society is organic, and without government, it would be yet more organic. Smaller communities would exist, and be more cohesive. People could choose to interact with others, or not. Your life would be what you choose to make of it. I am not sure what problem you fear or are trying to solve.
" Should peacefully even include criminals or violent actors?"
—Protective force is what is needed to deal with criminals and violent actors. That would still exist in a market-anarchic condition. The only difference would be who would be deploying the protective force.
At the moment, government imposes its authority, includes protective force as one of the services it provides, and threatens violence if you do not pay them for it. (Note: this is exactly the same as what the mafia does with a protection racket.)
In the market-anarchic scenario, protective force services are offered to willing customers.
Either way, criminals get dealt with.
"As an aside, what do you think would happen to the JFK quote"
—Also not sure what you are getting at. I think the sentiment of that quote is incredibly misguided. What is it, exactly, that I ought to be forced, by the threat of violence, to do for my "country"?
How do you define society without a group? A society of one is an individual. So hierarchy (group) is society? I think so. Lets say you have a family. That is your community and your society and could be considered organic. The next level is the tribe and I can see a market-anarchic system working with that for a time. People who do not support tribal decisions would have to be exiled. The protective force would be willingly provided but would probably not have been supported by the exiled. So dont you end up with the same thing? A society of individual(oxymoron) that does not care about the group(for the benefit of all) hence the quote.
I very much appreciate your definitions and thoughts. I just do not see how it would work except with small groups. I agree the government is a protection racket but I think it only protects itself.
Yes, social questions cease to matter if one is marooned on an island. And we are an ultra-social species. Still, we must be extremely careful: The argument that "no man is an island" and that we must live in groups, etc. becomes toxic and cancerous very easily. It is used by every form of collectivism to assert that the individual human person is but a sub-unit of the collective, and must subordinate himself to its utilitarian aims. The is the pathologization of our social nature, and it always ends up in democide.
That said…
There are lots of ways to do a condition in which individual human consent is respected.
You could, for example, have small polities, even ones that are internally illiberal, but in which participation is consensual and the individual may exit at any time. This could be anything from an intentional community (Amish, commune, etc.) to a private-law jurisdiction to a "country" run by a for-profit company to a city state. Or anything else you can imagine. This is the "inarchic" condition I identify here: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/what-kind-world-you-want
You could also have areas—including quite large areas—that are just free, and in which jurisdictionally coterminous market agencies or governance providers offer their services, and people become willing customers as they choose. In such a condition, you and I might live side by side and be customers of different agencies, or members of completely different distributed polities. This is the "panarchic" condition I identify in that same piece.
Regarding the quote, it somewhat takes me back to my first statement in this comment. I am hearing a touch of something that, while well-meant, tends to take things in sinister directions. The individual human person is the fundamental unit of moral concern and analysis. Groups cannot think, act, choose, or experience. Groups do not have rights or interests. Only individuals do. Individuals SHOULD be nice to people, help their fellows, etc. And most people do. But they are not REQUIRED to do anything other than NOT INITIATE COERCIVE FORCE against others. (Sorry, there are no italics.) Their failure to be nice is not actionable by anyone else. But if they initiate coercive force, that IS actionable. If someone "does not care about the group," that is his business. Morally, he may not be forced to do anything, help anyone, pay anyone, or interact with anyone. The only things he MUST do are to fulfill any contractual obligations or responsibilities, and to make restitution if he injures someone by means of coercive force. Most people WANT to help and interact. But it is not actionable if someone does not. Do you see what I mean?
Finally, there is no reason why this cannot scale up well beyond the tribe level. Part of the reason why that seems hard to imagine is because we are all accustomed to one-size-fits-all solutions being imposed upon large groups of people in large areas. That is old-school thinking. You could have a world of tribes, polities, private-law jurisdictions, phyles, city states, free territories, and more, and not have anything imposed upon anyone who did not consent thereto.
Once one starts studying this stuff, vistas open up…
I always think about the anarchists in the spanish civil war.
what i would like to ask is with your definition what happens to agents that are part of the group that are not willing to participate in security and justice?
My question is when was modern day anarchy pushed? Growing up in the late 60s and 70s it was a time of peace brought by the hippies. Lol. I was young and bought into all of that. Freedom of choice, freedom of peace. The world is going to be a place of love!
Then sometime in The early 2000s I was talking to my teenage nephew and he told me he wanted to be an anarchist. I remember laughing at him inside and asking him what that meant for him. And he said I just want to be free. I certainly didn’t want to laugh at him, but later my sister-in-law and I were just cracking up. Not realizing the danger of this thinking and where it came from — I him.
Somewhere in the 1990s and 2000s and maybe before they begin infiltrating young minds with anarchy through another perspective.
It certainly would not shock me if the CIA were behind it. I am not saying they were, but if someone dug up documents on the CIA plan code-named LET'S-GET-KIDS-TO-START-DRAWING-THE-ANARCHY-A-ON-THEIR-MATH-TEXTBOOKS, I would not at all be shocked.
To me, anarchy is choosing to live without total government rule. I don't care about the definitions. I don't have to call my desire to live apart from government anything.
The government is a leftist thuggery operation and at the slightest questioning of their over-powering authority, you are termed an anarchist or some such. Leftists are terrified of losing control or the majority waking up to their terrorism against the individual.
I may remain a peaceful anarchist but at some point the leftists/globalists might come at me with deadly force. Then what? Let them impale me or stick a pitchfork up their butts? Then I will be called something else when I only want to be left alone.
I like the this word more and more over Anarchist or Voluntarist: "Decentralist." It defines archaic terms in a more modern definition without losing its meaning.
But…you might have a decentralized system that still involves the initiation of government force, right? So maybe the term does not fully reflect the objective? (Or at least my objective 🤣)
Another great piece. Most people believe Anarchy is chaos because they have been told that is what Anarchy is by movies, television, media, government, schools, not realizing that the ultimate anarchy is peace....grow a garden, travel without a passport, live according to the non-aggression principle, yet take no shit, defend yourself and property, and those unable to defend themselves, but do not incite violence. The system doesn't want anarchists because an anarchist doesn't believe in their bullying, or non-consenting, force, instead live with consenting agreements between parties (without manipulation, honest and transparent). True chaos is the system we have, which is to rule by theft, deceit and coercion, creating fear in hearts and minds, instead of freedom.
Sharing!
You would be better off to support the use of "voluntaryism", since "anarchism" is a negative description rather than a positive one.
Well, "anarchism" is only negative because of three of the four definitions. But really it just means [an] without + [arkhos] rulers. And that is not viewed by adherents to definition four as a negative—quite the contrary. Nonetheless, your point is well taken. Indeed, my wife was saying the other day that she thinks the same: voluntaryism is better because it lacks the same connotations and baggage.
But there too, I've heard it all: "Voluntaryism? What, so you're saying criminals will just agree to behave themselves voluntarily?"
I completely disagree. We need to stop allowing others to redefine words us (and that goes for everything, not just this) and as such 'forcing' people to speak a certain way. Anarchy means what it means, always has and always will, and it is our duty to clarify and correct, not play more of their games.
Or perhaps "individual self-rule." Why not coin your own phrase that is more applicable?
ASG (the Advocates for Self-Governance) favor self-governance. Self-rule is also good.
But they are all fraught with pitfalls.
"Self-rule? So you're saying criminals can just do whatever they want?"
"Self-governance? So you want a totally atomized society?"
I've heard it all over and over.
Isn't that the same as "sovereign citizen"?
"'anarchism' is a negative description rather than a positive one."
I agree. The most common usage of "anarchy" implies "chaos", meaning the absence of order. Control is a kind of order. But there is another kind of order. The "invisible hand" Adam Smith wrote about.
Spontaneous-order/self-organization is the order that emerges from the voluntary interaction of people in a society. I honestly don't understand why a new term needs to be invented.
"I honestly don't understand why a new term needs to be invented."
—Those are good, expressive terms. But "self-organizationist" or "spontaneous orderism" don't make for good labels for peoples/philosophies/movements. Would you prefer voluntaryist? I like that okay, but it seems a bit clunky to me…
Good points. But yes, voluntaryism is somewhat clunky, and like anarchism, voluntarism already has a well established meaning, in usage and in the dictionary. Self-rule also has an established meaning in the context of nations and governments. Freedomism? Freedomists?
I found that "freedomism" does already have two meanings: indeterminism (Philosophy) and anti-statism. But it is rarely used. The MS Word spell checker does not recognize it as a word. 'Freedomism' would have the connotation of 'free markets' which are a good example of voluntary exchange.
Interesting thoughts.
But someone who believes in the "limited-government original vision of the Founders" could easily and rightly claim to be a freedomist. But that is still not the same thing as anarchism, right?
"someone who believes in the 'limited-government original vision of the Founders".
True, but at least it does not yet have that meaning.
Personally, I would be willing to go along with whatever label for the movement that others agreed upon. We need this movement, and your ideas seem to be the best basis for it that I have seen.
We need to counter-attack against the left, defeat them, and retake the future of America. We must cooperate on a movement and a vision for that, or we will lose everything.
Thank you. I am grinding my brain away on the problem daily.
I am about to offer you a very controversial and difficult thought. I have long been a patriotic conservative American, so what I am about to say, I do not say lightly…
The notion that we must "counter-attack against the left, defeat them, and retake the future of America" may simply no longer be the right way to look at things. Perhaps it never was.
Yes, the left is the worst major ideology ever to ooze forth from the twisted mind of man. And yes, they are a threat, and if they could somehow be defeated or discredited, in all of their manifestations, in every corner of the globe, for all time, the world would be a happier and better place. But…
The notion that we must retake the future of America is problematic. In fact, at risk of angering the ghost of Lincoln, the entire concept of a single America is problematic.
What happens if we defeat the left and retake the future of America? What do we do then? If we go with the system as it is set up, we will replace their blueprint with ours. We will replace their forcible imposition of their blueprint with forcible imposition of ours.
Does that sound like it would work for any length of time? Even if we could completely defeat the left politically, we would not obliterate its adherents. Those people won't be going anywhere. And they will be bitter and want back into power. They will want to reimpose their blueprint again. And so we will fight, back and forth, forever.
Do you remember that original series Star Trek episode with the two identical guys from parallel universes fighting in limbo forever? I don't want that to be our fate. I don't think it has to be.
Even if we could achieve a permanent forcible imposition of our blueprint, is that a good thing to want? To win decisively and maintain the power to tell everyone that they must live our way?
Granted, if we won, we would largely just tell people they could live however they want. Our blueprint would be smaller and less obtrusive than the left's. Much of the blueprint would be devoted to keeping the left and the state at bay.
Yet it is still, at the end of the day, imposed by force upon people who do not want it. "You want to live what way? Too bad—we're in the majority. You must live our way." That is a recipe for permanent strife. I refuse to accept that permanent strife is the only possible way mankind can live.
I think America needs to break up. The smaller the units, the better. I think this is true of every country. Every country is built on the notion that someone gets the power—a monarch, a majority, whatever—to tell everyone in the country how they must live. This is a terrible way to live. We must evolve beyond it.
Thus, the whole idea of "taking America back" (or any other such country) seems like the wrong goal. I know that is a bitter pill for lifelong patriots, and for all of us, since few of us have ever even contemplated anything other than the system we have. But I think we must.
Nikolai Berdyaev, twentieth century Russian religious philosopher, described sobornost’ in anthropological terms as a community of believers. According to him, a man needs other fellow creatures to reach self-fulfillment and jointly aim toward the truth. The community (sobornost’), which allows individuals to gain contentment and realization, is the ultimate happiness. It also enables its members to search for truth which can never be found independently.
Yes, we are ultra-social creatures. We hate being in solitude. We can accomplish very little in solitude.
The problem is that that fact is then used to justify treating the individual human person as a sub-unit of the collective. To treat the collective as a rights-bearing entity, and the human person as a mere cell of the collective. To subsume the rights of the human person into the utilitarian aims of the collective.
And those aims are always interpreted and actuated by a small group of people claiming to act on behalf of the collective.
And the full flower of this attitude is the 150 million human souls slaughtered in a single century.
If we emphasize the collective over the individual, that is what we will always end up with. That does not mean calling for atomization or misanthropy. It just means recognizing that the individual is the fundamental unit of moral concern and analysis.
Yes this is the vision of Berdyaev who has an existential Christian philosophy. Personalism. Not individualism.
OMG, YES! I knew I knew the name. One of my best friends was a RO priest for a long time, and he has sent me quotes from Berdayev about personalism. (In fact, I think he might have sent me a whole book, though I just spent ten minutes looking for it and cannot find it. I will have to look more.) I do remember one passage he sent being deeply moving. I will have to look for that too.
So can you say in more detail how he (or you) would distinguish personalism from individualism?
The major difference is that an individual represents a single unit in a homogenous set, interchangeable with any other member of the set, whereas a person is characterized by his uniqueness and irreplaceability. This uniqueness cannot be changed with another, cannot be used by another, and has infinite value. If you do not mind ebooks try https://annas-archive.gs/search?index=&page=1&q=Berdyaev&sort=
Yes, I remember now my friend referring to the "mystery of infinite personhood," or words to that effect.
Needless to say, if that is how we are to define individualism and personhood, then I am all about personhood!
That's very informative. Thank you for that foundation. So where would a Collaborative Democracy fit on your diagram? (A direct democracy legislated by all Citizens who choose to participate [remotely] administered by citizen councils [selected randomly from qualified pools of citizens]? It is a government, but of the people where each person has a voice and citizens collectively rule.)
If it is imposed by force against, and without the consent of, all people within a given territory, then it is a government. If it is occurring in a private polity, and participation in that polity is consensual, and people have the right of exit, then it is inarchy. If it is taking place and people can choose it from wherever they live, or they can choose other governance providers, or from a menu of market providers, or nothing at all, then it is panarchy.
I mean caste, class,any self defining category that feels or that is on the outside. Should peacefully even include criminals or violent actors? I don’t think anything will work now. We have been too indoctrinated to value the individual over being part of the society.
As an aside, what do you think would happen to the JFK quote… Ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country, if a politician said that today?
I also understand that anarchy is very individual.
"any self defining category that feels or that is on the outside."
—On the outside of what, though? Society exists whether or not there is an involuntary government telling everyone what to do. Society is organic, and without government, it would be yet more organic. Smaller communities would exist, and be more cohesive. People could choose to interact with others, or not. Your life would be what you choose to make of it. I am not sure what problem you fear or are trying to solve.
" Should peacefully even include criminals or violent actors?"
—Protective force is what is needed to deal with criminals and violent actors. That would still exist in a market-anarchic condition. The only difference would be who would be deploying the protective force.
At the moment, government imposes its authority, includes protective force as one of the services it provides, and threatens violence if you do not pay them for it. (Note: this is exactly the same as what the mafia does with a protection racket.)
In the market-anarchic scenario, protective force services are offered to willing customers.
Either way, criminals get dealt with.
"As an aside, what do you think would happen to the JFK quote"
—Also not sure what you are getting at. I think the sentiment of that quote is incredibly misguided. What is it, exactly, that I ought to be forced, by the threat of violence, to do for my "country"?
How do you define society without a group? A society of one is an individual. So hierarchy (group) is society? I think so. Lets say you have a family. That is your community and your society and could be considered organic. The next level is the tribe and I can see a market-anarchic system working with that for a time. People who do not support tribal decisions would have to be exiled. The protective force would be willingly provided but would probably not have been supported by the exiled. So dont you end up with the same thing? A society of individual(oxymoron) that does not care about the group(for the benefit of all) hence the quote.
I very much appreciate your definitions and thoughts. I just do not see how it would work except with small groups. I agree the government is a protection racket but I think it only protects itself.
Yes, social questions cease to matter if one is marooned on an island. And we are an ultra-social species. Still, we must be extremely careful: The argument that "no man is an island" and that we must live in groups, etc. becomes toxic and cancerous very easily. It is used by every form of collectivism to assert that the individual human person is but a sub-unit of the collective, and must subordinate himself to its utilitarian aims. The is the pathologization of our social nature, and it always ends up in democide.
That said…
There are lots of ways to do a condition in which individual human consent is respected.
You could, for example, have small polities, even ones that are internally illiberal, but in which participation is consensual and the individual may exit at any time. This could be anything from an intentional community (Amish, commune, etc.) to a private-law jurisdiction to a "country" run by a for-profit company to a city state. Or anything else you can imagine. This is the "inarchic" condition I identify here: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/what-kind-world-you-want
You could also have areas—including quite large areas—that are just free, and in which jurisdictionally coterminous market agencies or governance providers offer their services, and people become willing customers as they choose. In such a condition, you and I might live side by side and be customers of different agencies, or members of completely different distributed polities. This is the "panarchic" condition I identify in that same piece.
Regarding the quote, it somewhat takes me back to my first statement in this comment. I am hearing a touch of something that, while well-meant, tends to take things in sinister directions. The individual human person is the fundamental unit of moral concern and analysis. Groups cannot think, act, choose, or experience. Groups do not have rights or interests. Only individuals do. Individuals SHOULD be nice to people, help their fellows, etc. And most people do. But they are not REQUIRED to do anything other than NOT INITIATE COERCIVE FORCE against others. (Sorry, there are no italics.) Their failure to be nice is not actionable by anyone else. But if they initiate coercive force, that IS actionable. If someone "does not care about the group," that is his business. Morally, he may not be forced to do anything, help anyone, pay anyone, or interact with anyone. The only things he MUST do are to fulfill any contractual obligations or responsibilities, and to make restitution if he injures someone by means of coercive force. Most people WANT to help and interact. But it is not actionable if someone does not. Do you see what I mean?
Finally, there is no reason why this cannot scale up well beyond the tribe level. Part of the reason why that seems hard to imagine is because we are all accustomed to one-size-fits-all solutions being imposed upon large groups of people in large areas. That is old-school thinking. You could have a world of tribes, polities, private-law jurisdictions, phyles, city states, free territories, and more, and not have anything imposed upon anyone who did not consent thereto.
Once one starts studying this stuff, vistas open up…
I always think about the anarchists in the spanish civil war.
what i would like to ask is with your definition what happens to agents that are part of the group that are not willing to participate in security and justice?
Thank you for your question. Do you mean criminals/violent actors, or do you mean an agency that goes rogue?
I told my step-son last weekend, “I'm a ‘peaceful anarchist’.” He knows I don't perceive authority and I'm not a violent person, so it fits.
Hey, as a label, "peaceful anarchist" ain't bad!
Isn’t Anarchy a form of Cosmos?(Order) a minimalist type?
Or is it a “Strange Attractor” like the existence of the Red Eye on Jupiter
Hence order in the chaos of Jupiter’s atmosphere
Just tossing this out for consideration
Jon
Can you give me an example of what you are saying in each case, so I can better understand what you mean?
Very nicely done Chris.
Thank you. I probably should have spent six hours on a piece like this, but I only had three, so I expedited it.
Personally, I can hardly find fault with the disenfrachised for being, well, disenfranchised.
They don't go along with the program and society has completely cast them off.
I interact with a lot of young people and a lot of them jdgaf anymore. There is nothing for them.
I don't blame them for feeling isolated and bitter.
I think that is more true now than it was 30 years ago.
My question is when was modern day anarchy pushed? Growing up in the late 60s and 70s it was a time of peace brought by the hippies. Lol. I was young and bought into all of that. Freedom of choice, freedom of peace. The world is going to be a place of love!
Then sometime in The early 2000s I was talking to my teenage nephew and he told me he wanted to be an anarchist. I remember laughing at him inside and asking him what that meant for him. And he said I just want to be free. I certainly didn’t want to laugh at him, but later my sister-in-law and I were just cracking up. Not realizing the danger of this thinking and where it came from — I him.
Somewhere in the 1990s and 2000s and maybe before they begin infiltrating young minds with anarchy through another perspective.
It certainly would not shock me if the CIA were behind it. I am not saying they were, but if someone dug up documents on the CIA plan code-named LET'S-GET-KIDS-TO-START-DRAWING-THE-ANARCHY-A-ON-THEIR-MATH-TEXTBOOKS, I would not at all be shocked.
Well well they were apparently behind the Laurel Canyon lyrics in the sixties 🎶
What’s to stop them from mind controlling future generations? Imagine what they are doing the kids and teenagers today?
Laurel Canyon is still often your best bet for getting from the Valley into Hollyweird. (Listening to the song now.)
I don't think we have to imagine what they are doing to the kids. We are seeing the results!
holly wood
Holly would what?
😁
To me, anarchy is choosing to live without total government rule. I don't care about the definitions. I don't have to call my desire to live apart from government anything.
The government is a leftist thuggery operation and at the slightest questioning of their over-powering authority, you are termed an anarchist or some such. Leftists are terrified of losing control or the majority waking up to their terrorism against the individual.
I may remain a peaceful anarchist but at some point the leftists/globalists might come at me with deadly force. Then what? Let them impale me or stick a pitchfork up their butts? Then I will be called something else when I only want to be left alone.
Agreed on all. My only issue is that because I write about this stuff every day, I need to use labels, shorthand, terminology etc.…
I like the this word more and more over Anarchist or Voluntarist: "Decentralist." It defines archaic terms in a more modern definition without losing its meaning.
As a term, it has a lot to recommend it.
But…you might have a decentralized system that still involves the initiation of government force, right? So maybe the term does not fully reflect the objective? (Or at least my objective 🤣)
Force requires the use of a central authority. The force itself might be centralised but now how it is executed. (Think Anarcho-Tyranny.) 🙏😊
Have you ever read any of my discussions about how hard it would be for an invading power to conquer a large anarchist region?
Amazing article Christopher and so True including:
"Classical liberals, by contrast, have had nothing to gain and a great deal to lose'.
Thx!
Without ruler. All free men and women with our progeny are sovereign and therefore anarchists. All the rest is made up bullshit.
You lost me at Kamala's Venn diagrams. LOL
Go read the linked post. They are better explained there.
And I do not get the Kamala reference. Did she use Venn diagrams at some point? I do not pay attention to her.
VP Harris loves Venn Diagrams, Yellow School Busses, and simple explanations.
Are you associating me, or my work, with any of that?