Since nearly every anarchist here is replying with the same parroted, thats a sweeping generalization, almost as if reading from the same script, I will clarify. I have been chatting with anarchists for over two years here. I have fought along side of them, argued with them, seen their arguments, etc. I didnt talk to 3 anarchists and then start making generalizations about them. I have some 500 friends now and on my old profile was approaching 1000. I think this represents a pretty good cross section of what anarchists think and how they behave. If you dont think so, then maybe you should stop making generalizations about statists/marxists/socialists/leftists. I side very heavily with anarchist/voluntarist philosophy, but I see some pretty big chinks in their armor that they refuse to even acknowledge. I see just as much echo chamber confirmation bias in them as I do exhibited by Marxists. I almost never see an anarchist say, you have a good point to the other side. Or I have no idea how or that is something we havent solved yet. Nope, just free market will do it. Which is about like saying, God did it. Ever seen an anarchist admit that government did ANYTHING good EVER? Nope. Wont happen, because their belief system wont allow it. Yeah yeah, funded by robbery, we all know that, but a water treatment plant is still something good. IS it run in a shitty way, could it be done better/cheaper/whatever? Yeah, maybe, whatever. The point is you lose a lot of credibility when you dismiss obvious things that your opponents can see are bullshit claims. There is a very strong utopian coloring of many of the arguments being made. I see far too much appeal to the free market or in a free society as if these are answers that are any better than in an RBE..... There is a very heavy tendency to dismiss culture and group association outside of an abstract philosophizing about it. Over and over I have been told that ANY sort of group identification is collectivism or groupthink. I see a massive tendency towards a rootless, hyper-individualistic, suicidal tendency that is only made possible by high technology. I also see a lot of strawmaning, dismissal of biology, and rejection of human nature, in favor of some imaginary, objective, Vulcanesque human with a phD in logic and philosophy. Basically, if you cant provide an irrefutable logical reason then it is just subjective nonsense and therefore has no meaning in Voluntopia. The objective seems to be to sit around being free and talking about freedom rather than living. I see I hate the state as their answer to everything, their complete and total identity, the meaning of life. If the state were gone tomorrow, most wouldnt know what to do with themselves. They are completely, emotionally invested in this crusade that they cannot win and will never see the other side of. There is also a very strong permission to be free mentality among anarchists. They say, Well, we would be doing blah blah blah but government keeps stopping us/wont let us. So when is this every going to change? Either fight back or try to set something up in the rainforest where they wont find you for decades. And no this isnt the move to Somalia argument. It is simply the recognition that government isnt going to stop bothering you unless they cant find you. So either fight back some how or hide. You are never going to convince most people to let go of everything they grew up believing. You might be able to slowly change the opinions of people over several generations, but you are talking about 100 years or more to accomplish this. Getting here didnt happen over night, getting out wont be any different. If you want to get rid of statism, you have to give people something equally powerful to replace it with, not because of some imaginary power vacuum, but because of a very real structural/belief vacuum. People need to be able to see the world in a structured way and chanting voluntary interaction isnt going to cut it for most people. This is why tribes and societies developed customs and traditions, to ground the people and bind them together to survive. Were many of those traditions and customs brutal and stupid? Absolutely. However, humans are wired for this kind of thing. Humans are cultural creatures and MUST have a cultural context in which to function. Anarchy is not going to gain any headway as long as it exists and is promoted as a sort of floating abstraction, existing in the neo-Platonic realms.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Jul 2014 08:06:34 +0000
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