Reasons for Anarchy?

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And I'd prefer living in peace with my neighbours, but preferably not living next to any neighbours. If anarchy were to ensue, I'd head out into the country so as to decrease the "Lord of the Flies" setting into a "Robinson Crusoe" setting as much as possible. Anyone desiring to be a warlord over me I would be glad to provide with high velocity lead at extreme distance.

You are assuming that you are a better shot than somebody who desires to be a warlord. You are also assuming that the warlord will simply give up if you don't initially co-operate.

The thing that wannabe anarchist's always forget is that the absence on governmental constraint applies not just to them but also to the thousands and thousands of people who are tougher, stronger, better shots, better organized, more able to collect violent recruits and just plain more violent than them. Parts of the world that actually currently are anarchic show this. In the absence of any government to enforce laws, dominance goes to whoever is best able to wrest it from less violent people. Anarchy is the freedom for other people to do whatever they want to you, including kill you, unless you are able to fight them off permanently. And if all you have are your own weapons- you will lose.

I've only handled firearms twice in my life, but I've gotten complements from marine veterans (not recruiters, but people I know personally) regarding my innate ability to shoot with accuracy at hundreds of yards away, and with practice perfection. Of course there's more to defense than merely shooting. I am not actually that violent myself and do not even like the notion of even killing animals, but I'm taller and stronger than most people and if those who are more violent want to pick on some people they'd more than likely pick on weaker targets when I'm not around to defend others. If it were an anarchy here in America, I would imagine that there would probably be more thieving and crimes in cities especially, much more so when their electricity goes out and they can't entertain themselves electronically. Hence, I would travel as far away from other human beings as I can and either live nomadically or find a strategically defensible patch of land and fortify it. I'd imagine things would look somewhat like in the movie Book of Eli more than it would precisely like Haiti or Somalia. Most people here are quite lazy and content to be so, but as for myself I value working when I am given the opportunity to do so and have even traveled by foot 15 miles to get to work one way on the weekend when I had my last steady job.

Imagining how one would react and how other people would react is fertile ground for fiction. I saw and enjoyed Book of Eli as I am a bit of a post-apocalyptic movie and fiction buff. Mad Max also did it well.

And while I'm rambling on about fictional what if's, S.M. Stirling (among others) has written an extremely fun book series that wonders what would happen in the U.S. if suddenly there was no electricity and no means of generating any more elctricity (laws of physics suddenly changed). I think he makes a rather plausible scenario in his Change series about how people actually would react to that sort of anarchy. In his scenario, most people in cities die. The least plausible part of it is that nearly everybody who is currently in the Society For Creative Anachronism survives because they know how to use swords. I bet they don't know how to use swords half as well as they think they do- or as S.M. Stirling thinks they do- he's probably a member.

I didn't have a reason for Anarchy, at first. I had reasoning against all common acceptable options.

Ignoring the overwhelming ignorance of anarchism displayed by many posts in this thread lets discuss anarchism the philosophy rather than anarchy the media construct.

Anarchism is all about 'freedom and[i] responsibility', it relies on the natural tendency of humans to work co-operatively and form into self regulating social units [refer here to Peter Kropotkin and P J Prodhoun for foundation thoughts]. The idea that 'anarchy' [an-archos = 'without rulers'] is consistent with social breakdown and chaos is spin, little more.

I inclined myself towards the anarcho-syndicalist school of thought at 15 and still basically adhere to it's principles, however this is an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary belief/process as anything achieved through force is by nescessity only able to be maintained through force which leads to one group ruling over another and devolution back to a ruled and rulers dichotomy.

Is anarchism realistic given the global status quo and the fact that post industrial humans have no self governing communal structures and are educated to percieve themselves and others as individualist rather than collectivist? Well simply put - no, as an institution to empower people to self govern large scale industrial societies it is unlikely, all Kropotkins arguments are based on largely sedentiary pastoral societies which derive their sense of quality of life through harmonious co-existence and social interactions rather than material baubles and trinkets and Prodhoun was writing at the start of the industrial revolution.
Having said this however I am obligated to live according to 'best practice' [to borrow some corporate technocratic jargon] and honour those things which I hold to be true and so I actively live in a manner which is consistent with the foundation principles of mutual aid and self responsibility and refuse to cede my sovereignty where I can avoid it.

How do I know these things to be truths? well I constantly expand my knowledge [conciousness?] in order to adjust my perceptions and avoid presumptions [anthropology, primatology, philosophy, 'spirituality', ecology etc]. Texts as old as the Tao Te Ching support my ongoing belief that anarchistic social organisation promotes humans pursuit of achieving their best. The consistencies between all the worlds 'belief' systems support my ongoing belief in this. And ultimately my life experiences support this. Most individualistic human behaviour is aberant to the evolutionary norm and indeed a luxury only allowable in very recent times.

It is interesting that the only rational and sustainable models for 'anarchy' are basically consistent with any other collectivist system [the most obvious being communism] and this leads me to believe that in order to nudge my society along on the evolutionary path and return to a more anarchistic society I must in the immediate future [probably for my entire life] accept the idea of state and being ruled and, using the democratic procces' choose the more 'socialistic' options which moderate the amassing of wealth and power by a minority in the hope that it will nurture my society in the skills and attitudes requisite for an anarchistic ideal. As my grandfather used to say - 'there for the greater good go I' - it is not ultimately all about me but rather it is all about we[i].

peace j

Interesting, I didn't know there was a sci-fi novel that addressed the loss of electricity (although that's a bit of an extremely unlikely reason for it). I actually think that most people here wouldn't become as violent as is seen in other parts of the world. There could be little feudal kingdoms pop up, but if those people in cities, consisting in the millions, decided to organize themselves they could keep things going. People in cities here are so fond of following arbitrary programs that they'd probably invent programs to follow and without laws to penalize those that leave crappy programs the crappier ones would have less constituents. I think though that everyone who has an elitist attitude, such as those who call anyone they disagree with "ignorant", would be the first to be eliminated out of the nearest airlock. Aside from that, probably not too much violence more than exists now (at least compared to Washington D.C.)

It is not original - there was an earlier story based on the arrival of extraterrestrial enerfy eaters. In that case the adjustment was rather easy - return to smaller communities and a generally peaceful outcome.

Extraterrestrial energy eaters? What? Solution: find a way to drive them away or kill them. I suppose the author wanted a peaceful outcome rather than a realistic one though, probably written in the 60's or 70's by someone who smoked pot K-12 ... but that's just a guess.

That "anarchistic social organisation promotes humans pursuit of achieving their best" I tend to agree. The problem comes with the alleged "natural tendency of humans to work co-operatively and form into self regulating social units" A world of experience shows that ONLY applies up to a threshold of technology and community size. After that the Organizers and Powervolk institute various power structures.

Further - going through the socialist models is a bad choice. Those involve heavy uniformitarian socialization, and they will not yield to anarchy. Like a barbed spear point, the flow goes only one way.

People by default only want what will benefit themselves or those they love, a socialist model ignores human nature and assumes instead that we're bees or ants.

So what I am the only person who does not only want what will benefit myself? I find that pretty doubtful.

Do you want air to breathe, water to drink, and food to eat? Do you want this for those you love also? Do you want this for those you do not know yet? How about for those you hate also, such as myself probably?

Extraterrestrial energy eaters? What? Solution: find a way to drive them away or kill them. I suppose the author wanted a peaceful outcome rather than a realistic one though, probably written in the 60's or 70's by someone who smoked pot K-12 ... but that's just a guess.[/quote]

Bad guess - sci fi and I went our separate ways by the mid 60s after a few years of an increasingly shaky relationship. The story was out of the early 50s, I believe, probably read it about 58. The energy eaters were incorporeal, the story was not written in one of the periods of human triumphalism. They threatened nothing, just stopped super metropolitan civilization.

It was in fact an ideal solution for society.

Not at night. People are trying to sleep. Do anything you want but don't scare the horses and don't keep people awake at night.

ruveyn

True, I suppose at such a point Common Courtesy would become the law of the land, with extreme consequences for discourtesy.