Anarchists?

[Mr. Google]

Gang Wars!!! and thats all i have to say about that :/

 

[Rainforce]

can't work, because humans are de facto egoistic idiots.
sad, though :/

 

[Fetzenfisch]

As most political directions/ideologies or believes, its nice in theory but just doesnt work from the moment on it gets into contact with humans. Just like Communism, Democracy, Humanism,Tyranny and all the other things with potential have failed (some more than others), Anarchy has no real chance to work.
But the idea still is a nice thing.Well one can dream, cant he?

 

[hannan4mitch]

Well, anarchy cannot be a form of government. When you decide to call any system of government "anarchic" it is a fallacy. Anarchy is the LACK of government.
But, I have to admit, the anarchy symbol is badass.

 

[tehroc]

In a perfect world anarchy would be the perfect system of government.
The reason it doesn't work is the same reason communism doesn't work, because you always have some corrupt ass hat minority who take advantage of it for personal gain, forsaking the good of society.

The reason it doesn't work is cause you plug real people into the equation.

Humans like order.

 

[Ham_authority95]

I'd like to point out that a working, peaceful Anarchy can only really exist if governments and
establishments have already done away with crime and disorder that create need for governments and establishments.

I personally don't have anything against Anarchists so long as they aren't following it to just "Stick it to the man, man!", but rather because they think it will actually be good for humanity as a whole.

 

[Ampersand]

In a perfect world anarchy would be the perfect system of government.
The reason it doesn't work is the same reason communism doesn't work, because you always have some corrupt ass hat minority who take advantage of it for personal gain, forsaking the good of society.

In addition to the completely rational people who want to be rewarded appropriately for their efforts?

Most rational people are able to get over themselves enought to understand that effort put towards the betterment of society is it's own reward.

 

[Ampersand]

In a perfect world anarchy would be the perfect system of government.
The reason it doesn't work is the same reason communism doesn't work, because you always have some corrupt ass hat minority who take advantage of it for personal gain, forsaking the good of society.

The reason it doesn't work is cause you plug real people into the equation.

Humans like order.

I'm a real person.

Humans like security. I see no reason why that cant come from harmony and understanding rather then pissy, patronising rules.

 

[Kenko]

I laugh at anarchy. It's a contradiction in itself. You can't 'organise' an anarchic takeover without becoming a massive hypocrite. True anarchy is chaos, complete and utter chaos.

You don't understand, humans are naturally brotherly to one another and so society is unnecessary and thus any control it exerts is unwarranted.

That's why we have so much crime. There was no crime before society.

/sarcasm

Actually early on in mankinds development when there were few of us scattered around. There were little violence between humans. It was just pointless to kill or hurt eachother as there was enough resource and space to go around. It was better to band together rathern then anything. Ofcourse it happened, people do stupid things. But it wasnt as common then as it is today.

 

[SinisterGehe]

People want organization, rules, guidelines and hierarchy. These provide peace and control in even modestly working society.
When there are hierarchy, people don't need to take responsibility about things they can't/shouldn't take care of, it relaxes them.
Guidelines help those who are lost and can't tell what would be the right things to do (Right here is defined by the societies moral standpoint which varied person to person, but I am referring to the "baseline" moral).

What about those that are not lost?
And our current system does not promote peace at all. It also allows people that are responsible for horrible acts to pin the blame on somebody else and that person does the same. People in power are rarely punished for things that normal people like us would get the death sentence for.
We have the right to decide what's best for ourselves. No human has the right to decide what's best for other humans, we are all on the same level. Our current system ignores that and treats people in power as if they are above everyone else.

As I mentioned above "Even in modestly working society". I think society that is run by corruption and/or abusing dictators is not functioning society.
I am strong believer in the idea that human behavior can be reflected straight from nature. When theres is a pack of animals there is the leader and the underdog (And there are revelations going there), but by this force the pack stays together and survives.
I am myself pro-choice, but in order to live together in a functioning society we must have some rules and perimeters of which we live. I can not say that "I see that it is the best for me to kill the next person I meet". Society wouldn't exists if something like this is possible. I understand that this is possible in our current form of society, I can just go rampage if I want to, but I will be punished by the community according to my actions. Trough out the existence of communities (pack/herds/societies) There been revenge against those people who break the rules of that specific community, even if they wouldn't be part of that community, this fact has caused tremors trough out the history of life.
By my understanding and by my definition of functioning society I mainly refer to Platon's idea of Polis.
Which virtue is justness.
And the people who are not lost are either aware and in harmony with the set guidelines or part of another community (Or possibly a subdivision of it and its values are set by the meta community's values in certain range of allowance. If the values of this subdivision's are way too different that the meta community it can be considered to be a community of it own. )
Ofc.. Achieving something like this is just a idea and dream in the heads of people like me, who spend their time thinking about idea and theories of different situations and the perimeters they set to a specific being.
We can state a fact that, no matter how functioning a real (Real by definitions of "something that exist in this world that we the people by our own personal experience have deemed to be real) society is, there will be something that can be considered to be wrong and/or people abusing their powers/status, that is the human nature combined with our own unique personal traits.
I live in a country that was stated to be least corrupt on earth by the aspect, perimeters and views of people who are outside my community (Country). But I see the fundamental flaws in things that were supposed to bring well being in to my society. People abusing their own well-fare system. Immigrants using a loop-hole in the bureau system to bring their families to this country by illegal manners, condemning them to be illegal immigrants by the aspect of law (Law is not moral, but a solid guideline to define the agreed perimeter of right and wrong). Politicians lying and taking benefits that are legal but can be considered immoral (Blanket crisis of Finland). But everyone that been caught of breaking the law has been punished.
Law is not moral because morals are defined by individuals, by the means of their own ideas and experiences. Is situation like; I steal something from you, I get caught and the agreements inside the community lets you punish me as you see fit." In this situation you can do ANYTHING to me, because you are not bound by guidelines. This type of system also removes my fundamental rights of "humanity". In situation where there are set guidelines you can not; for example kill me for stealing an item from you, if the guidelines state that the punishment for stealing must be below some perimeter of severity.

Sorry got bit carried away there, tends to happen to me. But hey what you going to do? Punish me for making you read too much?

I know that discussing wont lead to anything real and I am sure that we can not reach as understanding about this subject between us, since my experiences, morals, culture, personality and aspect about this subject and it sub-subjects (Human behavior, Moral/Ethics and humanity), etc...)

Not sure what your saying to be honest. I'm sure it was well thought out but I honestly can't understand what your saying.
You said something like "society couldn't exist if that was possible" when you talked about the thought of murder.
Society exists and it runs on murder. Murder is the only way a society that makes demands can survive.

I don't think society as whole is bad but I think that is true of our society.


If you stole something, you knew the risk. I wouldn't kill you for it, but others would. That's their choice, the same can happen and has happened all the time in society. The law just makes it legal to violate a persons rights after they violate the rights of another.

Life isn't fair, that's a fact. We are not meant to live forever. If I steal from you and you decide to blow my brains out, so what? The universe won't collapse. There won't be a mass suicide or even that much sadness. Just one less person in the world.

Why does it matter if mine or anybody elses rights get violated because I pissed off the wrong person? I still believe the loss of rights and life is much larger when you have entire nations going to war with WMDs.


I hate to sound like an ass, but I just don't understand your point of view. No offense really, I'm probably just missing something.

This is not meant to be offensive in any way and it sounds cruel but my intentions are not.
I am just going to hop to conclusion that you haven't studied philosophy at advanced level?
What I was doing in that long piece of my boredom:
- I was analyzing the idea that I have of society (That you questioned earlier), and trying to break it down to small bits and examine and explain their ideas to you.
- I wasn't analyzing the "life" or its "fairness" or other universal meanings. I was merely trying to explain my idea(s) to you.
- "I knew the risks" You got hang of one of my points there (I believe that I mentioned it somewhere above, sorry if I didn't). That if I willfully and totally aware do an act that can be considered to be immoral/illegal, I am in situation to be punished. Example. In my country; If you can be proven to be mentally handicapped and you do a crime, the punishment can be withhold or severely eased. Because if it can be proven that you were incapable of understanding the consequences of your actions. (This does not imply on cases like being under the influence of drugs/alcohol, since you were aware of consequences of the actions you might do under the influence of substances.)

But I was happy to discuss this with you, even if it did not lead anywhere.

 

[Yokai]

Well, I wouldn't call myself an anarchist, but I'm no fan of capitalism and the almost feudal hierarchies and culture of excess and wastefulness it brings with it. However, I don't think the answer is to depose the government and throw a party. I don't really have a working solution.

 

[WOPR]

I laugh at anarchy. It's a contradiction in itself. You can't 'organise' an anarchic takeover without becoming a massive hypocrite. True anarchy is chaos, complete and utter chaos.

Anarchy: The opposition of all forms of government

doesn't say anything about chaos (even though yes that's what it almost always ends in)

 

[Wicky_42]

Thank you. You've just reaffirmed what I intially believed. If humanity developed differently, communism would work, as would anarchy. Capitalism got there first however, and because of that and how ingrained it is in all of us, our society would be a mass of chaos if the rules suddenly changed.

Pretty much every time there's significant political change, there's a time of social upheaval. People get killed, lively-hoods destroyed, but things balance out and change. It's kinda par for the course, and it's happened before. Let's just say that there're precedents for that sort of thing in the past, and that they've played some VERY important parts in shaping our current world, so maybe they're not all that bad, big picture-wise.

 

[mechanixis]

I think it's something only ignorant little punk kids would feel is a good thing, because they feel like rebelling against "the world" and haven't thought it through. Which is why they typically grow out of it as soon as their hormones start settling down.

Pretty much precisely. Anarchy is just rebelling for the sake of rebelling. Government and civilization were invented because they're a marginal improvement over not having those things.

Thomas Hobbes pretty much summed it up when he said that living without government would lead to the world entering a state of every-man-for-himself war in which human lives would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

 

[Jamous]

I think it's something only ignorant little punk kids would feel is a good thing, because they feel like rebelling against "the world" and haven't thought it through. Which is why they typically grow out of it as soon as their hormones start settling down.

Pretty much precisely. Anarchy is just rebelling for the sake of rebelling.

No. No it is not. Read back over the thread and you'll find most people telling you, correctly, otherwise.

 

[MaVeN1337]

I believe in abolition of the American government in it's current form, The white house needs to be purged of mindless individuals on a crusade for money and total control of the population. Corruption is everywhere in every single aspect of the American government, and the people shouldn't have to tolerate it anymore.

I'm not saying make home made bombs and go fucking crazy, But do something to take care of the government other than whining about how your taxes are too high. Take charge, and do something about it.

 

[The-Jake]

Any political system can work for a population size that is sufficiently small. The true test of whether a system is practical is how gracefully it handles the population size increasing towards infinity, because that's when you start to see the effects fundamentally inherent in The Bell Curve.
The smaller a population size is, the more plausible it is for you to make statements about everyone having X, Y, and Z in common in their nature, and the larger a population size is, the smaller that commonality list gets. Anarchy apologists call it cynicism to say that there will always be assholes trying to turn the system to their own advantage at the expense of the common advantage. It's not cynicism, it's just statistics. As population size increases towards infinity, the odds of there being someone with any specific nature approach 1. Anarchy advocates make the fallacious assumption that it's still valid to be making assumptions about common nature regardless of the size of the group. (Communism makes the same mistake, and goes on to make the also-fallacious assumption that increasing the power of the state increases the power of the masses.)

True anarchy is a society in which people live in harmony, mutual respect and understanding without needing rules to govern how they interact with one another.

Perfect example. Can only work for a sufficiently small group. Mutual respect and understanding are learned, not innate, and once you enlarge the group enough, you get people who refuse to learn, or who learn but then unlearn for whatever personal reason, or who pay lip-service to the lesson without internalising it. Not cynicism, just The Bell Curve. A robust political system is one that assumes that this kind of thing will inevitably happen even for no reason, and has mechanisms in place to limit the damage.
Communes are great, because any system can work if you select the right members. It's important to step outside your comfort zone and expose yourself to ways of life which contradict your own, so you can identify cultural myopia when you see it; if I were in charge, spending some time on some commune or another would be mandatory before you can be considered an adult. But what works for a commune can't work for an indefinitely large world.

The world isn't filled with serial killers and rapists, most of us are appalled by these acts being committed on helpless people.

Red herring. Two red herrings, actually. 1) The ones we're worried about aren't the ones who want to kill and rape; those chumps are small-time. The ones we're worried about are the ones who want unlimited power over others' ways of life. 2) The world doesn't need to be filled with them, there just needs to be enough. A power-grab is self-amplifying; kind of like a disease.

Believe me, we would keep order.

That's... government. Are you sure about which side you're arguing?

Tribalism? Really? First of all, what's so bad about that? Oh that's right, they didn't have tv and the internet to entertain themselves all day.
I get your point but I would rather live gathering food for my people, a group that I can respect, rather than working every day for a corporation I hate just so I can eventually reach my breaking point and blow my brains out or rot my brain out with idiotic television. Call me crazy, I guess I like tribalism.

1) Straw man. A particularly grotesque one. You must be a hit at parties. 2) Your noble savage fantasy is not universal truth: not all tribes are deserving of respect. 3) Your preference is not universal. I would rather spend my life creating more wealth than a bushman can by standing on the shoulders of giants, even if it's for the sake of strangers, than [strawman of my own redacted].

Of course things can go bad, but things could also go good. We could start from the beginning and rebuild society again, one that values human life over gold and one that doesn't see a slaughter as another statistic or news report to be ignored.
Yes the "sociopaths" of the world could organize (unlikely but it has happened before) and enslave us and force us to follow their rules, but we already have that. It's called a government.

1) False dichotomy. That we are not an anarchy does not mean that we are nothing but the slaves of sociopaths. 2) Your implied belief that all human life is equally valuable is not universally shared (I don't buy it, for example), and it isn't even the majority opinion (war wouldn't exist).

I would rather be killed in my prime in a moment of intense violence than work all my life only to get a break if I make it to 60 (or whatever they're changing it too) so I can slowly die in my own filth.

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.

We have the right to decide what's best for ourselves. No human has the right to decide what's best for other humans, we are all on the same level. Our current system ignores that and treats people in power as if they are above everyone else.

1) I decide that acting as though we are not all on the same level and that I do have the right to decide what's best for others is what's best for myself. 2) Our current system treats people in power the least like they are above everyone else out of all the systems we've tried. Ignoring that difference is nothing more than a perfect solution fallacy. 3) Anarchy inherently treats people with the will to power as if they are above everyone else.

People don't need rules. There's morality for that. People don't go around killing people because it's against the law, but rather because they feel that it is not right. Well, the majority anyway.

The problem is that there is no universally-shared morality. Indefinitely large group, and all that. (I'm not a moral relativist; I'm just observing that there is no moral precept that the entire world shares.)

By the way, it's funny how killing for personal reasons (not that I would condone it) is seen as wrong and society will call you evil. But work for the government, you're given a gun, told where to point it and kill as many people as you want and society will call you a fucking hero. Morality changes when it suits the government.

Or, rather, whether something is evil or good depends on mitigating circumstances. Did you kill that man because you wanted to hear the funny noises he made, or did you kill him because he was gassing civilians en masse? Also, I'm not familiar with the "kill as many people as you want" policy; even in war, there are rules about who you should and shouldn't kill.

Except killing other humans is not natural for us. It's a perversion of human nature that becomes more and more popular when there is more to gain.
If we didn't rely on rare resources to survive, we would have no reason to kill each other.

Aaaaaaahahahaha. I can't think of anything more counterfactual — II2 argued this more lucidly than I could. Competition for resources is not the only (or even the main) reason we kill each other — it's because very little of humanity shares your unnatural view that all human life is equally valuable. Also, are you trying to apply post-scarcity economics to tribes?

So the average american is unfit to run their own lives but a select group of Americans are fit to run everybody's lives?

Straw man.

We only want to be better than everyone else because we are trained from a young age that we need to be better than everyone else. [snip] When missiles are used on schools and hospitals in developing nations because some guy in a comfy chair who has never seen death in his life ordered it, something is horribly wrong with the world.

You know, the way you argue has a lot in common with the way Karl Marx argued. He, too, would present a distorted caricature of the position he opposed, then make a flying leap to his own stance and say, "There, isn't that better?" without critical examination of whether his plan would actually reduce those ills.

As silly as it may sound, I believe we will evolve from this tribalism stage. The groups that believe in peace (but not pacifism) will form together gradually and become stronger while those that prefer senseless violence will rarely ally with a fellow war tribe because they probably wouldn't even give them the chance to share ideas.
In some weird way, order will prevail and maybe, just maybe we will create a system of government that truly values all human life.

1) That describes the opposite of evolution. 2) ANOTHER false dichotomy. 3) There will never be a system of government that truly values all human life, because not all human life is truly valuable. Bell Curve.

That's another reason I want anarchy, so we can freely pursue our own spiritual truths. If you do that today, your insane. Schizophrenic, need medication and place full of nice doctors to help you be normal again.
Sick place we live in.

Where the hell do you live?!

Most rational people are able to get over themselves enought to understand that effort put towards the betterment of society is it's own reward.

People are not governed by rational choice theory.

Y'all keep decrying how impersonal and greedy our modern age is (and how tasteless and ill-bred!), but I've yet to be convinced that those are bad things. Why the hell should I feel better if I know that strangers have feelings about me? Who the hell do you think you are? Why is greed a vice? The profit motive is the only reason that new wealth is ever created. (Money and wealth are not the same thing. http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html)
The ultimate argument against practical anarchy is this: we had anarchy. That's how we existed in nature. What did we do with it? We used it to create governments. What makes you think a repeat attempt would have different results?