Breaking down walls, tearing down barriers and abolishing borders.
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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Anarchism
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Discuss anarchist praxis and philosophy. Don't take yourselves too seriously.
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Anarchy is when whoever is the physically strongest beats up everyone else.
Every anarchist envisions themselves as the strongman.
So anarchy - lack of coercive hierarchy is when there is coercive hierarchy? Nope, you are just not especially smart person.
There is no such thing as a "lack of coercion". That's what you can't understand - coercion is a permanent element of humanity. Human beings can't not be coercive.
Hierarchy or no hierarchy, someone stronger than you (and there's' always a bigger fish) is going to beat you to death for what they want.
Belief in an absence of coercion is a disorder.
I am an anarchist and I do not want to be a strongman. You sound like you don't have even the most basic understanding of anarchism as a political concept <.<
What I know is sociology and group psychology. I know what people can't do, and what people are compelled to do in groups. Human psychology and ego simply does not allow for anarchy, regardless of how you feel politically. Reality does not kneel to your desire - and your egotistical belief that it can is exactly the reason why it doesn't.
Ahh, the "human nature" argument. Never heard that one before /s
Then why do you stubbornly rebel against it, like a child who won't eat their vegetables?
Because it's not correct, for a lot of reasons. Even the idea of "human nature" is pretty questionable, at least unless your conception of it is extremely broad and conditional ^.^
People are capable of cooperation and non-hierarchical/coercive organising and natural disasters and shit demonstrate this. This is just one example of proto-anarchistic organising among many.
It is correct - not that you care about "correct". To you, words only mean what emotional reactions they get.
My conception of “human nature” comes directly from psychology, sociology, and anthropology textbooks, and the experience I have with humanity which has been exclusively abusive.
People are only capable of cooperation in the service of protecting their social groups from external threats, real or imagined. While that does include protection against natural disasters, it's primarily used against innocent people believed to be threats solely because they don't already belong to the social group. If they believe they can get away with it, any group will butcher any random person like a hog simply to show dominance.
Look up social dominance theory and recognize that all social groups try to dominate all other group and people. Human beings literally define their identities by who they or their social groups dominate. That's a fact.
I feel sorry for you that your experiences of fellow humans have been so unrelentingly negative. To clarify your position, are you saying groups of humans are incapable of altruism?
I'm saying that:
Human groups are capable of altruism toward perceived members of their group - "perceived" includes people like members of their group.
Human groups are ruthless to those outside their group, particularly towards lone people and weaker groups.
Solitary, unpopular people like myself are ravaged by everyone precisely because we have no protection and offer no threat to organized groups.
I've never had a the opportunity to join a group because I was not born into one in the first place, and people will only tolerate those already in a social group. Everyone objectifies me and insists that I am their property.
You engage in anarchism every day, and since you're here on Lemmy, it's statistically unlikely you're beating people up.
The hell I do, and it's the people beating me up - that's how I know you're full of shit. People beating people up is a permanent facet of humanity - it's what makes them animals.
You don't engage in anarchism? At all, ever? So in your group of friends, you have clearly established hierarchy? Do you go on a date with the assumption that one of you is in charge? Have you never gotten together with a group and discussed what's best for you all, without one person being the leader?
Anarchism isn't a lack of rules, or the strong beating the weak, or every person for themselves. Anarchism is rejection of cohersive authority. Anarchism is a thousand little things you do every day with everyone around you. You've definitely participated in anarchism, whether you want to admit you have or not. And no amount of protestation is going to change that.
I don't have friends because assholes like you coerce others not be my friend - even threatening them with death if necessary.
I don't go on dates - or even get near people - because you are all bloodthirsty bastards who enjoy torturing the "other".
I've never been allowed into any group, because the leader of every group ordered his followers not to accept my humanity, and they slavishly obeyed. Because that's an inherent facet of humanity - blindly believing and obeying what you're told.
So, anarchism is being dead? Because that's what happens when you reject authority - they fucking kill you. No exceptions; barely any delays.
The only way an individual does not die is to submit to a group that will protect the individual, and the minimum price for that protect is their free will. If the individual isn't willing to be the group's slave, why would the group ever accept the individual, when the only value any individual has for a group is their slave labor?
Damn man, I sympathize.
From the comments that you have been making it seems like you have a very negative view of other people and their ability to work together towards things that they both want (i.e. shared goals). This might be informed by your life experience and honestly, I'm sorry for what you have experienced that has led to such a negatively focused view.
I can't convince you that anarchism can be good if you believe this staunchly. All I can say is that if you look at your surroundings you could find that people do this all the time.
An example I like to think about is driving. You know almost nothing about other drivers (how sane they are, where they are going, etc.) but we still drive and trust other drivers not to crash into us, and a majority of the time people are able to get to where they are going unharmed. This is an example of anarchy working in our everyday lives.
As for this, my philosophy is that as anarchists we should follow the ideas that are based on the paradox of tolerance.
If we want a tolerant society, we need to be intolerant of intolerant ideas, or else those intolerant ideas over time become the norm.
The same goes for freedom (which is what anarchists want for everyone)
If we want a free society, we need to resist people that want to dominate, or else everyone will be dominated.
What you're deliberately ignoring is people "do this all the time" *to* dominate others. The primary purpose of forming social groups is to gang up and dominate everyone not in their social group - that's what social groups are for. My entire life people have ganged up on me, beaten me up and used their social gatekeeping as the clenched hand around my neck, throttling my lifeblood with the publicly-announced intention of killing me.
Like hell I do. I drive defensively because I know others drive offensively.
I almost can't go anywhere without at least some harm
People don't crash into others because they fear being shafted by lawyers. The steel tetanus-coated rebar of corrupt law keeps the public in line.
Bullshit. You don't actually believe this. You can't, because you are the people dominating others. Each human being wishes to dominate others - that was proven when exactly zero people protected me against such domination as a child. You all agreed, to the last man, woman, and child, that I was supposed to be dominated as a necessary function of society; according to humanity not dominating me would "bring about the End Times". You can't "resist people that want to dominate" - that can only end in you killing yourselves.
I am sorry for the trauma you have suffered that has left you living in fear like this. I don't expect you to believe me, but this really isn't the world in which most of us live, it isn't how things really are and it doesn't have to be this way for you either.
Bullshit. It is how things are, and I'm sick and tired of being lied to by a species of buffoons who don't care about facts who think me their inferior. Sure, you assholes don't live in a world of hatred - but that's because you belong to your social groups. You all decided that I was never allowed in any social group, and that I was to be preyed upon until some of you succeeded in killing me. Don't lie to me and tell me this "isn’t how things really are" when you assholes confessed to setting out to make it this way. You have no place to tell me what is or isn't when you consistently discard all facts and abuse everyone you can simply to stimulate your pleasure centers at all costs. THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE! Quit lying to me by telling me different. Your actions will always tell the truth and prove your lies wrong.
Look, I have no idea who you are, I don't know anything about you and we have never interacted before. You assuming that I'm part of some grand conspiracy makes it pretty clear to me that you are suffering from paranoid delusions. If you're not getting it already, I strongly urge you to seek help, and I'm sorry if I riled you up.
And yet you still instinctively hate me, simply because I'm not exactly like you.
I assume nothing of the sort. I simply regularly observe that people will do anything to fit in - including murder people who don't. People have been assaulting me since I was a kindergartner simply because they felt I didn't belong - and they convinced every other gullible fool I didn't, no matter how kindly I treated them. That's not "conspiracy" - that's sociology. Knowing that I've been abused - and that nothing stops other people from abusing me too, to "fit in" - isn't "paranoia", it's simply learning behavioral patterns of the perfectly amoral.
Fuck you, name-caller.
I've been to help - multiple times - and I've been diagnosed with Complex PTSD, from the very real and not "delusional" abuse I've suffered. Further "help" is not going to stop amoral people from abusing me.
The hell you are; I'm not stupid. All behavior toward me is malice with intent; you have no reason to interact with me except to abuse me to stimulate your pleasure center. You only see me as an object - just like you see everyone else you don't know and have never interacted with before. That's simply human predatory nature.
I'm sick and tired of being lied to about how human beings behave - I can see you motherfuckers and am intelligent enough to figure you out. Quit treating me like an idiot by lying about yourselves. You didn't do the homework - I did.
I am not questioning that you have been abused and that it must have been truly horrible. The paranoid delusion is thinking that every person is a sadist who's out to hurt you, and that some stranger saying "sorry" on the internet is doing so with some undefined malicious intent.
I hope you get better.
That makes absolutely no sense! By your admission, you don't know me - how do you benefit from being worried for me?
How do you think *I* feel by everyone else's hostility? You motherfuckers beat me up individually and in gangs my entire life!
Not one of you socially supported me my entire life - not one. That can't happen on accident - that requires enforcement with an iron fist. Not one of you contradicted the public narrative that I did not belong and needed to die. That is how everyone acted my entire childhood - and continues to act to this day, because why would they magically stop?
You hate me because you know nothing about me. People's hatred of the "other" is based on the fear of the unknown. You don't know me, and you're too mentally weak to understand me, so you fear me - and therefore hate me. That's true of all bigots.
What makes you think it stopped? What do you think is the enforcement mechanism that would make people stop abusing me once they start? You're talking absolute nonsense. People don't stop abusing until they are punished - and my abusers were never punished, establishing the precedent that everyone no lives by. It would never occur to anyone to punish my abusers now because they were never taught that abusing me was wrong. Everyone now thinks they're supposed to abuse me - abusing me has become popular, like a fad that won't go away.
That's your claim - your projection. You are the paranoiac with delusions. I'm accusing you all of being raging malignant narcissists, which every person is born as until it is traumatized out of them through upbringing. All children start out as narcissists; only being forced to face one's own mortality drives that out.
You're not capable of being "sorry" - you have no concept of right or wrong; only what stimulates your pleasure centers. That's all anyone cares abut.
And the malicious intent is defined: You are all malignant narcissists who objectify everyone not in your social group, and abuse anyone who doesn't have a social group to protect them to obtain narcissistic supply. It's all in any abnormal psychology textbook.
No you don't, and there's no "better" to get. As long as human beings exist, my life will be a living hell, and things will get worse for me. You raging narcissists will see to that.
Anarchy is one of those leftist ideals that has extreme rightward pressure (i.e. it is inherently unstable). Anarchy will always devolve rapidly into feudalism or other right-wing/authoritarian structures.
Anarchism only exists because hierarchy exists plus power that reinforces the hierarchy. That's the part you don't seem to understand. It's a dialectic. Anarchists are not against working in teams. They're against being subjugated by hierarchies and powers that keep hierarchies in place with the rationale of "just because we're in power." Anarchism questions authority and its existence is dependent on the existence of authority and power structures. Remove the power structures and there is no need for anarchy. You only seem to comprehend one side of the anarchist's rationale, the one that says, "screw you, I'm not going to obey you." You seem to not understand the other side of the anarchist's rationale, which is, "you just want me to be obey because you say so, and I have all kinds of reasons why your say so is irrelevant to reason and logic, because all you've done is construct a reason that justifies your authority, which is not natural or even essential to the organization of society."
Anarchism is against coercive hierarchies, so not really. Look at Zapatistas or Rojava, they I would say falsify your statement.
Humans are by nature social, remove the authority figures and after the initial panic. Tribes will form.....from tribes bigger clans, it will not be pretty. Some will lose, some will win...this is not a good route to take.