I will so thank you!
I'm surprised that an anarchist position is getting downvoted in this community. I guess the libs came to party.
Thank you for your insightful comment. :)
ACAB!
Seriously, what are you talking about?
Anarchy. I'm an anarchist. I'm talking about anarchy. People do not need to be controlled/enforced/governed. We are perfectly capable of organizing a society ourselves. Stopping violence should not be the responsibility of a special group but everyone. Social pressure is more powerful than direct violence. Otherwise the police would not have such a cushy job.
What would be the motive to write or follow laws?
No one needs to write laws. Custom is already a ruleset that most people in a society follow. You don't need laws on top of that. It's unnecessary and creates cases where the right thing cannot be done because it's illegal. Government creates a ton of unnecessary busywork that most people do not need to concern themselves with. What does the government do that you couldn't do with free association and an empowered populus?
Do you follow laws just because you're afraid of the police? Or is it because of the social pressure to not cause a fuss. Do you need rules to be written down on a piece of paper for you to follow them? I think not. I've followed a lot of "made up" rules because I understand these rules make my life better. Human beings are capable of working together without needing someone else to tell them how to live their life. We did it for millennia before archy clawed it's way into every society (by colonizing the anarchic ones because they were "primitive")
It's not the CEOs/police or the existence of their function
Yes it is. You cannot have police that doesn't abuse their power. If you have a position in society that gives people power, It's the power-hungry that fill them. Everyone that doesn't want to dictate other peoples lives will not fill those positions. so sooner or later they are going to be filled by people who want power and nothing else. It's no coincidence archy keeps devolving into fascism and totalitarianism. It's inevitable. Society elevates people who want power so you end up with people who believe they are god and can do no wrong.
No. We do not need cops. The police will always be a corrupt hand of state violence. As long as there are cops (as in special people who are allowed to use violence) in any form they will ultimately become corrupt. As long as law is enforced it is not equal, and it will never protect "the people". The people are the only ones that can protect "the people". You don't need cops, you need everyone to start policing people around them. That is the only way everyone gets protection.
ACAB! All power to all the people!
You just had to phrase it like that didn't you?
Rant incoming. (if you like this for some weird reason there's more on my profile)
Preface that non of the following arguments are against you or your ideas. You just said something in a way that got me thinking. Any reference to "you" is a straw-man. I don't want to make any assumptions about your ideas but will inevitably use a fictional person to talk to because it's easier to structure a rant that way.
There is nothing wrong with "dividing people into labels and treating them differently". It is wrong to try and derive any absolute value (good/bad, strong/weak, smart/dumb) out of people since humans are far too complex to fit on a single point on a spectrum. Sometimes you act smart sometimes dumb. In some situations you are strong in others you nope out as soon as possible. But that's not all labels are.
Labels are primarily a tool for self-identification. "Anarchist" is a label. One that I've attached unto myself quite firmly. It's the label I use as my primary identity and view the world through an anarchist lens because of that. Labels are a way to categorize and understand ourselves and those around us.
Even if you haven't labelled yourself you can have one be attached to you, and that's not necessarily bad. When categorizing you will reach a point where you need a label for "the rest". This means that a group of people creates a label for you (some examples include cis, strait/hetero, gender-conforming, neurotypical). These labels get created and attached to you whether you want it or not and there is nothing wrong with that. The world is filled with different people and in order for that difference to be understood by both yourself and others you need words to describe things.
The problems begin when you add extra value to those labels. Fascist slogans work well here since fascism is built on this othering. By saying that there is some intrinsic or natural value in a label you are encouraging the behaviour associated with that label. And same vice-versa. This is how cultural control works. Through shaping a common concept of a type of person and then laughing at it, or showing respect to it, depending on the desired outcome. This phenomena exists everywhere, because it is a useful tool for managing groups. It's a lot easier to call someone a statist to ignore their arguments than actually engage with them.
But this isn't bad. some people are different and in a certain space you don't want some people so labelling them to make sure they know they aren't welcome. This community uses it in it's about section:
Yes, if you're an obnoxious (-->)neo-lib(<--) you're going to get banned.
To sum it up, it's not that simple. Everyone labels people. It's how we understand the world around us. We treat others differently due to their labels so we can keep a culture we cherish alive. And I believe cultural control is a societal tactic, not just fascist one, ingrained into human social interaction and by extension society just as much as culture. It's how we maintain long-term control over the world, over the future.
At the end of the day you should try and understand and get along with everyone. But to say everyone needs to be treated the same is to ignore the fact that we're all different. We can't be treated the same.
It also implies that people are divided into strong and weak. That there is some inherent qualities in people that are inferior to other people who don't have those qualities. No-one is better than anyone else, a human beings is far too diverse for that. We're all just different. Not better. Not worse. Just different.
Anti-statism. Anarchism is against all hierarchy. Including class.
I mean the entire thing is meant as a joke. No-one is actually going to bother to memorize this abbreviation because it's too long and so arguing about feels part of the joke. Both are equally useless, the abbreviation and the argument.
Ultimately this is meant as fun, and pedantry can be fun. I have often just made jokes about something insignificant because for me that's fun.
The reason why I asked is because for me this comment enforces that "no rules" mindset by implying that voicing your opinion about something or upholding rules is not welcome, which is the opposite of anarchy. Anarchy is everyone having their own rules that grow and evolve to better fit into society, a process that would not work if everyone kept their rules for themselves.
Eg: I think abbreviating an abbreviation to fit inside a bigger abbreviation is fine, but I am also a programmer so I am used to nonsensical abbreviations (look up the full name of GIMP for example).
I think arguing about this is fun, and to me that's what anarchy is all about. FUN.
And now I think about it this argument is not that useless. If this was an abbreviation that was actually used you would want as many people as possible to understand it and for that it needs to make sense to most people.
How is being pedantic in an anarchist community ironic?
Ma väga loodan et sa suudad osad oma mõtted sellese kogukonda postitada. Mul ise praktilisi kogemusi ei ole, ainult väga palju mõtlemist ja teooriat. Samas tahan ma üritada neid mõtteid tegevusse panna, lihtsalt et proovida kas töötab. Selle pärast ma selle kogukonna lõin.
to quote: https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionA.html#seca213
The link goes into more detail.
A Definition for a term I'm about to use:
Archy - Hierarchy, Rule, structure of command and subordination, opposite of anarchy.
How did humans "rise" from anarchist structures? I wouldn't call whats going on right now any better than the pre-archic societies. Those societies were destroyed because they didn't have the structures to protect themselves against archy anarchy isn't just no archy, it's conscious opposition to archy. Now that we understand archic structures and their influence we can start opposing it. Pre-archic societies couldn't
Why would you need mobs? often times a single other person would be enough to stop/deter anti-social behavior.
Who controls that bigger power and what's stopping them from becoming corrupt? There is no bigger power than the state and police is the state. You can't have anything bigger. As soon as you have representative democracy the people will go from humans to a resource. They will be grown and molded to not care about their society and just root for their team. Governance isn't something you can delegate to others. It makes you lazy and means you will stop thinking about the actual problems and start fighting with anyone who disagrees with you.
Representational democracy does not work. The state is a living system that has interests of it's own and those will always be prioritized over the citizens. Sooner or later every state devolves into authoritarianism. All the while screwing over anyone who wants to live without it.