Let me put a scenario in front of your eyes. It's one that goes on every day all around the world. For the nonce, I will not allude to the morality of this scenario. Until I've presented it, I will leave all conclusions to you, the reader.
On with the story.
One evening you decide to go for a walk. The idiot box is boring, you have no real plans for the following day, and just feel like taking the night air.
After you've been walking for a few blocks, a man steps in front of you, points a weapon at you and tells you to put your hands where he can see them.
As he has the drop on you, and you are not armed, you comply. He then binds your hands and takes you away and locks you in a small room where he states you won't be leaving until someone pays his price. He allows you to make a call for help in meeting his conditions, but only with him listening in and censoring what you might say.
You don't know this man. You've never seen him before. You have no reason to believe he has any grievance against you.
How would you describe this scenario?
I would call it kidnapping. I would further define it as grossly immoral. I would, in fact, say that you would be entirely justified in using any means or force that you could muster to escape this situation up to and including killing your assailant.
Would you agree?
Think about it for a minute. You've been kidnapped and held for ransom. Isn't it your human duty to escape by whatever means you can? ...
And now, we'll add one more element to the story. The man in question wears a blue uniform.
Do you still think you're correct in trying to escape at any cost?
I do.
In normal human interactions, murder, kidnapping, theft, and other open aggressions are taken to be criminal acts.
The primary difference between a collectivist and an anarchist is that we hold the State to the same standard and therefor find it unfit to exist.
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8 comments:
The State is inhumane not just because of how they mistreat people, but how they have indoctrinated the population into thinking it is okay for them to do it.
I was just reading in New Orleans the new DA is sending pot smokers (not dealers, but smokers) away for 5-20 years.
"the new DA is sending pot smokers (not dealers, but smokers) away for 5-20 years."
That's what you get for minding your own business, being peaceful and not hurting/threatening others. I can't think of any other similar transgression with such severe penalties. It's a witchhunt.
"I can't think of any other similar transgression with such severe penalties."
Can't you? How 'bout refusing to 'help' fund their wars? That'll get you more jail time than pot.
Taxes, I forget. I was trying to think of crimes comparable to how I described pot-smoking. It's a victimless crime and nobody is screwed out of their money. The arbitrary and capricious nature of the law-makers is in full bloom here.
Egocentric and individualistic point of view?
Suppose I'm kidnapped, would'nt it be normal for my friends to come and help me? Or is anarchy something individual? Well when you are caught by the police, there is always a cause, and that cause is something you did, an action of your part. You are never caught whithout any reason, except by mistake, but who doesn't ever make mistakes?
So when a community of friends decides to defend their members and one of them gets robbed, is it allowed in anarchy that 'friends' come to help and arrest the thief? If yes, that is what society is about, if not there is true anarchy and no one will come and help you. Helping means friendship and friendship is the smallest form, the true germ af a society... and that germ can grow to become big and strong. Who cannot live in a society of 1000 people, can't live in a society of 10 people or even 2 people whithout causing trouble... This kind of individuals is too selfconsumed to be able to live with other human beings in real life. Only in theory they can share the same egocentric views, but in real life they would cause immediate crashes whith everyone...
Life is a dream, there is always a change you want to make that keeps you moving and living. Everything is perfect the way it is right now, since the very first second the universe exists. The only constant is change. And the challenge we can take part in this change feeds our dreams and helps us to give meaning to our lives. Changing the future doesn't mean that anything will get better or worse, because that is only a personal perception. The universe and everything in it, is just the way it is... always
To Laurent Caris:
Your post is all over the place, so I'm only going to address a couple of things.
Yes, anarchy allows friends to defend each other. This is damn near a central tenet of anarchic thought.
Egocentric and individualist? Absolutely. Based upon the idea that the ONLY legitimate minority is the individual, and that all other divisions are either simply statistical (i.e. race, geography, religion) or are an attempt to impose foreign rulership upon the individual. In the former case, no anarchist I'm aware of really gives a damn. Statistical analysis is a useful tool, but imposes no ones will upon another. The latter we oppose.
I agree that he who cannot live in a society of 1000 cannot live in a society of two, either. Mostly. He might find somebody as antisocial as he is. No anarchist that I have ever spoken with, regardless of what school of anarchic philosophy they adhered to or admired, adheres to the idea that the elimination of the government/rulership approach to society would eliminate crime. We do think, no, let me rephrase that. We know with certainty that it would vastly reduce the opportunity for crime while raising opportunity cost!
Government IS a criminal organization by any rational definition of criminality. It's very existence is predicated on institutionalized theft and robbery. This has been true of all schemes of rulership throughout known history.
Anarchists, particularly individualist anarchists such as myself, are not interested directly in building better societies or empires, but in building better humans. If the individual is protected and viewed as sovereign in his self, then society will by and large take care of itself. We invision a society where all legitimate interaction is voluntary, and that involuntary interactions, REGARDLESS OF PERCEIVED AUTHORITY, are malum in se (evil in themselves).
I agree that things are as they should be. I also think that it is the duty of the philosopher and plowman alike to attempt to alter them for the better. I do not believe in predestination, whether from religious nonsense or political abstraction. Our world, individually, is what we make it.
As for cops always having a valid reason for what they do, all I can say is you need to get out more. That statement is so openly blatantly false that I can only assume that you intended it to be humourous. Because if you live in the United States and have never been harassed by a cop for some crime like being a man on the sidewalk, then you are extraordinarily fortunate.
It has always been difficult to understand the suggested idea that police officers always have a legitimate reason for the action they commit, whether benevolent or malevolent. Such a concept assumes the former in every or almost every case. While many individuals are always concerned about the monopolization of a given industry in the private sector, they completely ignore the application of this idea onto the public sector--as if humans who participate in the public arena are somehow immune from mortal temptation.
Such intellectual inconsistency is striking while being equally disturbing. Obviously, such a mindset is the product of many years of government-induced brainwashing via [what is referred to as] the education establishment. Politicians would claim that their reasons for the implementation of a given policy holds a legitimate purposes, which of course is obvious nonsense.
When an individual can obtain a living be confiscating the incomes of others--essentially a form of plunder--the incentives for maintaining their lifestyle through said funds requires the confiscators to never solve the problems that they are supposedly attempting to alleviate. If the problem is actually solved, their livelihoods are destroyed. Therefore, whether one is a police officer, or simply a paper bureaucrat there is no actual personal incentive to solve the problems their position was supposedly created for.
The subject of economics explains why and how these incentives structures create the circumstances that they do. However, modern economics has unfortunately deviated, with the exception of the Austrian School, from from its purpose of discovering the causes of and the reasons for human action. Instead, it has transformed what should be a quantitative science into a qualitative science. In other words, Keynesianism, Monetarism, and Neo-Classical economic schools of thought have transformed economists into mere mathematicians.
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