> Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to.<p>I find this definition interesting because it seems to me there’s a very prevalent portrayal in media pointing towards the opposite, that is that humans left alone (read, without some powerful/wealthy authority) will unravel into the most depraved state imaginable.<p>Reading the book factuality was fascinating because it showed me a view of humans that you don’t see in mass media since ordinary is boring and thus we only get either extremes of good or bad (read, saving the Amazon rainforest to a mother killing her child)<p>Anarchy by this definition is hard to believe (although I aim to) because we are bombarder with the exceptions to the rule
No such thing as Anarchy. I've evolved my view on politics, gangs, tribes and governments into a simple understanding that we're dealing with systems at-large and those systems will always be expanding to fill the known universe and they'll constantly be bumping into each other and competing. An "Anarchist" is someone that does not consent to an authority (system) or its self identified "social contract". Ironically these kinds of people are the ones that dream-up systems (Rousseau's ideas built the US constitution) which then attract and absorb the systems-people (conformists). I accept that these systems-people are violent (nature of systems) and predatory but inevitable and sometimes useful and will be part of humanity for as long as humanity exists. Anarchy is impossible.
This is exactly how I view anarchism. The word itself only says one thing, no leaders. So it's up to us to define a world without leaders.<p>My definition has always been that we can have laws, we can have rules, we definitely need rules, but everyone must have a chance to understand how they're made, and everyone must have a chance to be part of the process. The only true democracy is anarchy. If we can put a man on the moon and hold elections then surely we can construct a functional anarchist system.<p>If you're a true anarchist you believe more in rules than anyone else. Rules about littering, about right of way, rules that enforce order. Because without centralized leadership everyone must help enforce the rules.<p>Which is also why it'll never work in practice of course. It will always remain a dream, it goes against evolution, really. If evolution is throwing dice then it dictates that sooner or later someone will go against the grain. No system is perfect and sooner or later someone will exploit it.<p>The true nature of human politics is just pure chaos. Dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, or like Pac said; "gimme gimme gimme, everybody back off". It's like a biological survival instinct to hoard wealth and protect ones own against the world.
> Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to.<p>This is an empirical question. It seems to me that even if a good-sized majority of the population is capable of living in this fashion, a small minority is absolutely not. (And this obviously is not due to "deprivation" or "inequality", unless you believe that white collar criminals are "deprived.") A small percentage of people can quite easily ruin things for everyone else, e.g. in NYC where a third of all shoplifting arrests were for 327 people (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyregion/shoplifting-arrests-nyc.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyregion/shoplifting-arre...</a>).
That is not the real test:<p>The real test is:<p>Your friend’s daughter had her drink spiked and then was raped while passed out by a bunch of frat guys.<p>If you believe that you and your buddies should get together with guns and baseball bats and go to the Frat house and exact justice/revenge on them, then you might really be an anarchist.<p>All the situations outlined are nice and good. Self-organization should be the default mode. However, there are situations where you need someone that can use violence to enforce justice. For most people, that would be the state.
> The first is that human beings are, under ordinary circumstances, about as reasonable and decent as they are allowed to be, and can organize themselves and their communities without needing to be told how<p>Well, I guess I'm not an anarchist then because I think it's already difficult when there's pressure to tell people what to do.<p>I do wish I'd agree with that though.
Coppola’s new movie Megalopolis is according to him primarily inspired by the works of Graeber and Wengrow including Dawn of Everything<p>When it’s reported to be a political film, it may be specifically anarchist, very interesting
Looking at the closing para...<p>> Now, you might object that all this is well and good as a way for small groups of people to get on with each other, but managing a city, or a country, is an entirely different matter. And of course there is something to this. Even if you decentralize society and put as much power as possible in the hands of small communities, there will still be plenty of things that need to be coordinated, from running railroads to deciding on directions for medical research. But just because something is complicated does not mean there is no way to do it democratically. It would just be complicated. In fact, anarchists have all sorts of different ideas and visions about how a complex society might manage itself. To explain them though would go far beyond the scope of a little introductory text like this. Suffice it to say, first of all, that a lot of people have spent a lot of time coming up with models for how a really democratic, healthy society might work; but second, and just as importantly, no anarchist claims to have a perfect blueprint. The last thing we want is to impose prefab models on society anyway. The truth is we probably can’t even imagine half the problems that will come up when we try to create a democratic society; still, we’re confident that, human ingenuity being what it is, such problems can always be solved, so long as it is in the spirit of our basic principles — which are, in the final analysis, simply the principles of fundamental human decency.<p>...and comparing it to Wikipedia's take...<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy</a><p>...I'm thinking that the article is <i>actually</i> advocating for an idyllic version of small-government democracy. Not anarchy.
The terms anarchist and libertarian are both really misunderstood (or misused?) today. At least in the US, most people seem to think libertarians are anarchists and anarchists are terrorists that want to lice in The Purge.<p>I guess that does kind of make sense though. We also don't use the left/right spectrum the way most other cultures do and we've totally redefined what it means to be liberal or conservative.<p>Well looky there, I must be an anarchist too?
>The first is that human beings are, under ordinary circumstances, about as reasonable and decent as they are allowed to be, and can organize themselves and their communities without needing to be told how.<p>That's a crock of shit, look at how brutal early civilizations were compared to today. You have an argument over long terms (100+ year spans), but not in the near term.<p>If you want the assumption to apply to the near term, you have to accept that people behave in part based on the laws and society which they grew up with, which then makes you look weird for being against that system. That's what gives rise to the common decency.
Anarcho-X people are heavily misrepresented by the government.<p>If north america went anarcho-capitalist, it'd work as well as or better the current system.<p>But the problem is that there's still an entity which must enforce property rights, etc. This 'police/military force' then becomes the new government. It will ever increase in size. Eventually you arrive back to where we are.<p>Where government got so large that it's unsustainable, suddenly anarchist sentiments return.
Another question: do you consider yourself neither left nor right on the political spectrum, because you believe that society is fundamentally broken and both sides just further consumerism in different ways (the right supports big business directly, and the left tries to create equal opportunities for everyone to further consumerism)?<p>If so, then you may be an anarchist.