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Scott Bennett's avatar

Excellent explainer! It frustrates me that the word anarchy is used interchangably with chaos - feels very intentional.

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Joe Panzica's avatar

First, this is a gorgeous piece of writing. I love and admire it and all the agonizing work that went into it.

And by work, I don’t (OF COURSE!) simply mean the effort and time to arrange one’s thoughts and put them into such accessible and persuasive language. I mean the work of reading, writing, thinking, and processing of experience that made it possible for such a piece to be written. I mean the spirit, the modesty, and the CARE that allows the writer to know that this is an introduction to many chains of thought and paradox. It is a knock on the door to something crucial which, if doesn’t hit against what is a major force driving “history”, still touches upon some deep (and disturbing) “truths” about humanity.

Most importantly:

“…while people can be reasonable and considerate when they are dealing with equals, human nature is such that they cannot be trusted to do so when given power over others.”

First of all, this is a statement that rings true ESPECIALLY if one replaces the word “people” with “adults.” Now, of course, a loving parent or a loving care taker of an aged parent or of ANYONE sick or wounded, is better described as “loving” than as “reasonable or considerate.” But all kinds of child abuse and elder abuse do take place in what we today call “nuclear” families… Of course, another key word here is “can”.

Any serious interrogation or unpacking of the clause quoted above ALSO requires an investigation of the key term “human nature.” And any serious and honest approach here requires that we admit there is something (perhaps many “things”) about human nature which will probably always remain, not only unknowable, but also open to change and possibility. (We can argue about how rapidly we are “evolving” biologically, but such arguments also must take into account how we are “evolving” culturally—and how each of those two different “processes of change” affect the other.)

“Human nature” surely contains the potential for us to be reasonable and considerate with “equals” who are not known to us, never mind seen as “kin”, to us. It also contains the potential to not only be violent, not only to refuse to recognize “kinship”, and not only to “JUSTIFIABLY” deceive or swindle others (seen as “equal” or not) if that would benefit our kin, our tribe, or help feed our children. (No one needs to peruse the patriarchal bits of the Hebrew Bible to “feel” this, they only need to interrogate common everyday contemporary cultural discourse.)

We humans are “darn tricky”. And we often admire the “trickiness” we see in crafty toddlers, cute pets, and wily animals in the wild when we observe them non violently manipulate others or even ourselves whether the ruses involve skillful (or awkward) attempts to deceive and/OR ploys that play upon our affection and innate desire to indulge them.

We are tricky AND therefore we know we can be tricked.

Now, another claim made here seems to be that before there were complex hierarchical societies, humans were much less murderous to each other. Well, before there were complex societies, there were fewer material technologies for mass destruction or intimate violence (although rocks, hand held blades, and spears have long been “handy”). And, before there were complex hierarchical societies, there were certainly fewer material and CULTURAL technologies for murder, manipulation, command, and control. Interestingly, two of the major motives for “murder” that (to my pitifully limited knowledge) anthropologists have documented among hunting and foraging societies are conflict over access to women and attempts to dominate. In the latter case, it is not that the murderers are the “Big Men” who attempt to dominate a group. The murderers are generally the group itself who resort to violence when the “Big Man” fails to respond to social pressures that begin with laughter and ridicule. We humans do HATE to be dominated!

We humans do hate to be dominated. This is something profound in us that is easily manipulated, but even when no shaman/sorcerer/necromancer is manipulating this quality in us to thwart the tiresome, COMPLEX, often frustrating, and sometimes misguided deliberations of a local communal participatory process, it CAN rear up in any (or many) of us individually to throw down additional “stumbling blocks” to processes that might be essential for a community’s physical or cultural survival. Sometimes just this alone (without subterfuge, manipulation or threats of violence) can lead to someone being granted “dictatorial” powers (Cincinnatus, throw down your plow and don your toga! Your city needs you!) for a “spell”.

We CAN be reasonable and considerate much more often than we ARE. But that requires very careful and fortuitous cultivation. That requires a culture that “properly” values reasonableness. And that requires an understanding (which we do not yet have in any collectively meaningful sense) of the limits of reason along with the limits of other darker aspects of human nature. It also requires an understanding (which we do not yet have in any collectively meaningful sense) of how those “limits” are also thresholds and supportive forces for so many avenues of potential change which may seem to occur spontaneously in certain individuals but which almost certainly will require many secular cycles of human history (tragic as well as inspirational) to manifest themselves.

Actually, the changes in an individual that appear to be “sudden” are generally the results of long periods of effort and seeking: the kind reflected in the piece we are commenting upon. But those “sudden changes” have so many potential directions. How many fascists started out as star struck socialists, left libertarians, anarcho-syndicalists, or communitarian idealists? (My definition of “fascist” involves the renunciation of all —or most— values except those related to accumulation and holding of power. If cultivation is only “self cultivation,” in the context of too much trauma caused by betrayal and abandonment, than a turn to fascism is much more likely than a turn to the kind of left libertarianism that understands that “freedom” depends of “self control” supported by a decent society in which all of us have a stake in creating, maintaining, and/or destroying.

I like to write fiction about a girl prone to throw books at people.

To the person who wrote “I never consented to be ‘governed’” I might gently lob a copy of Timothy Snyder’s new book (I’m only about 50 pages or so into this very well written and accessible text, but he has tons of YouTube’s too) “On Freedom.”

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