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[SalmonGod]

I'm guessing this "true anarchy" is defined as people running around like headless chickens, going crazy and shit.

Sadly, this is the average person's immediate mental image upon hearing the word anarchy.  It's rare to have a conversation on the subject that doesn't spend the first half explaining "Would you behave like that?  Yes?  What's wrong with you?  No?  Then why do you believe everyone else would?"

I hope I have not sounded like that... (I am viewing anarchy as something where people function independently, and do not force each other to do anything, and everything else is up in the air)

To be honest, I think you have a bit at times, but this whole thing has also been rather muddled, having been drawn out over a couple days and involving various people joining in and dropping out.  So it's likely I've mixed sentiments from other people in with yours.

The problem with that idea that SalmonGod got flustered because he was confronted with your "true anarchy", is that this "true anarchy" is something YOU made up, not a part of what's called "Anarchist political theory".

I believe that true anarchy was used here to highlight that some of SalmonGod's ideas are infact not part of whats called the "Anarchist political theory" and concepts are being added ad-hoc (If that is actually true or not, I am not going to comment on). In reality advocating a singular political theory is silly for this reason - people will just redefine it to suit them (hence why the definitions of these theories is in constant flux).

I am a self-styled anarchist.  I've considered myself an anarchist and been reading and having conversations like these on the subject frequently for about 15 years.   I'm not deeply read into any specific school of thought, but have a basic grasp of what each of the major ones is about.  I've taken care to identify what ideas I've presented that may be up to variability across different anarchist schools, and what are my own thoughts.

And anyway, I meant educated in pretty much the exact opposite way that you're describing.  Educated can just mean "knowledgeable", without having to mean "has a government issued diploma."  I made a pin back when I was trapped in a horrible school system and wore it around on my backpack that said "School sucks, Education rules".

Teach yourself? Be taught by a non-accredited person? If you did that it is unlikely anyone would trust you to be able to do your job though (a fair heuristic to apply, given that someone with a trusted diploma can probably do the job better than someone who just claims they can).

I don't mean educated into a specific career field, either.  I mean simply having a well-rounded base of personal knowledge and developed critical thinking skills.  You sound as if your notion of education is churning out cogs for a machine.  That is one of the major failings of our education system, and just one example of how such a thing can be forced for the wrong reasons.

"I eat first and get first choice of mates" is a pretty far cry from "I bomb you anonymously from hundreds of miles away because your appearance and location indicates you may hold thoughts I disagree with."

What of the situation where the bombing took place in order to prevent a mass supression of freedom (say, that persons thoughts were of invading your country and enslaving everyone, and they potentially had the resources to do it)? War is far more complicated than you make it out to be, more than "I disagree with you".

You're wildly tangenting off to something completely unrelated to the thing my quote was in response to... which is funny because in that quote, I am responding to a previous wild tangent.



Anyway, I just found this little essay by David Graeber, a rather distinguished anthropologist who taught at Yale.  It's a very unstructured commentary on common misconceptions about consensus decision-making.  Might be useful to some people here, if nothing else to show that the concept is functional, and has been subject to plenty of academic study and historical precedent.

[alexandertnt]

You sound as if your notion of education is churning out cogs for a machine.  That is one of the major failings of our education system, and just one example of how such a thing can be forced for the wrong reasons.

I would like to point out that I abhor the notion that the education system should be to educate for the purpose of fulfilling some role, and fully support education solely for non-economic personal reasons.

However, If someone is going to monitor that nuclear power reactor (ie generic-its-in-our-best-interest-to-take-no-risks thing), it's less risky to choose someone who has got a degree in cog churning from Government University than someone who has pursued cog churning privately for personal reasons. So a rigid, not-personal education system has its uses.

[GlyphGryph]

Just to weigh in on the bit I actually care about:

Crying for attention is an instinct. Humans are not taught to cry (far from it) and it is far from a simple behavior. Humans actually have a few instincts based around communication, by most reasonable definitions of instinct.

The only people who think humans don't have instincts are the one's who define instinct explicitly as "that thing that humans don't have". Which is pretty dishonest approach at best, and practically enlightening. It's generally a point of view taken by ideologues and populists rather than those with legitimate interests in science or communication. *cough*fuckyouMaslowyou'reahack*cough*

But seriously, we're talking about semantics of psychology. Find someone who's using the definition you want is pretty trivial. This conversation probably can't go anywhere productive thanks to that. But being reasonable, if one uses Maslow's definition of "instinct", most animals don't have any - at the very least, instincts seem to be completely foreign to mammals, by his definition. So if you're okay with that, sure, humans don't have instincts - but I think it's a weird place to work from.

[Devling]

It's the attack of the walls of text!

Anyways, this may be a bit late, but if "Anarchy" is a bad word, maybe you should come up with a better word.
Instead of trying to convince people it's not a bad word.
Like how comics had to be called Graphic Novels before they got taken seriously.

[Owlbread]

An alternative would be to work aggressively to change opinions on the word. Rehabilitate it, if you will. Anarchy is used rather commonly as a synonym for "chaos" after all.

I don't think we should abandon symbols because of popular opinion - words included. Examples of symbols that should be rehabilitated (in my opinion) rather than abandoned are the swastika, the confederate flags and the hammer and sickle.

[Devling]

Unless you literally erase history I see no time in the future where any of those symbols would be "rehabilitated".

[Nadaka]

Have I ranted recently about the war on language, the meaning of words, and by extension the assault on the fundamental foundation of all human thought in order to remove our capacity to discuss and eventually think about specific political concepts that threaten established power structures?

Yea. Anarchy is one of those words.

[Devling]

Right, because this thread need more rants.

[palsch]

Getting the first few points of interest from the Prop 8 and DOMA cases at the Supreme Court.

Robert's gay cousin will be in attendance with her partner.

For those interested, there is a 'plain English' outline of the legal arguments and issues in the Prop 8 case on SCOTUSblog.

[penguinofhonor]

Have I ranted recently about the war on language, the meaning of words, and by extension the assault on the fundamental foundation of all human thought in order to remove our capacity to discuss and eventually think about specific political concepts that threaten established power structures?

Yea. Anarchy is one of those words.

I'm not sure if this sounds more like 1984 or Dr. Strangelove.

[lordcooper]

Like how comics had to be called Graphic Novels before they got taken seriously.

It had the opposite effect on me.  Graphic novel = picture book.

[Dutchling]

I own one graphic novel.

It has boobies.

I take it very seriously.

[Max White]

Speaking of boobies...

[Sirus]

Speaking of boobies...

Wow. What the hell, publishers.

[Devling]

I can understand why games with guy protagonists get more sales.
If the main character is a guy, both men and women feel comfortable playing.
If the main character is a women, that can throw off guys.
Of course, it could be that games featuring women as main characters are smaller projects, and don't sell as well do to factors like that.