Didn't you used to call yourself commodore128_lurv or something? It would be odd to see two commodore aficionados who are also ultra right wing climate change denialists on the same board. Why'd you change your name to something almost identical?
Actually, mud huts are very good, appropriate and sustainable technology, I've got nothing against them, in fact I have a good friend that lives in a mud hut. Well, a small adobe house anyhow.
I'm pretty sure we could sustain this level of population given our current technology, we'd have to move to renewable resources like solar power, but we could do it. We wouldn't want to let the population grow too much more unless we get off the planet and find some new resources out in space, but that's doable too.
Ah, you seem to think a group is an actual sentient thing with desires and motivations outside the individual. All it is is individuals, and the interactions between individuals. "A group" cannot interact with an individual, only another individual can.
Now, you can argue that group dynamics can influence individuals and bring up such examples as diffusion of responsibility, but I would counter that individuals just need to start taking responsibility for their own decisions and stop blaming "the group." "The group" did not make you do it, you chose to, and then blamed "someone" not in the room, because they can't be in the room, because they aren't real: the group.
if groups are as you seem to think, we must ask, what can an individual do, given the existence of these large, powerful, sentient entities that have the power to influence us against our wills and make us do things to others that we wouldn't have done unless this all powerful, invisible entity made us. And the answer would be: nothing, we're fucked. I'm probably misrepresenting what you really think, but that's how it reads.
The planet can not support even 1/10th the current population at hunter gatherer or subsistence farming levels, unless you are okay with killing off 9/10th of humans alive today, we don't have the option of going back, however nice it might have been. Skyscrapers aren't necessarily better than mud huts, but freezing to death and having 9 out of ten of your kids die before the age of ten due to disease couldn't have been a walk in the park.
Now don't get me wrong, I see what you are trying to say. I just don't think you are putting it very well. Here is how I would put it: the group is legitimate only if belonging to it empowers the individual more than it hinders him, if it gives him more freedom rather than less. How's that? Oh, and no harming outsiders either. Ancient Greece may have had a lovely participatory democracy, but only for property holding men, not women, serfs, or slaves.
Nah, my fault. I was rude. It's just, you know, leftists aren't Superman, we can't right every wrong, and not all teachers are leftists. Getting bullied sucks. But it does generally get better after high school, and those bullies are the ones who are going to have problems later on.
If you do not like a particular group, there are others. Again, what is 'the group' but an arbitrary collection of individuals? Would you feel entitled to tell any one of those individuals what to do? I wouldn't. So why should you be allowed to impose your will on them as a group? You shouldn't. And they should not be able to impose their will on you. So, if you as an individual, and them, as individuals, can not come to some sort of agreement (government) b y which you can live together, YOU need to go. Not them. It's simple mathematics, you would be telling a number of people what to do, but each of them would only be telling you what to do. The least hierarchical solution is, you leave and find a deal more to your liking elsewhere.
"Hey, let's just everybody leave each other alone, and nobody tells anybody what to do," sounds nice in theory, but it is hopelessly naive. Because someone will invariably take that as an excuse to harm others.
Why do we band together, instead of living alone, like cheetahs? Well, it is what worked for us. We band together to share risk and reward, and to multiply our power through cooperation. Together, we are stronger than apart. If I feel that being part of a particular group allows me more and better choices than being alone does, I will want to be part of that group. If being part of a group actually limits my choices compared to being alone, or a member of a better group, I will endeavor to leave the group I am part of. It is like any other commercial transaction: am I gaining more than I am giving up?
Singularly, what do we really have the freedom to do? Hunt and gather, or subsistence farm. Everything we do nowadays requires cooperation. You going to build a skyscraper yourself? Invent a cure for cancer? Go to Mars? No. You need the cooperation of others, and you have two ways of getting it: you can take advantage of others in desperate situations (heck, you can even put them there) or you can offer them something of value. Now suppose your society has taken away common lands, so that all lands are owned by a relative few. Besides that, your society does not teach basic self-survival skills, because no one lives like that.
Well, people can't just be hunter gatherers or subsistence farmers at that point, they are in a desperate situation, if they want to live, they are at the mercy of someone else, someone with access to resources. Giving them a job, rather than a stake in things, is taking advantage of them. And that is not something government causes, that is something that individuals do to each other. The strong make the rules, unless the weak band together.
Being part of any group involves sublimating some of your desires to the group. Who doesn't want to punch some fucker in the face sometimes? But we don't, we give up that freedom, because we don't like being punched in the face. For most of us, the deal is a good one, I give up a freedom I value less for one I value more.
You know, there are gradations between "I live alone," "I'm part of a small tribe," and "I am a part of a huge group that dominates my every action." Are we currently a bit too far on the side of "huge group that dominates my every action?" Maybe so. But I bet we would also disagree over just what actions should be dominated. Oh, we'd both say "No actions that harm others" I imagine, but then the real argument would be over what constitutes harm, and finally, we would have to debate whether harms should be enumerated and policed, or they should have to be proven after the fact.
I'm not the arbiter of what "freedom" means, of course, but then, neither is anyone else. That's kind of the point. Some people think people should have absolute rights over their own property, other people think everyone should have a right to a minimum amount of nutrition, a roof over their heads, and clothing appropriate to the climate; the two are not compatible given the current distribution of property ownership in the world. Alone, you will have little chance of getting your partic
Yeah, as my wife would say, his books are character driven, not plot driven. The plot exists as a setting in which to explore the characters' motivations and choices, rather than the characters existing merely to move the plot forward.
Groups are the only way weaker individuals can protect themselves from stronger. All individuals are better off in groups. We are social creatures, we are not individualists.
You don't seem to understand freedom. Do you understand my sig? Why is it that only good men love freedom, while the rest love mere license? "I get to do whatever I want" is not freedom.
If you were alone in the world, it would be pointless to speak of freedom. It would be a null concept, like water is to a fish. You would either have the power to do something, or you would not have the power. Freedom, as a concept, only enters the picture in groups. Freedom is by definition a group moderation of individual power. Every freedom involves trading one sort of power for another, group power, which we call freedom. You trade the power to swing your fist wherever you like, for the group's power to defend you from getting hit in the face.
Powerful individuals are spending a lot of money and effort to get people to look at mere license, and call it freedom. They do this because they do not want their power limited by a group. But real freedom comes from no place else but the group limiting the power of certain individuals to exploit other individuals. These powerful individuals are attempting to condition people into identifying with the interests of their exploiters, in a kind of economic Stockholm syndrome. They condition weak and powerless individuals into believing that they are on the verge of making it into the exploiter class themselves, and thus defending the interests of the exploiters, thinking they will become one.
That is why the Tea Party and the Libertarian movement exist.
You can not say that one is better than many, or more important. This is because there really isn't a "many" there are only individuals. So what you are saying is that one individual is more important than one individual, which is nonsense. There is no "The group." There is me, and you, and that guy over there. You can never act against "the group." You are acting against me, personally, and that guy over there, personally. In a similar light, it is not the group telling you not to hit people in the face, it is me, telling you not to hit me or that guy in the face, and that guy, saying the same thing.
"One is better than many, but not a specific one but all ones." is simply nonsense. Any one person is more important than any two people? The two poeple say "You know, we don't want to get hit in the face. If you hit us in the face, we will ostracize you from the tribe, you won't be welcome here anymore." And the one says, "You guys are oppressing my freedoms! I'm an individual, you two are a group, groups can't tell individuals what to do."
And if you believe that an individual has some sort of ill defined, "natural" or "god given" right to be free from getting hit in the face, tell that to the hurricane and the avalanche. Don't even go there, all the phrase "natural rights" or "god given rights" are is simple appeal to authority, a logical fallacy. So don't even go there.
I should warn you, I have honed my argumentation on these matters for decades, against some of the strongest debaters on the Internet. While I hope that you can offer me some sort of new argument I haven't thoroughly debunked before, I'm not holding my breath.
Well, I do get suckered into reading some really terrible authors, but thankfully I have managed to avoid Goodkind. As for Jordan, just answer me this, how many times can a woman smooth the front of her dress?
Why do you think that? The collective will of the people can be arrived at through consensus based or democratic processes. If you are the type that believes the average person is incapable of governing themselves, and some sort of elites need to govern to prevent "mob justice," then you haven't been paying attention to history, because THAT is the scenario that does not end well.
You seriously think ANY one person is better than ANY group? That is just silly. One person is far more likely to have a coherent bias than a group, whose biases tend to cancel out.
Groups have a negative effect in the individuals in them? Okay, now you've gone off the deep end! Individuals NEED groups, we are social animals, we will die without human contact. Groups have an effect on individuals, but it is far more likely to be positive than negative.
You're a libertarian, aren't you? You seek the primacy of the powerful individual over the 'group' of less powerful individuals. You seek a hierarchy, "one is better than many." You do not want the groups of "inferior" individuals to limit the power of the "superior" individual. I see all the symptoms.
I believe it is obvious that Mr. Martin actually had an overall story arc in mind when he first set pen to page in this series. It does not read as though he is just making it up as he goes along, copying and pasting previous story segments while slightly changing the names and circumstances as a shortcut. NO, I do not believe that Mr. Martin had any intention of creating an interminable, never ending cash cow, and then kicking the bucket before penning a finale he never really intended to write.
Was anyone actually worried he would "pull a Jordan?"
Where were you earlier? I just had to finish that joke myself. Hehe, I'm going to have to rewatch Blackadder, it's been while since I've seen any of the series.
That, and lots of other bankrupt philosophies, like "The Secret" (though I hesitate to call that a "philosophy") It's amazing what the power of self-justification can accomplish.
Please try to understand what the phrase "rhetorical technique" means. It should have been obvious from context that I don't really want him to die in a fire, otherwise, why am I defending him at all? I said it to "build a bridge" (note! not a literal bridge. Not sure what rhetorical techniques I have to explain here...) with the people who do want to punish him. It is a way of saying "See, though I am like you, and have a vindictive side, I choose not to listen to it."
Justice is a social sense that almost all humans are born with. That is the most accurate description I know. It is, first and foremost, a gut feeling. It evolved because certain types of actions help propagate the species, cooperation is good for the genes.
Government, in the sense of the collective will of the people, is the only effective way of enforcing justice, because every individual's sense of justice is conditioned by experience and temperament, but collectively it tends to add up to something everyone can agree on.
Hierarchical governments are more worried about keeping the social hierarchy intact, yes, but that is not an indictment against all government. It is an indictment against hierarchy, and hierarchies will attempt to maintain themselves with or without any sort of formal government. Government is just a tool, a dangerous tool like a gun, yes, but just a tool. We don't have to let them use it against us. And if they do, our best course of action is NOT "Let's unilaterally disarm, and get rid of all government." That is just what the extant power hierarchies want.
Well, hopefully it is also there to get people to think about the consequences of their actions. That is what religion does, it mixes in a little bit of goodness and common sense wisdom with a whole lot of craziness. Just enough good and common sense stuff to hook people, get them to go "Yeah, that sounds plausible," but enough craziness to get them to go "Sheesh, I can't figure this stuff out, I'm probably not good and or smart enough, I'd better just listen to that guy in the funny gown over there."
But that is what self awareness will do to you, you forget it's just a tool and you get trapped inside it's symbology. Ideas become more real than the things they represent. Religion is only one symptom.
Hehe, exactly. The whole "next life" thing is an intellectual copout, a dodge, a self-con. If I'm me, I'm not some other dude. Either I'm the guy playing the video game, or I'm the character he's playing, I can't be both.
I was trying to use anarchy as a way of saying the will of the government or the many is not necessarily more important then the will of the individual ("will" is not a great word to use here, but you should understand what I mean). Which, at least in my opinion, is the underpinning idea of Anarchy.
One branch of anarchism focuses on that. It's called, appropriately enough, individualist anarchism, and American Libertarianism is perhaps the most vocal example of that school of thought. But there are other schools of thought, for which the umbrella term is called social anarchism. These schools of thought generally believe that collective decisions outweigh individual will, although as I said, some social anarchists will only accept unanimous consent as valid form of hierarchy-free decision making, while others would say that majority rules democracy still counts, if everyone agrees to it.
You could argue endlessly about whether one school of thought or the other better promotes anarchism's overall goal of "no hierarchy," and believe me, we do. If you've ever seen one of my diatribes against Libertarians, you know which side I tend to fall on. I consider myself an anarcho-syndicalist, because it's really obscure and it sounds kind of sinister. As an example of my ideal form of government, I give you The Mondragon Corporation. If I spoke Spanish, I'd move there. It's a great blend of worker's cooperatives operating in a free market system. Everything there is a co-op, everybody who has a good idea can start a business, and get cooperative staffing, banking, advertising, basically everything they need to succeed locally and cooperatively, and if the idea is very good, getting all the support they need to compete globally. It was founded not that long ago by a leftist Catholic priest and an engineer. They turned a community of subsistence level impoverished minority farmers into a global player with a university and factories in less than fifty years. And they did it without exploiting anyone.
Actually, there is a huge difference between anarchy and mob rule. Anarchy means "no hierarchy" not "no government," which would be "anocracy." Anarchists believe in government, they would just prefer leaders to rulers. Leaders are not "above" you in some hierarchy, they are the people you trust to help you get to where you want to go. Rulers, on the other hand, make you go where they want you to. For example, most anarchists would consider a pure participatory democracy as a valid form of government, although some would insist on a consensus based process. Most real anarchists (as opposed to the "circle-A" crusty street punk variety) would consider mob rule, or ochlocracy, to be an invalid form of government that relies on a hierarchy and force.
The reason no one talks about anocracy is that it isn't really possible for it to exist. If there are more than two humans involved, there is some kind of government.
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Didn't you used to call yourself commodore128_lurv or something? It would be odd to see two commodore aficionados who are also ultra right wing climate change denialists on the same board. Why'd you change your name to something almost identical?
Actually, mud huts are very good, appropriate and sustainable technology, I've got nothing against them, in fact I have a good friend that lives in a mud hut. Well, a small adobe house anyhow.
I'm pretty sure we could sustain this level of population given our current technology, we'd have to move to renewable resources like solar power, but we could do it. We wouldn't want to let the population grow too much more unless we get off the planet and find some new resources out in space, but that's doable too.
Does no one here get that I don't really like Jordan's work?
Ah, you seem to think a group is an actual sentient thing with desires and motivations outside the individual. All it is is individuals, and the interactions between individuals. "A group" cannot interact with an individual, only another individual can.
Now, you can argue that group dynamics can influence individuals and bring up such examples as diffusion of responsibility, but I would counter that individuals just need to start taking responsibility for their own decisions and stop blaming "the group." "The group" did not make you do it, you chose to, and then blamed "someone" not in the room, because they can't be in the room, because they aren't real: the group.
if groups are as you seem to think, we must ask, what can an individual do, given the existence of these large, powerful, sentient entities that have the power to influence us against our wills and make us do things to others that we wouldn't have done unless this all powerful, invisible entity made us. And the answer would be: nothing, we're fucked. I'm probably misrepresenting what you really think, but that's how it reads.
The planet can not support even 1/10th the current population at hunter gatherer or subsistence farming levels, unless you are okay with killing off 9/10th of humans alive today, we don't have the option of going back, however nice it might have been. Skyscrapers aren't necessarily better than mud huts, but freezing to death and having 9 out of ten of your kids die before the age of ten due to disease couldn't have been a walk in the park.
Now don't get me wrong, I see what you are trying to say. I just don't think you are putting it very well. Here is how I would put it: the group is legitimate only if belonging to it empowers the individual more than it hinders him, if it gives him more freedom rather than less. How's that? Oh, and no harming outsiders either. Ancient Greece may have had a lovely participatory democracy, but only for property holding men, not women, serfs, or slaves.
Nah, my fault. I was rude. It's just, you know, leftists aren't Superman, we can't right every wrong, and not all teachers are leftists. Getting bullied sucks. But it does generally get better after high school, and those bullies are the ones who are going to have problems later on.
If you do not like a particular group, there are others. Again, what is 'the group' but an arbitrary collection of individuals? Would you feel entitled to tell any one of those individuals what to do? I wouldn't. So why should you be allowed to impose your will on them as a group? You shouldn't. And they should not be able to impose their will on you. So, if you as an individual, and them, as individuals, can not come to some sort of agreement (government) b y which you can live together, YOU need to go. Not them. It's simple mathematics, you would be telling a number of people what to do, but each of them would only be telling you what to do. The least hierarchical solution is, you leave and find a deal more to your liking elsewhere.
"Hey, let's just everybody leave each other alone, and nobody tells anybody what to do," sounds nice in theory, but it is hopelessly naive. Because someone will invariably take that as an excuse to harm others.
Why do we band together, instead of living alone, like cheetahs? Well, it is what worked for us. We band together to share risk and reward, and to multiply our power through cooperation. Together, we are stronger than apart. If I feel that being part of a particular group allows me more and better choices than being alone does, I will want to be part of that group. If being part of a group actually limits my choices compared to being alone, or a member of a better group, I will endeavor to leave the group I am part of. It is like any other commercial transaction: am I gaining more than I am giving up?
Singularly, what do we really have the freedom to do? Hunt and gather, or subsistence farm. Everything we do nowadays requires cooperation. You going to build a skyscraper yourself? Invent a cure for cancer? Go to Mars? No. You need the cooperation of others, and you have two ways of getting it: you can take advantage of others in desperate situations (heck, you can even put them there) or you can offer them something of value. Now suppose your society has taken away common lands, so that all lands are owned by a relative few. Besides that, your society does not teach basic self-survival skills, because no one lives like that.
Well, people can't just be hunter gatherers or subsistence farmers at that point, they are in a desperate situation, if they want to live, they are at the mercy of someone else, someone with access to resources. Giving them a job, rather than a stake in things, is taking advantage of them. And that is not something government causes, that is something that individuals do to each other. The strong make the rules, unless the weak band together.
Being part of any group involves sublimating some of your desires to the group. Who doesn't want to punch some fucker in the face sometimes? But we don't, we give up that freedom, because we don't like being punched in the face. For most of us, the deal is a good one, I give up a freedom I value less for one I value more.
You know, there are gradations between "I live alone," "I'm part of a small tribe," and "I am a part of a huge group that dominates my every action." Are we currently a bit too far on the side of "huge group that dominates my every action?" Maybe so. But I bet we would also disagree over just what actions should be dominated. Oh, we'd both say "No actions that harm others" I imagine, but then the real argument would be over what constitutes harm, and finally, we would have to debate whether harms should be enumerated and policed, or they should have to be proven after the fact.
I'm not the arbiter of what "freedom" means, of course, but then, neither is anyone else. That's kind of the point. Some people think people should have absolute rights over their own property, other people think everyone should have a right to a minimum amount of nutrition, a roof over their heads, and clothing appropriate to the climate; the two are not compatible given the current distribution of property ownership in the world. Alone, you will have little chance of getting your partic
Yeah, as my wife would say, his books are character driven, not plot driven. The plot exists as a setting in which to explore the characters' motivations and choices, rather than the characters existing merely to move the plot forward.
Groups are the only way weaker individuals can protect themselves from stronger. All individuals are better off in groups. We are social creatures, we are not individualists.
You don't seem to understand freedom. Do you understand my sig? Why is it that only good men love freedom, while the rest love mere license? "I get to do whatever I want" is not freedom.
If you were alone in the world, it would be pointless to speak of freedom. It would be a null concept, like water is to a fish. You would either have the power to do something, or you would not have the power. Freedom, as a concept, only enters the picture in groups. Freedom is by definition a group moderation of individual power. Every freedom involves trading one sort of power for another, group power, which we call freedom. You trade the power to swing your fist wherever you like, for the group's power to defend you from getting hit in the face.
Powerful individuals are spending a lot of money and effort to get people to look at mere license, and call it freedom. They do this because they do not want their power limited by a group. But real freedom comes from no place else but the group limiting the power of certain individuals to exploit other individuals. These powerful individuals are attempting to condition people into identifying with the interests of their exploiters, in a kind of economic Stockholm syndrome. They condition weak and powerless individuals into believing that they are on the verge of making it into the exploiter class themselves, and thus defending the interests of the exploiters, thinking they will become one.
That is why the Tea Party and the Libertarian movement exist.
You can not say that one is better than many, or more important. This is because there really isn't a "many" there are only individuals. So what you are saying is that one individual is more important than one individual, which is nonsense. There is no "The group." There is me, and you, and that guy over there. You can never act against "the group." You are acting against me, personally, and that guy over there, personally. In a similar light, it is not the group telling you not to hit people in the face, it is me, telling you not to hit me or that guy in the face, and that guy, saying the same thing.
"One is better than many, but not a specific one but all ones." is simply nonsense. Any one person is more important than any two people? The two poeple say "You know, we don't want to get hit in the face. If you hit us in the face, we will ostracize you from the tribe, you won't be welcome here anymore." And the one says, "You guys are oppressing my freedoms! I'm an individual, you two are a group, groups can't tell individuals what to do."
And if you believe that an individual has some sort of ill defined, "natural" or "god given" right to be free from getting hit in the face, tell that to the hurricane and the avalanche. Don't even go there, all the phrase "natural rights" or "god given rights" are is simple appeal to authority, a logical fallacy. So don't even go there.
I should warn you, I have honed my argumentation on these matters for decades, against some of the strongest debaters on the Internet. While I hope that you can offer me some sort of new argument I haven't thoroughly debunked before, I'm not holding my breath.
Well, I do get suckered into reading some really terrible authors, but thankfully I have managed to avoid Goodkind. As for Jordan, just answer me this, how many times can a woman smooth the front of her dress?
Well put, those are exactly the characteristics that I find most enjoyable about Martin's writing.
Why do you think that? The collective will of the people can be arrived at through consensus based or democratic processes. If you are the type that believes the average person is incapable of governing themselves, and some sort of elites need to govern to prevent "mob justice," then you haven't been paying attention to history, because THAT is the scenario that does not end well.
You seriously think ANY one person is better than ANY group? That is just silly. One person is far more likely to have a coherent bias than a group, whose biases tend to cancel out.
Groups have a negative effect in the individuals in them? Okay, now you've gone off the deep end! Individuals NEED groups, we are social animals, we will die without human contact. Groups have an effect on individuals, but it is far more likely to be positive than negative.
You're a libertarian, aren't you? You seek the primacy of the powerful individual over the 'group' of less powerful individuals. You seek a hierarchy, "one is better than many." You do not want the groups of "inferior" individuals to limit the power of the "superior" individual. I see all the symptoms.
I believe it is obvious that Mr. Martin actually had an overall story arc in mind when he first set pen to page in this series. It does not read as though he is just making it up as he goes along, copying and pasting previous story segments while slightly changing the names and circumstances as a shortcut. NO, I do not believe that Mr. Martin had any intention of creating an interminable, never ending cash cow, and then kicking the bucket before penning a finale he never really intended to write.
Was anyone actually worried he would "pull a Jordan?"
Where were you earlier? I just had to finish that joke myself. Hehe, I'm going to have to rewatch Blackadder, it's been while since I've seen any of the series.
That, and lots of other bankrupt philosophies, like "The Secret" (though I hesitate to call that a "philosophy") It's amazing what the power of self-justification can accomplish.
Huh, someone else told me it was like goldy and bronzy, only with iron. Now I'm conused.
There is a great Easy Bake Soul Oven in the sky churning them out. That's why souls taste like cheap cupcakes.
Please try to understand what the phrase "rhetorical technique" means. It should have been obvious from context that I don't really want him to die in a fire, otherwise, why am I defending him at all? I said it to "build a bridge" (note! not a literal bridge. Not sure what rhetorical techniques I have to explain here...) with the people who do want to punish him. It is a way of saying "See, though I am like you, and have a vindictive side, I choose not to listen to it."
Can't believe I actually have to explain this.
Justice is a social sense that almost all humans are born with. That is the most accurate description I know. It is, first and foremost, a gut feeling. It evolved because certain types of actions help propagate the species, cooperation is good for the genes.
Government, in the sense of the collective will of the people, is the only effective way of enforcing justice, because every individual's sense of justice is conditioned by experience and temperament, but collectively it tends to add up to something everyone can agree on.
Hierarchical governments are more worried about keeping the social hierarchy intact, yes, but that is not an indictment against all government. It is an indictment against hierarchy, and hierarchies will attempt to maintain themselves with or without any sort of formal government. Government is just a tool, a dangerous tool like a gun, yes, but just a tool. We don't have to let them use it against us. And if they do, our best course of action is NOT "Let's unilaterally disarm, and get rid of all government." That is just what the extant power hierarchies want.
I'm not sure. What's irony?
No, being a Buddhist, I think there is never anything to be forgiven for.
Well, hopefully it is also there to get people to think about the consequences of their actions. That is what religion does, it mixes in a little bit of goodness and common sense wisdom with a whole lot of craziness. Just enough good and common sense stuff to hook people, get them to go "Yeah, that sounds plausible," but enough craziness to get them to go "Sheesh, I can't figure this stuff out, I'm probably not good and or smart enough, I'd better just listen to that guy in the funny gown over there."
But that is what self awareness will do to you, you forget it's just a tool and you get trapped inside it's symbology. Ideas become more real than the things they represent. Religion is only one symptom.
Did you see the fellow he's got doing his tracking electronics? With a neckbeard that fierce, his kung-fu must be great indeed.
Hehe, exactly. The whole "next life" thing is an intellectual copout, a dodge, a self-con. If I'm me, I'm not some other dude. Either I'm the guy playing the video game, or I'm the character he's playing, I can't be both.
I was trying to use anarchy as a way of saying the will of the government or the many is not necessarily more important then the will of the individual ("will" is not a great word to use here, but you should understand what I mean). Which, at least in my opinion, is the underpinning idea of Anarchy.
One branch of anarchism focuses on that. It's called, appropriately enough, individualist anarchism, and American Libertarianism is perhaps the most vocal example of that school of thought. But there are other schools of thought, for which the umbrella term is called social anarchism. These schools of thought generally believe that collective decisions outweigh individual will, although as I said, some social anarchists will only accept unanimous consent as valid form of hierarchy-free decision making, while others would say that majority rules democracy still counts, if everyone agrees to it.
You could argue endlessly about whether one school of thought or the other better promotes anarchism's overall goal of "no hierarchy," and believe me, we do. If you've ever seen one of my diatribes against Libertarians, you know which side I tend to fall on. I consider myself an anarcho-syndicalist, because it's really obscure and it sounds kind of sinister. As an example of my ideal form of government, I give you The Mondragon Corporation. If I spoke Spanish, I'd move there. It's a great blend of worker's cooperatives operating in a free market system. Everything there is a co-op, everybody who has a good idea can start a business, and get cooperative staffing, banking, advertising, basically everything they need to succeed locally and cooperatively, and if the idea is very good, getting all the support they need to compete globally. It was founded not that long ago by a leftist Catholic priest and an engineer. They turned a community of subsistence level impoverished minority farmers into a global player with a university and factories in less than fifty years. And they did it without exploiting anyone.
Actually, there is a huge difference between anarchy and mob rule. Anarchy means "no hierarchy" not "no government," which would be "anocracy." Anarchists believe in government, they would just prefer leaders to rulers. Leaders are not "above" you in some hierarchy, they are the people you trust to help you get to where you want to go. Rulers, on the other hand, make you go where they want you to. For example, most anarchists would consider a pure participatory democracy as a valid form of government, although some would insist on a consensus based process. Most real anarchists (as opposed to the "circle-A" crusty street punk variety) would consider mob rule, or ochlocracy, to be an invalid form of government that relies on a hierarchy and force.
The reason no one talks about anocracy is that it isn't really possible for it to exist. If there are more than two humans involved, there is some kind of government.