I don't see a way to mandate that. I mean you can't say "you have to put people first" in an authoritative manner and expect people to listen to you without total fascism or uhm.. human engineering. I'm not a big fan of either of those for what I'd think to be obvious reasons. I think the only acceptable route to improving the species to overcome the typical failings of greed is as I mentioned above. You have to blow it out, accept it to the extreme. Integrate it such that it cannot be a detractor. Celebrate selfishness and turn it around such that it is understood that the ultimate selfish act is to "put humans first". Know what I mean?
I think that there is no difference between being ruled by the orders of madman and being subjected to the whims of a mob; they would both result in the same state of affairs: terrifying disorder. Mob action doesn't ameliorate crisis, it worsens it. Men, unless engaged in warfare, have always had some form of authority, albeit originally not centralized. Anarchy, which is what you propose, is the utter lack of authority, centralized or otherwise. Men have never lived in that condition unless they were doing so in rapine and bedlam. Even the Hunter-gatherers had chiefs, theocratic leaders, or tribal princes of some sort. Most people define it with a dictionary. an·ar·chy Pronunciation Key (nr-k) n. pl. an·ar·chies 1. Absence of any form of political authority. 2. Political disorder and confusion. 3. Absence of any cohesive principle, such as a common standard or purpose. Dictionary.com - Anarchy It looks as though there are only three forms, and none of them mention anything about common law or cooperation. I haven't noticed anything pertaining to multiple stages either. So there are no chiefs, elders, or shamans in these communities? Unless they're all hermits, they have a ruling body. It may not be organized or even distinguishable from a church congregation,; it could even be a ruthless male with bigger muscles than everybody else. Nonetheless, it should exist. Men don't simply coexist in an agreeable state unless there's some cohesive force. (Note: men can coexist inharmoniously and contentiously in anarchy and have done so in the past. An example would be the Thirty Years War of Europe) Since that illustration was obviously a failure, I'll try another. The first word that many small children ever utter is "mine". I think that's sufficiently self-explanatory. I can't very well tell you that they don't exist when they do. I'm unconcerned with your perception of me. Now, if you would, explain to me why these remote communities would still be stuck in the Hunting-Gathering stage if their ideas in regard to the worth of commodities were intelligent and practical?
What about education? What if the next generations were taught human values instead of materialistic values. Considering how set we are today, this kind of thing would take generations to instill new values into our cultures. A quicker, not as serious, but fun to think about, way would be to take a large number of children, isolate them, learning from one set of teachers, who teach them a new set of values. After they become around 20, allow them a piece of land to create a society. I just don't think greed is determined in us. I think it could very well be a result of survival, making it necessary to getting us where we are today. However we really don't have to concentrate on nature survival anymore. We have enough knowledge and technology to live comfortably without too much worry (maybe a natural disaster, or disease outbreak here and there). In industrialized societies, the survival that we do struggle through anymore is created by our system of stratification.
Redoubtable, The dictionary will only give you a general definition, which is usually garbage in understanding concepts fully. If you really want to understand what anarchy is you need to read some central texts on the subject. I've dinked around and found this Anarchy FAQ. I looked it over a bit, and the guy knows his stuff. He sites many well known anarchist writers. If you really want to learn about anarchism, then look at this link: http://flag.blackened.net/intanark/faq/ If you are to begin to understand my point of view on what anarchy is you have to understand this... Anarchy doesn't mean a lack of order or organization. Anarchy is against organization and rules that put one person over another, in other words anarchy is against hierarchical organization. Let me provide an example. I have a friend who lives in a co-op. Being a member, she is part landlord of the building, as is everyone who lives there. They have agreed that each person has to put in so many hours each week on various chores. Some people have taken up certain positions within the co-op to fill these hours. For example, one person keeps track of the finances for the building, another does interviews for new members. However these positions aren't authority. Any member can have their say and vote on anything within the co-op, despite who's taking care of whatever position. If for example, the interviewer suggested someone another member didn't like, that member could vote against that person from coming in. No person has any political or economical power over another. So yes there are rules, but they are defined and voted on by all people that choose to. There is no hierachy, no larger owner. Note: This co-op isn't a true anarchy, mainly because it exists within a capitalist system and has to deal with the outside world via money. It does illustrate the principle of non-stratified organization that anarchy is based on. A child is on average one year old before he/she utters single word phrases. First think of what you can learn in a year. Now take a child who is in the prime critical period for learning many things (including language), who is probably learning at a rate between 5-10 times (I'm understating) the amount you and I do. Now think what you can learn in 5-10 years. Think about how often the word my or mine comes up in English conversations and how many times a child hears this within the first year of its life. Think how possession oriented our society, wouldn't this be one of the first concepts a child learns? Do you see the confounds in your illustration? You are measuring success by the standards of your own society. What if we measured how successful a type of society is by how long it's been in existence (not too far-fetched is it? an evolutionary successful definition). Well, humans have lasted via hunting and gathering societies since humans have existed, and to some extent, to this day. Democratic-capitalistic industrial societies have lasted maybe a few hundred years (industrial revolution). If we continue at the reckeless rate we've been traveling the past few hundred years, maybe no societies will be left within the next century. Can you see it from this point of view?
I think that's entirely idealistic. Look around you man, seems to me that human behavior will encompass all iterations between the boundaries of possibility based on the normal curve and the number of people sampled. In other words, regardless of your societal starting point, given enough people and enough time, the behavior you see around you now is almost surely representative (though not exactly) what would happen, especially when you consider simply the current scope of human behavior. I think that's exactly backwards. Survival promotes a certain level of greed depending on the individual (how they develop, their particular wiring/chem balance, etc). Just because nowadays the struggle has changed, you're not going to breed out the survival instinct without some.. well... that's a different topic. So you still have the instince but the struggle has changed. Do you think that means that the resultant greed just ceases? I say NO WAY, what happens is that it wraps itself around socio-economic conditions regardless of what they are. As such, greed will be found in the most affluent or communistic or socialist or whatever socio-economic configuration you examinel. I guess I think that while certain aspects of greed aren't determined in us, greed IS as it is a direct resultant (somewhat of a mutation) of the survival instinct.
Behaviors are often based on principles that are taught to us. How could the people around us (the USA?) be a normal curve to represent a sample of what human nature is. Say I look at the people in the US, then yes a normal curve of these people may be representative of how humans act within a democratic-capitalistic society, but you couldn't apply this curve to a hunting and gathering society who believes in animism, and feels you can't own anything because it is alive. It's an entirely different set of values. To say that a normal curve of people nowadays is a good representative of human nature, is to say that all human behavior is determined. Wes, if I remember correctly, I don't think you are a determinist. I would say that greed comes from the act of competition, rather than the survival instinct. Or really a combination of the two. The survival instinct would say "Do whatever it take to survive". Competition says "there's someone else wanting the same food I do." Combined they might say "I have to get that food before they do." They may then try to hoard the food (although most animals with survival instincts don't tend to hoard). If the competition wasn't there then the greed wasn't there. But really, what you are talking about is a survival drive and not instinct. An instinct means you are determined to do a specific behavior (instincts may not even exist). Such as birds, are thought to be determined to make nests, the knowledge is inborn. A drive compels you to do something. Such as hunger - you are compelled to eat. Survival is a drive. If it was an instinct there wouldn't be suicide, because instincts can't be controlled. Drives can be controlled however. We can supress our hunger. We can supress our will to live. Our internal thoughts and conditions mess up our drives constantly. Take obesity for example. Instead of eating when the body say to, people become conditioned to eat at various times - when they are bored, when they watch TV, when they are around friends, etc. They stop listening to the drive. Same thing with the survival drive. You can notably see that it is ignored when a person has depression. The point of all this is to say that our values and the environment around us, can control our drives. This is one of Reason's purposes to control habits and drives. Say you have a communistic society. If there is a food center where you can go and get food at any time, why would a person be driven to hoard food or any other thing? A problem might occur when the food gets slim. People may become greedy, thinking of their own survival and hear the calling of their drive. Or they may band together closer and figure out a solution, supressing the drive as they always have, with their Reason. I could see it happen both ways. The stronger the values and beliefs of the society, the more likely they won't follow their drives. Keep in mind that this concept can be seen in animals. It's called kin altruism. An animal will risk its own survival for the survival of the animals around it.
Immediatly after reading this i envisioned a scenario, it goes like this - A schezophrenic or even some other personality or mental disorder plague a child of a decent family. The child seriously harms or even kills a child or another family member of a neighboring family. Well obviously tensions will rise between two families. Now call me a cynic but hatred will breed between two families and even though the rest of the town may oppress the whole incident but the hatred will linger between the two families and possibly erupt in violence at a later time. BTW i have seen socieies that you could call examples of Anarchy and let me say they are far from idealistic. Infact they are downright barbaric. Ignorance is rampant and law is decided through town meetings where almost always anger and the heat of the moment make the decisions that seal the fate of innocent lives and criminal.
You're right, I'm not. I was just using the bell curve to get across the point that there is generally a bulky part in the middle and a number of fringy freaks. Well, I'd say we're of similar opinion, but the slight difference results in large differences in conclusions. I think you're mistaken about competition. Competition is a result of the instinct to survive, not a separate entity. Competition is "sizing up" which is to me the resultant of social interation. If I'm cruising along through the bush looking for food and I run across you, I'm gonna need to know what threat you present to me. Current social interaction is more sophisticated, but exactly analagous. You have to assess the threat (even if it is subconscious) that others pose because you do not know their motivations. Regardless of your societal structure, there will be mentally unstable fucks with cruel intentions. As such, to "survive" (the modern version of survival) you MUST assess the intentions of others in your social sphere. Now, this gets even easier to understand if I just present the following theory: The human basically strives to satisfy needs. Fundamental needs (water, food), Perceived need (I need THAT shirt, or I need to be the president of this fan club) and Subconcious needs (generally emotional like my daddy didn't love me so I generally seek a man's approval or whatever) seem to me to set up the general schema, though maybe it could be further dilineated or described more accurately. Now, every single individual on the planet has a completely different set of needs (though fundamental needs are generally very very similar). Percieved and Emotional needs are at the root of our discussion. The reason in the first place I'm arguing that greed is resultant of the survival intinct is because these percieved and emotinal need are basically the integration (using the mathematical analogy) of the survival instinct over time given your particular conditions, all of this evaluated in the present. The fundamentally obligatory act of pursuing the gratification of these needs IS the root of competition, considering the fact that the interactions of multiple individuals all striving to satisfy inherently selfish (that's not neccesarily bad, but well, see my comments about selfishness from before) agendas MUST result in a least SOME competition. On a related note, to acheive the type of society you desire, the only route I can see is to make people homogenous. If that's the case, what is the point? Individuality is the spice of life man, you want a bunch of fucking drones? Ack. :bugeye: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Sarge, Yeah, you're always going to run into problems, no matter what kind of society you have. I'm assuming the above feud would be handled as it would in any other society. It may even be handled better in an Anarchistic society, if the people have more humanistic values. That's why I would say, values need to change first, then Anarchy can take place. What societies are these that you are talking about? Wes, Yeah, like I said to Sarge. You're always going to have problems. It's how you handle them. Also, if the people are treated humanistically by each other, you are setting yourself up to have less problems in the long run. Needs are better fullfilled when people work together. The only reason why we exist today is because humans have realized that notion. If everyone works together, needs are more fulfilled efficiently. If people compete, people lose out. I'm sure in even the most idealistic form of society, there will be some instances of competition. Like I said, especially when times get tough (ie droughts). But I don't think this would necessarily break the framework of a developed anarchy, just as the communist party, hasn't "destroyed" the ideas of Americans. Actually, I see Capitalism as the thing that turns people into drones. Anarchy/Communism is base on human qualities, on creativity (old Marxist stuff about alienation is based heavy on this). To all, Again, Anarchy is another form of running things, it's going to have its faults. Although it seems like it, but I'm not advocating anarchy. There's a good chance that I'd prefer a democracy (a true one) and that may be better. What I really advocate is a society based on human values rather than money and stratification. Remember the point of this thread is if Anarchy is possible
Call me crazy but i lack such faith in my fellow man. They are the villages in India. Some are still quite underdeveloped but the interesting thing is the main national laws don't apply to them. Technically they are suppose to but these villages can be so isolated or underdeveloped that no one cares to enforce the national laws so these villagers have their own legislature and government, usually run by head of the richest families. The course of action concerning lawful activities and criminal activites is carried out by the villagers but often times their judgement is clouded by ignorance and pride. A lot of villages are like that but a lot of them are run by "royal" families also, families which are no better either.
Probably the reason that there is such bitter feelings in these villages is because of the stratification. You said that the rich families are running the show. The main point of anarchy is to not have such stratifications; so I wouldn't say they are anarchies.
What exactly is it that motivates people to work together rather than to fullfill their percieved need? They WILL fulfill their percieved need, you propose to manipulate that need into making it "work together" and I propose that is impossible. I think this stuff supported my point: "The fundamentally obligatory act of pursuing the gratification of these needs IS the root of competition, considering the fact that the interactions of multiple individuals all striving to satisfy inherently selfish (that's not neccesarily bad, but well, see my comments about selfishness from before) agendas MUST result in a least SOME competition." Further, in order for people to work together, like the people in your friend's commune, they have to agree that the premise is fair and be willing and able to satisfy their obligation. Further, optimally they would desire to satisfy their obligation. You're gonna force anarchy down everyone's throat? That's not anarchy anymore is it? Certainly, but note that cooperation does not preclude competition. I can help you and beat you at the same time. Well, I admire your idealism but I believe that to be a naive comment. It sounds good until you break it down. Think about it man.. break it down. What is together? What needs? Who has the same needs? What is effiency when subjectivity clashes? Cooperation is a necessary aspect of survival, but it's short-sighted to think it could possibly be entirely pervasive considering that every person INHERENTLY has their own agenda. It is also true to say "If people compete, people win.". Why do you choose one over the other? Because you're sensitive? Does that make you RIGHT? I think it only makes you vulnerable and distorts your comprehension of the larger picture. *sigh* We're animals dude, you can't change that. I mean, we're sentient and capable of incredible goodness.. but we each have a subjective experience driven by an almost irrisistable urge to survive and pro-create. We must embrace competition to survive, or we will not. *sigh* Okay dude, after reading my junk from above you still think that? Capitalisim allows every member to seek and potentially ascertain (based purely on their ability to adapt to the situation) exactly what they percieve that they need. In essence, it's perfect. It does seem problematic though as we are creatures to don't like to have our families slaughtered, etc. Laws are constructed to patch the holes left by the missing ethics of pure capitalism. I don't think a drone has the freedom to pursue their percieved need. No, it's based on idealistic fallacy. No, it's like athiesm. It's "not having a form of running things". I would if my idealistic fanatasies could in any way become real.
That is what i see all the time. Even when a isolated society has a oppertunity to incorporate their own laws and forgo the government dribble and tyranny they usually end up choosing a sort of a government to preside over them. Even if it works againt their favor they refuse to overthrow their own, out of control, creations. Why is that?
