[Michael Chui]

Thread was begun here, but I think Keith's right about splitting it off. I don't think that even moderators can branch a thread like that, though, so I'm just making a new one and linking back.

My understanding of the current positions:
KevinG believes that it is impossible to move towards an anarchistic "utopia" from where we are now.

Keith believes that a Consciousness Revolution will result in an anarchistic society comprised of "aware and conscious" people, doing away with any need for government.

Here's my take.

What is government? Why does it exist?

I believe the current theory of anthropology (no sources; just memory) is that government arose somewhere during the transition from hunter/gatherer societies to agrarian societies. Government is the practice of placing upon a subset of a society the responsibility to maintain the stability of that society. Its role, therefore, is primarily one of mediation, whether internal to the society or external, with another society. Today, we substitute the word "society" with "nation", and it makes as much sense.

Lao-tzu may have written about codes of morality and justice, but that is not entirely what laws are. Laws are statements of agreement. It might be as simple as saying, "George will do the laundry every Friday." I'm not convinced that even a society comprised completely of aware and conscious individuals would be capable of functioning without such agreement.

Once you add laws to a society, you no longer have your standard anarchy. This doesn't mean you have a government, though, so perhaps you can still call it an anarchy. I would call it a democracy; a direct democracy. A rule completely by all the people. This is, ultimately, not scalable. So either you split apart into separate societies, or you begin adding representatives to do the heavy lifting for you, i.e. government.

So scale is the first problem of anarchy, and it's not one that I think can be addressed by the consciousness of its citizens.

The second problem is the one KevinG brought up, and it's the fact that despite the drastic increase in conscious people, I think they are still very much a minority in the world. What, really, is the likelihood that anyone could bring them all together? Wouldn't their instinct to help others more likely spread them out? Sure, they'd band together to achieve things, but it's so that they can reach a larger population, not for any internal reasons of forming a separate society. To withdraw from the world is, in many ways, very selfish.