Anarchy - Infeasible or Inevitable?

[JohnLong]

Originally Posted by Brutha

I can't see how it is an enlightened way of approaching the world to compete with each other.
So that basically what enlighted being do? Compete with each other?

Well, there's a couple of ways to address that. First off, competing peacefully is certainly more enlighted than competing violently.

Second, competition need not be done in an unpleasant way. There are enlightened forms of competition all the time, as long as peoples ego's do not get involved. Every play a board game with a friend? Or run a marathon? Competition is not, in and of itself, un-enlightened. It's competing and believing the "winner" is "better" than the "loser" that's unenlightened.

Finally, markets are as much about co-operation as they are about competition. I know the competition gets emphasized a lot more, and it's certainly real, but co-operation is actually a more fundamental attribute of a free market. Think about your most recent financial transaction. This was almost certainly an act of co-operation, and in the bigger view, quite a lot of co-operation.

Suppose you bought some a pencil at the office supply store. The obvious co-operation is that you agreed to give the owner a little money and he agreed to give you a pencil. You both walk away satisfied. No one was forced to do anything. Essentially, you co-operated by letting the office supply store find pencils and get them where you could buy them, while they co-operated by letting you worry about how to make enough money so they could sell it to you. If you had to go and find your own pencil every time you needed one (or worse yet, make your own pencil!), you'd be a lot worse off.

Even something as simple as a pencil involves co-ordinating lumberjacks, chemists, machinists, janitors, truck drivers, miners, and in the end, hundreds of other people. Some method of figuring out how to co-ordinate all that activity, and to figure out which activities are the most important, is necessary even if the world where filled with 100% enlightened people.

That's the essence of an Anarchist society as I see it. Instead of short circuiting the negotiation required to make sure that everyone agrees to transactions, we do things the right way and hammer out agreements. Like adults. We accept that other people have different priorities, values and opinions from us, and we find ways to co-operate with them anyhow, instead of just overrulling them by getting a bunch of our friends together and voting.

If you posit a government without coercion, I'm all for that. I wouldn't call it a government, but hey, call it whatever as long as it doesn't force people to do things.

This is already too long. Are you understanding me any better here? I know there are a ton of questions and objections, and I can certainly discuss those if you're interested, but I want to feel like at the least we're working towards a better understanding of each others opinions.

[peter]

First let me say that a society with over 50% conscious people is not going to stay at 50% very long... I believe that it will have an explosive effect... and in a very short period of time that number will become 60-70-80-90%

There is a very interesting book by count Leo Tolstoy called "The kingdom of God is within you" and it treats the subject of Anarchy too, Christian Anarchy...

In this book his main idea from a society structural point of view is like this:
there are 3 stages of mankind
1. Barbary - man did pretty much whatever his animal urges dictated
2. State - built first around the nucleus of a family evolved to tribe then state. The main characteristic of this stage is "THE LAW", be it sent by God or created by man... the individual of the society had to obey it or face consequences.
Tolstoy said that this level reached its peak in Roman Empire times, some 2000 years ago when the Law reached its full maturity (current law is still based on Roman Law) and it is still the current stage.
Then came Christ and with his teachings showed man kind the third stage in its evolution
3. Christian Anarchy...

Now the main problem was that this stage competed with the previous stage and sometime around 300 AD something happened... The state adopted Christianity and in the process corrupted its message...

Right now the message of Christ is buried under miles of old stage Laws and old style "observance" believing.

Tolstoy goes further and says that although Christ teachings received this blow, they still survived and permeated the society... more and more...
and now they are at the heart of a lot of its members...

You don't need to explain to a normal person that is wrong to kill someone or to steal... they know it in their hearts to be wrong.

Another interesting phenomena is that quality people will start to choose other jobs than the ones regarded as prestigious by the old stage like Army, Administration, Law and such... and this will result in less competent people ending up in those positions... people discontent will rise and when it will peak they will realize that they don't need the old structure anymore.... more will start to practice civil disobedience, tax resistance, etc. They will realize that Nonresistance to evil by force is THE WAY!

They will start becoming better persons and start to create real service to people around them, either by listening to Christ's advice of "the first among you shall be your servant" or by listening to Earl Nightingale advice that "Money comes from service"... either way will do.

Success of this kind of people will inspire... and more will join... people will learn to love, will learn to think for themselves rather than turn on the cesspool in their living room.

Either there will be a progressive realization of this transformation or it will be brought about by calamity... like a nuclear war or some other catastrophically stupid thing that a man with too little brains and too much power at his disposal could do.

[Andrew Brunelle]

The whole problem with government, all government, no matter how well-intentioned the initial creators are, after they die, will the following generations be able to maintain it? Our nation was founded by highly conscious and brilliant people, but after they died off, it seems as if the highly conscious people dissipated in number. We no longer have a variety of highly conscious people in our government, but just a small few. One or two bad apples can ruin our whole system for a long time.

So the idea of government is not bad, initially. It is the maintenence of this government, a democracy, for the people, by the people. We have strayed quite a bit from this fundamental truth, but it's never too late to get back into it. We just need a highly conscious leader to help us along the way. And I'm quite sure it will not be from one of the two major political parties, which most likely means he/she will never be elected. Sad but true.

So don't knock the system, but knock the people who are in charge of the system.

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Andrew Brunelle

The whole problem with government, all government, no matter how well-intentioned the initial creators are, after they die, will the following generations be able to maintain it? Our nation was founded by highly conscious and brilliant people, but after they died off, it seems as if the highly conscious people dissipated in number. We no longer have a variety of highly conscious people in our government, but just a small few. One or two bad apples can ruin our whole system for a long time.

So the idea of government is not bad, initially. It is the maintenence of this government, a democracy, for the people, by the people. We have strayed quite a bit from this fundamental truth, but it's never too late to get back into it. We just need a highly conscious leader to help us along the way. And I'm quite sure it will not be from one of the two major political parties, which most likely means he/she will never be elected. Sad but true.

So don't knock the system, but knock the people who are in charge of the system.

This phenomenon, strangely enough, seems to be all over the place. Genius seems to have died out, and there feel like there are fewer and fewer great human beings among us.

But I don't think this is an irreversible trend: I think that the last few decades of explosive growth have caused the human race to reel backwards in shock. We need to catch up, but when we do, it won't be so bad.

[Brutha]

I don't really think that we had that much more Genuises before.
Time makes legends.

So the idea of government is not bad, initially. It is the maintenence of this government, a democracy, for the people, by the people. We have strayed quite a bit from this fundamental truth, but it's never too late to get back into it. We just need a highly conscious leader to help us along the way.

In a democracy the people get what the deserve. Democracy is the rule by the people not by highly conscious leaders, in societies without much highly conscious people.

The system is build in a way that a single person can't have much effect on it without support from many other people.

Brutha, I'm going to give my personal answers to your comments later, but let's try something a bit different in the interim.

I am still looking forward to those.

[nosos]

Originally Posted by Andrew Brunelle

So don't knock the system, but knock the people who are in charge of the system.

Why shouldn't we knock the system? There isn't just one system. History is filled with a multitude of democracies and capitalisms, overlapping with one another. Thinking of it as a dichotomy - that we may either adopt either one or the other - obscures the potential that exists to change the system into another system.

[Salt Bake Sun]

Hi everyone,

I came across this forum when I was supposed to be working. I´ve got some ideas on this subject, but as I have approached the topic from a Tech/Society angle (Mumford, Ellul (spelling?), History of Tech.. etc), I have some ideas that you may find interesting.

I see anarchy as an inevitability, but I don´t really see any reason why consciousness is a requisite for anarchy. In fact, I think that anarchy is much more likely to occur under the opposite circumstances - little to no social consciousness.

In my vision of the future, I see the technological system (technique as defined by Jaques Elul) actually replacing government, as our technique becomes more and more invasive, eroding our consciousness in the best interest of the system.

Yeah, so I could develop this with more detail, but I´m just gonna toss this one out there and see what the thoughts of the forum are.

[Michael Chui]

If a technology replaces the government, wouldn't the effect still be a governmental form? Anarchy is a lack of government, not a lack of human government, isn't it?

[Mark Lapierre]

Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn series (I'm mentioning this series a lot on these forums aren't I? ) tells of the separation of the human species into two distinct groups, the Edenists and the Adamists. The Adamists could be considered a continuation of the original human species, and the Edenists a genetically engineered branch. The Edenists embraced biotechnology and used it to develop a form of telepathy, called affinity.

Affinity allows the kind of immensely scalable communication that would be necessary for a truly effective form of self-government by the people. And this is exactly what occurs in Hamilton's universe; When a decision must be made which affects the race as a whole, the Edenists form a Consensus, which in this case is a race-wide communication via affinity. But despite being comprised of many minds, it decides as one entity. Consensus can also be formed of smaller groups of individuals.

So, complete fantasy, but a good illustration of the utopia we're discussing.

Though if Kevin were still around I wouldn't doubt that he'd think it's pointless mentioning this because it's fantasy

I agree that a more achievable form of self-governing society is feasible, but I doubt we (referring to those on this forum) will achieve it if we can't raise the consciousness of someone like Kevin.

I certainly don't see it as inevitable, because, as one example, despite 2000 years of progress since Christ, who many believe was the epitome of a highly conscious individual, and who so many profess to believe and follow, we still see daily evidence of those same people demonstrating how very low their consciousness truly is. And yet they also believe they're living life the 'right' way, and that it's other people who are responsible for anything deemed unsatisfactory. It's people like those who I believe are capable of creating the destructive anarchy Salt Bake Sun mentioned.

However, I'm optimistic. I'm regularly surprised by how many people follow a path of raising consciousness, especially when they're people who I wouldn't have expected to take that path. Regular people, not the smart people Steve aims his message at

By the way, Salt Bake Sun, currently many people have little to no faith in human government. And the common perception is that computers are unreliable. How do you foresee the technological system replacing government? If we agree that a major function of government is to be the final authority, how would that authority be granted to a technological system when we currently have as little faith in technology as we do in politicians?

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Salt Bake Sun

In my vision of the future, I see the technological system (technique as defined by Jaques Elul) actually replacing government, as our technique becomes more and more invasive, eroding our consciousness in the best interest of the system.

Re-reading this post, it occurs to me that I should ask whether or not people have seen the movie "I, Robot".

[Keith]

Sorry to resurrect this thread, but Brutha reminded me in another thread that I owe him some responses. Like I said last time, I still think it's more productive if everyone looks for ways to make it work rather than just reasons it won't.

Originally Posted by Brutha

We are talking about a population in which there are enough very intelligent, conscious and aware people available for government functions that are able to achieve win-wins.
If you think those conscious and aware people aren't capable of making win-wins your whole argument is dead.

It's a matter of communication flow. A network of people addressing an issue are always going to come to a better consensus than a central authority operating on necessarily limited information.

Originally Posted by Brutha

You suppose a society where they are conscious and aware people. Why should a government of those people act against the wishes of the people?

I suppose a society composed predominantly of conscious and aware people, yes. The power of government is likely to attract the least conscious members of that society, but assuming that doesn't happen, central control is still an inferior decision making approach for the reasons noted above.

No single human being is qualified to understand and respond to issues affecting large groups of individuals.

Originally Posted by Brutha

How do those people make the decision to come together? Who organises it?

Wouldn't it be more efficient if someone in City A and someone in City B had the job to organise those things. (That job is classically called mayor)

Through consensus reaching procedures. This is a new form of decision-making, just as diplomacy once was. Some of the techniques can be seen in the way Wikipedia is managed.

Originally Posted by Brutha

Let take a large-scale example, genetic manipulated plants.
The benefits of having better plants that have more vitamins and need fewer growing time mean that someone will want to do this in your society. Those scientists who want to do this will thing that the benefits are greater than they are in reality and that the risk aren't as big as they are because the belief in the idea of genetic manipulated plants.

Because other people fear that the risk genetic manipulated plants is greater than the benefits it provides.
How does your society decides the issue? What process is used to make that decision?

There are a lot of similar question where there is a risk for the whole society but a big gain for the one who does it.

I don't think that the one who grows the genetic manipulated plants is the best to ensure that the risk is balanced against the gain.
It is better when there is a government who decides (by some progress) what is appropriate.

The society decides the issue by those effected getting together to discuss the situation. I don't know what outcome they would reach - it's probably better than anything I can think of. Possibly there would be agreement that the scientists could work on it if they did so in an isolated area with no chance of cross-contamination. There'd presumably also be recognition of the need to label the products accordingly. The scientists should have no problem with these conditions.

Originally Posted by Brutha

If this spectacular group of problem solvers come together and build a force that can combat the aggressor they form a state in the process of doing so.
Maybe they win, but Anarchy is over anyway. That like "Cutting basic human rights to defend them" it doesn't work on a principle reason.

The other problem is that the aggressor can prepare for it and gather ressources. When he declares war their isn't much time anymore to build a defense.
But if you build your defense before their is aggresson that exactly building a state.

It is a concern. Some societies with superior levels of peace and happiness have historically become prey to more militant societies. I don't have the answer to this one.

Interestingly enough, conquering a people has historically also often spread their culture. The Greeks invented democracy and were then conquered by the Romans. But the Romans ended up absorbing a lot of the Greek culture, and the advanced Greek culture continued and spread in that way. Similarly, global interest in Tibetan culture spiked dramatically since China drew attention to it by conquering the nation.

Originally Posted by Brutha

Being I King could be kind of fun, so even when you are happy you may want to become one.

I don't buy this. I can't believe that a conscious, aware person would undertake military action and kill hundreds of people because "being King could be kind of fun".

And I don't believe a conscious, aware person would follow someone who wanted to. There's a reason soldiers have to undergo extensive training to prepare them to kill another human being.

Originally Posted by Brutha

There aren't only individual to individual relationships.
There are also group to group relationships.

I believe that groups would generally be less clear-cut in an anarchy. It would be more a matter of interpersonal networks than "the blue team vs the red team".