Every government is a pyramid, or why I’m an anarchist
by Jennifer Kesler
As a child, I believed the US – and many other nations – really were intended to benefit every citizen who made an effort, and what caused them to privilege some groups over others were flaws in the system. Then around age eleven, I came to believe the systems themselves were really designed to create privilege echelons, no matter what we’d been told – a pyramid at which the largest part of the population was forever getting crushed at the bottom as the more fortunate stood on their shoulders.
It’s hard to detail exactly what changed my mind. The final straw came one day when I thought – really thought – about the fact that the original voters in the US were not just white, male and twenty-one or older – they also had to be landowners. All this time I had been getting taught that our “forefathers” were planning an enlightened democracy and I should forgive them for failing to include women and other races in it because they would’ve gotten there eventually, and what school had generally failed to mention was that even back then, people who didn’t own property were disenfranchised non-entities. This government was always all about the people who owned bits of it – the shareholders, so to speak, in the wealth of the country. It’s like a publicly owned company telling you “We’re really all about you, dear customer” when you know the shareholders don’t give a flying crap about the customer, and they are who the company really has to answer to. It doesn’t even matter how much money you spend buying from the company; it’s about the shareholder’s perception of their stock value, which can be based on anything – including fiction.
Once I looked at things in this light, I never managed to go back. Every once in a while, I find myself thinking maybe the government really is meant to work for everyone and just fails most of the time. Then I watch something such as housing prices soaring uniformly all over the nation over a seven year period – yay for people who own a piece of America! – because the banks are essentially churning the money. Making loans, then turning around and selling those loans so they can’t get stuck with the losses, and then the buyer of the loan sells again – basically, it was a period of lenders playing hot potato with doomed deals, cashing in on them in the short term and hoping they weren’t the ones who got stuck with the losses.
No one’s gotten stuck with those losses yet, by the way. They’re still not on the books. The foreclosures that are losing money for the banks are only the tip of the iceberg. But the government has so far refused to make them record the actual transactions that caused all this. To do so would cause an unpredictable level of havoc – no one knows what those losses will be. I suspect we’d discover something insane, like that the paper value of home loans in the US in 2008 exceeded the actual amount of dollars in circulation, and that would be the end of the US economy as we know it.
I also believe that even if some governments really did start out with the best of intentions toward the people at the bottom of the pyramid, it’s the nature of humans to organize in a pyramid fashion, and no system can thwart that behavior for very long. Ultimately, we revert to instinctive behaviors.
Even in an anarchy, people form pyramidal hierarchies. Look at the lawless Old West – we think of it as chaos, but it was quite structured in the same way a pack of dogs is structured. The leader is the person who’s most lately proven him- or herself as a leader. Because anyone may attempt to take over leadership, it’s much closer to a meritocracy than what we have now (in which college expense bars poor people from the best positions in society and your most important assortment of opportunities is defined by what your parents are able to hand you, yet we maintain the illusion that our choices are the determining factor). When you stop thinking of what we have as a system that needs some fixing and really look at what we’ve got, you see:
- Worthwhile people getting stuck in bad life situations not because of laziness or lack of intelligence/dedication, but because of poor health, bad family situations, or being born into families that couldn’t give them much of a start. In other words, not because of their choices, but because of circumstances beyond their control, some of which society could provide workarounds for, but doesn’t. Because it’s too busy ensuring…
- …the insanely rich getting even more insanely rich at the expense of poor people, and getting rewarded for it out of our tax dollars.
- Different groups receiving different punishments/rewards for the same damn behavior.
- Different groups receiving different opportunities than others, based on such insignificant traits as gender, skin color, etc., rather than on merit.
The distinct advantage anarchy has over any government is simple. In a governed society, laws limit the bahvior of law-abiders, but not criminals. In an anarchy, no one’s behavior is limited. Good people can fight back, and that’s the most powerful deterrent to both crime and aggressive acts of entitlement. You can try to rape me, but I can shoot you for it with no worries I’ll be the one to end up in jail. You can beat your kids, but they can kill you while you sleep. You and your posse can try to keep people like me from eating in your restaurant, but my posse and I can burn your restaurant down. I’m not advocating these violent solutions, though I do think they’re all that some people can understand. Just there mere possibility of good people fighting back is a deterrent. And the possibility of people being assigned positions and accorded respect because they’ve proven themselves must give the privileged nightsweats just thinking about it.
The only meritocracy is anarchy.
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Posted in Class on February 9, 2009
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Here from the Hathor Legacy (which I dearly love, and recommend to any friend interested in the media or gender at all):
If no one’s behavior is limited, wouldn’t the obvious solution for anyone who wanted someone else’s stuff be to form a government?
A little self-control, and you can take a whole lotta goods from people. Add in some newbies who want in, and you’ve got the start of a nice little bureaucracy.
And then, the right of self-defense also relies on equal resources with which to defend oneself, a situation which I believe Jarod Diamond has demonstrated didn’t exist at the dawn of civilization, much less today. And a functional anarchy would require that individuals never seek those unequal resources at another’s expense, which I don’t think is terribly likely. And that we leave the sick, children, and the elderly to fend for themselves, since caretakers will automatically be at a disadvantage (since anyone who wants their stuff can simply threaten their loved ones, and without proper. The tendency of people to want their loved ones to prosper, means that a few individuals might get a secret – the nearest oasis, or medical treatment, or how to run a computer – that they could use against others (medical establishment was explicitly modeled after the familial relationship, with the Hippocratic Oath as a remnant). Plus larger problems, like a drought or disease, which require long-term planning and a varied skill-set. How precisely would you advocate those be dealt with?
Mind, I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you that political systems are set up to privilege some – at the minimum, they must privilege their own citizens over others – but I’ve seen nothing from anarchist friends that would indicate that anarchy would ever have worked in the real world. And I find unworkable solutions to problems boring, so . . .
(I’m sorry, this ran long, but I would like to hear any answers, if you have them.)
It all depends on one’s definition of a “working” system. I see nothing about our system that works. Government CREATES most of the problems it then claims to, slowly, solve. Like poverty. Something goes half-right for the poor, and people cite that as evidence that the system is working. Er… the system took a normal condition – not everyone having access to the best resources – and made it worse by enabling the stupid to have access and the talented to starve. The people who could move us forward are often not the ones with the power to do it, and that’s dysfunctional as anything. I don’t see how anarchy could “work” any worse.
How precisely would you advocate those be dealt with?
The way animals cope with these things – nomadic lifestyle. We were never meant to settle in one place and start thinking of land and animals and other people as our possessions.
Hmm. I suppose I’m slightly confused. Even nomadic groups have some sort of governance structure – inheritance, or election, for instance. Wouldn’t they by definition not be anarchic? (I was rather working on the assumption that the family was the largest structure you were likely to get.)
I’ve seen the evidence that hunter-gatherers had considerably better lives, but I have to admit, the fact that no-one knows why most ancient humans moved to sedentary lifestyles really bothers me – they had to have had a reason, and it had to be important to them (why deliberately put yourself through suffering if you don’t have to?). I would assume, given your advocacy of a return to it, that you have a theory on why we stopped (and why we wouldn’t do the same thing again)?
Even nomadic groups have some sort of governance structure – inheritance, or election, for instance. Wouldn’t they by definition not be anarchic?
They don’t have to. They could choose their leaders the way animal packs do – whoever does the boss stuff the best becomes is the boss. That is anarchic because the leader has no right to be the leader, no established time period before a challenger can attempt to take that position away, no right to say who’s the boss next.
I’ve seen the evidence that hunter-gatherers had considerably better lives, but I have to admit, the fact that no-one knows why most ancient humans moved to sedentary lifestyles really bothers me – they had to have had a reason, and it had to be important to them (why deliberately put yourself through suffering if you don’t have to?). I would assume, given your advocacy of a return to it, that you have a theory on why we stopped (and why we wouldn’t do the same thing again)?
Once we learned how to manipulate the landscape into providing what we needed instead of us having to chase what we needed around the landscape, that would have appealed to our desire to be lazy AND seemed to provide immediate benefits such as food (theoretically) always being available. Unfortunately, to make this system work, you had to establish concepts like ownership and rights. To get other people to respect your concepts of ownership and rights, you often had to kill a lot of them so the rest got the point. Religion, backed by war, was a primary system for promoting the concept that you can’t just walk about on this planet like a dog – you have to know your place, and this is my place, and you come near it again and I will shoot you, amen. The short term benefits are obvious – the long term costs are less obvious, and take a while to manifest, and by that time the PR spin has conditioned us all to believe the long term costs were inevitable, and not the fault of government.
Additionally, the short-term benefits enabled a small percentage of people to have a lot of control over everyone else, and… well, that’s where we’re at now.
Look, people – like all herd/flock/pack animals – tend to organize. Government is an extension of this natural behavior. Anarchy means different things to different people. To me, it’s not so much the absence of government (which I accept as very unlikely) as the acceptance of government’s impermanence – the refusal to idealize the concept of permanent government, and the willingness to get rid of a government that’s outlived its usefulness by becoming too ineffective or oppressive. Instead, we’ve bought into the idea that our government should be propped up and bandaged over and over and over until it’s like Weekend at Bernie’s – dead dude in a chair we’re all pretending is alive and well. The Emperor’s New Clothes.
So how do you know who is best qualified to lead? The person who can kill their opponent, the person who can sweet-talk everyone into following them, the person who got the last leader’s secret information about a niche, the person who can build a tool that can get food from the topmost branches, the person who can train a monkey to get that food? Mostly, in animal packs, it’s whoever can kill the leader or have sex with the top female, if I’m not mistaken. How is that not privileging the strong, evil, or most willing to use others?
Also, all the evidence I’ve seen (please let me know if you’re familiar with others) suggest that the transition to a sedentary lifestyle was extremely costly, with the short term benefits negligible (the assumption of sedentary modern humans aside) involving food shortages, disease, general unhealthiness, the loss of leisure time, and attacks from nomads. Add in the gradual loss of egalitarianism, and it makes no sense at all. To me, that strongly suggests that either the nomadic lifestyle was not egalitarian (there was either sufficient authority invested in a few leaders to force the transition, or the move to privilege wasn’t an issue because it already existed) or that something forced/scared them into it, regardless of cost. Regardless, I think it requires a closer examination than “laziness”. (And even if laziness was the cause, it’s not like that wouldn’t be an issue again, as nomadism begins to fail as soon as someone opts out of the system.) Nomadic systems are also territorial, as evidenced by the known practices of nomadic groups, and religion wasn’t born with the sedentary lifestyle. (Neither was science, although admittedly both have flourished under it.)
“To me, it’s not so much the absence of government (which I accept as very unlikely) as the acceptance of government’s impermanence – the refusal to idealize the concept of permanent government, and the willingness to get rid of a government that’s outlived its usefulness by becoming too ineffective or oppressive.”
That a society should be willing to experiment and encourage the growth and expression of ideas, even in government, is one of the core tenets of my own philosophical system, Pragmatism (as I understand it). Of course, it’s also among the principles (although no-one but those militia idiots remembers this) of American Republican Democracy – Thomas Jefferson’s phrase was “the Earth belongs always to the living generation.”
(I am enjoying this dialogue, for the record. I get few chances to seriously discuss political philosophy, so I may be a tad overenthusiastic. YMMV.)
So how do you know who is best qualified to lead?
In my experience, certain personality types inspire people to follow them without even meaning to. It’s a matter of instinct rather than conscious thought.
Here’s a page that lists the various competing theories about the transition from nomadic to agricultural society:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution
Let me clarify that I’m not advocating a return to nomadic or hunter-gatherer society. You asked how people would deal with inhospitable living conditions, and I offered the nomadic solution as one that’s tried and true – it’s what any other species would do.
What I AM advocating is probably closest to the lawlessness of the Old West, at least from what I’ve read about it. In theory, the law existed and determined who owned what. But law enforcement was fairly unreliable, as judges and marshals weren’t always readily available. So you needed to back up your claims of ownership yourself, like any other sort of animal would – through persuasion, personality dominance or violence.
We’ve subverted our natural territorial instincts into something weird and abstract that has to do with courts and documents now. You’re always at least twice removed from your own affairs, by layers of documentations, regulations and experts who get to have a say for reasons that sound logical… but at the end of the day, they’re just abstractions. And the big problem is that when law enforcement fails to protect your “rights”, effectively condoning the infringement of them, you’re not allowed to take action to protect or re-establish your rights. And I’m not talking revenge – I’m talking about, for a silly example, breaking into the home of a thief and taking back the TV he broke in and stole from you.
I know there’s more to government than ownership, I just felt that was enough to set up one example and clarify just what I’m advocating.
Hmm. In my experience, people who inspire people to follow them “instinctively” are quite frequently not good leaders. Humans have a distinct tendency to be over-impressed by confidence and the easy answer, even the confidently wrong. Or confidently evil.
The wikipedia article is a bit haphazard, but it does offer a not unreasonable summary of the points I made above – which I more or less think suggests that the nomadic lifestyle isn’t “tried and true” – it’s tried and failed. Moreover, your argument from animalia doesn’t strike me as terrible convincing – what any other (social) animal would do is use their natural abilities to win food, sex and power. Human’s natural abilities include the ability to forecast, to adapt the natural world to themselves, to recognize, to recognize patterns and order the world around them. I believe that most of our social problems are the result of natural traits that are no longer adaptive in modern society. Any other animal with our abilities and circumstances would have done the precise same thing – including treating other sentient beings as ends rather than means, murder of outsiders, the oppression of females, the overuse of natural resources, and general errors in logic.
On the subject of an eye for an eye: Anyone who believes they have the right to take the fruit of another’s labor is unlikely to accept a “no” graciously. For this to work, there must be a)an introductory condition of openness, trust, and generosity (or this quickly becomes “every man for himself”) and b)a societal understanding of justice and the will and authority to intervene as necessary (lest this go on forever). In short, it requires the same things modern representative democracies need: an involved, open, friendly, honorable, community with a working government. Insofar as the “lawlessness” of the Old West worked, it was quite likely because of Eastern ideas about law, justice, and government. For instance, a respect for property (in the sense of fruit of one’s labor, the traditional meaning), the ideal of participatory democracy and constitutional law, the right of a government to intervene to protect the populace, as in the case of gun control laws (which I believe were established in several cattle towns).
I would like to reiterate that I agree with you that modern society is largely dysfunctional, and that a big part of that is alienation and a resistance to change. I just disagree that revolution/devolution is the best answer.
In my experience, people who inspire people to follow them “instinctively” are quite frequently not good leaders. Humans have a distinct tendency to be over-impressed by confidence and the easy answer, even the confidently wrong. Or confidently evil.
And systems of government fix that problem how?
I believe that most of our social problems are the result of natural traits that are no longer adaptive in modern society.
And that’s where we differ. I believe they’re the results of heavy conditioning. But I don’t see what we can do, other than agree to disagree at this point.
I’ll take the second part first: I think my earlier statement may need clarifying – I phrased it in far more absolutist terms than I should have, and I really should know better. I think that most social problems originate in the application of natural traits that are not adapted to the situation. For instance, there was a study that suggested that when people are stressed, they see patterns where they don’t exist – a human form in the shadows, or a conspiracy, for instance. Pattern seeing is a human trait, a natural consequence of intelligence. But in stress, it is non-adaptive. However, the precise form the social problem takes (in the example above, whether people see ghosts, aliens, or a Papist/Zionist conspiracy) is dictated by social conditioning, which can be changed. (When combined with reason, that same trait is also highly adaptive – “all men (inclusive) are created equal” is essentially the recognition of a pattern – other people are human – and the logical conclusions.)
Governments don’t change human nature. But I do think it is possible for a society to recognize that they are problems, and compensate accordingly, and I think some forms of government may be better or worse at compensating, just as some forms of education, of religion, or of social structures may be.
(Or individuals, for that matter – I believe that probably about 20% of the U.S. population is basically predisposed to see the world around them as threatening, and will attempt to control it to reduce their fears. Whether that’s pure biology, personal psychology, or culture, I have no idea. But knowing that makes it easier to understand things like McCarthyism, or George W. Bush, or Know-Nothingism, and in understanding how people who don’t have that “paranoid style” should respond – for instance, with rational optimism, as in the case of Murrow, Obama, or Lincoln.)
I don’t think compensatory schemes are perfect, but I don’t think they are any more vulnerable to problems than any other social arrangement – a parent is just as likely to suffer from paranoia as a President, after all, and stagnation, laziness, and cheating the system is inevitable – but it does have the very slight advantage that recognition of human fallibility is written into the system, and the hypocrisy charge (which is useful because it is understandable) is at least possible. Part of the problem with lawlessness is – what if you’re wrong? You get together a posse to catch your rapist, or you go after the doctor you think cost you your leg, but you’ve made a terrible mistake. You have the wrong man, or no-one could have predicted what happened with your leg. What happens then? Abstractions and distance are meant to stop that sort of problem, which is a very real one. Currently, in some situations (corporate law, arguably) we go too far. In other areas, we don’t go far enough (police refusing to accept that they were wrong about a suspect is a problem of personalization, in my opinion).
And now I’m wondering if I just made any sense at all.
(If I’m not, it may have to do with the nice pain-killer I’m on.)
Part of the problem with lawlessness is – what if you’re wrong? You get together a posse to catch your rapist, or you go after the doctor you think cost you your leg, but you’ve made a terrible mistake.
I believe this happens routinely in the system we have. Particularly, in your example, if the accused is a man of color. Again, we seem to have a fundamental difference of opinion on which we must agree to disagree: you seem to think the system we have functions imperfectly. I think it’s functioning exactly as it was intended – keeping the vast majority of people servile to a very small and lucky minority, regardless of the talent that’s getting wasted in the process and the foolishness that’s being given run of the place.
I want to return to this briefly:
Humans have a distinct tendency to be over-impressed by confidence and the easy answer, even the confidently wrong. Or confidently evil.
I don’t accept that this is nature. I believe it’s nurture. Centuries of keeping that majority servile to the minority has caused people to internalize the abuse like an emotionally scarred child who rationalizes she must deserve the bullying she receives. “Life keeps thwarting me – I must suck. Life keeps working for that guy over there – he must be awesome.” And you know why assholes tend to win? Because if you don’t have any moral boundaries, you’re very free to do whatever it takes to get what you want. If you’re concerned with playing fair, that can slow you down a bit. So combine the two – rationalizing your own oppression and the fact that nasty people make progress more quickly – and you get people who think the “confidently evil” guy is a leader.
I’m not sure how long it would take for people to grasp what real leadership is, but I believe they will figure it out. I base this partly on my own experience of people turning to me for leadership, when I’m not only not seeking it, but don’t even want it. I never understood why people expected me to take charge whenever there was a gap in leadership – I just wanted to be a loner – but a few years ago, I started accepting the role of leader in certain areas, and the results were pretty decent. People seemed to like working with me in that capacity. I’ve talked to a LOT of other people who’ve had similar experiences. So you know, somewhere down in the lizard brain, I think we actually DO know what makes a good leader, and if we dump the social programming, we would do a much better job at choosing leaders.
My apologies for disappearing in the middle of the discussion – I just finished the semester. I have little to say in addition to my earlier points, just that I was really hoping that the system you advocated would be an improvement, rather than just a new way to suffer the same problems. *shrugs* Ah well.
Oooookay. I can’t tell if you’re being dismissive, in which case I’ve wasted my time, or if you’re just missing my entire point.
As I said above: the system is not functioning imperfectly, it’s keeping down exactly who it means to keep down, and bolstering the exact people it means to bolster, all under a guide of “liberty for all” that keeps people thinking, “Well, the bad things happening aren’t the fault of government. It has such great intentions!”
Anarchy ERASES the privilege that government enjoys over its people. The first, best and last improvement anarchy would make it to force people to think for themselves. Stop taking the government’s word and start seeing reality for what it is.
I’m not going to say anymore, because it feels like you’re not listening anyway, and my time is very precious to me.
*winces* Just re-read my comment, and I really shouldn’t post when I’m mad (I had to deal with an extraordinarily obnoxious professor today, and it came out in my writing). That did sound dismissive, and I didn’t mean it to. I’m sorry I insulted you.
That said – you say anarchy erases the privilege that government enjoys over its people, and I object to that phrasing. It’s “the evil that men do” not “the evil that governments do”. Anarchy may erase the privilege of governments, but I haven’t seen anything that would convince me that it would eradicate privilege as a whole, nor do I see any reason why the simple elimination of government would “force people to think for themselves” and result in the elimination of privilege – it didn’t do it in the Old West, in the tribes of Mongolia, or in our close cousins, the monkeys. Anarchy, in every real example I have ever heard of, leads to “might makes right”. And I think, if you had an actual example where it didn’t, you would have brought it up. Why don’t *you* start “seeing reality for what it is”?
I listened. I just don’t agree. I’m very sorry, as I said before, to have (apparently) wasted your time and for the unwitting insult earlier. I’m perfectly willing to leave this here, although, should you see historical or biological evidence that would verify your claims, or a work on a similar theme, I would be pleased if you thought to forward the reference.
although, should you see historical or biological evidence that would verify your claims,
Biological evidence? I assume you’re talking evolutionary biology? I consider that a pseudo-science and have explained my position on that issue on Hathor: you absolutely cannot separate biology from culture and events to determine what is hardwired behavior and what is fluid. We are being accultured every second we’re not in a state of complete sensory deprivation – if such is even possible.
As for history, I’m not aware of any anarchy in history that had the parameters I envision for it.
My arguments are all centered on human psychology, which is a soft science, but not one that rests on a complete fallacy. There is a certain evident logic to how brains work – so much so that when my father was diagnosed with NPD, the textbook descriptions I read about NPDs and the mothers who often make them NPDs could have been a specific, informed description of my father and his mother. That’s how predictable the human mind really is, and I find understanding psychology an uncanny predictor of what people will do. And from studying culture and history, it’s not difficult to extrapolate which percentages of people will react in which way, and make a good guess which way the herd will go in the end.
The examples I’ve seen of evolutionary biology and psychology were both fairly bad about propping up pre-conceived notions. The day I see a representative of either declare that their conclusion didn’t match their ideology, I’ll start paying attention again. (Among the issues, I was repeatedly told the “abused children always abuse their children” line, which has definitely soured me. I’m given to understand it’s getting better, but . . . ) One of the reasons I prefer historical evidence. If it happened once, it’s a fairy good bet that it could happen again, ceteris paribus. And no, I meant examples of your system/a similar system existing in other species, if there was one. *shrugs* Non-human examples are definitely not flawless, but I’m aware that there are severe limitations to using historical examples, and that examples that are separate from human culture can sometimes be a useful tool.
(May I ask, what is NPD? Google is utterly useless for acronyms.)
As I understand you, you feel the ideal would be a nomadic system, either hunter/gatherer or pastoralist (wait, no domestication of animals, right?), in which material goods are kept to a minimum and knowledge is passed down orally, supported by a high infant mortality rate and the other usual suspects.
What rules of inheritance?
You’ve said that leaders would be selected on the basis of strength and charisma. How does the evidence suggest the subordinates will behave? If they are unwilling to defend themselves from an abuse now, why will they defend themselves against an abuse then, particularly assuming that the leader is stronger, or more able to convince others of his correctness?
How will violations of the society’s mores be judged – according to ancient precepts and moral codes, the wisdom of the elders, strength (as in old England), voting (as the Athenians did)?
Assuming that the use of tools is supposed to equalize conflicts, what weapons, and who will make them? Knives and staffs don’t do much for equalization, and metal work is mostly limited to post-nomadic societies, iirc.
What will prevent them from domesticating animals again? (Particularly as there is some evidence that domestication was an accident, based on dogs and cats following humans around.) For that matter, will they be prohibited from eating animals, or just domesticating them?
If the intent is that those who are unhappy will move off to another tribe, how would you prevent xenophobia (literally the fear of strangers)? How will they deal with unequal resources? Will there be trade (it existed in neolithic times for art and tools, so presumably)? How will trade be handled? If others have desirable resources, why will they not conquer each other? What rules will be created to deal with warfare – the usual “kill the leaders, offer a low status position to likely men and boys, and marry or concubine women and girls”; the extreme “kill them all, or force them into the desert/tundra/rocky shoals”; or something else?
What about science, religion, and art? What of each will be passed on, and by what means? What about culture and language? There are so many of each, and they vary by so much – will those be eliminated first (and by what means)? If not, how will those nomads speak and deal with each other?
NPD = Narcissistic Personality Disorder. One of the sociopathic ones.
As I understand you, you feel the ideal would be a nomadic system, either hunter/gatherer or pastoralist (wait, no domestication of animals, right?), in which material goods are kept to a minimum and knowledge is passed down orally, supported by a high infant mortality rate and the other usual suspects.
No, no, and NO. As I’ve explained twice, to counter one point you made (escaping natural disaster through technological advancements), I brought up relocating as an alternative. used the term “nomadic” in the description, and you took that phrase like a pit bull and ran with it and have pretty much been arguing against things I never said throughout the thread.
One last time: AT NO POINT DID I SAY MY ANARCHY WOULD ENTAIL A NOMADIC SYSTEM. See, here’s where I cleared it up the first time:
Let me clarify that I’m not advocating a return to nomadic or hunter-gatherer society. You asked how people would deal with inhospitable living conditions, and I offered the nomadic solution as one that’s tried and true – it’s what any other species would do.
And yet you just keep coming back to this and arguing against things I never said.
No hard feelings, but this is exhausting and I’m very pressed for time. I’m drafting in my head an article about how anarchy could eradicate privilege, so maybe if my schedule lets up and I post it, that will answer some of your questions. Until then, you may have the last word if you want it.
Oh, effing hell. That sucks royally. (Another question, if it’s not too much trouble, and/or personal: do you find that the psychology books described you accurately as the child? As I mentioned, they did a very poor job describing my mother as the victim of abuse, so I’m curious.)
*sighs* I did mention I don’t get to talk alternative politics very often, and I’m sure it’s showing:) I’ll ask you to take it on faith that I wasn’t trying to create a straw man or even necessarily to disprove your ideas. I have several friends who espouse anarchy, but I’ve never seen a form quite like what you’ve described, and trying to picture it has been . . . difficult, because it bears so little resemblance to anything else. I’m sorry to have put pressure on you – I was pleasantly surprised at how prompt your responses have been. I don’t get answers from my thesis advisor this fast, sadly.
I look forward to the article, if and when you write it, and hopefully I’ll understand better.
NPD is such a relatively new diagnosis (1981 here, and not even recognized outside the US yet) that they didn’t even attempt to describe the children of NPDs. Many of them become NPDs themselves – while the belief that “most” abused kids become abusive themselves is a gross distortion, NPD is one of the few disorders with a strong tendency to replicate itself over and over in each generation.
Very recent research suggests that many NPD kids are very self-critical, which is true of me, but that’s pretty vague. The problem is, it’s very hard to get an NPD diagnosed – they feel like God’s gift, why on earth would they go near a psychiatrist? – so it’s even harder to identify the children of NPDs and put together any sort of decent study group.
As for anarchy, I’ve been working on a novel which will explore my vision much more clearly than I can describe it in essay form. If I ever get time to do it, I’m posting it online at http://nothingtodefend.com. Sadly, it’s been three years, and I still haven’t found the time, and my obligations seem to be replicating on their own with no say-so from me these days. But if I ever get to write the damn thing, it might help.
That’s very interesting. The local psychologists/social workers/etc. haven’t been struck with the enlightened stick, so they keep repeating the abused kids become abusive (not, of course, that that means they check up on the families of former victims of abuse, of course . . . ), and while I’ve heard that more recent research suggest that abused children actually divide into two groups, abusive and over-protective, I haven’t actually seen any of the studies yet. But it’s a better fit with my experience (both my mom and my half-aunt are really protective).
I’ve also had doctor’s try to diagnose me with depression, even after seeing evidence that I had a vitamin deficiency and an autoimmune disorder. I’m told that’s common, particularly for young women. It was that and my research into sci-fi TV that actually led me to the Hathor Legacy – thank you for that site, by the way. It’s been good both in a “keep my sanity” way and in “that’s a great idea I can research” way.
A novel set in an anarchy sounds like a wonderful idea. I’ll make a note of that site so I can check it out periodically.