In this narrative, anarchists are lawless hooligans and anarchy is about chaos and pointless violence. This event was indeed organised by a number of anarchist groups — and there were limited outbreaks of violence — but the equation of chaos and violence with anarchism is about as productive as the equation of circles with squares.
It is a crude and bizarre misrepresentation. What is anarchism anyway? It is a radical and revolutionary political philosophy and political economy. While there are many definitions and many anarchisms, most would agree to the definition formulated by Peter Kropotkin. It stands for the absence of domination, hierarchy and power over others. Anarchism is a process whereby authority and domination is being replaced with non-hierarchical, horizontal structures, with voluntary associations between human beings.
It is a form of social organisation with a set of key principles, such as self-organisation, voluntary association, freedom, autonomy, solidarity, direct democracy, egalitarianism and mutual aid. Based on these principles and values, anarchism rejects both a capitalist economy and a nation state that is governed by means of a representative democracy. It is a utopian project that aspires to combine the best parts of liberalism with the best parts of communism. Society finds its highest perfection in the union of order with anarchy.
Proudhon [ ]. Anarchists often make categorical claims to the effect that no state is legitimate or that there can no such thing as a justifiable political state. As an absolute or a priori claim, anarchism holds that all states always and everywhere are illegitimate and unjust.
This sort of claim rests upon an account of the justification of authority that is usually grounded in some form of deontological moral claim about the importance of individual liberty and a logical claim about the nature of state authority.
One typical and well-known example of this argument is found in the work of Robert Paul Wolff. Wolff indicates that legitimate authority rests upon a claim about the right to command obedience Wolff Correlative to this is a duty to obey: one has a duty to obey legitimate authority. As Wolff explains, by appealing to ideas found in Kant and Rousseau, the duty to obey is linked to notions about autonomy, responsibility, and rationality.
But for Wolff and other anarchists, the problem is that the state does not have legitimate authority. The categorical nature of this claim indicates a version of absolute anarchism.
Wolff concludes:. If all men have a continuing obligation to achieve the highest degree of autonomy possible, then there would appear to be no state whose subjects have a moral obligation to obey its commands. Hence, the concept of a de jure legitimate state would appear to be vacuous, and philosophical anarchism would seem to be the only reasonable political belief for an enlightened man.
Wolff This claim is stated in absolute and a priori fashion, a point made by Reiman in his critique of Wolff Reiman Wolff does not deny, by the way, that there are de facto legitimate states: governments often do have the approval and support of the people they govern. But this approval and support is merely conventional and not grounded in a moral duty; and approval and support are manufactured and manipulated by the coercive power and propaganda and ideology of the state. But Kant is no anarchist: he defended the idea of enlightened republican government in which autonomy would be preserved.
Rousseau may be closer to espousing anarchism in some of his remarks—although these are far from systematic see McLaughlin But despite his strong defense of individual rights, the stringent way he describes voluntary consent, and his advocacy of revolution, Locke believes that states can be defended based upon the social contract theory.
Leaving the canonical authors of Western political philosophy aside, the most likely place to find deontological and a priori anarchism is among the Christian anarchists. Of course, most Christians are not anarchists. But those Christians who espouse anarchism usually do so with the absolute, deontological, and a priori claims of the sort made by Tolstoy, Berdyaev, and Ellul—as noted above.
A less stringent form of anarchism will argue that states could be justified in theory—even though, in practice, no state or very few states are actually legitimate. Contingent anarchism will hold that states in the present configuration of things fail to live up to the standards of their own justification.
This is an a posteriori argument see Simmons based both in a theoretical account of the justification of the state for example, the social contract theory of liberal-democratic theory and in an empirical account of how and why concrete states fail to be justified based upon this theory. The author of the present article has offered a version of this argument based upon the social contract theory, holding that the liberal-democratic social contract theory provides the best theory of the justification of the state, while arguing that very few states actually live up to the promise of the social contract theory Fiala a.
One version of the contingent anarchist argument focuses on the question of the burden of proof for accounts that would justify political authority. This approach has been articulated by Noam Chomsky, who explains:. Sometimes the burden can be met. Chomsky Chomsky accepts legitimate authority based in ordinary experience: for example, when a grandfather prevents a child from darting out into the street.
But state authority is a much more complicated affair. Political relationships are attenuated; there is the likelihood of corruption and self-interest infecting political reality; there are levels and degrees of mediation, which alienate us from the source of political authority; and the rational autonomy of adults is important and fundamental. By focusing on the burden of proof, Chomsky acknowledges that there may be ways to meet the burden of proof for the justification of the state.
But he points out that there is a prima facie argument against the state—which is based in a complex historical and empirical account of the role of power, economics, and historical inertia in creating political institutions. He explains:. Such institutions face a heavy burden of proof: it must be shown that under existing conditions, perhaps because of some overriding consideration of deprivation or threat, some form of authority, hierarchy, and domination is justified, despite the prima facie case against it—a burden that can rarely be met.
Chomsky does not deny that the burden of proof could be met. Rather, his point is that there is a prima facie case against the state, since the burden of proof for the justification of the state is rarely met. Contingent anarchism is based in consequentialist reasoning, focused on details of historical actuality. Consequentialist anarchism will appeal to utilitarian considerations, arguing that states generally fail to deliver in terms of promoting the happiness of the greater number of people—and more strongly that state power tends to produce unhappiness.
The actuality of inequality, classism, elitism, racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression can be used to support an anarchist argument, holding that even though a few people benefit from state power, a larger majority suffers under it. As we shall see in the next section, individualist anarchists are primarily concerned with the tendency of utilitarian politics to sacrifice the rights of individuals in the name of the greater good.
Godwin articulated a form of anarchism that is connected to a utilitarian concern. He writes:. Above all we should not forget, that government is an evil, an usurpation upon the private judgment and individual conscience of mankind; and that, however we may be obliged to admit it as a necessary evil for the present.
Godwin bk V, ch. The goal of political development should be in a direction that goes beyond the state and toward the development of individual reason and morality.
The point here is that our judgments about the justification of the state are contingent: they depend upon present circumstances and our current form of development. And while states may be necessary features of the current human world, as human beings develop further, it is possible that the state might outlive its usefulness.
We should note that utilitarian arguments are often used to support state structures in the name of the greater good. Utilitarian anarchists will argue that states fail to do this. But utilitarian conclusions are not usually based upon a fundamental appeal to moral principles such as liberty or the rights of the individual.
Bentham More principled deontological anarchism will maintain that states violate fundamental rights and so are not justified. Rather, the complaint for a utilitarian anarchist is that state structures tend to produce disadvantages for the greater number of people.
For the utilitarian, this all depends upon the circumstances and conditions. Ben-Dor calls this anarchism because it rejects any a priori notion of state justification. In other words, the utilitarian anarchist does not presume that states are justifiable; rather a utilitarian anarchist will hold that the burden of proof rests upon the defender of states to show that state authority is justifiable on utilitarian grounds, by bringing in historical and empirical data about human nature, human flourishing, and successful social organization.
Forms of anarchism also differ in terms of the content of the theory, the focal point of the anarchist critique, and the imagined practical impact of anarchism.
Socialist forms of anarchism include communist anarchism associated with Kropotkin and communitarian anarchism see Clark The socialist approach focuses on the development of social and communal groups, which are supposed to thrive outside of hierarchical and centralized political structures.
Individualist forms of anarchism include some forms of libertarianism or anarcho-capitalism as well as egoistically oriented antinomianism and non-conformism. He argued that there was no duty to obey the state and the law because the law and the state impair self-development and self-will.
The state seeks to tame our desires and along with the church it undermines self-enjoyment and the development of unique individuality. Stirner is even critical of social organizations and political parties. Individualist anarchism has often been attributed to a variety of thinkers including Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, and Thoreau. Individualist anarchism also seems to have something in common with egoism of the sort associated with Ayn Rand. Libertarians are still individualists, who emphasize the importance of individual liberty, even though they disagree with full-blown anarchists about the degree to which state power can be justified.
Some individualist anarchists appear to focus on negative liberty, i. But anarchism has also been concerned with community and the social good. In this sense, anarchists are focused on something like positive liberty and concerned with creating and sustaining the social conditions necessary for actualizing human flourishing.
In this regard, anarchists have also offered theories of institutional rules and social structures that are non-authoritarian.
This may sound paradoxical i. According to Prichard rather than focusing on state-authority, anarchist institutions will be be open-ended processes that are complex and non-linear Prichard We see then, that individualist anarchism that focuses only on negative liberty is often rejected by anarchists who are interested in reconceiving community and restructuring society along more egalitarian lines.
Bookchin and other critics of lifestyle individualism will argue that mere non-conformism does very little to change the status quo and overturn structures of domination and authority. Nor does non-conformism and lifestyle anarchism work to create and sustain systems that affirm liberty and equality. But defenders of lifestyle non-conformism will argue that there is value in opting out of cultural norms and demonstrating contempt for conformity through individual lifestyle choices.
A more robust form of individualist anarchism will focus on key values such as autonomy and self-determination, asserting the primacy of the individual over and against social groups as a matter of rights. Individualist anarchists can admit that collective action is important and that voluntary cooperation among individuals can result in beneficial and autonomy preserving community.
Remaining disputes will consider whether what results from individual cooperation is a form of capitalism or a form of social sharing or communism. Libertarian anarchists or anarcho-capitalists will defend free market ideas based upon individual choices in trading and producing goods for market. On the other hand, socialist or communistically oriented anarchism will focus more on a sharing economy. This could be a large form of mutualism or something local and concrete like the sharing of family life or the traditional potlatch.
But these ideas remain anarchist to the extent that they want to avoid centralized control and the development of hierarchical structures of domination. Unlike state-centered communism of the sort developed by Marxists, anarchist communism advocates decentralization.
In The Conquest of Bread Kropotkin criticizes monopolistic centralization that prevents people from gaining access to socially generated wealth. Anarchy leads to communism, and communism to anarchy, both alike being expressions of the predominant tendency in modern societies, the pursuit of equality. Kropotkin [ 31]. Kropotkin argues that the communal impulse already exists and that the advances in social wealth made possible by the development of individualistic capitalism make it likely that we will develop in the direction of communal sharing.
He argues that the tendency of history is away from centralized power and toward equality and liberty—and toward the abolition of the state. Libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism also think that the free market will work to adequately maximize human well-being and help individuals to realize their own autonomy.
But for the socialist and communist anarchists, the question of individual self-realization is less important than the idea of social development. Socialist and communally focused forms of anarchism emphasize the importance of social groups. For example, families can be viewed as anarchic structures of social cooperation and solidarity.
A social anarchist would be critical of hierarchical and domineering forms of family organization for example, patriarchal family structure. But social anarchists will emphasize the point that human identity and flourishing occur within extended social structures—so long as it remains a free and self-determining community. The tension between individualist and socialist anarchism comes to a head when considering the question of the degree to which an individual ought to be subordinated to the community.
Individualists will want to struggle against this assault upon autonomy and individual identity. On the other hand communally focused theorists will point out that individual human beings cannot exist outside of communal structures: we are social animals who flourish and survive in communities. Thus radical individualism also remains a dream—and as more politically oriented anarchists will point out, individualism undermines the possibility of organized political action, which implies that individualist anarchists will be unable to successfully resist political structures of domination.
Anarchism forces us to re-evaluate political activity. Ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato held that human beings flourished within just political communities and that there was a virtue in serving the polis. Modern political philosophy tended to hold, as well, that political action—including obedience to the law and the ideal of a rule of law—was noble and enlightened. In Hegelian political philosophy, these ideas combine in a way that celebrates citizenship and service to the state.
And in contemporary liberal political philosophy, it is often presumed that obedience to the law is required as a prima facie duty see Reiman ; Gans Anarchists, of course, call this all into question. The crucial question for anarchists is thus whether one ought to disengage from political life, whether one ought to submit to political authority and obey the law, or whether one ought to engage in active efforts to actively abolish the state.
The idea of direct action is often viewed as typical of anarchists, who believe that something ought to be done to actively abolish the state including: graffiti, street theater, organized occupations, boycotts, and even violence.
There are disputes among anarchists about what ought to be done, with an important dividing line occurring with regard to the question of violence and criminal behavior. Franks has argued that anarchist direct action ought to exemplify a unity of means and ends Franks On this view, if liberation and autonomy are what anarchists are pursuing, then the methods used to obtain these goods must be liberationist and celebrate autonomy—and embody this within direct action.
Coercive imposition of the anarchist ideal re-inscribes the problem of domination, hierarchy, centralization, and monopolistic power that the anarchist was originally opposed to. One significant philosophical and ethical problem for politically engaged anarchists is the question of how to avoid ongoing cycles of power and violence that are likely to erupt in the absence of centralized political power.
One suggestion, mentioned above, is that anarchists will often want to emphasize the unity of means and ends. This idea shows why there is some substantial overlap and conjunction between anarchism and pacifism. Pacifist typically emphasize the unity of means and ends. But not all pacifists are anarchists. In addition to these names, countless others, whose identities have been lost to history, have helped refine and spread the ideology of anarchism. Today, anarchism is a fully global, intersectional philosophy, with particularly strong roots in Latin America, Spain, Germany, and, as of , the Middle East, due to the Rojava Revolution in occupied Kurdistan.
Classic anarchist traditions include mutualism, which is situated at the nexus of individual and collectivist thought; anarcho-communism, which favors community ownership of the means of production, and the abolishment of the state and capitalism; anarcho-syndicalism, which views unions, the working class, and the labor movement as potential forces for revolutionary change; and individualism, which has similarities with libertarianism, and emphasizes individual freedom above all.
The anarchist argument is that the state is not neutral, it is inherently hierarchical, it is inherently an institution of domination; therefore, anarchists oppose the state as much as they oppose capitalism. Marxist-Leninist parties advocate a vanguard model of organizing with a small group at the top, and anarchists are about horizontal, directly democratic kinds of politics.
Since fascism is an antidemocratic ideology that thrives on oppression, and anarchism is explicitly against oppression in all forms, and for direct democracy, anarchism is inherently antifascist much like all anarchists are by necessity anti-police and anti-prison. If no one is what time is, then what act or agency its being so?
Where does it begin or end? Or is there something incorrigably no one, non-quantifiable, its meaning and worth, its moment is? The reason we each can possess the conceit of being understandable is because of the need each of us is that the other be free to construe us in his or her own way, so that then this freedom is evidenced in our response.
The active mode of this need is our criticism of each other's resulting response. Ask yourself, then, why some of us demand uniform belief? A recent court case upheld the claim of a religiously own business to deny birth control and abortion coverage to its employees, as a matter of its freedom of religion.
But does my freedom mean a right to impose my views upon you? Does religious freedom imply a right of religious authority over the members of the church? Even its employess not members of it? This ruling is an example of casuisty. How is your 'freedom' and 'one' not similar? The Socratic dialog never led to truth, only more questions; I prefer One answer, the answer is just One.
I have said it twice: That alone should encourage the crew. Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true. Thursday, January 29, -- PM. Well, how about looking at the question as a difference between autonomy and sovereignty? It's all well that each of us is autonomously free to be him- or herself. But people assert property rights by which they raise a sovereign claim to deprive others of it.
Locke tried to excuse this sovereignty by deprivation by an appeal to supposed undiminished opportunity others still possess to achieve similar ownership. The fatuous nature of this claim should be obvious even were the wilderness still at our doorstep, if it ever was, with all the abundance of nature available to all and in no need of cooperation from others to obtain.
This was as deceptive a suggestion in the eighteenth century as it would be in the twenty-first. Nevertheless, the radical property claims of libertarians equate sovereignty over property to personal autonomy and demand absolute authority in it, as we all would over our minds and person.
But any such sovereignty claim sets up obligatory terms that require collective enforcement. This is the part of the equation that libertarians so willfully refuse to see. There is no autonomous sovereignty claim. Such claims merge and clash in ways that cannot produce freedom on any scale for anyone. Its law is not liberating, but obligating, or criminalizing freedom.
Where there is a claimed right to deprive others there is also an appeal for legal protection from a yet higher or greater sovereignty. It is therefore a dishonest claim that property is the same as liberty, or that regulating property is a violation of inherent rights.
And, by the way, there is no inalienable right to property established in the American Constitution. In fact, property is only mentioned in terms of the conditions under which it can be alienated. The Reformation was said to be a struggle of individual freedom against hierarchy.
This is a misunderstanding. The Latin Church was indeed hierarchical, and imposed hierarchy upon any emerging political entity in Western Europe. But the feudal system was not itself inherently hierarchical. It was an organic growth of personal covenant.
Each binding agreement was fluid and individual. A tenant was not subordinate to his lord, and outside the covenant he was equal to all, except for the sovereign.
In Anglo-Saxon England even a peasant could sue a lord in court, though his remedy would be rated according to his class, but his right to appear in court would not. When the Reformation blew up in the face of the Latin Church it was inspired by this egalitarian feudal principle that all social relations are relation of individual covenant.
The problem is, when we regard the god a the ultimate sovereign, and suppose we can make an end-run around all other sovereignty claims to have "a personal relation with god", the question arises, can we suppose we hear the voice of god without supposing ourselves to be that voice?
The famous case of Anne Hutchinson underscores the point. Sovereignty is no more individual than the market value of the property over which it is claimed.
And the fact is that property claims can only exceed a fairly low level without developing an ethic requiring others to subordinate their own autonomy to it. The rich claim that they alone know what is best for the continued prosperity generated by their property and that therefore they must be sovereign over it. They then claim, also, that others must be coerced to serve their needs because the propertyless will not work even for their own needs without social force or deprivation applied.
This, of course, relates the question of anarchy to the earlier thread on hypocrisy, in that there cannot be an honest anarchist, at least not on the neo-con, libertarian side of the economic spectrum. Sunday, February 1, -- PM. You can read the transcript here. Lots of interesting and challenging questions were asked, so for anyone interested in anarchism, I would encourage you to check it out. Monday, February 2, -- PM. Is law oracular? Or are we all legislators?
If each is the lawgiver, the process of social harmony is a constant revision, a dialectic of critique and response through which our differences prevent social sclerosis by engaging everyone in continuous alteration of the conditions of concourse and discourse. Society is meant to be dynamic. And is meant to leave no one out of that drama. In a way, the job of the community is to provide the context in which each individual is realized in all its merits and character.
But this limits how much disparity there can be amongst us in access to that drama. Those who feel an interest is that disparity engineer means of cutting some of us off from it. The simplest method is to require eternal verity and oracular certainty in law. Paul Feyerabend, in The Conquest of Abundance, says that the first towns were not markets or fortresses, but communities of landlords separating themselves from surrounding tenants.
It was a way of celebrating and entrenching the social disparities that benefit them. Those of us who are on the short end of the stick are rightly indignant, even punkish about this state of affairs, and attack law as unresponsive and irrelevant to our lives.
This sets up a whole language of ambiguous moves and counter-moves that blur the edges of the terms. Indignation becomes "resentment", law becomes sacred and immaculate, or stifling and corrupt. The feelings that arise on one side spill into the rhetoric of the other. Before there was capital, there was, famously, barter. But do we really remember this rightly?
Was barter really just an exchange system comparable to but made infinitely more practical by money? Or was it an ongoing interest in each other's wellbeing that was never a settled matter and always needed to be revived and revised?
If so, then money shuts down the human flow of mutual interest and so sets up the process of creating social disparities. The world gets divided between those who are privileged to pursue their interests and those who can only subsist in obligatory service to that privileged class. The Romans were past-masters at establishing and enforcing obligation.
Their law was rigid, status related, and brutally enforced. Rome did not fall, it was abandoned. The bishop of Rome tried to revive his position by claiming superior legal status to the Eastern Empire.
This did not work, but as Western Europe began to consolidate after centuries of raids, the Pope was able to assert his authority by creating a new Rome, in opposition to the old empire on Constantinople. The most effective weapons in this were the Latin language, and the unquestioned authority of Roman law. This combination suppressed the democratic aspirations of the people. Meanwhile, Anglo-Saxon law was emerging from a loose collection of highly democratized communities, but then conquered by the Normans who were at once at odds with Rome, but in need of some external justification for their suppression of unrest against their rule over the English.
The law that emerged pretended to have its roots in Rome, but the more careful authorities are clear that this was just a conceit to deny the English of their indigenous authorship of their laws. The Celts before them were a herding people who shared the open grazing to all of the villagers who claimed it as their common property. They had each a piece in the village called a croft, very much private property or "domes".
The English adopted this system and adapted it to a more agrarian lifestyle, evolving what would come to be called the "open field" system, which Norman law would slowly erode under the acts of enclosure. But, because the Celtic tradition was husbandry rather than farming, the leaders were not imposing upon the people by restricting hunting of large wild prey to the nobility.
Kings were itinerant, expecting the lower nobility to supply their needs as they moved about the countryside. This requirement evolved the manor system, in which lower nobles built huge manor houses large enough to meet their obligation to the king. But it took on the form we see on Downton Abbey long after this was a practical requirement. But, yes, they gathered in servants from the local community to service the needs of the huge estates.
American elites, who are financially easily able to reproduce this lifestyle, have not done so because the pretext of entertaining the itinerant king was never there, and so our elites pretend to be somehow less like an upper class. It's not really intrinsic, it's just not their style, at least not since emancipation.
But even through all these variations of tyranny, the suppression of the dynamic of law that must welcome the needs and views of each to complete itself, the universal principle that makes the difference between justice and unjust disparities is the superseding of mutual interest in the meaning and worth of each person with the quantifier money is. It is a mistake to suppose that capitalism came into being with the invention of money, capitalism is the use of money in a profit system based on the payment of rent on property or interest on borrowed money.
But if the simple invention of money did not create capitalism, it was the prerequisite of it. And if money is intrinsically toxic to human community, capitalism certainly is. But it is a toxicity necessary to a complex society, though it seems obvious that it can be mitigated by carefully designed conditions. It should be rendered homeopathic by dilution. But in large economies money does not trickle away, it accumulates, becoming more and more toxic.
The answer should be obvious, remove it from its toxic pooling and spread it about, to those who really earned it in the first place.
This can and in some places is being done to clearly superior effect than we have in America, and even once was here, under the New Deal, the most prosperous era in our history.
But getting lost in ambiguous terms and rhetorical devices, or reducing alternatives to a contrast between Mad Max and Caligula, is unhelpful.
Of course we need to carefully devise and regulate our conduct, but this only means coercive authority where people are naturally inclined to become invested in socially toxic systems. It seems humorous that a discussion of anarchy should end on the note it did, let's network on it! As a social order alternate to the one currently in place, anarchy is both tempting and terrifying, the latter mainly because the results of its implementation are ambiguous and we, humans, resent change.
Then, anarchy, as defined by Emma Goldman, suggests quite a few inherent problems of its own. If anarchy is defined as a new social order based on liberty and unrestricted by manmade law, then what is the meaning of liberty? What is the essence of this definition? If we had all the answers about what is right and what is wrong, what is just - in just, what is good, evil - then why would we need any social order? What is the purpose of an alternative social order that is in itself flawed or incomplete, that brings the same problematic as the social order we currently have only with a different face?
And if we don? Anarchy is theoretically possible, but as soon as it is put to practice and institutionalized its intrinsic sense of liberty comes to an end just as it happens in any other social order? Tuesday, February 3, -- PM. Nice try, I suppose. But it rather misses the point. What I was trying to do above was to show that there is a context on the periphery that is missed by our focusing on the usual concepts and methods thought to achieve the kind of results conventional wisdom has come to bank on.
There is nothing unilateral to freedom. This notion derives from the evangelical tradition of the Christian West and the other biblical traditions that belief is consensual and consent is constitutive.
If only everyone, or some critical mass, comes freely? But the Western tradition of individuality as it is conceived today is a conceit of the late Middle ages via Thomas Aquinas that individual faith transcends authority. But this only echoed, in a garbled fashion, the far more human intercourse that underlay the social lives of most European peasants. Worth and value was personal, what we do for each other in recognition of what we mean to each other. But where the satisfaction of need extends beyond what we can keep on a personal basis, as an ongoing reckoning of who is doing what for who and what deficit is outstanding amongst us, some more "objective" reckoning intrudes upon the personal ongoing measure and test of worth we are to each other, and the individual goes from being a running dynamic of finding our worth in needing each other free of obligation, to a 'unilateral' in which obligation is the only quantification, the only objective test and measure.
Once the quantifier intrudes the only path left to us is anarchy of the one against all or the all against one. Hence all the variations on a theme illuminated so well in these discussions. But largely beside the point.
Perhaps Pink Floyd was right: "All in all we're just another brick in the Wall". How many laws or bricks are there? Can they even be counted? And what do they all mean? Each One of us lives by our own rules and then there are all the other rules: work rules, play rules, and game rules, traffic rules, pedestrian rules, and bike rules, business rules and corporate rules, money rules and tax rules, medical rules, doctor rules, and healthcare rules, and don't forget the religious rules God forbid, then there are the town rules, city rules, county rules, state rules, and government rules, and each of them have there own rules.
We do have a Supreme Court to interpret these rules. Do they know how many rules there are and what they all mean? Does anyone know? And if we don't all know all the rules and the meaning of all the rules, does that mean we are guilty if we don't live by all the rules? Are we all guilty and who are we to judge even ourselves? How many bricks are there?
Isn't the thought of a world without walls and manmade divisions, barbed wire fences, rules and regulations appealing to everyone? An indivisible thought, a just thought of liberty, as just is the equity of freedom, a thought that might just lead us there.
Isn't that where we are meant to be, free? There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Gorbachev, open this gate. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! Beliefs become reality. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth.
The wall cannot withstand freedom. Wednesday, February 4, -- PM. It really seems time you noticed this! Without "? Liberty is license or privilege over possessions. Freedom is a response of need.
We need each other free if we wish to understand and be understood. There is nothing unilateral freedom is. As such it is liberty equated with freedom, not government per se, that is its enemy. As for Reagan, he was an atrocity as a president. He invented and promoted the Jim Crow economics we live under today. He negotiated with Iran to keep our people hostage until after the election, in return for a promise of illegal weapons sales.
And he stalled the fall of the Soviet Union even as he pretended to seek its ruin. He could easily have come to terms with Gorbachev, but used the Star Wars program as a pretext to scuttle talks.
The speech he gave in Berlin was given at a time when Gorbachev was already in separate negotiations with Western Europe to open the Eastern Bloc countries. The "tear down this wall" remark was just another of Reagan's monumental hoaxes, he knew it was imminent anyway. Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Free Birds I saw some birds fly by today and wondered why they are free to fly and live as they please and we, mankind, needs to be governed, ruled and controlled? If birds can be free then why can't we? And if our manmade rules are there as we are led to believe for our own protection, why is it that we continue to self-destruct? If the innumerable rules we already have can't keep us from destroying ourselves and this planet, are more rules the solution?
How many more do we need to survive? Or rather, is it the rules themselves that are the cause of our own demise? If you believe in bible stories, hmmm, wasn't it a single rule, not to eat a certain fruit that lost paradise?
Had there been no rules, might paradise still be here today? Today we have more rules than can be counted and the effect seems to be very much the same, Earth lost. If there were no rules would we live in harmony? Are rules the problem? Is freedom the ultimate solution we are searching for? It seems to be working for everything else but us. Wouldn't it be nice to try freedom and see. Imagine to be as free as a bird and live and fly as you please.
Thursday, February 5, -- PM. Some rules help us keep from bumping into each other. But even as we stop at the stop-sign we are free to critique whether it is needed at that intersection. If that critique had no plausible hope of being heeded we would be less free. But the power of legislation, not the absence of law, is what freedom is. Birds, by the way, all live under a highly developed and strictly enforced ranking system.
It's called pecking order. As for me, as attractive as flying without mechanical support may be, I would not trade arms and hands and opposable thumbs for wings and a barrel chest. But one odd thing keeps coming out in your posts, you clearly have some implicit sense of what I've been getting at, even if you repudiate this explicitly.
The first thing you wrote months ago was that the universe is immeasurable which it isn't. Yesterday you referred to a wall of countless bricks how many bricks make a wall, anyway. From a man who takes all one this seems strange. But more to the point, it expresses a sense that number gets lost in a more encompassing meaning. Your mistake in this, I think, is that you regard this loss as a mode of induction rather than, as I would argue, reduction.
How extensive must the count be before we recognize that there is a more encompassing meaning? How extensive must the count be before the notion of number gets lost to the meaning of it? The answer is not the most extensive term, but the least. The reduction that at first finds solidity evaporating before probabilistic flux between matter and energy, and ultimately a meaning even such probabilities cannot calculate. The result is meaning. The least term of time is that differing that can only be described as the lost enumerator.
The least term of time is all the differing it is. It is not until we have pressed through all the question that we can achieve satisfactory answers. It is the rigor of that count, and the loss of any sense in the notion of its enumeration, that we learn the meaning of words and come to know each other the person each is in that character of loss.
But like any loss, it is only the response recognized it not its own and yet of worth is that meaning articulated in the world, however real that loss is. But we need each other free for this completion to the drama of loss and recognition that meaning, and person, is. There is no freedom alone or unilateral. It is not letting be or being at liberty, it is a need fulfilled in the freedom enabled through that need.
Freedom is the product of not being alone in loss. And if I may ask again, how many rules are there in your measurable Universe? Friday, February 6, -- PM. Monday, February 9, -- PM. Hawking wrote: "philosophy is dead" and that was the end of that.
Philosophy is truth and truth will set us FREE! Tuesday, February 10, -- PM. Leafology Socates whilst walking through the park came across his friend Enstein standing in the shade under a tree. After some greetings Socates asked,? Enstein replied,? I am here doing some very important scientific work scientifically measuring the number of leaves that have fallen from this tree.? For what reason? Socates asked, Einstein answered,? Is Nature measurable? Socates asked?
Then asked further,? Enstein replied? Are you absolutely certain of you measurement? Enstein responded,? As he counted a light breeze came up and flipped a leaf over exposing yet another leaf.
Well well well? Enstein smiled and counted again and said,? Would you wager everything you know Enstein that scientifically your measurement is absolutely correct??
Enstein showing some discomfort now said,? I am certain there are 6. And to prove it to you I will right here and now count them again.? As he began to count a bit of a wind came by and blew all of the leaves away, much to Enstein? Now it was Socates time to smile and ask,? Eistein turned to Socates and said, " hmmm, smart question, is it measure that is in need of measure?? Socates replied,?
Michael, You have both Einstein and Socrates quite wrong. Socrates was a Pythagorean. Einstein had a very highly developed sense of humor. Have you ever heard of Michaelson-Morley?
Or the Lorentz transformation? By the way, the universe is something like fifteen billion years old, as I recall, and that sets an outer limit of that many light years in radius. A good deal less, I expect, since it is has almost certainly not expanded that fast for that long. But physics and I parted company, for the most part, many years ago, it was not where my fascination lay.
Not sufficiently, at least, to justify the work of getting as good at it as I felt I could have been. If you take offence athiestic assertions, you'll love section of Nietzsche's The Gay Science. Wednesday, February 11, -- PM. Tuesday, February 24, -- PM. Contrary to what James Martell posits, "anarchy" seems foolish both in theory and in practice.
Throughout the discussion, he and Ken and John were selective in the situations they considered, elided over how collective decisions are made in an anarchic society, and did not acknowledge the value of coordination by leaders and the import of the protection of intellectual property.
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