tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83076934785582953412024-02-20T03:19:34.075-08:00AnarclysmAnarchies AnalyzedB. M. Burnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06997489854880832172noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8307693478558295341.post-40480220513318817432008-11-08T23:36:00.000-08:002008-11-09T01:19:07.146-08:00Mock it and Rock it - Vote Nobody<span class="hw">write-in</span> <span class="pron" onmouseover="return m_over('Click for pronunciation key')" onmouseout="m_out()" onclick="pron_key()">(r<img src="http://img.tfd.com/hm/GIF/imacr.gif" align="absbottom" />t<img src="http://img.tfd.com/hm/GIF/prime.gif" align="absbottom" /><img src="http://img.tfd.com/hm/GIF/ibreve.gif" align="absbottom" />n<img src="http://img.tfd.com/hm/GIF/lprime.gif" align="absbottom" />)</span><div class="pseg"><i>n.</i><div class="ds-list"><b>1. </b> A vote cast by writing in the name of a candidate not on the ballot.</div><div class="ds-list"><b>2. </b> A candidate voted for in this manner.<br /><br />The definition of write-in, provided by the Free Online Dictionary. Most anarchists, and rightly so (to an extent), propose NOT VOTING as a means to further the cause. This strategy is despicably deficient. Why? A couple of reasons:<br /><br />1. Voting, while useless, is voluntary. Even if you can convince your voting friends to adhere to the non-aggression principle, you will not EVER convince them not to vote in the name of such a notion. The chain of command between placing a slip of paper in a box and a police officer shooting a man for resisting taxation is too long and convoluted for anyone, anarchist or no, to seriously suggest that one morally implicates a person for the end consequence of the other.<br /><br />2. By not voting, you open yourself to the classically fallacious (and first-amendment denying) "those who don't vote have no right to complain!". Since voting is done in secret, you can walk into that booth and vote for all the nobody you want. But hell, get creative. Vote everybody. Vote Jehovah. Vote Rowan Atkinson. Just as long as whoever it is will never accept the invitation.<br /><br />3. We finally get to join the Get-Out-The-Vote campaign, only we get to have infinitely more fun doing it by asking questions like:<br />Does a not voting constitute a vote for nobody?<br />Does a vote for one person constitute a vote against another?<br />How many votes would it take to cross the threshold into supreme-court-ruling turning?<br />Is a voting multiple times, once for each candidate, for all candidates; voter fraud, one vote for everyone, or no vote at all?<br /><br />4. Action is far more inspiring to a cause than non-action, no matter the action in question or how useless it may be. Ask any damn rally organizer or charity activist you want, you'll get the same answer - keep people doing easy shit symbolically for a hard cause practically, and you've won half the battle. By deliberately refraining to vote, you put yourself in the same class as those who routinely just don't give a shit, and your reasons for inaction <span style="font-style: italic;">could not be further apart</span>. You don't vote for caring too much, they for caring too little.<br /><br />5. Clog in the cogs, anyone? Voting for "Uncle Sam" is so much more time-consuming to vote counters than staying home and having him get elected anyway. Voting Nobody is active, spiteful, creatively de-constructive, and honest. What's not to love?<br /><br />In conclusion, get out there and vote for your ruler - put your own name down if it really comes to it.<br /><br /></div></div>B. M. Burnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06997489854880832172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8307693478558295341.post-87777401299656302832008-06-30T12:16:00.000-07:002008-06-30T12:17:27.437-07:00Anarchy Is Always Working<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Anarchists have that sincere and in many aspects exclusive trait among ideologues, in that their namesake aspiration is assumed as implicitly esoteric.<span style=""> </span>Anarchy is to the Democrat, as the Republic is the Monarch and the Commune is to the Czar.<span style=""> </span>Threatening to the passions, yet seductive to the reasons - in any honest discourse.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style=""> </span>Anarchism is not something to be implemented, like one would implement a policy or leader with a declaration or constitution.<span style=""> </span>Anarchy is nearly everywhere.<span style=""> </span>Defined as “any place where there is no coercion occurring”, all of outer space is in a condition of Anarchy.<span style=""> </span>So I say we put to bed these silly notions that Anarchy “just doesn’t work”.<span style=""> </span>If by work, you mean any of these:</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work</a></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">then please specify.<span style=""> </span>If not, shut up with the irrational argument which employs undefined terminology.</p>B. M. Burnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06997489854880832172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8307693478558295341.post-23805544726037942942008-06-30T11:17:00.000-07:002008-06-30T11:44:29.681-07:00What Is Not The Problem<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Television is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Every so often, in any amateur <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">discussion</span> of social ills or national afflictions, a person will witness a vehement denunciation of all televised programs.<span style=""> </span>It is true that television may inspire sloth, for the fact that it normally demands long periods of bodily inactivity.<span style=""> </span>And it is just as pertinently true that television may inspire violence and disregard for moral standards, as most <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">plot lines</span> in any good thought-provoking stories do.<span style=""> </span>But one cannot attempt to smear television with both of these brushes at once.<span style=""> </span>Television cannot <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">simultaneously</span> be to blame for active violence and contagious passivity.<span style=""> </span>But even if by some miracle of psychology it could, television would not be to blame for anyone’s actions in particular.<span style=""> </span>People are responsible for their own actions, so if television is influencing them to an undue degree, talk with them about it.<span style=""> </span>After all, any activity can be dangerous or unhealthy if <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">pursued</span> to excess – everything in moderation, like they say.<span style=""> </span>But we know then that it is not the television or the televised to blame, rather the excess.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Money is not the problem. It is easy for someone to hear that <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">anonymous</span> parable about the poisoning of the rivers and the leveling of the forests and conclude that since money is inedible, it must be worthless.<span style=""> </span>And to that degree, they are correct.<span style=""> </span>Money has no practical utility besides it’s rare employment as insulation or tinder, as can be observed in cases of sudden hyperinflation.<span style=""> </span>However, since money is intrinsically doing no harm to anyone, you cannot claim it it is anything less than worthless.<span style=""> </span>An arguably too-strict <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">adherence</span> to the labor theory of value will lead one to conclude that all money is justly possessed by whomever prints it (money <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">doesn</span>’t grow on trees, after all), but even this can be considered a temporary loan from the printer to the traders for purposes of a trusted socioeconomic organization, and therefore is not intrinsically evil or detrimental.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Money, at it’s best, is an IOU, but when presumed as an “objective standard” of value, invites dishonesty in the forms of identity theft and counterfeiting.<span style=""> </span>There are problems with it, especially in it’s flat form, but these are problems of technicality, not principality.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Logo, or signature, is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Many see symbols like the “golden arches” as symptoms of some dreaded capitalistic disease, and prefer to homogenize production of like wares so that no one body of persons may profit from personalizing the fruits of their labor.<span style=""> </span>This is the stance of the “market abolitionist”.<span style=""> </span>Most see the idiocy in such a stance, but we can understand the justice of decentralized logos by contrasting their purpose to the purpose of a signature.<span style=""> </span>When a painter finishes painting a picture, they sign their name in the bottom right corner, so that other people know who painted it.<span style=""> </span>Either for interests of posterity or profitability, it is of use to link a product to the identity of it’s producer.<span style=""> </span>If that was not permitted to occur, you would never know just who to consult to reciprocate a service you preferred from them, by virtue of their talent.<span style=""> </span>It is in this light, notice, that we ascertain a distinction between the market and capitalism.<span style=""> </span>Keep this distinction in mind for later discussions on the subject in order that nobody conflates the two in some “package deal”.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Conformity is not the problem, despite drawing the short straw from the hand of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">preferred</span> human <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">tendencies</span>.<span style=""> </span>Most “evil empires” throughout history have been evidenced by their rigid adherence to codes of their invention, codes pertaining to behavior and uniform.<span style=""> </span>This sort of conformity may be lamented for what edicts it is conforming to – for example, ethnic genocide or blitzkrieg.<span style=""> </span>But the evil does not lie within the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">existence</span> of conformity, rather the essence.<span style=""> </span>If every human being conformed to the edict “never murder”, for example, there would be no murder.<span style=""> </span>So it is misleading to assert the inferiority of conformity in contrast to absolute liberty.<span style=""> </span>Conformity is natural, if anything can claim to be “natural<i>” </i>(see next paragraph).<span style=""> </span>Monkey see, monkey do.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Human nature (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">ie</span>. popular tendency) is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Often, in an argument, a person will desperately attempt to supplant prescription with description.<span style=""> </span>This is a fallacy of relevance, known as the naturalistic fallacy.<span style=""> </span>Much the same disastrous course is pursued when a prediction is offered up in place of a prescription.<span style=""> </span>This is usually diagnosable as some version of the slippery slope fallacy, but only time and testing will tell.<span style=""> </span>For example, if I were to assert that coercive government should be eliminated, my opponent might respond with: “without government, there will be mass murder!”.<span style=""> </span>This is akin to saying: “without color, there will be mass blue!”.<span style=""> </span>But besides that much, is not an argument, rather a vague forecast of some sort, whose veracity is indiscernible in the absence of legitimate attempt of experiment.<span style=""> </span>Human nature is a favorite rallying point for social conservatives, who believe the current status <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">quo</span> is the best one by virtue of the fact that they were born within the temporal extent of it’s domain.<span style=""> </span>The social conservative was pro-slavery during slavery’s time, anti-suffrage during the time that males exclusively monopolized democratic participation, and the epitome of the epithet <i>reactionary</i> during the French revolution, despite the injustices <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">committed</span> in it’s name. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Technology is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Currently.<span style=""> </span>In the event a technological singularity arises and attempts to destroy, enslave, or deceive the human race, that may change.<span style=""> </span>But technology (derived from the Greek, “the study of skill”) as a whole is no threat to anyone.<span style=""> </span>It has become <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">minorly</span> popular to preach <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">primitivism</span>, which rejects all technology and advocates a regression from all civilization.<span style=""> </span>If you ever see this preaching upon a computer screen, or even a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">piece</span> of paper, know that the preacher (like most religious preachers) is a hypocrite.<span style=""> </span>They are not practicing what they preach.<span style=""> </span>In the words of a less hypocritical <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">primitivist</span>, the Cynic Diogenes, “Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music.”<span style=""> </span>The only technologies that bear <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">beratement</span> are those that threaten to be employed as coercive governance.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">H-bombs, for example.<span style=""> </span>You can’t have everyone walking around with a button that, if pressed, launches a nuke into some inhabited country.<span style=""> </span>While the preservation of such a world, for as long as it exists, may be the defining evidence of Utopia, Utopia is impossible and largely undesirable.<span style=""> </span>Technology must be handled intelligently, so that a person is at liberty to reduce the burden of their efforts however they can to <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">achieve</span> whatever goal they wish, <i>as long as that goal is not coercive</i>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Logic, reason, and rationality are not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Occasionally, you will run across a surrealist, or perhaps a Dadaist, who <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">bloviates</span> in opposition to these saviors of good sense and sense itself.<span style=""> </span>A rejection of logic is also a rejection of language, because language is predicated upon conception in coordination with the law of identity.<span style=""> </span>Therefore, surrealism cannot in any way, shape, or form, be refuted by <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">dialogue</span>.<span style=""> </span>Thus, I possess no duty to explain any statement of truth I ever make.<span style=""> </span>Because I’m not bound by the obligation to prove what I say, Reason is good, because reason is bad.<span style=""> </span>I win.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">God, or the belief that a God exists, is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Personally, I do not believe in God, and I would not believe anything a God told me if I ever met one.<span style=""> </span>God knows Gods have enough incentive to lie, God forbid we ever believe them.<span style=""> </span>God is not to ever be confused with religion.<span style=""> </span>That is what Einstein did, describing his spiritual inclination as a “religious feeling”.<span style=""> </span>He denied he possessed a personal God, yet denied that he was an atheist.<span style=""> </span>I have bad news for Einstein, he’s either one of the above, or a surrealist.<span style=""> </span>The lack of a personal God (he believed in Spinoza’s God) is pantheism, which like it or not, is ATHEISM.<span style=""> </span>Naturalistic pantheism is atheism in the same way that a picture of a cup is at once a picture of a cup <i>and two faces</i> at the same time.<span style=""> </span>It depends upon what you want to label “God”, the black (nothing), or the white (everything).<span style=""> </span>So the verdict is still out on Einstein’s theology, but either way he claimed a position of agnosticism, so he gets off easy no matter which theological truth turns out to be correct.<span style=""> </span>Anyway, God is not the problem because he flat out <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">doesn</span>’t affect anything.<span style=""> </span>Belief in God is not the problem because a belief <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">doesn</span>’t affect anyone but the believer, at least intrinsically.<span style=""> </span>Sure, plenty of religious idiots have oppressed and killed nonbelievers.<span style=""> </span>But that is not the result of their theism, it is a result of the religion their theism justifies.<span style=""> </span>In the same way that we would not punish a schizophrenic for his schizophrenia, we should not punish a theist for their theism.<span style=""> </span>And to those that think it impolite to draw a comparison of the two – when you talk to God, it’s prayer.<span style=""> </span>When God talks to you, it’s schizophrenia.<span style=""> </span>Regardless, belief in God hurts nobody, so stop being anti-theist and become anti-religion instead.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Cultural nationalism is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Nations are not the same thing as States, so there is no coercion implied in the idea of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">separate</span> nations.<span style=""> </span>The vast majority of nationalists, unfortunately, support some form of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">statism</span>, when it is in fact anarchism they should be turning to.<span style=""> </span>Anarchists support the liberty of anyone to disassociate themselves from anyone else, for any reason whatsoever.<span style=""> </span>If the certain members of the white race want to live only with other white people, that’s perfectly fine.<span style=""> </span>That’s why anarchists support the elimination of borders, so that people can travel where and when they want without fear of restriction or retribution.<span style=""> </span>Other strains of nationalism (political nationalism, or state nationalism) must be opposed, but only insofar as they are <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Statist</span> and coercive.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">The market is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Defined broadly, (and accurately) a market is any location where goods or services are traded on trust of reciprocity.<span style=""> </span>This is NOT capitalism.<span style=""> </span>It is the market.<span style=""> </span>There is a huge difference.<span style=""> </span>To oppose markets is to either oppose locations (a kind of surrealism), or to oppose trade (a kind of stupidity).<span style=""> </span>Trade, being consensual in all cases, but the case of accepting contractual obligations beyond your preference by <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">necessity</span> of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">acquiring</span> food to avoid starvation, is not wrong.<span style=""> </span>So I believe it is exceedingly obvious that markets are, by and large, a good thing.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Violence is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Most people, who lack a clarity of language demanded by the shrewd and deliberate, use the word violence <i>to additionally denote</i> coercion.<span style=""> </span>This is perhaps the most widely accepted “package deal” in <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">existence</span>.<span style=""> </span>For example, when Steven Pinker describes the “decline of violence” to coincide with the formation of nation-states, the example he provides is not <i>violent</i>, it is coercive.<span style=""> </span>Cat-burning is not anymore violent than skipping down the sidewalk, but it’s a great deal more coercive.<span style=""> </span>Obviously if a cat <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">doesn</span>’t want to be burned, it would be coercive to burn it.<span style=""> </span>That’s the definition of coercion!<span style=""> </span>Violence on the other hand, occurs anywhere and everywhere.<span style=""> </span>Just consider the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">egregious</span> amount of violence <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">occurring</span> elsewhere in the universe, like on Venus, where lightning arcs through the sky constantly and volcanoes erupt on a regular basis.<span style=""> </span>Once we understand the distinction between violence and coercion, we can realize that while a professional wrestling match might be violent, it <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">isn</span>’t coercive.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Discrimination is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Discrimination is a synonym for “personal judgement”.<span style=""> </span>When I say prefer chocolate ice cream to vanilla ice cream, I am discriminating.<span style=""> </span>The words “sexual discrimination” entail a bit of a social stigma, but the fact remains that almost every person sexually discriminates.<span style=""> </span>Are you heterosexual, but not homosexual?<span style=""> </span>Are you homosexual, but not heterosexual?<span style=""> </span>Then you sexually discriminate!<span style=""> </span>Discrimination is a liberty that nobody can deny, as long as it does not entail coercion.<span style=""> </span>For example, lynching a black person because you take offense at the color of their skin is coercive and wrong.<span style=""> </span>But telling a black person not to talk to you because you take offense at the color of their skin is not coercive, and not wrong.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">It <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">doesn</span>’t matter which race, gender, hair color, eye color, or shirt color you base your judgements on, the justice (or lack thereof) is the same.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Affluence is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Excessive affluence may be a symptom of the problem, but it is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>For example, Bill Gates popularized the personal computer and is now filthy rich thanks to his efforts.<span style=""> </span>He, at least arguably, has earned his affluence justly.<span style=""> </span>However, his daughter, who did not do anything, shares in his excessive affluence.<span style=""> </span>Is this wrong?<span style=""> </span>No.<span style=""> </span>But it sure <i>looks</i> wrong if we look around and see other sons and daughters starving to death every single day because of their brutal poverty.<span style=""> </span>It sure looks wrong in comparison, does it not?<span style=""> </span>Why should one person inherit the liberty to live healthily, and not another, who just happened (by pure chance) to be born somewhere else?<span style=""> </span>The demand for equality of affluence at the outset of a person’s life is called the demand for equality of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">opportunity</span>.<span style=""> </span>But it should instead be called the demand for affluence of opportunity, because that better embodies the motivation behind it’s adoption.<span style=""> </span>Obviously two starving people possess equal oppurtunity, but they are in no way affluent, the true end-goal of any theory devised to better the lives of it’s adherants.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Altruism is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Altruism, as a tendency, is a concern for the welfare of others.<span style=""> </span>This is far from problematic, as long as the golden rule is rejected.<span style=""> </span>The golden rule is “treat others as you would like to be treated”.<span style=""> </span>This sounds foolproof, but how would a masochist get along in such an ethic?<span style=""> </span>He might end up whipping people for the fact that he likes to be whipped, or any other perverse thing.<span style=""> </span>To quote George Bernard Shaw: “Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.”<span style=""> </span>So it is not altruism that is the problem, rather the assumption that a person prefers what they do not in fact prefer – which is stubborn stupidity at best, imposed governance at worst.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Egoism is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>While there are many forms of egoism, all egoism boils down to the importance of the self.<span style=""> </span>It can be simplified, in contrast to altruism, that you should “treat yourself as you would like to be treated”.<span style=""> </span>So the immediate question must be raised, again - how does a masochist like to be treated?<span style=""> </span>It depends upon what you mean by “like”.<span style=""> </span>Bodily likes, like the like of being free of pain, would deny the masochist their liberty to do to themselves what they wish.<span style=""> </span>A masochist’s body likes health and pleasure, but a masochist’s mind likes depriving their body of that enjoyment.<span style=""> </span>So egoism is not the problem, as long as every person’s mind is at liberty to decide what it is they like, even if it is in opposition to what <i>most</i> people like.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Evolution, it’s existance or it’s failure, is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Generally, the only people you will hear bitching about evolution are the people who think that it <i>doesn’t</i> happen – the ignorant – and the people who think that it has <i>stopped</i> happening – the idiotic.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style=""> </span>Evolution happens.<span style=""> </span>Everything from the hip bones on a whale to the coloring of a person’s skin to the arisal of a new virus proves this.<span style=""> </span>There are more transitional fossils available than you can shake a stick at, some of which are walking around on Earth as we speak (yes, <i>you</i> are a transtional fossil).<span style=""> </span>I’m not going to go into a professional dissertation on the subject, but the fact that humans are apes does not in any way invalidate morality.<span style=""> </span>It doesn’t <i>lower</i> humans to the standards of chimps.<span style=""> </span>On the contrary, it <i>raises</i> chimps to the standards of humans, in that any valid moral theory must not be “speciesist” – applying to one species only.<span style=""> </span>On the other side of the fence, there are social Darwnists clamoring on about how letting evolution go unregulated is the same as “devolution”.<span style=""> </span>“Devolution” is as invented and arbitrary a concept as “deceleration”, but no social Darwinist seems to recognize this.<span style=""> </span>Evolution means “change”, as long as things are still changing, they’re still evolving.<span style=""> </span>So even if things are changing for the worse, it’s not a liscense for you to advocate genocide or negative eugenics because you think people are too stupid to take responsibility for themselves.<span style=""> </span>Some of us can take responsibility for ourselves, and we’re damn sick of you shifting the blame for those who won’t onto biological theories you have nothing to do with.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Sexuality is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Despite Christianity’s best aspirations, people are still having unregulated sex, and even worse, enjoying it.<span style=""> </span>You have to stop and really wonder about a society that gets all up in arms, ready to prosecute someone, over this:</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style=""> </span><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" spt="75" preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"> </v:formulas> <v:path extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" connecttype="rect"> <o:lock ext="edit" aspectratio="t"> </v:shapetype><v:shape id="_x0000_i1025" type="#_x0000_t75" style="'width:234.75pt;"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:/DOCUME~1/BRIANB~1/LOCALS~1/Temp/msoclip1/01/clip_image001.png" title=""> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img src="file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/BRIANB%7E1/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msoclip1/01/clip_image002.jpg" shapes="_x0000_i1025" height="273" width="313" />(boobies during the superbowl)<!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">But doesn’t blink twice at this:</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_i1026" type="#_x0000_t75" style="'width:187.5pt;height:249.75pt'"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:/DOCUME~1/BRIANB~1/LOCALS~1/Temp/msoclip1/01/clip_image003.png" title=""> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img src="file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/BRIANB%7E1/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msoclip1/01/clip_image004.jpg" shapes="_x0000_i1026" height="333" width="250" />(David, the famous sculpture)<!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">So what if one happens in a fancy museum and the other during the halftime show of some football game?<span style=""> </span>It’s not like something gets <i>more</i> acceptable as it gets <i>less</i> exposure (and David, to his credit, has had some exposure).<span style=""> </span>Religion has been the driving force behind conflating body parts with sex, and sex with immorality, neither of which is true.<span style=""> </span>And once the vast majority of religions have been refuted and disestablished, it is likely their restrictive non-morality will die with them.<span style=""> </span>If people do not possess sexual liberty (or even non-sexual liberties like the ability to walk around topless), they are being oppressed.<span style=""> </span>So, it is an understatement to say that sexuality isn’t the problem.<span style=""> </span>The belief that sexuality is a problem, is the problem.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Obscenity is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>In much the same way that sexuality is not the problem, since obscene things are mostly sexual things.<span style=""> </span>However, death and extremely gory violence is also considered obscene.<span style=""> </span>In most cases, the “gory violence” is only detestable because gory violence so rarely occurs with the unbridled consent of all participants.<span style=""> </span>But if it were to, who could object?<span style=""> </span>Obscenity also applies to words.<span style=""> </span>I present the famous Milwaukee seven, out of respect for the recently deceased comedic genius George Carlin, and to make a point: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.<span style=""> </span>See?<span style=""> </span>Nobody got hurt.<span style=""> </span>Nobody died.<span style=""> </span>And at the end of the day, nobody cares.<span style=""> </span>If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is obscenity, so fuck you.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style=""> </span>Rational authority, or consensual government, is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Rational authority is the authority of an expert on some subject.<span style=""> </span>For example, if the experts on climate change warn us to beware of our carbon emmisions, we would do well for the longevity of ourselves and our children to listen to them.<span style=""> </span>Similarly, if we have no idea how to rock climb, it’s in our conditional interest to obey what the veteran climber has to say about keeping our footing – at least as long as we don’t want to fall to our deaths.<span style=""> </span>Obeying the rock climber when he or she tells you to reposition your feet against the cliff face, and obeying the rock climber when he or she tells you not to curse, is the difference between rational and irrational authority.<span style=""> </span>It is rational to obey the rock climber in regards to rock climbing, but it is not rational to obey them in regard to what language you employ to communicate (as long as you are communicating).<span style=""> </span>The inability to distinguish between these two forms of authority is a defining trait of an authoritarian – someone who obeys any given authority at their discretion and expects others to obey them, categorically.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Civilization is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Aspects of civilization may be, but not civilization itself.<span style=""> </span>For example, States only occur within civilization, and as coercive entities in conflict with on another, they enact arbitrary laws restricting actions which should not be restricted just for the fact that they occur.<span style=""> </span>For example, many States punish homosexuality with death.<span style=""> </span>This is disgusting, so States should be abandoned for the imaginary bullshit they are. <span style=""> </span>But that does not mean all civilization has to be abandoned.<span style=""> </span>Roads and medicine and libraries are all functionally <i>good</i> things, they aren’t hurting anyone by themselves. So society can keep them, and if we personally don’t like them, we have a wonderful option at our disposal – don’t use them.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Hatred (or lack of love) is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>If somebody deliberately murders one of your family members, it would make sense to hate that person.<span style=""> </span>That is not to say that it would make sense to murder them in return – that would just create a neverending cycle of familial strife.<span style=""> </span>But it would make enough sense to justify removing them from society and attempting to rehabilitate them.<span style=""> </span>Hatred is the necessary antagonist of love, without one we would never really know the other.<span style=""> </span>So to go on endlessly about the power of love and peace and flowers is a bunch of hippie bullshit.<span style=""> </span>Sure, you think it’s great.<span style=""> </span>But I’ve got a right to hate whoever I want because I want and there’s not a thing you can do about it.<span style=""> </span>Until my hate manifests in a coercive action, I am guiltless, goddamn it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style=""> </span>Greed (or lack of generosity) is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Greed is always bandied about like either a sin or a sacrament, it has a polarizing effect.<span style=""> </span>Either it is wonderful and perfect and improves society, or is a detriment to the whole Earth.<span style=""> </span>Neither of these denigrations of the phenomenon are correct.<span style=""> </span>Greed is personal.<span style=""> </span>If my aim in life is to live in a huge mansion with personal servants, it says nothing about my respect for justice if I accomplish this feat.<span style=""> </span>As long as my servants aren’t being forced by hunger or human hand to serve me, they serve me voluntarily.<span style=""> </span>As long as I harm nobody and earned my mansion through my own labor and it’s product that I peaceably traded for the product of someone else’s, my greed for that mansion has hurt nobody.<span style=""> </span>So greed – the emotion, the impulse, or the desire – is not wrong or flawed.<span style=""> </span>It just raises the stakes, so to speak.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Chaos or rage is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>Many “doves” who desire peace apparantly haven’t given much thought to the word.<span style=""> </span>For them, peace is “package deal” that includes liberty and tranquility.<span style=""> </span>But if liberty allows violence, how can peace be the solution by ruling it out?<span style=""> </span>Chaos is not a requirement in anarchy, contrary to what most politicians would have you believe, but it certainly remains an option.<span style=""> </span>Daredevils and bohemians, who refuse to submit to an ethic of “tranquility” reject peace as a virtue.<span style=""> </span>Peace is just passivity in purple robes, and if peace comes at the end of a stick, I’d be enraged.<span style=""> </span>Most people refer to any period between wars as peace, but how can <i>that</i> be peace when it’s so rarely peaceful?<span style=""> </span>Lots of good things aren’t peaceful.<span style=""> </span>Sex isn’t peaceful, sport isn’t peaceful, space travel isn’t peaceful, and heated debate isn’t peaceful.<span style=""> </span>These things are loud, competitive, active, and energetic.<span style=""> </span>In a word, chaotic.<span style=""> </span>So while the word peace retains a definition of passivity and the connotation of liberty, we must explicitly identify which we merely permit and which we unabashedly demand.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style=""> </span>Illicit substance is not the problem.<span style=""> </span>In the USA, a person can be drafted to fight and die in war, but be punished for lifting a bottle of beer to their lips.<span style=""> </span>It is oppression whose method of operation goes by the name of ageist prohibition.<span style=""> </span>Sure, it’s wrong to force-feed alcohol to a toddler, because it’s equivalent to poisoning a person.<span style=""> </span>But after the mind has developed into the teen years, why does prohibition still exist?<span style=""> </span>You might argue it has to do with the number of deaths every year that occur as a result of motor vehicles and alcohol.<span style=""> </span>Well, if 1/3 of car accidents involve alcohol, wouldn’t it mean 2/3 DON’T involve alcohol, and wouldn’t in then mean that the majority of car accidents have nothing to do with alcohol? <span style=""> </span>Yes, it would, at least if logic means anything.<span style=""> </span>So why do groups like MADD go on and on about alcohol when they should be going on and on about good old fashioned bad driving?<span style=""> </span>Because they’re a bunch of prohibitionists!<span style=""> </span>That’s why.<span style=""> </span>If we started removing bad drivers from the road at the rate we removed people whose BAC was .01 over the legal limit, there would probably be a lot fewer accidents.<span style=""> </span>But we don’t do that.<span style=""> </span>This argument applies to any other substance you can name.<span style=""> </span>Cocaine, marijuanna, all of them.<span style=""> </span>If a person is allowed to lift weights, but must have a “spotter” nearby to make sure the weights don’t fall onto their neck and choke them to death (it happens), why don’t we legalize all the rest of the drugs and require spotters for drug users?<span style=""> </span>Because that might put some reputability back into the profession, people would have to start accepting the consequences of their actions, the economy might start moving a little faster, and it would overall be the more intelligent decision.<span style=""> </span>That’s why we don’t do it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p>B. M. Burnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06997489854880832172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8307693478558295341.post-74221428900929036172008-06-23T17:25:00.000-07:002008-06-23T17:28:51.911-07:00Video Link In Leau Of An ArticleI was going to write about this non-topic, but I saw this guy's Youtube video, and he says it pretty damn well. So here's the link and the end of this very short update.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y64dLOsK1M">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y64dLOsK1M</a>B. M. Burnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06997489854880832172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8307693478558295341.post-24953038714540153672008-06-15T14:01:00.000-07:002008-06-15T14:09:03.137-07:00Critique of the Communitarian Anarchism Espoused by Anarchy.nethttp://www.anarchy.net/<br />The site where the article in question may be found.<br /><br /><br />“I am a citizen of the world”<br />– Diogenes, Greek (rather, Earthen) Cynic<br /><br />The problems with communitarian anarchism are the communities. It bills itself as the “you do it your way, we’ll do it our way” anarchism, but who is the subject ‘you’ to which the sentence refers? You, or your community?<br /><br />Alas, that is the curse of this “new anarchism”, this “anarchism of the future”. Every attractive thing about it has been stolen from it’s ideological nemesis, individualism! After all, you don’t want to be pushed into line, do you? You don’t want to conform to just one Globalist Utopian schematic, do you? Well then welcome aboard!<br />Yet the next words out of the communitarian’s mouth are in praise of the “community” and the “greater good”. What? What is this supreme contradiction? We should fear being governed by laws that apply to everyone, but not laws designed specifically for our particular geographical region?<br /><br />“Communitarian anarchism is strongly opposed to the idea of one system applied to all people; we think that leads to the normalization of cultural diversity, creation of giant bureaucratic states, exploitation of our environment, and financial structures that force us to obey dogmatic, capitalist jobs where we slave for a rich elite who don’t care about us.”<br /><br />Slippery slope fallacy. Cultural diversity is a blanket term, it applies as much to the nuances in traditional marriage garb as it does to the tribe that mutilates it’s infants and cuts patterns into children’s skin with sharpened rocks. Bureaucracies and states are opposed by every anarchist, you can not seriously claim that every globalist anarchist is a hypocrite by attempting to conflate globalism with statism. The environment, if it must be protected, requires uniform protection, you can’t have one country polluting and another not polluting, the same outcome will ensue – the ruin of the <span class="caps">GLOBE</span>. Or rather, the planet it is modeled after, our own Earth. And capitalism has nothing to do with globalism either. What kind of an argument are you trying to weave together there?<br /><br />“Some say anarchism is trying to create Ultimate or Absolute freedom, meaning no restrictions at all = everything’s allowed. But wait. We all carry values. Some things seem to be less wanted, like dumping radioactive waste in rivers, raping women, torturing children, exterminating ethnic groups etc. Suddenly it seems like "Absolute freedom" is not realistic, since it would allow these things to come about. Think about it: Would you allow your neighbour to shoot your dog, because it was his personal freedom?”<br /><br /><a href="http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/secA2.html#seca24" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/193..</a><br /><br />Some may say it, but no anarchists are saying it. In fact, they’ve been trying to shut those people up for years. <span class="caps">ALL</span> anarchists oppose the freedom to coerce, whether communitarian or cosmopolitan, individualist or collectivist. The million dollar question is: do you?<br /><br />I am an individualist cosmopolitan anarchist. I believe the same one standard applies to all people, and that standard is objective and not up for negotiation. That standard is as follows: Don’t make anyone do anything they don’t want to do – even, especially, dogs.<br /><br />If communitarianism would excuse anyone or any community that didn’t adhere to this libertarian principle, then I will not excuse, or endorse, communitarianism.B. M. Burnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06997489854880832172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8307693478558295341.post-44561662453658095562008-06-10T09:19:00.000-07:002008-06-10T09:26:28.026-07:00What Is Contract?<p class="MsoNormal">A woman is crouching in the corner of a room, beer bottles smashing violently against the wall beside her.<span style=""> </span>Her husband, once a loving and charming bachelor, has become a raging abusive alcoholic.<span style=""> </span>She wants a divorce, but the proceedings would take a lot of time and money that she is unwilling to forfeit.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">What is contract?<span style=""> </span>That is the question this essay will occupy itself with.<span style=""> </span>Contract takes many forms, but whether verbal or written, authoritative or impromptu, contract rules a great deal of our lives.<span style=""> </span>Marriage, for example, is a contract which entails that: </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->Two people – usually of the opposite sex – agree to live with one another for the rest of their lives.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->The bride must buy a very expensive dress</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->The bride’s family must pay for a glorified party</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->The groom is expected to purchase an expensive ring</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->Flowers are expected to be thrown over shoulder</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->The groom is expected to ask the bride’s father for permission to propose</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->Economic endowment is shared between the two people</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->Vows must be written</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And a whole host of other traditions and customs.<span style=""> </span>Yet, at least in the United States, 50% of all marriages end in divorce.<span style=""> </span>Half the people who sign the contract end up breaking it.<span style=""> </span>So we must inquire:<span style=""> </span>which is most just?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The retainment of a contract no longer unanimously agreed to?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Or the abandonment of all duties contractually specified, any interval of time after the participants bound by them object to their enactment?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Abstractly speaking, there are 2 variables in every contract:</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->The stretch of time the contract applies to, and when it expires.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->What duties or restrictions are entrusted to volunteers that enter into it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">For example, let us propose that Satan comes to me with the following proposal –</p> <p class="MsoNormal">If I agree to fellate him every day, he will grant me eternal life.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">If I should ever fail to fellate him on any day, he will kill me.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">We shall hold, for the sake of examination, that I agree to and consent to these terms at the moment I sign the contract.<span style=""> </span>Perhaps I’m in a wave of sexual urgency, and Satan has transformed himself into the lustiest concubine ever seen.<span style=""> </span>The time this contract applies to is literally eternity.<span style=""> </span>I have bound myself to two options – please Satan every day, or die.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">It may be argued, however successfully, that I deserve whatever destiny I reap from this contract.<span style=""> </span>I agreed to it, after all.<span style=""> </span>But if after a day, or two days, or a week, I begin to dread sexually pleasing Satan, should I stop?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">If I do stop, would it be as morally wrong for him to kill me as it would have been had I never signed the contract at all?<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 3pt;">The question is one of trust.<span style=""> </span>Satan has put his faith into receiving stimulation from me on a regular basis.<span style=""> </span>I have put my trust into living forever.<span style=""> </span>But if I take my trust OUT of living forever, for whatever reason, I may decide I no longer agree to serve Satan for that reward.<span style=""> </span>Does Satan’s trust overrule my desire to refrain from servicing him?<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Sure, letting him down would be unkind to him.<span style=""> </span>But persisting in fellating him would be unkind to me. <span style=""> </span>There is unkindness no matter which route you take.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=""> </span>Is he justified in murdering me <i>now</i> for changing my mind about an agreement I made yesterday or yesteryear?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">No.<span style=""> </span>To suggest otherwise is to pervert the intuitive truth of justice.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">There is no one moment in time that can serve as a rule for any other moment in time.<span style=""> </span>Today I may wish to do this, tomorrow I may abhor undertaking that same action.<span style=""> </span>Today I may wear a green shirt, tomorrow I may wear a red one.<span style=""> </span>Popular wisdom has long warned to “be careful what you wish for”, as if there were some genie manifesting your edicts as you spoke.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">But this aphorism is what Nietzsche might have called slave-morality.<span style=""> </span>It is framed from the point of view of the Aladdin, of the serf.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Being that there is no genie, each of us is approximately as powerful as the rest of us, we should instead remember we all possess the capacity to enforce and to decree.<span style=""> </span>Therefore, I amend the popular wisdom to:</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Be careful what wishes you grant, as yesterday’s consent to their terms is no replacement for today’s, and justice does not shut it’s eyes at your whim.”<span style=""> </span></p>B. M. Burnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06997489854880832172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8307693478558295341.post-10469365572647969962008-06-09T20:01:00.000-07:002008-06-10T09:19:08.481-07:00Critique of Bernard Sena's Anarcho-fascism<span class="postbody">This is a response to an essay I found using Google that I have since been unable to locate. However, the forum entry that I originally posted this as is now the 6th result in searches for "anarcho-fascism", so I figured I'd post it here on my blog as well.<br /><br /><br />Anarcho-fascism. Who’d a thunk it? Not only does Bernardo Sena get his definition of anarchy wrong, right off the bat, – invalidating his entire analysis – but he even gets the definition of fascism wrong. In an essay that itself attempts to describe (or perhaps invent) anarcho-fascism, that is the antithesis of impressive.<br /><br />First, anarchy. According to Bernardo, anarchism is, “A non-political platform which derives from the ‘individual against the point of authority’ idea. Initially it is a philosophy which supports violence against those in power in order to achieve a peaceful existence in which individual man can live in free will and without the restraint of social laws or order.” This is a flawed denigration in more than one respect. First, anarchism has never been, and hopefully will never become, non-political. Anarchy is vehemently anti-political. There is a difference. Where politics is defined as the art of excluding people from affairs which properly concern them, an anarchist is not content to sit idly by like the merely unaffiliated. The anarchist is devoted to unaffiliation, not just theirs, but everyone else’s as well. Anarchism, it must be clarified, does not support violence against those in power. Anarchists might, but anarchism does not. Gandhi was a pacifist anarchist who aimed to abolish all violence, in fact. The role of violence in anarchism is a personal and undecided matter in general anarchist history. What all anarchists can agree on, is that the violence used in a coercive or forceful manner, in any anarchy, would not exist. And I believe I speak for every anarchist when I say that liberty – the goal of any anarchist – is the mother, not the daughter, of order; which would be anything but eliminated.<br /><br />Second, fascism. According to Wikipedia, this oft-abused epithet means the following: an authoritarian political ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers the individual subordinate to the interests of the state, party or society as a whole. But in Sena’s understanding, it means, “a philosophical and realistic perspective to society in which the majority are considered ignorant and thus must be either overthrown or controlled in a ruthless manner so as to preserve the further evolution of intelligence within the state and the progress of said state.”<br />Notice the very wide leeway of terms at our disposal. Majority, society, state. In actual fascism, the collective is all-important. Yet in Sena’s fascism, it must be “ruthlessly controlled” so as to preserve the state, which undeniably does what Thomas Paine warned us all the writers of his day were doing, so confusing society with state as to leave little or no difference between the two.<br />In this gigantic fallacy, the equation of nation with state with society with majority, the axiomatic truth held by the anarchist that the state is the parasite of society, is rendered meaningless by the fascist’s counter-assertion that the society is the parasite of the state.<br /><br />So, anarcho-fascism is most accurately translated to mean the following – a belief that both the society and the state are parasites upon the anarcho-fascist himself. Anarcho-fascism is then the most extreme and repulsive egoism possible, one that is not characterized by a fundamental trust of all individuals, but by a fundamental suspicion.<br /><br />Anarcho-fascism, then, is not as contradictory as some may claim. It is simply consistently horrifying, flying in the face of every intuition, history, and reality.<br /><br />Sena, of course, uses the prefix of this neologism to represent the means to the base’s ends. Anarcho-fascism is supposedly anarchy achieved for the sake of fascism. Sena’s anarchy being chaos, destitution, and jungle law, achieved for the sake of what could more aptly be classified as extreme social Darwinism. The strong overtaking the weak, the intelligent outsmarting the stupid.<br /><br />Sena then proceeds to administer the summation of his idiocy. “If anything, Anarchy and Fascism are more of a social doctrine or philosophy for life seeing as they both reject politics.” Needless to say, both assertions reek of pure ignorance on the part of the speaker. To claim that anarchy is apolitical is to fall for bourgeois lies, to claim that fascism is apolitical is beyond comprehension.<br /><br />In closing, I would like to express SERIOUS concern for the health of the anarchist movement. These perversions, anarcho-fascism, - lump anarcho-capitalism in as well, if it suits you – and social Darwinist ideology, are anathema to historically valid anarchism and anarchist struggle. It’s not so much the absurdity of the ideas themselves, rather those idealist's appropriation of the anarchist name.</span>B. M. Burnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06997489854880832172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8307693478558295341.post-34176320676858069212008-05-30T20:49:00.000-07:002008-05-30T20:51:43.068-07:00Questions Any Philosophical Anarchist Can Try To Answer<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">#1.<span style=""> </span>Are humans causing global warming?<span style=""> </span>Whether they are or not, do we as a species have an obligation to stop it?<span style=""> </span>Aside from that question, what amount of pollution constitutes government?<span style=""> </span>If the temperature rises to 130 degrees every summer and people are dying in the streets as a result of gases expelled from inefficient technology, would some form of intervention be necessary to prevent the use of that technology?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">#2.<span style=""> </span>If your particular State provides it, look up the sexual predators in your city online.<span style=""> </span>In a properly functioning anarchist system, what social history deserves to be private?<span style=""> </span>Is it a good or bad thing that anyone may at any moment know where any known pathological governor exists?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">#3.<span style=""> </span>In one box, I have a healthy calico cat comprised of exactly ten trillion cellular organisms, all cooperating to form the cat.<span style=""> </span>In another box, I have a primordial soup of exactly ten trillion cellular organisms, drifting in gooey anomie among one another.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I decide to put one of these boxes into an incinerator and incinerate it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Is it more or less moral to incinerate one of these boxes and it’s contents rather than the other?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">#4.<span style=""> </span>You are hiding in the secret basement of a shanty of a seedy Vietnamese village.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Foreign troops are coming to slaughter the inhabitants.<span style=""> </span>You and ten other people are holding your breath as you hear the enemy walking into the shanty above you.<span style=""> </span>Suddenly, a woman’s baby begins to cry.<span style=""> </span>If the only possible way to stop the baby from crying is to suffocate it, would you suffocate the baby in order to prevent the soldiers from hearing it and killing all of you?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">#5.<span style=""> </span>If someone tells you every day,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I’m going to kill you, rape your dead body, and set fire to your friend’s houses”, and it seems like they mean it, do you (or anyone) have a right to preemptively restrain this person in a prison because of it? <span style=""> </span></p>B. M. Burnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06997489854880832172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8307693478558295341.post-6835732408437516692008-05-30T20:14:00.001-07:002008-05-30T21:56:31.238-07:00The Anarchy Of Free Market Socialism<p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"> The words “free market” and “capitalism” seem to be equivocal to quite a few anarcho-capitalists.<span style=""> </span>Namely, all of them.<span style=""> </span>Similarly, many socialists dismiss the free market as terminally unfree or an implicit contradiction in terms.<span style=""> </span>This has inspired a great many fruitless arguments wherein the socialist definition of capitalism and the capitalist definition of capitalism (two completely different things) are contrasted in a bout of contrarian confusion.<span style=""> </span>Of course, misunderstandings abound on both sides.<span style=""> </span>Capitalists often assume a socialist policy of centralization, and socialists often assume a capitalist policy of decentralization – two things that in no way entail one another.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"> In order to proceed with this article, I am forced to define my employment of the ideologies in question.<span style=""> </span>First, capitalism.<span style=""> </span>Capitalism, as I refer to it, is the practice of collecting rent, interest, or profit from someone based upon a claim of ownership.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"> Socialism, a I refer to it, is the society where every individual is entitled access to the product of their labor.<span style=""> </span>The “market”, as I define it, is simply any place where people congregate to trade the acquired products of their labor, whether those products were acquired justly or unjustly.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"> Here is the common capitalist objection to Libertarian Socialism – that the positive liberty advocated somehow conflicts with the right of the worker to use the product of their labor.<span style=""> </span>The resolution to this paradox is, “the watch belongs to you, the watch-factory to the people”.<span style=""> </span>What does this mean?<span style=""> </span>It means the factory or farm is controlled “democratically”, and in the most anarchistic way imaginable.<span style=""> </span>There are no quotas, and there is no boss.<span style=""> </span>There is merely an expert on the scene at all times to answer any technical question about production.<span style=""> </span>In this way, anyone who wishes to show up at the farm may exert their labor upon the primitive land to reap their own crop, without being compelled to subject any part of their wealth to some exploitative authority (as would be guaranteed by capitalist employment or purchase).<span style=""> </span>This does not mean that donations to the farm as a whole, or even an individual expert that frequents it, would be banned.<span style=""> </span>It simply means a strict adherence to the principles that:</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">A.<span style=""> </span>cost is the limit of price</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">B.<span style=""> </span>labor is the only real cost</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"> Privately owned homes, spaces of personal existence not large enough or fertile enough to qualify as a “means of production” would not be likewise collectivized democratically.<span style=""> </span>The libertarian socialist does not rebel against the private in private property, they rebel against the property (possession used to extract rent, interest, or profit).<span style=""> </span>This allows for what I have termed free market socialism.<span style=""> </span>Another common misrepresentation of socialist motive is the idea that mutually beneficial trade is “capitalistic” or “exploitative”.<span style=""> </span>As long as I’ve been around the anarchist scene, (not that long, but long enough) I’m sure that there are some such misguided socialists out there to which this strawman might apply.<span style=""> </span>But it does not apply to my socialism.<span style=""> </span>If two people, who have justly acquired their possessions wish to trade these possessions, they may.<span style=""> </span>They may even set a time and place for it, making a market.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"> Now, I can already hear your next question.<span style=""> </span>What definitively qualifies something as a MoP?<span style=""> </span>If, for example, a man were to make himself a hammer through his labor and trade, the hammer would exist as both a product and valid means of production.<span style=""> </span></p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"> The rule is simple – the right of the hammer-maker to access the product of his labor takes precedence.<span style=""> </span>Collectivization in any form must <i>must</i> <b>must</b> <b><i>must</i></b> <b><i><u>must</u></i></b> always be unanimously consensual.<span style=""> </span>In this way, free market socialism is not a “revolutionary” ideology.<span style=""> </span>It is an ideology rooted fundamentally in the doctrine of methodological individualism, which asserts that society as a transcendental meta-organism does not exist.<span style=""> </span>There are only individuals.<span style=""> </span>Before the concerned “social” anarchist misunderstand me, I suggest reviewing the great anarcho-communist Emma Goldman’s immortal treatise “The Individual, Society, And The State”.<span style=""> </span>Even the staunchest collectivists admit some degree of methodological individualism.<span style=""> </span>It is precisely this individualism that entails an opposition to every coercive revolution.<span style=""> </span>Revolutionary anarchists are those anarchists that still harbor the last traces of lust for death on a battlefield, a mystical glory reserved for martyrs and soldiers.<span style=""> </span>A free market socialist believes that if you don’t allow your worst ideological opponent to dance during and through it’s days unscathed, no revolution can be just. </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"> If any questions remain of free market socialism, I will readily answer them at anyone’s sincere behest.</p>B. M. Burnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06997489854880832172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8307693478558295341.post-58585728924045454732008-05-29T08:32:00.000-07:002008-05-29T08:36:02.439-07:00Disgusting Things That Can Be Wonderful<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Necrophagy</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">At first, eating dead human bodies may seem taboo.<span style=""> </span>But think of what a waste it is.<span style=""> </span>There are a billion starving people on this planet, you can’t tell me we’re too good to do a bit of recycling.<span style=""> </span>I mean, people eat crickets.<span style=""> </span>They eat monkey brains.<span style=""> </span>What’s wrong with a dead human body?<span style=""> </span>You’d have to make certain it was dead, of course.<span style=""> </span>Go through all the standard procedures to bring it back to life.<span style=""> </span>But if you’re prepared to call a corpse a corpse, bon apetit!<span style=""> </span>Why let a natural resource as renewable and natural as this just go to waste rotting in the ground?<span style=""> </span>And why waste money and time on all the elaborate ceremony normally associated with dying?<span style=""> </span>Again, for as long as LIVE people are withering away in the gutters, it seems a mite irresponsible to send flowers and love to a dead person.<span style=""> </span>It’s really insane when you think about it.<span style=""> </span>What’s a dead guy gonna do with a beautiful floral arrangement and a custom-carved coffin?<span style=""> </span>Absolutely nothing.<span style=""> </span>And if the grieving are looking for a place and time to mourn, there’s no better place than the thanksgiving table adorned with gourmet remains of the dearly departed.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Nudism</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Nudism is wonderful.<span style=""> </span>You might be shy, at first.<span style=""> </span>You might think it’s weird, at first.<span style=""> </span>But there’s nothing WRONG with it.<span style=""> </span>It’s certainly not a punishable offense.<span style=""> </span>You can’t say other people don’t have the right to lack clothing.<span style=""> </span>For as long as you are entitled to close your eyes at immediate command, a nudist is entitled to do whatever they want as naked as they want.<span style=""> </span>Naked babies are cute, but naked adults aren’t?<span style=""> </span>Then stay home and don’t associate with any, dumbass.<span style=""> </span>The law wasn’t established to protect the sensibilities of your petulant aesthetic preferences.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Pansexuality</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Under the heading of pansexuality I include all parasexualities.<span style=""> </span>Homosexuality and every possible “philia”.<span style=""> </span>What’s the big damn deal, people?<span style=""> </span>If a man and a woman can get married, there’s no reason a man and another man can’t get garried.<span style=""> </span>That’s right, garriage.<span style=""> </span>It’s like marriage, but with a “g” instead of an “m”.<span style=""> </span>Now that all you sanctity-of-marriage idiots don’t have anything to bitch about, we can start inventing new words for every possible perversion pining for it’s own institutional acknowledgment.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Suicide</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Suicide is horrible.<span style=""> </span>You know what’s even worse?<span style=""> </span>A living torture of abject existential destitution and 60 years of writhing in the thrownness of cruelty and human fault.<span style=""> </span>I’m tired of suicide being thought of as it’s own problem.<span style=""> </span>Here are the real problems:</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Abuse</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Rape</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Oppression</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Hunger</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Thirst</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Delusion</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">All of these thing make someone want to commit suicide, but THEY are the problem, not the suicide!<span style=""> </span>If you aren’t prepared to help a person, if you aren’t prepared to fix the substandard conditions of their miserable life, you aren’t prepared to tell them they have to go on living just for the sake of continuing to clog up this vastly overpopulated planet.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p>B. M. Burnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06997489854880832172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8307693478558295341.post-68888149779757770682008-05-26T20:11:00.000-07:002008-05-27T18:36:25.554-07:00Human Nature and the Prescription of Proscription by Means of Description<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p><br /> The most central question to any serious consideration of anarchism is that of human nature.<span style=""> </span>The debate is an ancient one, and may best be summed up as, absent of any contact with society and it’s chains of conforming conservation – it’s politics, morality, aesthetic opinion, and abstractions – what remains of a single human’s humanity?<span style=""> </span>What are the holds-true-in-all-cases assertions a person is logically entitled to make about their own species?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=""> </span>The term human nature possesses two parts, the adjective and the noun.<span style=""> </span>It may be reconsidered as the nature of humans, or the properties of the natural human, but if those rewordings imply any science differently than the colloquial “human nature”, we will surely prove to be at the mercy of our language, the mercy of ideas we’ve invented after the fact of our humanity.<span style=""> </span>So let us analyze the fullest spectrum of interpretations in order to make our conclusion.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">First, to define nature.<span style=""> </span>We’ve all heard the poems and paeans in praise of what is popularly understood to be nature – the trees and the squirrels and the bees and the pearls – but this is nature perceived in a xenophobic frame.<span style=""> </span>It is nature minus what is considered it’s chief production, human society.<span style=""> </span>By this logic does the word unnatural make it’s entrance, that anything man makes is seperate, either above or below, from what made him.<span style=""> </span>It is the synonymization of the words “unnatural” and “artificial”, where all of man is none of nature, and vice versa.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Nature understood more widely, as the deterministic consequences of each moment becoming the next, not only includes man, but includes all the species that may arise after or by his influence: cyborgs, tabletops, lampshades, microwave ovens.<span style=""> </span>Every one the evolutionary consequence of man’s inquiring mind and idle hand.<span style=""> </span>This conception of mother Earth does not dictate that nature existed only in the past, as some “state of affairs” where either the tyranny was red in tooth and claw, or the liberty was white in primitivism and paw.<span style=""> </span>It merely acknowledges the existence of reality as a descriptive entity, and a susceptibility to rapid or gradual fluctuation as it’s prime attribute.<span style=""> </span>Nature, then, is anything that has ever happened or was.<span style=""> </span>Nature is history.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">What is human?<span style=""> </span>Well, nothing is, really.<span style=""> </span>Human is a syndrome, a set of attributes possessed by an organism.<span style=""> </span>Humanity is a binary measurement, answers either yes or no to whether a creature meets all the requirements of identicality to some arbitrarily agreed upon stage of transition in the continual process of evolution.<span style=""> </span>So what if we share 50% of our DNA with the banana, does that mean the banana is 50% human?<span style=""> </span>Who knows.<span style=""> </span>But we may say with certainty that while nothing in existence is purely human, all things are to varying degrees more or less human.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">So it is, in light of these slippery words, with much care that we should approach human nature.<span style=""> </span>There are many people out there who would attempt to bamboozle you with the term.<span style=""> </span>In fact, the tendency is so common as to have garnished it’s own stature as a fallacy – the appeal to nature (a fallacy of relevance). </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The appeal to nature is a fallacy because of what students of philosophy know as the problem of induction.<span style=""> </span>The problem of induction is a conundrum that asks, when we throw an apple into the air and watch it come down, how can we know with certainty it will continue to do so in the future, under the same circumstances?<span style=""> </span>How many times must we observe gravity in order to know that it will always be there?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The answer is: we can’t.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">We cannot know anything based upon what was.<span style=""> </span>We can make guesses, certainly.<span style=""> </span>We can perform experiments, and set up <i>conditional</i> guarantees, but we can know nothing absolutely.<span style=""> </span>For example, on the condition that the theory of gravity holds true (and nothing obstructs it), the apple will continue to fall. On the condition that it doesn’t, it may not.<span style=""> </span>Correct conclusions are dependent upon correct precepts, but no precept can be categorically guaranteed, meaning we can never know whether or not they are true.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">So, when we speak of human nature, what we <i>really</i> mean is social history.<span style=""> </span>Social history tells many tales, tales of Christians being eaten by lions, tales of celebrated pedophilia, tales of Zeus and Thor. <span style=""> </span>Tales of genocide, war, and an 1,000 year dark age of religious integrity and barbaric practices.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Then came Gutenberg.<span style=""> </span>People began to read, and they began to understand. In a literal sense, humanity had first sunk it’s teeth into that forbidden apple from the tree of knowledge.<span style=""> </span>The spirit of humanism and the Enlightenment bloomed.<span style=""> </span>Monarchies descended (or were violently thrust) into comparatively libertarian Republics and Democracies.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">And as the centuries rolled by, government, at least in ratio to population, decreased.<span style=""> </span>No longer is <i>cat burning</i> any man’s idea of a good night out on the town.<span style=""> </span>And that particular attraction was popular even into the 16th century.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>So it must be realized that yesterday’s conservatism is today’s reactionism.<span style=""> </span>And so too will today’s conservative be tomorrow's reactionary.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>“We know what we are, but not what we may be."</p><p class="MsoNormal">-<span style="font-style: italic;">William Shakespeare, Hamlet</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p></o:p></span></p>B. M. Burnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06997489854880832172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8307693478558295341.post-58148451982378939502008-05-18T17:34:00.000-07:002008-05-29T12:28:45.643-07:00Debunking Common Myths About Anarchism<p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">Anarchism.<span style=""> </span>What is it?</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Some will tell you that Anarchism is violence.</p><div> </div><div> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Some will tell you it is chaos.</p><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Some will tell you it is Utopian. </p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Some will tell you it is oppressive.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Some will tell you it is an abandonment of technology.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Some will tell you it is <i>unrealistic.</i></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Some will tell you it is Marxist.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Some will tell you it is tolerance of anything.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">All of these people are lying, deliberately or not.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Anarchism is the decision that all relationships can and should be characterized by consent rather than coercion.<span style=""> </span>That is all.<span style=""> </span></p><div> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Why is Anarchism not violence?</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Because violence has nothing to do with ethics or politics.<span style=""> </span>Violence happens everywhere, even on Venus where the sky is filled with lightning and the ground with lava.<span style=""> </span>Violence is hated by anarchists, but only when it is committed upon a person without that person’s consent.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Why is Anarchism not chaos?</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Because chaos is anomie.<span style=""> </span>Anomie is the absence of order, direction, and meaning.<span style=""> </span>Anarchists think that order is wonderful, because when people are free to use their minds to design their own lives, they can best accommodate themselves with others to whatever ends they may desire. </p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Why is Anarchism not Utopian?</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Utopia (or, On the Best State of a Republic and on the New Island of Utopia) was a novel written by Thomas More about an island where, according to Wikipedia:</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>- Every household has two slaves.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premarital_sex" title="Premarital sex">Premarital sex</a> is punished by a lifetime of enforced <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celibacy" title="Celibacy">celibacy</a>, and adultery punished by enslavement.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism" title="Atheism">Atheists</a> are despised... as they are seen as representing a danger to the state.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>- Women are not given a high degree of equality in the society. Wives are subject to their husbands and are restricted to conducting household tasks.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">All of these things are anathema to Anarchy, and all Anarchists rebuke them.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Why is Anarchism not oppression?</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Because all oppression is coercive.<span style=""> </span>Some will try to set up the straw man that Anarchy is <i>any</i> place that does not possess a formally recognized State, even places with chieftains and warlords.<span style=""> </span>But that is not true at all.<span style=""> </span>Chieftains and warlords are tyrants, the worst kind of government, and Anarchists hate tyrants arguably more than anything else.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Why is Anarchism not an abandonment of technology?</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Because technology helps everyone.<span style=""> </span>Technology is, literally, the study of technicalities.<span style=""> </span>It’s given us bicycles, bifocals, windmills, and houses.<span style=""> </span>It has also given us dangerous things like H-bombs, but anarchists oppose these technologies alone because their sole use is to kill others, in blatant violation of anarchist ethics (unless you count deploying them to blow up incoming apocalyptic asteroids).</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Why is Anarchism not unrealistic?</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Because it does not violate natural law.<span style=""> </span>If, for example, I were to claim that we should all live in flying houses and use free energy, I would bear a burden of proof that this was possible.<span style=""> </span>Anarchism by itself does not propose anything like this, and is therefore quite realistic.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Why is Anarchism not Marxist?</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">To put it simply, because Karl Marx was not an Anarchist.<span style=""> </span>He believed in a tightly controlled State where civil liberties are strictly suppressed.<span style=""> </span>His ideas and their effects permanently destroy the idea that Anarchism has anything to do with Leftism.</p><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Why is Anarchism not a tolerance of anything?</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal">Because a tolerance of anything is apolitical ambivalence, not Anarchism.<span style=""> </span>Anarchists are intolerant towards <i>coercively imposed authority</i> and <i>hierarchy</i>.<span style=""> </span>Always.<span style=""> </span>Anarchists do not make the mistake of thinking that fascists can live with fascists, communists with communists, and other illusions of ideological segregation.<span style=""> </span>There is one objective reality, and consequently, one ideology worth promoting.<span style=""> </span>Anarchism, the abandonment of abolition and the prohibition of mandation.<span style=""> </span></p>B. M. Burnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06997489854880832172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8307693478558295341.post-56374998587878651462008-05-17T16:49:00.000-07:002008-05-17T20:13:24.441-07:00195 States, So Little Time<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">That is the official count.<span style=""> </span>195 seperate and mutually contradictory manifestations of rulership, living together not-so-peacefully on planet Earth.<span style=""> </span>Every other standing eternally as each one’s justification.<span style=""> </span>All of them subversively disseminating xenophobia, crime, and bad will towards our fellow man.<span style=""> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Some are undeniably better than others, of course.<span style=""> </span>Who is willing to argue that domestic life in the United States is worse than domestic life in, say, Iran?<span style=""> </span>Indisputably very few.<span style=""> </span>But this no more makes me a patriot than not being murdered makes a rape victim a happily wedded woman.<span style=""> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Too often do people think of “THE government” as a fixed entity, some homogeneous hominid deity making things safe for us from afar.<span style=""> </span>Government is an <i>action</i>.<span style=""> </span>It is a transgression.<span style=""> </span>When I am instructed to be at a certain place by a certain time, by threat of physical retaliation, I am being governed.<span style=""> </span>I may not know it, because I may comply with it’s dictates, out of sloth or ignorance.<span style=""> </span>But when I fail to show up at whatever camp I’m interred at – be it a workplace or school building – then I am introduced to government’s real face, a face inflamed with rage and violence.<span style=""> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">It is when one combines the continued occurance of these despicable actions, induced by a majority as an indissoluble given, and a generalization of a variable quantity of humen into a “society” or “nation” (forgetting the obvious truth of methodological individualism), that a State is formed.<span style=""> </span>A State, a celebrated coalition of thieves and liars, claiming necessity in the existence of <i>other</i> thieves and <i>other</i> liars.<span style=""> </span>Without someone deceiving the deceivers, you will be deceived, says the State.<span style=""> </span>Without someone murdering the murderers, you will be murdered, says the State.<span style=""> </span>There is a name for this fallacy – it’s popular name is “two wrongs make a right”.<span style=""> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">If you don’t support genocide, don’t commit it.<span style=""> </span>If you don’t support marriage, don’t get married.<span style=""> </span>It’s that simple, and that’s as far as our moral prescriptions to other people should go.<span style=""> </span>Never should we presuppose the necessity of retribution or retaliation, for if one man can be convinced to restrain a murderer, that murderer could just as easily be convinced to restrain himself.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">And if that is not the case, what is the use of speaking?<span style=""> </span>Keep your guns close and your suspicions closer, because some men can’t be trusted regardless of your words.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style=""> </span>Anarchism is the name given to the struggle for a society wherein each actor has a say in each decision to the degree they are affected by it, as one t-shirt so eloquently puts it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">I couldn’t say it better myself.<span style=""> </span>An anarchist is a person that trusts liberty fully – not conditionally or contractually.<span style=""> </span>And in order for us to realize it, in order to cross out each State from the list of world countries as if we were marking off collected groceries from a grocery list, we’ll have to do more than speak out.<span style=""> </span>We’ll have to live in accordance with our principles.<span style=""> </span>As the saying goes, anarchism does not stop at the doorstep.<span style=""> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Wherever and whenever, we must not choose to rule.<span style=""> </span>We must choose to not permit the continued existence of fallacious self-justifying authority.<span style=""> </span>Do not be offended if your friend is wearing clothes not fit for some occasion you both plan to attend.<span style=""> </span>The stigma is his consequence to reap.<span style=""> </span>If you yourself are bothered by his appearance, be honest and say so, but do not presume to speak for others too afraid to.<span style=""> </span>Do not say, “you cannot wear those clothes because <b>those others</b> will not like it”.<span style=""> </span>If that is the case, let those others speak when the occasion arises!<span style=""> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Anarchism entails liberty, liberty entails honesty, honesty entails personal responsibility.<span style=""> </span>A duty to your own happiness and nobody else’s, a deed to your own life alone.<span style=""> </span>Live, and let live.</p><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Love, and let hate; hate, and let love.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Do any thing, save make it certain for another.<br /></p>B. M. Burnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06997489854880832172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8307693478558295341.post-11275352164839913982008-05-16T18:02:00.000-07:002008-05-17T16:55:13.114-07:00Am I (an Anarchist) Conservative?<p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.kirkcenter.org/kirk/ten-principles.html">http://www.kirkcenter.org/kirk/ten-principles.html</a></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">Where is Confucius’ dictionary of political clarity when you really need it? Although, written by a guy named Confucius, it probably wouldn’t turn out all that clear anyway.<span style=""> </span>Today I’m going to introspectively analyze Russel Kirk’s <i>Ten Conservative Principles</i>, currently available at <a href="http://www.kirkcenter.org/">www.kirkcenter.org</a>.<span style=""> </span>Feel free to tag along on this ethical journey, just to see what Socratic falsification we can squeeze out of this clash. </p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">“1. First, the conservative believes that there exists an <a href="http://www.kirkcenter.org/kirk/ten-principles.html#one">enduring moral order</a>.”</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">Well, that’s great news, so do I.<span style=""> </span>I’d say that’s the basis for my anarchism, in fact.<span style=""> </span>I love morality and ethics.<span style=""> </span>Especially in hypothetical life-boat situations. It’s fun to intuit discrepancies in my own instincts and what causes them.<span style=""> </span>In general, I subscribe to a ‘choose the path of least harm’ principle, neither overtly pacifist nor overtly activist.<span style=""> </span></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">“Our twentieth-century world has experienced the hideous consequences of the collapse of belief in a moral order. Like the atrocities and disasters of Greece in the fifth century before Christ, the ruin of great nations in our century shows us the pit into which fall societies that mistake clever self-interest, or ingenious social controls, for pleasing alternatives to an oldfangled moral order.” </p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">Preach on, brother!<span style=""> </span>With villains like Hitler and Pol Pot and Stalin, I don’t think anyone could possibly disagree here.<span style=""> </span>But that oldfangled moral order line seems a bit metathesiaphobic for my taste.<span style=""> </span>What qualifies for oldfangled?<span style=""> </span>Would Plato’s republic or Athen’s democracy qualify?<span style=""> </span>If so, would you be as eagerly defending man-boy love as you do American conservatism?<span style=""> </span>Just an honest inquiry, as there has to be some other argument for conservatism than the fallacy known as the Appeal to Tradition.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">“2. Second, the conservative adheres to <a href="http://www.kirkcenter.org/kirk/ten-principles.html#two">custom, convention, and continuity</a>.”</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">That’s a Yes, Yes, and capital Yes for me.<span style=""> </span>I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone walking around in billowing 16th century garb outside the Ren Fest.<span style=""> </span>In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed it.<span style=""> </span>Never public nudity either.<span style=""> </span>And as far as ritual Aztec cannibalism is concerned, you can count me right out, I’ll have no part of it.<span style=""> </span></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>But... where are these people that <b>don’t</b> adhere to custom, convention, and continuity?<span style=""> </span>Everyone does!<span style=""> </span>Your championed trait is as distinguishing as any bee that likes being busy!<span style=""> </span>Welcome to sociology 101, this phenomenon is known as socialization.<span style=""> </span>It happens.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">“3. Third, conservatives believe in what may be called the <a href="http://www.kirkcenter.org/kirk/ten-principles.html#three">principle of prescription</a>.”</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">“Conservatives argue that we are unlikely, we moderns, to make any brave new discoveries in morals or politics or taste. It is perilous to weigh every passing issue on the basis of private judgment and private rationality. The individual is foolish, but the species is wise, Burke declared.”</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">I imagine the ancients must have imagined the same thing.<span style=""> </span>That is, except for those individuals we remember them for – Plato, Aristotle, Socrates.<span style=""> </span>They all spent considerable time in personal musing upon man and his place in society, even constructing complex theories to fit their arbitration.<span style=""> </span>Plato’s Re Publica, for example.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">Oh, I apologize, I think I just hijacked your appeal to authority.<span style=""> </span>Oops.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">“4. Fourth, conservatives are guided by their <a href="http://www.kirkcenter.org/kirk/ten-principles.html#four">principle of prudence</a>.”</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">“Liberals and radicals, the conservative says, are imprudent: for they dash at their objectives without giving much heed to the risk of new abuses worse than the evils they hope to sweep away.”</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">I completely agree here.<span style=""> </span>I’m as pensive and prudent as they come, folks.<span style=""> </span>But you might want to PM these folks with that memo:</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan</a></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">Reactionary revolution.<span style=""> </span>Who’d a thunk it?</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">“5. Fifth, conservatives pay attention to the <a href="http://www.kirkcenter.org/kirk/ten-principles.html#five">principle of variety</a>.”</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">Damn, it getting to seem like anarchism and conservatism are a rose by any name!<span style=""> </span>I love variety too (some call it chaos, but I call it liberty).</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">“They feel affection for the proliferating intricacy of long-established social institutions and modes of life, as distinguished from the narrowing uniformity and deadening egalitarianism of radical systems.”</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">Mmmm... I suppose the radical system that was and is the United State’s constitution qualifies as well.<span style=""> </span>I certainly support <i>it’s</i> abandonment.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">“6. Sixth, conservatives are chastened by their <a href="http://www.kirkcenter.org/kirk/ten-principles.html#six">principle of imperfectability</a>.”</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">You’re right, Russel.<span style=""> </span>Why bother?<span style=""> </span>Man is imperfect.<span style=""> </span>Nobody’s individual opinion or judgment can be trusted, and all we end up with is totalitarian plutocracy, time and time again.<span style=""> </span>“Utopian domination” isn’t something to strive for, because it just makes things worse.<span style=""> </span>Let’s strive for ubiquitous liberation (and non-interventionist solitude, in case of imperfection) instead.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">“7. <span class="subhead">Seventh, conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><span class="subhead"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">Well certainly.<span style=""> </span>I think freedom is a nicer synonym for power.<span style=""> </span>And what grants power more than property?<span style=""> </span>Property is a social contract, albeit an injust one, and without the necessities of life, property is nothing more than social blackmail.<span style=""> </span>Property, then, is the means by which the abuse of freedom is preserved.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">“8. <span class="subhead">Eighth, conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.”</span><span style=""> </span></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">Holy crap! This could pass for the central anarchist creed!<span style=""> </span></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">“For a nation is no stronger than the numerous little communities of which it is composed.”</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">Substituting individuals for communities in the above sentence, I concur.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">“9. <span class="subhead">Ninth, the conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><span class="subhead"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">Me too.<span style=""> </span>These restraints must come from within the power holder, because it is impossible to deprive everyone of any power by which they could oppress another, and even if it was possible, might qualify as oppression itself.<span style=""> </span>Instead, we must each of us recognize the universality of natural consequence, and strive to the maximum personal preference in the expenditure of our own time – a sort of lazze faire hedonism, or epicureanism if you will. </p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">“10. <span class="subhead">Tenth, the thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><span class="subhead"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><span class="subhead">Reification, my friend.<span style=""> </span>There is no permanence, all is flux.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><span class="subhead"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">“he is opposed to the cult of Progress, whose votaries believe that everything new necessarily is superior to everything old.”</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">Bifurcation.<span style=""> </span>You believe I think everything new is superior to anything old, and I suspect you think that everything old is better than anything new.<span style=""> </span>The truth?<span style=""> </span>Neither.<span style=""> </span>Things are better and worse as subjective interpretation dictates. <span style=""> </span>What this entails is your admitted greatest fear:<span style=""> </span>THOUGHT.<span style=""> </span>Arbitration.<span style=""> </span>Judgment.<span style=""> </span>Individual evaluation.<span style=""> </span>Your mind stagnates at the conclusion of a fallacy, mine riddles with eternal paradoxes.</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">I recall the words of Blake:</p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">“I mock thee not;<br />though by thee I am mocked<br />Thou call'st me madman<br />I call thee blockhead”.<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">We are not so different, you and I, Mr. conservative.<span style=""> </span>The majority of your sound-bites I applaud.<span style=""> </span>But under serious scrutiny, your conclusions are laughably naive.<span style=""> </span>Get back to me when conservatives of every country agree with one another to the degree anarchists of all countries do.<span style=""> </span>Perhaps then we’ll have enough in common to merit dialouge.<span style=""> </span>Until then, keep servicing the status quo ante.</p>B. M. Burnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06997489854880832172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8307693478558295341.post-88073146856429510682008-05-14T19:59:00.000-07:002008-05-17T16:58:55.579-07:00The Collusion of Domain and Property and a Critique of Pruvlic Allocation<div style="text-align: center;">What is public? Were the “whites only” and “blacks only” water fountains of the racist USA, respectively, public property? They certainly weren’t private property. Yet, a black person couldn’t drink from a public water fountain. And a white person either, for that matter, if there ever were any whites in want of drink from the “blacks only” fountains. So we must then ask, what is private?<br /><br /> We must eschew the Hegelian duality of these terms in order to properly understand them. Most people will agree that private property is that which is owned by one person. Most people will also agree that public property is that which is owned by all people. So what were the color-specific fountains of old, in reality? They were Pruvlic property. The property of a few. The property of the function f = (2, n - 1), where n is the number of people eligible to possess property in existence. There has been, until this time, no recognition of this state of ownership, with a continual argument taking place from the peaks of the ivory tower to the slums of the cardboard ghetto, with one side arguing that all that is not private must be public, and the other, vice versa.<br /><br /> Whole ideologies and economic systems have been established and destroyed in terms of these two “p” words. Just look at the definitions of Capitalism and Communism. One espouses the immortal divinity of the private, the other, the public. Then examine their realities. Both of their primary incarnations possessed a government. Both of them possessed massive violations of human rights in some form or another. It was Stalin’s regime, after all, that initiated the Great Purge, in aim of silencing dissent by robbing people of the ownership of their bodies, health, and life. And the homeless and starving of the United States remains an uncalculated number, not to mention their government’s conquests outside their territory, which arguably rival their inner crimes.<br /><br /> But wait! What was that we just tripped over? A clue to this unnavigable puzzle, perhaps? The United States territory. Ah. The United States owns something. What does it own? Perhaps it owns it’s citizenry? Well in that case, how can it’s citizenry own anything? Are there differing degrees of own? Whose ownership is final, the government’s, or it’s citizen’s? Well, according to US law, any citizen’s property may be confiscated by the government, aside proper monetary reimbursement, at any time for any “public” project. Well that answers that question.<br /><br />What say you? The United States owns merely the property of it’s citizens, but not the citizens themselves? Okay. So if I were to abandon my property and travel to Mexico, there would be no one to stop me? What are border guards there for, then? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Maybe it would be easier to say that the US owns the space in which all the collective property of it’s citizenry is owned. So then if all the US citizenry were to move to Mexico with me, what would the US own? How many different types of owning are there? Personal, material, spacial, spiritual? And how is it that under the Patriot Act, I can be detained and even tortured without due process of law? How can I be detained and tortured with due process of law? If that’s not the absence of private ownership of yourself, slavery, I don’t know what is.<br /><br />But now we know the truth. The designation of a state excludes public. The USSR was living a contradiction, and the USA still is, a lie. You see how much easier the distinction of Pruvlic makes things? It’s quite simple. You are the material property of any government you are living under. If it is a government of one person, like a monarchy or dictatorship, then you are privately owned. If it is a gerontocracy or plutocracy, you are pruvlicly owned. Owned by some. To be owned by all, is a state that requires as a prerequisite the fact that you own yourself, rendering null and void the concept of ownership, government, itself, as ownership is in any personal respect, a binary measurement. You either do, or you don’t. Same with property. So to regard the whole of Japanese land as the “public property” of the Japanese citizenry is blatantly false, on multiple levels.<br /><br /> Not only do I not own it, but even they don’t own it. It is the pruvlic property of the Japanese government, or just Japan, for short. Those that have yet to equivocate private property and government could argue that point, (communists, lovers of the government, and anarcho-capitalists, lovers of private property) but straight down the ticket anarchists know better. If the entire island of Japan was forklifted into the air, dropped over the Asian continent and found itself smack dab on top of Beijing, would the island now belong to China? Or would it still belong to Japan? Wouldn’t a theft of this magnitude depracticate retribution and restoration?<br /><br /> This is the example by which I shall advent the differenciation of material ownership, and spacial ownership. Material ownership, or property, is the claim to the rights to alter and unalter a certain substance. Spacial ownership, or domain, is the claim to the rights to dictate what material comprises a certain space. The difference is subtle, but as illustrated with the following example, important. Imagine a person in the comfort and privacy of their own home. They are sitting in their favorite lazy chair reading a book, smoking a pipe, in dim but suitable lighting.<br /><br />Suddenly, a stranger bursts through the door, walks into the homeowner’s kitchen, and begins to fix himself a sandwich. Now, the capitalist would claim that the main problem with the above scenario was the fact that the stranger has taken the man’s sandwich, which he presumably materialistically owns. The communist might retort that the only reason the stranger would ever dare enter another’s home was that the stranger must have been starving/abused/enslaved, and call for the abolition of the private ownership of sandwiches. What they both fail miserably to realize, is that amongst all this generalizing and posited justification, there is literally no economic difference between these two scenarios that is worth arguing about. In either case, you have the same net worth of sandwich to distribute, and regardless of how it is distributed, somebody is going hungry to whatever extent they don’t end up consuming said sandwich. The real problem with the scenario is not that the stranger is doing anything in particular, rather that he or she was there in the first place, whether they needed to be there or not. What we have, really, is a person reading a book peacefully under the presumption that they can do so alone and in peace, (exerting spacial ownership) and having this presumption violated by a person with no respect for privacy, or the concept of private domain. It would have been just as bad had the stranger walked in and attempted to read over the homeowner’s shoulder. Yet the difference (or similarity) between these cases has no recognized legitimacy by so many of all the political pulpits.<br /><br /> Pruvlic property is kept invisible by the silent collusion of property and domain, and only a few other sleights of mind. In Anarchy, however, these differences are faced and tackled head on, because Anarchy is the best (only) organizational system there is, willing to not just identify but SOLVE these non-ad-hominem problems and others like it. Abolish pruvlic property, be controlled by neither some nor one. An Anarchist pwns the State that owns.</div>B. M. Burnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06997489854880832172noreply@blogger.com0