Not a great time to turn against institutions.

People tend to forget that our institutions are built by society. They should operate as our collective mind. Incremental improvement beats giant leaps of epistemology.

Yes - Nietzsche calls out what the masses were doing at his time. He generally states it's a bad way to live, but masses today just here that what they're doing was called out by a philosopher.

I bet everyone who downvoted this hasn't read that book lol

I honestly don't think it takes an extraordinary degree of intelligence to systematically view the world through an objective lens. What it does take is the will to embark on that journey. Which isn't to say everyone will reach the same destination either, although I do personally believe there are several irrefutable conclusions that have been proven as best courses from my own explorations, usually we are denied the ability to even discuss on this basis as the idea of forging our own path simply does not have much traction in our current culture.

Your example of r/politics is unfortunately a demonstration of furthering political tribalism, in my experience at least. It's not so much a demonstration of the average person's ability to objectively examine how they view the world so much as an indictment of how little that is encouraged by our culture.

EDIT: a word

I think you mean Henry David Thoreau, student of Emerson who wrote Walden Pond. Thats the bit where he lived on his mothers land while she brought him sandwiches but wrote like he was roughin it.

I thought it was quite well written. The first half seemed annoyingly shallow—but once it got to the meat that was the point. Philosophy requires context.

I would argue that there is a difference in the way we behave versus "nature" in the sense that human beings reject things that are beneficial or even critical to their survival, in the pursuit of less concrete aims.

Your example of the beehive got me thinking about that film with Jerry Seinfeld, The Bee Movie. The plot of the film anthropomorphizes the human ideal of freedom of choice on a worker bee. From a natural perspective, this makes no sense. Worker bees simply do not question their nature. However, the idea of being born to simply perform a task until we die sits poorly on the human mind.

Fascinating read, thanks for sharing!

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You are a series of continually dying entities.

Assumption(s) made for this concept: There is no soul and the brain creates consciousness.

Based on that assumption, each consciousness must arise somehow from the specific ways in which matter is arranged in the brain. My consciousness is different from your consciousness and I am not you simply because our brains are arranged in different states of consciousness. But if each arrangement of matter in a brain is its own consciousness (assuming it is a consciousness at all), then the You of yesterday is an entirely different consciousness from the You of today as your brains are different. The You of yesterday is not here anymore; thus, it is dead. In fact, this happens every moment as your brain updates and changes every moment. You may see yourself as something continuous, but you only just came into existence and you're about to- oops, you already died, but you don't know it. Instead there's another being conscious in your place which has your memories.

This is not just a metaphorical interpretation; this is a literal interpretation. If death is interpreted as the destruction of consciousness, something that calls itself "you" literally dies every moment and actually there is no true "you", just a constant illusion covered in death.

Thoughts?

I think the author would make the argument that all of the dominants he listed have as a feature the threat of physical coercion. Granted, it doesn't include the bully down the street who wants your lunch money, but you could make the argument that the bully is on some level, a monarch. He rules his sidewalk with an iron fist, and only a bigger force will depose him.

I won't say the list is perfect, but I do think it goes beyond simply listing modern authorities.

It's been said already that anarchism is not an end, rather a process by which we make what we have better.

Anarchy as a system will never be a thing institutionally, as that is contrary to the very nature of anarchy. The author points this out, that anarchy isn't organized in the traditional sense, but rather organically. I think he actually illustrates this well by using examples of friendship. People don't generally take well to a forced friendship; they would rather happen upon it organically--if it happens, it happens. Anarchy supposes this as a universal good. If life can thrive organically without a dominant, that life is better for it.

I don't think anyone could successfully argue that anarchy in its purest form, without any dominant, is possible. Rather, how can we remove the most pervasive dominants that we no longer require to thrive?

Proof no one reads the article just the title

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I’ve heard that Nietzsche (who is often misquoted so I might be wrong here) said “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” so the pain you feel at the gym is only the pain that will make you stronger in the future. I don’t know if I’m doing Nietzsche justice but have a look into his stuff if you’re interested in the philosophy of leading a healthy life

So my idea of anarchy is making a choice for your personal situation based on your own morals regardless of the law. When I drive home from work today there are some stretches of the interstate that normally aren’t too busy, but the speed limit is 70mph I can safely and comfortably go 80mph so when I can I do go 80mph. My view of anarchism doesn’t mean looting and burning shit. Societies since the beginning of time have used natural law before a “state” existed do no harm to others and do no harm to the earth. MLK had a really good quote in his “letter from Birmingham jail” that to me is an anarchistic ideology “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws”

There used to be this idea of Unilineal Cultural Evolution which we've dispelled. I'm not sure it was so much that Rome had influence, in that people viewed cultures as a linear progression from one era to the next, with more "advanced" cultures being the evolutionary pinnacle of humanity, and that anyone not as "advanced" was simply unevolved. We obviously know this is not true nor correct, but as a whole, at least in academia, it wasn't until recently that this shifted, and continues to shift.

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It just seems like if you did read the posted piece, you should read it again. It might help clear up your questions.

I want to add another great work of fiction portraying ararchic ways of life is A Country of Ghosts by Margaret Killjoy. Oh and Walkaway by Cory Doctorow.

People who appeal to nature should be shown the top 10 from r/natureismetal

Great article! I think Nietzsche is overrated, but through no fault of his own. It's this almost worshipful attitude some people have toward him (I even saw someone refer to him once as "the great prophet Nietzsche"), and it's like... That kind of person tends to think that he has all the answers that will work for everyone and anyone; if they don't, you're just not "trying hard enough" (which, having grown up fundamentalist Christian, sounds familiar!). I think often those are the people who don't really get his work, too. Because I mean... Haven't they just replaced God with Nietzsche? Kinda undercuts what he was saying, actually. That is, turns out what happens is that people will just invent new gods. Although of course not everyone does that.

> What are some examples of successful ones?

The untold thousands of years of primitive communism, which led to the domination of the human species over the planet, is often considered an example of humanity's success as a species. We could consider the end of these cultures, often eradicated by empires through conquest and colonization, as failure, but I think an argument could also be made that conquest and colonization were a response to the failure of empire.

I like to use science as a good example of a cooperative free exchange that betters humanity, and contributes one of the greatest successes of the human race. Science constantly rubs up against hierarchy, competition, and privatization, which have all inhibited its ability to better our lives.

> It looks like you're describing Communism, which we tried and doesn't work.

This is an overly simplistic understanding of what people mean by communism. You might be thinking specifically of the USSR, which was not structured as a communist (or even socialist) society, but an attempt to eventually evolve into one. It does demonstrate the difficulty in taking a feudal society and trying to make it communist in a capitalist world, but it does not prove that communism is impossible.

> But see both socialism and fascism (which isn't an economic model, but I understand what you're trying to say) are both extensions of capitalism, not new systems entirely.

Fascist regimes, thus far, have had capitalist economies integrated into their political system. Some have described fascism as the merging of capitalism with government.

Socialism is not capitalist as it doesn't have capital. The word "capitalism" was invented by early socialists to describe an economy system focused on capital rather than society. Socialism abolishes capital (private property, employers, employees, etc.) and thus is no more capitalist than feudalism or other alternative economies that don't contain capital.

> It isn't accurate to say that we are doomed to back pedal as a direct result of not engaging with a hypothetical utopian fantasy.

Anarchism isn't a hypothetical utopian fantasy. In fact, by definition, it is the opposite, as to presume that future generations would structure society exactly as historical thinkers imagined would be a form of inter-generational oppression. Anarchism is merely a critical framework, like feminism or environmentalism, directed at power dynamics in political structures.

They weren't stupid.

Tradition and dogma is historically more of a propagandistic self-justification of any act they wanted to commit, than any actually consistently defined system.

This "consulting the ancient texts" stuff sounds a lot like "They were just silly little guys, they didn't know better!"

Anarcho socialism is a thing.