There's two parts to this:

1. How do you prevent the people with arms in your community from banding together and taking over? Well, I'd imagine you'd spread defensive readiness across different sectors of your community, embedded within the populace. You would complement seasoned volunteers and appointed or elected leaders, probably with some measure of training for all adults. Ideally you would rotate your soldiers across communities too.

2. How does a society prevent a different society from gathering enough strength to conquer them? I don't know, that's an open question. Once any society has figured this out we can talk.

so what happens when someone decides not to?

if i choose 'no' and happen to be the largest producer of food for x region i can simply dominate. offer food to enough people to form my own militia and then only give food to those who do what i want.

you have no answer to this that isnt itself facing the same issue (the defence force is the easiest way to get your own militia, even if you didnt bribe them what if they did the same thing? were up to minor civil war now).

how do you prevent someone with resources using those resources to slowly gain control?

anarchy and libertarianism both rely on far too much hippy BS to ever function (no system ever conceived has survived the wealthy, ever)

Careful now. Treading on Fascism territory.

>Systems of governance create the conditions which consolidate wealth and power in some hands, and strip wealth and power from others. An anarchist society is not one without structures of governance, but one which radically distributes wealth and power to the individual by critiquing and eliminating unjustified forms of dominance.

in what possible way?

how does anarchy prevent or even limit this? if you have no state at all then all it takes is a charismatic individual with resources to slowly take over, if you do have some form of state then all it takes is an individual with enough resources to co-opt whatever 'state' or institution/s.

again anarchy and libertarianism rely on fantasy versions of human behavior, where people will magically not submit to rule by others despite all of human history disagreeing (pre-agricultural humanity is utterly irrelevant, its like saying we should look to chimps for advice on structuring society).

if the whole point is to just try and never give up then no system is any better or worse than any other, literally all of them have utopian visions for someone.

personally im on the point that short of annihilating the concept of property its not possible to avoid those who have the most resources using said resources to control others (the wealthy have dismantled literally every system ever implemented, just look at what people define 'capitalism' to be vs what it actually is)

> Cancer isn't societal (there are prehistoric skeletal remains with bone cancer).

The rarity of cancer in antiquity remains undisputed..

> Claiming otherwise is a rejection of the germ theory of disease, implicitly.

The author isn’t claiming otherwise.

this right here. it's presumed that more or better technology will improve outcome's for society, yet if we observe the world there are technologies that are clearly not so, such as the nuke. but then, digging deeper into the nuance, "society" is always conflated with the state, as all the state is, is a representation of "society" (even though both empirically and logically that hasn't nor ever will be the case, else you wouldn't really need different words for it, now would you?)

plus, digging deeper, there's even technology nowadays that is antagonistic even to the state, so even taking that definition is troublesome.

this is why fundamentally we need to view technology as a multiplier, but a multiplier of what, need's to be questioned and ascertained. we need to consciously understand that most technology isn't "ideologically unbiased", that moral imperative's are usually baked into not only the technology we use, but also the very science they are based on.

Well that's an anomalous reaction!

whats to stop the local defence council from simply taking over and becoming a defacto government?

never seen any actual mechanism to prevent strongmen/warlords or the inevitable return of some form of hierarchical state, just some nebulous BS about how the 'people' would stop it.

These are fascinating questions.

While that might be true for some things, such as situational depressions or disabilities that fit the social model better- the flu isn't societal. Cancer isn't societal (there are prehistoric skeletal remains with bone cancer). Norovirus, strep throat, measles, mumps. None of those are societal. Claiming otherwise is a rejection of the germ theory of disease, implicitly.

>Define the integrity of your own mind, Are you different when you wake up every morning?

Yes.

People who make this criticism have totally missed the whole point of Walden. It wasn't about isolation, it was about solitude.

He makes it perfectly clear in the book that he goes to town to see his friends and family every day. He makes it perfectly clear that it's Emerson's land.

He doesn't pretend to be a hermit. It's about the philosophical implications of spending time alone and thinking for yourself, not about being a recluse who depends on no one else.

The STEM surge ended well before this article was written. Business, nursing, and soft non-STEM social sciences have been the hot pursuits for almost a half decade now. Incoming students have likely caught wind of these programs attrition—Half of those who who start with STEM end with non-STEM degrees. a STEM students don’t need more humanities, they actually need more STEM, likely the remedial kind. Why are the stem nerds being singled out as the herd that needs virtue education in the first place? Stem personalities and abilities trend towards just and high according to my stereotype. Is this because of Zuck? Probably. Of any major that could use ethics as behavior training, Id imagine any of grimey business school ones as being more appropriate, at least in this new neoliberal capitalism paradigm. A decade earlier virtue and profiteering were a dipole given.

Most cases in which one is a freethinker has nothing to do with morality or self-interest.

Say that I've decided I really want to have long hair even though I'm a guy. But then, suddenly long hair on guys becomes incredibly popular as a fashion trend. A contrarian might cut their hair short even though they liked it long, just to be opposite of the pack.

But a true rebel just wears their hair long, because that's what they wanted in the first place and they don't give a shit what anyone else thinks. The popularity of long hair for men is totally irrelevant to their decision. They just do what they think is best regardless of others' actions.

You could extrapolate that out to apply to moral decisions too if you want but the logic of it all doesn't have anything to do with what is ethical or not.

In my opinion, in order for a decision to be truly moral a person must come to it themselves. An ethical decision reached on anything other than real ethical conviction is on shaky ground.

> My first comment was removed for being an opinion. Which is comical as the article is also merely opinion.

Two wrong do make a right?

> So this is an opinion piece masquerading as a philosophy article.

Is this another opinion disguised as a fact?

I think you're engaging in what I've heard called "the historian's fallacy"--kind of "Monday morning quarterbacking" and assuming people in the past had access to equivalent information and I guess perspectives and analogies and experiences as you.

I get heavily down downvoted and my posts removed on rAskPhilosophy because quite honestly I don't think I'm really doing philosophy--I'm much more interested in things like psychology, history, maybe a little political science and economics, BUT there exists something called "the curse of knowledge" where once you know something it can be very difficult to understand what it's like for someone who doesn't. We live in a very diverse, generally scientific, information-rich environment where it's very easy to see what good it does to be nimble and flexible and say, "I'd prefer to do it THIS way, but I can see where you're coming from if you want to do it THAT way, THAT way, THAT way, THAT way or THAT way." e.g. The Crusaders didn't know a God-damned thing about Islam because they didn't have relationships with them such that they could have a lot of translators and even if they could, they'd have to write down what they were saying and it was very difficult to make many books, so they'd kind of have to decide between learning about Islam or learning about Christianity. And they didn't live in a highly scientific environment where they felt like they had a good handle on how things were going to go--they literally saw God working on the world in their day to day lives when so much happened that they couldn't explain--all they could do to give themselves any sense that they could make any productive effort in the world and they shouldn't give up and just kill themselves to end their suffering was say "don't piss God off." This was before Modernism and existentialism and things--they didn't think "I should create my own meaning or at least select the one that best represents me from multiple available, viable possibilities," they thought "I must submit myself to the one, true God and the essence of wisdom, all else is folly and ruin."

And as I'm saying as time went on and other possibilities became apparent, it depends on what you think counts as evidence. People who it's sometimes productive to call my enemies, conservatives and traditionalists, basically, explicitly say things like "the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few has always caused society to survive and progress before," and I don't think they're explicitly, intentionally lying, I think they honestly believe it.

I'm on my phone and this is getting long, but I think that's the gist of it.

EDIT: PS I just thought of the example of I think it was Semmelweis and germ theory: he had scientifically come up with the idea of "corpse particles" that were being transferred between autopsies and childbirth, making the mothers sick and killing them. He tried to communicate this to other doctors, but supposedly one of the reasons this didn't take was they didn't believe that they, engaged in a learned, gentlemanly pursuit, could get dirty and need to cleanse themselves. They didn't say, "Oh, I see where you're coming from and these corpse particles I'm sullied with are killing people, but I think it just makes me look bad and is bad for the profession, so I just completely of my own free will with my entirely informed consent just elect to put my fingers in my ears and act like it's not true"--it went against everything they ever "knew" about what was morally and factually right, so they honestly didn't believe it.

EDIT 2: PPS They had had some success predicting and explaining things with miasma theory, e.g. designing hospitals for airflow. "The truth," such that germ theory is the truth, isn't simple and natural and obvious from all perspectives in all experiences.

Just because one definition of an idea differs from another it doesn't make the whole idea of defining that thing worthless. I think they're saying that anarchism is the most basic human form, which is maybe not true, but this is philosophy lol And the thing is, political or not, ALL systems have a power dynamic, even anarchism. You HAVE to have power over those that would assert themselves over others. It's a paradox, but its like the paradox of tolerance. In order for anything to work you need at least a base level of authority over others.

I mean looking at the state of the world, I find that claim highly dubious. Even looking at global pew research poll results on things like climate change and so on, critical thinking is hardly as common as you purport it to be.

"There are lots of ways to interpret the justification of authority by the millions"

Exactly. Which is why the whole idea of defining Anarchism in terms of criticism of or opposition to "unjust hierarchies" or "unjust authority" is essentially meaningless.

Pretty much all political schools of thought have some set of power relations which they oppose. Defining Anarchism in the terms of Chomsky just means that everyone is an anarchist.

It seems to me that the author first needs to show that there is some meaningful correlation between advanced study of ethics and actually having ethical behavior. Do people with philosophy degrees commit crimes at lower rates than people with STEM degrees? Do criminals forced to take ethics classes reoffend less than those who aren't? Because if not, the argument in the article falls apart before it even begins.

Every time you log into social media or speak to a younger person Nietzsche comes up? Who the fuck do you talk to lmao? The only example you give is a post from r/existentialism so someone on a philosophy subreddit talks about philosophy, incredible…. Honestly this mostly just seems like you’re mad that other people like a thing you like so you’re lashing out with no substance. Very strange blog that says very little.

I despise police and military institutions. This logic of killing and smacking around people for freedom, the future and the children is all mentally challenged to me.

I mean actually rolling up your sleeves and serving ex middle class people that's living below bridges right now. Mobilizing for them instead of against them and their disgraced middle class dreams.

Capitalism as a system is in bankruptcy right now (probably already taken out by Technofeudalism, two complete steps backwards) and most people is still trying to fake normal, whatever that means.

That's exactly the problem to me, the eternal reversal and the eternal farce. I wouldn't endorse a single policy right now because it all leads to capital extraction from the lower clases. The system is illustrious in the obvious, it is right there in its name. It isn't called middle-classism. Even paying student debt would end up benefiting debt vultures. "Helping" Ukraine actually produces more capital extraction and more human loss.

I feel people voluntarily wants to be deluded all of the time.

The only meaning of current policies to me is bread and circuses. And I never was able to stand performative arts, really.

I can't stand party politics anymore. It didn't lead to something useful for the last 50 years at least. It only stands in the way of progress and keeps reassuring those capital transfers and extractions to perfection.

I can see over a dozen animal species and hundreds of non-animal species at this very second. Guess how much brutality I see?

But by all means, keep anthropomorphizing nature and pretending you are better than people who do it slightly differently than you do.

Great idea... How? Very good point shows the danger of homo-economicas and the worship of utility ... still how do you stop this train .. this perspective is baked into our institutions.