That's pretty cool of the United Kingdom. I feel like I've given the UK too much guff in the past.

Socrates only believed that he was wise because he didn't assume to be wise. I kind of like Socrates, but am only so sure as to how I feel about the guy. Good philosophy does seem to result from a willingness to doubt, though. People who think that they know everything already almost never discover anything at all. Though I think that this so-called virtue, if believed in too directly, loses out on a certain potentiality for free expression, which I do think is just good in its own right, there is something to be said for humility.

There's a difference between the accusation of "statism" and Stalinism. I don't think people who want things like universal healthcare are, at all, guilty of any form of implicit totalitarianism. I generally state that I'm of the "libertarian Left", and am usually willing to suggest that there is a Left and Right that can be meaningfully invoked, but there is something to that a politic could be created outside of that paradigm, as it can be rather limiting at times.

I fail to understand as to why you side with Conservatives against the "common enemy". It seems like a "freedom-loving individual" such as yourself ought to side with Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists, if you think that Social Democracy, which I do think pails in comparison to democratic socialism, is somehow "statist", which I don't think is quite the right way to put things, but there are grains of truth to.

There has been a historical problem of what you call "collectivism", being more or less the forms of totalitarianism that existed in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, but I don't really think that, more or less, outside of China, at least, that sort of things is really all the much of a concern anymore. People have gotten over the cult of sacrifice for the greater good of all humanity by now.

I agree with what you suggest about your own philosophy, by my interpretation of Camus is that he was saying that life was "useless and hopeless", but that you should rebel, kind of for its own sake, against this. To me, he seemed to have thought that the Absurd could only be coped with and not overcome.

Yeah, but the boulder rolls back down the mountain. I feel like Albert Camus was suggesting that Sisyphus was right to rebel against the Absurd, as, at the very least, even if things are so, why not? He's also kind of pessimistic in his choice of an example as it suggests that all that we have are brief respites from it.

Sometimes you feel that the past where you do things aimlessly and ignorantly seems to be more fulfilling as now you face with the uncertain absurdity of life. Is this true for most of y’all or am I being somewhat nihilistic? — Josh Lee

Quoting Camus is kind of nihilistic, as Camus, though not really a Nihilist, was kind of nihilistic. He thought that existence just simply was absurd. Like that the Absurd was conditional upon the human experience. You could say that he ascribed to a kind of philosophical pessimism in that he felt that the human experience was ultimately negative in spite of that he thought that people should rebel against this.

I think that such pessimism is pathological. Camus, understandably, probably felt that way because of his experience in the French resistance. It seems as if a person who believes that the human experience is ultimately negative is vindicated in such a belief because it tends to become true via an odd kind of self-fulfilling prophecy or something. It is only because of our circumstances that the human experience is any sort of way or another. In a world without subjugation, poverty, or violence, The Absurd would probably be abolished. I am not so optimistic to believe that such a world will necessarily be created, but not so pessimistic to believe that it is impossible for it to either.

It seems like you can engage in and experience the world better before you have to think too much about what it is that you're doing, but, when I think about myself in the past, I find that the freedom I expressed was only allowed for by an odd kind of reckless suicidal abandon. I have no desire to return to my life before Philosophy, so to speak, though do find that there are a lot of things that I used to appreciate better. I used to really care about and love listening to and playing music. I've let kind of a lot of things vitiate that experience to some extent. You should grow and, at least, alter the course of the mad revolt to some extent, but you've also kind of got to be careful about what you give up on. To suggest that Philosophy ends in disillusion would be to give up on the original wonder that leads people to become interested in it in the first place, which I don't think that people should do. I don't know. Life is kind of absurd, but I don't think that people should think that it should have to be so. It can be difficult to rally yourself out of despair, but what really is the point of expecting nothing good out of life? Why, when, in good faith, even the feint glimmer of hope is likely to let you appreciate life more?

I do dislike coercion. I believe that the freedom from coercion should be invoked as a primary right of sorts that should be a fundamental aspect of Politics. I'm an Anarcho-Pacifist. To frame this, again, though I don't entirely agree with the distinction, as it concerns positive liberties, I think that people should engage in Politics that are predicated by some sort of free association.

I am openly advocating anti-authoritarianism and so am "liberty-minded". I believe that egalitarianism follows from libertarianism. When engaged in Politics, I think that people should be attempting to effect continual maximal liberty, and, as it follows, continual maximal equality. My assumption is that, from that everyone will always rightfully demand to be as free a possible one can conclude that everyone should also be as equal as possible, as differences in equality are likely to result in implicit hierarchies which will let people take freedom away from others. I also advance that all of this should more or less be carried out through a fairly strict adherence to nonviolence, as violence is necessarily coercive, and, therefore, out of keeping with that people should be as free as possible.

The discourse centered around freedom, to me, seems to have been co-opted by the Right, and even, rather both ironically and ostensibly, the far-Right, which I find to be a very disparaging situation. I love freedom. I am the author of the maxim, "freedom proliferates by its expression alone." Something like total liberation is always necessarily the implicit project, in so far, of course, that there is one, of all of humanity, or even just simply life on Earth. Though I am atheist, I am even somewhat inclined towards a kind of liberation theology that posits that the common liberation of all of humanity is like an eschatological project that will result in an apothetical politic. I'm not, however, quite so optimistic.

Eh, perhaps, I was being too critical. The respect for life is laudable, though, since I'm pro-choice, I don't really like how the discourse gets carried out. To me, it's a real shame that the only people who are willing to come out against Eugenics, having provided the rationalizations and justifications for more or less every genocide on the planet, are Catholics who all too often want to blame the Chinese government for all of the evils in the world. A sincere moralism that meaningfully invokes the respect for life, even if making an appeal to the divine, I don't have too much a problem with, though.

That is more like an abuse of moral concepts. No doubt, these concepts can be abused in the way that concepts of justice can be abused. But corruptions of moral concepts are not a measure of ideal moral concepts — EnPassant

I was raised Catholic, but I'm an atheist now. I guess that I feel like even the best of Catholicism is kind of condescending. People tend to assume that plights are incurred because of how a person relates to God rather than thinking of everything else that could be happening. There are some Catholics who are humble in spirit, whom I don't really mind too much, though. I used to be kind of a single-minded atheist, but have since come around to that people can have a relationship with the divine without necessarily being like what I tend to dislike about moralists.

As it concerns Ethics, though, I'm not too sure about how I feel about the Ten Commandments, or any either moral or ethical universals, though. Sure, that you shouldn't kill someone else is probably true in almost every given context, but stealing, for instance, I think can, in cases, be either not wrong or not all that wrong. Jean Valjean in Les Misérables was right to steal the bread for which he was imprisoned. It's also the case that I just don't think that music piracy is an ethical concern at all, really. Sure, you shouldn't wage a hostile takeover of another company and, then, proceed to liquidate it out of avarice, but I don't think that it is the case that you can say that something like stealing is wrong in every given context.

Hold on, let me get my glasses here, as someone has finally decided to explain this to me.

That is quite helpful. Thank you!

I guess that I'll have to reread The Highest Poverty someday, as I didn't quite understand it the second time around either.

My understanding was that the separation of bios and zoe politicizes zoe because of that political life, what I previously referred to as "public life", bios, has become qualified, meaning that there become a set of people who can decide upon who is capable of living a politically qualified life. The distinction between the two then dissolves and private life, what you could call "everyday life", zoe, can, in some cases, be comparable to "bare life", which he identifies through the figure of homo sacer, who can be killed but not sacrificed. It seems like he's suggesting that, because the political realm or whatever is capable of exiling people from it, or even deciding upon who is excluded from it in all given cases, for example, slaves in Ancient Greece, or Jews in Nazi Germany, even everyday life becomes political because your existential status is let to be called into question. I realize that my way of explaining this is kind of strange, but I'm trying to get a clear and concise depiction of what his theories are.

Perhaps, I'm still not quite understanding, but, from there, it seems like something ought to be done to eliminate the measures by which the state of exception or whathaveyou is capable of excluding others, which you can take quite radically, from the political sphere, and I am still rather unsure as to what this "pure potentiality" is. To be honest, I felt a little lost when he talked about "use", especially since I was only paying so much attention, in The Highest Poverty, and, so, perhaps I could be missing something there. Is he suggesting that a proper articulation of a form-of-life somehow qualifies life that is in danger of being reduced to bare life and, therefore, eliminates the problem of that there are people who are capable of being excluded from the political sphere? If so, how?

Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee also take up these ideas and argue that an anarchist praxis needs to be much more centered around the rescue and development of repressed and new forms of life from what I recall. — monad159

Tiqqun gives great analysis, but is often kind of off in what they set out as per praxis or whatever. The Call basically suggests that an effective global revolution, given the information security apparatuses or whatever that exist now, can somehow just happen because of that people, through an odd kind of quite moving serendipity, will just discover how to because the information will just somehow come to them, which, though I, myself, wax spiritual about certain uncanny or sublime moments a person experiences while engaged in information warfare, is kind of like the revolutionary equivalent of believing that God will call out to the Twelve Tribes of Israel. In The Cybernetic Hypothesis they totally dismiss the Autonomist movement by rather spuriously castigating Antonio Negri, advocate a return to the "Years of Lead", and justify this as being something other than political terrorism through the invocation of the "diffuse guerilla". In Introduction to Civil War, they suggest that people should exonerate themselves of the Rights of Man and refuse to be identified as "citizens", which, though I can understand the revolutionary ardor that inspired such notions, does seem, to me, to be incredibly foolish. They do write exceptionally well, though.

I find it very difficult, especially since their language is so high-flown, to explain to anyone, especially within the Anarchist community, as to just what it is about Tiqqun, as, no one within the Anarchist community really agrees with them, but them seem to be in control over the general direction of the movement. The reason for this, I suspect, is that the Intelligence community considers for them to be "useful idiots" and is hoping that their plans are actually attempted to be gone through with. They let them do that, which Tiqqun, being liberal-minded as they are, just can't quite figure out how to talk themselves out of, as they are guilty enough of a certain degree of hubris to suspect that they just might as well be in control of the Anarchist movement, in spite of that they are, ostensibly, as the Communism they advocate is just Anarchism, Communists. It's all kind of absurd and kind of funny, but I do have the pet grief that I have had to undertake the lengthy inquiry into just what it is that they do actually think in order to figure out what to do about all of this.

I don't know, there's just something that seems so totalizing about that to me. As if even every thought were some sort of political battle. In Introduction to Civil War, Tiqqun writes the maxim, "all thought is strategic." I used to be somewhat taken by that idea, but I've grown to dislike it. I don't want to be constantly engaged in a kind of psychological warfare with crypto-Fascists, primarily, on the Right. People need to have a life away from Politics. You don't think well when you're constantly engaged in some sort of combat, even if it is just information warfare. That there's a disintegrative element to that communities are attempted to be subjugated by a divide and conquer does politicize daily life, but that, to me, just seems to be tragic. The Situationist International has oddly become an interest that people compulsively labor over. Political totalization just makes everyone neurotic. Again, Agamben seems to believe that there's some sort of liberatory potential given such a state of affairs, but I just don't see it. I kind of think that The Right to be Lazy ought to apply to left-wing academia as well.

I must not be understanding you. What does it mean to have no centralized authority at all? How can anything get done? We have to all get together in a big community meeting to decide how to build a road? Nothing could ever get done. — fishfry

To be honest, I haven't really put too much thought into questions like "Who will direct the traffic, and so, and so on?" Libertarianism slowly became vaguely synonymous with liberal social attitudes and laissez faire economics during the twentieth century, which is not necessarily what I'm suggesting by anti-authoritarianism.

Have scifi or fantasy movies where the status quo ante of the good guys' civilization is explicitly anarchic, then have space wizard fascists or whoever roll in and fuck it up, and the good guys have to fight to win it back without becoming the thing they're fighting. — Pfhorrest

The depiction of Fascists as evil space wizards is definitely how to make Anarchism possible!

Eh, I'm sort of a notorious "sectarian", and, so, you'll have to rally everyone else against me, but, I will concede the point that being of such an inclination is almost entirely pointless. That's a part of why I just became a-political.

From, let's say, the Left to a set of left-wing Liberals and even, perhaps, a few Centrists, there are a lot of people who ought to be able to get along well enough to engage in some sort of collaborative protest that brings about some sort of change. There are certain propensities or whatever that can result in that that sort of working relationship is just untenable. I can have a conversation with someone who is a Marxist-Leninist, but, because I am an Anarcho-Pacifist, I can't really do something like organize a protest with that same person. The same even goes for certain Anarchists, to be honest. Perhaps I'm just a little too disillusioned, but, I'd like to think that everyone ought to be willing to extend everyone else enough solidarity for things to go well, but I ultimately know that there are certain things that I just shouldn't engage in. To use Anarchism as an example, I'm not entirely sure as to how it is that I feel about showing up at a demo organized by someone with a fanatical bent towards propaganda of the deed, though I actually kind of liked Toward the Creative Nothing, Renzo Novatore, and who is likely to make vehement arguments in favor of the actions of The Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei, as I do suspect that such a person would be likely to be, at best, incredibly reckless.

Being said, though, there are a number of absurdities to ideological purity. Even if you are right, what's the point of being the only one?

Are you distinguishing between libertarianism and anti-authoritarianism? Even libertarians like a police force to keep some semblance of order. They might argue for a privatized police force, that would be a libertarian stance. I wasn't able to follow the distinction you're trying to make. — fishfry

Libertarianism sort of began as a left-wing philosophy, but I am specifically referring to anti-authoritarianism and do not mean for it to be synonymous Libertarianism. You could, however, be an anti-authoritarian Libertarian.

I tell people that I think that there should either be an informal set of a-systemic Liberal democratic governing assemblages and Anarchist communes or a "loosely affiliated set of freely associated societies", I use the term "society" not to refer to an "ordered community", but because "groups" doesn't really seem to refer to what I am attempting to describe. The former is really kind of a programmatic approach to the creation of what Murray Bookchin called the "Commune of communes". In short, and without political jargon, I do not agree that there must be some authorities as you say that there must.

The most effective thing anyone in any marginalized political movement can do is raise awareness, get people to care about the same problems enough to support actual political possibilities enough to actually make a real difference. — Pfhorrest

I sort of agree. Perhaps there just needs to be a cultural revolution of sorts before there can be any other sort of effective revolution, as I do find that people don't usually tend to know too much about what Anarchism actually is, in so far, of course, that it actually is anything at all, but I wonder if the information isn't just already as far out there as it can get. Anarchists are always trying to get people to read some obscure text or another. There's higher education, but good luck with that. Art, perhaps?

I refused to read Heidegger for years because of his affiliation with the Nazi Party, but eventually decided to give Sartre enough credit to go ahead and read Being and Time and found that I actually kind of liked it.

I wonder about authenticity, though. I used to be sort of into Jean Baudrillard, but had later decided that there was no such thing as simulated experience. A person who pilots a flight simulation still has the experience of doing just that. Obviously, it differs from piloting an actual airplane, but the simulation of the flight is still an experience in its own right. That might seem somewhat obvious, but I think that it can become pertinent when you consider things like what I can only think to refer to as "fourth generation warfare". A person is capable of waging a war as if it were a simulation because they can establish a certain degree of emotional distance between how it is that they experience their form of combat and what it actually effects. What is the difference between the loss of one, one hundred, and one thousand people when a person can rely upon the cold analysis of engaging in war as if it were a game of computer Chess? I actually think that war has always kind of been waged as such. Men have always moved figures around on maps without any real understanding of what that effects on the ground. The semblance of simulation has always provided people with the requisite delusions to decide upon things like who lives and dies and how.

Conversely, however, authenticity would seem like an antidote to such "bad faith". I can't quite place what it is; there just seems to be something that is somehow aristocratic and Fascist to what he evokes, though. It's as if he thinks that most of the human experience is somehow "inauthentic". It's as if he somehow thinks that someone who purchased an around one-hundred and twenty dollar Fender mandolin isn't an authentic mandolin player because they don't own an old mandolin that they inherited from a wealthy family who had one made from a distinguished luthier. All of the human experience is authentic. A person can act in bad faith, but none of what they experience is any more or less genuine than what anyone else does. I don't think that explicitly states anything to the contrary in Being and Time, but I just kind of got the feeling that there was something all too, how do you say, "Baroque", to what he was implying. That could not really be there, though.

I agree with most of this thread, it seems, in that the statement is just resultant of academic pretense. It's just a means to jot down a lot of multisyllabic words with no agreed upon definitions so as to qualify a work of Art as being of high culture. It's kind of like the Art equivalent to what gets printed on the back of a wine label. Some of them can be quite interesting, though.

Corrupt are some religions have become, the loss of Christianity and the moral collapse of society are not merely coincidental. Unless mankind has something higher than mankind to aspire to, things will go badly. — EnPassant

I disagree entirely. Morality has always been considered as according to social conventions. In the West, aside from, perhaps, a few libertarian socialist or Anarchist experiments, there has almost never been a society that could, at all, be considered to be exemplary. The change in social attitudes during The Victorian Era towards morality, for instance, may have been somewhat positive, as the British Empire did become less imperious during that period of time, but were ultimately hypocritical, as The Opium Wars were waged then as well. The social repression resultant from the reliance upon morality has also been notoriously fictionalized by any number of British authors.

At best, morality relies upon an appeal to a kind of quasi-ascetic superiority complex arbitrated by those who decide who is and isn't virtuous. Rather than analyze the situation that resulted in sexism within the music industry, the Catholic faith will tell you that people are being punished for playing music that isn't solely comprised of devotional songs to God. People can and should enjoy life and all that the world needs is to let whatever way of life there is that develops from situational ethics become as it naturally should.

All that said, we could certainly do a lot better for ourselves and for the world. We have to find a way of prying the Republican Assholes, crypto fascists, neoliberal death cults, and so forth from their ensconced positions in office. — Bitter Crank

We'll I'm glad that we agree upon that point.

I do, however, think that the challenge to the concept of authority is well grounded. What has there been historically? There was the Roman Empire to follow the Roman Republic, a litany of feudal warlords or whatever, monarchies, the aristocracy, the nationalism that led to the First World War, Fascism, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, what I, and some others, refer to as "Empire" that exists now. It's one thing to say not to let a few bad apples spoil the whole batch, but when you can only think of a few good examples, perhaps the idea is just somehow flawed? There is, of course, a difference between authority and authoritarianism. While I do agree with the abolition of all hierarchy, as things now stand, there is something to be said for good leadership or whatever. Even a good authority, though, to me, seems like it ought to abolish even itself, though.

Strange indeed. I think you are utilizing too many labels in your thinking. Pick a label, any label -- communist, neoliberalism, libertarian socialist Pacifist, crypto fascist, or Republican Assholes, and one finds that they really don't fit the intended target all that well [which I don't like because it irritates my discomfort with excessive ambiguity.] — Bitter Crank

I do identify as being an Anarcho-Pacifist. I had once conceptualized the political philosophy of anti-authoritarian Pacifist Anarchism, but felt that that was a bit redundant. I think that all effective praxis, nonviolent revolution, strikes, certain direct actions, marches, creative endeavors, leafleting, collaboration with the associated press, human rights legislation, civic engagement in the democratic project as it exists now, etc. etc., that reifies Anarcho-Pacifism can and should be simultaneously waged. By "Anarcho-", I do more or less mean libertarian socialism, though am both actually an Anarchist and well aware of that that can be a point of contention within the Anarchist movement. Like I said, though, I actually left the movement and more or less became a-political. I just wanted to find out as to how absurd my theory that people just have to luck out with anti-authoritarianism was.

I think that Donald Trump is a Central Intelligence Agency godsend, and, therefore, a bane of our existence, but I am not voting, in part, because of that the National Security Agency was built under the administration that Joe Biden was the Vice President of, and, in part, because of the total unwillingness on the part of the Democratic Party to either put the Church Committee into effect or acknowledge that Harry S. Truman was one of the worst presidents that we have ever had.

I thought about voting for Howie Hawkins of the Green Party, as I had thought that it would be the last time that I could with any degree of conviction vote Green, as Bernie Sanders had finally done what the Green Party believed to be impossible, which was to more or less run a Democratic Party campaign as if it were a Green Party campaign, thereby making it impossible for the Green Party to take the place of the Democratic Party as the primary opposition to the Republican Party, and, thereby rendering the Green Party totally ineffective, as the only reason a person becomes a Libertarian is so that they can ignore the Republican Party, thereby making an alliance with them unlikely and a multi-party system in the United States as equally unlikely, thereby only leaving the Green Party with the aforementioned plan to replace the Democratic Party as the primary opposition to the Republican Party, which can no longer be done. They can still win elections in local campaigns, but the grand project of the Green Party is no longer tenable. I voted for Barrack Obama twice and have never voted Green. I thought that I should give them a vote as a kind of token of solidarity. I decided not to vote in protest instead.

That's probably a better optimistic worldview to have than to suspect that only anti-authoritarian messiahs can usher in the new age, and I don't entirely disagree. I'm of a strange sort of syncretic political that is neither revolutionary, radical, nor reformist and, yet, all of them at the same time, or at least, was.

I'm an Anarcho-Pacifist, but I left the Anarchist movement in protest of its general proclivities towards crypto-Fascism and political violence and became decidedly a-political. What I found of nonviolent revolution was that believing in it more or less made you a libertarian socialist Pacifist or an Anarcho-Pacifist, and, seeing that those two descriptors can be more or less synonymous, you kind of de facto ascribe to Anarcho-Pacifism, which I actually do, but don't really have any qualms, as some other Anarchists do, with being called a "Socialist" or even a "Liberal". Because of this, in order to get anywhere, you have to get the Anarchist community on your side. As that entails talking them out of violent revolution, which there are a myriad of spurious justifications, appeals via invocation, and over-reactive defense mechanisms for, making it more or less what Anarchist ideology is, that can not be done. An attempt at effective nonviolent revolution is, at best, a sectarian protest, and, at worst, a political crusade. Perhaps other Anarcho-Pacifists will fare better, but dropping out of Anarchism has led me to suspect that I should probably just abandon Politics altogether, which I have, more or less done.

That's kind of off-topic, though.

To me, the situation that we're all in demands that something be done, but it also seems like there just isn't anything that effectively can be done. I realize that this is somewhat absurd conclusion, but I do almost believe that only an anti-authoritarian movement of some sort can effectively change things so that effective change can happen. I agree with your sentiments, however. To me, it seems better, though both arguments can be effectively leveled, to invoke something like the, though I don't really entirely agree with the distinction, positive liberty of free association rather than the negative liberty of the freedom from coercion. At the same time, via an appeal to a kind of realpolitik or something, the actual demand is the freedom from coercion. I would prefer, in good company, to discuss the free association, but, in a court of law, would state that I should be free from coercion. Perhaps that's a concession on my part or a form of interpellation or something. To utilize the distinction between positive and negative liberties, however, it seems like positive liberties can only become pertinent when negative liberties are no longer necessary. Perhaps that distinction should just be deconstructed or something, though.

I'm feeling kind of scatterbrained right now, and, so, apologize if this only seems to make so much sense.

Well, I mean, if I didn't think that then I wouldn't cite them as having ideas or ideals that should be substantiated.

What I more particularly mean, though, is that the praxis should be slated as a negation of authoritarianism. You ultimately care less about actually reifying what is veritable of the end goals of Communism, the abolition of the State, or effective democracy than you do of not being subject to people in power who abuse their positions. The idea can be summarized as that you have become liberated before you can create any sort of ideal society.

From an Anarchist perspective in what I can only think to refer to as "the West", for instance, a question is how to effectively create Anarchist communities. The primary concern, however, is what are you going to do about the Central Intelligence Agency, the Secret Intelligence Service, probably a set of political factions to have proceeded from the Gehlen Organization in Germany, the far-Right, the most culpable parties of wealth, the Mafia, factions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, factions of the local police, certain either Neo-Liberal or Neo-Conservative economists, the think-tanks, certain factions of the United States' Military, certain factions of other militaries in the world, a set of somewhat established politicians in the American Right, a set of somewhat established politicians within the European Right, certain new political factions within the American Right, certain political factions within the Right in Europe, the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization, the School of the Americas, etc. etc., basically the various order-enforcing bodies that comprise what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri refer to in Empire as the "network-power" that they, particularly, are subject to. Within the Anarchist community, of course, the general assumption is that some sort of effective revolution should take place. As violent revolution is likely to result in a sort of asymmetrical clandestine civil war, the prospect of winning seems to me to be incredibly unlikely, thereby suggesting a return to the political violence that occurred beginning more or less with the Red Army Faction in Germany in the late-1960s, which will only result in another wave of both legal and extra-juridical repression, aside from that that whole sort of thing was just kind of terrible in its own right, such strategy, to me, does not seem to be either effective, advisable, or even possible given the current structures of power that exist. Having come to those realizations, it seems like the focus should be upon how to neutralize their antagonists rather than to engage in what, at best, is an exercise in revolutionary reverie. I, of course, don't really know what to do about all of that either, though.

I should also like to point out that, while there are grains of truth to the theory that governance becomes as it does because of systemic flaws, I do mean that there are particular, primarily, men who are particularly responsible for out particular plights who have particularly become so because of authoritarianism. That lengthy list of antagonists may be different if you live in the Russian Federation or what is officially still called "The People's Republic of China", but almost all of the parties who are primarily responsible for almost all of the plights in the world are authoritarian men in their forties who never should've been let into any position of power at all by that they had evidently demonstrated that they intended to abuse such power to secure such positions in the first place.

The point here being that the problem isn't really that what is veritable of the end goals of Communism have yet to have been reified, the State has yet to be abolished, or that democracy is just simply dysfunctional; the problem is that such men have yet to be removed from power.

With all that being said, there's also the strategic aspect of anti-authoritarianism in that it is how you can win all of the political allies that you do want and none of those that you don't. It seems like, seeing that democracy is dysfunctional and revolution impossible, we'll just have to wait for people to luck out upon discovering anti-authoritarianism at a young age and just kind of sticking with that so that something can effectively be done about all of this. Hopefully that'll happen sooner, rather than later.

Even Thomas Hobbes posited that, as soon as a State become legitimated through a formal constitution or whatever, it dissolves into a multitude. He suggests that, in order to avoid a "war of all against all", the sovereign should restore order via some sort of "social contract". I would posit that the State should just be abolished, as almost every example of one has been created out of and still enforces some sort of subjugation, which I identity as being the reason for the dissolution, or another, and some sort of participatory democracy should take its place, but the crisis of "civil war" is not necessarily a Postmodern phenomenon. I do kind of agree with you analysis, however, in that "strategic instability" is more or less how power gets maintained nowadays.

Nah, people are, if you will, by nature good, and the problem is just with common sense.

I spent a lot of time thinking about the album, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, and have discovered what evil is. Evil is to exploit human cruelty in order to accumulate information and social capital and to conspire to continue to do so. Everyone knows that they just want to be a libertine, but not everyone knows that they just want to be an ethical libertine. Thus, where the common sense comes in. The other libertines think that they'd just be better off being somewhat evil, without ever considering that people are likely to thwart them from doing so. In order to get away with being evil, they have to constantly think about how to, which vitiates their libertine experience. It's just kind of pathological.

As is evident by kind of a lot of human history, that whole sort of thing does escalate, but that evil even exists is really just kind of a social problem that even the most rudimentary Ethics could easily do away with.

I posit that "natural rights" exist by that they will necessarily be damned in every given context. The freedom from coercion is, for instance, a "natural right". I'm not sure if that really qualifies as thinking that natural exist, though, and, so, am unsure of how to vote.

I'm really taking off this time. Goodbye, The Philosophy Forum!

Thanks for reading this everyone. You have convinced me to post this on my blog, I think. I'll be leaving for a couple of months, and, so, I'll see you then, I guess.

Idk. Everything was probably alright however it was beforehand, anyways.

I'm gonna take off now. Feel free to carry on with this discussion in my absence.

In your metaphor, you gave over the cliff to see the sea or something. All of experience requires a certain amount of danger. You've gotta test it all out.

To parcel this out a bit, Sartre never really talked about The Abyss. He just went on about The Void. He never explicitly referred to The Void as such. Those concepts are moreso the workings of my own imagination.

Sartre and I both feel like everything is a matter of choice. Nothingness isn't quite as negative as I think you're assuming that it is. For Sartre, it's exceptionally liberatory. I only partially agree with him which is what I have tried to explain here.

As a further aside to myself, it should be "Neoexistentialism".

In case anyone was wondering as to how it's like a suped-up moped: It seems super cool until you start it up and crash into a bunch of tables and patrons outside of a Parisian café.

Well, that is the case, but I am saying that you are Ethically correct in violating another person's autonomy in preventing them from committing suicide which is how it is not a practical right. It may only exist as a right abstractly.

If we are to consider suicide only as an individual choice without any other parties, then I think it can be considered as a right as it is not something that is immoral. You have right to commit suicide in so far that you have not wronged anyone by doing so.

You are correct that whether or not a right is invoked is somewhat irrelevant. The person can do as they please regardless as to what people suggest abstractly or what the law stipulates.

I'm just not sure as to what the right to die entails in regards to someone "without the will to continue living". It doesn't seem like any responsible Psychologist could assess that a person should be let to commit suicide. Any industry or institutionalization of such measures seems rather frightening to me. I suspect for people involved with the movement to have merely overlooked these considerations and don't think that they're quite the merchants of death that I'm making them out to be, but I do think that those things pose serious problems for the movement.

I'm also staving off having to call myself a "Post-Nihilist" which, given the choice between the two, I think that I would choose Neo-Existentialism even though it's like a sweet-looking suped up moped.

That statement was made under the assumptions that people would have a more favorable interpretation of Nominalism than I can reasonably expect and that they would get that it was intened to be somewhat Nominalist. As I only ordered Summa Logicae by William of Ockham, and haven't actually read it, I'm not sure why I would do something like that. Sartre thought that existence preceeded essence, but I actually partially reject that anything has essence at all. When we consider something in itself, we merely consider it ideally. The ideal existent doesn't actually exist "out there" somehow.

My point is that you shouldn't attempt to choose to become nothing. That would be an impoverished interpretation of Sartre, but it is a possible one.

I actually feel kind of bad about how hard I come down on Nihilism as well. I was sort of influenced by Nihilist Communism and feel like I, perhaps, haven't given the philosophy its due regard. I do think that it's just grossly misguided, though. I kind of use "Nihilism" to refer to a philosophical complex that manifests itself as a pathology. It's somewhat unfair for me to do so, but Nihilism also kind of just is that.

I'm realistically just staving off having to call myself a "Neo-Existentialist" whenever someone asks what philosophy I adhere to.

I suppose that if you fail and suicide was illegal that it could be punishable which I don't think should happen. A right is like some inviolable thing that a person has. I'm positing that people don't necessarily have a right to suicide, but I'm not insinuating anything by it.

I agree with Sartre's assertion that we "condemned to be free". I also like his description of Being being de trop. I kind of think that I came down too hard on Sartre in this essay since I more or less agree with the guy aside from that I think that he's too focused on nothingness not to be, in part, a Nihilist. The temporal aspect of Sartre's theory is either too boring or complex for me to explain or fully understand. I'm only on my second read through of Being and Nothingness.

He kind of already makes the argument that I am making with the concept of Being-in-itself, but I do think that he makes a slight error in too directly identifying Being as being its own nothingness which makes some of his methodology somewhat untenable.

Sartre really had his bases a lot better covered than I let on in this essay. My points are that negation is a thought process that should not be confused with thought itself, which Sartre, at moments, I think, does and that there really is something there that is Being even though it is always being called into question. Sartre identifies it as being its own nothingness at a few points in the text.

I guess I'm not sure that a person can really consent to suicide. You obviously can't know the full breadth of the endeavor.

That was realistically all that I came back to explain. Sorry to just bring this up and then bounce, but I am going to do just that. I'll catch ya later The Philosophy Forum.

You took that quote out of context. "You probably shouldn't [respect said person's right to commit suicide]."

Suicide is an interesting exception to the respect that a person ought to have for another's autonomy. If someone is smoking a joint and you think that they shouldn't do that for whatever reason, and you take the joint out of their fingertips and stamp it out on the ground, then, you have probably done something that most people would consider to be overbearing. If someone is going to commit suicide and they have a bottle of pills, and you have to strip the bottle of pills out of their hand in order to prevent them from doing so, then, it's probably fine that you do that. Maybe it would have been better if you could have just talked them out of it, but it's probably for the best that they don't commit suicide, however that happens.

My point is that, while perhaps you somehow do abstractly, you don't actually have a practical right to die if you are attempting to commit suicide because of psychological distress.

Eugenics was a ramble. I'm suggesting that invoking a fundamental right implies that, in exceptional cases, you should not try to stop a person from committing suicide. I don't think that that is the case.


I guess I would posit that being suicidal is a pathology. It can be resultant of dire circumstances, but it is still a pathology. Life can always get better.

Perhaps you have a right to suicide in some abstract sense, but there doesn't seem to be any practical application of such a right as, in all cases where you can do something to alleviate the other person's plight, you probably should.

Like, what I mean is that suggesting that a person has a fundamental right to suicide seems to imply that it is something that is said person's choice and that you should respect that. What I am saying is that, if you can talk the person out of it, then, you probably shouldn't. Perhaps the right exists, but there is a greater Ethical concern. The situation created by the other demands that you respond to it in some, way, shape, or form or another.

My point is that, while surely suicide shouldn't be punishable by law, suggesting that people have a fundamental right to it seems to advance that, in exceptional cases, it should be advocated. What does the normative natural or divine law do otherwise?


What does it matter what anyone does or does not prohibt in regards to suicide? They can stop anyone. I think that suicide is a somewhat exceptional case where the taboo is well founded. You probably should attempt to stop the person in most cases.

Whether or not you have a legal right to just doesn't matter. You can always kill yourself either way. What is the fundamental right if not that you are advocating that they should do so given significant emotional pain or whatever?

I'm, of course, not advocating that people who commit suicide should be judged. It's something that other people can not possibly empathize with. You do just not know what it is like.

I don't know. There's just something about right to die advocacy that sort of bothers me. I bet it's not quite as cultish as I think. I feel like it's kind of like Eugenics or something. Eugenics can be pretty terrible. People should use contraception, but Eugenics can be pretty terrible.

That's just a projection, though. I feel like people assume that I'm right to life because of my opinions on this which is totally false. There's probably a lot of that that goes on with this debate.

Also, concerning my particular opinions in regards to human nature. I really do think that people have a natural will to live. Suicide must occur during bouts of mania or something. Perhaps I'm stripping the act of its agency, but I do just think that it's like that. You can choose to kill yourself if you're someone like Socrates, but, for the most part, it really kind of is resultant of some sort of psychological malady. The symptom is not the subject even though the subject is always itself or something. I don't really know. I'm just hoping to ramble until I've improved my social relationship with the internet at large in regards to this.

I do see what the other side is. If you know someone, you want to treat the act with a certain degree of reverence. To truly cope with it, I think, though, means to accept it for what it is which is made in desperation. Suicide is tragic, but it's just that. It's not like this brave Existential act or anything. I honestly can't really engage in any sort of encounter on this and don't quite know why I even decided to bring it up.

Also, does anyone know what the Death Positive Movement stance on this is? I thought that that sounded pretty cool, but worry that it might be a bit of a cult.

I think that the act ought to be given due regard. It's certainly tragic. That someone does so calls everything into question. It should very much so be considered on its own terms. I just really do think that no person could ever find themselves in a situation where advocating that a person end their life would be the right Ethical thing to do. There's always someway out of every bad situation. There's, at the very least, always a means to cope. I know that "The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." is the part of The Argument that is put forth by Satan which Milton intended to refute, but I don't believe in a fatalistic God, and, so, I think that that really rings true.

I see what you're saying. In that sense, I suppose that I do use Olivier's Hamlet as the litmus. As someone who has seen over 10 different version of Hamlet, however, I must say that they really are incomparable. I wonder if it is at all meaningful to speak of standards in art. Perhaps, when we consider Jazz albums, we somehow compare them to Kind of Blue, but to judge any other record by a Modal Jazz experiment doesn't seem like it would result in a greater understanding of the genre.