If we want to appeal to definitions, we can.

an·ar·chism
/ˈanərˌkizəm/
Learn to pronounce
noun
belief in the abolition of all government and the organization of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis without recourse to force or compulsion.

No, I think you’re right that anarchists would necessarily need to enforce some body of rules or principles, if not to maintain their anarchism, than at least to defend their lives and livelihood. But I don’t think these principles would be coercive in the sense that people would need to follow these rules or else be punished. They don’t enforce a moral code; they defend a moral code and the people who believe it.

So I agree with you but on whether anarchism is stupid I do not. Anarchism is noble on its premise of freedom and anti-authoritarianism alone. Whether an anarchist society is possible I am not too sure.

You are just saying police but with extra steps

You are just saying police but with extra steps

More like a night-watchmen.

with CBS radio's and billyclubs. Right. So a cop

Cb *

And while we are on the subject...

an·ar·chy

/ˈanərkē/

noun

a state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority.

"he must ensure public order in a country threatened with anarchy"

Similar:

lawlessness

absence of government

nihilism

mobocracy

revolution

insurrection

riot

rebellion

mutiny

disorder

disorganization

misrule

chaos

tumult

turmoil

mayhem

pandemonium

Opposite:

government

order

absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal.

with CBS radio's and billyclubs. Right. So a cop

They defend others from aggression and violence, and they are volunteers or privately payed. So, not a cop.

Lif3r, you are saying that anarchy would be hard to maintain (unstable and collapse into another state), not that it is bad. Nobody disagrees with that. Anarchists, the kind who actually read and write about it, don’t say we need to just get rid of existing governments and then everything will be fine. They say we need to replace those governments with organizations that will do the same good that they do without doing the bad (coercive) things that they do, or to reform existing governments to become like that in time, by increasing liberty, equality, democracy, etc; dismantling hierarchies and authorities and replacing them with egalitarian, libertarian alternatives.

Anarchy doesn’t mean no rules, it means no rulers. And no rulers doesn’t mean no governance, it just means no state: no monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Anarchists want to somehow establish, or at least move closer to, some form of stateless governance, where there are social organizations that help to keep the peace, but they’re not hierarchical or authoritarian.

that's also the same thing with extra steps.

Social organizations? So you mean like the fda, the CIA, FBI etc. Same thing, different names.

Except what, no one is in charge? How do you propose that the military would operate if no one is in charge?

So the soldiers are going to sit around and what? Take a vote? Say they dont feel like going to war right now?

oh so you mean mercenaries? So now we hire police based on what? What we want them to do for us? Not based on a lawful obligation, but an individual's ability to pay them? This clearly does not turn out ethical.

oh so you mean mercenaries? So now we hire police based on what? What we want them to do for us? Not based on a lawful obligation, but an individual's ability to pay them? This clearly does not turn out ethical.

No I mean volunteer community members...or for those unwilling to fight, maybe a sort of hired bodyguard. It is entirely ethical for you and I to band together and defend our livelihood, property and community from those who would inflict harm.

ok so how do I do that and keep my day job? Now I'm all of the sudden a cop and so are my buddies under what guidelines? Our own? Someone robbed us and now we go fight them? Then we are all gonna pitch in and build a prison on the weekends. I don't see it. There's no structure to that. It results in gang wars. Instead we agree upon a set of principles. Principles that have the ability to shift with contingency in society's general consensus of morality. Represented by specialists who are responsible for actually making these decisions, but also mandated by society itself.

This is where law falls short. Law and the general consensus of morality are not fully parallel at any given moment, and although crime is reduced per the advent of law, it isnt fully effective in limiting all criminal activity.

The general consensus of morality also varies at any given point in time, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly. This is in reference to the idea that morality can be considered a consensus based on the individual perspective, a region's perspective, a planet's perspective, and perhaps a universal perspective.

I had this thought of decentralization of law and perhaps a blockchain representation of legality that can be voted on and documented on a ledger like bitcoin. I feel like it has a lot of refinement to it but that's just an idea.

Same thing as what? And also, maybe the “extra steps” are an important difference?

There are a lot of different views on how anarchism could be implemented in practice. Each one requires quite a bit of explanation for someone who’s evidently read very little about the topic at all like you. If you want to see my take on it from the ground up, you can read my essay On Politics, Governance, and the Institutes of Justice. For a more general overview of the whole range of views Wikipedia’s article on Anarchism is a good place to start. If you have more specific questions I’m happy to answer them.

without law there is no incentive to "stay woke" if you will. — Lif3r

But precisely there is, once you’re woke you see why it is important to remain woke, why it is important to keep preserving what you’ve been preserving, why it is better than going back to the old way of only caring about oneself. When you see why caring for others and yourself is better than only caring about yourself, you don’t want to go back to only caring about yourself.

At the moment not enough people understand that, so if tomorrow all laws were abolished the result wouldn’t be pretty, though I think it would be less bad than you imagine. But the more people understand, the more laws will come to be seen as unnecessary and even as part of the problem.

Now you sound in favour of anarchist ideology? Were you purposefully setting up a poor argumentative position to allow yourself to flip the argument on its head or are you just exploring this concept as you type? (Not having a pop because I think it is good to allow your ideas feel their way around without fear of making a few wrong turns along the way).

There are basically two nonexistent poles (ideological axioms around which we orientate ourselves). There is ‘Centralised’ and ‘Decentralised’ positions in regards to ‘institutions’. I use parenthesis to guard against taking any position as some illusionary ‘absolute’ form. People managed prior to writ Laws, so we know from ‘anarchical’ societal groups we developed and refined rules creating centralised powers/laws in institutions (civilization). We mist keep checking the balance yet the obvious conundrum is knowing which way to push and when. It is no huge surprise that today people are becoming more and more aware of each other due to technological advances in global communications, this has presented ‘institutions’ and ‘public opinion’ to clash on a scale never seen before in human history - the stronger ‘conservative’ tilt is now fighting the side of what used to be the ‘liberal’ position and the ‘liberal’ position is now fighting for what used to be the ‘conservative’ position. The landscape has become so confused you have people on the left demanding more centralised power/law whilst on the right they’re demanding decentralised power. The bizarre thing is they are also under the impression that what they are saying is in line with what is happening.

In short the world isn’t black and white. People don’t really want ‘freedom’ - because people are lazy cowards who would rather someone else deal with shit jobs. No one wants ‘peace’ when ‘peace’ means destroying any sense of useful conflict which enables discovery and exploration. We’re in a hedonist phase which, hopefully, will be consumed by an age of aesthetic sensibility and allow us to navigate the flat featureless political landscape we have at the moment. All there is today is a choice of blandness, a broken compass and a huge divide between cultural generations across the globe. It’s not likely to level out until the end of the century and in the meantime anything could happen.

Anarchy is the natural state of humanity. Look out your window. No one knows what they are doing or why beyond their immediate impressions which are often willfully short-sighted and actively avoiding any claim of agency unless it comes under the guise of ‘groups’ they perceive to have ‘power’ - I don’t think anyone really bothers to ask what ‘power’ means they just attach it to friend and foe to suit their homegrown myopia.

All that said, I think things are peachy :)

‘Do what thou wilt’ is good enough because generally speaking only a few have the nerve to act on this principle so encouraging a few more along the way is beneficial EVEN if this happens to foster some ‘moral’ glitches along the way. How we regard time will dictate the future of politics. Somehow we’ve gotten into the habit of trying to learn form the past unlearning the past - it’s just a game of narratives now and you can be sure the ‘best’ narrative always wins out in the end.

'Extreme' Anarchism is merely a response to Fascism. See what is happening in Hong Kong. What Anarchists aspire to is a pluralistic Democracy.

you think just because I am trying to consider means of decentralization that all of the sudden I think anarchy is viable? Nah. I still want law to be in motion, I'm just trying to think of ways to do it while removing human fallibility.

That's not anarchy, that's revolution.

That is the purpose of anarchy (disobedience): to create a revolution.

well I'm not opposed to revolution, but I am opposed to a non governed, lawless state or community. So take it as you will.

I’ve no idea what you’re thinking. The ‘block chain’ idea sounds vaguely interesting though, just wish you’d started there.

This thread probably had legs on it if you explore that idea and flesh out exactly what you propose.

Anarchy is the counter force to Fascism. (The Antifa's in the US) The middle ground is plural democracy. And that is what we all want. -

I made a post about it and it disappeared into the nether

Of course I don't really know exactly what I mean and I was hoping one of you would but I digress

Anarchists become statists to the natural cycle of leadership, and in anarchistic society the general leadership that forms is a forced leadership of violent individuals with little concern for morals. The bullies. So that's out. — Lif3r

Anarchism, yes, is stupid, but the current way that we decided to implant the "State" on society is stupid too. On my point of view, we should create a new structure, more refined, more individual, to take the place of the State, something that we doesn't even have a noun to project it.