Hard News: Te Qaeda and the God Squad
938 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 … 22 23 24 25 26 … 38 Newer→ Last
-
That's another one of the things I love about contemporary society, there are no more thieves, armed robbers or murderers anymore and the political elite work harmoniously with their corporate counterparts for the benefit of humanity *vomits*.
There you go again. Dehumanising anyone who participates in democratic politics is a handy way of not having to think about the much messier reality of people's hopes, dreams and motives. Every cop's a bad cop, and every politician is a sock puppet of the capitalist elite.
-
Weird. I thought you wrote "I am an outtie", and I thought "Why is she talking about her belly button?"
That would have been preeety random. I wasn't sure how one spells "outtie".
-
Actually, pre-Maori Polynesian settlers would have been very strictly bound up in familial hierarchies, taboos etc
For about as long as it took anyone at the bottom of the heap to piss off to greener pastures. Which in NZ-just-discovered would have probably been about 1 day, by the sounds of it. The remainder set up 'government' over what tiny jurisdiction a few dozen people could actual enforce, and they probably are the groups that became powerful and dominated. But I suggest a lot of people would have just bailed off into the wilderness with a few mates/chicks, and lived quite happily a totally anarchist life slaughtering Moas and picking fish up off the beach etc. Until contention over access to the women led to cold-blooded murder with absolutely no consequences, perhaps. Who knows? I mean one canoe of people controlling the entire South Island? Yeah right.
-
for similar reasons Animal Lib Antivivisectionists also give me the sh-ts - their propoganda seems to suggest that all scientists are sadistic monsters who enjoy torturing kitties and bunnies, rather than considering the possibility they really might be trying to find cures for terrible diseases through the most effective methods.
And Russell, the great thing about the net is it eliminates the PA at the office door who won't let you talk to the boss. Now that's true democracy. Given that NZ politicians have always been relatively accessible to mere mortals, the Net allows the rest of the world to enjoy what we in NZ have had for some time.
-
I apologise to all if I occasionally sound a bit cranky, it is the Socratic way to provoke to extremes, and I am a huffy jaded new fogey cynic.
I myself am often crotchety it's only to be expected. I like your contributions myself.
As far as Socrates goes; fuck the Socratic method I say. Tedious and kind of dishonest. Oh and patronising (not you, the Socratic method). -
Andrew, if I sound cranky it's because I've spend the last couple of hours achieving very little, and my post-work drinkies have fallen through.
-
Ah Mr Wilson, may I direct you to Pitcairn Island
-
Even Winston Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government
-
3410,
RB,
With respect, the only thing you've proved this afternoon is your own prejudice. It's like a straw man factory in here. -
Andrew, sounds like paradise on Earth. Who could wish for more? Pity about a few bad eggs (the menfolk, by the sound of it).
-
Don't drop any matches then, that straw is pretty dry because it's booze o'clock and it hasn't had a drink yet TGOF!
I'm off to an exhibition opening, Andre Hemer who is a very exciting young painter. -
I apologise to all if I occasionally sound a bit cranky . . .
. . . if I sound cranky it's because I've spend the last couple of hours achieving very little, and my post-work drinkies have fallen through.
I myself am often crotchety it's only to be expected.
It's full moon.
-
RB,
With respect, the only thing you've proved this afternoon is your own prejudice. It's like a straw man factory in here.It's not prejudice. It's an opinion you might wish to discuss. What do you think about the potential for a society with no elected leaders, law enforcement or commerce? How would you achieve it? Would anything but a tiny minority of people really embrace it of their own free will? How do you deal with people who insist on being capitalists or armed robbers?
I'm interested by the ideas outlined in those two manifestos, just not particularly impressed by the thinking.
I did have much more sympathy for the third page I linked to -- and it's interesting that, as Andrew pointed out, it is not unlike the Declaration of Independence.
-
Yoza,
"A French writer, sympathetic to anarchism, wrote in the 1890s that "anarchism has a broad back, like paper it endures anything"---including, he noted those whose acts are such that "a mortal enemy of anarchism could not have done better. ... The anarchist historian Rudolph Rocker, who presents a systematic conception of the development of anarchist thought towards anarchosyndicalism, along lines that bear comparison to Guérins work, puts the matter well when he writes that anarchism is not
a fixed, self-enclosed social system but rather a definite trend in the historic development of mankind, which, in contrast with the intellectual guardianship of all clerical and governmental institutions, strives for the free unhindered unfolding of all the individual and social forces in life." Noam Chomsky "Notes on Anarchism"
Presenting the Anarchist tradition, which has a history stretching back hundreds if not thousands of years, as everyone doing what ever they want when ever they want is at best dishonest. Anarchism is more a challenge to the self-serving authority of elite groups than it is any kind of dogmatic belief.
Roughly, from the Greek: An - without; Arches - Rulers/Kings
-
All we are saying is that there is a viable alternative to authoritarianism. You don't need priests, kings, nations, governments, laws, police, prisons, or soldiers. It can be and has been done.
Since the examples so far were born of two of the more notably appalling civil wars of Europe, rich in mass murder, and collapsed in short order through being unable to offer their citizens any meaningful protection against aggression, "has been done" is something of an overstatement.
Yet if I was to say that capitalism didn't work on the basis that there's no pure capitalist countries I'd probably be laughed at.
Only by people who aren't very thoughtful. Especially considering Adam Smith himself devoted not inconsiderable thought to discussing the likely flaws of unbridled capitalism.
Anyone who truly loves lawless society doesn't have to go very far at all to find one.
Is that a little like the offer I used to make to Libertarians to buy them a one-way ticket to Somalia so they could enjoy a life unbridled by the fetters of government?
-
RB,
With respect, the only thing you've proved this afternoon is your own prejudice. It's like a straw man factory in here.It's not prejudice. It's an opinion you might wish to discuss. What do you think about the potential for a society with no elected leaders, law enforcement or commerce? How would you achieve it? Would anything but a tiny minority of people really embrace it of their own free will? How do you deal with people who insist on being capitalists or armed robbers?
I'm interested by the ideas outlined in those two manifestos, just not particularly impressed by the thinking.
This conversation reminds me of Stephen Pinker's account of an argument he had with his parents when he was 13:
"As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin’s anarchism. I laughed off my parents’ argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 A.M. on October 17, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 A.M. the first bank was robbed. By noon most downtown stores had closed because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order."
Doesn't anyone read Hobbes anymore? In Leviathan he writes
that " life without a social covenant" or anarchy as such a condition is otherwise known, would result in "no arts, no letters, no society and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". -
Anarchism is more a challenge to the self-serving authority of elite groups than it is any kind of dogmatic belief.
And I'm way more comfortable with that with the more absolutist ideas I linked to earlier. I'm just a bit suspicious of utopian solutions predicated on "smashing the state".
-
Ha ha, if everything belonged to everybody, there'd be nothing to steal.
That ignores that fact that people like owning things and stopping them doing that will take an awful lot of very nasty coercion. To that I imagine you would reply "but people only want to own things because capitalist society brainwashes them". Which is one step away from those re-education camps so favored by left wing dictatorships.
There's very good reason that people like to own things and quite frankly I'm very glad that there is a State there to stop the likes of Jamie Lockette from taking things from others.
I'm not an Anarchist but there is much to be admired about what the Spanish anarchist movement achieved in the 30s. But they actually did things like form co-operatives, they are every different from the lets play smash the state with Tame Iti crowd we have in NZ.
My view is that the government by the State is preferable to government by the Family - which is what a society defaults to when there is no central goverment. Family loyalty is immensely strong - think of the clans, mafia families, etc.
Pinker nails it. His analysis of the perils of utopian politics in The Blank Slate is by far the best.
-
it is the Socratic way to provoke to extremes, and I am a huffy jaded new fogey cynic.
Socrates was not a Cynic, of course.
-
and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short
I thought that was a description of Rodney Hide.
-
Winston Churchill did NOT say that democracy was the worst form of government.
Here's what he actually said:
-
And finally, crikey, I get busy for an afternoon, and come back to find that EVERYONE ELSE has been having a lovely time discussing anarchy.
My rough take on it - nice enough for small groups where social norms might prevail, but given that we live in communities of hundreds of thousands, and even millions, it's hopelessly unrealistic about human nature. Which is why we might have do make do with Western liberal democracy as a form of government.
-
Anarchism is more a challenge to the self-serving authority of elite groups than it is any kind of dogmatic belief.
So is just saying what thing these elites are doing that you don't like, and why. Much more targeted and likely to have a useful outcome, if enough people agree with you. If not, feel free to live out in the bush, no one is stopping you.
-
nice enough for small groups where social norms might prevail,
and even then "nice enough" might not be all that great - fancy spending ones whole life dealing exclusively with ones family? That's what we used to do. We didn't get a whole lot of choice over the membership of those small groups.
And "social norms might prevail" via such mechanisms as anger, fear, jealousy - all the evolutionary product of human conflict resolution developed in and for small groups.
not to put too much of a damper on things this pleasant Fri eve.
-
Exactly so, Neil. There's good reason for liberal democratic institutions such as the rule of law.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.