Every now and then I see a statist saying something like, “Yeah, I used to be an anarchist, but then I grew up.” They really believe that the way to be a responsible, rational adult is to bow down to a parasitical ruling class, and ask it to manage their lives, and the lives of everyone else. What a drastically perverted view of reality that is.
Of the people I see saying that, few if any were ever anarchists for any philosophical or moral reason. To them, being an “anarchist” probably meant being a short-sighted, inconsiderate, obnoxious punk who did whatever he felt like in the moment, without regard to anyone else’s person or property. No, smoking in the boy’s room doesn’t make you an anarchist. Neither does randomly breaking other people’s stuff.
At this point I must confess—with a heavy dose of embarrassment—that in school I was very quiet, well-behaved and obedient. I had been trained, the way an animal is trained, to view obedience to authority as a virtue, and disobedience as a sin. And so I thought that the disobedient and disruptive kids were bad, and that I, in comparison, was good.
But authoritarian indoctrination has another unfortunate side effect: even those who, for whatever reason, feel a burning desire to rebel—to disobey and resist those who attempt to control them—also start to believe that they are bad for doing so. Then they start to take pride in being anti-social, destructive, criminal, etc. And so what may start as a perfectly righteous and positive yearning for freedom gets warped into frustration, anger and hatred, precisely because society teaches rebellious teenagers that their rebelliousness is inherently immoral. They “learn” that they are bad, and then they act like it.
Meanwhile, misguided obedient goodie-good me was taking pride in good grades, the approval of “authority” figures, etc. (Of course, good grades aren’t inherently bad, but judging one’s own worth and goodness by whether one pleases one’s controllers is not a good or healthy thing.) I was a well-trained dog, not like those “bad dogs” in the class.
Fast forward a few decades, and a rather depressing irony shows up. Now so many of the “trouble-makers” in school are well-trained, patriotic, compliant, conforming subjects. And I’m a freaking anarchist with a criminal record (for having not paid tribute to the politicians).
Sadly, a whole lot of teenage “rebels” eventually have the spirit trained out of them, and then view being an obedient subject as being mature. Often their rebelliousness consisted of little more than doing whatever “authority” told them not to do, which is just a different, twisted way of letting someone else control you. Like a recently captured animal, they angrily snarled for a while, but then, after a while, were successfully trained to view a life of subservient captivity as not only acceptable, but as proper, responsible and superior.
Having never had a coherent philosophical understanding, but just having an instinctive reflex against being tamed and subjugated, they are eventually psychologically bludgeoned into being good “law-abiding taxpayers,” who faithfully give obedience and tribute to their political masters, and even talk about how they are proud to do so.
And then, as a pathetic display of Stockholm Syndrome, they go online and talk down to (in their eyes) those silly, immature trouble-makers who don’t want to be forever dominated and enslaved by a political ruling class. And while they can’t do much of anything without the permission of the rulers, and are continually robbed by the political machine, they scoff at any comparison of that to slavery, or even theft. They have learned to love their captors, to be dependent upon those who exploit and abuse them, and to scorn and mock any who advocate that they be free.
“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” - George Orwell (“1984”)
Great article Larken. I have taken to notice this exact sentiment as well as I spent most of my childhood like you achieving the approval of my authority figures through obedient actions. Post graduation I had many of the same people who looked at obedience as uncool were complementing my ultimate statist move of joining the military. It seems the statist understanding of responsibility is akin to a responsibility to the group completely abandoning the responsibility to oneself. Hence, the underlining resentment that many statist display. The claim of "growing up" reeks of it.
Very well spoken mroctavius!
I had a beautifully orchestrated piece of guitar music visit my mind while reading your words. Mick Farren would be proud.
Woodchuck Pirate
aka Raymond J Raupers Jr USA
Have you noticed that the ones that throw insults are the ones that are the least capable of coming up with an intelligent response?
I admittedly struggle with the concept of anarchy, but I don't feel as though it comes from a place of arrogance (people who are anarchists are "childish or immature") but rather distrust in people themselves.
I think that's why I have been such a hard sell until late on Libertarianism in general, seeing as though so much of it is based on personal responsibility, which I am all for because I can be personally responsible.
Yet, so many people can't.
I suppose, if you are coming at anarchy from the perspective that people can properly govern themselves, color me skeptical about that reality. Though I have come to learn that there are many interpretations of what an anarchist society might look like.
I guess I haven't found one that looks anywhere near probable yet!
Fantastic read though! :)
I can totally sympathize with distrusting a lot of people. The question is, in a world of imperfect, flawed, sometimes malicious people, does it improve the situation to give SOME of those imperfect, flawed, and sometimes malicious people POWER over the rest of us? (And is it not the nastiest people who usually end up in those positions?)
That's a very thought provoking point. And to be honest, I don't know. I don't think that all leaders are terrible, or all police. I think there is a healthy mix. I was in the middle of training to be a cop, and injury took me out, but I saw a variety of people there for a variety of reasons. We could definitely use a few less meatheads who were just there to fuck some shit up.
I have experienced the same in politics. I was with the Republican party as a Precinct Committeeman for quite some time, and in my experience, there was also a variety of people and reasons for those people to be serving.
I think we tend to see the worst in those people because it is put on display. I think that a lot could change if we fixed the government rather than completely demolishing it. I think one of the biggest problems is corporate government, and businesses being in bed with politicians.
I am usually very anti-regulation, but I think that regulation and oversight is 100% necessary on those making decisions about our money and our rights and that highly regulating the interactions between government and business would solve a lot of problems right off the bat. Though, it is likely it will never happen, and I can see the advantages of just trashing it all and starting anew.
It's a very complicated and delicate situation.
Oversight by who? De-centralize and be responsible for your own money and the decisions you make with it...
Why try to reinvent the wheel though? To a degree, that's what anarchy is. Eventually, people will have to come together and reorganize again. Discover that it's not efficient to do everything yourself, or any better to privatize everything for profit. We have seen what doing that with jails has done. So ultimately, we all decentralize, then rediscover each other on a community level and reconstruct society to the point that it looks identical in 100 years. I just don't understand it when it would be so much easier to just fix the things that are egregiously wrong.
"Government" is not just cooperation and/or organization; it is violent domination. The only difference between voluntaryism and statism is that voluntaryists don't pretend that "authority" is real, or that anyone has an exemption from morality. There are literally millions of ways to organize and work together on a VOLUNTARY basis. What is "egregiously wrong" is the notion that violently dominating people is okay if it's called "law" and done in the name of the "common good." In fact, that has been the cause of the vast majority of injustice and human suffering in history.
It can also be looked at this way: If you look at children, they learn best by practical tasks and observations, in other words, learning by trial and error. And thats the basics of science. And as sutch what most are missing is htat to succeed you wil fail x number of times first. But if you never even try, then you wil never learn and thus succeed.
MEaning if people never take responsability for theyre actions, and insted depend on hte architypal parrants (gouvernment or and archon) they wil never learn to take care of themselves and be responsable for theyre actions.
If you do something bad, life smacks you in the face, if you do something good, life rewards you. But When it comes to archons/"rulers", they bypass that by having obediant followers do theyre bad stuff. So the obediant masses gets smacked in the face insted of the archons/"rulers".
Point is, we need to venture out in the chaos of darkness, to light the candles (yes refrensing candles in the dark ;) ) That includes doing stuff we dont yet know how to do, like taking responsability.
Being more quite and reserved in school kept me out of the clicks and group mentality. This fostered a more individual approach to life and all its processes. I think it has kept me free of a lot of mental and spiritual baggage, as well as an eye for what’s real not programmed.
Amen but easier said than done!
"I used to eat steaks and salads, but I grew up. Now I only eat pureed baby mush like a Big Boy." Statey McStatist
A good read! Thanks Larken.
I was such a choir boy :)
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society"
-Jiddu Krishnamurti
Freedom in mind - it's more important than any other freedom.
Good write up, although it pays to be obedient.thanks for sharing.
You lost me. It ‘pays’ to be obedient - Pays cash money?! Eh unless this is a pyramid pitch, shoot me some ‘opportunity in return for obedience’ links. :wink:
Jeez, Larken... a man of your illustrious stature can't be Steeming like a noob with no profile pic! Get with the program, man!
Yeah, nothing is as infuriating as people who arrogantly scoff at the truth. To "look down" on others from a position of baseness is just too ironic for any intelligent person to bear. I'd like to pull their face off, stuff them into a locked voting booth, and drop it into the ocean. The face could be glued to a scarecrow and sent home to their family - with the level of consciousness remaining unchanged, it's unlikely that anyone will notice the difference.
Nah.. the name @larkenrose is plenty. 👍🏿
Hahaha Damn straight!
There, how's that?
Ha! Absolutely perfect! Way t’ be!
nice ,, make wedding photos
Yeah, those people must be wrong.
Great write up about your views and perspectives - glad to read this. Thx.
I am glad to see you mature and move beyond childish behavior! well writen article
I've had similar comments from smug #newspeakliberal. An aunt-in-law used to like Ayn Rand; now she's a hardcore statist
Great article Larken. I like the way you put it.
Damn Larken you sure have a laser like, logical, psychological, clean, clear answer for everything! If only we could put something in the water that would give everyone 50% of your superpower (instead of fluoride, which has the opposite effect)....the world would be drastically different by this time tomorrow!
This tree hugger liked your post
unfortunately where i live in northern california the punks and rebels are all anarcho-communists and they falsely believe american corperate facism is the result of the free market, and they grow up to be democrat party voters
Ha ha ha
i am follow and upvote for you
Parasites in many fields around man on the land
Larken,
This article is one of the most enjoyable I've consumed. I like hardcore music and it's such fruitless labor to remind the punk-herd that the mixed economy model is socialism not capitalism. Laissez-faire capitalism is the only capitalism and has never existed anywhere at anytime in history.
To most self-professed "anarchist" punks, anarcho-capitalism can not equate to anarchy. Those indoctrinated posturing anarcho-socialists are worse than hypocrits, they are revealed as deceitful little weasels that reject freedom for socialism.
To equate Laissez-faire capitalism to the statist construct of "incorporation" under the mixed economy model is the argument of a fool. Those fools are the first in line to sign up for entitlements and rationalize their theft as stealing from the government while shouting "power to the people" and scrawling big letter "A" on walls. If anyone deserves those walls falling upon them it is they.
Thankfully there are some hardcore bands that are conscious and celebrating the truth:
Statists and weasel socialists suffering cognitive dissonance posturing as anarchists, you are undone, no longer will you control the fear.
Woodchuck Pirate
aka Raymond J Raupers Jr USA