Yeah. All that is quite logical, rational, and would make sense in a twisted sort of ideal. But you're not taking the nature of the beast into account- sure, it would make SENSE to eliminate sex. That doesn't mean doing it wouldn't still end up being the death of the species. People are irrational in the extreme, and the only way to understand them is to be able to factor in that something else, even if it isn't hard to understand. We're not math equations, or, at least, we are, and bloody complex ones. So complex that nobody quite gets the details of how we work, and only the most successful leaders have figured out how to work with us effectively.
Yes we are. In fact, while nobody has been able to create a fully precise and rigorous theory of mob psychology, it is
extremely easy in practice to change around the culture of a society given several decades and the right communication devices. How do you think so many of history's fierce demagogues were able to completely transform the culture of a nation? People like sex because that is what the common culture of today's dictates. (note the great resurgence of sex in the last 30 or so years; there are a number of causes for this, but I will not get into that)
You misread me. I don't think there are ANY "inherent rights" because a right is a privelidge given by the government to good children. The "right" to speech, in the form outsiders take it, is not a right, any more than being able to throw a Molotov cocktail at the pigs is a right. There's nothing to grant, because it can't be denied. The governments of the world try to, and that spells their eventual doom.
Actually, everything can be denied very easily by the Stalinist route, seeing as you either live by the laws or you die. A right exists only as far as it can be put into practice. However, it only really comes to this if the change in laws is sudden and drastic; a gradual change in the laws over hundreds of years will allow the cultural systems to keep up with the changing laws and thus mainstream people will not care one bit if any of these "rights" are denied completely. This is why I support communism in principle but not in today's world.
You assume, as most non-anarchists do, that we want to pick up the first gun we see and start shooting. Lack of a government FORCING people to be decent does not mean that nobody can on their own. Disorganized? The anarchist Yippie movement used to be one of the more highly organized, influential powers in the nation! What you see NOW is disorganized- a hundred million demoralized people trying to survive in a nation too wishy-washy to fully concede its own totalitarian rule, and thus secure power, and too greedy to be decent enough to die quietly. Everyone's miserable, most people, given half a chance, WOULD go start shooting everyone at random, and you can't get a group of people to agree on one set of pizza toppings, much less a political philosophy. In contrast, the "disorganized" anarchist movements of the 60s and early 70s were highly attuned to one goal, could talk freely and exchange ideas, and did as they pleased. They understood that not just ONE ideology was going to get anyone everywhere, but only that they needed to follow the same general goals of securing their personal freedoms. They lived, in fact, outside of the law, and yet were nicer to each other, by all accounts, than anyone in any authoritarian society. Disorganized? You really need to read up on what you're talking about. People are only organized when they can gather behind a common cause of their own volition, live together of their own free will. NOT when forced to get along by a quasi-dictatorial government.
Okay, you need to read that book I mentioned earlier, since all of these issues are answered there. Yes, that is exactly what I assume, because the lack of a civilization will force the human to return to its primordial instincts and we would become just like animals. Do you think that humans actually have any natural inborn instincts of common morality and that they will no longer be, to quote you, "too greedy to die quietly?" Morality has arisen from the civilization, and although it has been taken way too far at this point, going back to where we started from would not better the situation either. The ultimate objective of the isolated animal is personal survival, since no society exists, and of course, half the time this will involve destroying other humans. This would continue for millions of years until humans have evolved into a new kind of species, thus eliminating the human anyway. Regarding organization, as you said, people can be somewhat organized when they have a common goal, but
only as long as the cause that binds them together exists. I bet all you anarchists will be at each other's throats when your objective of destroying the society has been met.
(incidentally, this is why the plots against Hitler during WW2 were largely failures) The most "organized" system would be, like I said before, a single mega-organism encompassing everything in the universe, and the path of intelligent evolution throughout history has shown this to be the limiting end anyway.
Now, I never said that people will be
forced to do anything at all in the sense of the word you are thinking of. The social and cultural conditions in the people's surroundings largely determine what they like and do not like. Seeing as these events will occur over very long periods of time, the tensions among the people will become quite insignificant as long as the
rate of change is low. (think of the human's general attributes rather than those of the current human) The people will go along with everything by their "own free will," but this "free will" can be and is changed around easily with the varying global conditions. Next, you are saying that "one ideology is not going to get anyone anywhere," and then immediately after you write that they all need to attempt to uphold individual freedoms. Yeah, that makes sense.
Contrary minds are of course necessary to keep the progress going, but in the generality, organization implies that a central objective must exist for the majority. And lastly, what is the Yippie movement? A group of people who advocate interjections of happiness?
And I never said the government should STOP people if they started killing themselves. I said that, if that was what the people wanted, the government should HELP them. Put good use to all those nukes in Nevada.
Sounds fine, but this would effectively destroy the human race anyway since the members of a static society would at some point fall prey to the tide of evolution. If that is what you want, then it turns into a somewhat unrelated issue, so I will not get into the details of that here.
How 'bout if someone told you that computers and TV were deleterious to your mental health, confiscated all means of electronic communication, and replaced all TV programming with propoganda of the dullest sort? It's far from unlikely in any authoritarian movement, and probably the closest analogy I can find, knowing as little as I do about your habits.
I would obviously not like it (the computer part; couldn't care less about TV
), but if I can be given a solid reasoning behind the new law I would still accept it and would get used to it over time. The next generation would find it very easy to cope with the new law and would in fact wonder how people were ever able to live without it. If a slow and subtle change as I talked of earlier was to take place, it would go far beyond the scope of any one man's lifetime, and thus few, if any, hard feelings would come up.
Hmm... Definately not the Culture...
Does Culture with a capital C carry some sort of different meaning from the normal word?
My point is this: had the shooter on July 4th not been a Muslim Arab but a somewhat unhinged LA resident, or a guy from Denver, or from France, say - would it automatically have been linked to terrorism? What we're seeing and experiencing is some sort of ethnic stereotyping of Arabs and Muslims as anti-American terrorists. For example, one of my friends is the son of an Iranian asylum seeker and following Septempber 11th he wasactually physically assaulted at work - simply for being an Arab.
Such behaviour has to stop, really. That might sound a bit sanctimonious, but perception of the 'outsider' is one of the key features of further persecution...
This reminds me of a slightly similar but far less serious incident; my uncle was on a business trip a few weeks ago and was detained by at the airport for a much more detailed search due to his southeast-Asian appearance. (my family is of Indian origin and Hindu ethnicity but there are large numbers of both Hindus and Muslims in that country, and by natural characteristics alone, both look very similar
) Unfortunately I think that this might be necessary for some temporary period while these terrorist tensions are still high so to make sure that nobody slips through. One thing though is that the people should be given some compensation if they are thoroughly searched and questioned and nothing is found out of the ordinary, because it might otherwise cause previously loyal Americans to turn over to these terrorist bands.
I fully agree with you that the idea of the outsider must fade away, but this will require very powerful propaganda campaigns along with the cooperation of all national governments (including those in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, etc.). Most of the religions and common cultures make divisions of people based on origin, ethnicity and such things, which is how the terrorist groups get supporters in the first place, but these ideas coming up actually cause the divisions to form (psychological conditioning), and so all of this must go. It will happen eventually, but probably not in our lifetimes.
"Give peace a chance!"
It was tried but it did not work, so it's time for war now.
