Larken Rose, author of The Most Dangerous Superstition, is my favourite anarchist thinker.
Larken posted this on his Facebook page yesterday. It’s highly germane to my previous post damning the MSM so I decided to copy and paste it below.
The world is really damn big, and there are a lot of people on it. No kidding, right? But the near incomprehensible number of humans on the planet allows for massive manipulation and deception. To wit, if I could merely choose which events and stories you hear about—even if everything I tell you is completely true and accurate—I would have massive control over your perceptions, control over your thoughts and fears, and therefore a lot of control even over your actions. If, for example, I made sure you were told about it—and saw the gruesome images—every single time someone was injured by a chainsaw (which happens about 80 times a day), you would think it was an intolerable, shocking epidemic… a crisis! If you weren’t very good at statistics and critical thought, you might even be joining the call to have chainsaws banned, or at least licensed and heavily regulated.
As another example, if I made sure you heard about it, in lurid detail, every time someone with red hair mistreated an animal, and you were exposed to that day after day, over time you would—whether consciously, subconsciously, or both—start to think that redheads are all sadistic animal torturers. Just due to the sheer numbers of people on the planet, there could be a news channel that reported only redheads mistreating animals, without repeating the same story twice, and without ever running out of stories (provided they had a way to find all those stories). For those who want to check the math, there are estimated to be somewhere around 100,000,000 redheads in the world. If even one out of every 100,000 of those was nasty to an animal at some point, that would give our “Redheads Being Mean to Animals Network” around three unique stories a day, for a year, never mentioning the same individual twice. (After a year you could probably start over with the list of people without the viewers noticing.)
The point is, if YOUR perception of any group—any race, religion, nationality, fans of a particular band, people who wear a certain fashion, people born in a certain month, etc.—is based on what you see on a screen, or hear on the radio, keep in mind that you are allowing someone else to mold your opinions for you. And if your view of that group doesn’t match your own direct, firsthand experiences, then you are probably being lied to, and someone is probably intentionally instilling fear or hatred in you in order to serve their own agenda.
Take it from an anarchist, living in a world of people who are being taught to fear anarchists.
A quick question for the reader. What is YOUR perception of anarchists?
Allow me to mold your opinions for you.
Yeah nah. You can mold your own opinions.
Meanwhile, I pick my fights, and defending the preferred labels of the political tribes with which I’m affiliated from what I and other tribe members deem to be misuse isn’t my battle.
There’s an insuperable problem with the terms ‘anarchy’, ‘anarchism’, ‘anarchist’ that isn’t going to go away. Simply put, the trouble is that the term ‘anarchist’ (e.g.) is an auto-antonym. Check out the Collins English Dictionary definition.
1. a person who advocates the abolition of government and a social system based on voluntary cooperation
2. a person who causes disorder or upheaval
I’m a person who advocates a social system based on voluntary cooperation and the abolition of government, but I’m not a person who causes disorder or upheaval. So, am I an anarchist or not?
What do you say I am?
I say I’m a voluntaryist.
The Voluntarist type Anarchist vision of Anarchy is like the Objectivists vision of Selfishness…*Bogus* by definition.
Whenever you point out something negative about Egoism/ sefishness to an Objectivist… they say “Oh no thats not what *We mean* by ‘Rational selfishness’…. same deal with Anarchy…. ie Anarchists are full of shit… for the very same reason…. ‘Their Anarchy’ is all beer and skittles…. none of all the negative stuff that gets attributed to anarchy…. “Our Anarchy would never result in tribal warlords”.
“Our Anarchy would never promote Terrorism”….. etc etc…. how convenient it is to dream happy dreams and arbitrarily ‘forbid’ anyone from raining on your parade.
This stuff is called Pie in the Sky… like the useful Utopian Idiots delusion about what Communism is supposed to usher in…
Reality however results in Death and chaos.
Tim Wikiriwhi.
Christian Libertarian.
P.S We need a ‘Dont like’ option.
This is the Only Larken worth reading…. Clarence Larken.
http://blog.eternalvigilance.me/2011/12/dispensational-truth/
> Anarchists are full of shit
I’m not really sure what you’re saying, Tim. Are you trying to give “anarchists” (whatever they are) a bad name? Because all you’re doing is giving “Christian Libertarians” (whatever they are) a bad name with your ranting and raving.
Do you advocate a social system based on voluntary cooperation? Or not?
Lol Tim. No anarchist I know promises a rainbow crystal utopia. But if the means to an end is righteous there is less need to insist on a deluded outcome, and better opportunity to deal with problems as they arise.
Simon…. having had my fill of conversations with Anarchists, I know the absurd denial-ism that is hallmark of the faithful.
Refer to my original comment above…
It occurs to me that my comparison of Objectivism with Anachy bears more than a little weight in both of their delusional ‘Air headedness’ about Human nature and free society.
‘Galts Gultch’ and Credo ‘ I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another …’ is also ultimately the Anarchist’s Credo “Dont tell me what to do”, and on pondering this more… and exploring this Parallel, It amuses me that my reasonings in this direction have very solid ground.
When reading Wikipedia on Galts Galtch, They start with a few obeservations and assumptions… such as they *assume* Galts gultch ‘legal system’ would follow English comon Law… *Yet Rand Did not say that!*… but actually leaves the Galtch without Laws!
It then further… its description could be mistaken for being not a Libertarian Manifesto… *but an Anarchist one!*
Libertarianism being not only Idealistic in it’s conception of rights… but non-utopian pragmatically speaking…. confessing Liberty without Law and *Small government* to be a Failure… due to human sinfulness (crime) but likewise… Small government is always hungry to grow….due to human sinfulness (the lust to impose our will) …. Libertarianism walking the razors edge between two dire fates… in the pursuit of happiness… but not guaranteeing it… alowing to the greatest degree people live by their own values… and to reap what the sow…
So it is that I find Anarchy to be as whack and as puerile as Objectivism… and Richard will appreciate the depth of disgust I harbor for these ridiculous Ideas.
I am a fully committed enemy.
Read on about Galt’s galtch… wikipedia
“John Galt described the Gulch to Dagny Taggart as a place of rest. The Gulch had no police force or sheriff, because it had no crime. The closest thing it had to an executive authority was a three-man Committee of Safety, consisting of John Galt, Francisco d’Anconia, and Ragnar Danneskjöld. Indeed, it was not a state of any kind, but a strictly voluntary association of homesteaders. Judge Narragansett’s judicial activities were probably limited to the occasional Request for Judicial Intervention to ratify arbitration agreements. The judge might also have reopened his law practice to assist his neighbors with the drawing-up of contracts.
However, the Gulch had several unwritten customs which arose, as Galt also explained, as a reaction to the things that the residents sought to rest from. No one ever remained in the Gulch at another person’s expense, nor asked nor granted any unremunerated favors. Every resident was expected to pay his rent to Midas Mulligan, or else pay room and board to the leaseholder of any house in which he stayed. Similarly, no one ever “borrowed” something belonging to another; instead one rented it and was expected to negotiate a rent with the owner. (And if one discovered that he was renting the same article often enough to make it a significant expense, then he might ask Midas Mulligan for a loan, if necessary, and buy the article.)
For example, when John Galt wished to take Dagny Taggart on a driving tour of the valley, he needed to secure a car, because he did not own one. (He didn’t need to own a car in a place where he stayed only one month of the year.) So he asked Midas Mulligan for the use of his car. But he did not “borrow” that car in the usual sense; he rented it and actually paid a daily rental on it. Dagny thought that behavior strange, given that Mulligan, with his tremendous net worth, could scarcely realize a (to him) significant income by renting out his car for twenty-five cents a day. But Galt explained it as an example of “resting” from the constant stress of living in a society in which one’s fellow citizens constantly demanded certain things of one and expressed no willingness to pay for those things.
http://www.conservapedia.com/Galt's_Gulch