What am i, the only anarchist on hipforums?

u've got me pissed, kid

 

Nice way to try and sound progressive, but that actually makes no sence...

Are you talking about renaming?

How the hell do you "reinvent" a theory (anarchism) that's based on the freedom of the individual from coersion and force?

 

And another thing:


It's awfully presumptuous for you to assume that anarchist theory hasnt evolved (if that's what you mean by "reinventing") over the past 200 years.

Do some research.

 

Anarchism "reinventing" itself:



individualist anarchism, anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-capitalism, mutualism, Christian anarchism, anarcha-feminism, green anarchism, nihilist anarchism, black anarchism, post-anarchism, post-left anarchism

Anarchist "reinventors":

0–9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

 

But is that reinventing or just evidence that anarchism is such a vague concept that you can mean whatever you want it to mean? After all these are just theories that people create names for, they have no relevance to reality.

 

Capitalism and Communism have been practised, thus they evolved. If a theory has never been practised, the change of it is just rewriting a fairy tale.

 

Hiker

Your view seems to be based on the idea that Anarchist theory was set in stone some 200 years ago and now needs reinventing?

For one some would argue that the idea had been knocking around for some time before then and another is that few ideas are set in stone they all get interpreted.

Think about it, as an example think about religion this is something that should be rather solid seeing as they are usually based on a set of limited religious texts. But if Mohammed is your prophet or Christ your saviour how an individual interprets their words mean seems to be legion. Christianity has thousands of different churches, sects and cults ranging from congregations of a few million to a few dozen.

In politics think of democracy. The model as set up by the Ancient Athenians is not the same model as say that followed by the citizens of present day USA. But what is democracy does it mean the involvement of everyone in everything or does it involve representatives being voted for to hopefully act in the way you would want? Does it encompass all adult citizens or should there be limits by intellect, wealth, age or gender?

Ideas do change and adapt, sometimes they improve other times they become corrupted. Christ’s ideas of peace led to people going to war over the details of just how he should be worshiped.

**

As to an idea being such a vague concept that it can mean whatever you want it to mean? Well as I say democracy can be interpreted differently but it might seem important to you how others interpreted its meaning if you are one of the people excluded from the vote. So it might be important to try and understand not just the concept but the different interpretations.

**

I agree that people need to be pragmatic but that pragmatism has to have a goal that is worthy, it needs to be clearly and honestly stated, documented and discussed. Because a system that is only based on what is seen to be pragmatic can very easily become corrupted and unworthy.

Think about it? You have a country that has two ethnic groups in it one a majority the other a minority. There is ethnic tensions and violence. The worthy course would be to get the two to work together but many would see the most pragmatic course as been to try and kill or banish the minority.

**

As to ideas being just fairy tale until they are introduced and practised, I hope you are not implying that they should therefore be dismissed? Many things have been called impossible or ridicules until they were tried and how would human society evolve if new things were not tried?

**

 

Not that i'm not guily of this, but i'm pretty sick of every intelligent person taking pathetic, sarcastic pot shots at everyone else who disagrees with them or voices an opinion or fact that doesn't "sound right", and most of the time means an entirely different thing to me. Shane, yes you the mighty shane included.

All I can say pointbreak is that I believe our culture is sick for one main reason, capitalism or not, the entire thing is almost entirely dependent on economic growth, which means that the shareholder, the owner, the CEO ("the main achiever") and the politician who serves to increase the dollar in their pockets in order to increase their own budgets are the pivoting point of the whole society, whilst the very backbone of life and society itself (imo the workers, the natural environment) is put on the backbench.

So I ask everyone here, what can we do right now to stop the evil being done by rampant consumerism?

And here starts another stupid ideological alpha male argument and nothing is ever achieved.

I'm done with arguing.

 

Whoa, where did that come from?

 

Lying

“i'm pretty sick of every intelligent person taking pathetic, sarcastic pot shots at everyone else who disagrees with them”

Hey man look where you are?

This is like a big debating chamber Assembly, Diet, Senate, congress, , Parliament, maybe more closely the Athenian ekklesia, where “the assembly's 'members' were not elected, but attended by right when and if they chose”

Anyone can come here and speak their mind (once they have done the time and posted the posts) there are some rules and the moderators have some leeway in how they intrepid them but more oftenn than not we let people speak their mind.

Some comments will be relevant, intelligent and interesting others pathetic, sarcastic and pointless.

If I banned everyone who ever presented a badly constructed argument or one that was boring or if we got rid of anyone those that were only once cynical, derisive, disparaging, scornful or rude, then none of us would be here including myself.

If you post here you can expect to have others pass judgement on your views some agree some will try to understand others will disagree and their will be those that just wish to heckle and snipe.

You can choose how you wish to respond to such cat calls, ignore, respond or attack, but as long as you post you will not end it.

But would you want to end it?

These are real people they are the ones you need to persuade in the real world so that the real world can be changed. Or at least you need to show that their views are rubbish, unfounded and untrue.

And remember it is better to confront some people here than in person.

**

As to Point I like him but sometimes he does seem like a man who is stuck n a hole that refuses to look up and therefore thinks the only way out is by digging the hole deeper. The thing is that the man knows that digging is very likely not work and that the hole will more than likely cave in but looking up is such a radical thought that he just cannot contemplate it.

For example he often attacks me for attacking US government policies, many, many times he doesn’t defend those policies, he knows they are not that defendable, no, he attacks me for just mentioning them. As if the defective policies were ignored or continued in the same vein everything would be ok.

For him because he has faith in globalisations benefits he cannot look up and see its shortfalls and dangers.

I hope that one day he will see that facing a problem is better than ignoring it and hoping it goes away. He can then move on to the next step of trying to think of ways to rectify the situation.

 

You're almost as bad as pointbreak sometimes.

Aren't there things and ideals like ecological commerce and non-profit organisations that people of all political beliefs but with their hearts in the right places can support as immediate solutions to greed and bala bla

is it any use?

 

But balbus, as an intelligent person you of course would know that lots of human phenomena, like an obssession with hierarchy and a belief in competition is often determined more by culture than anything else. I don't see bitching, cynicism and petty competition as a result of "free speech", its more of a general feeling or "attitude" imposed on us by our culture.

Have i explained that properly?

For example, the roads of my city are awfully congested, the air is dirty and everyone is going poor because of insane petrol prices, and yet there are hundreds of thousands of people who could very feasibly ride bicycles and I have very little success persuading a lot of them because there is a general attitude of "Its too hard, no i couldnt do that". Australians love their cars man.

 

My a ask your indulgence and go off at a bit of a tangent from the thread

I’ve always said that the left has the better arguments but the right has the money.

So the more capitalistic a society the more likely it is to have a strong right wing bias.

Those that gain an advantage from such an unequal system are likely to support it or actively help in pushing it’s, supposed, benefits and will attack those that seem in any way to endanger their dominance.

In many areas of the US the left wing argument is hardly (even never) heard, it is talked about in a negative light or in the past tense as if died but is not presented in an unbiased way.

Many Americans end up been right wingers because they end up believing that left wing arguments are not as good as those of the right, but without ever having to understand why or having been confronted with real left wing arguments.

But they think they have.

And so they turn up here.

Some just shout at us and go (or are pushed)

Others cockily think they will have some fun. They come in thinking they will explain to the ‘hippies’ and ‘morons’ just how stupid left wing views are and having left us all in tears move on.

Others genuinely wish to debate, to try and understand why people would have left wing views when they were so patently wrong.

But then they discover something.

Left wing arguments are better.

Unprotected by the barrier of right wing capitalist assumption they find their views crumbling and find they are unable to defend them because they never thought they needed to, because ‘everyone knows right wing views are better’. What is worse they find they cannot refute many ideas presented by the left.

The cocky ones usually end up shouting abuse while the debaters last longer but eventually they slink away or spend more time sniping and sneering ineffectually rather than making any genuine points.

**

 

Interesting Balbus, i have been doing a lot of thinking and I think through all the confusion we can put the right/left argument down to this simple explanation:

On the right (believers in capital and economic growth dictating culture and living systems) there is the greedy, and the cynical. The greedy promote pure capitalism because it affords them the opportunity to exploit and they know this. The cynical/stupid (like pointblank) don't believe that a culture can exist fairly and efficiently unless the entire system is dictated by capital and "the market", where those things will determine and provide for human and environmental needs (but obviously they don't). This is mostly due to, like balbus says, the society's right wing bias.

On the left, whilst we may have incredibly conflicting ideas, what unites us is our desire for a society that is dictated by EVERY HUMAN's needs, as well as the Earth's. Capital and economic growth should be secondary concerns, if they are necessary at all.

So....ultimately left wing arguments are better because they are by nature, in the pursuit of truth from a human standpoint, whilst right wing arguments are full of half truths and convenient lies.....for example: "For a country to become better, it needs to produce more children, produce more than it needs, consume more than it needs, give shareholders more rights than the workers....etc"....even if it is at the expense of the environment, human rights and the future because "the economy wont run otherwise"...where a left wing argument might say "Lets scrap this all consuming monster of a system and replace it with one where success is measured by how a nation looks after ALL its people and its resources responsibly, so that the bottom line is no longer the dollar, but the pursuit of happiness"

 

Lying I think we are straying off thread so I hope you don’t mind but I think I’ll start a new thread in the general politics forum using the last two posts as a beginning.

 

I can just hear the conversation in the villages of South America
Jose': Hey Pedro, some rich Yank or Brit sayin here his family goin poor cuz a the high petrol prices.

pedro: You know man I feel real sorry for that man, I hope his family dont end up pickin beans for a livin like we do.

Jose': hey the bourgeois gringo, I see he is a revolutionary

pedro: what kinda anarchy is that shit man - hey Let me eat cake
I demand to eat cake or I riot

jose': no man he sayin he gonna win the revolution by not complainin

both : ha ha ha ha ha

(sorry i should explain it is irony to illustrate and iterate the point lying in a field is making)