ogwahs Posted October 17, 2014 Posted October 17, 2014 Hello everyone, I just had a debate with my brother about whether anarchy would be a good thing if people were still hitting their kids en masse, and whether it was even possible for anarchy to come about if that were the case. I vaguely remember watching a youtube video in which Stefan Molyneux said he would consider it irresponsible to remove government from the world as things are, and i was hoping someone could confirm my memory and post a link to the video or show he said that in, if he did. Hope this is a good section to ask for help with this in, sorry if it isn't.
powder Posted October 17, 2014 Posted October 17, 2014 I think the state is a manifestation of our psyche, it exists because people want it to, because they believe it is necessary and good. If children are raised by adults that abuse, coerce and manipulate them with fear and violence then those children will grow up and internalize the notion that coercion is a valid form of human interaction, they will be very prone to bow to authority without question. so yes, I think a stateless society full of frightened angry manipulators would not be sustainable. 1
_LiveFree_ Posted October 17, 2014 Posted October 17, 2014 The state is a symptom. If I get an awful flu, one of the symptoms will likely be vomiting. Vomiting is a great way to spread the flu to others. Enough vomiting can dehydrate the body and lead to death. However, vomiting is the body's mechanism to try and rid itself of contagions. The government is like the vomit of childhood trauma spewing out onto the world. It infects everything it touches. But it also clearly identifies who's sick. When afflicted with vomiting, you stay in bed, rest, sip water or other replenishing drink, eat very light food. You take it easy and go slowly. The body can fight off the flu with the help of medicine. Medicine in this case being philosophy. You can inoculate yourself and others against catching the flu with peaceful parenting. Peaceful parenting is like living a healthy lifestyle around healthy people and being able to identify when sick people come around you. When that happens you know to keep your distance, wear a mask, wash your hands frequently, and trust that your healthy body can fight the infection. I had fun with this metaphor 3
ogwahs Posted October 19, 2014 Author Posted October 19, 2014 That was a good metaphor, but it got my gag reflex going lol. Thanks for the fuel, guys, gonna go in for round two soon!
Spenc Posted November 4, 2014 Posted November 4, 2014 i view anarchy as a logical experiment toward the goal of achieving the maximum peace and happiness. for example, set up the problem as you would in 9th grade science class. We have a problem as good people wanting other people to have joy, but we also recognize that conflicts arise from our competing desires that can easily prevent us from enjoying peace and happiness. We hypothesize that there can be a moral standard by which people can resolve conflicts peacefully and to enjoy the conditions that will allow them to pursue their unique goals and desires. Anarchy comes in in the Method. We outline a philosophical framework of peaceful conflict resolution and opportunity for personal achievement by defining rights/UPB and we can sum this up as anarchy, or a thousand different terms. Then we try our best to run our experiment and refine it. So for example, if you have people abusing their children in an otherwise peaceful and libertarian world, we are still receiving feedback: children who are abused suffer! They achieve less happiness as a psychological consequence of their abuse, and the abuse itself would be difficult to sueeze into any rigid, consistent libertarian doctrine. Walter Block's arguments in his debate with Stef were fairly unimpressive to me. Many libertarian theorists tend to put children into special categories, with secial rights, or lackthereof, and imposing certain responsibilities upon others. I think we generally know though that these theories are interesting to legal theorists, but to living, breathing, feeling humans abuse is sometimes self-evident. So when this feedback comes in to an enlightened society, it cannot reject that data. It must conform and adapt and our very definition of 'anarchy' must change, or we must throw it out and embrace some new term in its stead as the new Method in our experiment. Anarchy and child abuse are simply antithetical, in the sense that anarchy is a theory rationally derived to serve an ends which child abuse is clearly in direct conflict with.
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