Tag: anarchy

Condemned to live together!

A criticism of my early views that laws are a common compromise of people who can take responsibility for their acts: To explain this better, I’ll explain my early views on morality and human freedom. I believed that they don’t co-exist. A moral judgement is a judgement of an act. An act done by a human in any emotional state is done with a rush to do it. Is it justified then? No! Does it need to be judged? Of course! But why? Why do actions of other people bother us? Why should we even live together?

Humans are condemned to be free. There is no way out. Is there a common essence for all of us? No. Is there a common purpose? No. Can we have objective morals? No. But we have understood that we can survive if we lived in groups. And it worked. Thus, we built civilizations, kingdoms, states and now nations. Now, do we need objective rules that repress us?

We need to understand that there is no supernatural judgement waiting to judge our actions. If we have to survive better, living in groups is the better way. And for that, we do need rules that don’t destroy society. We need society alive and functioning. So regardless of our opinion towards it, there is a forced common goal for all of us. That is to maintain harmony to live together intending no harm. Thus, we need objective rules that will however cause repression, but it should be a common compromise. “Humans are condemned to live together”

These rules should be applied in the best interest of maintaining harmony. Anarchy is amazing? Of course, it is. Imagine being able to live your own life independently, governing yourselves. But humans are beasts in nature; like any other animal. We have tried to refuse our true nature for a long time now. We have to accept that we all are predators, hunters, killers and thieves. Given certain pressure, everyone can break the threshold and can commit any treacherous act just to survive. It is there in all of us. That is our true nature, the true essence — we are animals.

Rather than judging our true nature to be filthy from the fixed-moral perspective, we should accept it. We should embrace the fact that we are all by birth predators and contribute to the common goal of harmony voluntarily. If it’s a rule book of God that condemns us to act accordingly to the rules, it causes repression. If it’s a spiritual guide, it causes repression too. You are suppressing your true nature rather than embracing it.

End of the day, rules, morals and laws only exist to maintain harmony. Why don’t we all contribute to it voluntarily? Rather than being suppressed by an unknown or a third-party-source (government), we can do it on our own. And the only third-party judge, the law should indeed exist, even though it suppresses our true nature, it is the necessary suppression we need to balance the harmony.

It won’t work if we ask people to create morals themselves. We can not blame the irresponsible for not taking the responsibility of creating their values. Again, it is natural. We are the beasts that we need to tame. And the taming; not because of a holy purpose. Or a moral judgement of a good/bad. But just what needs for society to exist. There is no objective good/bad, but just accepted/not accepted. Killing is not bad, it is just not acceptable. It is still natural for humans to kill, but we don’t need it now if we want to exist together.

I had this view that people who took responsibility to create their own values to not harm the other have compromised to create laws to control the irresponsible. I saw it in two perspectives. One being an unselfish contribution to the society. That is, that the law exists because the irresponsible cannot create their own values. The other being, a selfish act to preserve oneself. That is, that the responsible understand that we need harmony and thus to protect themselves from the irresponsible they have created these rules.

On further introspection, that might sound true, but such is not the case. There exists some common and objectively accepted thing in all of us. That is the idea of living together. This idea is the agent that causes morals, laws and values. People who don’t have these ideas of harmony are called ‘anti-social’ or sociopaths. According to what is not-accepted (bad) by all of us (those who wish harmony), a sociopath is bad (not-accepted), because a sociopath destroys the fundamentals of living together.

What is objectively bad is that which does not value or disregards the balance of the society. What is objectively good is that which does add to or does not break the fundamentals of society, at least. Thus, even though objectivity is a human construct, that is much needed. And as ironic as it may sound, it takes a person who is individual and independent to form a better society — so independent that one’s growth does not even depend on the decline of other people.

The call for chaos! – Anarchism as a civilized ideology!

By – Manoj Sri Harsha

The word Anarchy derives from the Greek words ‘an’ and ‘arkhos’, meaning ‘without a leader/ruler’. The word Anarchy is frequently abused, and the abuse is evident throughout the history of rulers and governments. It’s looked upon as chaos! A state with no rulers, no law and order are usually called Anarchy. But that’s not what it is! Anarchy doesn’t mean the absence of law; it just means the absence of a ruler.

Anarchism as an ideology is that we don’t need an authority to govern over us. It is the recognition of each individual’s right to govern themselves without having any masters over them. Law exists in Anarchy, and the judicial system exists; it’s just the government that is being opposed by the anarchists. Most of the philosophers since the 20th century have reached a point where it’s now clear that humans can’t be generalised. The essence of one human cannot be the essence of the other. Each human has their own essence created through experience and intuition. One cannot give a set of rules or morals that will be universally accepted by everyone equally. The idea that a group of people can have the same opinions is just a myth. Every one of us differ in perception. Then what’s the point of having the same rules and same rulers?

One might hate marriage, and one might hate the idea of pre-marital sex, can you collectively pass a moral upon them satisfying both of them? Given a thought, why should you meet them if your ideology differs from both of them? Maybe you are celibate! It’s almost a fact that no one agrees. We are different! And that’s precisely where socialism and even democracy fail. In a democracy, only the person elected by the majority of people is a leader of all the people. Then how is democracy respecting the opinion of others who voted for someone else? It’s erroneous!

But if someone tells you that Anarchism is the resolution, it is not! But it is the utopia we can imagine. It is something we can consider to create a society. Socialism failed to be a society, but without socialism, we would never have many of the human rights and worker rights. Similarly, Anarchism if established, it assumes all the people to be aware of their freedom and create their own set of morals and live individually without causing any harm to the lives of others. It’s naive to assume that everyone will be willing to create their own morals. It’s also too dumb to believe there won’t be any crime and people will behave responsibly. We have come too far and have already complicated our lives. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre calls the people who use religious and other excuses for not creating their own morals as “Bastards!”. But in reality, we do surrender ourselves to ideologies and religions and use them as excuses for not being moral. We can’t presume everyone to be accountable for themselves. Hence, the requirement of law and order is even more significant in an anarchist society. 

Our history tells us how societies were formed and then rebelled against, destroyed, and upon the graveyard of dead civilisations, rose new rule. Monarchy failed, imperialism failed, socialism failed, and now democracy is at its verge of being a total disaster. All the systems that failed were because of a rebellion by people that got suppressed. Democracy too, is containing the rights and opinions of people. Foundation of democracy is to generalise some ideology followed by the majority of its people. Suppressing natural drives of humans has never been a good idea. Generalising morals suppress the very natural instincts of humans and make them feel squeezed in a tight box. Now we don’t need new pillars on the broken foundation called democracy. We need no pillars at all! They are proven to be fallible however! The fundamental human nature, chaos is what we need. All these years and sometimes we wonder we were better in a cave with no consciousness. But we are conscious, evolved, and civilised! We can still be owners of ourselves and be moral, accountable and responsible for our lives. 

Democracy has never been a people’s rule. Who have we been ruling? Our dogs and cats? Not even them! Democracy is a bitter gourd that has heavily been sugar-coated. The reek of this failed social construct calls for chaos!