Breaking down walls, tearing down barriers and abolishing borders.
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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Anarchism
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Discuss anarchist praxis and philosophy. Don't take yourselves too seriously.
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You don't engage in anarchism? At all, ever? So in your group of friends, you have clearly established hierarchy? Do you go on a date with the assumption that one of you is in charge? Have you never gotten together with a group and discussed what's best for you all, without one person being the leader?
Anarchism isn't a lack of rules, or the strong beating the weak, or every person for themselves. Anarchism is rejection of cohersive authority. Anarchism is a thousand little things you do every day with everyone around you. You've definitely participated in anarchism, whether you want to admit you have or not. And no amount of protestation is going to change that.
Damn man, I sympathize.
From the comments that you have been making it seems like you have a very negative view of other people and their ability to work together towards things that they both want (i.e. shared goals). This might be informed by your life experience and honestly, I'm sorry for what you have experienced that has led to such a negatively focused view.
I can't convince you that anarchism can be good if you believe this staunchly. All I can say is that if you look at your surroundings you could find that people do this all the time.
An example I like to think about is driving. You know almost nothing about other drivers (how sane they are, where they are going, etc.) but we still drive and trust other drivers not to crash into us, and a majority of the time people are able to get to where they are going unharmed. This is an example of anarchy working in our everyday lives.
As for this, my philosophy is that as anarchists we should follow the ideas that are based on the paradox of tolerance.
If we want a tolerant society, we need to be intolerant of intolerant ideas, or else those intolerant ideas over time become the norm.
The same goes for freedom (which is what anarchists want for everyone)
If we want a free society, we need to resist people that want to dominate, or else everyone will be dominated.
I am sorry for the trauma you have suffered that has left you living in fear like this. I don't expect you to believe me, but this really isn't the world in which most of us live, it isn't how things really are and it doesn't have to be this way for you either.
Look, I have no idea who you are, I don't know anything about you and we have never interacted before. You assuming that I'm part of some grand conspiracy makes it pretty clear to me that you are suffering from paranoid delusions. If you're not getting it already, I strongly urge you to seek help, and I'm sorry if I riled you up.
I am not questioning that you have been abused and that it must have been truly horrible. The paranoid delusion is thinking that every person is a sadist who's out to hurt you, and that some stranger saying "sorry" on the internet is doing so with some undefined malicious intent.
I hope you get better.