From: glenne@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Neuromancer )
Newsgroups: alt.society.anarchy
Subject: Re: Call for REVOLUTION.
Date: 10 Oct 1992 19:56:02 GMT
Organization: Computing Services Division, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.7.4

pmetzger@snark.shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger) writes:
>>Are you a collectivist or an anarchist?  You must choose, because you
>>can't be both.  You can't say you want freedom and then put conditions
>>on it.  Freedom means that everyone minds their own business.
 
ee@lever.com (Edward Elhauge) responds:
>Try using common sense rather than blind idealism. Certainly there are a lot
>of unrealist leftists, but they will have as little impact and influence as
>Propertarian idealists until they align themselves with the real world.
 
>An example of materialist analysis that has a better chance of being listened
>too than those of a moralist strip, either left or right.
 
Right On, Perry!
[As my jaw drops to the floor.]  Incredible...  Perry and I are on the
same wavelength for a change.  Moralist strip... give me a break.  Minding
my own business is NOT the radical approach.  Using coercion to ram my beliefs
down other people's throats is far more radical.  Nazism is simply a form of
your (Ed's) kind of thinking taken to the extreme.  (Suppose the
socialist party wins the election this year. ;)  And we have a socialist
GOVERNMENT (ptuey).  By forcing a socialist system on people who do not want
it (Perry Metzger for example) you are destroying the most important concept
in Anarchy:  freedom.  For God's sake, let Perry choose freedom.  Bleeh... I
actually think I detest you more than Perry...   ;)
 
You make an appeal to common sense.  I spit on your common sense.  Why
not try ORIGINAL thinking for a change, instead of regurgitating a bunch of
socialist bullshit that has been rehashed so many times it has lost all
its value and then try to force it on us.  Your common sense is blind.
Common sense is a brain-washed sheep like mentality.
 
I may be wrong here, but my concept of your type of socialism is that it
is sort of an IMPOSED type of equality.   Give me Perry's capitalism any
day over that kind of unnatural system.
 
 
...Minding my own business will have little to no impact... blah blah
blah...  I've heard it a thousand times from every idiot I have ever
spoken to.  But now, self-proclaimed anarchists, both from the left and
the right, have told me that minding my own business will have little or
no impact.  I feel like heaving my cookies.  A new low for my view of
homosapiens.  Are you morons trying to tell me that if I do not force
people to be socialists (or whatever else) that there is not a damn thing
I can do that has any value whatsoever?
 
Why couldn't I come up with a new technological innovation that will
help make people's lives easier?  Are you saying this has no value?
I could do this without forcing anything on other people.  What about
directly offering some food to a hungry person?  What about going to the
store for an old lady who no longer is mobile enough to do her own
shopping?  What about spending some time with her because she spends
almost all of her time alone?  What about spending time with my friends?
What about listening to their problems, and feeling their ups and downs
with them.  None of this requires any coercion.  Are you saying none of
this has ANY impact?  That none of this has any value?  Ahh, aside from
the technological innovation the rest has just a minimal value.   Nothing
important.  Nothing you could evaluate in monetary terms.  Nothing that
would turn Perry Metzger into a socialist.
 
(Since you like common wisdom so much, how about this little ditty? :)
 Little things mean a lot.
 
IMHO you do not have to diminish other people's freedom one iota and
worry about not having the most intensely meaningful impact your life
can have.  Rather than channelling your energy, your passion into
negative life draining things like protecting your property, or forcing
people to give up thier property, you can direct all of your energy into
an infinite variety of positive, life/meaning enhancing things.  All you
have to do is respect other people's right to choose their own lifestyles.
I.E. If Perry wants to be a jerk, let him be one :)
 
Glenn                                          glenne@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
 
P.S.  Perry, I don't own a TV (not sure there will ever be anything on
there that will make it worth buying).  I bought most of my clothes from
the clearance rack at Wal-Mart.  You still sure you want to make the
trip to my house to take my stuff?  And since you want ALL of my
clothes, does this mean you are going to strip me?  Maybe you could
convince my girlfriend to do it for you. :)
 
But I know the principle you are getting at.  There are a few things
that I might not want you to take, they aren't anything fancy but they
make my life far easier and far more productive.  Would I call the cops
if you took these essentials?  I don't know.  I do know it would be a
great deal easier for me to give them up if we lived in non-propertarian
society.