From: glenne@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Neuromancer )
Newsgroups: alt.society.anarchy
Subject: Re: Explaining anarchy to your friends?
Date: 13 Nov 1992 21:33:08 GMT
Organization: Computing Services Division, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.7.4

cburke@nexus.yorku.ca (Carolyn Burke) writes:
 
>My concern is that though an anarchist, I still want to live in society.
>As there will probably not be any quick conversions of most everyone
>else to a freer way of thinking, I am left coping with a world I never
>would have created.
 
You may not have created the present lump of dung society that we
live in, but you perpetuate it by being a part of it.  You're like the
chimp who puts his hand into a hole in a tree to grab some food,  but
the hole is too small for you to get your hand out with the food in
it.  You see that it is a trap.  You see the man coming to kill you, but
you don't realize that you have to let go of what you have in your
hand to get something better, namely your life.  If you want to call
that coping with the world, go right ahead.  If you want something
better, then quit accommodating yourself to a lump of shit society.
 
>Without some positive or active resistence to the governments and pushy
>neighbours of the world (with the hope of affecting a change for the
>better), I don't believe I could survive.  Well I know I couldn't be
>very happy with what I see as a passive solution.
 
You don't have to fight the government!  Just make it irrelevant
by doing a hell of a lot better job meeting people's needs!
 
Give me liberty, or give me death.  If you value life more than you
value liberty, liberty doesn't have a stinking chance.  Argh!  Open
your eyes!  You're fighting the government is based on the same thing
the government is based on: RETALIATION!  ARGH!  STOP IT!  How can
you see retaliation as positive?!
 
[I smash 'my' head open on the desk]  ARGH. PASSIVE?!?!?!?!
Sorry, it's just the millionth time I've had to refute this one.
(With the knowledge it isn't going to sink in.)  It's not you, its
just about everyone.  Passive and non-resistive are two VERY different
animals.  The whole point of liberty is to free people from need,
violence and coercion.  Admittedly freeing someone from violence
and coercion means a passive stance, but freeing someone from need
is definitely an ACTIVE process.  It's hard work.  It's not just
standing around with your finger up your butt.  It isn't letting
the world atrophy.  One could spend a lifetime of intense creative
work trying to free people from need, and NONE of this need require
any violence or coercion.
 
>I guess I'm asking whether there is a way for me to stop being a middle
>of the roader, without losing any chance of happiness in this life.
 
I have no clue as to why you and just about everyone else cannot see
an intensely active and creative, but non-violent and non-coercive
life as fulfilling.   You've gotta love freedom so much that you are
willing to do everything to give it to other people, knowing full
well they are too damn ignorant to give it to you.   Yeah this sucks,
but unfulfilling, NEVER.
 
Sorry for being so introverted,  ;)
 
Glenn                                     glenne@csd4.csd.uwm.edu