From: anderson@gab.unt.edu (RICHARD ANDERSON)
Subject: Re: Anarchist Picnic
Summary: removing coercive character of rules makes a completely different society
Organization: College of Arts and Sciences
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 22:00:13 GMT

In article <1992Oct7.172340.18657@eskimo.celestial.com> kurt@eskimo.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum) writes:
>From: kurt@eskimo.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum)
>Subject: Re: Anarchist Picnic
>Summary: removing coercive character of rules makes a completely different society
>Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 17:23:40 GMT
>In article <cannon.27.718333914@scs.unt.edu> cannon@scs.unt.edu (Dustin Cannon (Lab 3460)) writes:
>>In article <BvGt5H.4Gu@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> mwilkenf@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Missi Wilkenfeld) writes:
>[...89 lines of quoted article deleted!! pretty thoughtless IMO...]
>>
>>One would think that an anarchist picnic would not have a schedule.
>>_________________________________________________________________
>>Dustin Cannon       "For the first time I laid my heart open 
>>University of        to the benign indifference of the universe."
>>North Texas                           -Albert Camus
>
>Are you trying to be funny or what?? "One would think..."  Well, why
>don't you?
>
>Why *wouldn't* an anarchist picnic have a schedule?
>There's no principle that says out-and-out that organization is *bad*.
>That's prolefeed propagated *by* authoritarians about anarchists.
>
>The point is that there are still going to be "rules", "laws", "axioms",
>"guidelines", "postulates", "codes-of-conduct", "taboos", "regulations",
>"rules-of-thumb", "collected-wisdom",
>"belief-systems", "10-commandments", "lists-of-do's-and-donts", you-name-it,
>in the anarchist utopia of the future.  They won't have *coercive* force
>backing them up, though.  Anarchists aren't going to say, "...or else" the
>way authoritarians do.  Some of these "you-name-its" may, because of some
>useful or generally advantageous quality (whether "correctly" preceived or
>not), become part of the general "way things get done".
>
>One might *attempt* to "enforce" them, but the outcome in an anarchist
>society would be a good deal more uncertain than in an authoritarian
>society but no less counterproductive; in an anarchist society, the "masking
>factors" that serve to gloss over the unpleasant side-effects of *enforcement*
>in an authoritarian society would be absent, since they would require the kind
>of effort to maintain them that only a state has the resources to support, and
>so the unpleasant side-effects would be much more readily perceived.
>
>For example, I cordially detest those "walk/don't walk" signs at streetcorners
>in urban centers, and there is no more pathetic spectacle than to see
>some rainbow-haired kid with a circle-A on the back of his jacket standing
>at an empty intersection waiting for the walk lite before crossing.
>In Bellevue (one of the car-friendly mallworlds in the Pacific Northwest)
>the cops now stop and hassle people who jaywalk, trying to get from one
>concrete mega-bunker to another, working their miserable shitjobs.
>
>But those walk signs, used as *guidelines* or in an *advisory* capacity,
>have a completely different character IMO.  They might be genuinely useful
>in providing a go/no-go assessment of crossing conditions, that a person
>who was disabled or elderly, for example, might find useful.  There's no
>reason why such amenities couldn't be maintained by a
>cooperative/collective/individual enterprise of some sort, composed of
>people who found such things useful.
>
>There will also be collected bits of wisdom about what works best as
>social lubricants between diverse and abrasive sovereign free spirits.
>
>The *real* problem IMO is getting those "diverse and abrasive sovereign
>free spirits" in the first place, instead of the joiner-type sheep we seem
>to be plagued with.  Authoritarians need (and want) a tightly controlled,
>coercive society to control sheep [ after all, look at what sheep do when
>they get out of control -- viz. LA riots, where it was demonstrated how well the
>ghetto kids of So. LA had *internalized* the predominant cultural values of
>this society -- the "educational system" really *does* work! :( -- but when
>they are under control, they are such *wonderful* subjects! :( ], it's not
>at all clear that a bunch of enlightened free spirits would.
>
>I think that people will perceive the advantages of organization (of which
>schedules are a tool of), and be able to apply it more effectively (or *not*
>apply it, as they choose) when the *coercive* character of organization is
>removed.
>-- 
>kurt@grogatch.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum)
> Nostalgic conservatives will soon be referring to the Bush Era as
> "those Halcion days of yesteryear".

This is why an anarchy will never succeed: ANARCHISTS HAVE NO SENSE OF 
HUMOR.........
_____________________________________________________________________________
Rich Anderson                          |    Dan Quayle in '94
Dept. of Unsubstantiated Rumors        |
   and Inuendo                         |
University of North Texas              |    "Stupid lazy Americans need a
anderson@gab.unt.edu                   |     stupid lazy leader."
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