In this thread I'd like to hear other's opinions. It's not about "X video by Stef changed my life" or anything. It's about people in general. Why some individuals find out that State is a massive scam, basically, worst religion ever while the majority still are strict believers who do not ever question the legitimacy of state. So how? Why and how some break out of the matrix? Discuss.
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
A nominalistic materialistic mindset that is interested in socioogy that asks the question "how do things work".
"As in a kaleidoscope, the constellation of forces operating in the system as a whole is ever changing." - Ludwig Lachmann
"When A Man Dies A World Goes Out of Existence" - GLS Shackle
When I changed my major to political science at the end of my freshman year, I decided to become a libertarian because the government was lying and murdering all the time and that people were being forced to pay for it.
in High school I thought bill clinton and the liberals were pretty cool because I thought they were so anti-racist, but then I realized they were nothing but hypocrites out to get power. In 2007, Ron Paul's ethics turned me to libertarianism and helped to set in stone my then-one year old realization that the Clintons and other liberals just wanted power. I realized they lacked ethics because they had enough money to give to the poor without advocating theft. After seeing what a good man Dr. Paul was, I didn't want to be associated with dishonest people like the Clintons.
In 2009 I simply realized that the Constitution was statist.
I'm still hesitant about diving into the full anarchist position, although I do call myself a voluntaryist. However, what made me skeptical of even minarchy was a couple of things. One, of course, was the breaking down of a lot of the myths and dogmas surrounding our current government. Two, understanding fully what democracy entailed. We always hear it's supposed to be bringing people together, but in reality it all too often sets them at eachother's throats because of rent-seeking activity, special interests, etc. Three, understanding social contract theory and how it's basically just used as cover by people who are trying to gain an unjust advantage, even if it's for a "good cause".
The biggest step, and one of the first, on the path to supporting a stateless society is to throw out the Nirvana Fallacy that "good government" is something that actually exists with any consistancy.
To answer the OP's excellent question about other people though, I guess it's just because a lot of people lack ethics or they want something for nothing. Also, some people are too emotional and not rational enough. For example, most peoples' reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks was "kill that evil bastard Bin Laden", without even knowing much as to who the hell he was, why he did it, that innocents could be slaughtered if war was the response, that it could put americans at further risk, that American foreign policy sucked, that the government could've done it, etc. However, I've never felt attached to this country (or any country really), so I wasn't like that. But now, I'm not only not a violent nationalist, I also think that if the government exists, then it should abolish the standing military and fight all of its wars on the continent.
Chance?
I think some people never enter the Matrix to begin with. Most of them are probably in prison or living in inner-city slums on the boundary of civilization. I suspect that there is a dispositional tendency of some people to love to belong. They crave the feeling that someone is in control of the circumstances of their life. They feel that is what makes the world sane and bearable. If the Matrix did not exist, such people would create it from scratch just so they could live in it.
If true, I am not sure what percentage of the populace has this disposition but I suspect it is a majority by virtue of the persistence of the State over so many millenia. For this reason, I do not believe that the system is reformable, certainly not in this generation, maybe in the next probably not for a few generations yet. People have to start being free before people without the dispositional longing to belong will become a majority.
In the meantime, I think freedom is something you just have to create for yourself. If you wait for society to stop believing in its own taxation and enslavement, you will never be free. We can contribute to the eventual freedom of mankind by continuing to promote the ideas of freedom in the hopes that as people begin to be more free, they will change the constitution of future generations to be less innately disposed to enslavement.
Clayton -
Tribal instincts account for the statist mentality. Tribal instincts are blind to scale; it worked to trust authority when the tribe was like an extended family, but humans are not evolutionarily adapted to thinking about modern conditions with millions or billions of people. At this scale our instincts still tell us to trust the tribal elders and medicine men, and that we need elders for the entire gigantic "tribe" of a whole country. Simple as that. To reject statism requires digging deeper and/or rejecting authority. The Internet is enabling the digging and fueling mistrust of authority as their propaganda support structures crumble. Plus the recent global chaos is making people want to find out how the world really works.
Why anarchy fails
MaikU:"X video by Stef changed my life"
Oh gag me.
thank you all for responses, many of them made me think and I a little bit changed my opinion. What I think is that one of the most important things is questioning and understanding authority, meaning, which authority is "good" (voluntary, like in medical practice, for example) and which is bad (imposed by force).
the other thing is simply being skeptical, like LogisticEarth said. Seeing not only scam in newspapers (especially their last pages, called "horoscopes") but in first pages too (A politician X attended event Y. Who the fuck is X? Why should I care about him? I don't care about supermarket owner's personal life and how he spends his free time, He doesn't affect me at all. I can quit going to his shop, but with the politics... you can't quit, you're in the game since the day you're born. Why is that?)
Still... I think it would be too arogant (and quite insane) to say, that we are somehow intellectually or physically different than other people. Maybe it's enviroment? Maybe the parenting? I don't think there's only one answer though. But yeah, vive la insurrection hit the point: "how do things work" is almost essential question in the road to anarchism.
Well if you ask progressives/leftists it's because of white privilege herp derp!
I think parenting, life experiences, educational opportunities/tone/method all have an effect. Personally, I have a feeling parenting, or at least interaction with adults during childhood, has a good deal to do with how someone takes in information. During my childhood, my parents rarely gave me "childish" explainations for things. My dad would always accept my questions and explain things to me, and my mom would too. If I stumped them, they'd tell me rather than flubbing it off. I think it lead to a really strong sense of curiosity and self reflection that helped me look back on what I'd been taught in school and question it. This didn't manifest itself in political theory so much until I was in college, and I didn't call myself a libertarian until a few years ago. Back to the point though, I still cringe every time somebody gives a wrong/terribly simplified answer to a kid, or toying with them. I think it does a great deal of damage.
I do think libertarians are a different breed of people. I think our minds work differently. That isn't to say we're superior, it's just that we think differently about topics. That's also not to say that we can't convince people, but when I see studies like the one that came out a little while ago about libertarian morality compared to conservative or liberal morality, I can't help but feel it's like Sisyphus pushing the proverbial boulder up a hill.
Prior to becomming increasingly aware of the libertarian mindset i was your typical in-your-face liberal, who everyone was wrong and heartly and discompassionate and the likes. Then, trying for a 5000 dollar or more scholarship i read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. While its not her capstone book, it still introduced to me a whole set of morality counter to the liberal, and gave me a different perspective to look at the world with. Also prior to this, i had, though, considered myself a "social libertarian," but being in highschool at the time was never exposed to anything that made fiscal libertarianism make sense to me until then.
To be clear, i wouldnt consider myself quite an anarchist, though if i was i would be more of the Bastiat variety. But even so anarchist theory inspires my ideology as much as any else.
A lot of it is simply ignorance, and not digging deep enough to find the root of current events or problems. I can tell you, just from posting links on my Facebook page, and some friendly debate, at least two of my friends have become anti-statists, one a Paulite.
Beyond knee-jerk appeals to emotion and morals, most statists have no resons to keep believing the myth, you just have to show them that.
As an aside, as a perpetual statistical outlier (how many prog rock nerd mystic Stirnerites do you know?) I've always considered Steppenwolf to be a great treatment of the struggle between being part of the herd, and being a lone wolf.
I think that genetics has something to do with it, but don't ask me how exactly.
I see the state as a type of domestication of the human animal. A bad type, obviously, but that's what it is.
If you think about dogs, it's obvious that selective breeding doesn't just change their physical attributes, but it also changes their basic personalities. You do get qualities and quirks specific to individual animals, and upbringing plays an enormously important role. Any dog will become vicious if it is raised abusively or traumatically.
However, "breeds" of dog do have very strong stereotypical traits that tend to be true across the vast majority of individuals within a "breed", and are more obvious if the dogs are all raised in a non-traumatic environment when they're young. Labrador retrievers tend to be very gentle and easy-going with everyone they meet, Doberman Pinschers will tend to be warier and more aggressive etc. Pretty much any dog can be raised to be friendly towards the people it bonds with early on, but there are many breeds which will always view strangers - both dogs and humans - with extreme prejudice; as the 'other' which threatens them.
It's not impossible to take a newborn wolf and raise it to be essentially domesticated, but it's not an entirely safe proposition, and it will never behave quite like a normal dog. If you ever encounter a "tame" wolf or wolfdog you will know what I mean... Whereas the first reaction for most dogs towards a strange human could vary from naive overfamiliarity and friendliness to wary shyness to wary aggression to conditioned wilful ignorance, you will never get the same impression one gets with a wolf - that it doesn't look up to you in either reverence or fear, but sees you as a peer in nature, and reacts accordingly. If it doesn't chew your arm off, it's because it took the cool-headed, measured decision not to. Maybe it had better things to do. You get a similar sort of impression when you encounter any very large wild mammal that won't instinctively flee when it detects a hominid, e.g. an elephant or bear. It will stare you down until you shit yourself, and then it will turn its back and slowly walk away when it smells you aren't a theat. :)
I think that the same selective breeding for juvenile traits that is done intentionally to breed dogs to be domesticable also happens to humans, but it's mostly a spontaneous process which has been going on naturally for a very long time. A normal adult Homo sapien naturally exhibits what might have been described as 'juvenile' physical traits in earlier hominids. "Civilisation" depends very much on a pervasive juvenile mindset - that we're all juvenile members of a tribe waiting around for food and everything else we need to descend upon us from our provident superiors returning from their hunt.
Belief in God is associated with this. If you believe in God, you believe that human beings are eternally, immutably and fundamentally juvenile spirits with God as their eternal parent. Theists do not generally believe that humans are destined grow up to become a God ourselves and have little humans of our own one day, which is a bit strange if you think about it. People apparently feel that in their souls, they are supposed to feel like children forever.
I think that it's the root of a lot of economic fallacy. People simply cannot shake the mindset that 'wealth' - that which is to be valued - is not just a wildebeest, i.e. a fixed quantity, waiting somewhere out there for the hunters to go out and kill it and bring it back for supper, and then divide it up 'fairly' between the rest of us. 'Wealth' is not a fixed quantity. We have the power - human beings have the power to breed wildebeest, or indeed cows, for food if they want to, and this changes the rules of the game completely. We actually have the power we attribute to God. But it doesn't change people's instincts. When there is no need to hunt wildebeest, people tend to hunt each other instead.
Sometimes, I think that the genetic precursors which make people susceptible to Pavlovian conditioning, i.e. behaving like dogs, are weakened or even non-existant due to a recurring mutation of some kind. I don't think that this will necessarily turn someone into an 'anarchist' - i.e. someone who has a highly developed ethical theory concerning 'punishment'. What happens from this point on depends on environment. Perhaps a number of things could happen to someone for whom punishment and reward simply does not work as effectively as it does for others.
They might become a "psychopath" - someone who is incapable of building an ethical theory outside their conditioning, and yet for whom the conditioning itself was ineffective. So they become an intraspecies predator.
Or they could react defensively in a "schizoid" or "schizophrenic" way - lose the ability to form proper object-relations, at least with regards to ethics, and descend into their own fantasy world as a defense against an unworkable reality.
Or, if they are lucky, there is a third option... They are able to recursively analyse their position, and escape the trap of Pavlovian conditioning. They are able to construct an ethic, based either on utilitarian or deontological reasoning, which does not incorporate the concepts of 'punishment' and 'reward' to achieve its desired outcomes.
Sadly, I don't think you can talk the good kind of 'anarchism' into most people any more easily than you can talk a gentle nature into an abused Rottweiler. The recursive analyses has its place, but it's only really going to work on a very small number of genetic mutations. For the rest, ethics will always be synonymous with reward and punishment. Virtue will always be synonymous with obedience.
A nominalistic materialistic mindset that is interested in sociology that asks the question "how do things work".
Seems that most of the people I come across who actually end up taking sociology classes in college turn out to be leftists of some sort.
I think it falls on whether the person who has the question of "how things work" goes into it without bias, looking at the "mechanics" of society, politics, and economics objectively and accepting what is, compared to going into it with a view and agenda of what ought to be. This seems to be the line in those who favor some sort of centralization, state, government, collectivization, whatever. Some will take the role of government, and say "it should be like this" and "it world work if so-and-so was in control" as well as "this is needed to help [insert group here]" and so on, compared to those who say, "no, it clearly doesn't work, and changing the variables won't make it any better" as well as someone who's willing to trace the roots of how something works through it's entire "functioning system" and coming out with a view even if it goes against their previous stance.
+1 James.... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawesome post.
If it doesn't chew your arm off, it's because it took the cool-headed, measured decision not to.
And that's exactly what I take the term "originary secession" to mean... it means gradually transitioning oneself out of the mindset of obedience to imposed authority out of either reverence or terror and into a mindset of measured indifference... the police officer pulling me over, armed to the teeth is a peer. He can threaten me, probably even beat me and cuff me and I will likely not respond with violence but it will be solely the result of a measured decision, not awe or terror at his uniform and institutional backing.
Stop being a lapdog, start being a wolf.
MaikU: In this thread I'd like to hear other's opinions. It's not about "X video by Stef changed my life" or anything. It's about people in general. Why some individuals find out that State is a massive scam, basically, worst religion ever while the majority still are strict believers who do not ever question the legitimacy of state. So how? Why and how some break out of the matrix? Discuss.
See: "The Reluctant Anarchist" by Joseph Sobran
Regards, onebornfree.
P.S. A good start can also be made by refusing to swallow, "hook, line and sinker" , any of the states bigger lies; for example, the official story about 9/11,or Pearl Harbor, or the Moon landings, [etc. etc.] and instead to automatically assume that every part of the states story is in fact an unmitigated pack of lies, until [if ever] conclusively proven otherwise.
For more information about onebornfree, please see profile.[ i.e. click on forum name "onebornfree"].
"I do think libertarians are a different breed of people. I think our minds work differently. That isn't to say we're superior, it's just that we think differently about topics. That's also not to say that we can't convince people, but when I see studies like the one that came out a little while ago about libertarian morality compared to conservative or liberal morality, I can't help but feel it's like Sisyphus pushing the proverbial boulder up a hill."
I'd like to see a link if you have one.
I honestly feel as though it primarily has to do with how open minded one is. Most people I've talked to have honestly been convinced or swayed to my viewpoint simply based upon my arguments. It sounds presumptuous but it is my experience. It all depends upon how engrained the idea of a government and 'intention makes reality' is engrained into ones brain.
Intellectually honest and open to reason.
@Neodoxy:
This is the study: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1665934
This is the summary: http://reason.com/archives/2010/11/02/the-science-of-libertarian
The capacity use assumptions only after they are logically verified, I believe, is the capacity to realize the evil and uselessness of the state.
The Anarch is to the Anarchist what the Monarch is to the Monarchist. -Ernst Jünger
Based on the summary article, I have problems with the study. I don't disagree that there may be some dispositional factors that influence the receptiveness of the individual to classical liberalism (libertarianism). But the theories mentioned in the article are weak. For example, they posit that perhaps libertarians are less opposed to victimless crimes because they experience less intense feelings of disgust. But it could equally be the other way around - libertarians experience less intense feelings of disgust precisely because they are less opposed to victimless crimes. This goes with the "mind your own business" orientation of most libertarians ... thinking in detail about a particularly disgusting sexual act may very well arouse the same intense feeling of disgust in the libertarian as it does in the conservative but the libertarian simply chooses to banish such thoughts from his mind for the simple reason that thinking about them is disgusting and useless.
Furthermore, the article seems to imply that morality is formed in the same way that food tastes are formed... a largely blind process by which preferences get expressed as "morals." But there are a lot of things that I find disgusting now (e.g. blind patriotic expressions of "my country right or wrong" "kill them all, let God sort them out" and so on) that I was perfectly OK with just four years ago. The shift in my view of what is right and wrong has altered how I feel about the very same actions, at a visceral level.
I was that way for a long time as well. What you said is probably true to some degree. I know, ever since early high school which is when I began developing my hardcore conservative beliefs, I was very conservative and I would have considered myself a Christian fundamentalist. I still had the personality traits of a libertarian though, at least according to this study. Socially, I'm an introvert. I still had relatively low levels of "disgust." I was more rational than emotional. I think I just hadn't been acquainted with the libertarian argument before.
A lot of opinion-molding is done because you accept certain positions by default and only can change them when you come across an argument so convincing that it is able to be dislodged. Personality traits could determine whether or not you dislodge one of these core beliefs when you stumble upon a fringe argument. It could be the case that I always had the capacity to become libertarian, I just hadn't been introduced to the argument, whereas someone who is predisposed to be a collectivist socialist with no respect for freedom may reject an argument for anti-statism the first time upon hearing it because it doesn't jive with them, for whatever reason.
Or not. Who knows
For instance though, a lot of computer programmers are libertarian. I don't think this is a coincidence. We most likely have similar personality traits.
How do people become anarchists?
You have to sign up for a card which holds all your biometric data. You'll be added to the National Register of Non-conformist Political Ideologues and need to log onto their website once a month to arrange a retina scan. Freedom awaits you.
Consumariat:How do people become anarchists? You have to sign up for a card which holds all your biometric data. You'll be added to the National Register of Non-conformist Political Ideologues and need to log onto their website once a month to arrange a retina scan. Freedom awaits you.
... You have nothing serious to post in this thread? Really?
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
Not really, no.
Why not? And why did you feel the need to post something non-serious when everyone else in the thread posted something serious?
The more that I look around 'mainstream' forums, the more that I'm convinced that the answer is not being an idiot. Anarchism is in a very real way a liberation through the death of three things
1. Aggregation of human affairs
Such as the belief that 'America' is all that meaningful a term except in describing whatever the government has done or general societal trends.
2. Questioning of government
Not just 'What should government be for?' but a real questioning of the institution as a whole. What it is, the means available to it, and why it's actually necessary
3. An understanding of free action
Whenever you look at anarchist solutions to problems, or an analysis of problems I usually see quite a praxeological method of cause and effect based upon individual desires. This manifests itself through actually thinking through things which are immediate deadfalls to most other people. For instance when talking about poverty the statist brain seems to generally just buzz out of existence at the idea that there are other ways to solving it. The answer for 90% of statists claims about things which can't be solved by markets is the democratic problem:
In order for something to be supported in a democratic society it must be supported by the majority.
If you're talking to an average statist then they will agree with this, if you're talking to a smarter one then they will state the reasons why this isn't necessarily the case, but then you can really challenge the efficiency of democracy in the first place.
In almost all countries the majority of people have a good deal of money, especially because the majority is unlikely to totally exclude the rich
In a free market society commercial or 'capitalistic' means are not the only means of action, other means are available so long as they are voluntary
Therefore if the majority of people want something, and they have a good deal of money then they can address the problem and they will want to as they support it happening. If the problem does not involve money and can be solved through simple labor, then they will do this to and the equality in society doesn't actually matter.
This then means that according to the statist's own argument people should come together in order to solve problems which are supposedly unsolvable through capitalistic means! If this is not the case then either the statist admitts that democracy doesn't reflect the will of the majority, or the matter is so massive that it requires coercion on others to come about, something which social austricism could usually bring about in the first place, and where cash payments and other forms of social pressure will work in almost all others.
Jeez! Lighten up mate. Not everything has to be serious.
Consumariat:Jeez! Lighten up mate. Not everything has to be serious.
"Jeez" yourself. How about you try to make me "lighten up", hmm?
Now can you actually answer my questions or not? What are you afraid of?
lol
Well?
Well what?
Do I need to repeat myself?
Would you? Please. This all very entertaining for me.
Here goes:
Autolykos:"Jeez" yourself. How about you try to make me "lighten up", hmm? Now can you actually answer my questions or not? What are you afraid of?
With that out of the way...
Consumariat:This all very entertaining for me.
So you admit to trolling here?
...I think their post was pretty obviously and honestly not serious. I'm not sure who appointed you the silly police, but as an outsider its hard to see why you seem upset about it.
Believe me, it's not me who is acting the troll. I certainly didn't post here expecting anyone to get all weird and aggressive. I think you need to lay off the coffee.
Birthday Pony:...I think their post was pretty obviously and honestly not serious.
By "trolling" I was referring to his refusal to answer my questions. I thought that was obvious.
Birthday Pony:I'm not sure who appointed you the silly police, but as an outsider its hard to see why you seem upset about it.
Am I supposed to be intimidated by this? Or otherwise care? Do you really think this is going to dissuade me here? Come on.
Consumariat:Believe me, it's not me who is acting the troll.
Really now? I'd love to see you expand on this. Surely you're able to.
Consumariat:I certainly didn't post here expecting anyone to get all weird and aggressive.
Then what exactly did you expect?
Consumariat:I think you need to lay off the coffee.
I couldn't care less what you think in this regard.