[From xorcist offlist] Cloudflare & NoDAPL again w/ a ROTF

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Mon, Sep 19, 2016 at 06:11:43PM -0000, xorcist at sigaint.org wrote:
> >> You know, the main problem with anarchism is that there are no doctors
> >> and engineers to speak of.
> 
> > Guaranteed we could find at least a handful of "doctors and lawyers",
> > who subscribe to at least some aspects of political anarchy!
> 
> Yes, of course. But a handful is not nearly enough,

We should probably imagine 10 year time frame, not 6 weeks :)

Relationships, real relationships. One person at a time. Only option.


> and I find that pragmatic professional types who aren't political
> ideologues don't want to waste time with a group composed of such
> people,

There are no rules. This also means I am not obliged to keep discordant
disagreeable folks in my house at my think tank meetings, or invite them
back.

I don't have time to be steamrolled by those who denounce literally
everything, including "use of the word 'freedom' is oppressive because
that means I'm agreeing with everything you might say in the future" (I
kid you not, some folks are -really- messed up - I can't work with
people so fragile of mind and belligerent of intention (belligerent in
that they will pick any 'hot' word and say it cannot be used, in order
to denounce or 'control' the entire group - not on my watch!)).


> which as I say, in my experience tend to be the type that
> crowd under the banner of anarchy.

Mums and dads, engineers, yes. Those without too much of a personal axe
to grind.

However, you need your core, and your core must have persistence of
conviction.

It's hard to find persistence of conviction except in those who are also
keenly aware of evils, and distinctly angry in response (oh no, not me
of course - it's everyone -else- that suffers this neurosis ;)

But even though it's difficult, without a core of belligerently
principled and strongly persistent fellow souls, you'll be a one man
band, and that's no fun :/


> > I do wish there were an easier silver bullet where I could say to you
> > "yeah, good on ya mate! go live your own life and avoid all politics
> > it's all doomed anyway, so I pat your back for giving up mate!"
> 
> Well, I will say that I've all but given up on "anarchy." Or, rather, I've
> come around, perhaps, more to Thoreau's view: we're not ready for it.

An interim step could perhaps be "direct democracy" - some variant on
Swiss style democracy.

I read this early in the year from someone's "to read" link, that direct
democracy is at least for some folk, an "aka" of anarchy.

And it sounds so much more palatable - most are neither aware nor
willing to be aware of the nuance that anarchy means something other
than chaos for example.