Anarchism

[xsecx]

and what is beyond the desperation in the personal lives of people if that same case of desperation is multiplied at least a billion times over?
times ARE desperate for most people in the world and most people do not enjoy the level of privilege and comfort of the middle to upper class of the first world. Times are desperate in terms of ecological devastation and the unchecked power with which capitalism allows these companies to destroy ecosystems and homes to both animals and the remaining non-civilized indigenous peoples. Times ARE desperate and to deny that is to be blind to anything beyond the privileged, first world, and oftentimes "white" way of looking at things.

so, uh, when are you going to give it all up?

[straightXed]

says the person of privilege.
please go to talk to someone who has no job, is looking at losing their home, or doesn't know how they will pay for their family's next meal and tell them "times aren't desperate". After that maybe you can stop being so self absorbed in thinking that everyone enjoys the same level of comfort and privilege as you do.

You have described a scenario close to one i grew up in and i certainly would never champion the idea of anarchy.

[xGriffox]

so, uh, when are you going to give it all up?

first of all, need i really give up anything to make my points relevant or to work towards building non-hierarchical community? and second, you don't know me nor do you know where i stand economically, so your criticism here is basically a stab in the dark attempting to somehow make my points irrelevant rather than actually addressing the issues i brought up.

[xsecx]

first of all, need i really give up anything to make my points relevant or to work towards building non-hierarchical community? and second, you don't know me nor do you know where i stand economically, so your criticism here is basically a stab in the dark attempting to somehow make my points irrelevant rather than actually addressing the issues i brought up.

well, if you find a problem with how things are, living and adding to that system, does kind of make your statements worthless. I always love the "you don't know me" response. I don't need to. You're living in new york, are white and male, and want to complain about privilege, but as far as I can tell, you don't really seem to have any plans to give that up.

but, if you want to talk about your points, we can talk about low the unemployment rate is now in comparison to the past. how low infant mortality rates are now. How middle classes are existing in places like china and india where there never were before. So yeah, basically your points are bullshit, but it's more fun to ask you when you're going to give up your white privilege and comfort since it bothers you so much.

[mouseman004]

says the person of privilege.
please go to talk to someone who has no job, is looking at losing their home, or doesn't know how they will pay for their family's next meal and tell them "times aren't desperate". After that maybe you can stop being so self absorbed in thinking that everyone enjoys the same level of comfort and privilege as you do.

Person of privilege? Who the fuck do you think you are? You don't know me or how I live my life. I'm not the one sitting on the internet in probably my parents house spouting absolute bullshit about anarchism. You want to talk about freedom being infringed upon? Move to China, or Cuba, or an African dictatorship. You have no idea how good you have it in the United States, so don't sit on your soap box pretending like you understand a tough life.

And I meant times weren't desperate with governments and authority, which is the basis or an anarchist ideology. Tell me, how would anarchy help the current economic crisis. Tell me how a world with no form of authority would help these people support their families.

[mouseman004]

first of all, need i really give up anything to make my points relevant or to work towards building non-hierarchical community? and second, you don't know me nor do you know where i stand economically, so your criticism here is basically a stab in the dark attempting to somehow make my points irrelevant rather than actually addressing the issues i brought up.

Funny, you can make judgements about me living a life of privilege without knowing my economic situation, but its not okay for somebody else to make the same assumption about you?

[xsecx]

Funny, you can make judgements about me living a life of privilege without knowing my economic situation, but its not okay for somebody else to make the same assumption about you?

duh anarchists don't have to make sense or be consistent.

[xWiglex]

Anarchy.. the worst thing that could happen.


But Perfect Democracy ( which once happened in Ancient Greece in Athens if my memory serves my right ) is a great alternative.

Evryghting is decided by everyone and there are only people that are in charge of the law beeing brought to life. And you could easily be one of them.
That would be great.

[x.Xmiss_SmogX.x]

people loot and rob in a capitalistic society in order to further their own standing in said society by accumulating more capital from the fencing of said stolen good. What good would stealing a stereo be if you then couldn't sell it for money? And why would you steal a stereo from someone who was a member of your community who you knew personally and relied upon for your own survival?

Read this and i think some questions will be answered for you when it comes to why many advocate for anarchism and total self-"governance" and why it makes perfect sense to them.
Mutual Aid by Peter Kropotkin
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist...dcontents.html

Hey thanks for that i really enjoyed reading it :)

[xGriffox]

well, if you find a problem with how things are, living and adding to that system, does kind of make your statements worthless. I always love the "you don't know me" response. I don't need to. You're living in new york, are white and male, and want to complain about privilege, but as far as I can tell, you don't really seem to have any plans to give that up.

once again, and i know you love to hear this, you really don't know me and really don't know what i do or what i am involved with.

I am beginning to help organize community food programs WITH (not for) community leaders (almost all of which who are non-white) throughout the new york city area in an attempt to ease the pains of hunger in poor and often non-white communities, and in doing this and i am at least, in a very slight way, working towards dismantling white privilege, something i want NO part of and would give up in a second if doing so was possible.

I consider myself a staunch feminist, put in 15+ hours a week as a volunteer at a radical/activist/feminist/queer space, and am working towards the dismantlement of the gender binary system within myself and within the people i come into contact with thus attempting to combat male privilege.

I put in a lot of my time and effort towards at least trying to dismantle a system of privilege that has been developed independent of myself for at least a millennium, and in some ways you are right, i could be doing more (and i hope to as time goes on). Perhaps my efforts are futile, but i know i couldn't sleep with myself at night if i weren't at least attempting to dismantle some of the fucked up thing that occur in our culture.

what do you do to try and change things you strongly disagree with? (and i mean this as a serious question, not as a mocking statement)

but, if you want to talk about your points, we can talk about low the unemployment rate is now in comparison to the past. how low infant mortality rates are now. How middle classes are existing in places like china and india where there never were before. So yeah, basically your points are bullshit, but it's more fun to ask you when you're going to give up your white privilege and comfort since it bothers you so much.

First, the unemployment figures are unreliable since they are based off of those who are taking unemployment insurance, not the true number of those who lack a job and are gaining no income. Many of those who are without work have either run out of said insurance or never received it to begin with (example being migrant workers within the United States).

Secondly, middle classes come at the expense of who again? oh yeah, the working class. There's a reason why there is historically so much flak directed toward the bourgeois, and it is primarily because they are the "vanguard of capitalism". They stand in a position of privilege and they benefit from a system which excludes the lower class in its spoils. As China and India gain a larger middle class the conditions seem to be getting worse and worse for the lower classes. You need only look to the example of South Korea to see that while the middle class certainly holds decent footing, the lower class has had their homes demolished and even been killed trying to defend them for the building of a shopping mall (a middle class institution if there ever was one). Source: http://indymedia.cast.or.kr/drupal/?q=ko/node/6 (which is directly sourced from within South Korea so don't try to shrug it off as unreliable.)

[xGriffox]

Person of privilege? Who the fuck do you think you are? You don't know me or how I live my life. I'm not the one sitting on the internet in probably my parents house spouting absolute bullshit about anarchism. You want to talk about freedom being infringed upon? Move to China, or Cuba, or an African dictatorship. You have no idea how good you have it in the United States, so don't sit on your soap box pretending like you understand a tough life.

You only serve to prove my point. We have it (comparably) good so why shouldn't we put our efforts towards making everyone have it great?

And I meant times weren't desperate with governments and authority, which is the basis or an anarchist ideology.

Times are not desperate with government and authority for you maybe; which is once again due to privilege. Go to Oakland and speak to people whose family has been killed by police within the past few months or go to a prison where an environmental rights activist is serving 25 years for destruction of property and tell them that there are no problems with the government or authority. Times aren't desperate for you personally but to fail to acknowledge the hardships that people are going through every day simply because it doesn't affect you is the exact problem with the institution of privilege and its "out of sight, out of mind" mentality.

Tell me, how would anarchy help the current economic crisis. Tell me how a world with no form of authority would help these people support their families.

By replacing capital with community.

[xGriffox]

Funny, you can make judgements about me living a life of privilege without knowing my economic situation, but its not okay for somebody else to make the same assumption about you?

I guess you are right, that is unfair of me.
So how are you working, or at least trying, to make the world a better place so that no one ever has to complain about the issue of privilege again?

[xGriffox]

Hey thanks for that i really enjoyed reading it :)

browse that site for more writings from a whole lot of different anarchist thinkers, it's very thorough and collects a lot of almost-impossible-to-find works.

[xsecx]

once again, and i know you love to hear this, you really don't know me and really don't know what i do or what i am involved with.

I am beginning to help organize community food programs WITH (not for) community leaders (almost all of which who are non-white) throughout the new york city area in an attempt to ease the pains of hunger in poor and often non-white communities, and in doing this and i am at least, in a very slight way, working towards dismantling white privilege, something i want NO part of and would give up in a second if doing so was possible.

I consider myself a staunch feminist, put in 15+ hours a week as a volunteer at a radical/activist/feminist/queer space, and am working towards the dismantlement of the gender binary system within myself and within the people i come into contact with thus attempting to combat male privilege.

I put in a lot of my time and effort towards at least trying to dismantle a system of privilege that has been developed independent of myself for at least a millennium, and in some ways you are right, i could be doing more (and i hope to as time goes on). Perhaps my efforts are futile, but i know i couldn't sleep with myself at night if i weren't at least attempting to dismantle some of the fucked up thing that occur in our culture.

what do you do to try and change things you strongly disagree with? (and i mean this as a serious question, not as a mocking statement)

and all of this is possible because you're not having to work 100 hours a week to have a place to live or food to eat. You're doing this all from the comfort of your own existence, so if this culture and privilege really bothers you, then when do you plan on discarding all of it and moving somewhere where if it didn't matter it would at least be significantly reduced? I'm sure you're planning on going off to college in the US and not in a foreign country. If so, then why wouldn't you go to school in place where your privilege wouldn't matter? I honestly do think everything you're doing is awesome and helping, however I think your mindset about the culture is completely fucked up and is a direct result of the fact that your life isn't that bad and you seem to be completely unwilling to discard your comforts. you want to take full advantage of your privilege while talking about how evil it is.

I actually give a fair amount of money to charities and my job has a direct effect on making the work a better and a safer place.

First, the unemployment figures are unreliable since they are based off of those who are taking unemployment insurance, not the true number of those who lack a job and are gaining no income. Many of those who are without work have either run out of said insurance or never received it to begin with (example being migrant workers within the United States).

sure, but it's also the only way to really track it. It still doesn't take away from the fact there are more and better paying jobs now globally than there were in the past.

Secondly, middle classes come at the expense of who again? oh yeah, the working class. There's a reason why there is historically so much flak directed toward the bourgeois, and it is primarily because they are the "vanguard of capitalism". They stand in a position of privilege and they benefit from a system which excludes the lower class in its spoils. As China and India gain a larger middle class the conditions seem to be getting worse and worse for the lower classes. You need only look to the example of South Korea to see that while the middle class certainly holds decent footing, the lower class has had their homes demolished and even been killed trying to defend them for the building of a shopping mall (a middle class institution if there ever was one). Source: http://indymedia.cast.or.kr/drupal/?q=ko/node/6 (which is directly sourced from within South Korea so don't try to shrug it off as unreliable.)

I guess it's lost on you that the larger the middle class gets, the smaller the the lower class gets. The lower class will always get shit on, regardless of the socio/economic model. Are you going to try and argue that lower class life is better in north korea than it is in south korea?

[xsecx]

Times are not desperate with government and authority for you maybe; which is once again due to privilege. Go to Oakland and speak to people whose family has been killed by police within the past few months or go to a prison where an environmental rights activist is serving 25 years for destruction of property and tell them that there are no problems with the government or authority. Times aren't desperate for you personally but to fail to acknowledge the hardships that people are going through every day simply because it doesn't affect you is the exact problem with the institution of privilege and its "out of sight, out of mind" mentality.

Or you could go and talk to the people who grew up in oakland and went to school, got good paying jobs and left the area.

are you seriously trying to argue that people blowing shit up isn't wrong?