Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Actually, you pretty much nailed it, nice. TBF that makes it kind of a trick question, since it's not neatly in any of the categories.
Do you think the world isn't complicated? Even anarchists usually do. If anything, you see the argument that the world is too complicated to be reduced to numbers and laws.
I think the world is more complex than any individual person can possibly comprehend, but that doesn't make us incapable of moral judgement or unable to imagine radical alternatives to the status quo. Yes, things are the way they are now for a reason, but rarely a good reason. I see the appeal to complexity as a cognitive trap serving as a thought-terminating cliché, and it's the trap that a lot of social democrats have fallen into. It is easier to stick to what you know than to speculate about a world you've never experienced, but I promise you the latter is more fulfilling and a great antidote to cynicism.
I won't speak for you, but when I was a social democrat I was pretty miserable and cynical. I recommend the book Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher, as it is what snapped me out of being a social democrat, personally. That sent me into the world of radical politics and I found footing by reading David Graeber (The History Of Everything, Bullshit Jobs, etc.) which helped me put my thoughts into perspective and realize my beliefs had already been fairly anarchist for a while. I'm not an anti-realist like a lot of anarchists are, my worldview is still grounded in materialism, but I have become a bit more agnostic in that regard over time.
You're right, it is a thought terminating cliche for a lot of people. If you get rid of the thought terminating cliches and put in the work to understand, you open yourself up to all the ideologies, not just anarchism.
If you want to turn this around and sell something to me, fill that in with details. Anarchists have a way of pointing out things that seem terrible, but then when you ask how things should work instead, getting really vague.
On it's own that says nothing about the movement itself. But, when it's literally all you can find even looking hard at an old idea, it starts to seem like there's nothing there.
Doesn't "a bunch of other things have been tried, and they had X problem" count?
On policy specifically, that's usually the gist. There's been a lot of history, very little is original unless new technologies are involved, and even there it's uncommon (eg. tech monopolies are railroad monopolies).
You know, maybe I will. I'm pretty sure I did read Bullshit Jobs. Or maybe just the notes?