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ELI5 why is anarchy not "the guy with the bigger stick" making the rules? (lemmy.giftedmc.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm politically agnostic and have moved from a slightly conservative stance to a vastly more progressive stance (european). i still dont get the more niche things like tankies and anarchists at this point but I would like to, without spending 10 hours reading endless manifests (which do have merit, no doubt, but still).

Can someone explain to me why anarchy isnt the guy (or gal, or gang, or entity) with the bigger stick making the rules?

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

By that logic, there either never has been a murder in human history or governments cause people to murder.

Anarchy isn't some deep philosophy, it's just a lack of any sort of life experience.

[–] nicocool84 3 points 10 months ago

By your logic, murders don't happen anymore in liberal democracies?

It isn't some deep philosophy indeed. It's very practical and not a church in any way. Anarchists usually don't care about people calling themselves anarchists, but consider that some stuff like counter measures to absolute power that our institutions have, gender equality and some other stuff are things they've been pushing for a while.

At its very core, anarchism is the refusal of any fundamental dogma, and in some ways very related to the scientific method and rationalism. This is probably a more personal take than what I've written so far ;-)

Chill out man, we aren't coming to behead you or anything. <3

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

All murders happen because of emotional (killing someone in anger), economical (Theft gone wrong) or psychological (Doesn't realize it's wrong) reasons. none of these is prevented by sticking the murderer in a box after the murder.

All of these are prevented by building strong social network to manage any harmful impulses before something happens, which is something any reasonable anarchist would agree with.

Also If you think the list is incomplete then feel free to give another example.

Oh yeah also political assassinations and wars. But your comment already addresses those.

I think a better wording is that anarchy is naive. And I'd rather be naive than accept that this is the best we can come up with, because that's depressing.