>I don't just think it is inevitable and natural. I think
>it is good and I embrace it, including the violence.
At least you are being honest, and revealing a sociopath mindset that is ignorant of and/or uncaring about morality. Violence (violating another's person or property against their will), is the definition of immorality, objectively speaking, as a matter of fact. Stating that you embrace violence on any level (other than self-defense or of other innocent people, which should be distinguished as defensive force rather than 'violence', which involves the *violation* of a person's rights), is to reject morality, basically admitting to being a piece of shit. So you might want to re-think that.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isb83V89iFA>I cherish my country, not just its lakes and mountains and people
> but also its political institutions and traditions and its laws
What about the fact that most laws violate people's rights and are therefore inherently immoral? (You need me to make a very long list for you?) What about the 80% of non-violent offenders sitting in prisons run by a subsidized prison industry? What about the traditions of enslavement, eugenics, and genocide? What about the tradition of innocent people including children being bombed, kidnapped, and ripped from their parents often to be raped and sacrificed in satanic rituals? And that's just the tiniest start of my criticism... To ignore these things can only be accounted for by a complete deadening of empathy and total brainwashing. The tradition of the state is one of horrible violations and brutality of unfathomable proportions. You embrace and cherish that?
>Conflict is one of the most basic features of life (along with cooperation), and
>we are living beings. It is not some genetic defect that needs to be corrected
>through culture, it's life itself.
I agree with this statement, but that does in no way excuse our choice in the participation of conflict to take the role of aggressor. Human beings are distinguished from animals by the fact that we have the ability for empathy and higher reasoning, the ability to understand when we are causing harm to others or their property, and this capacity and the knowledge it gives us presents us with the choice to behave morally or not. Regardless of how natural or inevitable conflict or violence may be, it does not erase the objective basis for human rights and morality, and this is why the tradition of morality as "natural law" has been articulated by so many philosophers and authors.
>The political community must be understood with this backdrop
>of constant potential conflict. It is a shaping of the violence if you will,
>a limited pacification that include internal constraints and defense
>against external intruders.
Yes conflict should be expected, but it is important to be on the right side of that conflict (not as the aggressor or violator of rights, but as the defender of rights). So again we need to define 'violence' as distinct from defense, it can't be lumped together. "Conflict" is two elements: an aggressor, and a defender. Defense is justified, aggression is not. So when we refer to violence, and the necessity of defensive force, we must not conflate these two under "conflict" or "violence" to imply that because one is necessary, therefore the other is also necessary and justified.
Defensive force cannot use aggressive violence, in other words taxing people to pay for the military, as the people being aggressed upon to seize their money have every right under natural law to use defensive force to repel such an effort.
The problem is that under the guise of 'defense' countless aggressions are perpetrated. False flag events are staged to generate fake "threats" intended to justify aggressive actions as retaliation. The gross level of mass murder, pillaging, and destruction waged by the US government, and paid for by taxation, can by no reasonable measure be considered defensive, and the claim that it is is a grossly blatantly obvious and heinous lie.
> It's not natural just in the sense that it's in our traditional culture or
>our genes, but in the sense that it matches our condition of intelligent
>living beings, it's the solution to the existing challenges, and that's why
> it exists everywhere and existed always (and why it's in our genes and
>culture in the first place!).
The immorality of aggressive violence cannot be denied or excused because of what is in our genes, or because it seems inevitable, nor for any other reason.
> your confidence in the possibility of your unseen other world rests
>on nothing but your willingness to argue.
From your perspective maybe. From my perspective it's not an unseen other world that I am confident in the possibility of, and I have never stated anything even remotely like that. I have been very clear that what I am confident of is the morality of the non-aggression principle, the principle of respect for human rights, non-violence, non-participation in violence, and of taking personal responsibility to operate voluntarily rather than using violence in the form of taxation to solve problems or any other form.
> "Show me wrong, spend hours debating me!" is your only argument.
How obviously this statement is incorrect and intellectually dishonest it is, is asinine in the extreme. It is in fact a pathetic cop out to issues you apparently lack the capacity or inclination to address.
>And by the way you keep insisting on your moral vision, but it rests on thin air.
No it rests on observable fact. Morality is based on facts and the logical implication of them:
Fact:
No one (including yourself) desires their person or property to be taken, used, damaged, or violated against their will, that is to say everyone desires their person and belongings to be respected.
Fact:
Everyone understands that this desire, this value, is universal, that it's true for everyone.
The logical implication of these facts, if we are to formulate a logical code of behavior that allows us to demand that our own rights are respected, is that this code must be extended and applied universally and equally. How else could we have a logical claim to our own person and property being respected if it is not because such respect is due universally?
This has been pointed out and hinted at in every religious and moral philosophy known to man. This basic logic is present in the golden rule, the non-aggression principle, the wiccan rede, the declaration of independence, and even in the history and etymology of the very word 'conscience'... which is defined as the "knowledge of the difference between moral and immoral behavior", when the root translation is "to know together", or common sense.
>I don't share it; what now?
The laws of morality are like the laws of gravity. It's not a matter of belief. Either you recognize the way the law works and align yourself with it for favorable results, or you take a fall and suffer the consequences... personally this applies on a spiritual level, and collectively it can be readily seen to apply on on all levels including the physical. (Yes I used the word 'spiritual', which like many words carries unfortunate baggage, so I can clarify my meaning if it is unclear. For now I will state that it is not something religious or superstitious in nature and I would be happy to define it in down to earth terms if necessary.)
>I also think that deep down the idea that we must do this on
>moral grounds even if it's bound to fail (which you are almost saying)
No, it's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the right thing to do is the right thing to do. If you can reduce, stop, or eliminate one's participation or contribution to violence, then one is obligated to do so, and that support of the state clearly qualifies. You can't say, "well, we can't be non-violent because that will just fail". That's just a pathetic cop out born of a desperation to deny moral responsibility.
>is a remain of the religious view in which what really matters is God watching us
>and keeping scores of our good deeds, with a big reward that we can expect.
No, it's a view based on recognizing the moral imperative to not participate in violence. I don't even know what you are talking about when you say "God", mostly religion and the idea of a "reward" or "heaven" is just another cop out and born of the same psychological reasons: fear of taking personal responsibility, it's more comforting to imagine some all powerful authority that takes the burden of responsibility away and where we can instead take comfort in some fantasy of unconditional forgiveness with ponies and rainbows to reduce that big scary importance of our decisions here and now in this place. I find your insistence to interpret anarchy as necessarily equating to a religious viewpoint indicative that you are seeking to discredit the view without having to present facts and logic to do so.
The two most widespread and destructive religions on this planet is the religion of statism and that of money.
>Maybe you were told that as a child and you still act on it.
>When you completely get rid of this, then you will naturally
>be led to alter your moral vision so that it makes more sense.
So now again, in place of facts or reasoning to argue against anarchy with, you make presumptions regarding my childhood, which is again far easier considering there are no facts or logic that will support your case.
>Instead of starting with the moral vision, you will try to understand
>reality and see what is the best course of action given reality.
How about arguing the merits of the issue instead of trying to psychoanalyze why I personally think the way I do based on your assumptions. Morality is a 'first principle'. The foundation of our priorities, that is if we are not sociopaths. The "best" course of actions must be those that adhere to the moral principle. Actions which violate it can in no way be justified. You can't rob one person based on the idea that you are going to feed 5 people with that money. It is still wrong.
>A proper morality is one that leads you to act in a way favorable for you and your communities,
This is far too weak and vague of a definition for morality. Morality has a clear definition of what constitutes it, that does not beg the question of what "favorable" means. The best natural law definition of morality, the boiled down essence of what it actually is, is non-stealing. In Sanskrit there is a word for it: Asteya, which the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali expound upon the true and expansive meaning of. Theft is the true definition of all forms of immorality, from murder, to rape, to fraud, to trespass.
>not one that destroys you and your communities
>"but at least you were moral and that is the only thing that matter".
By what logic do you accuse the philosophy or practice of anarchy of "destroying communities". It is the state which clearly does that.
"Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukranians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a 'Great Leap Forward' that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children. In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy's mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state's mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous." - Robert Higgs
>Again (as I know types like you have a hard time digesting it),
>my point is not that, alas, it is natural, inevitable, and we must
>resign to it. My point is that this is what life is and I embrace it.
I do as well. I also embrace the moral necessity to not participate in and resist the immoral violence of the state, and all aggressive violence of which I am capable of resisting. What you seem to have a hard time digesting is that just because conflict can not be expected to be eliminated, doesn't justify aggressive violence nor excuse us from the duty to not participate in it or support it.
>Finally the fact that you can classify something I say as a known argument
>that you have seen addressed in some book doesn't mean that the argument
>has no merit.
Agreed. My intent was not to dismiss your argument by appeal to authority, but to indicate that it is not anything new, and that the refutation was in what they are saying, the facts and reasoning they present... not just because of who they are or that they had said it. Also I have done my best to address your arguments with facts and logic, and I only reference other authors who make this point because of how much more educated and articulate they are able to make the point than I am. By no means do I mean to imply that my arguments are true *because* they have been written down by someone in a book.
>Try to see past the talking points and the sales leaflet and to look more closely into reality instead.
My viewpoints are not based on some sales leaflet. They are based on the study of literally hundreds of books and documentaries by literally hundreds of different researchers and authors. Statements like this mean very little as they don't bother to address any of the merits of the issue we are discussing... just an attempt to apply a dismissive label "sales leaflet".
>Some of these known arguments may be true even if there
>is a standard answer in the the anarchy FAQ (which I guess
>you are copying and pasting to this forum,
There is no anarchy FAQ from which I copy and paste. I think things out for myself and often disagree with the authors I read on many points, in fact very few I can find whom I agree with everything they say. Again, whether I'm copying and pasting anything from anywhere is not any kind of commentary on the merits of the issue. It brings nothing to the table. At all.
>with some cut and paste accidents in fact). Every ideology has standard answers
>for every objection addressed to it, that doesn't mean every ideology is true and
>refutes all its objections. By reading only authors defending anarchism you just
>reinforce the grip the ideology has on you.
You are making the assumption on how I limit my reading. You don't know what I've read or how I research. What you are accusing me of is called "confirmation bias", and it's something everyone including myself always must be on guard against. Rather than deny that I am at all affected by this, I would again point out that if some claim is false, then it should be refuted with facts and logic. Pointing out that every philosophy has some pat answer to common critique means nothing, both sides of any argument have that. What is necessary to discern truth is to discuss the facts and merits of the issue, not focus on assumptions about how you or I might be flawed in our thinking. If the *idea* or argument is flawed then show that, as that's what is important. I could accuse you of confirmation bias in the same way, and it would be just as presumptuous ad meaningless, which is why I address your argument instead of trying to dismiss it by criticizing you personally.
I would also ask you to refrain from accusing me of confirmation bias until you have presented books or other information that I have dismissed out of hand without taking the time to read, fully understand, and address.