Anarchy

"Anarchism...may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of [human beings] should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the state should be abolished."

- Benjamin Tucker, 1880

"The anarchist is the enemy of humanity, the enemy of all mankind, and his is a deeper degree of criminality than any other."

- Theodore Roosevelt, 1901

Anarchy: an idea misunderstood by most, especially me.

If manifest in the human situation of today, hypotheses of potential outcomes range from utopia to catastrophe, mostly because the exact outcome eludes any possible conception. The scope of human experience spans more vastly than we can currently imagine. It's my take that consciousness is unity, and in order to experience itself more intimately divides itself infinitely. This infinity can, if chosen, be considered in its many totalities, the relatively independent sub-totalities (to use the language of David Bohm); like an ant, a nugget of gold, a really good song, or a span of human evolution called civilization, like we tend to imagine is really all there is. I choose to leave it open ended, postpone judgment as much as possible, and see where life gets me.

What anarchy means to me is that the free play of ideas won't be encumbered by silly 'adult' ideas. Play can be taken in all seriousness and that's what anarchy is to me. If and only if the conditions are in place whereby each sovereign individual can espouse whatever way of life that unique entity wishes, can life be said to live to its fullest. It is my full belief that life happens better in cooperation than in conflict. Consciousness supporting itself is stronger than consciousness battling itself. In the beginning and the end (and in between, of course) everything that is not itself, that is, other, is merely a relatively independent sub-totality of itself. My anarchy embraces no structure and all structures.

Anarchy is a commitment to helping out as best as possible for living organisms to form harmonious ecological niches where evolution can happen consciously, intentionally, and consensually, among respectfully diverse forms of life; well, at least it is for me. Anarchy means a commitment to not initiating any form of violence, save for philosophizing, and to grow new ideas from the rubble of tyranny's wake and looming doom:

"I philosophize with a hammer. I smash old tables of values."

-Nietzsche

Anarchy is a commitment to abolishing non-functional ideas. I've come across various etymological explanations of the words, some more preferable than others. The more common one stating: an- a negative prefix, and, -arkhos for leader; and, an- negative prefix, and, -arche, for structure, giving us words like arch, architecture, archer. I prefer the latter, even though they're very similar. Since ancient arches were held together at the apex by the cornerstone, I'm always intrigued by uses of the word. The title of the first book I started working on is The Stone that the Builder Refused, and it has much to do with the development of my own personal intellectual anarchy.