A phase that some people go through, especially when they first get an Internet connection and they happen to be angst-ridden teenagers (especially males).

The symptoms are:

Fortunately, most individuals soon either get caught doing something bad and/or outgrow the phase.

The main point of this node:

Anarchy is a political system, not an excuse to be angsty and break things.

First off i would like to state the fact that this is my first full node, so bear with me.


 

Lets be honest, when you hear someone say "I'm an Anarchist" you probably think of that skater kid who likes to say "Fuck America" and randomly break things because he doesn't think the world "understands him." The truth is anarchism is now a pop culture icon and somewhat of an oxymoron.

Lets start off with an introduction for those of you unfamiliar with the glorious system that is anarchy. In short, it is a system of government sans-government. The idea behind anarchism is the notion of leaving the people to fend for themselves without any sort of political hierarchy to speak of, most people think this means murder in the streets and riots abound, but to the contrary it may actually be a much more solid form of government than our own. The basic premise is that when no central government in place, people will band together and form alliances to achieve a common goal, where the only form of solid currency is your time for work in exchange for goods (which you may then trade for more goods). Essentially it is a slightly less structured version of the feudal system.

Now, for the meat:

The purpose of anarchism is to create a society in which no-one is subject to the rules of society,  which may in turn make a better society. Yet, the essence of anarchy is the removal of structure so does that mean that mean that "clans" of anarchists are forbidden? It just depends on your interpretation of a structured society. In my version of anarchism the ideal vision is of societies of anarchists with all members of the each society being of relatively equal status, and all important decisions will not be handled by any sort of leader (seeing as there is none) but as a result of a collaboration of the entire colony. That being an almost impossible achievement in group cohesion and problem solving, another idea is a combination of the ideas of Ayn Rand and Adam Smith. Ayn Rand's philosophy of "Rational Self-Interest" is an idea that humans need no justification in the form of helping others achieve their goals, when they can simply help themselves to further their own goals. In complementation to this idea i also present Adam Smith's economic theory of "The Invisible Hand" in which it is stated that individuals working for individual gain may actually be a greater help to the economy than the same individuals working together, because of the flood of money gained by each individual would surpass the total worth of a smaller lump sum aquired through collaboration. As an added idea, a modified form of Darwinism can also be applied to the rules of society, seeing as the weaker civizations will die out, thus paving the way for more functional forms of Anarchism. Apply all three of these theories to an anarchist society (assuming they hold true) would be a great plan with witch to carry on a functional ungoverned society. This entire theoretical society is based on the fact that the individuals of a group will push for their own goals and the totals of the individual gain will push more towards the ultimate good of the unit than the lump sum of a large group cohesion, and through Darwinism the weak societies will be removed, and replaced with the strong.This idea is the true essence of anarchism. And of course, this is directly in contrast of the misinformed image of anarchist society that the media portrays. Anarchy is not an excuse to toss bricks for a cause, it is a beautiful idea, and deserves to be treated as such.

On this note i would like to end this (slightly over-ambitious) first node, and let you think about some of the ideas raised here.


Thank you for taking the time from your day to read this, and please, don't hesitate to add, criticize, amend, or otherwise improve this article. (or to tell me how i may improve my next)

this used to be a full node, but was killed due to the ample amounts of anarchist nodes and i decided to ressurect it here since it is in keeping with the original idea of the node.

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