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@ChrisSick
Perhaps it's not apparent that I find this issue to be entirely silly and that that's why I included a silly analogy. Allow me to clarify: you can argue whether one should vote or not; you can vote, or not; you can become completely unaware of the entire process of voting through isolation, or you can immerse yourself in the issue and spend many hours obsessing over voting; you can make up a new word for voting and confuse everyone down at the polls; basically you can do anything you want and the crack-heads who lives on my stoop will still be addicted to crack, the hookers will still change their clothes in my back alley in a sadly mechanical fashion, children will be born the world over into hopeless situations, living out short lives of near unadulterated suffering, people will still starve to death every day while the uneaten food left over after government shindigs, like the Democratic National Convention, is thrown out; the concepts of 'child labor' and 'child armies' and 'child pornography' will remain firmly in our collective consciousness, strengthening the existence of those concepts in reality. These things, the real problems that our species is facing right now -- mainly an increasingly sadistic bent, a growing sense of apathy, and a derangement of our higher faculties -- will not and cannot be fixed by the election of anybody, nor by the enacting of laws. The problems faced by our meta-organism are ultimately more important than the problems created by our xenophobia or our tribalism or our petty individual desires because those things don't actually exist on the meta-organism level. If we truly understood that we are all the of the same matter and energy and that there is only the appearance of an esoteric/exoteric differentiation then perhaps we could finally focus as a species and accomplish something truly phenomenal. Instead we all sit around and worry about which face is going to be behind the whip for the next four years. It is all so silly and pointless and needlessly complex.
Now don't worry, you didn't offend me. Being completely written off is nothing to be offended by. I'll just continue to chalk it up to an unwillingness to explore new ideas and a predisposition to project your currently held conclusions about anarchism onto my words. For the sake of clarity, however, I would like to state that my analogy is not extraneously silly to those who are on the same page as I and get what I mean. To claim I was simply comparing life to a role-playing game belies your misunderstanding; what a superficial interpretation of what I wrote! Because my analogy contained an element that you found silly, it's merits are to be willfully ignored? All you can say is, comparing life to a role-playing game is gibberish? Isn't every metaphor gibberish from an uninformed perspective? Isn't the idea of comparing some chick to flower gibberish? or a moon to a pizza pie? Metaphors and analogies are all gibberish; they require an act of imagination to attain meaning. Your claim that my analogy is gibberish, in this context, simply proves to me that you are unwilling to expend the effort necessary to perform that act of imagination. That is a result of your disposition, not the silliness of my analogy. The really funny thing about my defense of my analogy is that I framed it using D&D because I really thought some of you guys would have a chuckle; I thought it was funny. Oh well. -
you think that most people are not anarchists because they're afraid of being alienated, imprisoned, murdered either by the state or in a random killing, and you seem to be rejecting the notion that there are people out there who have plenty of experience with anarchist philosophies and just might disagree with them, or reject them for reasons other than fear or misunderstanding.
To be honest with you I believe that everyone is an anarchist and they just don't realize it. Anarchist is just a fancy word for Human, and there are as many definitions of anarchism as there are people on the planet. People don't reject the notion of anarchism, they reject the idea present in anarchism that their lives and their actions are unimportant, which is an indulgence more than anything else, a vanity. People want to be important; it's important to be important, but only in the context of human activity, which is the merest fraction of the goings-on of our planet. Anarchism is not the absence of government, nor is it a different type of government, it is the process by which a human being can learn to function without the concept of government. Anarchism has no place for such a void as would be created by the complete absence of government, nor is it equipped to delineate the actions of everybody. Anarchism is whatever method you have found to live harmoniously with your your surroundings. This will be different for everyone, but not that different 'cause after all, at our cores we all want and need the same small number of things. You can claim that you want and need the extraneous, but again, it would only be an indulgence; you wouldn't really cease to function without them. By this definition the notions that you claim I seem to be rejecting become entirely meaningless.The fact of the matter is 'the game' such as it is evolved for a reason throughout thousands of years of human history, and complaining about it and arguing that it's wrong without having any alternative as as bad as saying 'voting doesn't do anything, don't vote, that's my alternative'.
First of all, nothing evolved for a reason. You cannot arbitrarily reverse the flow of causation from, "there is a reason we evolved this way," to, "we evolved this way for a reason." It is not logical and there is no reason to do it except to buoy up a justification that would hold no weight without it. By your reasoning we can justify institutional rape and murder and imprisonment on a species-wide scale by making the claim that it evolved [that way] for a reason. This is wrong. The present is never justified by the past, only explained.
Second, I am entirely over people saying that I am arguing for point 'x', and then to go on to argue against point 'x' without ever actually realizing that I never asserted point 'x' in the first place. Someone else did whose argument may have resembled mine in general character. I never complained about the state of the world in this thread. I made claims about its nature, some of which were less than flattering, but I simply was not complaining. Read it again if you think otherwise, and if I'm completely off my rocker with this claim, then I would appreciate a little >blockquote< to dispel my illusions.
And finally, I did propose an alternative: awareness of the pointlessness of this game relative to the necessities of our lives and an unwillingness to justify and validate its workings by finding a space outside of the game to reside and operate. It's just that my alternative is not viable as an individual's alternative, it must be enacted on a community scale, and people don't seem to have any faith in the community anymore (and I don't mean your chosen community of friends, but the community you share land and food and water and image and culture with directly, the community you have no choice over.) It's a shame really, everyone is trying to change the world by themselves, to find something to accomplish, when the only real way to change the world for the better is through the combination and collusion of efforts by many people working towards a common goal. Otherwise all you have is many individuals attempting to change things for their individual benefit. As for human accomplishments, the only ones worth their salt are those that persist through time and benefit everyone. Nothing you could ever do on your own will fit this definition. -
<blockquote>To start, metaphors involving role playing games will weaken your stance straight out the gate, man, every time.</blockquote>
Yes.
<blockquote>I'm sorry, I lack the nerdpower to even attempt to tackle the D&D thing.</blockquote>
I have nerd power, but I think tackling that particular metaphor with any degree of seriousness requires geek fu. I have no geek fu.
I didn't vote during the Bush elections, no point- he was bought and paid for, and during the second term I was living in a red state. (I would hasten to point out that my red home state went blue and didn't vote for him either time.) I do, however, plan to vote in this election. Whether Obama or Clinton wins, it's a historical moment that I'd like to say I participated in.
I'd make a witty remark comparing multi-sided dice to ballots or something, but I grew out of D&D ages ago. I can't remember enough of it. (shrug)
- Z -
Well, leave it to the anarchists to suck all the life out of an otherwise amusing conversation.
Wordy, you quoted two parts of about four paragraphs and went out of the way to miss the point. You're basing your entire philosophy and argument on not one, but several points that any number of people in this thread clearly disagree with. You're right who sits in the Oval doesn't have any effect on the crackheads or the prostitutes or your neighborhood. Your mayor does, your council people do, your sheriff does, who the police commissioner is, who the health commissioner is... you're sitting around waiting for the Singularity to unite us all into higher consciousness, and while that's really a very pretty idea, the rest of us are generally in the business of trying to get shit done. Voting is a way to do that. You're welcome to disagree, and intelligent debate is always welcome in a democracy. If you're entire argument is 'nothing will ever change no matter what we do, unless we all become perfected spiritual beings' you're not going to find a lot of people to take you seriously, which you seem to wear as a badge of honor and take great comfort in. And if that's your goal, you're welcome to it and you're well on your way.
Thirty or sixty or seventy or two hundred years ago you might have said something along the lines of 'no matter who the President is black people will always be slaves, that will never change.' Or 'blacks will never be fully enfranchised.' Or 'gays will never be allowed to marry, no matter who's in charge.' And in every case you would've been wrong. -
Also for future reference, alternatives should be at least somewhat plausible or else I win every argument because my alternative to whatever you're arguing is to kill everyone who looks at my funny until the world is quiet and peaceful.
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There is so much happening outside of the sphere of human awareness that we will never become privy to, that has a daily and concrete impact on all of our lives, and is in no way influenced by or related to whom we have invested with authority. There is a world beyond what humans do, and all that happens in government is exterior to it.
That is a pretty heavy claim. Prove it.
Uh, the movement of the Sun and the planets and the entire solar system seems to fit my definition, as does the radioligical landscape through which our bodies are hurtling constantly. Those are two of the big ones (relative to us) that I pulled of the top of my head. Also the pattern of animal behavior, wind behavior, water behavior, the shifting of the tectonic plates. These are things whose elegant patterns we can observe, but whose inner logic is alien to us; we will never be fully aware of how they work unless we advance considerably in out sensorial capabilities. These are things with simply far too many variables to comprehend, yet they still impact our lives in either noticeable or unnoticeable amounts, and in a concrete way.Also, I never said "I don't want to play." What I was trying to get at was, "it would be better for all of us if we all stopped playing."
Why would it be better if we all stopped playing, and how do you think that kind of thing can be achieved. This isn't a gotcha question, I would seriously like to hear a reasoned explanation for this.
It would be better for all of us because the only way for the game to end is if everyone were to stop playing it. It is the nature of the game to consume as attrition those who attempt to exist without it, therefor as long as there is one 'nation' of people convinced that the game they are playing is necessary, the rules of the game will call on them to expand and conquer all those who are in possession of the game's particular type of currency: resources. With an enemy at the gates, it would be nearly impossible for the besieged community to not meet that enemy in kind. This however would be tantamount to rejoining the game. Violence spreads the concept of violence, and the concept of violence warps those who possess it over time. As for a means to get the point of non-indulgence, I have no idea, I'm just trying to live my life and not be ashamed of myself
Thanks for the reasonable questions reasonableman, it's nice to have someone ask for clarification on a point instead of condemning it for being aberrant. -
Your mayor does, your council people do, your sheriff does
I'm calling Bullshit on that statement. Do you honestly believe that here in San Francisco (or anywhere) there is a possibility of electing a mayor or council people or a sheriff who will magically wean the crack-heads off of crack and convince the prostitutes that they don't have to sell their pussies in order get through the day? Really? 'Cause I can tell you, it ain't gonna happen. Those official positions have no power to change individual people. They simply cannot fix these problems, it's not in their job description. In fact Gavin Newsom, San Francisco's current mayor, has a particularly sadistic stance on the homeless, as does the police chief. And it has always been thus. People fall through the cracks because there are cracks and no one wants to fix them. We all think, "God, somebody should do something about this man lying in a puddle of his own excrescence!" and we walk on by. Decades will go by for these people and nothing will change. Actually, there might be a couple of new mayors, a new police chief, a constantly shifting city council in the time their life, but do they notice it? No they're too busy trying to survive with so much less then you or I have that it's sickening. There are lot's of homeless people in SF and I try to talk to the ones who are coherent, and the impression I get from them is that it doesn't make a lick of difference in their immediate lives who was voted in as mayor. You know what would? Giving them food. Giving them a place to sleep that's not outside. Treating them like fucking human beings that deserve some fucking love and attention. What's Obama going to do about the millions of wasted human lives in this country alone? Huh? Human lives that are wasted because the system didn't have a place for them.
Maybe you'll understand this:
The game at this point in time needs hookers, and it needs crack-heads, and it needs a homeless class and a lower class and a working class and a bourgeois class and an upper class. It needs these things to function the way that it does. Within this system it is freely admitted that not everyone can be at the top, but people don't often talk about how not everyone can be in the middle either, or that if you happen to have been born poor chances are you will die poor. This state of being is deliberate. This is the way the game has oriented itself and us along with it. It has taken a couple millennia to evolve into what it is, and let me tell you, it is a leviathan. It is a system far more complex than any single human could ever hope to comprehend. It is needlessly complex, full of extranea, self-assembled and designed to baffle and confuse; it is internally consistent to give the appearance of necessity. It is a closed system, with all of it's own factors and functions coming from itself and validating itself through circular logic. It is the ultimate role-playing campaign setting: BE A BUSINESSMAN! BE A DOCTOR! BE AN ACTOR! BE ON DRUGS ALL THE TIME! None of these things are real, they are costumes that people wear, scripts that people follow, roles that people play, when in reality we are all simply amazing little meta-apes with the uncanny ability to project our consciousnesses into alternate pasts and possible futures, a mental process we call imagination, of which we have very little understanding at the moment, yet nevertheless utilize on a constant basis to construct a thoroughly human world across the surface of this great elipsoid of rock and water and gas. -
You're basing your entire philosophy and argument on not one, but several points that any number of people in this thread clearly disagree with.
This one kind of confuses me. Let me see if I've got this right. Because an undefined number of people, ahem, disagree with me the things that I'm saying are invalid? Ipso Facto? Seriously? Did really mean to write that because a number of people disagree with me, I'm wrong? Uhhh... ok. I guess the overwhelming evidence just isn't in my favor, huh? Darn. I guess it's back to the drawing board. Maybe this time I'll come up with a life philosophy that everyone agrees with. That sounds like a perfectly acceptable criteria by which to judge the validity of my opinions.>/sarcasm<If you're entire argument is 'nothing will ever change no matter what we do, unless we all become perfected spiritual beings'
You just are not listening to me, are you? Government is stasis, it tries to keep things as they are "for the citizens," anarchism is transis, a word I just coined and the antithesis of stasis. I am by no means saying, "All is lost! Nothing can change, so let's just not try." or in the parlance of our times, "I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas!" Again, you seem to be projecting the arguments you have had in the past with other people onto me and my words. Please stop. I never said things will never change. In fact what I did say was: "Everything is always changing and what it can change into is nearly infinite." Quite the opposite of you are saying I'm saying, eh? And would someone please point out to me where I said the answer was to sit around and wait for a fantasy? Again, projecting. I don't think I'm the one you're arguing with, dood. It sounds to me like you're arguing with yourself, like you're chanting the catechisms that make you feel comfortable in the face of the fundamentally uncomfortable., But what do I know, several people disagree with me.
Two final notes.
First, some things, unequivocally, should not be taken seriously. In fact, I believe that everything should be taken with at least a modicum of good humor. Otherwise you're bound to warp your mind into something that enjoys suffering on some level, either in others or in yourself. Pain is serious, humor is not. This is not complicated.
Second, I never claimed that the homeless or crack-heads would never go away. I said this system has a specific function for them, and will therefor never allow there to be none available to perform that function for as long as the system is in place. Homeless and crack-heads will go away soon after those concepts become outmoded and unnecessary. When no one knows what a homeless person is there will be no homeless people. -
If you don't believe that a mayor can have any effect- for good or ill- on the homeless population of a major metropolitan city then do me a favor, go to New York City and talk to the homeless people there and see if they agree with you or not.
Maybe the people in charge of the show in San Fransisco aren't addressing issues you're obviously passionate about because- wait for it- you're not a registered voter and haven't gotten involved in the process to make sure that someone's addressing that issue.
You live in the city that gave Jello Biafra nearly seven thousand votes, it's probably the most liberal city in the entire country, and you're convinced that the problems you see in encounter every day has 'always been thus' and has no hope of changing.
I admire someone who's convinced that the only solution to any problem is 'to stop playing the game' but you have no idea how to accomplish that on the scale necessary to achieve it, yet you think voting is a waste of time. As you said 'the point is there's really nothing to be done'. Which is great, I bet you sleep wonderfully and your dance card's always open on a Saturday night, but as I said previously, some of us are of the 'get shit done' persuasion and offering no alternatives or ideas to fix real world problems that you so condescendingly refer to as 'the game' isn't helping anybody.
So, Little Martyr Boy, let me leave you with this: you're not an idiot, that's obvious, you know a lot of big words, you are a music box with one song, however. So instead of sitting hear all night and using your talents and intelligence to try and outflank me in debate, maybe you could use those same skills to, I dunno, accomplish something. You're so bothered by the homeless, register to vote tomorrow and circulate petition demanding your City Hall takes action to get them into rehab programs with job placement at the end, skills training, mental health assessments, devote more of the city budget to mental health care, AIDS outreach, drug counseling. You're upset about the prostitutes, help them organize to get prostitution legalized in your city, then help them organize a union so that their lives get marginally better if not massively. You're passionate about your anarchist ideals, all kidding aside I respect that, but until we all come together and stop playing the game, what are you doing in the meantime to address the social ills you're so angry at the politicians for failing to? It's easy to lay blame but not so much to try and change it. Your ideals are noble and you're clearly passionate, just as you are about the plights you see in your own neighborhood, but I'd like to inform you that you're not the only that interacts with homeless people on a regular basis, you're not the only one who sees these things and gets upset about them. You're the only one here who doesn't seem to be doing anything about it other than letting the homeless guy down the street from you bum a cigarette.
I'll leave you with the words of a politician to help illustrate my point better.
'We could not afford to do nothing, while we waited to do everything' -Mario Cuomo -
- CommentAuthorreasonableman
- CommentTimeFeb 15th 2008
Uh, the movement of the Sun and the planets and the entire solar system seems to fit my definition, as does the radioligical landscape through which our bodies are hurtling constantly. Those are two of the big ones (relative to us) that I pulled of the top of my head. Also the pattern of animal behavior, wind behavior, water behavior, the shifting of the tectonic plates. These are things whose elegant patterns we can observe, but whose inner logic is alien to us; we will never be fully aware of how they work unless we advance considerably in out sensorial capabilities. These are things with simply far too many variables to comprehend, yet they still impact our lives in either noticeable or unnoticeable amounts, and in a concrete way.
Ok, that whole thing was much less bizarre than I thought. All I can say to this is that you grossly underestimate how much science knows. Plate tectonics, for example, are pretty easy. The "inner logic" of that is not at all beyond human comprehension.It would be better for all of us because the only way for the game to end is if everyone were to stop playing it. It is the nature of the game to consume as attrition those who attempt to exist without it, therefor as long as there is one 'nation' of people convinced that the game they are playing is necessary, the rules of the game will call on them to expand and conquer all those who are in possession of the game's particular type of currency: resources. With an enemy at the gates, it would be nearly impossible for the besieged community to not meet that enemy in kind. This however would be tantamount to rejoining the game. Violence spreads the concept of violence, and the concept of violence warps those who possess it over time. As for a means to get the point of non-indulgence, I have no idea, I'm just trying to live my life and not be ashamed of myself
The object of the game is to not have to play it anymore. There are those of us that are trying to finish it. We, those people that are trying to finish, will not simply say that the game is too complicated, or too hard, and that it cannot be finished, so lets all just stop playing. Progression within the game happens all the time, whether you are willing to see it or not. Voting is one of the tools we as players have to advance the game. Voting has achieved progress in the past. It will continue to do so in the future. -
- CommentAuthorerudite_ogre
- CommentTimeFeb 16th 2008
It's always interesting to read conversations between proponents of anarchism and proponents of the current system. The ideologies pass each other like pirate ships, cannons blazing, then tack back around for another broadside. In the end, both just limp off to make repairs, and the sunken treasure remains untouched.
The problem is, the ideologies are so incomparable that they cannot address the presumptions of the other in a satisfactory manner. People who believe in the system cannot conceive of things outside of the system, and those who do not believe in it cannot understand why those who champion the system can't see the seminal problems inherent within it.
I think Wordywordsmith has a valid point, but it's lost because he will not transform it into something ideologically more palatable, like for example saying that voting can create change.
I thinking voting can create temporary alterations to the impact of the system, but it cannot substantively alter the system. And the system is the problem. There will be no enduring change until that system is altered, and it CANNOT be altered by working within the system through voting. This does not mean that people who choose to not validate the system by voting do nothing: this is just an insulting self-righteous denigration that tries to make them feel bad for not "participating." Those who do nothing not only do not vote, they do not pay sufficient attention. If you should be angry at anyone, be angry with them. People who conscientiously do not vote often choose other methods of political activity that are just as valid, but they do not reify the dominant paradigm.
The "problem" of anarchism is that it does not put forth some detailed mechanistic programme; it advocates people not wielding power over each other, but sitting down together and figuring out what is needed to address human needs and wants. Sorry if that simple idea is to pie-in-the-sky, but there you are. Such thinking is contrary to our current system of power-condensation and opposes options that feed that system. I think the necessary opposite of stasis in this context is not transis, but disequilibrium. Voting promotes stasis; I prefer to promote disequilibrium in this context. -
Thank you erudite_ogre. You are dead on about incompatible ideologies. It is exceedingly difficult to explain the tenets of anarchism to someone who believes in the working system. It is very easy to take for granted those tenets and speak to people with the assumption that, at the vary least, they they see the logic in them. But the logic behind anarchism is based on a perception of the system that is simply too exoteric relative to a capitalist perspective. It really does feel like I'm speaking to people in a foreign country; I have to start out with, "MY...NAME...IS...SAM," and work from the ground up. But I'm not really capable of doing that. I'm not really sure of the road that brought me to this perspective so I have trouble directing other people down it, especially when they flat-out deny the road's existence. Chalk that one up to me be human and incapable of having all of the answers. To me, what I take for granted is obvious; I'm sure it's the same with those proponents of the system. To them voting is obviously a good thing to do. And you know what, I never said it wasn't. I never said that voting was stupid or wrong, I simply claimed it was not a tool capable of "fixing" the system. And it's not. Voting is the system functioning, it is the natural process of the system. You can not program a computer to turn into fish, nor can you vote for the system to magically become a paradise, it is simply not an option within the confines of the system. Voting is just replacing old cogs.
@ChrisSick
To be honest with you Chris, I'm not really into your condescension. You are arguing with me in a very odd way. It really does sound like you are not actually arguing with me, like you have not once actually considered what I was actually saying. It sounds to me like the gist of your counter-argument to my assertions (and that is what I am speaking in; assertions not assumptions) is that I am a priori wrong, because people don't agree with the truth of my assertions. This is so fucking ridiculous! I mean talk about a "bankrupt" point! Jesus fucking Christ! How does one combat that magnitude of prejudice!? You've "straight out the gate" closed yourself to the idea of considering my words. Now, I've always felt that this happens on the internet because people don't have to look each other in the face when they write their shit down, they don't have to regard the words as a product of this other completely real human being's thoughts and ideas; they can just look at them as words and write down whatever witty retort they feel is the most satisfying to see on the screen. And as simple words they carry with them the weight of the interpreter's own subjective meanings in their entirety, without the filter of the speaker's non-verbal communication. This would explain why you seem to be arguing with someone else. The words that I am writing are not coming from me in your interpretation, they are coming from those other anarchists that you've claimed to have "spent plenty of time" around. Let me tell you something: I am not them. The things that they have said have nothing what-so-ever to do with the things that I am saying, even if their subjects are referred to by the same word. So I'm done arguing with the brick wall that you keep posting, it was fun to stretch my brain and my tongue, but the futility of our intercourse has taken it's toll and it's time to stop.
@reasonableman
I think you misunderstand my use of the term game. You can not reach a point where you're allowed to stop playing; the game ends (only for you) when you die. Retirement is not the end of the game, it's just a new phase of the game; a phase that can only be reached by a minority percentage relative to the whole human population; a phase that exists (as does everything else in the system) upon the labor of the less fortunate. Your good fortune is always at the expense of someone else's in this system, a natural consequence of their being a finite amount of units of "success". There are rich because there are poor, this is unequivocal. Voting will only progress the system relative to the system's definition of 'progress', which is a shallow and anthropocentric. Voting is our species' vanity, a vanity that we must get over if we want to truly progress as a species.
I'll leave you guys with two of my favorite aphorisms:
"The range of possible change is dependent upon the initial state."
"Think generationally." -
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CommentAuthorRootfireember
- CommentTimeFeb 16th 2008
Wordy- TL;DR. Have you an abridged version, more suitable for the lady with no time to slog through the morass of your attempt at erudite verbosity before heading off to her wageslave prison? Thanks in advance,
~Roo -
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- CommentAuthorreasonableman
- CommentTimeFeb 16th 2008
@wordywordsmith
I understand fully. You keep remolding your game analogy, the one you started, so that it cannot be argued properly.
Much of what you said to Ogre is telling. Your admitted lack of the ability to articulate your point is where this conversation is having problems. Please figure out exactly what you are trying to say. There is nothing you've said that I cannot parse. It does keep changing however.
Sadly, it looks more and more like the entirety of you're trying to say is something along the lines of, "Wouldn't it be great if..." Please tell me that is not the case, and explain why that is not the case, so I can get rid of the feeling that you've offered nothing more than that. -
Could you trace the evolution of my game analogy through my posts for me? I'm serious, 'cause I honestly don't think I've been changing my tune. My ideas are pretty constant in my head; I'm not re-writing my philosophy as I go. But, hell, I could be wrong (a thing that I seem to be unique in being able to admit in this conversation,) so if you could illuminate what you're talking about, I would be appreciative.
And what I was admitting to in my response to Ogre was not a lack of ability to articulate my point -- I think I've done that just fine given the medium and the responses I've had to work with -- I was merely stating my fallibility and the fallibility of the medium through which we are communicating, and also agreeing with Ogre's point that our perspectives are simply too alien from one another to reconcile easily on the internet. This should have been redundant; these are points that are true for everyone, always. You gentlemen are not placing your own arguments under the scrutiny by which my is being picked apart. I'm not writing a fucking doctoral thesis, I'm trying to discuss ideas. The discussion of ideas is always boggy, and the discussion of ideas that relate to and affect all of us (i.e. politics) is even boggier still. I seem to be the one who is being punished and blamed for the inherent limitations of our medium of communication. None of your arguments meet the standards to which you are holding my argument. The only reason I can think of to explain this is prejudice. You are prejudiced against anarchism. This prevents you from considering my concepts as possibly true, and spurs you to disprove what I'm saying by any means possible. I'm not fucking Noam Chomsky. Nor am I Noam Chomsky. I'm not looking to establish what I'm saying beyond a shadow of a doubt, because, quite frankly, anarchism doesn't exist beyond the shadow of doubt. But what does? I say something, and you're like, "Prove it!" and the fact that it would be impossible for me to prove by writing something on the internet is ignored and I end up looking like a stupid anarchist with a sloppy theory. So I say to you reasonable man, "Prove it. Prove that this system is the best. Prove to me in writing right now that voting is the answer to mankind's problems. C'mon, do it, prove something to me, anything. Prove what you are arguing."Sadly, it looks more and more like the entirety of you're trying to say is something along the lines of, "Wouldn't it be great if..." Please tell me that is not the case, and explain why that is not the case, so I can get rid of the feeling that you've offered nothing more than that.
No, that is not what I was saying. Maybe something closer to, "Wouldn't it be great if people stopped wasting their time spinning wheels on a machine that has been broken and dangerous for thousands of years and instead began the process by which our species could attain some level of higher development!? That process is the goal, with the meta-goal of finally becoming a healthy and non-self-destructive meta-organism. The question, "What should we do to fix our problems," should replace, "For whom should we vote to fix our problems." That is what I am saying, what I've been saying this whole time. I don't have all of the answers, but I really can't be expected to -- I'm just some guy who often asks these questions to himself -- but as long as you expect to find the answers in those you vote for, you will be blind to the answers that lie outside of political platforms. Or (since you guys all enjoyed my last one so much) as long as you look to find your car keys in your bedroom you're not going to find them in the bathroom drawer. We've been voting for people for centuries and it has always led to corruption. We learn about this shit in school, but no one wants to apply it our current situation. We make jokes about how slimy and untrustworthy politicians are and then we turn around and vote for them, exclaiming, "It's better than anarchy!" all the while. Voting is the means by which we make god-damned sure our children suffer the same humiliations and defeats, develop the same neurosis and complexes, and hold the same biases and prejudices as ourselves. -
- CommentAuthorreasonableman
- CommentTimeFeb 19th 2008 edited
So I say to you reasonable man, "Prove it. Prove that this system is the best. Prove to me in writing right now that voting is the answer to mankind's problems. C'mon, do it, prove something to me, anything. Prove what you are arguing."
I never said it was. Not once. My only argument thus far has been that change can be made within the system. It has before, and will in the future. However small or large is not the point of my argument.The question, "What should we do to fix our problems," should replace, "For whom should we vote to fix our problems."
How are these questions mutually exclusive? I think they go together nicely. For example, I chose the candidate that I believe would be able to move the country in a direction that makes it easier for people to better address, and work to solve the problems of the world. I'm absolutely not expecting miracles, but I think I am being... reasonable about what can be accomplished.Sadly, it looks more and more like the entirety of you're trying to say is something along the lines of, "Wouldn't it be great if..." Please tell me that is not the case, and explain why that is not the case, so I can get rid of the feeling that you've offered nothing more than that.
No, that is not what I was saying. Maybe something closer to, "Wouldn't it be great if people stopped wasting their time spinning wheels on a machine that has been broken and dangerous for thousands of years and instead began the process by which our species could attain some level of higher development!? That process is the goal, with the meta-goal of finally becoming a healthy and non-self-destructive meta-organism.
OK, I'll grant that to you for the sake of forwarding the discussion. Where do we go from there? How do we make such a thing happen? How do we go about convincing people to stop wasting their time? What are the arguments that you would use to tell people that their political and governmental model should be abandoned?
There was a part of an earlier post that I didn't answer properly:You can not reach a point where you're allowed to stop playing; the game ends (only for you) when you die. Retirement is not the end of the game...
Retirement has nothing to do with anything. When I made a reference to ending the game, what I meant was that, the game ends when all of humanity and society has progressed to the point where playing the game is no longer necessary. The basis of our disagreement is that you think that time is now, and I do not. I absolutely do not expect to see the end of the game in my life time, but I do hope to contribute to humanity "leveling up," so to speak.
Ok, your turn.
p.s. I retract the statements about your game analogy changing around. Arguing that gets us no where.
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