Dr. Alexander Wendt and James Corbett Clash Over Inevitable One World State |301|

On the topic of possible futures.....I think it's helpful to explore and imagine alternatives. An alternative future sketched out in narrative fiction by John Michael Greer can be found here: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/retrotopia-dawn-train-from-pittsburgh.html
The future he sketches he calls Retrotopia. It's based on small scale communities who make real stuff, have no internet and wear hats. It's written in instalments and I am finding it really stimulating and enjoyable. He's a novelist as well as being an archdruid so he writes well.....

I think if we don't want to end up in some technocratic, dystopian, world government nightmare then we'd better start imagining alternative futures for ourselves pretty sharpish.
 

I believe that we as a species are genetically wired for collectivism, and for blind obedience to authority. This is why statism continues to flourish everywhere, despite every logical and moral argument for liberty ever put before the people. The few of us who truly understand the distinction between voluntarism and coercion are vastly outnumbered by sheeple. Sad to say, I really doubt this sorry state of human affairs will ever change.

Doug
 
I think you should research the subject a little more, Hurm. You and Alex sound kinda dumb.

Silly statists.

Yanni, look to your roots! :)

The thing is... It's easy to point out what's wrong with current governments. It's much harder to figure out how to make things better in an enduring way. It's like humanity in its brief moments of lucidity (usually after a great deal of hardship) has to psychoanalyze itself and play a game of chess with its future self.

It's like that movie Momento... Humanity is a little homicidal and has severe memory problems... So we've got to get all these instructions written down and tatted on... And we have to be very careful how we write things down because in a very short while we won't remember why wrote them.
 
How we are wired is neither here nor there. The crucial thing is to keep things small scale. When things are small scale we have a fighting chance of making leaders accountable. With things like the EU people barely even know who their so-called representatives are, let alone what decisions they are making. So these often inexplicable rules come down from Brussels and we really have no clue why or how they came about and it is very difficult to overturn them. So democracy is actually pretty meaningless.

Also, when power is concentrated in one place it is so easy for corporations and lobbyists and mafiosi-style scumbags to corrupt. When small communities actually have some power, when power is widely dispersed, then it's much more difficult for large entities to impose their will.
 
I like to remind myself of this quote by the late UK politician Tony Benn:

"In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system."
 
I think the best approach is to take a hard look at the psychology of the human race and try to promote the development of the individual and put checks on the expansion and consolidation of power wherever you can.
nice... hadn't really considered this.
 
How we are wired is neither here nor there. The crucial thing is to keep things small scale. When things are small scale we have a fighting chance of making leaders accountable. With things like the EU people barely even know who their so-called representatives are, let alone what decisions they are making. So these often inexplicable rules come down from Brussels and we really have no clue why or how they came about and it is very difficult to overturn them. So democracy is actually pretty meaningless.

Also, when power is concentrated in one place it is so easy for corporations and lobbyists and mafiosi-style scumbags to corrupt. When small communities actually have some power, when power is widely dispersed, then it's much more difficult for large entities to impose their will.
right, but since self-defense is always the primary concern (the Huns are always at the gate) things tend to get bigger.
 
But seriously, I think the Swiss system of cantons and direct democracy has much to commend it. And they are not members of the EU. Plus, all males do national service and must keep a gun in the house by law for purposes of national defence.
 
As the Greeks used to say... A man without a Polis is nothing.

I don't know where I stand on this. I'm a libertarian at heart but could devote myself to a state if it embodied the right ideals. Given that there will always be power struggles it seems appropriate to join somebody's team...

Utopian ideals can certainly get people in trouble (I.e. Communism ). Perhaps volunteerism is just as likely to end up badly.

I think the best approach is to take a hard look at the psychology of the human race and try to promote the development of the individual and put checks on the expansion and consolidation of power wherever you can.



...Except with nuclear weapons and the ability to spy on everyone.



Agreed.

I agree.
As a zenarchist, I am unable to see any political solution to anything. All kinds of libertarianism demands individual responsability, and the question is always: will people rise to the occasion (given a minarchist or anarchist structure) or do they have to do the work (on themselves) first? I tend to believe the latter, as that is a natural conclusion of idealism to me.
 
A few bits from Thornley's "Zenarchy":

As a doctrine, it holds Universal Enlightenment a prerequisite to abolition of the State, after which the State will inevitably vanish. Or — that failing — nobody will give a damn.

“Having said that zen study is knowing yourself, the roshi went on: In America you have democracy, which means for you government of the people, by the people, and for the people. I in my turn am bringing democracy to Japan. You cannot have democracy until people know themselves. The Chinese said that government was unnecessary and they were right. When people know themselves and have their own strength, they do not need government. Otherwise they are just a mob and must be ruled. On the other hand, when rulers do not know themselves, they push the people around. When you do not know yourself, you busy yourself with other people. Zen study is just a matter of getting your own feet on the ground.” (from Matter of Zen by Paul Wienpahl, New York University Press, 1964)

He who wants to take over the country and remake it under his own reforming plans will fail. ‘Mankind’ is an abstract concept that cannot be remade after one’s own ideas. Under any system of reform, a ruler must make use of different, real-life people — some as they seem and some not, some who will assist and others who will resist, some strong and some brittle and unsafe to rely on. That is why the Sage never tries to take over things and reform man, but is instead content to reform himself — letting others follow his example, but never forcing them.

Totalitarian states, however, know the danger of the artist. Correctly, if for the wrong reasons, they know that all art is propaganda, and that art which does not support their system must be against it. They know intuitively that the artist is not a harmless eccentric but one who under the guise of irrelevance creates and reveals a new reality. If, then, he is not to be torn to pieces like Orpheus in the myth, the liberated artist must be able to play the countergame and keep it as well hidden as the judo of Taoism and Zen. He must be able to be ‘all things to all men’, for as one sees from the history of Zen any discipline whatsoever can be used as a way of liberation — making pots, designing gardens, arranging flowers, building houses, serving tea, and even using the sword; one does not have to advertise oneself as a psychotherapist or guru. He is the artist in whatever he does, not just in the sense of doing it beautifully, but in the sense of playing it. In the expressive lingo of the jazz world, whatever the scene, he makes it. Whatever he does, he dances it — like a Negro bootblack shining shoes. He swings.” (from Psychotherapy East and West by Alan Watts, Random House, 1961)
 
I believe that we as a species are genetically wired for collectivism, and for blind obedience to authority. This is why statism continues to flourish everywhere, despite every logical and moral argument for liberty ever put before the people. The few of us who truly understand the distinction between voluntarism and coercion are vastly outnumbered by sheeple. Sad to say, I really doubt this sorry state of human affairs will ever change.

Doug
What about McKenna's notion of the archaic revival? It may not always have been like this. Seems the agricultural revolution changed a lot in favor of statism. I do a lot of research on ADHD (as I have it) and there is evidence that there is a genetic predisposition hailing back to the matrist hunter societies, and that the agrorevolution gradually selected the risk-taking and autonomy out of the gene pool in favor of a high threshold for boredom and obedience. This is also seen in the few hunter populations that exist today; they all have the same dopamine mechanics as ADHD'ers.
 
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

H.L. Mencken 1913
of course... but the reason these folks play the fear game is because self-defense is a real/primary concern. just watch any post-apocalypse movie :)
 
I think the government probably want to defend themselves personally. But do I think my government really gives a shit about defending me? Not really.

This is kind of the nub of it. I'm not convinced that the psychos in my own government are much of an improvement on foreign psychos. I fear the psychos have all sort of merged into one huge global class of psychos.
 
I agree.
As a zenarchist, I am unable to see any political solution to anything. All kinds of libertarianism demands individual responsability, and the question is always: will people rise to the occasion (given a minarchist or anarchist structure) or do they have to do the work (on themselves) first? I tend to believe the latter, as that is a natural conclusion of idealism to me.
Hi EGV... hard to disagree with this on principle, but I get hung up on the huge gap between the ideal and where we are now. I think history (limited/flawed as it is) is a better measure of what's possible.
 
Hi EGV... hard to disagree with this on principle, but I get hung up on the huge gap between the ideal and where we are now. I think history (limited/flawed as it is) is a better measure of what's possible.

Hi Alex. Yes it's hard to take a stand on this without ambiguity. Is history an unavoidable unfolding of karmic relations and evolutionary necessities? Or is destiny in our hands? Or both?
I agree that the current situation always demands something of us, usually a choice. I am a member of a libertarian party simply because I intuit that more constitutional freedom must be good even if it's risky as long as we're not enlightened. Even if I completely disagree with the party's dominant objectivism.
 

For everyone: if you want to learn more about anarchism in its multiple forms, schools and manifestations (anarchy is diversity), try legendary Anarchist Library - it has countless freely downloadable texts from every anarchist author and on every anarchist topic.

For anarchism in academia, look at North American Anarchist Studies Network, Radical Criminology Working Group and its journal, Thought Crimes Press and Jeff Shantz personally.

And, of course, read Hakim Bey and his mysitcal-anarchic treatrises.
 
What about McKenna's notion of the archaic revival? It may not always have been like this. Seems the agricultural revolution changed a lot in favor of statism. I do a lot of research on ADHD (as I have it) and there is evidence that there is a genetic predisposition hailing back to the matrist hunter societies, and that the agrorevolution gradually selected the risk-taking and autonomy out of the gene pool in favor of a high threshold for boredom and obedience. This is also seen in the few hunter populations that exist today; they all have the same dopamine mechanics as ADHD'ers.

Yes. Hunting is not at all boring. It provides nothing but 24-7 action-packed, brain-stimulating, boredom-crushing excitement.
 
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