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counterspin posted:Who do you think is making those sorts of decisions right now? It's the worst, richest subgroup of your neighbors. I don’t disagree, so much as I am very reticent to place my trust in a system that seems specifically designed to stress me the gently caress out and slowly kill me in order to be treated well. Which is to say: I don’t buy that getting rid of formal hierarchy will do a drat thing to social hierarchy, and indeed this system seems designed to create extremely fierce informal hierarchy via needing very frequent communal decisionmaking meetings. Hi, I’m on the autism spectrum and can barely attend family parties for more than an hour or two before feeling overwhelmed. You’ll excuse me if I am rabidly distrustful of any setup that’d require me to attend group gatherings with strangers regularly, especially those where power and influence are solely determined by social esteem and rhetorical skill.
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Jul 3, 2019 14:36
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Mors Rattus posted:I don’t disagree, so much as I am very reticent to place my trust in a system that seems specifically designed to stress me the gently caress out and slowly kill me in order to be treated well. Which is to say: I don’t buy that getting rid of formal hierarchy will do a drat thing to social hierarchy, and indeed this system seems designed to create extremely fierce informal hierarchy via needing very frequent communal decisionmaking meetings. Yeah, I've heard of this criticism echoed in other channels of discussion: formal hierarchical structures certainly have their issues, but the advantage is that (some of) the pathways of power are clearly identifiable, i.e. you know exactly who your Congressional representative is, and can (theoretically) hold them accountable for anything coming out of their office. Or, say, you know exactly who your boss is in an office. A more moderately leftist view might say that you should be able to elect (and recall!) your boss, but you would still have a boss. The alternative, of some kind of communal "we are all each other's bosses" set-up that attempts to create a largely/purely horizontal organization not only creates conditions by which people are constantly policing everyone else, but leaves it vulnerable to mobilization by persons who are, shall we say, charismatic, except the lack of a formal organizational framework means that you might not know that it's happening, and you might not have a process for accounting for bad actors.
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Jul 3, 2019 14:52
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Pope Guilty posted:I mean part of the point of anarchism is removing the structures that needlessly set people against each other. Without power and privilege to wield, justify, and defend, there's a lot less reason for people to be untrustworthy and a lot more reason for trust and solidarity.
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Jul 3, 2019 15:01
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Warthur posted:Sure, I understand those points - it's just the question of what stops the militia then deciding that they're the state. Like, okay, you've joined an ad hoc militia to kill fascists. So now that you've got a gun, you're going to terrorize your own neighbourhood for some extra consumer goods? Very dangerous to you and your family, probably more trouble than it's worth. Military occupation and policing works best when you can take a bunch of young people, train them to dehumanize the enemy, then set them loose on a population they don't know and don't have much in common with. The same logic wouldn't apply to a classless society. But we're talking pure hypotheticals about a scenario where the parameters are extremely vague. For something approaching a historical example: in France, the National Guard always had a more-or-less antagonistic relationship with conservative regimes. The Army proper, which by the reign of Louis-Napoleon included many rural conservatives needing a paycheck, had no qualms about firing on rebellious urban workers. Mors Rattus posted:Hi, I’m on the autism spectrum and can barely attend family parties for more than an hour or two before feeling overwhelmed. You’ll excuse me if I am rabidly distrustful of any setup that’d require me to attend group gatherings with strangers regularly, especially those where power and influence are solely determined by social esteem and rhetorical skill. But no one's going to drag you out of the house and make you cast your ballot for Local Executive Committee #2407.
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Jul 3, 2019 15:07
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm not going to lie, a socialist society is probably going to be less fun for people who only want to participate in society through consumerism and broadcast media. yes this is exactly what is aid and not that I literally have brain chemistry issues that make dealing with groups of strangers incredibly stressful in ways that can and do cause huge issues in my life what the gently caress is wrong with you and, y'know, I DO have to go out and do it anyway because my needs are not the needs of my neighbors, and I cannot trust them to advocate for my needs because they don't loving understand them, because they're not autistic so yeah i'm not a fan of anarchism
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Jul 3, 2019 15:17
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I'm not really sure what's happening here, because any sufficiently advanced society that's implementing some form of anarchism is going to presumably also have accessibility features. The internet is one of the more exciting prospects making anarchist organisation look more plausible, precisely because it means people whose responsibilities, schedules, or personal needs make going to some kind of town hall difficult far easier to organise. "I guess if you can't get up the stairs to the clubhouse, too bad so sad" is a really backwards view both socially and technologically.
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Jul 3, 2019 15:27
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Halloween Jack posted:
Oh hey yeah, cause being on the autism spectrum's a choice we made because we only wanna be consumerists. you dipshit motherfucker.
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Jul 3, 2019 15:28
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm not going to lie, a socialist society is probably going to be less fun for people who only want to participate in society through consumerism and broadcast media. That's not terribly comforting when you're responding to a concern about autistic people. gradenko_2000 posted:The alternative, of some kind of communal "we are all each other's bosses" set-up that attempts to create a largely/purely horizontal organization not only creates conditions by which people are constantly policing everyone else, but leaves it vulnerable to mobilization by persons who are, shall we say, charismatic, except the lack of a formal organizational framework means that you might not know that it's happening, and you might not have a process for accounting for bad actors. My impression from reading about relatively horizontal, informal structures with little executive power like LARP organization, Burning Man, left-leaning activist groups, etc. is that they're often very vulnerable to bad actors who want to bully or harass people. It's a very real issue and I don't always find proposals to restructure society so that bad actors won't exist all that reassuring: it sounds very hypothetical. Whereas we have more experience with well-implemented structures ameliorating the problem.
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Jul 3, 2019 15:33
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spectralent posted:I'm not really sure what's happening here, because any sufficiently advanced society that's implementing some form of anarchism is going to presumably also have accessibility features. The internet is one of the more exciting prospects making anarchist organisation look more plausible, precisely because it means people whose responsibilities, schedules, or personal needs make going to some kind of town hall difficult far easier to organise. "I guess if you can't get up the stairs to the clubhouse, too bad so sad" is a really backwards view both socially and technologically. Considering that we're dealing with actual human beings and the exchange that just literally happened...yeah no I don't actually think that automatically assuming anarchists and leftists are going to not be ableist is actually smart. People tend to be most educated and interested in issues that affect them personally. Intersectionality matters, and literally the people designing these systems have to actually think of the potential issues that will be faced - which, like, clearly isn't happening.
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Jul 3, 2019 15:34
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Yeah, the general consensus I'm getting from the "pro-anarchy" people here is "Society will be fine because we'll kill the bad actors prior to initiating the anarchostate" ignoring the possibility that other bad actors will rise up out of the remainder to exploit the methods that they saw working prior.Halloween Jack posted:I'm not going to lie, a socialist society is probably going to be less fun for people who only want to participate in society through consumerism and broadcast media. What the gently caress dude.
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Jul 3, 2019 15:35
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It's the one weakness of anarchism: It relies on most people not being dicks.
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Jul 3, 2019 15:39
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For what it's worth, and to be clear, I don't identify as an anarchist, it's just something on my reading list that I think I've managed to grasp at some level, and it's interesting to muse about, but as I've alluded to (perhaps not explicitly enough), there are issues with how this particular vision of socialism is supposed to come to fruition, even moreso than statist forms of the ideology. And, as a sop to the line of discussion, anarcho-capitalism is even more of a non-starter, since it specifically leaves intact the one hierarchical structure that's responsible for most of the problems in the first place.
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Jul 3, 2019 15:40
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Loomer posted:It's the one weakness of anarchism: It relies on most people not being dicks. It relies almost exclusively on people not being dicks. It's the sociological equivalent of "Assume a spherical frictionless cow".
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Jul 3, 2019 15:41
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Kurieg posted:Yeah, the general consensus I'm getting from the "pro-anarchy" people here is "Society will be fine because we'll kill the bad actors prior to initiating the anarchostate" ignoring the possibility that other bad actors will rise up out of the remainder to exploit the methods that they saw working prior.
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Jul 3, 2019 15:42
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Also the currently existing global order is going to die within the next 30-50 years and take most of humanity with it, so if you're thinking that allegiance to the current system is a valid choice you are extremely badly mistaken. The question isn't "should we change the system?" It's "to what should we change the system?" And it's depressing and infuriating to watch people pretend otherwise, or advocate abusive, exploitative systems as their preferred future.
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Jul 3, 2019 15:45
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It is my understanding that there's been some academic discussions about how the fundamentals of Marxism and other political theories are somewhat ableist because they rely on class consciousness and other concepts that might be difficult to either grasp or put into action for those with learning disabilities or those on the spectrum, thus excluding them from the first and most important step in the theory. People with social anxiety and other disorders making assembly difficult or impossible are also people who are, to an extent, excluded from some of the most common forms of praxis the left has. I have neither the expertise or the life experience to comment on such issues but they're important to keep in mind. Not everyone on the left is a neurotypical, able-bodied white male.
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Jul 3, 2019 15:49
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Mors Rattus posted:Considering that we're dealing with actual human beings and the exchange that just literally happened...yeah no I don't actually think that automatically assuming anarchists and leftists are going to not be ableist is actually smart. People tend to be most educated and interested in issues that affect them personally. Intersectionality matters, and literally the people designing these systems have to actually think of the potential issues that will be faced - which, like, clearly isn't happening. Right, but I don't think our society is close to implementing luxury ground anarchism. I think it comes back to the "no true communist has been born yet" thing; we're all products of our massively nationalist, exploitative, extraction focused, heirarchical, capitalist, racist, ableist society, and the ways those things are issues is often invisible to people, for example, as above. Implementing full anarchism is probably a goal for after we've already achieved significant strides in the fields of democracy, equality, and social justice.
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Jul 3, 2019 16:03
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spectralent posted:Right, but I don't think our society is close to implementing luxury ground anarchism. I think it comes back to the "no true communist has been born yet" thing; we're all products of our massively nationalist, exploitative, extraction focused, heirarchical, capitalist, racist, ableist society, and the ways those things are issues is often invisible to people, for example, as above. Implementing full anarchism is probably a goal for after we've already achieved significant strides in the fields of democracy, equality, and social justice. What's the point in discussing theories that are not anywhere near being implementable when the problem is now?
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Jul 3, 2019 16:16
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MollyMetroid posted:Oh hey yeah, cause being on the autism spectrum's a choice we made because we only wanna be consumerists.
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Jul 3, 2019 16:17
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Halloween Jack posted:That isn't the issue. I'm treating "I don't trust democracy because I might have to go to a meeting" with the precise level of seriousness it deserves. That sure is a take. Mors Rattus posted:What's the point in discussing theories that are not anywhere near being implementable when the problem is now? Well, panning back over the thread, because someone claimed someone was an anarchocapitalist, and someone else explained the distinction between anarchism and anarchocapitalism. If you're wondering why people talk about imagined designs of utopia when there are concrete problems now, I dunno, why're we talking about roleplaying games when we have real lives?
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Jul 3, 2019 16:23
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Halloween Jack posted:That isn't the issue. I'm treating "I don't trust democracy because I might have to go to a meeting" with the precise level of seriousness it deserves. Ah, so you didn't read their post then.
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Jul 3, 2019 16:24
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I got some serious social anxiety and autism issues but i've been going to the gym 4 times a week to lift and doing some shooting range stuff so maybe I can survive one or two weeks as an urban guerilla when the inevitable military coup happens here. Dunno how I can train for the likely eventuality of being arrested and sent to a torture dungeon but hey there might be something.
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Jul 3, 2019 16:25
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Is this the point where we start spamming the  smiley?
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Jul 3, 2019 16:32
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Perhaps it is overly optimistic of me, but I believe that adopting a democratic socialist governance would be able to both address climate change in a comprehensive way as well as set up a situation where more leftist forms of political organization can be entertained as being more viable. While I can appreciate the anarchist position of rebuilding society from the ashes of the old, I think that a less radical form of change can be managed, and that said change would be less inherently destructive to the lives of marginalized people. Edit: Nuns with Guns posted:Is this the point where we start spamming the
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Jul 3, 2019 16:33
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Meinberg posted:Perhaps it is overly optimistic of me, but I believe that adopting a democratic socialist governance would be able to both address climate change in a comprehensive way as well as set up a situation where more leftist forms of political organization can be entertained as being more viable. While I can appreciate the anarchist position of rebuilding society from the ashes of the old, I think that a less radical form of change can be managed, and that said change would be less inherently destructive to the lives of marginalized people. But then how would Holloween Jack style on people for having the temerity of not being neurotypical?
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Jul 3, 2019 16:34
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Meinberg posted:While I can appreciate the anarchist position of rebuilding society from the ashes of the old,
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Jul 3, 2019 16:36
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Pope Guilty posted:Also the currently existing global order is going to die within the next 30-50 years and take most of humanity with it, so if you're thinking that allegiance to the current system is a valid choice you are extremely badly mistaken. The question isn't "should we change the system?" It's "to what should we change the system?" And it's depressing and infuriating to watch people pretend otherwise, or advocate abusive, exploitative systems as their preferred future. This is why I still advocate for anarchist social theories for small, self-regulating societies, despite the problems inherent in it and its inability to achieve the change we'll need to stop what's coming (if, as I accept, what's coming cannot be stopped then we can neatly sidestep that particular issue). It's an excellent transitional alternative.
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Jul 3, 2019 16:37
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Halloween Jack posted:What? Classical anarchist thought suggests that the state must be destroyed completely in order for it to be rebuilt into an anarchist form, while I suggest that a more gradual form of change is possible. Kurieg posted:But then how would Holloween Jack style on people for having the temerity of not being neurotypical? Listen, I'm sure he'll find a way. Ableists always find a way.
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Jul 3, 2019 16:38
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Loomer posted:This is why I still advocate for anarchist social theories for small, self-regulating societies, despite the problems inherent in it and its inability to achieve the change we'll need to stop what's coming (if, as I accept, what's coming cannot be stopped then we can neatly sidestep that particular issue). It's an excellent transitional alternative. Yeah, there's no reason to assume Anarchist positions are violently revolutionary. I mean, there are, but, that's cynical rather than praxis.
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Jul 3, 2019 16:38
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Kurieg posted:It relies almost exclusively on people not being dicks. It's the sociological equivalent of "Assume a spherical frictionless cow". No, it's "take a cow and make it spherical and fictionless, then work off that." Anarchism cannot work until people are educated enough to understand their best interests and work peacefully towards realising them without trampling on other people. It's an inherent assumption of the system that you first need to get people up to that level.
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Jul 3, 2019 16:41
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Kurieg posted:It relies almost exclusively on people not being dicks. It's the sociological equivalent of "Assume a spherical frictionless cow". People level this critique at anarchism like our current system hasn't resulted in multiple periods death marches and concentration camps. Americans have a sundowning racist president getting kids killed at this moment. Because capitalism and representative republics are also vulnerable to bad actors exploiting rules that the good guys only use for the right reasons. Which is probably why anarchists itt are touchy about claims that anarchy needs to emerge as a perfect frictionless transition. Social change doesn't work that way.
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Jul 3, 2019 16:45
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The only motherfuckers dumb enough to think you can just turn government off tomorrow and everything will sort itself out are ancaps, and that's because their desired end-state is just the current system stripped of what little safeguards are left.
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Jul 3, 2019 16:53
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Lemon-Lime posted:No, it's "take a cow and make it spherical and fictionless, then work off that." For me it's more, as I said, that the utopia imagined sounds like Hell if you're a person like me and want to be represented. e: well, that and I also literally cannot imagine, even with the best possible education, a social situation in which there is no informal social hierarchy developed based on inherent human group-forming, personal charisma and so on. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Jul 3, 2019 |
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Jul 3, 2019 16:57
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I suspect that hierarchical structures have advantages in organization, coordination, and response time that horizontal structures will never be able to compete with, but I don't know how you'd even begin to actually measure and test such a theory. Also definitely put me down on the list of "on the autism spectrum and extremely suspicious of any organization that substitutes informal hierarchies for formal ones"
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Jul 3, 2019 17:03
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Mors Rattus posted:For me it's more, as I said, that the utopia imagined sounds like Hell if you're a person like me and want to be represented. As I said, the exciitng cool new part of anarchist discussion is that there's not going to be loads of quorum meetings if you can build good quality inter-community communications infrastructure that'd reduce barriers to access. "Sorry our planning meeting doesn't have wheelchair access, get hosed" is a dumbass position that should be self-evidently problematic and non-NT people being excluded is equally bad.
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Jul 3, 2019 17:08
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The broad critique of "anarchism isn't workable because it requires that people aren't going to be dicks" feels a little simplistic under the notion that it's capitalism itself that pushes people towards unvitiated self-interest to the point of societal harm, and also acts as an active disincentive towards mutualism. Or to put it another way, it seems far too similar to the right-wing canard of "communism cannot ever work because people are always going to be too greedy", often with the implied assertion that this is somehow part of "human nature", which is itself a non-materialist take.
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Jul 3, 2019 17:10
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But how does any of this relate to the time Zak S poo poo his pants at Chick-fil-A on the last day of Gen Con '17?
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Jul 3, 2019 17:14
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gradenko_2000 posted:The broad critique of "anarchism isn't workable because it requires that people aren't going to be dicks" feels a little simplistic under the notion that it's capitalism itself that pushes people towards unvitiated self-interest to the point of societal harm, and also acts as an active disincentive towards mutualism. I mean, I'm an anarchist and I still think its reliance on people not being dicks is a serious weakness.
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Jul 3, 2019 17:14
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From each according to their ability to say that Zak S poo poo his pants at Chik-Fil-A at the last day of Gen Con '17. To each according to their need to say Zak S poo poo his pants at Chik-Fil-A at the last day of Gen Con '17.
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Jul 3, 2019 17:16
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spectralent posted:As I said, the exciitng cool new part of anarchist discussion is that there's not going to be loads of quorum meetings if you can build good quality inter-community communications infrastructure that'd reduce barriers to access. "Sorry our planning meeting doesn't have wheelchair access, get hosed" is a dumbass position that should be self-evidently problematic and non-NT people being excluded is equally bad. And as I said: I don't believe any amount of education is going to fix the informal social hierarchy problem, and my experience as an autistic person is that due to my disabilities related to social interaction, these hierarchies are unlikely to be friendly to me because social interaction is loving hard, especially when, as I have, it is literally something that has required actual training to learn to take part in even at my current level. To me, what you are describing sounds literally impossible based on my lived experiences even with the best-intentioned and well-educated groups. That you assure me that in the future it will not be impossible merely makes me even more skeptical. I vastly prefer formal hierarchies to informal ones because there are rules, which can be learned and relied on. These rules are explicit. If they are not obeyed, that's a problem to be fixed, but with an informal hierarchy the rules change constantly based on social position, charisma, any number of factors which I am literally incapable of tracking at a speed sufficient to take part in the process of self-governance.
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Jul 3, 2019 17:18
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