Anarchists Are Not Naive About Human Nature 

How about now

That's your intellectual path which might be accurate or not.

“Parents just don’t understand” - Will Smith

This is an actually nice way to put this idea. Fit for a casual conversation with friends or family.

ok lol

But people don't see that they're being ruled by idiots. As this video keeps saying, they see authority figures _as_ 'The State.' Can you put 'The State' on the phone for me right now? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-76sX2tZSx9g.html. Did you support Mitch McConnell's efforts to block heroic first responders from getting needed medical aid? No one tried to _stop_ him. Even though his interference & the $ he was paid to do it are both illegal acts, not one person saw the criminal individual committing these. They saw The State in all its Physical Glory showing off its power. That's what's missing from these discussions. _consciously,_ you all know what I'm saying is true. *Subconsciously,* you're all terrified of engaging in discussion that Daddy-Government our Ultimate Protector might construe as dissent. People succumb to their subconscious (SC) fears multiple times a day. All it would take to get over those would be to remember that politicians are not the state. Ahh, but doing so would cause most people to have a _different_ SC fear overwhelm them. Oh well, next time.

i will quote u from now one

if there were any justice in this world Zoe would have 10M subscribers.

It took my brain a moment to process but I laughed out loud at Kropotkin smiling warmly while brandishing a couple pistols

@@Rishi123456789 Zoe is a trans woman. You can recognize that someone's biological sex and outward gender expression are different. Outside of that, awesome comment

I need to pay attention then. I have been listening to this more as a podcast while my hands and eyes are busy. Currently with frying fish.

@@Rishi123456789 Wow. What an ignorant viewpoint. Your Techno Naturism or whatever comes across as way more delusional than any notion of Trans- gender Identity. Maybe try educating yourself a little bit on the subject before embarrassing yourself next time.

Amazing we love to hear it. Something I hate about the idea of being unbiased is that what you think of as centrism necessarily alienates whole ways of thinking simply because they fall outside an arbitrary and binary political divide. For example someone rejecting anarchism outright simply because it’s “far left”. There’s an interview where an anarchists puts it quite well and says something about how ideas not generally found in the common discourse can at first sound ridiculous and absurd, this helps to obscure what they actually are and keeps people willfully ignorant of alternatives.

That's awesome! I think there are so many people like that who, because anarchism is usually "eliminate state and create chaos and apocalypse", simply don't know about it and don't know that it's actually a really evidential and logical ideology.

How exactly would it work though?

For it to work, most people would need to be on board

​@@alexgomez6723Well, society needs to realise the benefit of working together instead of against one another, something that is almost impossible for those who have lived their entire lives in a society that has instilled the opposite in them. It's kinda like what Moses does with the 40 year walk to the promised land in the old testament. He leads the people through the desert for that long not because the distance is that big, but in order to ensure no one born in slavery will reach Ha'anan, even he himself dies before that. Hopefully I was able to explain what I mean in an understandable way. One love ❤️

the big problems.. no, there is no one master to blame. Bill Gates the man? Jeff Beso the man? Zuck the robot? no, not directly. are they really any more culpable? they have set themselves up in compartmentalized workflows that legal protect them from liability. Every individual that lets the evil continue? every worker down to the janitors that clean the bathrooms? well ... if the masters arn't committing the evil who at the corp is .... the workers? every person in every anti-social institution is to blame? every commenter feeding this very algorithm is to blame?

@@Andre-qo5ek What are you talking about? The point they were making is that the problem with the system isn't any individual person in power, it's the fact that positions of power exist at all. They were not making the point that, say, Elon Musk isn't bad, just that whether he is bad or not is immaterial to the immorality of these systems.

@@jadegrace1312 "the system" is ethereal, systems can not operate without compliance. the bosses are profiteers, they will use any means to get profit, good or bad. that leaves agency in the workers; the power is in the hands of the workers. thus the workers are the agents of the immorality. it is immaterial if a person is just he janitor or the boss, they are participating in bringing the "systems' to fruition. blaming ethereal institutions is no different than blaming god for the bible. we all know there were PEOPLE that wrote up the bible. and PEOPLE to be held accountable for the things going on in the world, not systems. there are no wheels of destiny that have been placed in motion; unstoppable by mortal change. for an ideology that denounces hierarchy, contracts outlining "institutions" and "systems" conveniently get blamed a lot instead of the people that should be held accountable.

@@Andre-qo5ek What are you talking about? What's the point in focusing on people? We know how to change people's behaviour, it's by changing incentive structures. Thus even if you want to focus on people you get sent back to focusing on institutions. I seriously don't get the purpose of your comment, it really just seems like you want to start arguments. Edit: Also, my favorite part of your comment is how you put "the system" in quotes as if it was some vague, ethereal term, when clearly the system I was referring to is the specific system of hierarchy relevant to each system. I wasn't using it in some sort for vague, recuperated "anti-capitalist" way, I was referring to a specific system. Admittedly, I probably should've said "each specific system" because that would've more accurately conveyed the point I was making.

@@Rishi123456789 of course it was just a brief comment on a video in the void. the range of topics you have jammed into the comment makes it impossible to address in any meaningful way. it was a very nice utopian speech. so thanks for that. but it doesn't actually say much to the video topic. quite the opposite. it feeds the idea of naivety IMO. 1) i question this line particularly "where everyone has raw vegan organic alkaline food". i'm guessing you simply mean available for people who choose to eat this way... but the science doesn't look great for these diet choices for the general public. (i'm no expert by any means of course, just a normal rando) 2) hadn't heard of Minarchism. ... but its the only item that was an actionable item in your speech. Sounds like a standard government before the socio-economic power dynamics take hold ... i'm not sure how this helps your argument. > "In the strictest sense, it maintains that the state is necessary and that its only legitimate function is the protection of individuals from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud, and the only legitimate governmental institutions are the military, police, and courts. In the broadest sense, it also includes fire departments, prisons, the executive, and legislatures as legitimate government functions. Such states are generally called night-watchman states. Minarchists argue that the state has no authority to use its monopoly on force to interfere with free transactions between people, and see the state's sole responsibility as ensuring that contracts between private individuals and property are protected, through a system of law courts and enforcement. Minarchists generally believe a laissez-faire approach to the economy is most likely to lead to economic prosperity. "

Well then either everyone should have a sword or no one.

@@Aconitum_napellus Well Someone will need a sword metaphorically speaking. Even the most anti- authoritarian system needs some kind of power to back itself up. Just hopefully not some unaccountable group like the army or police in a conventional state.

@@Rishi123456789 Truthfully I don't think any political systems made by people can be inherently peaceful. No system will ever exist without an adversary, even if only an abstract one. Also how will everyone be on a raw vegan diet in your utopia if said society has a non compulsory educational system? If Educators are afraid of "indoctrination" then they won't really succeed in arguing for good things socially like teaching children they shouldn't be racist or transphobic etc. A non compulsory approach will lead to a culture of fair weather liberals at best, easy pickings for any emergent reactionary force.

Also, people are lazy. Most of them probably would prefer a state to rule so they don't have to put in the effort of ruling themselves.

​@@jeffersonclippership2588 Yes, they are. And, yes, they would, and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable human future. Though, as a filthy reactionary and former anarcho-libertarian(filthier still), I feel compelled to ask: what exactly is meant by "ruling themselves" ? I'm not from around these parts. I snuck in through an open window 'round back; forgive me if my question is stupid, but please answer it anyway

Anarchist and Marxist views on human nature are often seen as a precursor to pragmatism. In particular, pragmatists developed the idea of the primacy of action over ideas and senses.

I have to disagree. I do not know who controls the normative understanding of morals in any country. In countries that lack free media, there is a feedback cycle between propaganda mills and popular opinion. In countries with free media and the internet, there is segregation into various echo chambers.

I think that's wildly off base in the majority of contexts. Most morals as traditionally conceived of - as intuitive judgments, particularly - are clearly nothing more than attempts to justify personal feelings by assigning them external validation through the reification of "morality". Most people don't construct moral positions through anything resembling critical thought or rigor; they merely feel base emotions such as fear and disgust, and make those things the basis for social prescriptions. "Human nature" is for the most part a product of circumstances, neither intrinsic nor unchanging. The closest thing to that would be the sets of positions most people are socialized into. But that's exactly the problem: People try to get an ought from an is, to assign moral primacy to their feelings that are actually just products of the status quo. Some ethical systems are, however, more than that. Particularly some forms of utilitarianism that focus on things other than pure pleasure and pain. I find that much more compelling than pretending our personal feelings are actually some kind of universal moral law.

I think Malatesta wrote about that, but I can't find the exact quote now. But it basically said - as far as I can remember - that a lot of anarchists in his time tried to fully reject the concept of morals and ethics with the very argument that those were controlled by the ruling forces. But he answered to them that they shouldn't just reject them, that they should stick to those aspects of morality that were in line with anarchist thinking and that they should replace morals and ethics where they have better ones as replacements. And I fully agree with that. Morals and ethics are quite important and I wouldn't like to see an anarchist movement that goes full anti-intellectual which is a path that historically led to fascism. And I don't mean that in an exaggerated way. Anti-intellectualism and the glorification of action instead of thinking was and is a core element of fascist thinking. "Thinking is a form of emasculation" for fascists according to Umberto Eco. And a lot of fascists thought of anarchists as those action-guided forces of violence (because they only knew anarchism as the distorted version they knew from the media). For example, the fascist poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti wrote in his 'Futurist manifest': "We want to glorify war - the only cure for the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman". And the fascists in Italy used some anarchist/syndicalist terms (I don't know which exactly, but something in the direction of direct action, propaganda of the deed ect. ) and some of the early fascists were indeed earlier anarchists who had abolished all morals and then only believed in the purifying force of action and pragmatism.

@@Kuhmuhnistische_Partei wow I don’t mean there is no moral bases for the actions we have in the real world. I just thought what dewy said was interesting, the implication which indicated the establishment of morals that conflict with human nature are used to degrade individuals to the system they are subjected to

capitalism is, and will be, a very brief period of human social development

And I'd like to hear about those egalitarian societies in which we have lived for so long. You can certainly not mean the Dugum Dani of Papua Guinea, who have been extensively researched since the 1960s. You can't possibly mean the Maori, the Yoruba, the Ibo, the Hausa, the Yamomamo, the Zulu, the Great Plains Indians, the Aztecs, or the Corded Ware Culture peoples, among many others, because all these certainly were socially structured in above and below. Given what anthropologists have found out about tribal structures, about 'war before civilization' or 'big men', I do indeed wonder what is so 'natural' for humans.

@Jean Sanchez Irrespective of that, they are most certainly hierarchical societies and it is highly likely that our ancestors have lived much like the Dugum Dani did until the 1960s. There is no anarchism in traditional societies.

@@ewaldseiland8558 Look up Immediate Return Hunter-Gatherers. Specifically the following examples: -Pygmy groups in central Africa (Aka, Baka, Efe, Mbendjele, Mbuti); -Hadza in Tanzania, some San groups in Namibia and Botswana (Ju\'hoansi aka !Kung); -several groups in India such as the Jarawa and Ongee Andaman Islanders, Hill Pandaram, and Nayaka; -In Southeast Asia, the Agta, Batek, Maniq, Penan and others These are all highly-egalitarian societies that are the closest to how our ancestors lived for most of human existence (100,000 years). For the source, see "Egalitarian social organisation among hunter-gatherers" by Jerome Lewis Your examples are all newer than that. In fact, the Aztec empire is younger than Oxford university.

what was Emma Goldman's conclusion to the nature of lamb and -wolf- lion? who was this person observer?

@@Andre-qo5ek I believe the lion represents governments, and the lamb the masses

Sure, but the lion exists in nature too. One million lambs united together stand a much better chance against a thousand lions than a single lamb against a single lion with nobody else around. It's nice poetry but it's only that, it doesn't actually address the unfortunate reality that bad people will still be bad people when you take away state interference (or that charismatic and imposing bad people will still unite new mobs beneath them with nobody around to stop it, so you actually end up facing all thousand of those lions by yourself as a single lonely lamb).

@@TheSquareOnes "bad people will still be bad people when you take away state interference (or that charismatic and imposing bad people will still unite new mobs beneath them " yup... all the wolves(lions) in sheep's clothing. time and time again history shows us that when one lion falls the sheep bleat and a new lion steps in. power vacuums seem to be able to be secured by the sheep. sheep are also governed by a shepard ... how does the Shepard play into this? unless we are saying this is in a state of nature (aka. human less), but that would destroy the Emma Goldman quote. it would be in the sheeps nature TO be fooled and consumed by the lion.

@@TheSquareOnes exactly

I: My two cents: to transition from a society motivated by greed and selfishness, we need to disincentivize these behaviors. Capitalism puts them on a pedestal, glorifies them, and makes them, in people´s minds, necessary for survival. To have your college or job application accepted, another person´s must get rejected. Getting a promotion menas someone else doesn´t get one. Winning means someone else loses. Artificial scarcity of success leads to this dog-eat-dog mentality we can observe in the world. When we transition away from capitalism, this way of thinking will lose its merit and appeal, since people won´t be forced to live in a constant competition. Does it make sense, what I mean? I must admit I´m not the best at explaining my thoughts.

@@iamnohere this is my issue though, for anyone to design incentive structures of how society can run, that is in essence going to be a state that requires coercion of some kind. Whether that’s positive reward or negative consequences for acting against the wishes of those designers or both, to design a system by how you wish society to govern itself requires coercion of some kind. Anarchists seem to not have an answer for how this could be done otherwise.

This is a huge topic. Have you seen my video anarchism as a way of life? It covers some of this stuff ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VP31dPtbHLc.html

How to achieve anarchism wasn't really the point of the video.

@@calebr7199 true, but the argument over how achievable an anarchist society is is why people say Anarchists don’t have a clear grasp on human nature.

systems render behaviors render systems render behaviors

That's not exactly what that was getting at. It's making a point that we cannot change NEEDS. For what you are getting at try the brain in a jar experiment. I will walk you through below if you have questions do ask. First take your limbs and replace them (let's assume advanced cybernetics for a visual), is that still you? Now we take everything below the neck, and ask again. Then we take everything but the brain, are you still you? And for arguments sake a step further we will exactly copy your whole brain and make a synthetic version slowly replacing it. Then ask one last time. Now you may struggle with the concept but you definitely are your brain but the concept of self is harder to pin down. But if you think about it, however different as the memories remain the chain is unbroken as the person is still there. So if the "mind" is unaltered nothing but the shell changes.

That's what I always come to. The hierarchies are only good at on thing, and that is destroying peaceful, cooperative communities. The mob rules. Gangsterism tends to prevail over decentralized, peaceful societies...at least so far.

@@Jimi_Lee Exactly my feeling. This is why I always feel that while anarchism sounds like an ideal far-future potential, in the meantime we need strong community organization and self-defense, and I believe that this requires a certain amount of hierarchy.

This is the thing that I never understood about anarchy as a philosophy. You can't get around the fact that an organized group with strong leadership is more effective than an unorganized one and will always be able to force its will on everyone else. This sort of thing happens all throughout history, a *lot*, and it's why we have political power structures today at all. The best you can hope for is some say in what the people at the top use state violence to do (which is supposed to be what democracy does, to varying degrees of imperfect success). I think this is what people mean when they say anarchists are naive, and I didn't feel that I got a satisfactory answer to this question from the video (maybe I missed something? Not asking in a sarcastic way).

@@shinyary2 Anarchists pick up the pieces after empires destroy themselves.

@@Jimi_Lee This doesn't seem to have answered the question? Or are you saying that anarchy is really more descriptive, rather than prescriptive? As in, it's not something to try to establish and/or maintain, but instead it's just a state of being that exists in between the fall of one empire and the rise of the next? If that's what you mean, I think we're on the same page.

The Jam is boss

how do you teach that without having the power to keep people from trying to take dominance path within an anarchist society?

@@emanuelneagu14 depends on how far down the line you're thinking. I had in mind more of a parent raising a child situation. For people with a more established sense of self, I don't have an answer for that beyond "make it unpopular to do so" but in the age of internet those types of people can just cluster around in forums and spread their ideas that way. This is definitely a topic that needs further consideration.

​@@dandelionsryans down the whole society, things get the most different they can be from a parent raising a child on the other side of things (far authoritarian right I suppose). Otherwise, nobody wants partial anarchism right? How'd that be even possible in the first place lmao. Well anyway, there should have been an answer to that in order for anarchism to be an option, not like this, being an unanswered question even now. If the answer is found in history, more specific teach all people how to fight like back in antiquity when there was some natural anarchy cause tribes were fighting and wouldn't unite into states, that again today to fight extremists?! No thanks, that's fucked up.

@@emanuelneagu14 you can't create an ideology without existing material conditions or else your "plans" are doomed to fail. if we had the answers for every problem we would have solved them by now. When we throw off the yoke of our oppressors, in whatever time that may be, only then can we answer questions like this because our material conditions will have changed from the present day and we will solve them accordingly

@@dandelionsryans giving various solutions for an imminent problem everywhere has nothing to do with current material conditions, choosing which solution is optimal at a specific time does. The problem is something relatively constant, in our nature, that wouldn't change in just a few years or tens of years. It's a threat that you either oppose either change from the inside. Change could only be through education, hardly, whilst as opposition, I haven't ever heard of any institution or such that's more competent to oppose such groups than states themselves through police or army and despite how incompetent they actually might act sometimes, anarchists don't propose anything in this sense and again the tribal-like system is a huge NO, a big jump back. My conclusion is only education of anarchist theory could work in some already very civilized society where everyone would see how valuable anarchism is. Such a society is light years away from anything currently existing, hell even Marx's dictature of the proletariat idea sounds closer to what could today's people organize to do.

education and debunks of ideas, study and arguments

@@emanuelneagu14 Would education alone prevent the rise of societal structures like: - armed oppressors - debt - democratic organizations - capitalist/feudalist job contracts - religious sects - thieving cliques - socialist communities and all of the other anti-anarchist power-seekers that could desire to topple an anarchist society? Because that is essentially what my question boils down to: How would it be stable, i.e. how would people be unable to topple it in favour of their own ambitions?

@@iwersonsch5131 oh I thought you mean something else by "stable", like marxists are diverse as hell and would want reforms. Sure it's not stable, there's always gonna be some fascists looking to either rob or rule everyone, you're completely right, we never get answers for this stuff from anarchists, that's why I call myself whatever-kinda-socialism-gains-power-excluding-anarchism-for-now-and-trotskyism-always-ist. In some ideal society though yes, education alone would prevent people from willing to be part of any of such groups that wouldn't even exist, that's why most people call anarchists naive about human nature.

@@emanuelneagu14 I'm fine if anarchists only want to propose a framework in which anarchy can remain the dominant description for society, rather than fading almost completely in favour of some form of archy. However, I don't even see that in the current, pretty vague anarchist proposals that I've heard. This is even assuming that people are perfectly educated about anarchy and why all possible ideas for breaking it would be bad ideas. Wouldn't there eventually start being strong enough real-world incentives to exploit a power vacuum by overthrowing it with a governing structure? For example, some subset of the population could hope for: - personal accumulation of wealth - cheaper protection of property - more efficient trade - more efficient production chains - access to resources that happen to be owned by a part of society unwilling to share at a fair price - the desire to make history - desire-driven oppression of individuals, or protection against such oppression?

@@iwersonsch5131 same. No, there wouldn't, they would know why it wouldn't be better, isn't that the point?!

that's not a slippery slope. that's jumping off a cliff. how does one get from naive to inferior?

@@Andre-qo5ek Could you describe an example of when someone is being naive?

​@@celestialbuffalo sure.. lets see.... generally anything that is not thought out to the extend of people abusing it. an everyday example: not locking your bike, your car, your house and being surprised when your property is stolen. * not locking the property does not make a person inferior for their mistake. they just didn't think ahead. big picture example: proposing laisse fair capitalism and not expecting people to sell adulterated products. proposing intellectual property rights and patents and expecting people to not hoard patents and crush competition.

@@Andre-qo5ek In the latter example I'd say that is often the aim of the economic system. As far as not locking things up I'd just say that was a mistake.

Why characterize someone as an innocent cherub to be looked after? I think that's the slippery slope.

serial killers are a modern invention and a product of our current conditions. a better society would not create them.

@@mikeymullins5305 completely untrue archeologists theorize that murders have existed since we were in caves, like hallmarks of hiding and killing a person. Bureaucracy/capitalism may play a role but some people just have the urges to hurt others.

the main approach we use now to attempt to restrict power is by having classes that are able to exercise power over one another, incentivizing both to cooperate and work at least partly in the interest of the other. but this situation can be unstable, as one class gets unbalanced power and then erodes all restraints on their power. can anarchy be stable against ambitious and clever people?

Al Gore Rhythm, if you will.

Ironic statement

@@dawkom320 How so?

this

There's market anarchists, but most anarchists have advocated for bottom-up confederation of workplaces as a model for decentralized economic planning. I'm a market anarchist.

interesting thanks. Would you call yourself an anarcho-capitalist or maybe simply an anarcho individualist? @@Jorge-xf9gs